"Plank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In 1847 we were living in a large white house on the corner of Hill and Main Streets—a house that still stands, but isn't large now, although it hasn't lost a plank; I saw it a year ago and noticed that shrinkage. My father died in it in March of the year mentioned, but our family did not move out of it until some months afterward. Ours was not the only family in the house, there was another—Dr. Grant's. One day Dr. Grant and Dr. Reyburn argued a ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... that it was only necessary to pull off a narrow strip of board in order to effect an entrance. With the sight of these houses came the suggestion to the mind of Andrew that he might find a place to sleep therein for the night, and acting upon this, he passed up the plank leading to the door least securely fastened, and soon succeeded in getting it open. But, just as he stepped within, a heavy hand was laid upon him from behind, and ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... wives and the soldiers' wives followed the troops to the dock. The soldiers marched single file over the gang-plank of the boat, the officers said good-bye, the shrill whistle of the "General McPherson" sounded—and they were off. We leaned back against the coal-sheds, and soldiers' and officers' wives ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... could only be entered by a plank propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of the country. Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners had once lain; and the other gable was pierced by a sashless ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the explorers of this new world. Instead of blazing our trail through a wilderness of trees we dredge our way through a wilderness of waters; instead of a stockade around a blockhouse to protect us against wild beasts and wilder Indian foes, we have but a thin plank between us and destruction; instead of a few wolves and mountain-lions to prey upon the few head of stock we might raise, we have thousands of millions of fierce, finny pirates with which to do battle, and we work against odds the old pioneers could ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... other extremity. The scaffold on which the victim suffers is called in Russian 'Kobyla,' literally a mare. It is an inclined plane, on which the sufferer is tied, his back is stripped naked, his arms embrace the higher end of the plank, his hands are tied under it, his feet are fastened on the lower end, all movement being thus rendered impossible. Hacking down upon the naked back of the victim, the knout falls with its concave side upon the skin, which the metalized edge of the instrument cuts like ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Georgia, Democrat, felt somewhat betrayed that the suffrage plank in the platform of his party in 1916, recommending state action, should be so carelessly set aside. "There is not a Democratic Senator present," said Mr. Hardwick, "who does not know the history that lies back of the adoption of that ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... view," said the mayor, grasping at the other's counsel, as a drowning man clings to a plank. And he made all retire excepting the brigadier and the valet de chambre, the latter remaining to serve as guide. "Gendarmes," cried he to the men guarding the gate, "see to it that no one goes out; prevent anybody from entering ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... done at once, Mr. Strong ran to the boathouse, which was close at hand, and soon reappeared, carrying a long plank. He was followed by a boy with a rope, and several boys brought more ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... corner of his eye, Farmer could see Milton Berle still cavorting silently on the television screen, and this seemed to add the final touch of insanity to the scene. Farmer finally succeeded in pointing, and Ray clumped slowly in a half-circle, just as the nonapus dropped to the deck with a plank-shivering thump. ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... largest are 60 or 70 feet long. These consist of several pieces; the bottom is round and made of large logs hollow'd out to the thickness of about 3 Inches, and may consist of 3 or 4 pieces; the sides are of Plank of nearly the same thickness, and are built nearly perpendicular, rounding in a little towards the Gunwale. The pieces on which they are built are well fitted, and fastned or sewed together with strong platting something in the same manner as old China, Wooden Bowls, etc., are mended. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... napkin and not looking up at all, "and don't forget your apple as you go out. Those Northern Spies are just getting to be good about now. When they first come off the tree in October you could shoot them through an oak plank." ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... which they have allowed to escape them, and have diverted it to the thriving town of Portland in Maine. The day after we landed was one of intense heat, the thermometer stood at 93 in the shade. The rays of a summer sun scorched the shingle roof of our hotel, and, penetrating the thin plank walls, made the interior of the house perfectly unbearable. There were neither sunshades nor Venetian blinds, and not a tree to shade the square white wooden house from an almost tropical heat. When I came into the parlour I found Colonel H—— stretched on the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the Neva, we shall find its frozen surface teeming with life. Sledge roads have been laid out on it, marked with evergreen bushes, over which a yamtschik will drive us with his troika fleet as the wind, to Kronstadt, twenty miles away. Plank walks, fringed with street lanterns, have been prepared for pedestrians. Broad ice paths have been cleared, whereon the winter ferry-boats ply, —green garden-chairs, holding one or more persons, furnished with warm lap-robes, and propelled by stout ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... preparations had been making there, and an officer had been directed to prevent anyone from ascending. One of the clerks of the Directory, however, contrived to get upon the scaffolding, but had scarcely placed his foot on the first plank when it tilted up, and the imprudent man fell the whole height into the court. This accident created a general stupor. Ladies fainted, and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Ditch; instead, she went back a few yards to where a dyke ran under the road. She followed it out on the marsh, and when it cut into another dyke she followed that, walking on the bank beside the great teazle. A plank bridge took her across between two willows, and after some more such movements, like a pawn on a chess-board, she had crossed three dykes and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... so completely taken place, that no atom was left of the original person who had existed at a certain period, but there existed in his stead another person having the same limbs, thews, and sinews, the same face and lineaments, the same consciousness—a new ship built on an old plank—a pair of transmigrated stockings, like those of Sir John Cutler,[107] all green silk, without one thread of the original black silk left! Singular—to be at once another and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... except one, had broken from their fastenings. As the men passed over, several were thrown from their treacherous platform into the rushing stream, until at length they refused to trust themselves except to the centre plank. The column of fours was thus reduced to single file; men, guns, and waggons were huddled in confusion on the river banks; and the officers present neglected to secure the footway, and refused, despite the order of Major Dabney, to force their ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... so proud he grew red in the face, and ran shouting up and down the plank, shaking and turning the bottle upside down now and then, so as to make the cabined fairy use her wings, and buzz like a fly ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... consists in reducing the soil to a fine surface; huge lumps of tenacious earth are turned up by the plough, which, under the baking influence of the sun, become as hard as sun-dried bricks. The native method of crushing is exceedingly rude and ineffective. A heavy plank about sixteen feet long and three inches thick, furnished with two rings, is dragged by oxen over the surface; which generally remains in so rough a state that walking over the field is most laborious. There are many stone columns lying useless among the heaps of ruins so common in Cyprus, that ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the Otter's smallest boat, which he called the perissoire, although it was not really a canoe. He was the chief builder of it, and as a contrivance for bringing home to man the solemn truth that life hangs to a thread or floats upon a plank—perhaps the worst state of the two—it certainly did him infinite credit. It was a flatbottomed outrigged deal boat, very long, and so narrow that to look over one's shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... spring. After harvesting 300 bushels of potatoes to the acre use a heavy coat of well rotted manure without weed seed, plowed under late in fall. The following spring, as soon as the ground will work, thoroughly disk and harrow, and harrow twice more. Then roll or plank it, mark both ways two by four feet, set by hand either with dibble or spade, no machine work. Crown even with the surface, with best of plants from new beds, leaving on but two leaves, and if the roots are not fresh dug, trim them ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... splitting or expanding irregularly. It is first reared on tressels, with the slit downwards, over a large fire, which is kept up for seven or eight hours, the process requiringunremitting attention to avoid cracks and make the plank bend with the proper dip at the two ends. Wooden straddlers, made by cleaving pieces of tough elastic wood and fixing them with wedges, are inserted into the opening, their compass being altered gradually as the work goes ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... a piece of plank had been rudely fastened, and here stood two wooden boxes containing a few violets, mignonette, and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... profound silence, broken only by the slight and uniform sounds produced by the oars, prevailed: and when the boat touched the strand, a long and wide plank, covered with velvet, was so placed as to enable the high functionary before alluded to to land conveniently. Attended by two slaves, who followed at a respectful distance, the Mussulman chief advanced toward Nisida, whom he saluted in a manner which strengthened her suspicion ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... said, as Barton stooped to take him in his arms. "I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson's Kents, hard by; my name is Winter." Then, after a pause, "I can pay for a private room at the infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end in the left-hand corner by the window, and you will ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... justice, beyond all question, neither to commit murder nor robbery. What, then, would your just man do, if, in a case of shipwreck, he saw a weaker man than himself get possession of a plank? Would he not thrust him off, get hold of the timber himself, and escape by his exertions, especially as no human witness could be present in the mid-sea? If he acted like a wise man of the world, he would certainly do so, for to act in any other way ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... we got the James hove down on the other side to the keel, and on this side we found four very dangerous places, where the main plank was eaten quite through by the worms. Into each of these we graved a piece of plank, and in one of them we drove a trunnel where none had been before. We also nailed a piece of lead on the end of the bolt, which had been formerly driven through the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... built, a pair of robins, having successfully brought up one family in one of the unfinished rooms, actually reared a second brood in a hole made for a scaffold-pole, though the sitting bird, being immediately beneath a plank on which the plasterers stood at work, was repeatedly splashed with mortar! The egg of the robin is subject to considerable variety of type. I think it was the late Lord Lilford who, speaking on the subject of a Bill for the protection of wild birds' ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... the first school at Shingle Creek when I was a girl of seventeen. My school house was a claim shanty reached by a plank from the other side of the creek. My boarding place was a quarter of a mile from the creek. The window of the school house was three little panes of glass which shoved sideways ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... of anything that may happen unfortunately either to you or me for the next twelve months, than I do in passing from Dover to Calais of the one-inch plank that is between me and Eternity. I have assured myself that as long as the time will appear in passing now, I shall think some time hence its progress not so slow, and I will not add imaginary to real evils, by supposing it possible that I shall ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... still muttering and went into the Y hut. Hilda gave a little scream of joy when she saw me and ran round the counter, which was a plank on two barrels, and kissed me. I must say she was a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... made up sech foolishness ez habeas corpus out'n our own heads," said Timothy. "I 'ain't never looked ter the law fur pertection. Hyar's the pertecter." He touched the trigger of his rifle and glanced reassuringly at his sister as he sat beside her on the plank laid as a seat from side to ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... that pertained to grinding but one saw through the walls several water wheels going in water. I asked why it had equipment for grinding. An old miller answered that the mill was shut down on the other side. Just then I also saw a miller's boy go in from the sluice plank [Schutzensteg], and I followed after him. When I had come over the plank [Steg], which had the water wheels on the left, I stood still and was amazed at what I saw there. For the wheels were now higher than the plank, the water coal black, but its drops were yet white, and the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... be under sail in the Euxine Sea with a prosperous gale, and just in view of Bosporus, discoursing pleasantly with the ship's company, as one overjoyed for his past danger and present security, when on a sudden he found himself deserted of all, and floating upon a broken plank of the ship at the mercy of the sea. Whilst he was thus laboring under these passions and phantasms, his friends came and awaked him with the news of Pompey's approach; who was now indeed so near at hand, that the fight must ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the vote of a southern Republican counted at least once, excited general applause. They laughed when he asked what Andrew Jackson would have thought of Cleveland, and they laughed again when he declared the Democrats wanted to reduce the revenue, but didn't know how. He read them the tariff plank in the Confederate platform, and they laughed to see how it agreed with the same plank in the Democratic platform. From discussion of the incapacity of the Democrats to deal with the tariff question, from their very construction of the constitution, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... we might manage a lion from this fortress. Unless the fellow found the stage, he could hardly board us, and a plank or two thrown from that, would make a draw-bridge of it at once. Look yonder! there is something moving on the bank, or ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Plate Glass, is made of thick board or plank, with the broad side of the board at right angles to the surface of the glass. A rabbet is made for the reception of the glass, and four strips of strap iron, overlapping both the glass, and the wood, and screwed to the wood, keep the glass in position. Strips of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... A thin rotten plank had been thrown across from one bank to the other. The fugitive already had his foot upon it.... But it so happened that just there beside the river stood his best friend and his ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... ash, began. Swiss chalets glitter'd on the dewy slopes, And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came Notes of wild pastoral music—over all Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow. Upon the mossy rocks at the stream's edge, Back'd by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood, Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant's leaves Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within, Under the eaves, peer'd rows of Indian corn. We shot beneath the cottage with the stream. On the brown, rude-carved ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... here whar I'se a-doin' de white folks' washin'," she said. "Jasper's done been powerful sick and I can't leave him by hisself none. I brung him out here in de shade so I could watch him and 'tend to him whilst I wuks. Jasper stepped on a old plank what had two rusty nails in it, and both of 'em went up in his foot a fur ways. I done driv dem nails plumb up to dey haids in de north side of a tree and put jimpson weed poultices on Jasper's foot, but it's still ...
— 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
... the ship to Westeray, in Shetland. Bothwell escorted Anna to the castle of Noltland; and as she landed at the pier, a young man sprang forward and helped her across the plank. She felt agitated, she knew not why; she looked at the man's face, but it was concealed. It was Konrad. He had fallen over a cliff, had been carried out to sea on a plank, had been picked up by a ship which had carried him to Shetland, and had taken service with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... had been edging into the crowd so politely suddenly dashed to the group forming at the gang-plank and pushed his way rudely into the front rank. His elbow dug into the proper waistcoat of a proper plump old gentleman, but he didn't know it. He stood grasping the rope rail of the plank, gazing goggle-eyed while ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... lies in the sale of the system to some private concern, which will give us that superior service which is always afforded by private capital. Westville is upon the eve of a city election, and we most emphatically urge upon both parties that they make the chief plank of their platforms the immediate sale of our utterly discredited water-works ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... fairing it was found the lines drawing would produce a vessel 153 feet 2 inches overall outside the stems, or about 151 feet over the planked rabbets, with a moulded beam of 56 feet and extreme beam of 58 feet. The moulded depth was 22 feet 9 inches and the width of the race was 14 feet 10 inches, plank to plank. The room and space of framing shown was 2 feet. The designed draft appears to be 13 feet and this would bring the port sills 5 feet 6 inches above the loadline and the underside of the gun-deck beams about 2 feet 9 inches ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... "the only one which can push its action on to total reform; the only one which can give full effect to each working class demand; the only one which can make of each reform, of each victory, the starting point and basis of more extended demands and bolder conquests...." Here we have the plank on which Jaures undoubtedly laid the greatest weight, and it was supported unanimously partly because of the necessity of party unity. For this is as much as to say that no reform will ever be brought to a point that wholly satisfies the working people except through a working class government. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... They should not die—first I would be gathered to nothingness, ere infection should come anear these idols of my soul. I would walk barefoot through the world, to find an uninfected spot; I would build my home on some wave-tossed plank, drifted about on the barren, shoreless ocean. I would betake me with them to some wild beast's den, where a tyger's cubs, which I would slay, had been reared in health. I would seek the mountain eagle's eirie, and live years suspended ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of Capiz was expecting a woman teacher, for cries of "La maestra!" began to resound before the boat was properly snubbed up to the bank; and when I walked ashore on a plank ten inches wide, there had already assembled a considerable crowd to witness that feat. They gathered round and continued to stare when I was seated in the principal saloon. Meanwhile a messenger was sent to find the American man teacher, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... scissors-like opening and closing, was about his neck and clamped. Discovering his predicament, he set up a bull-roaring and dancing, till all had to back away to give him clear space for the flying ends of his plank. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... do not permit us to doubt this fact. The equality of rank between these different functionaries did not prevent their functions being, even in their origin, distinct; they became subsequently still more so. See Plank, Geschichte der Christ. Kirch. Verfassung., vol. i. p. 24.—G. On this extremely obscure subject, which has been so much perplexed by passion and interest, it is impossible to justify any opinion without entering into long and controversial details.——It must be admitted, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... truth, sir; yet is there light ahead. We have a ship, sound and tight as the day she sailed; while Robinson lost his craft under his feet. As long as there is a plank afloat, a true salt ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Walters, was coming from England to aid her in final arrangements with the lawyers, and he was to carry her off in a day or two to Melford. At the end of the last sitting she looked round the dismal place—it had discoloured, uneven, bulging whitewashed walls, an unutterably dirty loose plank floor, and a skylight patched with maps of hideous worlds on Mercator's projection, and was furnished with packing cases and grime and the sacking which was Cazalet's bed—and sighed wistfully, as if she had been an unoffending Eve thrust ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... his old friend, who had so scientifically cured him of his sea-sickness, and toward whom John evinced a kind of filial reverence, placing peculiar reliance upon every thing said by the worthy tar, "why, John, they will make us all walk the plank." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... If I could have met him openly, I would have dispatched him according to the accepted code of honor; but, then, I should have had to renounce all idea of marrying Mademoiselle Marguerite, so I was obliged to find some other way. I could not choose my means. The drowning man does not reject the plank, which is his only chance of salvation, because ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... you won't—very well: now all I have to say is this: that the moment I can find strength to do it, I'll stave out a plank; I'll scuttle the vessel, that's all; I have made up my mind, and look ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Well, why not? I seize this wretched plank or sink with all that in me is. Men have done it. But not Edgar Poe! Sell my soul for ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... is over, and we are at sea. I am so glad it is done. It was dreadful to see poor Uncle William and Uncle Henry and Cousin Willie and Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria, coming up the gang-plank into the steerage, with their boxes on their backs. They looked so different in their rough clothes. Uncle William is wearing an old blue shirt and a red handkerchief round his neck, and his hair looks thin and unkempt, and his moustache draggled and his face unshaved. His eyes seem watery ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... covers it with the foot, the same way as at the first. Instead of making depressions with the heel, some use a long stake, an inch or two in diameter, to the lower end of which is affixed a piece of plank, fastened two inches from the end, and four or five inches long (fig. 4). This is used for punching the holes, and the piece of plank near the end prevents it from making the impression too deep. This is another of the inventions of the Virginia Peanut-planter; so true ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... guillotine. These young and beautiful girls, all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and from the most refined and opulent families, were beheaded. The group of youth and innocence stood clustered at the foot of the scaffold, while, one by one, their companions ascended, were bound to the plank, the ax fell, and their heads dropped into the basket. It seems that there must have been some supernatural power of support to have sustained children under so awful an ordeal. There were no faintings, no loud lamentations, no shrieks of despair. With the serenity ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... time to reply the Ark stopped, and everyone rushed toward the gang-plank. "Let it down easily," ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... of an hour later they returned with a sergeant and two soldiers. The captain pointed him out to the sergeant. The latter crossed the plank on to the deck, put his hand on Julian's shoulder, and motioned to ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... these names well enough, and it was finally determined that the question should be decided by a game of boxing, between these two men. So the meeting adjourned to a new barn, with a rough hemlock plank floor, and the contest commenced. After boxing awhile, one of them threw the other upon the floor, and sprang upon him at full length; but the one who was underneath dealt his blows so skilfully, that his opponent soon gave in; and rolling the Holden man out of the way, he jumped up and shouted, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... do you, what be the scholastic attainments of the one called teacher; if he isn't able to teach, that is, to cause to learn, we all know that the school, in just the mesure of his inability, is a failure. One thing further we all know, and that is this: one plank in our great educational platform is belief in the necessity of an institution set apart for the preparation of teachers. We are irrevocably committed to the idea. It is a part of our educational creed. Fortunately, in our educational ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... "I know the way." And with her hands still in her pockets, from one of which protruded a rolled-up novel, she walked down to the little stream which ran from the spring, crossed the plank and took the path which led by the side of the vineyard to Pine ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the step," he whispered, shaking his head. "You shouldn't use your heel at all. Here's a grass border for you: walk it as you would the plank! Gravel makes a noise, and flower-beds tell a tale. Wait—I must ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... few moments to her retreat behind the willows, and then returned, bearing on her shoulder a narrow plank. With the help of smiling Affection she ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the overhanging willows, so grown upon with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected, such a haunt of rats, so advertised a storehouse of rheumatic agonies, that the heart of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... shrink back after having declared my resolution, and accordingly I boldly entered the house; and after narrowly escaping breaking my shins over a turf back and a salting tub, which stood on either side of the narrow exterior passage, I opened a crazy half-decayed door, constructed not of plank, but of wicker, and, followed by the Bailie, entered into the principal apartment of this ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... case my treatment of the subject may be valid for the artist, amusing to the amateur, and at least intelligible and therefore possibly suggestive to the Philistine. Every man who records his illusions is providing data for the genuinely scientific psychology which the world still waits for. I plank down my view of the existing relations of men to women in the most highly civilized society for what it is worth. It is a view like any other view and no more, neither true nor false, but, I hope, a way of looking at the subject which throws into the familiar order of cause and ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... B. M. O., watching the mountain plank through his glasses; "every variety of adventurer in their ranks—cattlemen, ranchmen, Hudson Bay trappers, North West police, lumbermen, mail carriers, bear hunters, Indians, renegade frontiersmen, soldiers of fortune—a ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... mean time the tempest, acting the decrees of Fate, had rent all the rigging from the vessel; no mast, no rudder left, not a rope or plank, but an awkward shapeless body of a ship tost up and ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... another vessel. They had scarcely proceeded fifty leagues, when a violent storm arose. The night was unusually dark, and the ship ungovernable. In this extremity, the brig suddenly dashed against them with such force, that every plank seemed rent asunder, and an instant after, they found themselves transfixed upon a rock. It was now near five o'clock in the morning. They repeatedly fired guns of distress, hung out signals, and at daybreak beheld, with grateful delight, a large boat, rowed by two stout females, approaching ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... asked Marie timidly of Father De Smet as he was about to draw in the plank. "The babies are both asleep and I have nothing ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... but when at length we managed it we were amply rewarded for our labour, an abundant supply of planks and scantling for our utmost need being found. I took careful stock of it all, recording the nature and dimensions of each piece of scantling and plank, and then, providing myself with paper, pencil, and scale, I set to work to scheme out a craft that should be easy to build, fast, stiff and weatherly under canvas, a fairly good sea-boat, and of light draught. It was a decidedly ambitious scheme for an individual who, up to then, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... pay a visit to the Archbishop of Vienne, I went on the lake in a little boat, and felt very happy in the thought that my sole protection, besides a thin plank, was Divine Providence. The wind was high, and I was glad, too, to feel entirely under the command of the pilot, who made us all sit perfectly still; and, indeed, I had no wish to stir! Do not, however, my daughter, take these words of ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... and aft, life's craft undone! Crank plank, split spritsail—mark, sea's lark! That gray cold sea's old sprees, begun When men lay dark i' the ark, no spark, All water—just ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... name of his friend, who, as if loath to cross the plank, held back for a few more words. Tom gave him a little push at last, and said, "Good-bye, you really must go. Success to you, but don't for a moment think of carrying out that quixotic plan you first mentioned. Better jump into the ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... were a job!" said Seth, taking up the thread of the story. "I've been in a vessel as sprung a leak, and where the hands were pumping day and night, with nary a spell off, so as to kip a plank atween us and the bottom of Davy Jones's looker; but, never, in all my born days, have I seed sich pumpin' as went ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the Ship sailed fast, But I left not a sail, and I left not a mast; There is not a plank of the hull or the deck, And there is not a wretch to lament o'er his wreck; Save one, whom I held, as he swam, by the hair, 30 And he was a subject well worthy my care; A traitor on land, and a pirate at sea—[143] But I saved him to wreak ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... of the enemy, and breathed freer as the last belated passenger leaped aboard, the folding gang-plank was raised, and the steamer, with a prolonged blast of the whistle, slid out into the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... crossing with some sort of Russian delegation, we had picked up our grips and started for the gangway, when the strains of a band on the dock became audible, and we could see a group of French officers waiting to meet the Russian delegates who were slowly filing down the gang plank. The band slowly played the Russian national anthem, and we all dropped our baggage and stood to attention. As the strains died away we again seized our grips and began to push forward when the band struck up the Marseillaise and again we dropped everything and stood to attention. After ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... through Congress, to be signed by a President chosen with a knowledge of his prohibition principles, will have to have a good running mate for its prohibition issue. Yet I believe the prohibition plank in the platform of the great progressive party, lineally descending, would be the centre of attraction and of repulsion. I grant that. But the balance will be so kept that multitudes who take, at first at least, a livelier interest in some other measure which also is ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... where he got some more liberty, having some others of the sufferers with him. However, they were very much disturbed by a notorious murderer, who, being drunk one time, thought to have killed him with a large plank or form. But happily the stroke did not hurt him, though he struck with all his force twice, whereby another was almost killed. This made him and other five to lie sometimes upon the stairs; for they could have no other place; though they desired the thieves hole, they ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... scrambled from the table and pranced about the room like a horse with blind staggers. My grandfather sprang at him and dealt him blow after blow in the back, which sounded like the blows of a mallet on a dry hide; but the ham wouldn't budge. The old man ran out into the yard and seized a plank about three feet long, and rushed into ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... was in charge that night of a young officer named Craven, and never was an officer worse named or better deserving to be called Courage. He had his wits about him. At the hour I have named, he observed something on the starboard-quarter, about 150 yards off. It resembled a plank on the water. In reality it was a torpedo-David. It was opposite the main-mast when first observed, going rapidly against the tide. At that moment it turned and made straight for the ship. Craven ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... made their way down the gang plank and ashore. There a line of automobiles waited. The officer motioned his prisoners into the largest of these and gave instructions to the driver. He took a ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... ago the principal avenue of Detroit had a toll-gate close to the entrance of the Elmwood Cemetery road. As this cemetery had been laid out some time previous to the construction of the plank road, it was arranged that all funeral processions should be allowed to pass along the latter toll-free. One day as a well-known physician stopped to pay his toll, he observed ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... their effect and have to be varied. The sentence mentioned in Tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but if I came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently, then it would excite me. I am very capricious in the small things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath still produces excitement. The idea of the plank does not now affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. I think, therefore, that the feeling must come in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... had the clouds below us, as they are on Penang Hill. The path up the mountain—if path it can be called—is almost a staircase of tumbled rocks, and requires both strength and agility to climb. It was quite beyond me; but I was carried on a man's back, sitting on a bit of plank, with a strip of cloth fastened round my waist and across the man's forehead, my back to his back. The Dyaks are famous mountaineers, their bare feet cling to the stones, or notched trunks of trees thrown from ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the plantains all about. Within the monastery it will be all bare. However beautiful the building is without, no relaxation of his rules is allowed to the monk within. All is bare: only a few mats, perhaps, here and there on the plank floor, a hard wooden bed, a box or ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... hospital stood in a field outside the village, surrounded by a thick, high hedge of prickly material. Within, the enclosure was filled by a dozen little wooden huts, painted green, connected with each other by plank walks. What went on outside the hedge, nobody within knew. War, presumably. War ten kilometres away, to judge by the map, and by the noise of the guns, which on some days roared very loudly, and made the wooden huts shake and tremble, although one got used to that, after a ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... and twenty feet deep. They cut down an evergreen oak, whose wood is almost as solid and heavy as lead, gouged out a place in it sufficiently large to receive the body, and nailed over the top a massive plank. The body, thus placed in its final coffin, was taken at midnight to the centre of the river, where it immediately sank to its deep burial. The utmost silence was preserved, and every precaution adopted to conceal the movement from all but ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... more accurate, an inconspicuous path under a fence, so that for some time they had to walk along a steep slope above a ditch where they could not keep their footing without holding the fence. At a dark corner in the slanting fence Pyotr Stepanovitch took out a plank, leaving a gap, through which he promptly scrambled. Liputin was surprised, but he crawled through after him; then they replaced the plank after them. This was the secret way by which Fedka used ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for some time, they reached the piles upon which Mayo's Bridge was then supported, and there attempted to rest and try to gain the shore by climbing up the log abutment to the bridge. Upon reaching the bridge, however, they were dismayed to find that its plank flooring overlapped the abutment by several feet, and that it was impossible to ascend it. Nothing remained for them but to let go their slippery hold and swim back to the shore. Poe reached the bank in an exhausted and benumbed ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... greatly differing in size, with low-ceilinged cabins built upon them—sometimes of one room, sometimes of half a dozen, and varying in character from a mere shanty to a well-appointed cottage. Perhaps the greater number of these craft are afloat in the river, and moored to the bank, with a gang-plank running to shore; others are "beached," having found a comfortable nook in some higher stage of water, and been fastened there, propped level with timbers and driftwood. Among the houseboat folk are young working couples starting out in ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... array, endur'd The onset of the Trojans; nor could these The assailants, though in numbers less, repel; Nor those again the Grecian masses break, And force their passage through the ships and tents, As by a rule, in cunning workman's hand, Who all his art by Pallas' aid has learnt, A vessel's plank is smooth and even laid, So level lay the balance of the fight. Others round other ships maintain'd the war, But Hector that of Ajax sought alone. For that one ship they two unwearied toil'd; Nor Hector Ajax from his post could move, And burn the ship with fire; nor he repel ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... in his shipwreck looked round for a saving plank, and tried to nurse himself in illusions. The Duke of Vicenza went to Marshals Ney and Macdonald, whom he found just stepping into a carriage to proceed to Paris. Both positively refused to return the act to Caulaincourt, saying, "We are sure of the concurrence ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of this plank-like piece of wood, which is split with the grain to stand the great strain often imposed upon it, and never sawn at all, the toes are fastened by a leather strap. Another strap goes round the heel in a sort of loop fashion, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... 'Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom. Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising dough. It was a boom town of the regular kind—you stood in line to get a chance to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a lodging bill added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged it to you as board ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Another (saith [1619]Cardan out of Aristotle), fell down dead (which is familiar to women at any ghastly sight), seeing but a man hanged. A Jew in France (saith [1620]Lodovicus Vives), came by chance over a dangerous passage or plank, that lay over a brook in the dark, without harm, the next day perceiving what danger he was in, fell down dead. Many will not believe such stories to be true, but laugh commonly, and deride when they hear of them; but let these men consider with themselves, as [1621]Peter Byarus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... as a people had ceased to be; but when the phantom of their former life, surviving in high works of beauty, was still superb by reason of imperishable style! How much in Italy of the Renaissance was, like this plank-built plastered theatre, a glorious sham! The sham was seen through then; and now it stands unmasked: and yet, strange to say, so perfect is its form that we respect the sham and yield our spirits to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... navy, and made my first voyage under the gallant Decatur. I spent four years at sea with him, and during that time I had those terrible fights with the Algerines, of which I have before spoken. In the last battle, I was captured, and compelled to walk the plank." ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... engaged, the wind had again got up, and the sea, dashing over the reef, began to burst with violence against the shore. The effect produced on the wreck was soon apparent. The remaining upper works began to give way. As the sea rolled in with increasing violence, plank after plank was torn off, then larger portions were wrenched from the hull, the deck burst up, and was soon dashed into pieces against the rocks. As soon as we had swallowed enough water somewhat to slake our burning thirst, we hastened to the beach ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... the English to be the "Pluton," and if so, her captain was D'Albert de Rions, in Suffren's opinion the foremost officer of the French navy. "The crash occasioned by their destructive broadsides," wrote an English officer who was present, "was so tremendous that whole pieces of plank were seen flying from her off side ere she could escape the cool, concentrated fire of her determined adversaries. As she proceeded along the British line, she received the first fire of every ship in passing. She was indeed in so shattered a state as to ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... high. It is fortunate that I am a short man, otherwise it would have been hard exercise to go in and out of my lodgings. The planks of which the doors are made are cut with great labor by native axes out of trunks of trees, one trunk seldom yielding more than one good plank. My hut, an average-sized dwelling, was twenty feet long and eight feet broad. It was divided into three rooms or compartments, the middle one, into which the door opened, being a little larger than the other two.... Mokenga is a beautiful village, containing about ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... All winds are broken by frequent brief intervals of calm, and a kite must rely on its lightness to outride these. Whoever contemplates going seriously into kite-flying will do well to provide himself with a store of suitable sticks by purchasing a straight-grained, well-planed spruce plank, free from knots, and having it sawed on a circular saw into sticks five-sixteenths and seven-sixteenths inches in thickness, to be cut later into such lengths ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... a horse unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane, And burst the curb and bounded, Rejoicing to be free, And, whirling down in fierce career Battlement and plank and pier, Rushed headlong ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... so far departed from her purely occult programme after her arrival in India in 1879 as to reconstruct the society on the basis of "Universal Brotherhood." This idea was completely absent from her first scheme; "the Brotherhood plank in the Society's future platform," wrote her coadjutor Colonel Olcott, "was not thought of."[712] It was over this plank, however, that Mrs. Besant was able to walk to the Supreme Council of the Maconnerie Mixte, and adding ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Europe and America. 'Around the curving shore of the Bay and upon the sides of three hills, which rise steeply from the water, the middle one receding so as to form a bold amphitheatre, the town is planted and seems scarcely yet to have taken root, for tents, canvass, plank, mud and adobe houses are mingled together with the least apparent attempt at order and durability.' However, the appearance of the city is fast improving—for churches and schools and public buildings ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... answered the officer and passed up the gang plank, enviously regarded by the press of brass-hats and red-tabs who, for the most part, had a cramped berth below or cold quarters on deck to look ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... central stronghold, raised on a great mound of earth; and this was the dwelling of the chief, provincial ruler, or king. Lesser mounds upheld the houses of lesser chiefs, and all alike seem to have been built of oak, with plank roofs. Safe storehouses of stone were often sunk underground, beneath the chief's dwelling. In the fort of Emain, as in the great fort of Tara in the Boyne Valley, there was a banqueting-hall for the warriors, and the bards thus describe one of these in the days of its glory: "The banquet-hall had ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... dozen of them all told. You pass through a locked door from the charge-room into a wide, stone-flagged corridor, lined on each side with massive doors. Swing back one of these doors, and you will enter a high pitched room with a barred window at the farther end, and a broad plank running down one side, the full length of the cell. This serves either as a seat or a bed. Washable mattresses and pillows are served out at night-time, and I can imagine that, if lonely, the cells are not uncomfortable. ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... attack, and none but the main-deck guns of the Yarmouth would or could be fired, for fear of hitting their own men in the melee on the deck. The Randolph was a wreck below, at best; but while anything held together above her plank shears, she would be fought. The men had reached that desperate condition when they ceased to think of odds, and like maddened beasts fought and raved and swore in the frenzy of the combat. The thrice-decimated crew sprang aft, rallying in the gangway to ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... 'E's carryin' a plank. You can see it stickin' up above the parapet. 'E's a-go'n' to get a nasty one if 'e don't duck w'en he comes to ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... said Win, "that the space between the castle and the town was once a meadow. For that matter, they also say that the whole channel between here and France was once so narrow that the Bishop of Coutances used to cross to Jersey on a plank." ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... told him that I had just come from a crimp's house near Stonehouse, where I left in their beds thirty-five as fine men as ever walked a plank, and that, as I was pressed myself, I did not mind telling him where they were, and he could take ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... open in order that one might see. And the thaw was entering the place, the melting snow was falling drop by drop, and coming over the tiled floor. After long weeks of intense cold, dark dampness rained quivering over all. And there, lacking even a chair, even a plank, Laveuve lay in a corner on a little pile of filthy rags spread upon the bare tiles; he looked like some animal dying on ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... evening, met Mr. O'Connor by chance upon a plank which crossed a river. This plank was only a foot in breadth, so that no two individuals could pass each other upon it. We cannot find words in which to express the dismay of both, on finding that they absolutely glided past ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... authoritative voice and a look of command, "All ashore who are going ashore! All ashore who are going ashore!" Immediately there were hasty hand-clasps and hasty good-byes, and a large part of the company marched quickly down the stairs and across the gang-plank. Those who were left held ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... rope-twiner," said one of them. Then Roger turned and whispered to Ralph: "Friends. Get out thy sword!" Wherewithal the gate was opened, and they all passed out through the wall, and stood above the ditch in the angle-nook of a square tower. Then Ralph saw some of the men stoop and shoot out a broad plank over the ditch, which was deep but not wide thereabout, and straightway he followed the others over it, going last save Roger. By then they were on the other side he saw a glimmer of the dawn in the eastern heaven, but it was still more than dusk, and no man spoke again. They went on ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the love of parents make for the same thing. It is all very well to experiment for oneself, but when one sees these dear things of one's own, so young and inexperienced and so capable of every sort of gallant foolishness, walking along the narrow plank, going down into dark jungles, ah! then it makes one want to wrap them in laws and foresight and fence them about with 'Verboten' boards ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... said to Ayesha, who shrugged her shoulders, and answered, "Well, let him come, it is naught to me; on his own head be it, and he will serve to bear the lamp and this," and she pointed to a narrow plank, some sixteen feet in length, which had been bound above the long bearing-pole of her hammock, as I had thought to make curtains spread out better, but, as it now appeared, for some unknown purpose connected ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... shoulder and one hand, while swimming and guiding us ashore with the other! There on the land we were hauled up, and four weary days were spent fetching and carrying from the Mission Station every plank, tool, and nail, necessary for her repair. Every boat for these seas ought to be built of cedar wood and copper-fastened, which is by far the most economical in the end. And all houses should be built of wood which is as full as possible of gum or resin, since ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... ye, Whose bosoms thus together press," said I, "Who are ye?" At that sound their necks they bent, And when their looks were lifted up to me, Straightway their eyes, before all moist within, Distill'd upon their lips, and the frost bound The tears betwixt those orbs and held them there. Plank unto plank hath never cramp clos'd up So stoutly. Whence like two enraged goats They clash'd together; them such fury seiz'd. And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft, Exclaim'd, still looking ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... plank; not otherwise unless we accompany you," answered Nehushta. "Man, why do you waste words with us. Listen. This lady is the only child of Benoni, the great merchant of ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... times, my father was a farmer. My mother farmed too. She was a hand in the field. They lived in a little log cabin, one room. They had a bed in there, a few chairs and a homemade table. They had a plank floor. I only know what I heard my people speak of. I don't know what was what for myself because I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... only used with reference to the top of a room—the ceiling. It is an old English word, and means overlaid or lined with wood, wainscot, or plank, either roof, sides, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... intensely interesting, but the Obstacle Race proved an even greater excitement. Two thin planks of wood were placed across the bath, floating upon the water. The competitors started from the deep end, dived under the first plank, and then scrambled over the second. At the shallow end were a number of large round wash-tubs; each candidate had to seize upon one of these and seat herself in it, a most difficult feat of fine balancing, for ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold, From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, By the living God who made me!—I would sooner in your bay Sink ship and crew and cargo, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the thoughts which crowded upon her; they were refused, and thus was one of the books of the sibyls lost. She bowed to the great statue of Liberty near by, exclaiming, "O Liberte! comme on t' a jouee!"[2] and gave her majestic form to the headsman to be bound upon the plank. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... however, impossible, and "Fear not, but trust in Providence" is a necessary motto for Arctic seamen. My faith in this axiom was soon put to the proof. After a short sleep I was called on deck, as the vessel was suffering from great pressure. My own senses soon made it evident; every timber and plank was cracking and groaning, the vessel was thrown considerably over on her side, and lifted bodily, the bulkheads cracking, and treenails and bolts breaking with small reports. On reaching the deck, I saw indeed that the poor "Pioneer" was in ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... divinely innocent); "but only yesterday she informed me that she had resolved to go abroad, and asked if it would make any difference to me. She's like that. Her procedure resembles jumping off a diving plank." ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Germans, whether the Arx on the Capitoline Hill occupied the northeastern or southwestern corner, which take up nearly one half of the learned article in Smith's Dictionary, on the Capitoline. "Thales supposed the earth to float on the water, like a plank of wood": [Greek: oi d hudatos keisthai touton gar archaiotaton pareilaephamen ton logon hon phasin eipein thalae ton Milaesion]. Aristot., De Coel., ii. 13: "Quoe sequitur Thaletis ineptq sententia est. Ait enim terrarum ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the skies a ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... languish. I think of Corinne and I see that her eyes are full of mourning, like the eyes of a wood dove. Gorman, I cannot bear the weight. It will be better that I take the risk, that I go on the navy. The admiral will make me walk a plank. That is certain. But it might be that I should survive. And then I should rejoin Corinne, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... path that conducted into a flower-garden, divided from the park by a ha-ha, over which a plank and a small gate, rusting off its hinges, were placed, Caroline led the way towards the building. At this point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four steps led into the garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an old pig peeped around, to see if anybody was watching. As he saw no one, he grunted, as much as to say, "All right," and started for a large hole beneath the fence. But, before he could get out, grandpa nailed a plank over the hole. ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... low-studded ceiling, blossomed bravely. The sound of a running stream could be heard distinctly. In this place was a great number of beautiful white horses, perhaps a hundred. They were eating barley from a plank placed on a level with their mouths. Their manes had been coloured a deep blue; their hoofs were wrapped in coverings of woven grass, and the hair between their ears was puffed out like a peruke. As they stood quietly eating, ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... necks over the stout plank which crossed the door, and gazed at something dark away in the lower ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... of their pestles on the planks strung along the sides of the trough, each row of happy toilers alternately swung in and out, toward and from the trough, its long heavy pestles rising and falling with the regular "click, click, thush; click, click, thush!" as they fell rebounding on the plank, and were then raised and ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... gang-plank, and in less time than it takes to tell it he was beside her, while oblivious, in his great thankfulness for her safety, to the fact that others were observing them, he caught her close to him in a ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... firing off several small arms, the bullets of which stuck in her beam. It was some time before we perceived that she leaked, being all thunder struck; but when the Master stepped over the side to examine her, he put his foot on a plank that was started, and all this time the water had been pouring in. We immediately brought all our guns on the other side to give her a heel, & sent the boat ashore for the Doctor, a man having been hurt by the lightning. When we got her on a heel, we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... convention, which made "extension of slavery" the essential plank of the party platform, met at Chicago on the 26th of May, 1860. At this time William H. Seward was the most conspicuous Republican in national politics; Salmon P. Chase also had long been in the forefront of the political contest against slavery. ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... more easy of application, than the South American contrivance. Near both ends of the centre spar there is cut a perpendicular slit, about a couple of inches wide by one or two feet in length. Into each of these holes a broad plank, called guaras by the natives, is inserted in such a way that it may be thrust down to the depth of ten or twelve feet, or it may be drawn up entirely. The slits are so cut, that, when the raft is in motion, the edges of these planks shall meet the water. It is clear, that if ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... its contents on to a plank, the ends of which were held by my servant and myself, we walked to the footlights with our heavy burden, and upset it. The Moor had disappeared—the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne |
