"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there partook, as they had been invited to do, of beef and pudding, and good home-brewed beer. The young Mortimers waited upon them at dinner, and before they left the Lodge, presented them each with a plumb cake; and Mrs. Mortimer gave them each an amusing little book to read to themselves and their parents, who had not like themselves possessed the advantages of ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... miles west of New Aberfoyle, under the solid rock which supports Ben Lomond, there exists a natural shaft which descends perpendicularly into the vein beneath. A week ago I went to ascertain the depth of this shaft. While sounding it, and bending over the opening as my plumb-line went down, it seemed to me that the air within was agitated, as though ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... wonder than you know," replied Kelley. "I was headed right plumb that way till I was seventeen. My mother had it all picked out fer me. Then ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... never loved any other woman as he did that one. And by the Lord! when it comes to that, no other woman in that town ever was loved more than she by everybody. Odd creatures, women, eh? Who can find them out? Who can weigh them, who can plumb their souls? But, my God! who can do ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... ask 'what brig's that?' But none of these tricks will answer with t'other, who misses the whipping off the end of a gasket, as soon as any first luff of us all. And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Later this young blood takes his place in the blundering ranks and then does learn that indeed he was right—Age knows nothing. For with years we begin to realise our ignorance, and the lesson is not complete when the grave slams the book. A few plumb the depths of their ignorance before death: these are able to speak—and these are the teachers of men. We get here one reason why giants are fewer in our day: with the growth of man's imaginings and his inventions there is more vanity to be forced through; the truths of ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the style; and the most simple way of drawing it on the dial will be by suspending a plummet from some point of the style whence it may hang freely, and waiting until the shadows of both style and plumb-line coincide on the dial. This single shadow will ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... prime?" he said. "But I never expected ter work sech a scatteration of the crowd Thar skeer plumb terrified me. I jes' set out with the nimblest, an' ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... he was so mean that you are glad he's dead. Your way leaves you hoping that he was just awful nice, and got killed, or was taken sick or something; my way, there ain't no doubts in your mind. You are plumb sure he wasn't decent. Don't you bother none ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... plumb 'bug,' Bill," he said, with an amiable grin. Then, as only a flicker of a smile from the others answered him, and Bill ignored his charge altogether, he hurried on, "You're helpin' that misguided feller to a dose of lead he'll never have time to digest. If ever Zip runs foul of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... between the two walls, and the other cords C, D, and so attached that the objects at their lower ends hang close to the walls. It will be found that the cords C, D are farther apart at their lower ends than at the upper ends, and that the cord B is exactly plumb, as it is affected equally by the attraction ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... gave me this, general, ter take ter you, an' she would hev it, though I told her she'd no business ter be botherin' yer with sich plumb foolishness." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... had roughed it in East and West Kootenay and were working south to leave the country dead broke. We had found "float" in plenty, and had followed it up ridges and over divides across three ranges of mountains. Our horses were plumb played out. We had camped on a ridge to let them fatten up enough to beat it out of British Columbia for ever. Well, we found some galena "floats" in a dry gully on the other side of the valley. We had provisions left for only eleven days. Some of the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... was another man. He didn't even look the same. Sich eyes! Al'ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They'd give anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after that—said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with him—he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away from that grave—you don't want to look odder than ye are by nature. And when ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... permanent central calm, who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... flat, plain, smooth, flush, plumb; horizontal; steady, impartial, well-balanced. Antonyms: undulating ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... N.—Level is a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... that you're on the hard luck tack," quoth Ben, "there was the Junior, of New Bedford. I've heard my uncle tell of her. Out a year and two months and put back to port clean—and the crew plumb ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... woods. The path now led along the edge of a precipice descending sheer to the uppermost terrace of the valley he had left. The valley was but a cleft in the mass of the mountain: a little way over sank its other wall, steep as a plumb-line could have made it, of solid rock. On his right lay green fields of clover and strange grasses. Ever and anon from the cleft steamed up great blinding clouds of mist, which now wandered about ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... slip around and gather up their guns," said Pringle. "Pick out one for yourself. I left yours where I threw it when I picked it out of your belt. I meant to knock you out, Chris—there wasn't any other way; but I didn't mean to plumb kill you. You hit your head on a rock when you fell. It wouldn't have done any good to have got the drop on you. You had made up your mind not to surrender. You would have shot anyhow; and, of course, I couldn't shoot. I'd just have got ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... conspiracy on foot. If you do not produce enough aeroplanes, it is the work of spies; if there is trouble in Ireland, it is German or Bolshevik "gold." And if you go stark, staring mad looking for plots, you see all strikes, the Plumb plan, Irish rebellion, Mohammedan unrest, the restoration of King Constantine, the League of Nations, Mexican disorder, the movement to reduce armaments, Sunday movies, short skirts, evasion of the liquor laws, Negro self-assertion, as sub-plots under some grandiose plot engineered either by ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken. Still ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... Rabbinical and Talmudic tendencies; he must acquaint himself with the heretical leanings of a certain era, and the shadow cast upon the page by apocryphal tradition. In philosophy he is still worse off, because he must plumb the depths of metaphysical jargon and master ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she was my own child I'd serve notice that this circle business should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count—but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted with ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Flash, and shine out, when thought is sharply stirred; How the mind works, when once the wheels are loosed, How nimbly, with what swift activity. I think, 'tis strange that men should ever sleep, There are so many things to think upon, So many deeds, so many thoughts to weigh, To pierce, and plumb them to the silent depth. Yet in that thought I do rebuke myself, Too little given to probe the inner heart, But rather wont, with the luxurious eye, To catch from life it's outer loveliness, Such things as do but store ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... from a window. An enormous crowd was collecting, watching the big building swinging a foot out of plumb like a giant pendulum. The crowd was growing. Should the building fall the loss of life would be appalling. It was mid-morning. The interior of the building teemed with thousands of workers, for all floors above the third ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... because we have travelled so fast," answered the raven. "In your world you cannot pull up the plumb-line you call gravitation, and let the world spin round under your feet! But here is my wife's house! She is very good to let me live with her, and ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Peter's trousers they blew right out again through another hole. And he didn't care to accept the dime which Mr. Lenox in an excess of generosity offered him, because, it seemed, he already had a dime. When it came to being plumb contented there probably never was a soul on this earth that was the equal of Master Hurdle. He even was satisfied with his name which I would regard as ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... driver in his slow way, "hit was like this. That there saloon were plumb full of sailor-men all exceptin' you an' me. I was a heap admirin' of the way you handled that big hombre what opened the meetin' and also his two pardners, who aimed to back his play. Hit was sure pretty work. The rest of the crowd sort o' ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... When I have children I'm just going to leave them plumb alone. I don't care what they'll ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... talkin'. An old gobbler is tellin' his hens that day is comin'. It's a plumb waste on his part, because they know it theirselves, but he must jest let 'em know what a smart bird he is. An' it's that pride uv his that will be his ruin. Git up, Paul; we must have him an' one uv his hens ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said the young inventor as he re-entered the library a few minutes later, "when you warp the wing tips in making a spiral ascent it throws your tail wings out of plumb, and so—" ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... hanging from the knotted strings to the small of my back, and with difficulty refrained from crying. I had never been wretched just in that way before. Two imperative duties had met plump and face to face, with a shock that jarred all preconceived principles of belief and action out of plumb. Cousin Molly Belle had trusted me to keep her secret, and I saw no way of doing it except to lie outright and repeatedly. The sin lashed my conscience until I could have located in my corporeal frame the exact whereabouts of the uncomfortable ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his own language ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... forty rifles, not one of the hunters has nerve enough to shoot unless officially authorized or personally desirous of visiting the silver-mines of Siberia. Crack! thug! The smoke clears away. By Jove! his imperial majesty has done it cleverly; hit the brute plumb on the os frontis, or through the heart, it makes no difference which. Down drops Bruin, kicking and tearing up the earth at a dreadful rate; cheers rend the welkin; pots, pans, and kettles are banged. High above all rises the stern voice of the autocrat, calling ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... existence. Little Mme. Camusot saw their change of countenance and subsequent composure when they scented opposition on the part of the examining magistrate. When her husband unveiled the thoughts in the back of his own mind, she had tried to plumb the depths of hate in du Croisier's adherents. She wanted to find out how du Croisier had gained over this deputy public prosecutor, who had acted so promptly and so directly in opposition to the views of ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... mildness of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. You'll do this job, and you'll do it my way. Maybe you ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... put it? That willing lad of yours has plumb knocked the answer out of my noodle. Maybe you're thinking of some one else, Buck." Dingwell looked up at him with an ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... "He's above such jobs. No, sir! This afternoon Jessup ran plumb into Mr. Ellis when that little beast bunkie of the other beast, Mr. Briggs, was just in the act of dropping soft soap into the shoes that Aldrich will wear to ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... if it had been done with a knife, doesn't it? Alpine crags seem vertical but are nearly always inclined; their primary rock, you know, cannot flake off abruptly like this tufa. This is a genuine precipice. Plumb!" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... as all that," he said casually. "Gotta make that grub pan out, somehow. I told you I was rough—an animal. Don't look so plumb sober. I lived for ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Tennie's peartness," his mother sarcastically rejoined. "'Pears ter me like the chile hain't never hed good sense; afore she could walk she'd crawl along the floor arter ye, an' holler like a squeech-owEL ef ye went off an' lef' her. An' ye air plumb teched in the head too, Birt, ter set sech store by Tennie. I look ter see her killed, or stunted, some day, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... cigar had gone out, and he idly twisted the stump between his fingers. "Well," he said, with a sigh, "our family, gen'rally speakin', has always held its head pretty high. Dad was poor, but he prided himself on bein' straight as a plumb line. And, as for mother, she...." Then, looking up quickly, he asked, "Does anybody outside know ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... an' that ain't but half of it," the lank rider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. These here red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed, whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle o' yore ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... with disgust. "I sabe what you are hintin' at when you gas of morals—which I'm a heap acquainted with because I ain't got none to speak of. But I'm plumb flabbergasted when you go to connectin' a battleship with anything that's got a whole lot to do with morals. Accordin' to my schoolin', a monitor is a thing which blows ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you're plumb crazy. But all the same—Well, it's got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you're meat just the same, an', by the great Geewhillikins! you'll be dead meat, an' digested meat at that, before you're an hour older, my son, if I know anything o' wolves." Later, as he proceeded ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... figures down all right," nodded Lieutenant Danvers, thoughtfully. "The risky part is in trying to run over that derelict's sunken hull in order to locate it and make your soundings. Now, you run a big chance of running plumb on to some other stump of a mast. The 'Hastings' may easily get an injury, from the stump of another mast, that may tear a real hole in our plates and send us all to ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... next, at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane, will be performed The Lying Valet, and that Mr. Steevens, at the particular desire of some persons of quality, is to act the part of Justice Guttle; in which character he will devour twelve pounds of plumb cake at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed this extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... narrow that, as the prophet represents, it is as if a fire of destruction were on the one hand and a flood of wrath on the other. Ah, Brethren, the truth can never be made to bend. It is as the builder's line to the foundation; and as the plumb line to ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... "I'm plumb all right ag'in, Dave, now you're back," she answered, squeezing his hand hard. "But land's sakes, Dave, how ever did you git all that blood on ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... grass. The captain of the Burtington team was the local publican, a hearty man who told us in the same breath that he was very glad to see us, and that he had played cricket for thirty years, boy and man. His name was Plumb, and I liked him very much; he played in both braces and a belt, because he told us belts were ticklish things and braces sometimes burst. I answered that it was always well to be on the safe side, and we had quite a confidential talk, until Lambert ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 1882, Apaches killed Nathan B. Robinson at the Reidhead place and shot Emer Plumb at Walnut Springs, during a period of general Indian unrest. Soon thereafter, President Smith advised the settlers that they had better look for other locations, as the ground was on ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the patchwork made ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... rings got the blue ribbon. Sam said it took a good eye and a steady arm and a good seat to manage the thing, and he enjoyed watchin' 'em. 'But,' says he, 'why they call the thing a t'u'nament is more'n I could make out. I stayed there a plumb hour, and I couldn't hear nor see anything that sounded or looked ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of all feeling and thought. She knew ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to his associates as a man of splendid and many-sided vitality. A college classmate, Dr. John Denison, graphically describes him, "A sort of cataclysm of health, like other cyclones from the South seas"; what the Tennessee mountaineers call "plumb survigrous"; an islander, with the high courage and jollity of the tar; "a kind of mental as well as physical amphibiousness." Extraordinary in his training and versatility; able to "manage a boat in a storm, teach a ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... this evening, an enchanting creature of flame and fire. She said the most outrageous things at dinner, talking a lot of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away if any more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For an instant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winging lightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughter rose and fell around her. With butterfly touch she opened the cupboard of memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, skimming the thin ice of bygone times with ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... had left me where they left you last night, and you a plumb stranger, I'd rared and pitched a little myself," continued the ...
— Forty Minutes Late - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... notice which way he went, sir," returned the guide. "He looked plumb scared, and I reckon he ducked into cover somewhere. Maybe he headed for Dugout City and hasn't stopped ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... the man. He seemed to have a sense of humour. I felt sure that he, at least, was plumb straight. 'Sure, doc,' I said, 'I'm sorry about the tree, and I guess the new bulbs will be on me. But perhaps you'd like to know what I was doing in your garden?' 'I think the facts do call for an explanation,' he replied. 'Well, to ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... I should have sent her away the very first night. I'm getting to depend on her. I'm plumb foolish about her now—can't let her out of my sight; and yet I'm off my feed worryin' over her. Gregg is getting dangerous—you can't fool me when it comes to men. Curse 'em, they're all alike—beasts, every cussed one of them. I won't have my girl ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... satisfaction when he looked up at the rear facade of Miller's Folly. Near the edge of the roof, was a chimney. A plumb line dropped from the center of the chimney would drop about three feet to the right of the only window ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... strength jerked it toward him. A square in the floor opened as the trap was flapped back upon its hinges, and through the opening the haltered form shot straight downward to bring up with a great jerk, and after that to dangle like a plumb-bob on a string. Under the quick strain the gallows-arm creaked and whined; in the silence which followed the hangman was heard to exhale his breath in a vast puff of relief. His hand went up to his forehead to wipe beads of sweat which for all that the morning was ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... was also in the crowd, wandering about bewildered. Nor Juan did not rub his hands, nor was he carrying his rule and plumb-bob; he was dressed in black, for he had heard the bad news and, true to his habit of looking upon the future as already assured, was in mourning ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... not be Declared to them by the Owners thereof." The draughtsman of this dignified little Act it is clear was greatly addicted to capitals. Probably he thought they heightened effect, much as Charles Lamb spelt plum pudding with a b—"plumb pudding," because, he said, "it reads fatter and more suetty." At the time this Act came into being, railways in the eye of Parliament were public highways, upon which you or I, if we paid the prescribed tolls, could convey our traffic, our vehicles, or ourselves. In the years 1838-1840 many ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... a p'int to always stay and see the plumb finish of a thing," explained Yancy. "Otherwise you're frequently put out by hearing of what happened after you left; I can stand anything but disapp'intment of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... love for both of them. Such love is perfect, absolute. He took no thought, therefore, of the changes time and poverty had wrought in his appearance: "Bob" wouldn't notice. He bet she wouldn't care if he was plumb ragged. They were one and indivisible; she was his, just like his right arm; she was his boy and his girl; his son-daughter. The old gunman choked and his tonsils ached abominably. He hoped he wasn't in for another attack of quinsy sore throat. But—why ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... 'bout blind before de War, and 'bout time of de War he go plumb blind and have to set on de long seat under de bresh shelter of de house all de time. Sometime I lead him around de yard a little, but not very much. Dat about de time all de slave begin to slip ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... cotyledons of the former and the hypocotyls of the latter were bent rectangularly towards the light. The pots were now quickly laid horizontally, so that the upper parts of the cotyledons and of the hypocotyls of 9 seedlings projected vertically upwards, as proved by a plumb-line. In this position they could not be acted on by apogeotropism, and if they possessed any tendency to straighten themselves or to bend in opposition to their former heliotropic curvature, this would be exhibited, for it would ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... up the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't have ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... difficult at present to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things, that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb. Monsieur Rostand, in his description of the Battle of Wagram, does not shrink from bringing about the Duke's ears the frightful voices of actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when the Duke, terrified at these dreadful appeals, asks them ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... confusion never kept Celestina awake nights or prevented her from partaking of three hearty meals a day as it would have Abbie Brewster or Deborah Howland. So long as things were clean, their being an inch or two, or even a foot, out of plumb did not worry the new inmate of the gray house an iota. And when Willie was balked in an "idee" that had "kitched him," and left half-a-dozen strings and wires swinging in mid-air for weeks together, Celestina would patiently duck her head as she passed ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Fortunately, General Sheridan wanted also to do something beneficial for the cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is an honor ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... "She don't seem plumb sure o' things herself," remarked the sailor. "The mermaids is all right an' friendly, mate, but this 'ere magic maker, ol' Zog, is a bad one, out 'n' out, an' means to kill us ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... own imps; I'd a heap rather play with a rattlesnake than him." He paused, to assure him self that Sikes was safely out of hearing. "I thought maybe I better tell yer while I had a chance. That fellar is plumb pisen, miss." ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... boys dat one ever did see. At dat time Claude, he 'bout two year old and Clarence, he 'bout four er mebbe little less. Ella, she worked in da house cooking for Miss Fannie an' nussin' de chillun and she plumb crazy 'bout de chillun an' dey just as satisfied wid her as dey was wid dere mama and Ella thought more dem chillun dan she did anybody. She just crazy 'bout dem boys. Mars Luch, he gibe me job right 'way sort flunkying for him and hostling ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o' ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... heard him shout. "I give him one plumb in the eye! A fine shot! And we hit him besides with the boat. I guess he's ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... 'That's all right,' he announced cheerily. 'You'll set watches, Mr. Grimalson, and keep her in easy hail. The weather will certainly hold fine for a bit, and early to-morrow I'll be alongside again with instructions. Plumb south our course lies, for the present. I'll tell you why, later. You ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of being hanged, With voice so piercing shrill he twanged The word of luckless sound, His beast sprang forward at the cry, And plumb the priest dropped down from ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... precisely formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency, for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the classical ideal, all who have had a passion for ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb between the eyes. ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... stood fixed, biting his nails keenly there. Then he laughed, saying, "I cannot fight a monk," and sheathed his sword. He did not love monks, none of his house did. He had seen the new gallows, could measure the build of the fellow in the quarry; and though he could not plumb the girl's soul through her misty eyes, he could read her shaking lips and clinging hands; he could see, and be shocked to see, how young she was to be acquainted with grief, and with sin how likely familiar. The hint of the thing revolted him; ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... beams so decayed that new ones must be added. The foundation may need rebuilding and door and window frames may be so weathered that they also must be replaced. Beware of a house where floors slope and side walls are out of plumb. This means extensive shoring which is ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... schooners I ever saw. Were it not for the lines of her bilges and the internal arrangement of her hold, it might be imagined she had been built originally as a pleasure yacht. Even the rake of her masts, a little forward of the plumb, bore out this impression, which a comparatively new suit of canvas, well stopped down, brass stanchions forward, and two little guns under tarpaulins, almost confirmed. One thing struck me as peculiar. Her complement of boats ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... earth but few men. Firm laid across the torrent's course, Their work withstands its mighty force, So damming it from shore to shore, That, gliding smoothly o'er, In even sheets the waters pour. Their work, as it proceeds, they grade and bevel, Or bring it up to plumb or level; First lay their logs, and then with mortar smear, As if directed by an engineer. Each labours for the public good; The old command, the youthful brood Cut down, and shape, and place the wood. Compared with theirs, e'en Plato's model state Were but the work of some apprentice pate. Such ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... a killing to-day," said Old Man Curry. "Well, she'll have 'Lisha to beat, I reckon. And all he's runnin' for is the purse, Frank, like you said. I did my best to bet 'em until the price got too plumb ridiculous, but the children of Israel ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... is that just the moment he saw Zena Pepperleigh, Mr. Pupkin was clean, plumb, straight, flat, ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down. ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... with you, Horn," interrupted Clayton. "Poe was plumb drunk! It is the infernal corn whiskey he drinks that puts the devil in him. It may be he can't get anything else, but it's a damnable concoction all the same. Kennedy has about given him up—told me so yesterday, and when Kennedy gives a fellow up ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... raised the heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subordinate knows the general in command. It struck him forcibly that the aspect of the house fitted the man. With the broad river and the distant Palisades to be dwelt upon, its outlook windows were narrow. With the sloping park and the great trees to give it dignity, it seemed to assume an artificial, plumb-line dignity of its own, impressive only as the product of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... at anything. He says that if he pulls off this thing the Emperor, when he gets to London, will make him Duke of Westminster, or something, and six months from now he will appoint me Governor-General of North America. I tell you, Mr. Rebener, that fellow is plumb nutty." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... to himself, with a slight duck of the head of careless acknowledgment. Then he glanced with slumbering anger at the stove. "Smoke, we'll have to dig up a new stove. That fire-box is burned plumb into the oven so ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... be further from the mark than to say that Will tried to take advantage of Maga's youth and savagery. Fred and I had shared a dozen lively adventures with him without more than beginning yet to plumb the depths of his respect for Woman. Only an American in all the world knows how to meet Young Woman eye to eye with totally unpatronizing frankness, and he was without guile in the matter. But not so she. We did not know whether or not ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... thing," said Shoop as he mounted. "Now, if I was to tell that dog he was gettin' too old to ramble with me, he'd feel plumb sick and no account. But when I tell him he's got to do somethin'—like watchin' the house—he thinks it's a reg'lar job. He's gettin' old, but, just like folks, he wants to think he's some use. You can't tell me ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... to keep the tears from starting again—"'cause he ain't got much appetite. But when he's eatin' good his legs is jest great. Why, there ain't no other dog in Golconda that's got as strong legs as Baldy when he's—when he's eatin' good," he repeated hastily. "An' Golconda's plumb full ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... take it easy from me. You see, you picked me up when I was down and out. You passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a thing I can't never forget. I'm ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... yelled to me to ease off the larboard stay. Now, I might know something about mince pie, but a larboard stay is not my long and hasty. Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through the dock. It ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began scattering lead so sudden I didn't have time to ask many 'Whyfors.' I reckon we'll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion," he ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... journal. He had never really loved her, she declares; his affection for her had been interested, though even in her wrath she admits that he really loved her husband; he cared less for her conversation, which she had fancied necessary to his existence, than for her "roast beef and plumb pudden," which he now devours too "dirtily for endurance." She was fully resolved to go, and yet she could not bear that her going should fail to torture the friend whom for eighteen years she had loved and cherished ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... return to St. Louis to make arrangements for a prolonged absence, as also to communicate with Mr. Campbell, who was still at his home in Hamilton, Ohio. By correspondence we agreed to meet in New York, November 8th, he accompanied by Mr. Plumb, secretary of legation, and I by my ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN! Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after; ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... sentry, and they watched him picking out the mortar from between two big stones with his knife. In five minutes he had it loose, and, grasping it with both hands, he pushed it close to the edge, and then peeped over. The soldier was some yards from the plumb. Jack looked down at the shrubbery for guidance. The smith raised his hand to signify patience. Jack waited. Breathlessly the ambushed party watched the two soldiers, who were now talking together. Would they never return to their doors? Five anxious minutes passed, and then, with a look ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... laundry-chute, and a brood to rear, and a hard-working husband to cook for. And as the kiddies get older, I imagine, I'll not be troubled by this terrible feeling of loneliness which has been weighing like a plumb-bob on my heart for the last few days. I wish Dinky-Dunk didn't have to be so much away ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Here I is done drapped plumb off'n my subject; but a old man's mind will jes' run waa'ry at times. Me and Joe, Alex's son, went to see de officer 'bout gitting Joe's pa buried. He 'lowed dat Alex's body was riddled wid bullets; ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... skeery critter!" he said, contemptuously. "I hain't goin' to hurt him, Uncl' Gabe, but he must be a plumb idgit, a-talkin' 'bout folks to thar face, 'n' him so puny ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... waiting for? What are you waiting for? What is the hot, plumb weight of your desire on me? You have a hot, unthinkable desire of ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... never says nothin',—jest sets there like he was froze plumb stiff an' couldn't stir a eyelid—sets there, starin' straight ahead down the flume. Looks like his face is caught in the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... suits his will. The tailor? Let him take his coats And pay his notes; Or if perchance He's long on pants, Let trousers be His L. s. d. The baker! Let his landlord take His rent in cake, Or anything the man can bake. And if a plumber wants a crumb, He may unto the baker come And plumb. A joker needing hats or cloaks Can go and pay for them with jokes, And so on: what a fellow's got Shall pay for things that he has not. If beggars' rags were cash, you'd see No longer any beggary; In short, there'd be no poverty." "A splendid ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... tell you I shook hands with this boy an' was plumb glad to meet him?" demanded Laddy, with considerable heat. Manifestly he had been affronted. "Tom Beldin', he's a gentleman, an' he could lick you in—in half a ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... plot is—and do not misunderstand this, he cautions—that the pretense here around the broken automobile grows shallow enough to plumb. There is nothing here. Two dozen men standing dead on a curbing, tricked into confessional ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... giddiest of yards, and after being wormed and twisted about through all sorts of intricacies—turning abrupt corners at the abruptest of angles—is to be dropped, clear of all obstructions, in a straight plumb-line right down to the deck. In the course of this business, there is a multitude of sheeve-holes and blocks, through which you must pass it; often the rope is a very tight fit, so as to make it like ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... lead the Army into the paths of light and learning were crowned with success until in an evil moment I undertook to teach Private Goodbody. This genial ornament of our regimental sanitary squad is especially anxious to plumb the mysteries of arithmetic. When he had, as I thought, finally mastered the principle that if you borrow one from the shillings' column you must pay it back in the pounds' column, I ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... torn The stedfast Earth. At last his Sail-broad Vannes He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoak Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a League As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides 930 Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuitie: all unawares Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not by ill chance The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud Instinct with Fire and Nitre hurried him As many miles aloft: that furie stay'd, Quencht in a Boggie Syrtis, neither ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Parliament for securing the Church of England, and told me, with great satisfaction, that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid dissenter who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plumb-porridge. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... attention, and, indeed, fills him with amazement, as does their construction in general. What instruments of precision did a rude people possess who could raise such walls, angles, monoliths, true and plumb as the work of the mason ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... substructure is cased with the finer material to a height of nearly twenty-four feet, which is quite enough to account for Xenophon's statement. As for his dimensions, they should not be taken too literally. In their rapid and anxious march the Greek commanders had no time to wield the plumb-line or the measuring-chain; they must have trusted mainly to their eyes in arriving at a notion of the true size of the buildings by which their attention was attracted. The tower at Nimroud must have been about 150 feet square, measured along its plinth; the present ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... her once hard at work with charcoal and board and plumb-line, a house-maid posing for her with a broom. He congratulated himself that his little sermon on the advantages of occupation as a cure for discontent had borne fruit so speedy and ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... fusing fireballs scorch the sky, Their mining arts the staunch besiegers ply, Delve from the bank of York, and gallery far, Deep subterranean, to the mount of war; Beneath the ditch, thro rocks and fens they go, Scoop the dark chamber plumb beneath the foe; There lodge their tons of powder and retire, Mure the dread passage, wave the fatal fire, Send a swift messenger to warn the foe To seek his safety and the post forgo. A taunting answer comes; he dares defy To spring the mine and all its AEtnas try; When a black ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... it does NOT REMAIN AT REST in a state of strain (at any rate if this strain passes limits which are relatively quite low). Not only are, according to Hayford's observations, the inequalities of the North American continent compensated for by lighter material below, so that the plumb- bob deflections are only one twentieth what they would be if they rested upon a rigid substratum of uniform density, but other facts that lead to the same conclusion are the apparent tendency of areas of sedimentation to slowly settle under their load, the apparent settling ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... are careful to plumb the questions with which they have to grapple and to weigh the inconveniences and the advantages of the acts they have ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... sky an' sunshine, an' the temper o' the breeze— Here's the weather I would fashion could I run things as I please: Beauty dancin' all around me, music ringin' everywhere, Like a weddin' celebration—why, I've plumb fergot my care An' the tasks I should be doin' fer the rainy days to be, While I'm huggin' the delusion that God ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest |
