"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... white farm-houses. As the early sun streamed upon the most prominent of these, leaving the others in deep shade, the effect was strangely novel and imposing. In more remote regions, where the forest has never yet echoed to the woodman's axe, or received the impress of civilisation, the first approach to the shore inspires a melancholy awe, which becomes painful ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... says Dave, 'an' the last gent with which I thirsts to dig up the war-axe. Which I'm proud to be his friend; an' I means no offense when I su'gests that he whirl a smaller loop when he onbosoms himse'f of a tale. I yere tenders Texas my hand, assurin' of him that I means my language an' ain't holdin' out ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... savin anchored in the fissure, lean over the brink of the precipice, and look downward, a little to the left, on the belt of woods which covers the strand between the water and the base of the cliffs. Here a gang of axe-men are at work, and Point Levi and Orleans echo the crash ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... most effective offensive weapons known to antiquity or the Middle Ages. Some of their warriors were clothed in coats of brass equal to the steel or iron cuirass worn by the Mediaeval knights of chivalry. They had the battle-axe, the shield, the sword, the javelin, the metal-headed arrow. One of the early Egyptian kings marched against his enemies with six hundred thousand infantry, twenty thousand cavalry, and twenty-three thousand chariots of war, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the axe, wielded by brawny arms, the strong door presently fell with a crash into the room, and stepping over its fragments, the assailants stood in the presence of the occupants. By a taper, which was burning on a small table, the apartment was sufficiently lighted to make ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... was preparing for bed; and taking up a prayer-book, as was his custom, was reading the prayers before the fire, with his back to the door, when some natives looked through the window, saw their advantage, and opened the door silently. The woman, his attendant, then entered with an axe belonging to him in her hand, and several men followed her. She approached the unsuspecting youth, and, while his soul was devoutly engaged in prayer, she raised the fatal axe, and, with one blow, severed ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... hedges) it will hinder the growth of rootes and boale, because such a kind of stowing is a kind of smothering, or choaking the sap. Great wood, as Oke, Elme, Ash, &c. being continually kept downe with sheeres, knife, axe, &c. neither boale nor roote will thriue, but as an hedge or bush. If you intend to graff in your Set, you may cut him closer with a greater wound, and nearer the earth, within a foote or two, because the graft or grafts will couer his wound. If you like his fruite, ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... sounds and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exercise in a campaign against the Moors. He brought with him a hundred archers, all dextrous with the longbow and the cloth-yard arrow; also two hundred yeomen, armed cap-a-pie, who fought with pike and battle-axe—men robust of frame and of prodigious strength. The worthy padre Fray Antonio Agapida describes this stranger knight and his followers with ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... crossed at various points by carriage-roads, and threaded in all directions by paths and byways, along which soldiers, laborers, and truant school-boys are passing at all hours of the day. It is so far escaping from the axe and the bush-hook as to have opened communication with the forest and mountain beyond by straggling lines of cedar, laurel, and blackberry. The ground is mainly occupied with cedar and chestnut, with an undergrowth, in many place, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... mine," said Montfichet, in a hard voice. "Do not speak of him here, sister Nell—nor think me an unforgiving man," he hastened to add, "for God knows that I did humble myself to the ground that I might save his head from the axe of the King's executioner! And he disgraced me by running away to Scotland on the very night that I had gained Henry's pardon for him. Nay; I have no kin ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... while in an upright posture and with the sword, as in France; they told her of her mistake, and without ceasing to pray she laid her head on the block. There was a universal feeling of compassion, even the headsman himself being so moved that he did his work with unsteady hand, the axe falling on the back of her head and wounding her; but she did not move nor utter a complaint, and, repeating the blow, he struck off her head, which he held up, saying, "God save Queen Elizabeth!" Her lips moved for some time after death, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... beginning to boil. Other utensils were strewed around. There was a frying-pan, some tin cups, several small packages containing flour, dried meat, and coffee; a coffee-pot of strong tin, a small spade, and a light axe, with its ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... cried Rube, at this moment galloping up; "he! he! that Injun's as savagerous as a meat axe. Lamm him! Warm his collops wi' the bull rope; he's warmed my old mar. Nick ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... have been in this Territory, and Kinney hardly ever swears.—But sometimes human nature gets the better of him. On the second day we started to go by land to the lower camp, a distance of three miles, over the mountains, each carrying an axe. I don't think we got lost exactly, but we wandered four hours over the steepest, rockiest and most dangerous piece of country in the world. I couldn't keep from laughing at Kinney's distress, so I kept behind, so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... slips towards the ground, Then with an idle whistle lifts his load And shambles home along the country road That stretches on, fringed out with stumps and weeds, And finally unto the backwoods leads, Where forests wait with giant trunk and bough The axe of ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the jolly stir of it all, for my visit spread over the days of busy preparation. In the woods the axe was busy at work, cutting through the tough hickory trunks. Other wood might serve for other seasons, but nothing but good old hickory would do to kindle the Christmas fires. All day long the laden wagons creaked ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... cocks, They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks. But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks When Peace another door in them unlocks, Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe. Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. They need their pious exercises less Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief That these are devilish only to their thief, Charged with an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ourselves. So far, there seems to be no scarcity of employment for all hands, neither is there any prospect of it. For the men there is always the beach-wood to collect, haul and saw up into firewood, not to mention the splitting with an axe, which is, I believe, as hard work as any of it, and there is water to bring in barrels each day or two from Chinik Creek, a mile away, for drinking and cooking purposes. The barrels are put upon sleds and hauled by the men themselves, or by the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... pack-straps and headed down trail to where the remainder of their outfit lay at the last camp a mile away. And old Tarwater became busy. He washed the dishes, foraged dry wood, mended a broken pack-strap, put an edge on the butcher-knife and camp-axe, and repacked the picks and shovels into ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... diary," she explained. "If you are really interested you may read it. Oh Mr. Jerrolds, to think of the money that goes to Africa and India and slums full of Syrians and Russian Jews, when these Americans—our real kin, you know!—are putting an axe under the bed, with the blade up, to check a haemorrhage! If they were Zulus," she added, flashing, "some one might do ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appear'd as such, being cloath'd in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color'd countenances, being each arm'd with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols, nor was their dialect different from what I conceive these geniusses to speak, as their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves. Not the least insult was offer'd to any person, save one Captain Conner, a letter of horses in this place, not many ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... be, 'cept for Grandma a-singin' and a-shoutin' up in de loom house all by herself. One of dem Yankees tried the door and he axed me how come it wuz locked. I told him it wuz 'cause grandma had 'sturbed de Baptist meetin' wid her shoutin'. Dem mens grabbed de axe from de woodpile and busted de door down. Dey went in and got grandma. Dey axed her 'bout how come she wuz locked up, and she told 'em de same thing I had told 'em. Dey axed her if she wuz hongry, and she said she wuz. Den dey took dat axe and busted down de smokehouse door and told her ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms: The milkers lace their ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... he do? Would you really have him buy an axe and chop cord-wood, or work as a carpenter, or sell tape behind the counter? Are there not enough to do all that work as fast as it needs to be done? Is there not a clamorous need of brain-work, and who is there to do it? Who is to govern, and manage, and control twenty years ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... in the beautiful Bush. Rich and gurgling came the note of the magpies, the jovial kookooburras saluted the sun with rollicking laughter, the crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in chorus, or solemnly "popped" in deep vibrating tones, like the ring of a woodman's axe. Every now and then came the shriek of the plover, or the shrill cry of the peeweet; and gayer and more lively than all others was the merry clattering of the big bush wagtail in ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... you say? Hum! History tells us that William the Conqueror wooed his lady with a club, or a battle-axe, or something of the sort, and she consequently liked him the better for it; which was all very natural, and proper of course, in her case, seeing that hers was the day of battle-axes, and things. But then, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... could get it, Lenoir received something himself that sent him to earth with a hollow groan—felled like a bullock beneath the butcher's pole-axe. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... makes, upon the whole, a better wine, if the pressing is added to it. The husks, or mashed grapes, are then poured upon the press, and pressed until fully dry. To accomplish this the press is opened several times, and the edges of the cake, or "cheese," as some call it, are cut off with an axe or cleaver and put on top, after which they are pressed down again. The casks are then filled with the must; either completely, if it is intended that the must should ferment above, as it is called, or under, when the cask is not completely filled, so that the husks, which the must will throw ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... his neck with their scaly bodies, they tower head and neck above him. He at once strains his hands to tear their knots apart, his fillets spattered with foul black venom; at once raises to heaven awful cries; as when, bellowing, a bull shakes the wavering axe from his neck and runs wounded from the altar. But the two snakes glide away to the high sanctuary and seek the fierce Tritonian's citadel, [227-261]and take shelter under the goddess' feet beneath the circle ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... deepest forests which are still left upon our northern hills, and compare the bird life which we find there with that in the woods and fields near our homes, we shall at once notice a great difference. Although the coming of mankind with his axe and plough has driven many birds and animals far away or actually exterminated them, there are many others which have so thrived under the new conditions that they are far more numerous than when the tepees of the red men alone broke the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong, lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded spurs and valleys of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand; on the other ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... horses coming slowly towards him in single file. Cawing rooks streamed back from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir plantations, and the strident rasping of a saw from the wood-yard in the beech grove near ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... a swift sentence, and swiftly to be executed. Five days were allowed him to prepare himself; and the more austere features of the penalty were remitted with some show of pity. He was to die by the axe. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... his pupil found enough occupation to make their trips worth while; and Bob learned to sink post holes, to ram a post home beyond the possibility of moving, and to strain a wire fence scientifically. He was not a novice with an axe, though Jim's mighty chopping made him feel a child; still, when it was necessary to cut away a fallen tree, he could do his share manfully. His hands blistered and grew horny callouses, even as his muscles toughened and ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... her sister Lizaveta Ivanovna, I... killed... with an axe. Darkness came over me," he added ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Disaster Falls, though more safely approached. This was called Triplet Falls by the first party. We went into camp at the head of it on the left bank. This day we found a number of fragments of the No-Name here and there, besides an axe and a vise abandoned by the first party, and a welcome addition to our library in a copy of Putnam's Magazine. This was the first magazine ever to penetrate to these extreme wilds. The river was from 300 to 400 feet ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... was treated as an inferior state. It was regarded as being necessary, indeed, and therefore justifiable, for the propagation of the species, and to free men from great evils; but still as a condition of degradation from which all who aspired to real sanctity could fly. To 'cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage' was, in the energetic language of St. Jerome, the end of the saint; and if he consented to praise marriage it was ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... houses, five of which were saloons. There was a branch road running from here to Honiton, quite a settlement on the Mississippi river, and that was the only possible excuse for an officer at this point. The atmosphere was so full of malaria, that you could almost cut it with an axe. I stayed there just three days, and then, fortunately, the chief despatcher ordered me to come to his office. He wanted me to take the office at Boling Cross, near the Texas line, but I had the traveling fever and wanted to go further south, and he sent me down on the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... forgotten to put lime in the mortar. It was just sand. When the houses fell in the sight of men, the law was at last able to make him responsible. It failed in the matter of the soil pipe. It does sometimes to this very day. Knocking a man in the head with an axe, or sticking a knife into him, goes against the grain. Slowly poisoning a hundred so that the pockets of one be made to bulge may not even banish a man from respectable society. We are a queer lot in some things. However, that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... left, I was sitting beside Calliope's cooking range, watching her at her baking, when the wooden leg of Peleg Bemus thumped across the threshold, and without ceremony he came in from the shed and stood by the fire, warming his axe handle. But Peleg's intrusions were never imputed to him. As I have said, his gifts and experiences had given him a certain authority. Perhaps, too, he reflected a kind of institutional dignity ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s and all Christian and moral forces in connection with your religious and social life, pass resolutions of condemnation and protest every time a lynching takes place; and see that they axe sent to the place ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... This is what we ask, and this is what we insist upon. Put this into the Constitution, and you take the shortest and the most effective means of settling the question, and of promoting peace and tranquillity. You strike the axe to the very root of bitterness, whence has sprung all our trouble, all our difficulties. I ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... baronies below. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as fatal to feudalism as to world-empire and world-church. A series of wars occurring at this time were especially remarkable for the wholesale slaughter of the feudal nobility, whether on the field or under the headsman's axe. This was a conspicuous feature of the feuds of the Trastamare in Spain, of the English invasions of France, followed by the quarrel between Burgundians and Armagnacs, and of the great war of the Roses ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... by the Itchkerians. Though an open aoul, Dargo was sufficiently protected by the mountains and the thick forests which everywhere covered them; for here the primeval woods had never been disturbed by the axe of any pioneers of civilization. The oaks stretched out against the sky their twisted branches crowned with the glory of two centuries; the beeches with their innumerable leaves spread out a wider shade than those which in Italy inspired the pastoral reed of Virgil; the round-topped elms towered ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... axe, for instance; nor a coffee-mill; nor a tin pail, nor an iron chain, nor a dipper; nor screws, nor tacks; nor a lamp, do you? ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... "Short axe, in case of close work, and rifle each. You'll be more than a match for six Greeks. Besides," he added, with a significant smile, "I ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... sharp cracks which heralded the thunderous crash of a falling tree. There were other sounds which betokened the loggers' activity in the near-by forest,—the ringing whine of saw blades, the dull stroke of the axe, voices calling distantly. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... then, is to "fire" the government officials and to bring back the profiteer. As to which officials are to be fired first it doesn't matter much. In England people have been greatly perturbed as to the use to be made of such instruments as the "Geddes Axe": the edge of the axe of dismissal seems so terribly sharp. But there is no need to worry. If the edge of the axe is too sharp, hit ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... provided he be but well and heartily cursed by the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the oppressed (the sole rewards, as many authors have bitterly lamented both in prose and verse, of greatness, i. e., priggism), I think it avails little of what nature his death be, whether it be by the axe, the halter, or the sword. Such names will be always sure of living to posterity, and of enjoying that fame which they so gloriously and eagerly coveted; for, according to a ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... day: In the woodland fray he fareth, and oft on a day doth ride Where the mighty forest wild-bulls and the lonely wolves abide; For as then no other warfare do the lords of Lymdale know, And the axe-age and the sword-age seem dead a while ago, And the age of the cleaving of shields, and of brother by brother slain, And the bitter days of the whoredom, and the hardened lust of gain; But man to man may hearken, and he that soweth reaps, And hushed is the heart of Fenrir in the wolf-den ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... on that stretcher over there," he said, nodding to a rough framework of untrimmed saplings with a length of coarse canvas fastened across. "You won't be cold. Keep a good fire on. You'll find an axe in the harness shed if you want to get ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... at that, but my messmates were all of a mind and landed. Twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. 'As for you, Benjamin Gunn,' says they, 'here's a musket,' they says, 'and a spade, and pick-axe. You can stay here and find Flint's money ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yard of one of the cabins opposite the car-wheel foundry, and near the station, as I now remember, a middle-aged negress was cutting up an oak log. She swung the axe with vigor and precision, and the chips flew; but I could not help saying, "You ought to make the man ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... up a vision of Ottilia free of the glittering accessories of her high birth; and that was the pain of shame; but it came only at intervals, when pride stood too loftily and the shadow of possible mischance threatened it with the axe. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... war with no blare of trumpets to keep the soldiers on the job, no flourish of flags or clinking of swords to stimulate flagging courage. It may not be as romantic a warfare, from the standpoint of our medieval ideas of romance, as the old way of sharpening up a battle axe, and spreading our enemy to the evening breeze, but the reward of victory is not seeing our brother man dead at our feet; but rather seeing him alive and well, working ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... and had a wife and six children. Stebney testified that he had not been used hard, though he had been on the "auction-block three times." Left because he was "tired of being a servant." Armed with a broad-axe and hatchet, he started, joined by the above-named companions, and came in a skiff, by sea. Robert Lee was the brave Captain engaged to pilot this Slavery-sick party from the prison-house of bondage. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... was a broken bench, which with a little contrivance might have seated three persons of accommodating tempers. A hole in the roof let out the smoke—when it chose to go; and let in the rain and snow, which generally chose to come. On a niche in the wall stood a single pan, an axe, and a battered tin bowl, which comprised all the family riches. The axe was the tool which obtained bread—and very little of it; the pan did all the cooking; the bowl served for pail, jug, and drinking-vessel. An iron socket let into the wall held a piece of half-burnt pinewood, which was lamp ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... his tomahawk with violence at the unresisting speaker, and gnashing his teeth with a rage that could no longer be bridled at this sudden exhibition of firmness in the one he believed the weakest of the party. The axe cleaved the air in front of Heyward, and cutting some of the flowing ringlets of Alice, quivered in the tree above her head. The sight maddened Duncan to desperation. Collecting all his energies in one effort he snapped the twigs which bound him and rushed ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run down over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for a towel to ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... mention marriage to a woman unless I feel love. Henceforth credit and commerce may take care of themselves. Bankruptcy may come when it lists. I have done with slavish fear of disaster. I mean to work diligently, wait patiently, bear steadily. Let the worst come, I will take my axe and an emigrant's berth, and go out with Louis to the West; he and I have settled it. No woman shall ever again look at me as Miss Keeldar looked, ever again feel towards me as Miss Keeldar felt. In no woman's presence will I ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and reap; upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers in shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... to her neighbors, an exasperated peasant hewed her down with an axe, because she fed the wolves on her own offspring, selfishly saving by the sacrifice, ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... was aroused from a doze by the sound of footsteps, and, looking through the screen of leaves, he saw his late jailers hurrying along the path. The charcoal burner carried a heavy axe, while the Jew, whose head was bound up with a cloth, had a long knife in his girdle. They went as far as the end of the forest, and then retraced their steps slowly. They were talking loudly, and Charlie could gather, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... are those among them who, like another section of the French noblesse, are ready, more generously than wisely, to throw away their own social and political advantages, and play (for it will never be really more than playing) at democracy. Let them, too, beware. The penknife and the axe should respect each other; for they were wrought from the same steel: but the penknife will not be wise in trying to fell trees. Let them accept their own position, not in conceit and arrogance, but in ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... wene ye that every wrecche woot 890 The parfit blisse of love? Why, nay, y-wis; They wenen al be love, if oon be hoot; Do wey, do wey, they woot no-thing of this! Men mosten axe at seyntes if it is Aught fair in hevene; Why? For they conne telle; 895 And axen fendes, is ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... great carven chair on which he was wont to sit on his ship's quarterdeck, and thereon had set the jarl, as though he yet lived, and did but sleep as he sat from weariness after fight, with helm and mail upon him. Shield and axe rested on either side of him, ready to hand, against the chair; and behind him, along the wall, were his spears, ashen ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... lifted the nude, insensible form of the beautiful girl so that her neck rested in the hollow of the block. He held her in position. The axe fell. The head rolled to the stone pave. A woman close by, caught the head by the hair, twisted her fingers well into the beautiful black swathes, and swinging the gory thing around her head, let it fly from her hand, shouting, as it ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... much to give up, Brother Ansel?" Susanna asked. "'Bout's much as any sinner ever had that jined this Community," replied Ansel, complacently. "The list o' what I consecrated to this Society when I was gathered in was: One horse, one wagon, one two-year-old heifer, one axe, one saddle, one padlock, one bed and bedding, four turkeys, eleven hens, one pair o' plough-irons, two chains, and eleven dollars in ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the kitchen, he came out a minute later with his axe on his shoulder. As he crossed the log over the mill-stream, the spotted fox-hound puppy waddled after him, and several startled rabbits peered out from a clump of sassafras by the "worm" fence. Over the fence went Abel, and under it, on his fat little belly, went Moses, the puppy. In ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... was frozen, but not sufficiently so to bear the horses. Our only resource was to cut a way for them through the ice. It was a work of time, for the ice had frozen to several inches in thickness during the last bitter night. Plante went first with an axe, and cut as far as he could reach, then mounted one of the hardy little ponies, and With some difficulty broke the ice before him, until he had opened a passage to the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... Hamlet and Horatio. Clowne A picke-axe and a spade, A spade for and a winding sheete, Most fit it is, for t'will be made, he throwes vp a shouel. For such a ghest most meete. Ham. Hath this fellow any feeling of himselfe, That is thus merry in making of a graue? See how the slaue joles their ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... but a Fool.—Chief Justice Marshall once found himself suddenly brought to a halt by a small tree which intervened between the front wheel and the body of his buggy. Seeing a servant at a short distance, he asked him to bring an axe and cut down the tree. The servant—a colored man—told the judge that there was no occasion for cutting down the tree, but just to back the buggy. Pleased at the good sense of the fellow, Judge Marshall told him that ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... clothes and white shirt-sleeves, the Rector was hewing with an axe at the boarding of a cowhouse, the door end of which was already in flames, and his voice could be heard above the tumult shouting directions to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a rebellious pueblo two centuries ago, made a background for the huge silver spurs of cunning workmanship with which some other daring caballero had urged his horse in search of adventures and of gold. And beside them lay the stone axe with which a courageous senora, a heroine of the Southwest, had cleft the skull of a Navajo chief and saved her townspeople from falling into the hands of the savage enemy. On the walls were old, old paintings of Nuestra Senora de this and that, proud of neck and sad and sweet of face, which ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... the way of Danish men and vikings, and that flight stayed almost before it had gone fifty yards. Up rose amidst the throng a mighty double axe, and a great voice was heard shouting, and round their chief began to form a great ring of tried warriors, shoulder to shoulder as well as might be. But that ring might not be perfect all at once—too close were we upon them, having ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... day is o'er, Their fires are out from hill and shore; No more for them the wild deer bounds, The plough is on their hunting grounds; The pale man's axe rings through their woods, The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods, Their pleasant springs are dry; Their children—look, by power oppressed, Beyond the mountains of the ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... image remained sitting in the house; no human power was able to move it. So hard was the stone, that hammer and axe flew in pieces without making the slightest impression upon it. The giant sat there till a holy man came to the island, who with one single word removed him back to his former station, where he stands to this hour. The copper kettle, which the underground people left behind ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's figure is standing; Stothard's, kneeling: yet both are expressive and helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated "Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,—shadows on the shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;—on the whole, a monstrous nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw beef, but never from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... would have taken it well, for among all the youths unwed I have a name for beauty and speed of foot. With one kiss of thy lovely mouth I had been content; but an if ye had thrust me forth, and the door had been fastened with the bar, then truly should torch and axe ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... on earth. Further acquaintance with the old man taught me that he was one of nature's noblemen. He was an Illinois farmer, who had enlisted as a private, and had in time become colonel of his regiment, and had been placed in command of this brigade. Every evening he would take an axe and cut up fire-wood enough for headquarters, and he was not above cleaning off his horse if his servant was sick, or did not do it to suit, and frequently I have seen him greasing his ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... see! a moderate axe-handle, that'll make its sentiments understood You are warned; you see what you are to expect. I will not take you in. Are you ready for a ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... eyes on Sita set They cried again with taunt and threat: Each licking with her fiery tongue The lip that to her bosom hung, And menacing the lady's life With axe, or spear or murderous knife: "Hear, Sita, and our words obey, Or perish by our hands to-day. Thy love for Raghu's son forsake, And Ravan for thy husband take, Or we will rend thy limbs apart And banquet on thy quivering heart. Now from her body strike the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... better, Because that I am more than common tall, That I did suit me all points like a man? A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh, A boar-spear in my hand; and—in my heart Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will— We'll have a swashing and a martial outside, As many other mannish cowards have That do outface ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... runs far up into the country, you stare to see a large schooner appear amid the rural landscape; she is unloading a cargo of wood, moist with rain or salt water that has dashed over it. Perhaps you hear the sound of an axe in the woodland; occasionally, the report of a fowling-piece. The travellers in the early part of the afternoon look warm and comfortable as if taking a summer drive; but as eve draws nearer, you meet them well wrapped in top-coats or cloaks, or rough, great surtouts, and red-nosed ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... warned you to flee from the wrath to come! 8. Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance; and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our Father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 9. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 10. And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? 11. He answereth and saith ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... felled the pines on Pelion, and shaped them with the axe, and Argus taught them to build a galley, the first long ship which ever sailed the seas. They pierced her for fifty oars—an oar for each hero of the crew—and pitched her with coal-black pitch, and painted her bows with vermilion; ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... earthly trace of him remains. Spring freshets from the hills have washed away The last wrecked fragments of his hermitage, And though I pleaded hard, I could not save The oak, his dear dumb daughter, from the axe, Albeit 'twas she preserved him unto us. Forgive me, sir, my chatter wearies you, Here be the grapes my boy has plucked: they sate Both thirst and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... and into the light of the sun. They are going to organize a great hunt, and smoke certain animals out of their burrows. They are going to unearth the beast in the jungle in which when they hunted they were caught by the beast instead of catching him. They have determined, therefore, to take an axe and raze the jungle, and then see where the beast will find cover. And I, for my part, bid them God-speed. The jungle breeds nothing but infection and shelters nothing but ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... situated and laid out, close to the London and North-Western and Midland Railway stations. Being elevated considerably above the town, a panoramic view of Higher and Lower Buxton, St. Ann's Cliff, Broad Walk, the Crescent, and Buxton Gardens is obtained from its windows, and in the distance Axe Edge, 1,950ft., Harpur Hill, Diamond Hill (so-called from the Derbyshire diamond being found there), Solomon's Temple, and Hindlow ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... and I rushed into the ruins of our machine-gun dugout. The roof still held in one place. There we found Mac, his head split in two as though it had been done with an axe. Gardner's head was blown completely off, and his body was so terribly mangled that we did not know until later who he was. Preston was lying on his back with a great jagged, blood-stained hole through his tunic. Bert ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... small shrubs. Tufts of tamarinds, myrtles, and mastic-trees, such as are produced in the temperate zone. Generally, there was enough space between the trees to allow him to pass without being obliged to call on fire or the axe. The sea breeze circulated freely amid the higher branches, and here and there great patches of ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... of was quite venerable in appearance. Thin white locks fell below the edge of his full turban, and a mass of still whiter beard flowed down the front of his coarse gray gown. He came slowly, for, in addition to his age, he carried some tools—an axe, a saw, and a drawing-knife, all very rude and heavy—and had evidently travelled some distance ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... those which are given in the thirteenth chapter.— 'The path is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered the path. In the Book of Poetry it is said— "In hewing an axe-handle, in hewing an axe-handle, The pattern is not far off." We grasp one axe-handle to hew the other, and yet if we look askance from the one to the other, we may consider them as apart. Therefore, the superior man governs men according ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... caught in the net, with the face of a person condemned to death, with the heart of one whose head is lying between the axe and the block, took the hand of the ogre, who dragged her off without any attendants to the wood where the trees made a palace for the meadow to prevent its being discovered by the sun, and the brooks murmured, having knocked ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... descent of bloody axe, Guiding hand of princess led the captive forward— "Sire, he's mine," she cried, "Adopt him for thy son, If thou Matoax lovest best of all thine own." Powhatan thus answered to the lovely maid, "'Tis thy wish, Matoax; the Wizard's ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... nutritive regimen. O Yudhishthira, O child, thou knowest the subtle path of morality. Possessed of great wisdom, thou art also humble, and thou waitest also upon the old. Where there is intelligence, there is forbearance. Therefore, O Bharata, follow thou counsels of peace. The axe falleth upon wood, not upon stone. (Thou art open to advice, not Duryodhana). They are the best of men that remember not the acts of hostility of their foes; that behold only the merits, not the faults, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... God, at the end of last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant, Jane, and no other in family ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... ponderous axe on shoulder hung, For the distant darksome jungle issued forth serene ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Silken Thomas flung King Henry's sword on council board, the English thanes among, Ye never ceased to battle brave against the English sway, Though axe and brand and treachery your proudest cut away. Of Desmond's blood through woman's veins passed on th' exhausted tide; His title lives—a Sacsanach churl usurps the lion's hide; And, though Kildare tower haughtily, there's ruin at the root, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... them the quality of your goods is likely to deteriorate. Salt of the poorest grade, gaudy fabrics that neither "wear" nor "wash," bars of coarse soap (the native is continually washing his single strip of cloth), and axe-heads made of iron, are what Leopold thinks are a fair exchange for the forced labor of ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... consequently without any beauty, like eunuchs, though they all have closely knit and strong limbs and plump necks; they are of great size, and bow-legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the stout figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an axe on the posts at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... young sheep. When he returned to the farm he declared that he had seen nothing unusual. Next year the troll appeared as usual, and took four sheep, which Sigurdur offered her, and himself besides. When she arrived at her cave, she bade Sigurdur kill them, and then bade him sharpen an axe, for she was going kill him. He did ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... her Ladyship's cousin too, which cannot be, for I know all his family: they live in Skinner Street and St. Mary Axe, and are not—not quite so respectable ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on board with his two axe-men, and I heard him politely ask the captain to send two of his men with axes to assist him. Captain Blastblow not only stopped the steamer, but he instantly ordered his mate and another man to do what the mate ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... see where the power of his brush lay. No timid, uncertain, niggling stroke ever came from that torso or forearm or thigh. He hewed with a broad axe, not with a chisel, and he hewed true—that was the joy of it. The men of Meissonier's time, like the old Dutchmen, worked from their knuckle joints. These new painters, in their new technique—new to some—old really, as that of Velasquez and Frans Hals—swing ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it as it passed their own doors. Shopkeepers and mechanics left their work and fell into the ranks; the farmer left his plow in the furrow, seized his rifle, and joined his neighbors; a woodsman who was "letting sunlight" into the gloom of the virgin forest, hid his axe under a fallen log and with a deadlier weapon on his shoulder followed in the train; the hunter on the trail of the frightened buck saw the column coming through the forest road and allowed his prey to escape while he turned his attention to matters of graver moment. Thus ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended shape, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to fuse;—whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down upon them, and, as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying sound was heard in the forest; or did those old trees groan in fear that men were come to lay the axe to their roots at last? Reuben and his son, while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed to wander out in search of game, of which that day's march had afforded no supply. The boy, promising not to quit the vicinity of the encampment, bounded off with a step as light and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bound round the helve of an axe, and borne by the lictors before the Roman magistrates in symbol of their authority at once to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Rolf needed a supply of his own. Again there was great choice of material. The long, straight shoots ol' the arrowwood (Viburnuin dentatum) supplied the ancient Indians, but Quonab had adopted a better way, since the possession of an axe made it possible. A 25-inch block of straight-grained ash was split and split until it yielded enough pieces. These were shaved down to one fourth of an inch thick, round, smooth, and perfectly straight. Each was notched deeply at one end; three pieces of split goose ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of long logs of ash and maple. "I don't want much." She gathered her apron full of chips and turned away, all too obviously refusing to place her hope of wood for the breakfast fire upon the efforts of the new man. Cameron stood looking alternately at the long, hard, dry logs and at the axe which he had picked up from the bed of chips. The problem of how to produce the sticks necessary to breakfast by the application of the one to the other was one for which he could see no solution. He lifted his axe and brought it down hard upon a ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Tilly stood on the upper part of the Place d'Armes, a broad, roughly-paved square. The Chateau of St. Louis, with its massive buildings and high, peaked roofs, filled one side of the square. On the other side, embowered in ancient trees that had escaped the axe of Champlain's hardy followers, stood the old-fashioned Monastery of the Recollets, with its high belfry and broad shady porch, where the monks in gray gowns and sandals sat in summer, reading their breviaries or exchanging salutations ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the states, thus delivered over the province to the kingly power, from jealousy of the great lords. The ordinance, dated from Nantes on the 31st of July, 1626, rendered the measure general throughout France. The battlements of the castles fell beneath the axe of the demolishers, and the masses of the district welcomed enthusiastically the downfall of those old ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it barely escaped being called black. It was set aside to cool, and after a short parley, the children set out to reconnoitre, armed with such weapons as they thought most useful. Bubbles carried an axe, Florence a bottle of ammonia, which she meant to throw in the face of the intruder "to take his breath away," she declared; and Dimple bore a long rope and a pair of large scissors. She intended, she said, to snip at the man if he came near her, and, when he was overpowered by Florence's ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... formerly worn by the administrators of Sweden, before it became a kingdom under Gustavus Vasa. Before the throne were seated several grave, austere looking personages, in long black robes. Between the throne and the benches of the assembly was a block covered with black crape; an axe lay beside it. No one in the vast assembly appeared conscious of the presence of Charles and his companions. On their entrance they heard nothing but a confused murmur, in which they could distinguish no words. Then the most venerable of the judges in the black robes, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... more intense incandescence and in that same fleeting instant went down, and all defenses vanished as the metal sphere fell apart into two halves, as would an apple under the full blow of a broad-axe. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... sank all party considerations in national objects, and he has had the glory of living to hear this universally acknowledged. Brougham said of him, 'That man's first object is to serve his country, with a sword if necessary, or with a pick-axe.' He also said of the Duke's Despatches, 'They will be remembered when I and others (mentioning some of the most eminent men) will be forgotten.' Aberdeen told the Duke this, and he replied with the greatest simplicity, 'It is very true: when I read ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... "you have no right to axe—you must know, Darby O'Drive, that I've had my private business, as well as my public business, an' that I'd suffer that right hand to be cut off sooner than betray trust. Honor bright, or what's the ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... side, where the wharf was located, there were two sally-ports and numerous windows to be guarded. In the second story the embrasures were nothing but large unfinished openings, slightly boarded up. Three or four blows of an axe would have made a broad entrance for an escalading party. The form of the fort was a pentagon. Retaining a small force as a reserve in the centre of the work, we could only furnish eight men to defend each side and guard all the ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... the Grande Place and Hotel de Ville forming the centre. We found our way to the cathedral, where a white-haired old cure showed us around, pointing out the door leading to the great square tower and the axe marks left by the German soldiers who burst it open. They had used the tower as an observing post during the week their cavalry had held the town the preceding October. The old man had been held as hostage by ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... blood crept down his smooth face. The sight of it seemed to rouse some latent fury in the mob, and a deep growl sounded ominously. He felt himself jerked suddenly back, and Belding and Baudette jumped in front of him. The woodsman balanced a great shining axe, and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... gazed around her like a caged animal seeking escape. The sun beat down on her bare head mercilessly, and mechanically she moved to the shade of a half-grown hickory tree that voluntarily had sprouted beside the milk house. At her feet lay an axe with which she made kindlings for fires. She stooped and picked it up. The memory of that prone figure sobbing in the grass caught her with a renewed spasm. She shut her eyes as if to close it out. That made hearing so acute she felt certain she ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... perch. If not one of the melodies of morn, it is one of the most notable sounds that herald its approach. And how intimately is the voice of this bird associated with the sunshine of calm winter-days,—with our woodland excursions during this inclement season,—with the stroke of the woodman's axe,—with open doors in bright and pleasant weather, when the eaves are dripping with the melting snow,—and with all those cheerful sounds that enliven the groves during that period when every object is valuable that relieves the silence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... As the water in the pond above had been drawn low by the morning's work, none overflowed the gate, so the men were enabled to work dry. Below the apron, of course, had been filled in with earth and stones. As soon as the axe-men had effected an entry to this deposit, other men with shovels and picks began ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... now there's Uncle Tony in another. It seems Uncle Tony sold Seth Curtis a hand axe for a dollar and ten cents. Of course Seth paid for it like he always does—right away. But you know how forgetful Uncle Tony is getting. Well, it seems he clean forgot about Seth paying and sent in a bill for a dollar. And now Seth's hanging ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... her victims were all men who had married or had wanted to marry her. Mr Dilnot says these victims "almost certainly numbered more than a hundred.'' She murdered for money, using chloral to stupefy, and an axe for the actual killing. She herself was slain and burned, with her three children, by a male accomplice whom she was planning to dispose of, he having arrived at the point of knowing too much. 1907 was the date of her death at La ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... affairs the Boss, axe in hand, picked his way across the monstrous tangle of the face of the jam between the great white jets, till he gained the centre of the structure. Here his practised eye, with the aid of a perilous axe-stroke here ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... liege," he says, "the camp fast hither moves, The axe is laid unto this cedar's root, But let us work as valiant men behoves, For boldest hearts good fortune helpeth out; Your princely care your kingly wisdom proves, Well have you labored, well foreseen about; If each perform his charge and duty so, Nought ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... idea struck Tom. He could do but little good; he must run for help, and bring men with shovels, a rope, levers, and an axe, for they would perhaps have to cut the ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... You axe me, sir, to sling sum ink for your paper in regards to the new Irish dramy at Niblo's Garding. I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... very terrible giant armed with a great axe, who lies in wait for all and sundry. He makes no nice distinction between the married and the unmarried, but strikes out at all ghosts indiscriminately. Those whom he wounds dare not present themselves in their damaged state to the great God Ndengei; so they never reach the happy fields, but ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... while chasing a bear. Others related that those who dwelt in the world above lived off the fruit of a certain tree; that the husband of Ataensic, being sick, dreamed that to restore him this tree must be cut down; and that when Ataensic dealt it a blow with her stone axe, the tree suddenly sank through the floor of the sky, and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... heavier and broader, and not quite so nicely made as a verandah. One day my uncle was crossing the lake on the ice; it was a cold winter afternoon; he was in a hurry to take some food to his brothers, who were drawing pine-logs in the bush. He had, besides a bag of meal and flour, a new axe on his shoulder. He heard steps as of a dog trotting after him; he turned his head, and there he saw close at his heels, a big, hungry-looking grey wolf; he stopped and faced about, and the big beast stopped and showed his white sharp teeth. My uncle did not feel afraid, but looked steadily ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... pretended: it was the brief moment, grotesque and pathetic, when the doomed classes of society, who were fatally going to be exterminated for their long selfishness and indifference, enthusiastically caught up pick-axe and shovel and tore down the bricks of the edifice which was destined to fall and to crush them ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... crashes, and finally the head of an axe appeared through the panels of the door. Ah-Fang-Fu tried to drag the woman away, but she clung to Stuart desperately and was immovable. Thereupon the huge quadroon, running across the room, swept them both up into his giant embrace, man ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... day, That Danger ne was redy ay, With whom for speche ne for mede Yit mihte I nevere of love spede; For evere this I finde soth, Al that my ladi seith or doth To me, Daunger schal make an ende, And that makth al mi world miswende: And evere I axe his help, bot he Mai wel be cleped sanz pite; 1550 For ay the more I to him bowe, The lasse he wol my tale alowe. He hath mi ladi so englued, Sche wol noght that he be remued; For evere he hangeth on hire ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... that dawned upon its last born son Is vanished, and the bloody axe of Fate Has felled the goodly tree that blossomed late. O Oedipus, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... answered, "You are welcome to load your ship with timber, and I will give it you. For I think it no every-day occurrence when such men as you come from Iceland to visit me." At parting the Earl gave him a gold-inlaid axe, and the best of keepsakes it was; and therewith they parted in the greatest friendship. [Sidenote: Giermund goes with Olaf] Giermund in the meantime set stewards over his estates secretly, and made up his mind to go to Iceland in the summer in Olaf's ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... a youth of not more than two score years, returns from his day's labour a while after I had arrived. And as he stands in the door, his pick-axe and spade on his shoulder, his sister runs to meet him, and whispers somewhat about the stranger. Sitting on the threshold, he takes off his spats of cloth and his clouted shoes, while she gets the pitcher of water. After having ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... be adopted when a hedge becomes too high by long years of growth. The trees are first partly trimmed with a light axe or hook with a long handle, and then half cut off at the ground and bent over. A new growth will spring up and form a new hedge. This course was adopted by the essayist with a hedge planted twenty-eight years ago, and which has been a perfect farm barrier for more than twenty ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... an age by which the liveliest have usually declined into some conformity with the world, Thoreau, with a capital of something less than five pounds and a borrowed axe, walked forth into the woods by Walden Pond, and began his new experiment in life. He built himself a dwelling, and returned the axe, he says with characteristic and workmanlike pride, sharper than when he borrowed it; he reclaimed a patch, where he cultivated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rev. Mr. Coventry, in his admirable exposure of the grotesque absurdities in gardening, (being No. 15 of the World) thus speaks of Kent:—"The great Kent at length appeared in behalf of nature, declared war against the taste in fashion, and laid the axe to the root of artificial evergreens. Gardens were no longer filled with yews in the shape of giants, Noah's ark cut in holly, St. George and the Dragon in box, cypress lovers, laurustine bears, and all that race of root-born monsters ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... perform a great number and variety of exercises. They were taught, when they were old enough, to spring upon a horse with as much armor upon them and in their hands as possible; to run races; to see how long they could continue to strike heavy blows in quick succession with a battle-axe or club, as if they were beating an enemy lying upon the ground, and trying to break his armor to pieces; to dance and throw summersets; to mount upon a horse behind another person by leaping from the ground, and assisting themselves only by one hand, and other ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... wot'd go my bale, so I got 'em to send for Mr. Gilley. Wen he arrove, he cum up to me, the teers streem-in down his cheeks, and sed: "Georgie, I'm sorry to see you in such a posishun, but you'd better pleed gilty, and axe mercy of the cort, cos they've got a sure case agen you. If you'd ony bin sharp enuf to hide the property, it wouldn't ben so bad." Jest then the lady wot the shawl was stole from, come to identerfy it. ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... utterly fails, however, as the Tribune wears a corselet of mail beneath the robes of state, and his guards quickly disarm and secure the conspirators while the people loudly clamour for their execution by the axe, a burly blacksmith, Cecco, acting as ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... boy and his mother called on Nils to desist; the drunkard took no notice. Arne rushed to a corner of the room and picked up an axe; at the same moment Nils fell down, and, after a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... inspire men of free and joyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily freight of victims, ancient men and lads, and fair young girls, the binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the little national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood beneath the scaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the panier—these things were to him what Lalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace, what Rosette and a bottle of iced champagne are to De Beranger. As soon as he began to speak of slaughter his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... than is usually exhibited in the rude habitations of the first settlers. It was a story and a half high, and the walls were built of solid pine timber, originally roughly hewed, but recently dressed down with broad axe over the whole outward and inner surfaces so smoothly that, at a little distance, they presented, with their still visible seams, more the appearance of the wainscoting of some costly cottage than the humble log cabin. The building had also ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... portal whence the previous actors had made their entrance, came a giant larger without artifice than any I had ever seen, clad in a long green silk robe, a turban on his head like a Saracen in Granada. His left hand held a great, old-fashioned two-bladed axe, his right hand led an elephant covered with silk. On its back was a castle wherein sat a lady looking like a nun, wearing a mantle of black cloth and a white ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... rude spring-house and setting them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile. There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered under the weight of his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an hour high and, on the spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and set to work with his axe on a sapling ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... instead. She did not, even now, in their innocent, busy manners, read how much else they had that she lacked; though she looked at them and at all the other wild things. The tree branches that stretched as they listed, no axe coming ever upon their freedom; the moss and lichens that flourished in luxuriant beds and pastures, not breathed on by even a naturalist's breath; the rocks that they had clothed for ages, no one disturbing. The very cloud shadows that now ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... over the sea, by a bridge, to procure drums and other musical instruments; we learn from the Aztecs that while the darkness yet prevailed, the people built a sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, and on the top of it they placed an axe of copper, the edge being uppermost, and on this axe the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly |
