"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beneficial for the cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under water ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... said he was just plumb ruined. He said he'd snatch Ikey bald-headed, and do a lot of other things to him, if he didn't walk right out into State street and bring back that Little Brass God. Holy Moses! You ought to have seen how scared ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... stood up with a light in his eyes. "Then you've hit the thing plumb where you wanted," he said. "Whose standing in ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... like a dog by somebody who was a-waitin' for him, hidden in the brush. The widder, pore soul, suspicioning trouble, follered Jake, and found him with a bullet plumb through his heart. She heard the shot, and she swore that it come from Ransom's side o' the fence. And she knows and we know that there isn't a man 'twixt Maine and Californy with a grudge agen Jake, always exceptin' this ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... returning home; they drifted along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here, quite different from that of the "Ark." The houses were new and orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed ways, and one could see at a glance what ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... said the old sponger; "an' that's the way we sees the sponges lying on the bottom. An' when we sees 'em we takes those long-handled rakes there an' hauls 'em up to the top. When they fust comes up they's plumb black, and about the nastiest things you ever did see, I reckon. We throws 'em into crawls built in shallow water, an' lets 'em rot till all the animal matter is dead, an' we stirs 'em up an beats 'em with sticks to ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... and knew it, I thought, to perfection, If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness, It is the need of it,—it is this sad self-defeating dependence. Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you. But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose. All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something. Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks, Is not I will, but I must. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... an amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding the disfranchisement of United States citizens on account of sex, which resulted in 16 yeas, 34 nays, 26 absent.[61] Of the absentees Senators Chace, Dawes, Plumb and Stanford announced that they would have voted "yea;" Jones of Arkansas and Butler that they would ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to repudiate the incredible agility and recuperative strength it housed, and his carriage was consistently "out of plumb." ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... friction due to pressure. Too often the bearing value on irregular surfaces as well as the bearing due to taper in piles, and lastly the resistance offered by binding, enter into the determination of so-called skin friction formulas. The essential condition of sinking a caisson is keeping it plumb; and binding, which is another way of writing increased bearing value, will oftentimes be ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... give her the name, myself," he observed, at last. "Seein' I just got her a week ago last Saturday. I ASKED Casper Hoyt what under the canopy possessed him to give her a name like that. Said his father named her. Well, I thought his father must be plumb foolish, or something, but I didn't like to say so to HIM. Seems too bad to waste them gilt letters, or I'd a-had another name on her 'fore this. I wanted to use as many of them letters as I could, an' I thought of callin' her for ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... them?" "They're plumb scart. All this disturbance and mystery has got in on them. They act just like ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... we love to watch the ebbing of population, the dwindling from groves of chimneys and worlds of bricks and mortar to tricksy cottages marshalled with the plumb-line, or sprinkled over "farmy fields" facing Macadamized roads, and collecting more dust in one month than would have ransomed all the captive kings of history, sacred or profane. There we love to trace ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... quick enough if she'd have him, but barrin' her, he hangs to Marg so as ter be nigh Nella-Rose in any case. And right here Burke Lawson figgers. Burke's got two naturs, same as old Satan. Marg can play on one and get him plumb riled up to anythin'; Nella-Rose can twist him around her finger and make him ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... he wrenched a huge mouthful from one of the "hanks" to test the quality. "But I'll tell ye what's a fact. When I come home tonight, after a meetin' of that there Committee of Safety I was tellin' you about, I found that I had plumb disremembered to fetch along the bacon, meal, an' taters that my wife done told me to bring, an' so I thought I would jest run over an' see if I couldn't borry some of you to ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... British mode, as taken from Steele's "Shipmaster's Assistant," was this: Drop plumb-line over stem of ship and measure distance between such line and the after part of the stern port at the load water-mark; then measure from top of said plumb-line in parallel direction with the water to ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the sacred name of Time are you meanin' to do with that dummy? For the good land's sake! Have you gone plumb crazy, or ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... was all in vain. He could see a long way, and sometimes it almost seemed as if he saw farther than at others; but lower down there was always that purply transparent blackness into which his eyesight plunged, but could not quite plumb. ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... says: "To plan secretly, to move surreptitiously, to foil the enemy's intentions and balk his schemes, so that at last the day may be won without shedding a drop of blood." Sun Tzu reserves his approbation for things that "the world's coarse thumb And finger fail to plumb."] ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... is to be carried aloft, in your teeth, if you please, and dragged far out on the giddiest of yards, and after being wormed and twisted about through all sorts of intricacies—turning abrupt corners at the abruptest of angles—is to be dropped, clear of all obstructions, in a straight plumb-line right down to the deck. In the course of this business, there is a multitude of sheeve-holes and blocks, through which you must pass it; often the rope is a very tight fit, so as to make it like threading a fine cambric ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... clean getaway, and we're plumb wore out. Our play isn't to hike out like we were scared stiff of something. What we want to do is to act as if we could look every darned citizen in the face. Mac's ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... different!" She nodded her lovely head in firm conviction. "It's heaps different and I'm goin' to know more about such things as clo'es. I ain't plumb poverty poor, like lots o' folks, here in th' mountings. I got land down in th' valley I get rent from—fifty dollars, every year! I'm goin' to find ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... in weary protest, as he smiled apologetically at the court. "Darned if I didn't plumb forget one thing," he said. "We got to swear in these witnesses before they can chatter. Is there anybody got a Bible around 'em? Nope? Montana, I wished you'd lope over to that house and see what they got ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... hams beside an emergency 'chute opening on the deck of the Penguin's weather observatory. He was letting down a spliced beryllium plumb line, his gaze riveted on the slowly turning horizontal drum of a windlass which contained more than two hundred ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... to understand. You will be lowered over the cliff edge and let down the cliff face exactly five feet at a time. As it happens to be absolutely calm, the rope by which you are to be lowered will hang accurately plumb; all that you will have to do, therefore, will be to measure the distance from your rope to the face of the rock, at every five feet of drop, and you will then have the particulars necessary to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... that form of assistance. He was of opinion that the rope was there, then, and if so, it must have been thrown over by means of a stone, or weight of some kind. In that case, if the stone had rolled after reaching the ground, the rope might not be hanging like a plumb-line from the wall, but at an angle from it, and at some distance. He began to move, then, in a parallel line from the wall, still feeling right and left; and on the third trial he caught in his stretched-out hand a string—a string-line such as a boy uses for his kite; and for an instant, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... of here, Allen. If you think you can marry Morton Bassett's daughter with that kind of a scandal in your pocket, I tell you you're mad—you've plumb gone insane! Great God, boy, you don't know the meaning of the words you use. You handle that thing like a child with a loaded pistol. Don't you see what that would mean—to Marian, to Blackford, to Mrs. Bassett—to Aunt ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... practice in the shifts of a monastic existence. Little Mme. Camusot saw their change of countenance and subsequent composure when they scented opposition on the part of the examining magistrate. When her husband unveiled the thoughts in the back of his own mind, she had tried to plumb the depths of hate in du Croisier's adherents. She wanted to find out how du Croisier had gained over this deputy public prosecutor, who had acted so promptly and so directly in opposition to the views of ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... "It's a plumb waste of money to take a newspaper when you're around, Steve," drawled Colter, in amiable derision. "Happen to notice the color of the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... the presence of the creative one, would ever be plain to him. In the Perfect, would familiarity ever destroy wonder at things essentially wonderful because essentially divine? To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... and level, that is, as architects build, by plumb line and level. Trinculo picks up the word line and makes a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... going to find out," said the captain. "At least we can't sink, for we're right on shore," and as he spoke the fog blew away for a moment, showing a bleak shore of rocks with hemlock trees a little way up from the beach. "Yes, sir, we ran plumb on the rocks!" muttered Captain Craig, as he stood up and tried to peer through the fog that was now closing ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... thinking as I walked, with shoulders bent and head forward. At once I straightened up and looked about to see who was speaking. It was the voice of a pine tree, growing hard by the path, tall and straight as a plumb line. "Thank you," I said to ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... fact that the eye and hand need such guides shows how untrustworthy the senses are. A similar argument occurs in Luc. 86. Perpendiculum is a plumb line, norma a mason's square, the word being probably a corruption of the Greek [Greek: gnomon] (Curt. Grundz p. 169, ed. 3), ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don't you suppose Mad Lane'll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid? You plumb make me tired, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... on the round of the cliff-track—all in one quiet golden glow. War? Who could think of War? . . . Nicky-Nan at any rate let the thought of it slip into the sea of his private trouble. It was as though he had hauled up some other man's "sinker" and, discovering his mistake, let it drop back plumb. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... gone all out over this case. I saw, the minute they briefed me, that one tiny flaw, his neglect to take up that option—you remember, I told you—right down at the bottom of the whole tangle, and I went plumb down for it and hung on to it and fought it up like, like a diver coming up ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... day, my sky an' sunshine, an' the temper o' the breeze— Here's the weather I would fashion could I run things as I please: Beauty dancin' all around me, music ringin' everywhere, Like a weddin' celebration—why, I've plumb fergot my care An' the tasks I should be doin' fer the rainy days to be, While I'm huggin' the delusion that God made this day ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... dat one ever did see. At dat time Claude, he 'bout two year old and Clarence, he 'bout four er mebbe little less. Ella, she worked in da house cooking for Miss Fannie an' nussin' de chillun and she plumb crazy 'bout de chillun an' dey just as satisfied wid her as dey was wid dere mama and Ella thought more dem chillun dan she did anybody. She just crazy 'bout dem boys. Mars Luch, he gibe me job right 'way sort flunkying for him and hostling at de lot an' barn ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... done it, but I was plumb mad. I pulled a San Augustine paper out of my hip-pocket, and showed him an item. It was a half a column about the marriage of Myra Allison ...
— Options • O. Henry
... morning, the captain told him to stay the fore-topmast plumb. He accordingly came forward, turned all hands to, with tackles on the stays and back-stays, coming up with the seizings, hauling here, belaying there, and full of business, standing between the knightheads to sight the mast,—when the captain came forward, and also began ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... said Dick, "and I had rather not have given Conkey Jem a taste of blue plumb, had there been any other mode of silencing the snitching scoundrel, which there was not. As to the Major, he's a gallant enemy, and shall have fair play as long as Dick Turpin stands by. Come, sir," added he, to the Major, as he bound him hand and foot with the rope, "I'll do it ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of it the alkali swept in little vagrant puffs, proceeding from the gaps of the hills. It piled in little gray heaps like ashes. The air hung steady and still as a plumb line dropped ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... like takin' a candy sucker from a baby. 'Curly' let go of that 'six' like he was plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over the ear just oncet. Then he turned on the room; and right there my heart went out to him. He took in the line up at a sweep of ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... scrutinized the clean, smooth face, and she saw lines which had hitherto escaped her notice. She was at last convinced that she had to contend with a man, a man who had dealt with both men and women. How deep was he? Could honors, such as she could give, and money plumb the depths?... He was an American. She smiled the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... you plumb bugs? Why—" Vic gulped and stuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it, sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to get it too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salary ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... greater the god, the greater the slave; and so it was that, falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... a bit, before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o' Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I looks up, he's plumb absent. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... at the teamsters as of no particular account when they walked out, but when they wouldn't work, they became the most important part of the show, and after the show was over the managers who had told the striking teamsters to go plumb, found that they had gone plumb, and they had to rush all over Pittsburg and find them, and grant their demands, and get ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... together a fat wad of bills, which was useful seeing I had my young cousin's—you know, young Will Henderson, of Barnriff; he's a trapper now—education on my hands. Just as things were good and dollars were coming plenty the enterprise bust. I was out—plumb out. I hunched up for another kick. I had a dandy patent that was to do big things. I got together a syndicate to run it. I'd got a big car built to demonstrate my patent, and it represented all I had in the world. It was ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... channel open to him was the theatre. Badly as it paid the outside author, there was nothing that paid better. Venus and Adonis brought "more praise than pudding," if one may venture a guess. With the freedom of the theatre Will could soar to all heights and plumb all depths. No such opportunity had Burns, even if he could have used it, and, owing to a variety of causes, his spirit soon ceased to soar high ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... and failings cannot vex us afresh, their errors are all forgiven. It is their best part only that remains unrealised and unread, their purest aspirations which we follow with leaden wings, their deepest thoughts that we still strive to plumb with the short line of our imagination or experience, and to weigh in ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... disdainfully. "Hello, dere, foolish! What yo' think Ah am anyhow? To' must think Ah'm plumb crazy," and Sam looked pityingly at George. "Ob co'se Ah wouldn't nebber lif' mah ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse porphyroid gray trachyte; very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte. Chimborazo is very likely not a solid mountain: trachytic volcanoes are supposed to be full of cavities. Bouguer found it made the plumb-line deviate 7" ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the man—my promise to my father holds. They teach well, but they do not do well: it is the doing that speaks to the heart. The chief that buried his hatchet is a plumb fool, else the white chief would do so ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... all he'd let me," said Tito, on the defensive. "I tolt him it was all right, but he just stood up there cursin' me. And then he got to throwin' things, almost had me here"—he put his hand against his ear—"like he was plumb crazy. But I guess he wasn't, for he ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... seems plumb foolishness," declared one grizzled salt. "I don't see why folks want to make so many pictures of men and women walkin' in and out of my cottage and sayin' such outlandish things like: 'Gal, you shall give me them papers!' or, 'Meet ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... were as many as the sea-gulls, and his palace like a marble hill. And he sat among the pillars of the hall, upon his throne of beaten gold, and around him stood the speaking statues which Daidalos had made by his skill. For Daidalos was the most cunning of all Athenians, and he first invented the plumb-line, and the auger, and glue, and many a tool with which wood is wrought. And he first set up masts in ships, and yards, and his son made sails for them: but Perdix his nephew excelled him; for he first invented the saw and its teeth, copying it from the back-bone of a fish; ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... led along the edge of a precipice descending sheer to the uppermost terrace of the valley he had left. The valley was but a cleft in the mass of the mountain: a little way over sank its other wall, steep as a plumb-line could have made it, of solid rock. On his right lay green fields of clover and strange grasses. Ever and anon from the cleft steamed up great blinding clouds of mist, which now wandered about over the nations ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... another man. He didn't even look the same. Sich eyes! Al'ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They'd give anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after that—said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with him—he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away from that grave—you don't want to look odder than ye are by nature. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... leaving the old man absorbed in ecstasy, and tried to see if the light, falling plumb upon the canvas at which he pointed, had neutralized all effects. They examined the picture, moving from right to left, standing directly before it, bending, swaying, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... unpoetical hesitated, perplexed. Philosophy was not in his line. "'Tisn't too bad," he said, suddenly aware of the beauty of the scene, and then the tradesman came to the surface. "I reckon MY job'll be a bit more on the plumb, though," he chuckled, and, delighted with his little joke, shouldered his axe and walked towards one of the marked trees, while Dan speculated aloud on the chances a man had of "getting off alive" if a tree fell ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... had a black beard, simply came along and married the little thing. She fluttered down on to his shoulders like a pigeon. She adored him, feared him, cooed to him, worried him, and knew that there were depths of his mind which she would never plumb. Woodruff, after being best man, went on loving, meekly and yet philosophically, and found his chief joy in just these suppers. The arrangement suited Vera; and as for the husband and the hopeless admirer, they had always ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... you ain't in any sort of a hurry. If you start across the bay now before it gets plumb dark old Bill Broome is liable to ketch yer," and the aged fellow gave Jim a shrewd look from under ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... when the imperial proclamation was issued, General Sherman and Messrs. Lewis, Plumb, and Campbell arrived in the port of Vera Cruz, on board of the Susquehanna. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... a man as ever sacked ore, and plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,—and 'tain't ever the Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they don't make that five-dollar kind of ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... we have travelled so fast," answered the raven. "In your world you cannot pull up the plumb-line you call gravitation, and let the world spin round under your feet! But here is my wife's house! She is very good to let me live with her, and call it the ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... sech a mighty job at last. But law, if it hed been Peter Birt 'stid of me, that thar wild tur-r-key would hev laid on this hyar ledge plumb till ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. You'll do this job, and you'll do it my way. Maybe you got ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... yer course north by northwest three p'ints and ye'll hit the Red Star plumb in the eye—if ye don't miss it," and the miner laughed ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... Missowa edookan owasi sek negi—' Why, it's Ojibway, not Cree," he exclaimed. "They're just leaving a record. 'Good journey from Moose Factory. Big game has been seen.' Funny how plumb curious an Injun is. They ain't one could come along here and see th' signs of this camp and rest easy 'till he'd figgered out how many they were, and where they were going, and what they were doing, and all about it. These records are ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... ones as well as small. If Uncle Pete wasn't plumb crazy, he had his money and papers in a hide-out that I'd ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... had never really loved her, she declares; his affection for her had been interested, though even in her wrath she admits that he really loved her husband; he cared less for her conversation, which she had fancied necessary to his existence, than for her "roast beef and plumb pudden," which he now devours too "dirtily for endurance." She was fully resolved to go, and yet she could not bear that her going should fail to torture the friend whom for eighteen years she had loved and cherished ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Hills. I was only a kid then. This wasn't no such tur'ble long a snake, but he was more'n a foot thick. Looked just like a sahuaro stalk. Man name of Terwilliger Smith catched it. He named this yere bull-snake Clarence, and got it so plumb gentle it followed him everywhere. One day old P. T. Barnum come along and wanted to buy this Clarence snake—offered Terwilliger a thousand cold—but Smith wouldn't part with the snake nohow. So finally they fixed up a deal so Smith could go along with the show. They shoved Clarence ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... 'what brig's that?' But none of these tricks will answer with t'other, who misses the whipping off the end of a gasket, as soon as any first luff of us all. And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as the back of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... You couldn't tell it from the real thing! Believe me, Bud's some pickled bum, these days. I run across him up in the mountains, a month or so ago. Honest, I was knocked plumb silly—much as I knew about Bud that you never knew, I never thought he'd turn out quite so—" Joe paused, with a perfect imitation of distaste for his subject. "Say, this is great, out here," he murmured, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... calm, who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... she allus was. She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... would not a collapse of some sort necessarily take place? What would support the present frail foundations of the city buildings, which seem to be now sustained by hydraulic pressure? Even as it is, no heavy structure can be found in the limits of the capital which is not more or less out of plumb, in emulation of the leaning tower of Pisa. The thick walls of the Iturbide Hotel are so full of cracks and crevices, caused by the settling here and there of its insecure foundation, as to cause anxiety and constant remark among its guests. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... principal are plantains, of which they have fifteen different sorts or varieties; breadfruit; two sorts of fruit found at Otaheite, and known there under the names of jambu and geevee; the latter a kind of plumb; and vast numbers of shaddocks, which, however, are found as often in a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... of his accession King George has been confronted with trials and troubles enough to daunt the stoutest heart, and none of us can plumb the depth of anguish that must have been his through the awful years of the Great War. He has been tried and proved in the fierce fires of adversity, and has emerged ennobled by pain, and dowered by sorrow with a gift of expression that has placed him among the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... little procession set off. Mr. Poyser was in his Sunday suit of drab, with a red-and-green waistcoat and a green watch-ribbon having a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plumb-line from that promontory where his watch-pocket was situated; a silk handkerchief of a yellow tone round his neck; and excellent grey ribbed stockings, knitted by Mrs. Poyser's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr. Poyser ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... upon him no power for being or doing what it required. It is like a looking-glass placed before a child to show him that his face is soiled, but having no power to cleanse that face. It was like a plumb- line applied to a leaning wall, which shows how far it deviates from the perpendicular, but which has no power to make it upright. Nay, it even comes to pass that in consequence of inbred sin, the law multiplies offences. It causes sin to ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... then, with all his freedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed to draw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on his paper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to the plumb-line. It enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in the other lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stability of a figure. Rules of art are, like this straight line, dead and powerless in themselves: they help ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... built work, especially in tracery. A thing may be theoretically and intentionally at a certain angle, but actually at quite a different one. If level is important, take it yourself with spirit-level and plumb-line. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... he had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of all feeling and thought. She knew he ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel—I prudently avoid names nearer home!—I am sure that to many of you, my hearers, these names are little more than reminders of as many curious personal ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... hanging from the knotted strings to the small of my back, and with difficulty refrained from crying. I had never been wretched just in that way before. Two imperative duties had met plump and face to face, with a shock that jarred all preconceived principles of belief and action out of plumb. Cousin Molly Belle had trusted me to keep her secret, and I saw no way of doing it except to lie outright and repeatedly. The sin lashed my conscience until I could have located in my corporeal frame the exact whereabouts of the uncomfortable possession. So absorbed was I by ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon. "They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat—had had it from a kitten. Brought it ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... of the level roof runs along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... in motion, and sees its resistless might in the passive wrecks that follow the uproar. And this from a piece of marble, cold, immovable, lifeless! Surely there is that in man, which the senses cannot reach, nor the plumb of ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... try it on, only once, Miss Sweetheart, that's all! She has all she can eat and can order it herself—lots of horses and riding—a gun—cricky, I only wish I had her chances! Think of it—just oblige me by thinking of it—secret passages to come and go by, night and day, right plumb in the wall under your nose, mysterious priests, Jesuits, Jacobites, and things. Why, it's nearly as good as Crusoe's ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Old Pete, as he fumbled with his straps about the patient burros, "are plumb pizen ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... observer's attention, and, indeed, fills him with amazement, as does their construction in general. What instruments of precision did a rude people possess who could raise such walls, angles, monoliths, true and plumb as the work of the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... expecting any day that the workers will take things over and he'll come into money—money the interests have kept him out of. He kind of licks his chops when he talks about it. Never heard him talk about his wife's share, though. Say, that brother of yours is making a plumb fool of himself!" ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... eternities! But by-and-by there is a kink. You find, that, though the line runs off so fast, it does not go down,—it only floats out. A current has caught it and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I call it a coup d'etat?" Arobin had put on his coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She told him it was, looking no higher than the tip of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... She did not say much, but she went her own way. She had gained a certain quiet decision and dignity which bewildered everybody. Her sisters had dimly realized that there was something about her out of plumb, as it were. Her nature had been warped to one side by one concentrated and unsatisfied desire. "Seems to me, sometimes, as if Sylvy was kind of queer," Hannah Berry often said. "I dunno but she's kinder turned on Richard Alger," Sarah would respond. Now she seemed suddenly to have ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... luck if you'd git plumb drownded, you white-livered son of misery. Whatever in Gawd A'mighty's world you was borned for certainly is more'n I can tell—and I your Maw at that, that ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... glanced from Mr. O'Rourke's leg, went plumb through the Bilkins mansion, and knocked over a small marble slab in the Old South ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... our children. Huh! We've moved five times since we was married. Now just as we got into a good country, where a woman could dry corn and put up jell, and where a man could raise some hogs, why, you wanted to move again—plumb out to Oregon! I tell you, Jesse Wingate, hogs is a blame sight better to tie to than buffalo! You talk like ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the coating was thin, they grounded the Callisto, and stepped out for the first time in several days. The air was so still that a small piece of paper released at a height of six feet sank slowly and went as straight as the string of a plumb-line. The sun was bisected by the line of the horizon, and appeared to be moving about them in a circle, with only its upper half visible. As Jupiter's northern hemisphere was passing through its autumnal equinox, they concluded they had ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... come, Before this same old Time shall strike me numb, To carry it out."—"Strange, this is!" said the other; "What mind shall plumb ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... made at all. Are any of you younger people old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... know whah Mahs Hudson libs? Dey's a turkey dah dat gibs Me a heap o' trouble. Some day Hudson g'ine to miss Dat owdashus fowl o' his; I's g'ine ober dah an' twis' 'At gobbler's nake plumb double. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... crackers and dropped my cigar into Vesuvius. I tell you he was worth four and eightpence, and the man was right when he said there wasn't his match in London. I doubt if there was his match anywhere for being plumb- full of red balls and green balls and blue balls and crimson stars and fizzlegigs and whole torrents of tiny crackers and chase-me- quicks, and when you about thought he was never going to stop ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... no man-of-war dared come anigh him." He swore gently and reminiscently as he went on to detail the recent severities of the Massachusetts government and the insecurity of buccaneers about the Virginia capes. "They do say, tho', as Cap'n Edward Teach, that they call Blackbeard, is plumb thick with all the magistrates and planters in Carolina, an' sails the seas as safe as if he had a fleet of twenty ships," said Job. "We sailed along with him for a spell last year, but him an' the old man couldn't ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an' thar eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET—they're plumb out o' reach o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't blame her jes' now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched Rufe and hung him, and she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done that, her old daddy wouldn't be in thar on his back nigh to death. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and in the United States in 1837-1839 and in England in 1864-1866, large houses and powerful institutions of credit had maintained a whole scaffolding of speculation which was already out of plumb, but still able to stand upright through the general effect of the parts which connected them, and in this unstable equilibrium it sufficed for a single one to detach itself in order to overthrow the whole edifice at a juncture at which it was ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... that you were a physician," said Rosalie, "but there's one place I got you plumb wrong. I thought it was business troubles. So the trouble's your heart and affections! It's that big-eyed blonde niece of Markham's, of course. Well, you ain't the first. The best way to bring the young men like a flock of blackbirds is to shut ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... antennae are constantly feeling, fumbling and exploring, superintending, as it were, the finishing touches given to the work. They are her instruments of precision; they represent the builder's compasses, square, level and plumb-line. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... fingers among the American soldiers in the crowd. French men and women, with their old world musical taste, would consider the musical gymnastics of the demented drummer in the orchestra, then survey the swaying Americans and come to the conclusion that the world had gone plumb to hell. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... pesterin' 'bout thet. Them young-uns 'druther sleep out'n in, any time. Ef I'd let 'em they'd grow up plumb wild. When yo've got worshed up come on right in the kitchen an' set by. Us Wattses is plain folks an' don't pile on no dog. We've et an' got through, but yo' take all the time yo're a mind to, an' me an' Microby Dandeline 'll set by an' yo' c'n tell us who yo' ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... identity between the dead man and his heirs was certainly much older than any form of Testament or phase of Testamentary jurisprudence. This indeed is the proper moment for suggesting a doubt which will press on us with greater force the further we plumb the depths of this subject,—whether wills would ever have come into being at all if it had not been for these remarkable ideas connected with universal succession. Testamentary law is the application of a principle which ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... covered with thick gold, was still untouched. Could not it, in this extremity, be peeled off, at least in part; under condition, of course, of its being replaced when times mended? The Abbot, starting plumb up, se erigens, answered: "Know ye for certain, that I will in nowise do this thing; nor is there any man who could force me to consent thereto. But I will open the doors of the Church: Let him that likes enter; let him that dares come ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... that it was pleasant to me to have the right to pay a woman's bills; I enjoyed seeing her garments lying about on my chairs. In time that exultation wore off. But I was not unhappy, I didn't expect much, I was always so sure that no woman could ever plumb the ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... Shaky, sullenly. "Mebbe young Dave Steele as come back from ther' with a hole in his head that left him plumb crazy ever since till he died, 'cos o' some racket he had wi' Jake—mebbe that's out of a dime fiction. Say, you git right to it, an' kep on sousin' whisky, Slum Ranks. You ken do that—you can't tell ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and when I looked in on him hopefully he ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... football match in the first part and the cricket match in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... To make Plumb-Porridge:—Take a leg and shin of beef to ten gallons of water, boil it very tender, and when the broth is strong, strain it out, wipe the pot, and put in the broth again; slice six penny-loaves thin, cutting ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... so fussy. When I have children I'm just going to leave them plumb alone. I don't care ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... foundation of stones or a series of stone piles, but if you use stones and expect your house to remain plumb where the winters are severe you must dig holes for them at least three feet deep in order to go below the frost-line. Fill these holes with broken stone, on top of which you can make your pile of stones to act as support for the sills; but the simplest ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... Hazlitt has cut his throat. He also incidentally regrets that he cannot accept an invitation to dine with Hume: "Cold bones of mutton and leather-roasted potatoes at Pimlico at ten must carry it away from a certain Turkey and contingent plumb-pudding at Montpelier at four (I always spell plumb-pudding with a b, p-l-u-m-b—) I think it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... need sharp looking after Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth Notion of private property in truth Only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas Opinions Out of plumb when they sit side by side Overestimate of our special individuality Pathological piety Perpetual insult to mediocrity Plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world Presumption in favor of any particular belief Pseudo-science Question ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... of the harbor they sircled to the right, or Westward, and Capt Clark knew they were trying to escape. they did not think the old Oregon was such a runer as she was a fighter, so we Just tailed on with them and giving them shot for shot. In about 20 minuts the first ship went on the Beach, plumb knocked out, and 15 minuts later the secon one went on the Beach, a short ways from the first. Then came the tug of war for we had to run to catch the Vizcaya and the Colon, but we catched them both. the Vizcaya was about 4000 yards ahead and the Colon was about 3 miles ahead, and the poor ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... the east side of the south transept, are considerably out of plumb, owing to the great weight of the lantern, and perhaps to the inferior material ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... rivers—Amazon, Orinoco, and Essequibo. Hillhouse and Schombergh describe the side of the mountain as composed of cliffs, fifteen hundred feet in height, of compact sandstone, as perpendicular as if erected with the plumb-line, and overhung in part with low shrubs. Though distant, they appear as if in dangerous proximity. Around are detached masses, apparently torn from those gigantic walls of nature; and every moment it seems as if one of them would block up the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Sam said it took a good eye and a steady arm and a good seat to manage the thing, and he enjoyed watchin' 'em. 'But,' says he, 'why they call the thing a t'u'nament is more'n I could make out. I stayed there a plumb hour, and I couldn't hear nor see anything that sounded ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... into conical forms, and built one upon another to a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a mountain; and the tout ensemble compose an enormous mass of the Lundus Helmonti, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in circumference, and what the Spaniards call two leagues in height. As it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the base of ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... truth has led me along many devious routes," Zircon continued. "I have tried, with some success and many failures, to plumb the mysteries of Nature. But while I have tried to make the business of our natural universe my own, I have never thrust my not-inconsiderable nose into the business of neighbors. However, this ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the Assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* Then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seer's words—a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the Lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits—till at last the whole people of Israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the Eternal. "There ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a rider of the range, plumb rough an' on-refined, An' wild an' keerless in my ways, like others of my kind; A reckless cuss in leather chaps, an' tanned an' blackened so You'd think I wuz a Greaser from the plains of Mexico. ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... to plumb the business these two had together in Egypt—in the Desert. For the Desert, he felt convinced, had brought them out. But here, though he constructed numerous explanations, another barrier stopped him. Because he knew. This woman was in touch with that ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... here, tropical nature's desire for a welter of life. And when they're too young to have developed the hard outer shell of experience, why, their womanhood is just naked to the searching, smirching tropical sun, and they go plumb crazy. Develop dual personalities. Lose their civilization. Want to go into the jungle, and so on. Thin white skin, like thinnest silk, and blue veins full of young red blood showing through. A fine spectacle, Payne; a natural princess among girls writhing in a struggle ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... in its infancy when I was born," he told Jessie. "And then came the telephone, and these here automobiles, and flying machines, and wireless telegraph, and now this. Why, ma'am, this radio beats the world! It does, plumb, for sure!" ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... got through. Twice I almost had reason to reverse my impression of the power of water. First the stern rose up in front of me, as if squaring off at the tops of the cliffs, then descended, until it seemed to be trying to plumb the depths of the river. The waves, rolling over me, almost knocked me out of the boat, I lost my hold on the oars and grabbed the sides of the boat; then, regaining the oars, I finished the run by pulling ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... three or four years ago," answered his cousin, who, as my old readers know, was a natural-born hunter and woodsman. "Got a deer right over yonder." And he pointed with his hand. "The one I hit plumb in the ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... mines, without striking a blow. Afterwards, continuing to follow the same army to certain other strongholds, his evil fortune would have it that he should be killed while attempting to measure certain heights at a difficult point; for when he had put his head out beyond the wall in order to let a plumb-line down, a priest who was with the enemy (who feared the genius of Cecca more than the might of the whole camp) discharged a catapult at him and fixed a great dart in his head, insomuch that the poor ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... Drury-Lane, will be performed The Lying Valet, and that Mr. Steevens, at the particular desire of some persons of quality, is to act the part of Justice Guttle; in which character he will devour twelve pounds of plumb cake at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... thoughts." And had Major Durward, honest fellow, realized the volcanic force of passion hidden behind the tense inscrutability of his wife's lovely face, he would have been utterly confounded. We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those who ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Shep let an apple core drop from his hand. Pop Lundy was looking up when the core hit him plumb ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... poor workman bear away! And many times when he doth nothing to it at all, yet when it is brought home again it is very fit and handsome; then must we put it on, then must the long seams of our hose be set by a plumb-line, then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us. I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman's locks, many times cut off, above or under the ears, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... and raised the heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was death—below, ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
