"Spike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wood cut at the end of this book.) In the Memoriale of Henry, prior of Canterbury, A.D. 1285, the term prikett denotes, not the candlestick, but the candle, formed with a corresponding cavity at one end, whereby it was securely fixed upon the spike. p.413, n. 1. Henry VIII.'s allowance 'unto our right dere and welbilovede the Lady Lucy,' July 16, 1533, included 'at our Chaundrye barr, in Wynter, every night oon preket and foure syses of Waxe, with eight Candells white lights, and oon Torche.' Orig. Letters, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... now before us, and as the breeze gently waves its slender stalks, each tipped with a vegetable butterfly, it becomes almost difficult to imagine that we are not watching the movements of a real insect flitting among the plants. Here is a spike of Gongora maculata, bearing no faint resemblance to a quantity of brown insects with expanded wings collected round the stem. Close to it are some Brassias, mimicking with equal fidelity insects of a paler colour, besides hundreds of others equally curious and beautiful. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... agreeable men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six months of the year they keep company with the most distinguished travellers of Europe. With these guides, each of us armed with a long pole with an iron spike, such as my uncle described to me ages ago, and which I never expected to wield, we came down La Flegere, which we mounted on mules. In talking to an old woman who brought us strawberries, I was surprised to hear her pronounce the Italian proverb, "Poco a poco fa lontano nel giorno." ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... a hard, shiny hook. He realized with a start that every single blade of grass was the same. The soft green lawn was a carpet of death. As he straightened up he glimpsed something under a broad-leafed plant. A crouching, scale-covered animal, whose tapered head terminated in a long spike. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... almost universally employed as a vessel by the tribes of the Atlantic drainage of North America. Usually it was trimmed down and excavated until only about three-fourths of the outer wall of the shell remained. At one end was the long spike-like base which served as a handle, and at the other the flat conical apex, with its very pronounced spiral line or ridge expanding from the center to the circumference, as seen in Fig. 475 a. This vessel was often copied in clay, as many good examples now in our museums testify. The ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... not give either musket or fusee; but they had each a halberd, or a long staff, like a quarter-staff, with a great spike of iron fastened into each end of it, and by his side a hatchet; also every one of our men had a hatchet. Two of the women could not be prevailed upon but they would come into the fight, and they had ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... "I want you, Spike, to follow them. See what they do—where they go. It's her birthday. Something's bound to occur that will give you a lead. All you've got to do is to use your head. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... he drove a spike into the end of the log, tied one end of a rope to the spike, and the other to a ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... ripens in a single night, she fell into the most furious rage, but being terribly afraid of her daughter, she controlled herself, and bade the boy go and find the field guarded by eighteen millions of demons, warning him on no account to look back after having plucked the tallest spike of rice, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... views which they took of the subject. Mr. Pitt, about to surrender the possession of power to his rival, had a very intelligible interest in reducing the value of the transfer, and (as a retreating army spike the guns they leave behind) rendering the engines of Prerogative as useless as possible to his successor. Mr. Fox, too, had as natural a motive to oppose such a design; and, aware that the chief aim of these restrictive measures was to entail upon the Whig ministry ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Church of Ireland. Mochuda, head of a great monastery at Rahen, is likewise a kind of pluralist Parish Priest with a parish in Kerry, administered in his name by deputed ecclesiastics, and other parishes similarly administered in Kerrycurrihy, Rostellan, West Muskerry, and Spike Island, Co. Cork. When a chief parishioner lies seriously ill in distant Corca Duibhne, Mochuda himself comes all the way from the centre of Ireland to administer the last rites to the ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products ("Spike to Loaf in One Operation!") began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb What time, with ardors manifold, The bee goes singing to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... ready for sea. The superior seamanship of the Carthaginians was neutralized by converting the decks into a battle-field for soldiers. Each ship was provided with a long boarding-bridge, hinged up against the mast, to be let down on the prow, and fixed to the hostile deck by a long spike, which projected from its end. The bridge was wide enough for two soldiers to pass abreast, and its sides ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... and fragrance, are worthy to be, as they really are, cousin to the rose. On one of my rambles I came upon some plants of a strangely slim and prim aspect; nothing but a straight, erect, military-looking, needle-like stalk, bearing a spike of pods at the top, and clasped at the middle by two small stemless leaves. By some occult means (perhaps their growing with Tiarella had something to do with the matter) I felt at once that these must be the mitrewort ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness—potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes—each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repass wholly occupied ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the stairs. He found Cicely kneeling before a pail in which Melchisedek stood upright, a picture of sooty dolefulness, with water trickling from every sodden spike of his coat. The corners of his mouth drooped dejectedly, whether from Cicely's chidings or from the taste of the soap it would be ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... is a sheath for electric forces sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a child's molars will chew off the end of a stick of candy. Thus each new book opens up some new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature. Thus books fulfill for us the legend of the wondrous glass that showed its owner ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... In drooping spikes about 1 inch long and 1/2 inch in diameter; dark purplish-red, oblong, sweet and edible; apparently a simple fruit but really made up of the thickened calyx lobes of the spike. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... usual), he ran, in a fury of impatience, to his rod, which he had stuck into the bank, as now I saw, and drew off the butt end, and removed the wheel, or whatever it is that holds the fishing line; and this butt had a long spike to it, shining like a halberd in ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of stout serving men, proportioned to his estate and quality, all of whom walked with the air of military retainers, and were armed with sword and buckler, the latter being a small round shield, not unlike the Highland target, having a steel spike in the centre. Two of these parties, each headed by a person of importance, chanced to meet in the very centre of the street, or, as it was called, "the crown of the cause-way," a post of honour ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... job—you don't want me to draw the moral, do you? I never was good at that, though I've known fellows with that peculiar cast o' brain as could draw a moral out of a marline-spike if they were hard put to it. Seems to me that it's best to let morals draw themselves. For instance, that time when I was wrecked on the South American coast, I came to a shallow river, an' had to wade across, but was too lazy to pull ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... the throats of all whom they could master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in which they had also laid up their provisions, so that the Greeks could get nothing from that country, but lived upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... good indeed of you to say so, but am always anxious to do my duty to my Queen and Country. (Gazing at picture.) Hm! Not bad! But, I say, I do know something of yachting, and that isn't the way to brace up the marling-spike to the fokesell yard with the main jibboom three points in a wind with some East in it! If I may venture a suggestion—hope Artist will paint out the gondola. Ta-ta! A bird in the hand is worth two ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... as he had done that night when he had thrilled Tim's heart by his shocking conduct. The boy drew slowly near, half fearful of his own daring. What if the dark man should not at first recognize him as a kindred spirit, and should leap at him with a hand-spike? John McIntyre looked up. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... latter resemble in this respect cleistogamic flowers, but differ widely from them in being sterile and conspicuous. Not only the aborted flower-buds and their peduncles (which are elongated apparently through the principle of compensation) are brightly coloured, but so is the upper part of the spike—all, no doubt, for the sake of guiding insects to the inconspicuous perfect flowers. From such cases as these we may pass on to certain Labiatae, for instance, Salvia Horminum in which (as I hear from Mr. Thiselton Dyer) the upper bracts are enlarged and brightly ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... responsible?" asked the officer in cold, unsympathetic tones, looking the unfortunate sergeant over from the spike of his Pickelhaube to the thick soles of his regulation boots. "Surely not this sergeant? Surely not the non-commissioned officer before me—the one so quick to find fault with a sentry who seems to have been doing only his duty? ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... hundred, and appeared to subsist on fish and fern roots. They were evidently poorer than those seen previously, and their canoes are described as "mean and almost without ornament." They soon understood the value of iron, and readily took spike nails when trading, and greatly preferred "Kersey and Broadcloth to the Otaheite cloth, which show'd them to be a more sensible people than many of their neighbours," ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... down a quiet street and sees the plainest of chapels,—a kind of wooden tent, that owes whatever grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roofs—traces, both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of a flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below. This suggestion of medieval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... nothing, since these romantic forests would be as empty as tunnels when Julien was not there; but closing the door of the garden gate softly behind her, she blew out the lantern and hung it to the topmost spike, that Stewart, who was leaving for England in the morning, might bequeath it to ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... my notion. Think he mistook th' False Ridge drop. Ain't no man could make it up again without th' hammer spike an' rope." ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... in their hands, some men climb into trees and wait for the herd to pass, whilst others drive them under. The hippopotami, however, are not hunted, but snared with lunda, the common tripping-trap with spike-drop, which is placed in the runs of this animal, described by every South African traveller, and generally known as far as the Hametic language is spread. The Karuma Falls, if such they may be called, are a mere sluice or ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... mouth seeming the whole time to grow wider and wider, and then a huge man rushed out through the boat-house door, but not too quickly for Elias to see, by the light of the lantern, that out of his back there stuck a long iron spike. Now Elias began to understand a little; but still he was more afraid on account of his boat than for his own life, and he sat in the boat himself, with the lantern, and kept guard. When his wife came to look for him in the ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... decapitated this Gharib and suppressed his breath of life and forced my cousin and his people back to their belief: and whoso baulketh me, him will I destroy." Then he mounted an elephant paper-white as he were a tower plastered with gypsum, and goaded him with a spike of steel which ran deep into his flesh, whereupon the elephant trumpeted and made for the battle-plain where cut and thrust obtain; and, when he drew near Gharib, he cried out to him, saying, "O dog of mankind, what made thee come into our land, to debauch my cousin and his folk ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... voyage to worlds unknown, for profits guessed at, against dangers neither to be counted nor foreseen. Be not too much stricken of amazement, therefore, when now these cold ones, who would not have bought an American railroad without counting the cross-ties and weighing every spike and fish-plate, were ready to send millions adrift on a sightless invasion of Asia ten thousand miles away. Besides, as the five with Mr. Harley laid out their campaign, any question of Oriental danger was for ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... majestic grandeur against the saffron sky, and looking at it one can well imagine how much grander it must have looked when the tower bore some fitting termination, either the Norman pyramid or the later octagon, or even possibly the wooden spire of the Hertfordshire spike ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... got to the "George" at Hereford I had L7, 13s. 6d. left out of the L10. I slept in workhouses or in the fields; the professional term for the former is the "spike," for the latter the "skipper." I went on "spike" and "skipper" both. I had sent a little portmanteau on before me to the "George" at Hereford, with the initials "D.C.M." at the side. In it I had a change of clothes and a shaving kit. When I got into Hereford I had had no shave for three ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... fight only rested them. Indeed there was more military air about this work than had been or has since been about the building of a railroad in this country. It was one big battle, from the first stake west of Omaha to the last spike at Promontory—a battle that lasted five long years; and if the men had marked the graves of those who fell in that fierce fight their monuments, properly distributed, might have served as mile-posts on the great overland route to-day. But ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... during the passage, except the visit from Neptune and his wife, and the shaving and ducking all his new acquaintances, who were rather numerous. We saw several tropical birds, which the sailors call boatswains, in consequence of their having one long feather for a tail, which they term a marlin-spike—an iron instrument sharp at one end and knobbed at the other, used in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... keepers entered with a species of halbert, with half-moon shaped steels at the head, and one small spike in the midst. With this they caught the horns of Nero, and he was forced to retreat before the men, for if he resisted the spike entered his head and hurt him. Thus finally, by sheer force, he was driven, snorting, pawing ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... brought a box covered with net, in which a huge apple-green caterpillar, with dashes of bright colour on his sides, and a horny spike on his tail, was feasting upon tamarisk leaves. Grace asked if she was going to keep it. "Yes, till it buries itself," said the child. "Aunt Ermine thinks it is ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... penknife-ingenuity, with a general preponderance of feminine appellatives, bold incisures, at times, of some worthy professor in profile,—the whole besmutched with ink, and dotted with countless punctures, the result of the sharp spike with which every student's ink-horn is armed, that he may steady it upon the slanting board. The preceding lecture ended when the university-clock struck the hour; the next should begin within ten or fifteen minutes. One by one the students drop in and take their places,—high and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... designer had managed to give rudely in the figure of a Zouave in a fierce attitude; and the other was thrust toward Russia, a huge colossus with Calmuck dress, and features. The most conspicuous thing in the giant's dress was a helmet with a spike projecting from the top, much too large for the head of the wearer, and therefore falling over his eyes until they were almost blinded by it. The style of the helmet was that of the usual head-dress of the Prussian soldier. The caricature ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... imprisonment. Fortunately no one was killed, and the only casualty was a drummer slightly wounded. The next day both regiments returned their ammunition into the magazine. The Tower Hamlets were ordered to their headquarters, London, and disbanded. The 25th were sent to Spike Island, a ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... (p. 508) is described a throwing-stick of Igloolik, 18 inches long, grooved for the shaft of the bird-spear, and having a spike for the hole of the shaft, and a groove for the thumb and for the fingers. The index-finger hole is not mentioned, but more than probably it existed, since it is nowhere else wanting between Ungava and Cape Romanzoff in Alaska. This ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... not hurry the horse. He merely walked in front holding the bridle slackly. The horse followed him as good as gold—and picked up his feet at nearly every spike. Once or twice a hind hoof grazed a spike-head with a rasping sound that sent Racey's heart bouncing up into his throat. Lord, so much depended ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... to do. Corporal Pederson produced hardened steel spikes with ring tops. Private Trudeau had a sledge. Driving the first spike would be the hardest, because the action of swinging the hammer would propel the Planeteer like a rocket exhaust. In space, the law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction had to be ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... described as an insulated core on which are two short lengths of brass tubing. One of these has rubbing against it a spring connected with the terminal of the battery; the other has similar communication with the - terminal. Projecting from each tube is a spike, and rising from the baseboard are four upright brass strips not quite touching the commutator. Those on one side lead to the line circuit, those on the other to the earth-plate. When the handle is turned one way, the spikes ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... gazing at that worn and rusty bar of iron with its single bent and rusty spike, I was whisked back across the years by some strange trick of memory and I saw, instead, a dimly lighted sick room, on a hot summer night—myself a little sufferer, and sitting beside me, fanning my fevered brow, my beloved father, who, notwithstanding the fatigue of a heavy ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... stopping before a splendid line of plants in full blossom. Her self-respect was whole again; her spirits rose at a bound. 'I don't know why you admire them so much. They have no scent, and they are only pretty in the lump,' and she broke off a spike of blossom, studied it a little disdainfully, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... last do not curve back, but point forward; and as both these carry their heads low down the long sharp spike is often borne horizontally. In the form and length of their neck, the set of their ears, and other respects, the black rhinoceroses differ materially from the white ones. In fact, their habits are quite unlike. The former feed chiefly on the leaves and twigs of thorns, ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... on the icy pavement of Atlantic Avenue. Spike Walters, its driver, cursed roundly as he applied the brakes and with difficulty obtained control of the little closed car. Depressing the clutch pedal, he negotiated the frozen thoroughfare and parked his car in the lee of the enormous Union Station, which ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... countries; but a few hints may be acceptable upon points that, although not absolutely essential, tend much to the comfort of the traveller. A couple of large carriage umbrellas with double lining, with small rings fixed to the extremities of the ribs, and a spike similar to that of a fishing-rod to screw into the handle, will form an instantaneous shelter from sun or rain during a halt on the march, as a few strings from the rings will secure it from the wind, if pegged to the ground. Waterproof calico sheeting should be taken in large quantities, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... quivered, and in the limpid waters of the lowland brook, spanned by a little stone bridge, the fish hung motionless above the yellow gravel, and the dragonfly sat quite still, perched upon the sharp tip of a spike of the rushes, with its ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... them. And yet for a whole afternoon she worked enthusiastically at a fantastic design of dream flowers, an extraordinary efflorescence blooming in the light of a miraculous sun, a burst of golden spike-shaped rays in the center of large purple corollas, resembling open hearts, whence shot, for pistils, a shower of stars, myriads of worlds streaming into the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... found a small hoofed animal, hardly bigger than old Tom, rearing and bucking with a broken leg in the trap. It had sharp little spike horns, only a few inches long, but mean. Ed got several painful jabs before he got the animal tied up and out of the trap. He restrung the alarm, then took his catch ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... guns were ordered forward. Turning out of the road to the left, we unlimbered and commenced firing. The ground on which we stood was level and very soft, and, having no hand-spike, we had to move the trail of the gun by main force. The enemy very soon got our range, and more accurate shooting I was never subjected to. The other four guns of the battery now came up, and, passing along a small ravine about forty yards behind us, halted for a time nearby. We were ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... part of a hero; I was not of the stock that had stood at the stake glorifying the deed with a hymn. I had wanted to drop the subject, not because it was painful to her, but because it pressed a spike into my own flesh; but her wish to dismiss him from her mind urged me to keep him there, to torture her with him. Brute? Surely; I have never denied it, but I loved her, and in love there is no generosity. The lover who seeks to be liberal is a hypocrite, a sneak-thief robbing ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... Denning, as he drew back and began to reload. "I could not see any one, only that a bag of powder was being thrust along the deck with a hand-spike, and I fired at where I thought a man ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... straightly cut with a crosscut saw. The window openings, one or more, may next be cut, commencing beneath the second log from the top, and taking in three beneath it. Replace the logs above, and on the ends of those thus cut, both in windows and doors, proceed to spike a heavy plank, driving two nails into each log, about five inches apart, one above the other. This will hold them firmly in place, and offer a close-fitting jam for the door, and neat receptacle for the window sashes, which latter may now be put ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... dogs. He did not find any wild pigs; but before long he sighted a big deer with many-branched antlers. The dogs gave chase and seized the deer, and held it until the man came up and killed it with the sharp iron spike that tipped his long staff (tidalan [149]). Then the man tied to the deer's antlers a strong piece of rattan, and ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... Plants are so unobtrusive in their material processes, and always at the significant moment some other bloom has reached its perfect hour. One can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has from the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One notices here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind. Part of the charm of the lupine is the continual stir of its plumes to airs not suspected otherwhere. Go and stand by any crown of bloom and the tall stalks do but rock ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the entrances to the royal residence, and secured with iron bars, is a large bowlder weighing three hundred and sixty-three pounds; in the wall above it are driven three spikes, the highest spike being twelve feet from the ground; and Bavarian historians have recorded that Earl Christoph, a famous giant, tossed this bowlder up to the mark indicated by the highest spike, with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... should you know, who have hardly been out of Overcombe in your life?—you don't know what delicate feelings are in a real refined woman's mind. Any little vulgar action unreaves their nerves like a marline-spike. Now I wonder if you did anything to ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... and splice your marline-spike. Where are you coming to?" cried Peeler, the coastguardsman—for such, we need hardly say, was the rank of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... pioneer construction which in Ontario brought in the narrow gauge, was the wooden railway built in 1870 from {102} Quebec to Gosford. The rails were simply strips of seasoned maple, 14'x7"x4", notched into the sleepers and wedged in without the use of a single iron spike. The engine and car wheels were made wide to fit the rail. In spite of its cheap construction the road did not pay, and the hope of extending it as far as Lake St John was deferred for a generation. A similar wooden railway was built from ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... swinging that twelve-pound sledge and near breaking my back. 'I think it's easier this way,' he says. 'Besides you can hit a lot faster if you use just one hand.' And he takes the hammer, and sends that big spike in all the way to the head with one lick. And he wondered why I didn't work the same way! Ain't got any idea how ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... great satisfaction of the besieged. The batteries were reopened, and daily contests took place. One night under cover of a fog, a party of the besieged marched up to the principal Spanish battery, and attempted to spike the guns. Every one of them was killed round the battery, not one turning to fly. "The citizens," wrote Don Frederick, "do as much as the best soldiers in the world ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... clank! Tom Reade, gazing in fascination, saw the last spike of the last rail being driven ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... fellow," he cried, "don't you try that game again, or I'll fix a spike to the end of a stout hickory ready for lancing those gums of yours. I'm afraid you've got toothache, or you wouldn't be so ready to bite. Now then, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... brown mare with an open fetlock joint due to a spike-nail puncture. Lameness was excessive, and joint greatly swollen. Tincture of iodin was injected into the wound and towels dipped in hot antiseptic solutions were applied for several hours daily until the acute stage had passed. Later the mare was turned ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... sword; the only difference being that the levy of black mail in old times was by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night; the modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber, the other as a cheating pedlar; but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones; and in the habits ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... only: off with it, for the tree's sake, if for nothing more; let the Conservatism that would preserve cut it away. Did no wood-forester apprise you that a dead bough with its dead root left sticking there is extraneous, poisonous; is as a dead iron spike, some horrid rusty ploughshare driven into the living substance;—nay is far worse; for in every wind-storm ('commercial crisis' or the like), it frets and creaks, jolts itself to and fro, and cannot lie quiet as ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... little sacs known as spore-cases or sporangia (Fig. 4). They are usually clustered in dots or lines on the back or margin of a frond, either on or at the end of a small vein, or in spike-like racemes on separate stalks. Sori (singular sorus, a heap), or fruit dots may be naked as in the polypody, but are usually covered with a thin, delicate membrane, known as the indusium (Greek, a dress, or mantle). The family ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... gendarmes—the policemen of the army—gorgeous in uniforms of bottle-green and silver and mounted on sleek and shining horses. After them came the infantry: solid columns of grey-clad figures with the silhouettes of the mounted officers rising at intervals above the forest of spike- crowned helmets. After the infantry came the field artillery, the big guns rattling and rumbling over the cobblestones, the cannoneers sitting with folded arms and heels drawn in, and wooden faces, like servants on the box of a carriage. These were the ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... out of an old telephone, then drove a spike in a damp place under the porch, attached a wire to the spike and ran the wire to one of the poles of the magneto. Then I set the garbage-can on some blocks of wood, being careful not to have it touch the ground at any point. I next ran a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... flower-bud and proceeded to dissect it. After the external covering, which consisted of seventeen scales, he came upon the down which protects the flower. On removing this he could perceive four branchlets surrounding the spike of flowers, and the flowers themselves, though so minute, were as distinct as possible, and he could not only count their number, but discern the stamens, and ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... successful, had stopped her speaking at the close of a brief preface to her plea. She, however, soon rallied, though her voice was tremulous throughout, from the conviction that only an eminently successful presentation of her subject, could spike the enemy's batteries and win a verdict of "just and womanly." Mrs. Nichols hoped no further than that. She did not expect conservative Vermont to yield at once for what she asked, as she stood alone with her paper among the press; and there was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... by which his soldiers called him. Invariably he spent some part of his day among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited with them public prayers. Often at night he and they together went up to the teeth of the Russian batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the silence of these nights was broken hideously by the wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden roar of the cannon and crack of gunfire, by the groans ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... drawings, that attracted general attention, followed in rapid succession. Who that has seen it can forget the "Fancy Portrait" (by induction) "of my Laundress"—a brawny-armed woman standing over his shirts, which she belabours with a spike-studded club? or the "Automatic Policeman" at a crowded crossing, which, when a penny is dropped into the slot, puts up its arm and stops the traffic? or the "Restored Skeleton of a Bicyclist," and other "happy thoughts" of that period? It was obvious that ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... and darted into the bedroom. You observe that the scratch on that table is slight at one side, but deepens in the direction of the bedroom door. That in itself is enough to show us that the shoe had been drawn in that direction and that the culprit had taken refuge there. The earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indiscriminately by both names, and amply justifies either prefix. The hideous reptile is very thick and stumpy in proportion to its length, which rarely exceeds two feet, whilst its circumference may be put down at one-fifth of its total measurement. The tail is terminated by a small curved spike, which is commonly regarded as the sting; but though when touched it doubles up, and strikes with this horn, as well as bites, I do not think the tail does any material damage, but this opinion one would find it difficult to make a bushman ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... brethren of another "persuasion," who magnified that mode, and though he was willing to do as I advised in the matter, he was evidently a little inclined to the more spectacular way of receiving the ordinance. Mrs. White suggested that it might save future trouble, and "spike a gun." So Jack, with four others, was taken down to Santa Rosa Creek, that went rippling and sparkling along the southern edge of the town, and duly baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. A great crowd ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... to go walking with, and I've done that myself, hundred of times. And I knew that I had an ice-ax of that very pattern at home—and so I just shoved it under the doctor's nose in court, and asked him if that hole in Crone's head couldn't have been made by the spike of it. Why? Because I knew that Carstairs would be present in court, and I wanted to see if he would catch what ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... to liberate him. The country, however, showed no disposition to do anything of the sort. He was tried in Dublin, found guilty, sentenced to fourteen years' transportation, and a few days afterwards put on board a vessel in the harbour and conveyed to Spike Island, whence he was sent to Bermuda, and the following April in a convict vessel to the Cape, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Phormium tenax, loves to grow, and to its long, ribbon-like leaves the eel-fishers fastened their lines securely, baiting each alternate hook with mutton and worms. I declared this was too cockney a method of fishing, and selected a tall slender flax-stick, the stalk of last year's spike of red honey-filled blossoms, and to this extempore rod I fastened my line and bait. When one considers that the old whalers were accustomed to use ropes made in the rudest fashion, from the fibre of this very plant, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... including filaments, anthers, and style; crowded in a dense spike; quickly fading; unpleasantly odorous. Perianth tubular, 2-lipped, parted into 6 irregular lobes, free from ovary; middle lobe of upper lip with 2 yellow spots at base within. Stamens 6, placed at unequal distances on tube, 3 opposite each lip. Pistil 1, the stigma minutely toothed. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... executioner's axe fell. Although Bishop Fisher was condemned for denying the King's supremacy, he incurred the wrath of Henry by his book against the divorce, and that practically sealed his fate. His head was placed on a spike on London Bridge as a warning to others who might be rash enough to incur the displeasure of the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... that the same sort? No, take that one up; it is the bulb of a dwarf palm, each layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted, like the outside of a cocoa-nut. It is a clever plant that; from the leaves we get a vegetable horsehair; - and eat the bottom of the centre spike. All the leaves you pull have the same aromatic scent. But here a little patch of cleared ground shows old friends, who seem to cling by abused civilisation:-fine, hardy thistles, one of them bright yellow, though; - honest, Scotch- looking, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heavy ordnance being all that caused me any anxiety. And even now they do not greatly trouble me; for if they keep no better watch there on other nights than they did on this, it would be easy for a couple of resolute men to enter the place, even as I did, bind and gag the sentinels, and spike all eight of the guns, and never a man of them any the wiser until they came to put ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... moment to the limbo of forgotten tribulations. Reliance on relieving expeditions was considered foolish; all our thoughts and energies were centred in a desire to stay the slaughter of the innocents, and thus in a manner to spike the enemy's guns. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the young fool, whose hands were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... part of the sky, where, on the average, there are ten stars (say) to a field, we should find a certain small portion having 100 or more to a field, then, on HERSCHEL'S first hypothesis, rigorously interpreted, it would be necessary to suppose a spike-shaped protuberance directed from the earth, in order to explain the increased number of stars. If many such places could be found, then the probability is great that this explanation is wrong. We should more ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... spirited but brief tourney, conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There seemed to be so many people who had been attracted ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the tops are of the roughest description, made by the village carpenter. More finished ones can be bought in the native bazaar for a farthing. But often a hopelessly disreputable-looking top, with an old nail for its spike, has a better record for deeds done than a more showy one bought in a shop. Those that are spun with the view of splitting their opponent often have, instead of a spike, a flattened bit of iron like a little chisel, which the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... his station on the other side of the deck. "Steady as you go now.—Newton, take the helm.—D'ye see that bluff?—keep her right for it. Tom, you and the boy rouse the cable up—get about ten fathoms on deck, and bend it.—You'll find a bit of seizing and a marling-spike in the locker abaft." The sloop scuddled before the gale, and in less than two hours was close to the headland pointed out by the master. "Now, Newton, we must hug the point or we shall not fetch—clap on the main sheet here, all of us. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... law—just once. Spike Mix's guns—he's only doin' this on a bluff. Guess he wants the reform vote for Council, or somethin'. Keep it under our bonnets, and send out a squad of patrolman Sunday afternoon to raid every theatre in town. Bat 'em ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... walls of the seaside palazzo in Southern Italy, "where the baked cicala dies of drouth"; and the blue lilies about the harp of golden-haired David; and Solomon gold-robed in the blue abyss of his cedar house, "like the centre spike of gold which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb";[66] and the "gaze of Apollo" through the gloom of Verona woods;[67] he sees the American pampas—"miles and miles of gold and green," "where the sunflowers blow in a solid glow," with a horse—"coal-black"—careering across it; and his ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... never say "Society" when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why," asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun shine twenty-four hours ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... were arranged, some in the interior of the wire-gauze cover, the prison of the female, and some around it, in an unbroken circle. Some contained naphthaline; others the essential oil of spike-lavender; others petroleum, and others a solution of alkaline sulphur giving off a stench of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the prisoner I could do no more. These arrangements were made in the morning, so that the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... he swore fiercely, and eight days after, he sent me to Porto on a schooner belonging to one of our neighbours, just to give me a change of air. I came back, at the end of six months, thinner than a marling spike, but more in love than ever. Recollections of Claudine scorched me like a fire. I could scarcely eat or drink; but I felt that she loved me a little in return, for I was a fine young fellow, and more than one girl had set her cap at me. Then my father, seeing that he could ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks, preferring death to capture. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... suppose, and with all his might had thrown himself clear over our palisades, except one strong pile, which stood higher than the rest, and which had caught hold of him, and by his weight he had hanged himself upon it, the spike of the pile running into his hinder haunch or thigh, on the inside; and by that he hung, growling and biting the wood for rage. I snatched up a lance from one of the negroes that stood just by me, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... single word, but his face had grown pale for a moment. Letting go of his hand-spike, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... a pause in which some background noise sounding like a crash came over the televiewer speaker. "It started swinging around when I came in sight, so I just rammed it with that pretty ornamental nose spike. I'm backing off now with the ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... opened badly, although one party thinks differently. In a few minutes, however, another truffle is found, and this time the old man delivers a whack on the nose at the right moment, and, seizing the fungus, hands it to me. Now he takes from his pocket a spike of maize, and, picking off a few grains, gives them to the pig to soothe her injured feelings, and encourage her to hunt again. This she is quite ready to do, for a pig has no amour propre. We move about ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... which they find open, or on a window; and after setting it on fire, they make their escape. This is sufficient often to produce the most terrible ravages in a town where the houses, built with wood and painted with oil of spike, afford the easiest opportunity to the miscreant who is disposed to reduce them to ashes. The method employed by the incendiaries, and which often escapes the vigilance of the masters of the houses, added to the common causes of fires, gave ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... in the morning, Lord Cornwallis directed a sortie to be made in order to destroy or to spike the guns in one of the enemy's batteries which was causing us most annoyance. The party consisted of about a hundred and fifty men from the guards, the light infantry and the 80th regiment. Never have I seen a more spirited or dashing affair. Away they went, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... a near relative of the foregoing, H. psycodes, but far less fortunate in its attributes of beauty, its long scattered spike of greenish-white flowers being so inconspicuous in its sedgy haunt as often to conceal the fact of its frequency. Its individual flower is shown enlarged at Fig. 12—the lip here cut with a lacerated fringe (H. lacera). The pollen-pouches approach slightly at the base, directly opposite ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... impaled and injudicious Richard [Sir J. Hooker's youngest son, who had managed to spike himself on a fence.] is none the worse. It is wonderful what boys go through ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... (daedalus) attacks and honeycombs it; and riddled as it may occasionally be, still, if spike or nail finds substance enough to hold, or sufficient solidity to resist crushing, then, for many purposes, even such lumber is practically as good as the soundest timber; because when the tree dies the fungus dies, and thenceforth will absorb no more moisture than the soundest part, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... water, is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret: it is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a Pike; and then cast it into a likely place; and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water, and so up the stream; and it is more than likely that you have a Pike follow with more than common eagerness. And some affirm, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... bunch of mountain-willers, and, after driving a big railroad-spike into the door-casing, over the latch, he said the senate and house would sit with closed doors during the morning session. Several large, white-eyed holy terrors gazed at him in a kind of dumb, inquiring tone of voice, but he didn't say much. He seemed considerably reserved as to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... in armor. A cap of blue steel, with a silver spike on the crown—neck and shoulders covered with a hood of mail—body in a shirt of mail, a bead of silver in each link—limbs to the knees in mail. From the knees down there were splints of steel inlaid with silver; his shoes were of steel, and on the heels ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the plants of this wonderful forest. The ocatilla is a cactus-like form having a group of long slender stems bunched together at the root. In the spring each is tipped with a spike of red flowers, and as the snake-like stalks wave in the breeze they present an appearance scarcely less attractive ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... gave me two staves to propel myself with. At the end of each was an iron spike, and above it a guard of wicker-work, about ten inches in diameter, to prevent the stick from sinking deeper. "These staves," he added, "are very useful when the snow is soft and the skees do not glide easily. Then propelling oneself with them makes one go faster. Though the snow is ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... of Portsmouth, N. H.; CHARLES MUDGE, of Maiden; MATTHEW F. WHITTIER, of Medford, a brother of the poet Whittier, and a newspaper-writer of considerable prominence, writing under the pen-name of "Ethan Spike"; and TRISTRAM TALBOT, of Newburyport, with others whom the writer does not now recall. A few years later the writer spent several of his college vacations as deputy clerk in the same Naval Office, and made pleasant acquaintances with all of the above-named men. ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... few steps round, as if back towards the cave; where was an iron spike driven into the smooth rock a little above the edge of ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... was flourishing his sword with as much apparent knowledge of how to use it as if it had been a marlin-spike. Ralph pushed it aside with a stout stick that he carried, and was passing on, when the singing soldier came up and said, "Never mind his name; but whether he be Presbyter Jack or Quaker George, he must drink to the health of the King. Here," he cried, filling a drinking-cup from ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Heaven's sake, as an old friend, spike or remove the chimney cowl that McWhannel at No. 3 has written you about. He has called on me twice and written three long letters, "to enlist my sympathy and support." He is the most poisonous kind of bore, and I'll gladly pay for the removal of the cowl, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... pulls hand over hand brought me to the edge of the shelf, when, throwing my arm around the granite spike. I swung my body upon the shelf and lay down to rest, shouting to Cotter that I was all right, and that the prospects upward were capital. After a few moments' breathing I looked over the brink and directed ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... had a go— Chief, Commander, P.M.O., Padre, Carpenter and Stoker, Using engine-grease and poker, Hawser, marlin-spike and soap, Till at length they gave up hope, For, in spite of all they did, Edwin fitted like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... climb this ten-foot fence, And, careless where his feet may strike, He tumbles, bang! And there will hang, His rope being caught by vine or spike. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... When you swing, spike the right-hand rail lightly. Then string your gangs again and set a line of spikes for the outside of the standard-gauge right-hand rail straight through to Saint's Rest. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... went on Aunt Verbeny, "an' when she las' come home, she wuz a-warin' spike-heeled shoes en er veil uv skeeter nettin'. 'Tain' so long sence Rhody's Viney went to Philadelphy, too, but she ain' had no luck sence she wuz born er twin. Hit went clean ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... here the projecting end of a fallen cross. Between showed no vestige of an opening; dark, impervious, formidable as a fortress wall, the tunal met the eye. Ferne, attacking it with his sword, thrust aside a heavy curtain of broad-leaved vine, came upon a network of thorn and spike and prickly leaf, hewed this away, to find behind it a like barrier. Evidently the man had lied!—to what purpose Sir Mortimer Ferne would presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook him a sudden revulsion of feeling, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... simple-looking traveller, attired in a homespun suit of gray, and wearing a broad-brimmed, Quaker-looking hat, drove up to the door of the Spread Eagle Tavern, in the town of B——, State of Maine, kept by Major E. Spike, and ordered refreshments for himself and horse. There was nothing particular about the traveller, except his air of simplicity; but his horse was a character. The animal was at least thirty years of age, and was as gaunt as Rosinante, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the road to Victoria, which was our road, and the third upon our left, equidistant from the other two, so as to form a triangle. Their signals showed us their position through the darkness. We saw that it was impossible to retreat unperceived and that our only plan was to spike the guns, abandon the wounded and artillery, put our rifles in as good order as might be, and cut our way through that body of Mexicans which held the road to Victoria. Once in the wood, we were safe, and all Santa Anna's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... expedition was now, of course, commanded by the steward, but the duties of his unpleasant office left him but little time for directing an invasion. Well, we got within reach of England when the wind began to blow, and before I could hitch myself up with a marling-spike, every man Jack of us was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... keep a sort of iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in the wall, "in order to preserve it from the rats," as he said. As Thenardier was kept in sight, no objection had been made to this spike. Still, it was remembered afterwards, that one of the jailers had said: "It would be better ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... interwoven radial spines, which crown the thirteen spiral rows of tubercles, and are almost white when mature. The tubercles are 1/2 in. long, and, in addition to these white radiating spines, they also bear each a stout spike-like spine, growing from the centre of the others. This spine gives the plant an appearance quite distinct from all other cultivated Mamillarias. The flowers are produced two or three together, on the top of the stem, and they are nearly 2 ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... his own types and engraved his own woodcuts. Henry Burden (1791-1871), born in Dunblane, inventor of an improved plow and the first cultivator, was also the first to invent and make the hook-headed railroad spike "which has since proved itself a most important factor in railroad building in the United States." His "cigar boat" although not a commercial success was the fore-runner of the "whale-back" steamers now in use on the Great Lakes. William ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... these are but partly turned under by the plow. For this reason it is especially useful on sod or other rough ground. The most convenient harrow for putting on the finishing touches, for leveling off and fining the surface of the soil, is the lever spike-tooth. It is adjustable and can be used as a spike-tooth or ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... rough grey stone. Upon it, there is what I thought at first was a sun-dial, and I wondered what it was doing there. Then I saw it had not a dial plate; only a strong cross-bar of wood, and the index finger, so to speak, was longer than one would expect, a sharp wooden spike. As I was wondering what it was a passer-by explained it. It is not a sun-dial, it is an impaling instrument. On that spike they used to impale alive goats and kids and fowls as offerings to the god Siva and his two wives, the deities to whose honour the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... and ends of old canvas, while he was not averse to licking the galvanised compound off the newly painted quarter-deck stanchions whenever an opportunity of doing so presented itself. He was a healthy goat of voracious appetite. His gastric juices would have dissolved a marline-spike, and he even made short work of the greater portion of a pair of ammunition boots belonging to the Sergeant-Major of Royal Marines, and devoured with every symptom of relish a sheaf of official and highly important documents lying on the ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... very well in his way; but he is a man who has risen too fast, as other men rise too slowly. Nothing in him; no substance, madam; I knew him as a youngster, and I could have tossed him on a marling-spike. And instead of feeding well, Sir, he quite wore himself away. To my firm knowledge, he would scarcely turn the scale upon a good Frenchman of half of the peas. Every man should work his own way up, unless his ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... had built that gleaming line of yellow sand that held the sleepers and the rails—almost with his own hands. From far over the horizon to the east he had crept along westward, urging on his big gang with relentless but just hand. And out there before his door they had driven the last spike at the very edge of the valley that cut ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets, honey-worts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... here, Mr. Barnes," said De Soto. "There isn't a dinner jacket or a spike tail coat on the place. It's strictly against the law up here to have such things about one's person. Come as you are, sir. I assure you I speak the truth when I say ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... legislature, Lincoln was the longest of the Sangamon representatives, distinguished as the Long Nine. They were much hampered by an old member who tried to put a stopper upon any measure on the set ground that it was "un-con-sti-tu-tional." Lincoln was selected to "spike his gun." A measure was introduced benefiting the Sangamon district, so that its electee might befittingly push it, and defend it. He was warrantably its usher when the habitual interrupter ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... lay this plaster to the back; take opopanax, two ounces, storax liquid, half an ounce; mastich, frankincense, pitch, bole, each two drachms; then with wax make a plaster; or take laudanum, a drachm and a half; mastich, and frankincense, each half a drachm, wood aloes, cloves, spike, each a drachm; ash-coloured ambergris, four grains: musk, half a scruple; make two round plasters to be laid on each side of the navel; make a fume of snails' skins salted, or of garlic, and let it be taken in by the funnel. Use also astringent fomentations of bramble leaves, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous |
