"Axle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. Then remember to hew your timber: it is the season for that work. Cut a mortar [1313] three feet wide and a pestle three cubits long, and an axle of seven feet, for it will do very well so; but if you make it eight feet long, you can cut a beetle [1314] from it as well. Cut a felloe three spans across for a waggon of ten palms' width. Hew also many bent timbers, and bring home a plough-tree ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... wagons and remudas arrived at the new ranch hours in advance of the herds. The horse wranglers were detailed by Priest, and fitting an axle to the spool of wire, by the aid of ropes attached to the pommels of two saddles, it was rolled up to the scene of its use at an easy canter. The stretching of the wire was less than an hour's work, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... the highest degree of excitement. I instantly ran towards the chaise, in order to offer what help was in my power. "Help me," said the poor fellow, as I drew nigh; but before I could reach the horses, they had turned rapidly round, one of the fore-wheels flew from its axle-tree, the chaise was overset, and the postillion flung violently from his seat upon the field. The horses now became more furious than before, kicking desperately, and endeavouring to disengage themselves from the fallen chaise. As I was hesitating whether to run to the assistance ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... runabout car Tom drew forth a wheel-jack. This he and Dave fitted under an axle, raising the wheel half aft inch off the ground. Dick rapidly remove the tire from that ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... represented the archduke were well beaten, the Swede was hunted down, and for the Piastis, they seized on a cart belonging to a gentleman, laden with provisions, broke it to pieces, and burnt the axle-tree, which in that country is called a piasti, and cried out The Piasti is burnt! nor could the senators at the diet that day command any order or silence. The French party wore white handkerchiefs in their hats, and they were so numerous as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Olympus, held counsel with the gods and decided to destroy the reckless race of men. At first he wanted to turn his lightnings over all the earth, but the fear that the ether would take fire and destroy the axle of the universe restrained him. He laid aside the thunderbolt which the Cyclops had fashioned for him, and decided to send rain from heaven over all the earth and so destroy the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... of our gun cut great furrows in the earth, which made it necessary to move several times to more solid ground. In these different positions which we occupied three of the enemy's shells passed between the wheels and under the axle of our gun, bursting at the trail. One of them undermined the gunner's (Henry's) footing and injured him so as to necessitate his leaving the field. Even the old Irish hero, Tom Martin, was demoralized, and, in dodging from a Yankee ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... salient features of the Metropolis which instantly strike the attention of the stranger are the stations of the Fire Brigade. Whenever he happens to pass them, he finds the sentinel on duty, he sees the "red artillery" of the force; and the polished axle, the gleaming branch, and the shining chain, testify to the beautiful condition of the instrument, ready for active service at a moment's notice. Ensconced in the shadow of the station, the liveried watchmen look like hunters waiting for their ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... "you see that we shall have no difficulty as to the dam. Then, as to the wheel, it will be a simple one of not more than four feet diameter, presented vertically to what I may term the water-spout, so that its axle, which will have a crank in it, will work the saw direct; thus, avoiding toothed wheels and cogs, we shall avoid friction, and, if need be, increase ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... straining began, and men grunted as they heaved against an axle. After a long seance of such effort there came a sharp exclamation, like an oath, and the confusion fell to a murmur of dismay. Someone jerked open the door, and Dupin's grizzled ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the Stamp Act, the Tea Tax, or any of those entering wedges of tyranny with which the British government sought to rive the liberties of America? The wheel of the Revolution would have rusted on its axle, if a spirit so weak had been the only power to give it motion. Did our fathers say, when their rights and liberties were infringed—"Why, what is done cannot be undone. That is the first thought." No it ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... over, and my heart gnawed, and the acid of vexation boiled in my throat, and despite the axle grease my arm nagged; while we rode unspeaking, like some guilty ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... fiendish yells. The next minute the whole band were circling round the wagon in a wild war-dance; their yells, their savage song, completely drowned the shrieks of the tortured man. The whole wagon was soon a mass of flames, and more fuel was added. Presently the rear axle came down with a crash, sending showers of sparks whirling through the night air, and Pike ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... retorted the doctor seriously, 'that it matters very much. You're off your axle, my friend, and I shall have to doctor you. But if I hear of any foolishness, Predikant or no Predikant, I'll have you locked up as sure as ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a month elapsed ere the newly married couple were able to set out on their journey to the French capital, and, even then, they had to travel along roads studded with quagmires into which their carriage frequently sank up to the axle. Sometimes fifteen or sixteen men and a crick were necessary to extricate them. Though on their honeymoon, they found the repetition of these incidents monotonous, and were so tired when they reached Dresden that they stayed there to recover themselves. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... also Testifi'd, That the Axle-Tree of his Cart, happening in passing, to break some part of Rose Cullenders House, in her Anger at it, she vehemently threatned him, His Horses should suffer for it. And within a short time, all his Four Horses dy'd; after which he sustained many other Losses in ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... was used in a vertical cylinder, the former being thrown up by the force of the explosion. The only work done on the up-stroke was that to overcome the weight of the piston and piston rod, and the latter being made in the form of a rack, engaged with a toothed wheel on the axle as the piston descended, causing the fly-wheel and ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... at Dagon's knee, Gropes for columns strong as he; When his ringlets grew and curled, Groped for axle ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... down a certain number of axles an hour. At definite, brief intervals a fragment of an automobile would move along the assembling track and pause beneath his spout—and his axle must be ready. There was a constant procession of fragments, and a second's delay brought up to his ears pointed commentary from below. ... The more pointed that those below knew ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... is to wake at night, When over all there reigns the ultimate spell Of complete silence, darkness absolute, To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree, In slow gyration, with no sensible sound, Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched In vigilance of ecstasy among Ethereal paths and the celestial maze. The rumour of our onward course now brings A steady ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... whole door bracing against it with his shoulder, then turning the knob and giving the door a severe kick it flew open and in the next moment we found ourselves in a dingy, narrow hole of a room smelling horribly of axle-grease, tallow ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... of iron plate, about seven inches in diameter, and eight inches in height, the exterior surface of which is made toothed, like a rasp, by piercing holes through the plate from the inside. This cone is fixed upon a verticle axle, with a handle at the top to turn it by; and is mounted on the pivots of the axle, within a hollow cylinder of plate-iron, toothed withinside like the outside of the cone; the smallest end of the interior cone being uppermost, and the lower or larger end being ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... admyred in Paris, where shee oftetimes out-Frensheth ye Frennsh themselves. As for mee, I doe avowe that I adore her, for as muche as shee is a noble bricke, and, as DAN LYDGATE sayth, 'a whole teeme, whyppe and alle, wyth a Dalmatian coache-dog under ye axle.' And thatt shee may go itt like a Countesse whyle shee is younge, and a Duchesse whenn shee is olde, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... end of a piece of board about 1 in. thick, 3 in. wide, and 6 in. long. The spool, A, is laid upon this, a band of tin, T, being used to hold it down firmly upon the end of B. Screws, S, hold T down. A stove-bolt axle (See App. 93) is shown, and by using a nut, as explained, bolt magnets may be wound. By using the handle of App. 92, this arrangement can be used to wind almost anything, when used together with the attachment of ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... water, I saw a driver of one of those Norwegian sulkies that were called karjolers: he, on the high front seat, was dead, lying sideways and backwards, with low head resting on the wheel; and on a trunk strapped to a frame on the axle behind was a boy, his head, too, resting sideways on the wheel, near the other's; and the little pony was dead, pitched forward on its head and fore-knees, tilting the shafts downward; and some distance from them on the water ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the marks of what was evidently an old and rackety conveyance. One of the wheels was loose and askew on the axle, with the result that it made a wobbly mark on the ground, while the tyres on all the wheels were uneven in width and ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... generated fire; and the rocky dust fell like unto masses of flames. And when the showers of crags had been repelled, there happened near me a mightier shower of water, having currents of the proportions of an axle. And falling from the welkin, those thousands of powerful torrents covered the entire firmament and the directions and the cardinal points. And on account of the pouring of the shower, and of the blowing of the wind, and of roaring of the Daityas, nothing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... attended one of these hook-swingings, not far from the city of Madura. It took place on the morning of June 8th, 1848, just twenty-nine years after I first left America for India. It should have taken place on the preceding afternoon; but one of the axle-trees of the car, which was to support the machine on which the man was to be elevated in the air, was broken. Nothing, of course, could be done until it was repaired. The carpenters and others worked with great diligence until ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... matters. It is evidently a very long and quite illogical step to infer that, because the results of an accident may be dreadful, therefore the danger of the accident occurring at all is very great. On land, a slight derangement of a rail, a slight obstacle on a track, the breaking of a wheel or of an axle, may plunge a railroad train to frightful disaster; but we know from annual experience that while such accidents do happen, and sometimes with appalling consequences, the chance of their happening in a particular case is so ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... how you do hold a body up! I meant what I said— that I didn't want the job of livin' with your pa if anything happened to you. You know as well as I do that he thinks you're the very axle for the earth to whirl 'round on. But, there, I don't know as I wonder—jest you ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... clothes and the stock market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies. The woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not, and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas, in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of delight—with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause. And likewise, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... pigeons of every kind: birds of all sizes, from great eagles to the little quails that hid in the cornfields; lammergeiers that were fed on human bodies, the dead of families of high degree, exposed on a flat rock of slate with head and shoulders tied to a wooden axle that stretched the corpse like a rack. In Bhutan ordinary ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... suspiciously, and even to Rod's unaccustomed nostrils, there came a most unpleasant smell. "Hot box!" said Conductor Tobin, and the next time they stopped, they found the packing in an iron box at the end of an axle, under one of the cars, blazing at a furious rate. The journals, or bearings, in which the axle turned, had become dry and so heated by friction as to set the oil-soaked cotton waste, or packing, with which the box was filled, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... down even as Comanche had done at the Newtons. He whirled down the grade to Jackson's crossing, saw the windmill west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and sweated big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed an axle had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the liability to bent axles in curving on account of greater leverage unless the size and weight of the axle are increased to correspond, and the wheel itself must be made stronger. A four or six wheel truck will not retain its squareness and dependent good riding qualities so well with 42 in. wheels as with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the road up the side of Snake Peak he used too heavy a charge and brought down a land slide which it took them a day to clear. On a previous day he had blasted too close to the wagon and a bowlder had smashed the rear axle. He took extraordinarily narrow chances with the steepness of grade but in spite of the Sun Planters' prophecies they did not lose either horses or wagon down canyon or mountain side. Ernest, however, slipped on top ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... whether he was really as kind to her as he might have been. If the road is just wide enough for one vehicle, he moves along pensively. If it is wide enough for two vehicles, he throws his horses straight across the road and enters upon a prolonged examination of his rear axle. If the road is wide enough for three vehicles, he drives zigzag. The necessity of conserving our natural resources would seem to be a meaningless phrase when we consider the natural resources of an American farmer in front ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... although the vehicle they were hauling held no load. This structure, the mere skeleton of a cart, consisted of two pairs of clumsy, broad-tired wheels, united by a long tongue of ash, whose tip was tied with rope to the middle of the forward axle. The road looked innocent of even the least of the country-road-master's well-meaning attempts at repair,—a circumstance, indeed, which should perhaps be set to its credit. It was made up of four deep, parallel ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... inner framing which carry the inside bearings of the cranked axle must be examined, and any considerable play prevented by screwing them up if necessary. The wheels ought to be accurately square and firm on their axles, and the keys driven up tight. All the pins, bolts, &c., by which the slide-valve gear is connected, the lifting-links, and the slings ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory
... you might have bent an axle on your own pretty, blue wagon. It's a good thing Masterson was there when you blew up. Anyone else, and I might have come up short one son. I wouldn't like that too well. Might make me go down to Oreladar and try a little target practice." He ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... supplied, then the fish, found many all alive alivo. A cart load of cods weighed by means of a double steel yard, one below and suspended from the other. The cart suspended by a chain fastened to each axle outside the wheel, and the front of the cart and the other wound up by a capstan. The grapes in the market of a poor sort: no wonder that peaches and melons are preferred. Called at Mr. W. and received but poor accounts of Dr. Marsden who has been worse since he left: ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... axle deep in it. The horses floundered through it in the darkness, and every now and then the lamps were reflected in a big pool of shallow water. The wind blew keen and cold, but the coach was full inside and out, and ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... him. There has been a plan of some changes among the Dii Minores, your Lord Norths, and Carysforts, and Ellises, and Frederick Campbellsl(589) and such like; but the supposition that Lord Holland would be willing to accommodate the present ministers with the paymaster's place, being the axle on which this project turned, and his lordship not being in the accommodating humour, there are half a dozen abortions of new lords of the treasury and admiralty—excuse me if I do not send you this list of embryos;(5 I do not load my head with such fry. I am little ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... hours in climbing to the top by paths which no mortal had as yet known. When we reached it, we perceived the whole extent of Lapland, and the Icy Ocean as far as the North Cape, on the side it turns to the west. This may, indeed, be called arriving at the end of the world and jostling the axle of the pole (se frotter a l'essieu du pole)." Here they set up a tablet of stone they had brought with their luggage,—monument eternel, Regnard says. "It shall make known to posterity that three Frenchmen did not cease to travel northward until ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... threw a vivid light on the cages. They were four in number. A wide iron grating formed their sides, turning at one end upon hinges like a door, so as to give ingress to the animal; the bottom of each den rested on two axle-trees and four small iron castors, so that they could easily be removed to the large covered wagon in which they were placed during a journey. One of them was empty; the other three contained, as already intimated, a panther, a tiger, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of the yard, and into this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel. Then I wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a wisp ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... each other's brightness; nay more, where the arena's bound sets forth its shows close to the marble wall, ivory is overlaid in wondrous wise on jointed beams and is bent into a cylinder, which, turning nimbly on its trim axle, may cheat with sudden whirl the wild beast's claws and cast them from it. Nets, too, of twisted gold gleam forth, hung out into the arena on tusks in all their length and of equal size, and—believe me, Lycotas, if you can—each ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... back of the enclosure was drawn up a formidable array of carts and carriages, varying as much in quality and character as did their owners. There was the squire's landau rubbing axle-boxes with Jem Burton's modest moke-cart; and there Viscount Birdsaye's flaring barouche side by side with the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Moscow. In these wagons, among the spoil taken from the capital, were placed the wounded, frequently unattended and without protection. Many of the drivers, anxious to possess some of the spoil with which their wagons were loaded, weakened the axle, so that it should collapse. The bedraggled soldiers would march on, and when the drivers were well in rear of the force they murdered their wounded ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... Ives' flaccid, shocked gaze to the bulkhead where there had been the outline of the closed port, and beside it the hole which had held the axle of the manual wheel, and which now was a smooth, seamless curtain of impenetrable black. But Hoskins looked at the Captain first of all, and he said "Now it's our move," and only then did he turn with them ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... conjectured that De Wet and his following, as they were stripping the adjacent little township of Strydenburg, learned with satisfaction that the British columns, which lay round him like the spokes of a wheel to the axle, were as immobile as usual—Plumer from the force of circumstances, the others for the reasons set down in the preceding chapter. But the cunning guerilla had no intention of dallying at Strydenburg. It was not part of his strategy to spend two consecutive days in any one ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... put his arms around the axle and tried to get one leg over; but as soon as he took his foot off the ground, the wheels began to go. He put his foot down again and made the wheels go faster, hanging on to the axle with his arms and paddling on the ground ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... and balance it on the axle of a pair of low wheels, and you have the London camel in principle. To complete it add shafts in front, and at the rear run a low free-board, as a sailor would say, along the edge, that the cargo may not be shaken off. All the skill of the fashionable brougham-builders ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... monstrous beast twelve foot in length and six foot about the waist. But whilst the giant went for his club, bethinking him of a very good weapon, he made no more ado, but took his cart, turned it upside down, and took axle-tree and wheel for shield and buckler. And very good weapons ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... of evil which is so much dreaded by the Breton peasantry as the Ankou, who travels the duchy in a cart, picking up souls. In the dead of night a creaking axle-tree can be heard passing down the silent lanes. It halts at a door; the summons has been given, a soul quits the doomed house, and the wagon of the Ankou passes on. The Ankou herself—for the dread death-spirit of Brittany is probably female—is usually ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... two-ton Hawkesbury, with seven-and-a-half tons of load, was down to the axle-beds; and the Cornstalk was endeavouring, by means of extracts from the sermons of Knox's soundest followers, to do something like justice to the contingency. Thompson sighed, glanced toward the ram-paddock, and hooked ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the days of Gustavus Adolphus, the wheeled artillery carriage seems to have been invented by the Venetians in the fifteenth century. The essential parts of the design were early established: two large, heavy cheeks or side pieces set on an axle and connected by transoms. The gun was cradled between the cheeks, the rear ends of which formed a "trail" for stabilizing ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... between the principal cylinders, the accessory cylinders are caused to rise, the plate is curved as shown by the dotted lines, O' O'. To obtain a uniformity in the position of the two cylinders, F F, the following mechanism is employed: Each cylinder has an axle, to which is affixed a crank, Q, connected by means of a rod, R, with the slide, G. These axles are also provided with toothed sectors, L L, which gear with two screws, L L, whose threads run in opposite directions. These screws are mounted on a shaft, N, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... word used here, covinarius, signifies the driver of a covinus, or chariot, the axle of which was bent into the form of a scythe. The British manner of fighting from chariots is particularly described by Caesar, who gives them the name of esseda:—"The following is the manner of fighting from essedae: They first drive round with them to all ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... of the first steps in the art of wagon building. And yet as a cart it is not to be despised: all the heavy traffic of the colonies is done within its rude board sides. It has two wheels, with heavy square spokes that are held on to a ponderous wooden axle-tree by two wooden pins. A platform bottom rests on the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Cup come next. In my trips over various parts of the country I visit a great many engineers and find a great part of them using hard grease and I also find the quality varying all the way from the very best down to the cheapest grade of axle grease. The Badger Oil I think is the best that can be procured for this purpose, and while I do not know just who makes it, you will probably have but little trouble in finding it, and if you are looking for a ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... talk dat goes 'round," said Uncle Eben, "ain' no mo' real help in movin' forward dan de squeak in an axle." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... deep, and what it takes with it into this tomb, no one ever sees again: if it should be a man, he had better look out for the resurrection. And into this place the current carried the mill. Before it reached there it sprung a leak and got a list over; the axle of the wheel stood straight on end; the white cat ran along to the highest point and stood there humping its back; the eddy caught the wooden fabric, carried it round in wide circles four or five times, turning on its own axis, creaking ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... bowmen; all were in national divisions, each nation marching in densely-crowded 10 squares. And all along their front was a line of chariots at considerable intervals from one another—the famous scythe-chariots, as they were named—having their scythes fitted to the axle-trees and stretching out slantwise, while others protruded under the chariot-seats, facing the ground, so as to cut through all they encountered. The design was to let them dash full speed into the ranks of the ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... an axletree, about which they revolved, in the usual manner. The body was placed directly upon the axletree and upon the pole, without the intervention of any springs. The pole started from the middle of the axle-tree, and, passing below the floor of the body in a horizontal direction, thence commonly curved upwards till it had risen to about half the height of the body, when it was again horizontal for awhile, once more ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... is only outrage, and it seems that with materials left in the workshops here the engines can be repaired in a couple of days. The Boers have been very clumsy over this; a dynamite cartridge might have been strapped under a driving axle in far less time, and its explosion would have been ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... a deliberative body that the cardinals take part in the government. Their collective functions are for the most part purely formal, and the great wheel turns steadily on its axle without any direct help from them. But as sole electors of the sovereign, whom they are not only to choose, but to choose from among themselves, and as the body from which the highest functionaries of the State are drawn, their individual influence is always very considerable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of gold, the gift of Vulcan,—the axle of gold, the pole and wheels of gold, the spokes of silver. Along the seat were rows of chrysolites and diamonds, reflecting the brightness of the sun. While the daring youth gazed in admiration, the early Dawn threw open the purple doors of the east and showed the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... gallants which approach To kiss thy hand from out the coach; That fleet of lackeys which do run Before thy swift postilion; Those strong-hoof'd mules, which we behold Rein'd in with purple, pearl, and gold, And shed with silver, prove to be The drawers of the axle-tree; Thy wife, thy children, and the state Of Persian looms and antique plate: —All these, and more, shall then afford No joy to thee, their ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... carriage was very prudently driven at a snail's pace; for, had anything approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition of the wheels in a few minutes must have been the necessary result. No sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement than we sank to our axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to render the journey perfectly delectable, the rain fell in torrents and ceaselessly." {108b} The state of the road Borrow attributed to the ill-nature of the King of Denmark, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... matters that are hushed up and forgotten in a few months?—Let this same man be robbed and the entire police set to work, and woe to the poor innocents they suspect!—Has he to pass a dangerous place, escorts overrun the country.-If the axle of his coach breaks down everybody runs to help him.—Is a noise made at his gate, a word from him and all is silent.—Does the crowd annoy him, he makes a sign and order reigns.—Does a carter chance to cross his path, his attendants are ready to knock him down, while fifty honest pedestrians might ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a flat hub and eight radial spokes bent upward toward the ends at an angle of 45 deg.. The hub and spokes are supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the altitude of the luminary. The heater is composed of rolled plate iron 0.017 inch thick, and provided with bead and bottom formed of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... With foam and blood each courser's bit is red. Some say a god, amid this wild disorder, Was seen with goads pricking their dusty flanks. O'er jagged rocks they rush urged on by terror; Crash! goes the axle-tree. Th' intrepid youth Sees his car broken up, flying to pieces; He falls himself entangled in the reins. Pardon my grief. That cruel spectacle Will be for me a source of endless tears. I saw thy hapless son, I saw him, Sire, Drag'd by the horses that ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... years of age, had been familiar with every street in Paris, was not to be baffled: he was a man of resources. He seized the springs of the coach, raised himself up by the strength of his wrists, and hung on behind, with his legs resting on the axle-tree of the back wheels. He was not quite comfortable, but then, he no longer ran the risk of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... been lighted and hung from the rear axle of the carry-all. But this did little more than cast weird, flickering shadows ahead. It certainly did not light up the road ahead of there. In the dense darkness the bridge was not visible to the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... my present instrument is, I am a little ashamed to confess, nothing better than a piece of looking-glass fixed to an axle within the camera, near its top left-hand edge. One end of the axle protrudes, and has a short arm; when I push the arm back, the mirror is raised; when I push it forward it drops down. I used a swing-glass because the swing action is very true, and as my apparatus was merely ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... from the dread and the awe and the half-incredulous wonder, to set closer watch upon our inner and hidden selves. In him who cultivates only the reason, and suffers the heart and the spirit to lie waste and dead, who schemes and constructs, and revolves round the axle of self, unwarmed by the affections, unpoised by the attraction of right, lies the germ Fate might ripen into the guilt of Olivier Dalibard. Let him who but lives through the senses, spreads the wings of the fancy in the gaudy glare of ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... frame which is simple in construction and easily attached. The lower fore and aft side bars P have the single front wheel axle at the forward end, and the aft double wheels at the rear end, a flexible bar Q, running from the rear wheel axle to the forward ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... interesting Treatise on Locomotion, by Mr Alexander Gordon, a civil engineer of eminence, we find an account given of the trial of power alluded to by Mr Gurney. A pair of three feet wheels were used on the hind axle, and the engine drew with ease a large waggon loaded with cast-iron. After going about a mile and a quarter, a cart also loaded with cast-iron was attached to the waggon. The engine started with these loaded carriages, and returned to Gloucester. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... African victory, and the last for that in Spain; and (25) they all differed from each other in their varied pomp and pageantry. On the day of the Gallic triumph, as he was proceeding along the street called Velabrum, after narrowly escaping a fall from his chariot by the breaking of the axle-tree, he ascended the Capitol by torch-light, forty elephants [62] carrying torches on his right and left. Amongst the pageantry of the Pontic triumph, a tablet with this inscription was carried before him: I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... horse was an aged mare, with high withers, and galls on her shoulders and fetlocks unshorn, after the fashion of Belgian horses; and the dogcart was a venerable ruin, which creaked a great protest at every turn of the warped wheels on the axle. We had been able to buy the two— the mare and the cart—only because the German soldiers had not thought them ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Devon apple-trees, nor, next day, the sportsmen banging off guns at the partridges around Salisbury. The slow, jolly life of England on either side of the high road turned leisurely as a wagon-wheel on its axle, while between hedgerows, past farm hamlets, church-towers and through the cobbled streets of market towns, he had sped and rattled with Collingwood's dispatch in his sealed case. The news had reached London with him. His last post-boys had ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sacred bovine; mustn't be touched for fear of the axle grease. See? I've got a list of 'em—public lands, through freights, water power, smelter, lumber deals," the telegraph man opened his table drawer and held out a scrawled list. "If you call that delivering the goods, I call ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Chillingworth, had provided certain Engines, after the manner of the Roman Testudines cum Pluteis, wherewith they intended to Assault the City between the South and West Gates; They ran upon Cart-Wheels, with a Blind of Planks Musquet-proof, and holes for four Musqueteers to play out of, placed upon the Axle-tree to defend the Musqueteers and those that thrust it forwards, and carrying a Bridge before it; the Wheels were to fall into the Ditch, and the end of the Bridge to rest upon the Towns Breastworks, so making several compleat Bridges to enter the City. To prevent which, the Besieged ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... 1759 expedition it was recommended that wagon accessories include drag chains, grass cutting knives, axes, shovels, tar buckets (for lubricating axles), jacks, hobbles, and extra sets of such items as clouts (axle-bearing plates), nails, horseshoes, hames, linch pins, and hamestrings.[23] It is doubtful if many teamsters in the 1755 expedition had so complete a selection of equipment; campaign experience in the mountains ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile
... dying! I have waited lone and long,— Long have hung, a warning skull that gleamed Above their feast of Life and Love;—their song Is ended, and the Sun sheds blood. They dreamed. Earth that called me cold and pale, grows pale and cold,— Now wearily her groaning axle turns Those alternating glories that she rolled To mock my ashen tombs and crater-urns! No more her midnight ghouls nor lovers creep To curse or bless my light; my shadow crawls Like some dark moth upon her. I shall sleep ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... sir,' returned Mr. Weller, 'the axle an't broke yet. We keeps up a steady pace, - not too sewere, but vith a moderate degree o' friction, - and the consekens is that ve're still a runnin' and comes in to the time reg'lar. - My son Samivel, sir, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... indefinitely, party friction becomes party obstruction; and the engine of the State would no longer proceed smoothly and evenly along its appointed course at the rate of sixty miles an hour, but would resemble an old-fashioned coach, up to its axle-trees in mud, its motion altogether stopped by ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... time to account for the workings of Fate or to follow the course of its agents. The track of an earth-worm destroys a dam; the parting of a wire wrecks a bridge; the breaking of a root starts an avalanche; the flaw in an axle dooms a train; the sting of a microbe depopulates a city. But none of these unseen, mysterious agencies was at work—nothing so trivial wrecked ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... faster. He received the proposal with a perfect yell of derision; brandished his whip about his head (such a whip! it was more like a home-made bow); flung up his heels, much higher than the horses; and disappeared, in a paroxysm, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the axle-tree. I fully expected to see him lying in the road, a hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple- crowned hat again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, 'Ha, ha! what next! Oh the devil! Faster too! Shoo—hoo—o—o!' (This ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Mr. Sexton's and we called it Sexton's post office, on the Raleigh and Fayetteville Road. The stage run on this road and brought mail to this place. This post in my yard is part of a stage coach axle. You see it? Yes sir, that's what it is. I got it at Fayetteville when they were selling the old stage coach. We bought the axle and wheels and made a cart. We got that stuff about 1870; my father bought it. He gave twelve dollars for jes' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... longer; and turning on my heel, I hastened below. Down the kleets of the wheel-house, along the guard-way, then down the main stairs to the boiler-deck. Threading my way among bags of maize and hogsheads of sugar, now stooping under the great axle, now climbing over huge cotton-bales, I reached the after-part of the lower deck, usually appropriated to the "deck passengers"—the poor immigrants of Ireland and Germany, who here huddle miscellaneously with the swarthy bondsmen ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... of some of the intolerable effects of selfishness in the past by selfishness in the present and the future. And that in the midst of this terrible but salutary scuffle for ease and security, the ideals of those who are privileged enough to have any, may be not much more useful than the fly on the axle-tree. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... more absolutely practical, than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round very fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the cause of such phaenomena, and thence educe a general remedy for them. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was a great powerful man, with bare arms, and blackened face. When they entered, he and two other men were making the axle of a wheel. They had a great lump of red-hot iron on the anvil, and were knocking a big hole through it—not boring it, but knocking it through with a big punch. One of the men, with a pair of tongs-like pincers, held the punch steady in the hole, while the other two struck the head of it with ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... when I learned that we were to ride behind those wise-looking animals and in that gorgeously painted wagon! It seemed almost like a living creature to me, this new vehicle with four legs, and the more so when we got out of axle-grease and the wheels went ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... lesson to be got out of the story. Observation shows us in what point any particular mechanism is most likely to give way. In a wagon, for instance, the weak point is where the axle enters the hub or nave. When the wagon breaks down, three times out of four, I think, it is at this point that the accident occurs. The workman should see to it that this part should never give way; then find the next vulnerable place, ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... only pointed with iron, and is borne to and from the field on the shoulder. The carts are picturesque, but clumsy; they are made of wicker-work, and the iron-shod wheels are solidly attached to the axle, so that all revolves together, amid fearful creaking. The people could not be induced to use a cart with movable wheels which was imported from America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the noise is held to drive ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... roulette, rowel; gear, cogwheel, miter wheel; pulley, sheave (wheel of a pulley). Associated words: spoke, felly, hub, strake, tire, straddle, cog, sprocket, linchpin, arbor, axle, axletree, sprag, traction, trochilics, trochilic, ratchet, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... feet long and four feet wide, upon which was mounted a "Z" dynamo used as a motor, so that it had a capacity of about twelve horsepower. This machine was laid on its side, with the armature end coming out at the front of the locomotive, and the motive power was applied to the driving-axle by a cumbersome series of friction pulleys. Each wheel of the locomotive had a metal rim and a centre web of wood or papier-mache, and the current picked up by one set of wheels was carried through contact brushes and a brass hub to the motor; ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease, while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... by corresponding men, re-read by corresponding controllers, passed and ratified by corresponding ratifiers; and through this almighty pomp of wheels, whose very whirling would be heard into other planets, did not the very velocity of their motion seem to sleep on their soft axle, is the business of this great nation, judicial, fixed, penal, deliberative, statistical, commercial, all carried on without confusion, never distracting one man by its might, nor molesting one man ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... suddenly discovered that we were on the wrong road. So much for not knowing our way out of town—twenty-five kilometres of axle-breaking cobblestones! ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... fanned By all their sighs, meandering stole. They who, from Atlas' height, Beheld this rosy flame Descending through the waste of night, Thought 'twas some planet, whose empyreal frame Had kindled, as it rapidly revolved Around its fervid axle, and dissolved Into a flood ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... patch up the wagon by tying the "rocker" of the wagon body to the forward axle with the rope halter, and reloading our meal bags, drove slowly home without further incident. Addison, having captured the reins, retained possession of them, much to my mental relief. Halstead laid the blame alternately to the woman and to Addison's ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... seen in the Wild West circuses the old-fashioned overland coach hung by heavy springs from front to rear axle. One of the most uncomfortable conveyances to ride in ever invented, especially for the driver, for, if the coach was not heavily loaded, when the front wheels dropped into a hole the old ramshackle thing was liable to topple over on the animals; ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... pans and windmills. One of these windmills is especially pleasing; it consists of five or six dummy ships with real sails on a pond; these ships form, as it were, the rim of a wheel lying on its side, the spokes being poles which attach the ships to the axle, an island in the middle of the pond. The wind blows and the ships race after one another round and round the pond, causing the poles to work the mechanism which is inside ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... in a little one-horse jaunting car, consisting of a wooden seat on an axle-tree, and four poles which supported a tarpaulin to shelter us against the rain. These cars changed horses every four or five miles, and served to convey to Paris the masons from the Bourbonnais and from Auvergne, the weary pedestrians they met on the road, and soldiers lamed by their long marches ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine |
