"Tinder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... till we reached a hill which we saw some way off, and there to light a fire, that the smoke might attract the attention of any one living on the island. He carried out his plan, and collecting sticks as we neared the spot, having brought tinder and matches, we quickly had a fire blazing. We looked in vain, however, all round the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... possible, for your fire. Beware of having it under tree branches, too near a tent, or in any other place that might prove dangerous. Start your fire with the tinder nearest at hand, dry leaves, ferns, twigs, cones, birch bark, or pine-knot slivers. As the tinder begins to burn, add kindling-wood of larger size, always remembering that the air must circulate under and upward through the kindling; no fire can live without air any more than you can live without ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... eight, having completed the fixing of the smith's forge, his vice, and a wooden board or bench, which were also batted to a ledge of the rock, to the great joy of all, under a salute of three hearty cheers. From an oversight on the part of the smith, who had neglected to bring his tinder-box and matches from the vessel, the work was prevented from being continued for at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he left behind him!" But as he never spoke of this girl to either of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either jesting or mistaken. In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder, and the clothes on our back. These ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... walk, however, soon put the blood in circulation, and ere long we entered a shanty where we experienced the usual hospitality of these generous folks. Here we borrowed a "smoking-bag," containing a steel, flint, and tinder. With the aid of these desiderata in the appointments of a voyageur, we had a comfortable encampment ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Moon for counsel, Ask the Bear for ancient wisdom, From the stars divine thy future; When the Great Bear faces southward, When his tail is pointing northward, This is time to break with slumber, Seek for fire within the ashes, Place a spark upon the tinder, Blow the fire through all the fuel. If no spark is in the ashes, Then go wake thy hero-husband, Speak these words to him on waking: 'Give me fire, O my beloved, Give a single spark, my husband, Strike a little fire from flintstone, Let it fall ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... the rains are delayed—long, tragically long delayed! The time for their annual return has come—has passed, and still the pitiless sun scorches the brown earth as if it would set afire the grass it has already burned to tinder-dryness. The ryot's scanty stock of grain is running low, the daily ration has been reduced until it no longer satisfies the pangs of hunger, and with each new sunrise gaunt Famine stalks nearer to the occupants of the mud-dried hut. The poor peasant lifts ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... you the other day? Stories start from nowhere. It's just like putting a match to tinder. Now ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... unexplained, "you use friction-matches at home? Now you know how cheap they are,—two boxes for a cent. But I remember when one box sold for twenty-five cents. People were then careful how they used them, and it was not everybody who could afford to do so. The flint and tinder-box were long in going out of use. But how is it now? Instead of one match serving to light a cigar, the smokers use two or three. They waste them because they are cheap, carrying them loose in their pockets, that they may always have enough, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... understanding. Here the terror was of earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements, flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like structures ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Johannesburg in control of a subsidized press; what with Rhodes and Jameson dreaming of a solid British South Africa and fanatical Doppers dreaming of the day when the last rooinek would be shipped from Table Bay, and with the Kaiser in a telegraphing mood—there was no lack of tinder for a conflagration. Even so, the war might have been averted, for there were signs of growth among the Boers of a more reasonable party under Joubert and Botha. But, whatever might have been, Paul Kruger's obstinacy and Joseph Chamberlain's firmness collided; and when, on ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... driven about on the sea (death is unwelcome, men love to live) look about them and see this fish; they ween it is an island. They are very glad of it, and with all their might they draw towards it, make the ships fast, and all go ashore. With stone and steel and tinder they make a good fire on this monster, and warm themselves well, and eat and drink; the whale feels the fire and makes them sink, for he quickly dives to the bottom, he kills ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... sleeping in the bush, when it struck me that there must be an uncommonly fine aurora, but getting up a little rising ground where the trees were thinner, I observed it was to the south-west, not the north. That way there lies prairie land, at this season one ocean of dry bents, fit to burn like tinder, so that one spark would set fifty square miles alight at once. All the sky in that quarter was the colour of glowing copper, but the distance was so enormous that danger never occurred to me till I saw the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an end. The last spark had died out of the paper in the grate and left only black tinder; the table was left bare, the golden plates and richly embroidered napkins, and the garlands were transformed again into old handkerchiefs, scraps of red and white paper, and discarded artificial flowers all scattered on the floor; the minstrels in the minstrel gallery had stolen away, and ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... imagination: and there was often a great dissimilitude between his fair captivator, as she appeared to others and as she seemed when invested with the attributes he gave her." "My heart," he himself, speaking of those days, observes, "was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other." Yet, it must be acknowledged that sufficient room exists for believing that Burns and his brethren of the West had very different notions of the captivating and the beautiful; while they were moved by rosy checks and looks of rustic ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humour enough; the whole lying in such hot neighbourhood, close by 'a reverberating furnace of Fantasy': have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... base," she said—"as he was at first, so he is now. 'Tis thy favourite, Anne," lightly, and she delicately spurned the blackened tinder with her ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and knew that Giglio must come to grief, got up very early the next morning, and went to devise some plans for rescuing her darling husband, as the silly old thing insisted on calling him. She found him walking up and down the garden, thinking of a rhyme for Betsinda (TINDER and WINDA were all he could find), and indeed having forgotten all about the past evening, except that Betsinda was the most lovely ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... good hand at making a fire, and he quickly found plenty of fine tinder which flashed up when a match was applied. Then more wood was carefully placed on the little blaze, until in a brief time he had a cheery ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... the hand which fitted a key to his own front door trembled with trepidation. Once he had seen his wife's face he would know. Her anger would not burn slowly, in such a case, but in the conflagration of tinder laid to powder. Yet when he stole quietly to the study door and looked in, anxiety made his breath uneven. She was sitting there, within arm's length of the table—which, thank God, seemed to the casual glance, just as he had left it,—but in her fingers she held what appeared to be a ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... where he knew the tinder-box to be kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light throughout the hut, and choking back ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... and produces a vegetation of low shrubs, and a few Talh trees. The greater part of the Wadys from hence to Egypt are of this description. The coloquintida grows in great abundance in all of them, it is used by the Arabs to make tinder, by the following process: after roasting the root in the ashes, they wrap it in a wetted rag of cotton cloth, they then beat it between two stones, by which means the juice of the fruit is expressed and absorbed by the rag, which is dyed by it of a dirty blue; the rag is then dried in the sun, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... enough to get up and lie upon the bed?" asked Miranda, soothingly, for she was uncomfortable tinder the strange glare that the woman ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... those burning arrows on the ranch house roof. Whitey watched, chilled but fascinated. The men around him were in the whirl of a fight. He was a spectator; one who saw other men being forced out of a trap to their deaths. The arrows burned like tinder. Whitey did not know that they were soaked in oil, brought along for the purpose ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... and in a quarter of an hour the bluejackets and marines were seen issuing from the houses and coming down to the shore. The place was by this time a sheet of fire, the lightly built huts, dried in the heat of the sun, catching like tinder, and blazing up in a fierce flame, that in a few minutes left ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conflict was going on the fire died out, having been flooded by the water. The Prince would not waken his brothers, although he had no tinder-box of his own to rekindle the flame, but resolved to search around a little in the wilderness in hope of stumbling upon some one who could ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... room, I made the customary motions of undressing, so that I might time myself; and when the cycle was complete, set my tinder-box ready, and blew out my taper. The matter of an hour afterward I made a light again, put on my shoes of list that I had worn by my lord's sick-bed, and set forth into the house to call the voyagers. All were dressed and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... transportation, and munitions, and even axes, picks, and shovels, so much in use later in the war, evidenced the forethought that governed this force. The boats, from their open lower deck construction, proved admirable for transports, but their tinder-box construction made fire-traps of them, requiring unremitting vigilance. These points were well understood, and the readiness with which the troops adapted themselves to circumstances was a constant source of wonder ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... scattered on hot, dry, still days by pipe and cigarette, by sparks from donkey engines, by untended camp fires, wherever the careless white man went in the great coastwise forests. The woods were like a tinder box. One unguarded moment, and the ancient firs were wrapped in sheets of flame. Smoke lay on the Gulf like a pall of pungent fog, through which vessels ran by chart and compass, blind between ports, at imminent ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Nature, and even in the world of thought there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters; things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some Martin Luther ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the tinder was lighted in the Balkans and Austro-Hungary seized a bit which brought her a step nearer to the world's highway; she seized one bit and poised herself for another. Then came that curious chorus of challenges, those leaping suspicions, raking ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... dark and rainy evening, and as the entrances to the catacombs were not guarded in those days, it was not difficult for me to make my way unseen into their interior. I had brought with me a tinder-box and several rushlights, and as soon as I felt secure from observation from the outside I struck a light and began my operations. Then, according to a plan I had previously made, I slowly walked along the solemn passageway which ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... go!" said he, looking at Herbert. "The box must have fallen out of my pocket and got lost! Surely, Herbert, you must have something—a tinder-box—anything that can possibly ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... gold large glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in the furnace did the rest. What with the bundles of dried herbs which burnt like so much tinder and the woodwork, the panelled walls and furniture, nothing could ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Anne! I am here!' but he couldn't. At the horror of this chase, more ghastly in his imagination than if he could have seen it, the perspiration broke out on his forehead, while his throat was as dry as tinder. A last supreme scream ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... chance of reaching the shore. As daylight came we passed into a little sheltered cove, and sank with exhaustion on the shore. Our frozen clothes rattled like tin, and we could scarce lift a leg. But we gathered a fine heap of wood, flint and steel were ready, and the tinder was sought; which, when found, was soaking. Not a dry stitch or stick could we find anywhere, till at last, within a leather belt, Mr. Stevens found a handkerchief, which was, indeed, as he told me afterwards, the gift and pledge of a lady to him; and his returning ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... when a little girl is the subject. Of course that was ever so long ago, when there were no lucifer matches, and steel and tinder were used to light fires; when soda and saleratus had never been heard of, but people made their pearl ash by soaking burnt crackers in water; when the dressmaker and the tailor and the shoemaker went from ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... character arranged expressly to carry fire from the bottom to the top, valiantly consuming themselves in the operation. Furthermore, they are frequently charged with shavings and splinters of wood, which, becoming dry as tinder, will respond at once to a spark from a crack in the chimney, an overheated stove or furnace-pipe, or a match in the hands of an inquisitive mouse. They are, likewise, so arranged that no water can be poured inside them till they fall apart and the house collapses, for they reach to the roof, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... surrendered. While Sir Edmund was bandying threats with stout Robert Treat, the queller of Indians and now governor of Connecticut, in the course of their evening conference the candles were suddenly blown out, and when after some scraping of tinder they were lighted again the document was nowhere to be found, for Captain Wadsworth had carried it away and hidden it in the hollow trunk of a mighty oak tree. Nevertheless for the moment the colony was obliged to submit to the tyrant. Next day the secretary ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... by no means easy. Everything had been soaked by the rain of the previous night, and a bit of dry grass could scarcely be found. At length he procured a little; and by rubbing it in the damp gunpowder which he had extracted from his pistol, and drying it in the sun, he formed a sort of tinder that caught fire after ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... set out under the trees on the lawn of some country inn, where the enchanting music of harp and fiddle twangled on the summer air, where great bowls of punch chimed gently as the lumps of ice knocked on the thin crystal. The little tables were spread tinder the trees, and then, later on, perhaps, the customers were spread under the tables.—I would ask you to recall the manly seidel of dark beer as you knew it, the bitter chill of it as it went down, the simple felicity it induced in the care-burdened ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... built up his heap of tinder wood, somewhat behind the mouth of the hollow, and, kneeling down, he used flint and steel with amazing rapidity and power. The sparks leaped forth in a shower, the dry wood ignited, and up came little flames which swiftly grew into bigger ones. Then he fanned his bonfire with all his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had to clear their way through the tangled thickets as they journeyed along. The stock of provisions they carried with them was supplemented by game snared or shot in the forest and fish caught in the river. These they cooked over the wood fire, kindled by means of tinder and flint. The interlaced branches of trees and the sky made the roof of their bedchamber by night, and pine ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... women came and tossed in logs through the door and windows, until presently that building, too, contained fuel enough to decompose the stone. And over the whole of it, here, there and everywhere, men were pouring cans and cans of kerosene, while other men were setting dry tinder in strategic places. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free herself,—that this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... without being discovered. There was no time to be lost. I opened the door with the greatest facility and gained the opening into the back path. I locked the door after me, and brought the key with me for a short distance, then placed all the keys tinder a rock. I had no hat but only a black veil. I threw that over my head after the fashion of Italy and gained the outer gate. There were masons at work near the gate which was open and I passed through into the street without being questioned ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... the scene. Anyone and everyone volunteered to help carry goods to a place of safety, and hot work it was, I can tell you, for being mostly of wood, and maybe redwood, they (the houses) burnt like tinder. From running to so many fires and falling down in my haste I got my shins bruised and bleeding, and my trousers, of course, torn. I was showing my children these scars only lately, they being still much in evidence after ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... rake, this dark-eyed ne'er-do-well, notorious all down Cheapside for his relentless dalliance with the fair, placed in intimate proximity with one of England's most glorious specimens of ripening womanhood. It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the meeting of flint and tinder—these two so widely different in the essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable, from the first they loved—he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake, she with the sweet, appealing purity ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... meaning of his conductress, Halbert bared his arm to the shoulder, throwing down the remains of his sleeve, which no sooner touched the floor on which he stood than it collected itself together, shrivelled itself up, and was without any visible fire reduced to light tinder, which a sudden breath of wind dispersed into empty space. The White Lady, observing the surprise of the youth, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... in that tense moment he seemed to hear his father's voice saying to him, "Why, boy, you're built like an ox!" The memory was like a match to tinder. He flung his hard young legs about the man's ankles, bringing him down like a dead weight upon his own body. With the wind half crushed out of him, he struggled and rolled to protect his revolver. A dozen times the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... wint an' he tuk onjew advantage av our confidince to desayve our r'y'l moind. Upon the discovery av this offince I felt the kaynist sorrow, not for him, ladies, but for you; an' it's for your sakes that I now come here, to assure you av my tinder sympathy, an' also to ax about the fax. Is he Lord ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... The town turned out to fight for me—that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood— Of something more than tinder-grass and weed— That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the space That I spread coal-black over in the time It took me. Neighbors ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... Layson could rush forward to stamp out these sparkling perils, the fire had spread, as the girl, wise in the direful ways of brush-fires, had known at once that it would spread, to the encircling pine-tops, left in a tinder barricade about the clearing by the sawyers ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... heap of black tinder where some papers had been burnt weeks or perhaps months ago. There were cigar-ends lying about, showing that whoever had been there had ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... did not answer, and the two clinging wretches encumbered me. After a long while the clouds broke and the moon shone through them; and where he had stood there was no one. Also the slab of rock was dark, and the two drowned corpses had vanished with him. I pointed to it; but there was no tinder-box at hand to light the lantern again, and in the bitter weather until the dawn the two clung about me, confessing ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Father, "I see quite plainly how it has been. He was like tinder, ready to take fire at a spark, and you were thinking I had been hard ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... hard, though she was still a virgin spinster; but it had never yielded in this way at the first assault. She had intended to bring together a middle-aged, studious clergyman and a discreet matron who might possibly be induced to marry again, and in doing so she had thrown fire among tinder. Well, it was all as it should be, but she did feel perhaps a little put out by the precipitancy of her own success, and perhaps a little vexed at the readiness of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... out among the Indians. They could be plainly seen in the red glare thrown by the burning cabin. It had been a very dry season, the rough shingles were like tinder, and the inflammable material burst quickly into great flames, lighting up the valley as far as the edge of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring and a horrible spectacle. Columns of yellow and black smoke rolled heavenward; every object seemed dyed a deep ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... they bound Korak. Then they brought brush and piled about him, and The Sheik came and stood by that he might watch the agonies of his victim. But Korak did not wince even after they had fetched a brand and the flames had shot up among the dry tinder. ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been termed outlooks, were not in any sense watch towers, but rather places of abode during the harvest season, where the workers in the field lived when not actually employed in labor, and where the fields tinder cultivation could always be kept in view—an arrangement quite as necessary and quite as extensively practiced now as ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... interlocking trunks. For some reason it always seems to die when it has attained a certain age, and wherever you find its green spiny foliage you will also find dry white trunks as inflammable as tinder. It furnishes almost the only firewood of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis, and without it many parts of north-eastern Siberia would be absolutely uninhabitable by man. Scores of nights during our explorations in Siberia, we should have been ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... view of an immense arch over my head, to which I could see no bounds; the stream itself, as I judged, was about thirty yards broad, but in some places wider, in some narrower. It was well for me I happened to have a tinder-box, or, though I had escaped hitherto, I must have at lust perished; for in the narrower parts of the stream, where it ran swiftest, there were frequently such crags stood out from the rock, by reason of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... fermentation, may claim a character of simplicity and generality that is well worthy of attention. Fermentation is no longer one of those isolated and mysterious phenomena which do not admit of explanation. It is the consequence of a peculiar vital process of nutrition which occurs tinder certain conditions, differing from those which characterize the life of all ordinary beings, animal or vegetable, but by which the latter may be affected, more or less, in a way which brings them, to some extent within the class of ferments, properly ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... his dark skin flushed and his eyes kindled. I looked at him closely. A more honest face one could never see, and his keen blue eyes met my gaze steadfastly. Heavy-hearted as I was just then, I could not help but smile, and all his face brightened, as the sea at its dullest brightens suddenly tinder a stray gleam of sunshine. Without another word we both rose to our feet, and stood side by side for a minute, looking down on the little grave beneath us. I would have gladly changed places then with the lonely English girl, who had pined ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... appearance, he requested permission to go to his own room in the adjoining house. This Doubleday allowed, posting himself as watchmen at the door. No sooner was Fawkes alone than he took the opportunity to rid himself of the chief evidences against him, by flinging the match and tinder out of his window, which overlooked the river. In another minute Sir Thomas Knevet and his ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... the other priest, "that at twenty you must indeed have been excitable, a veritable tinder-box, to have retained so much energy! Come, monsieur, try to calm yourself and have patience: you yourself admit it can only be ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was groping, I felt an object in the bottom of the boat that I knew at once was the boat's lantern keg, which is kept in all whale-boats. In it are flint, tinder, a lantern, candles, and packed all around them are ship's biscuits. Instantly the memory of our officers' instructions in reference to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... inflammable, and when propelled in a hollow cone against lighted spirit of wine on tow at the other end by a sudden jerk, its flash serves to imitate lightning for stage purposes. It was formerly used as tinder for lighting fires with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... fire. A few men go out before nightfall from the village and sit down in a row, one behind the other, on the path. The man in front has a leaf-mat drawn like a hood over his head and back in order that the ghost may not touch him from behind unawares. In his hand he holds a glowing coal and some tinder, and as he puts the one to the other he calls to the ghost, "Come, take, take, take; come, take, take, take," and so on. Meantime his mates behind him are reckoning up the names of all the men near and far who are suspected of sorcery, and a portion ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... be carried in abundance, together with a lantern, axe, bill-hook, tinder-box, matches, candles, oil, tea, coffee, sugar, biscuits, wine, brandy, sauces, etc., a few hams, some tins of preserved meats and soups, and a few bottles of curacea, a glass of which, in the early dawn, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... could steady himself well enough, Benson bent and snatched up the burning candle from the tinder-like bed ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... threatened to be swept away. Here was a tall flag-staff for signals, and a place for a beacon-light when needed, and a bench with a rest for a spy-glass. In the hut itself were signal flags, and a few spare muskets, and a keg of bullets, with maps and codes hung round the wall, and flint and tinder, and a good many pipes, and odds and ends on ledges. Carroway was very proud of this place, and kept the key strictly in his own pocket, and very seldom allowed a man to pass through the narrow doorway. But he liked ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... three leagues from the mainland of Accomac, and upon it neither food nor water. We had the clothes upon our backs, and my lord and I had kept our swords. I had a knife, and Diccon too was probably armed. The flint and steel and tinder box within my pouch made ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... desire, Thou tempting, consuming and treacherous fire, That catches like tinder and scorches like flame, Consigning the victim to sorrow and shame, Thy honeyest potion is wormwood and ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... burned. The fire, started by Nero's soldiers near the Palatine Hill, spread from house to house and quarter to quarter until it reached my couch. The old shell parted and burned as tinder. Then the mortal put on immortality and the shackled darkness of the old soul gave place to light ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... candle which Amante held, caught in some draught, went out, and we were in darkness. Amante proposed that we should carry the letters back to my salon, collecting them as well as we could in the dark, and returning all but the expected one for me; but I begged her to return to my room, where I kept tinder and flint, and to strike a fresh light; and I remained alone in the room, of which I could only just distinguish the size, and the principal articles of furniture: a large table, with a deep, overhanging cloth, in the middle, escritoires and other heavy articles against the walls; all this ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... on you, Jer Mulcahy, is it gone into a sauvaun [pleasant drowsiness] you are, over again? or maybe you stole out of bed, an' put your hand on one o' them ould good-for-nothing books, that makes you the laziest man that a poor woman ever had tinder one roof wid her? ay, an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an' house, in the heart of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer Mulcahy, to sell drams o' whisky an' pots o' beer to all the riff-raff o' the counthry-side, instead o' the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... especially American. We have yet to know of any one who really ranks as a scholar in his subject from whom students do not derive inspiration and enthusiasm. Such a one usually pays little attention to the methods of others, for the divine fire of knowledge itself does not need much of tinder to kindle the torches of others. Our greatest plea is for our teachers to be men of understanding, for then they will be found to be ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... said, the source of our vanity. Hence the poetic clan are more obnoxious to vanity than others. And from vanity consequently flows that great sensibility of disrespect, that quick resentment, that tinder of the mind that kindles at every spark, and justly marks them out for the genus irritabile among mankind. And from this combustible temper, this serious anger for no very serious things, things looked on by most as foreign ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... version arise often tinder the same reading of the original text; but as, in the meantime, there are many different readings, here a fifth source of possible error calls for a fifth inspiration overruling us to the proper choice amongst various ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... in Duben Forest, the rustic Christopher was rising from his bed. As with steel and flint he scattered sparks upon the tinder, in kindling himself a light, his wife, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... rather not do this, that he was afraid of the darkness, and that the fire was always extinguished in the evening. I bade him light a candle with the flint, when he told me that we had neither matches nor tinder nor sulphur. I persisted, and determined that a light should be got by one means or another, for I knew that, if I should go to sleep under so dire an omen, I must needs perish. So I ordered him to get a light as best he could. He went away ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... side of the staircase he took a candle, flint, and tinder, talking the while to Molly, as she rubbed the balusters. Having produced a tiny candle-flame that did not light up half the hall, Williams started towards the dining-room, but stopped at a distant sound of ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his time in prison (in 1832) with chemical experiments, though a North of England apothecary, Walker, lays claim to the invention. They were first made in Birmingham in 1852, but they have not, as yet, completely driven the old-fashioned, and now-despised tinder-box out of the world, as many of the latter are still manufactured in this town for sundry ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... your smocks, Look well to your locks, And your tinder box, Your wheels and your rocks, Your hens and your cocks, Your cows and your ox, And beware of the fox. When the bellman knocks, Put out your fire and candle-light, So they shall not you affright: May you dream of your delights, In your sleeps see pleasing sights. Good rest to ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... think of a good excuse to knock on her door. It 'ud be a stunt, wouldn't it, to raise an alarm of fire in this old tinder-box. Say, if there's ever a fire I bags the new roomer to save—that is until I get a look at her. If it's over a hundred and fifty, I'll give the job to ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... stands a large wooden ladder, tall enough to reach to the top of the roof, for fire is very common, and generally ends in everything being demolished by the flames. Buckets of water, passed on by hand, can do little to avert disaster, when the old wooden home is dry as tinder and often rotten ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... ancestry increases in the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he was knighted—a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer has a box at the opera. On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a match fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... she has more iv it than other childern," Riley explained to Mrs. Gorham; "but th' divvle is in 'em all. Go 'long wid ye'er ride, Missus Gorham, an' lave her ter me. 'Tis th' firm hand I'll be afther showin' her, but th' tinder wan, like I done wid her fa-ather forty year ago. Ye lave her ter ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... savage, I'm afraid. I should have most faith in putting a pound of powder and laying a train ready, so that one could light a bit of touch-tinder and get away to a safe distance. When that went off with a good explosion, I should think the rattlers would ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... started the fire. It seemed to his fevered imagination that it burned far too slowly. He shoved in more kindling, shavings, ends left from siding. This smothered his fire, so he made trip after trip to the tinder box, piling in armloads of ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... buck, which the white man, whom he described as "husband of the goddess," had "slain by thunder." When these had departed upon their errand, leaving Jeekie to superintend the building operations, Alan sat down upon a fallen tree, watching one of the savages making fire with a pointed stick and some tinder. ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... my table a copy of the minutes of the Board of Education of January 9, 1895, in which is underscored a report on a primary school in the Bronx. "It is a wooden shanty," is the inspector's account, "heated by stoves, and is a regular tinder box; cellar wet, and under one classroom only. This building was erected in order, I believe, to determine whether or not there was a school population in the neighborhood to warrant the purchase of property to erect a ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... rose. His words were as match to tinder. "I have an engagement for the rest of my life with shame and disgrace and disappointment. You have helped to bring them on me and you tell me to hurry—to /hurry!/ Her right hand flew out with tragic eloquence. "That I receive you in my house is ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... rush was on. Most great movements are done to song, generally commonplace. It was so in this instance. Oh, Susannah! or rather a modification of the original made to fit the occasion, first sung in some minstrel show, ran like fire in the tinder of men's excited hopes. From every stage, on every street corner, in every restaurant and hotel it was sung, played, and whistled. At the sound of its first notes the audience always sprang to its ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... tongue, the mess chest was open and pans shone in mingled fire and sunset gleams, but the mysteries of the distance, over which twilight veils were thickening, gave no sign of him. Daddy John built up the desert fire as a beacon—a pile of sage that burned like tinder. It shot high, tossed exultant flames toward the dimmed stars and sent long jets of light into the encircling darkness. Its wavering radiance, red and dancing, touched the scattered objects of the camp, revealing and then losing them as new flame ran along the leaves or charred branches dropped. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... street the Academy of Sciences and the Jennie Flood building and the History building kindled and burned like tinder. Sparks carried across the wide street ignited the Phelan building and the army headquarters of the department of California, General Funston commanding, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... to conversion by cannon, and has retorted in a still louder roar of high-explosive arguments. God, as a politico-philosophical ally, is certainly cheaper than Herr Krupp; and, divested of his mediaeval sword and tinder-box, he is decidedly humaner. But is the glamour of his name quite what it once was? Or can it be restored to ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... ways, William, although, in most of them, tinder is necessary. The savages can produce fire by rubbing a soft piece of wood against a hard one. But we have gunpowder; and we have two ways of igniting gunpowder - one is by a flint and steel, and the other is by collecting the sun's rays into one ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... calm and the grass and bracken which they heaped together as dry as tinder, there was little difficulty about raising a thick column of smoke which presently rose high in the sky. But Audrey, turning away from the successful result of their labours, suddenly glanced at Copplestone with a look that challenged an answer to her own thoughts. They were standing ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... this ancient cave homelike and familiar. There was less litter within than she had found without and what there was was mostly an accumulation of dust. Beside the doorway was the niche in which wood and tinder were kept, but there remained nothing now other than mere dust. She had however saved a little pile of twigs from the debris on the porch. In a short time she had made a light by firing a bundle of twigs and lighting others from this fire she explored some of the inner rooms. Nor here ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she were intent upon domestic work; and, by-and-by, there she was busy with coals and sticks brought from their respective places, putting on the fire, which she lighted with the indispensable spunk applied to the spark in the tinder-box. Next she undertook the sweeping of the floor, saying to herself—and they heard the words—"It looks as if it hadna been swept for seven years." Next she washed the dishes, which had been left on the table, indulging in the appropriate monologue implying the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... cabin, which we tied two together with our handkerchiefs, leaving a space between for each child; and fastened this new swimming apparatus under their arms. My wife prepared the same for herself. We then collected some knives, string, tinder-box, and such little necessaries as we could put in our pockets; thus, in case the vessel should fall to pieces during the night, we hoped we might be ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... out on deck again twilight had fallen, but far back on the horizon was a tiny blur—the Silver Star. As Jack gazed back at her, she vanished below the horizon as suddenly as an extinguished spark in a piece of tinder. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... As soon as he saw that, Caleb dropped the bow and gently fanned the powder heap. It still smoked. He removed the fire-board, and lifting the punk, showed the interior of the powder to be one glowing coal. On this he laid the Cedar tinder and over that a second piece of punk. Then raising it, he waved it in the air and blew gently for awhile. It smouldered and then burst into a flame. The other material was handy, and in a very short time they had a blazing fire in the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in making flames, but it is thrilling to get sparks from flint. Once a child brought an old tinder box with steel and flint, but even then we were not skilful enough to get up a flame. Still it is something to have tried, and we are left with a respectful admiration for those who could ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... roof, branches of pine had been spread over the timber, and the branches in turn covered with a thick layer of straw to prevent the earth from filtering between the logs. This material was as dry as tinder, and held the fire. ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... the nature of free states into his royal consideration, and being steadily persuaded that the laws in such governments are incomparably better and more surely directed to the good of mankind than in any other; that the courage of such a people is the aptest tinder to noble fire; that the genius of such a soil is that wherein the roots of good literature are least worm-eaten with pedantism, and where their fruits have ever come to the greatest maturity and highest relish, conceived such a loathing of their ambition and tyranny, who, usurping the liberty ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... and then began a search of the oaks. He was looking for squirrels, which he knew abounded in these trees, and, after much slow and painful walking, he shot a fine fat one among the boughs. Then followed the yet more mighty task of kindling a fire with sticks and tinder, but just when he was completely exhausted, and felt that he must fail, the spark leaped up, set fire to the white ash that he had scraped with his knife, and in a minute later ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... way to the forest, White Cloud. It will be a long walk for you. We need dry moss and decayed wood for tinder. Some cold morning we shall wake and find no red coals in the ashes. Then we shall need some pieces of the driest of wood to ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... poor child up and give him the breast! And if gold or silver he has them not, why Heaven and Santa Maria, and Saint Christopher bless him! It makes no difference. Here is a rocking-chair, here a cigarette, and here a light from the host's own tinder. He will ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... one moment, during the searches, it is true, hopes were excited on the perception of a faint brimstone odour issuing from an antiquated iron box found among some rubbish; but instead of any vellum or parchment, there were only the unused remains of some bundles of veteran matches, with their tinder-box accomplice, which had been thrown aside and forgotten, ever since the time when the functions of those old hardened incendiaries, flint and steel, were extinguished by the lucifers. All further search, it is feared, will be in vain; and the deed is now believed to be as irrecoverably ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... clink of the tinder-box; a light was struck; it spread over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the window-curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood a moment or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, to the left, its visage covered with the black, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... breathless; about my body was strapped a leather belt to which was attached a wicker bottle. When we were seated on the rock, my dear Brigitte asked for the bottle; I had lost it, as well as a tinder-box which served another purpose: that was to read the inscriptions on the guide-posts when we went astray, which occurred frequently. At such times I would climb the posts, and read the half-effaced inscription by the light of the tinder-box; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... where to place the precious casket. They had brought tinder and matches, and Steadfast, who knew the secrets of the cave even better than his father, showed them a little hollow, far back, which would just hold the chest, and being closed in front with a big stone, fast wedged in, was never ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... assistance of the men from the other ships who had now arrived alongside, the smoke increased in denseness, and presently burst up above the hatchway, while we could see the red glare through the ports. The ship having been in the West Indies for some time, her woodwork was like tinder, and the flames rapidly gained the mastery. Now forked tongues of fire burst out from the midship ports, gradually working their way forward and aft. At length all attempts to save the ship were abandoned. The crew were seen descending into the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... a real difficulty. It will be better appreciated when the men's childish nature is borne in mind. Their patience was terribly strained in their attempts to make the sparks fly into the tinder. Again and again one of them would throw the rocks angrily to the ground, fairly ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... day A cruel, cruel fire, they say, Into her bones was sent: It dried her body like a cinder, And almost turn'd her brain to tinder. 1798.] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... you have a flint, a small one, And a little piece of tinder, Strike a light as quick as may be, Light the pine-chip in the holder, 140 Then go out to clear the cowshed, And the cattle do thou fodder, For the mother's cow is lowing, And the father's horse is neighing, And her chain the son's cow rattles, And the daughter's calf is lowing, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... and another took out tinder and flint, and soon they had a big fire roaring, and my grandfather could see Patrick plainly enough. If he had kept still before, he kept stiller now. Soon they had four poles up and a pole across, right over the fire, for all the world like a spit, and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... the wind, the flames soon were eating at the stable. And once caught, it burned like tinder. The horses screamed as the fire licked at them, and all was confusion. To make matters worse, ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... fungi as scavengers of creation, there are some which have a commercial value and yield an article called "amadou." This is a French word, used for a sort of tinder or touch-wood, an inflammable substance which is prepared from a fungus,[1] Boletus igniarius, and grows upon the cherry, ash and other trees. It is made by steeping it in a strong solution of saltpetre and cutting it in small pieces. It is also ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... a normal and healthy boy, but the discussions, the debates, and the passions sweeping over the Union throughout the year had sifted into Pendleton also. The news today had merely struck fire to tinder prepared already, and, infused with the spirit of youth, he felt much excitement but no depression. Making a careful toilet he descended to the drawing room a little before the regular time. Although he was early, his father was there before him, standing in his customary attitude with his back ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... great wonder that always, where two or three met together, there was I among them. But far beyond all other impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l'adorable moitie du genre humain. My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook, I feared no competitor, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns |
