"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what is this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?— Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord,—quite an irregular thing; not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... being this evening, an enchanting creature of flame and fire. She said the most outrageous things at dinner, talking a lot of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away if any more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For an instant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winging lightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughter rose and fell around her. With butterfly touch she opened the cupboard of memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... 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 ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Close 'em, and I know I'll go to sleep an' have good dreams. And down in the middle of Morgantown is the buryin'-ground. I've ridden past it a thousand times an' watched a corner plot, where the grass grows quicker than it does anywheres else in the cemetery. Pierre, I'd die plumb easy if I knew I was goin' to sleep the rest of ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... fed up with her. But I'm like that: I just can't tell her so. I'm not brave enough to tell her to go plumb to hell. That's the way I am, see? When I like a woman, I get plain silly; and if she doesn't start something, I've not got the courage to do anything myself." He sighed. "There's Camilla at the ranch for instance.... Now, she's not much ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... door shut abruptly. Lena's too thin boots, out of plumb, suddenly slipped on a half-formed piece of ice. She made a desperate grab at the smooth surface of the window and then came ignominiously down—not wholly ignominiously, however, since her accident brought to her aid the man who was ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... sculpture of the facades and interiors of these buildings arrests the 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
... that'll match, in a box full o' tail-ends o' things. This'n 'd do, and that'n 'd do; but you can't put this'n and that'n together; and here's got to be square work, everything fittin' tight and hangin' plumb, or it'll be throwed back onto your hands, and all to be done over ag'in. I dunno when I've done so much head-work and to no purpose, follerin' here and guessin' there, and nosin' into everything that's past and gone; and so my opinion is, whether you like it or not, but never mind, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the stroke of an artist. He handled each brick as if it were porcelain, balanced it carefully in his hand, measured with his eye just the amount of mortar which it needed, and dropped the block into its bed, without staining its edge, without varying from the plumb line, by a stroke of hand-craft as true as the sculptor's. Toil gave ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... 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 ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the time of Christmass Plumb-porridge shall be thine, If thou wilt let my lady fair ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... when they prate of you and me, As the two gifts they want, Say Classic lore and Cookery Are things for which they pant; Believe me, my dear Heptarchy, They plumb profoundest Cant!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... soundings, depth of water, water, draught, submersion; plummet, sound, probe; sounding rod, sounding line; lead. bathymetry. [instrument to measure depth] sonar, side-looking sonar; bathometer^. V. be deep &c adj.; render deep &c adj.; deepen. plunge &c 310; sound, fathom, plumb, cast the lead, heave the lead, take soundings, make soundings; dig &c (excavate) 252. Adj. deep, deep seated; profound, sunk, buried; submerged &c 310; subaqueous, submarine, subterranean, subterraneous, subterrene^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... round-up had started; so Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen Ben Butler. To my discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked, "Why, there's nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, "That's all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me out! he's lying on me!" Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... over your house. I was on my way to pay you a visit, but I didn't intend to do it in just this way," and the birdman smiled grimly. "I didn't see your wireless aerials until I was plumb into them, and then it was too late. I hope I haven't ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... you picked me up when I was down and out. You passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and I want you to know it when I'm telling you the things ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me. She did that, Alan—fed me. When the lightning fired up, I could see her eyes shining and her lips smilin' as if all that hell about us made her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how happy she was that I was goin' her way. Her way, mind you, Alan, not mine. And that's just the way ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... you was to get a leg over a bronc', and the bronc' should find it out—Say, I've got a li'l' blue horse out on my place in the Antelopes that'd plumb give his ears to have you try it; he shore would. You take my advice, and don't you go huntin' a job night-ridin' in the greasewood ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... be blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air. There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin life by setting ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cleaner, till the last polishes him as smooth as a yearling baby. Having thus reached the lower end of the table, there are a quantity of hooks fitted to strong wooden arms, which revolve round a stout pillar, and which, in describing the circle, plumb the lower end of the table. On these piggy is hooked, and the operation of cutting open and cleansing is performed—at the rate of three a minute—by operators steeped in blood, and standing in an ocean of the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... like a 'crazy Jane,'" cried the grandmother, with sudden exasperation. "Yer white sun-bonnet plumb off an' a-hangin' down on yer shoulders, an' yer yaller hair all a-blowsin' at loose eends, stiddier bein' plaited up stiff an' tight an' personable, an' yer face burned pink in the sun, stiddier like yer skin ginerally looks, fine an' white ez a ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a cur'osity, ain't it?" said Constant Hite complacently, as they jogged along. "When the last gover'mint survey fellers went through hyar, they war plumb smitten by the ole 'oman, an' spent cornsider'ble time a-stare-gazin' at her. They 'lowed they hed never seen ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Willis as he turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you're plumb crazy. But all the same—Well, it's got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you're meat just the same, an', by the great Geewhillikins! you'll be dead meat, an' digested meat at that, before you're an hour older, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... he impressed upon me with an intention I was yet to plumb. "Dole," he exclaimed, "it's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... must have been at fourteen; I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner, and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a mountain of plumb-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... best 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 ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... well-situated—on the side of the promenade nearest to the bath. Diphilus had placed the columns out of the perpendicular, and not opposite each other. These, of course, he shall take down; he will learn some day to use the plumb-line and measure. On the whole, I hope Diphilus's work will be completed in a few months: for Caesius, who was with me at the time, keeps a very sharp look-out ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a man in a red tie do it for him, and after six weeks came to the conclusion that a strike is a game that more than one can play at. He strikes now only in his holidays. He never now forgets his tools or leaves taps running. He does a good day's plumb for a good day's pay. And he sings while he works. Strange to say that little tooth of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... New York is a plumb dead town; but I'll go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... painters drew back, 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, rising ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... a p'int to always stay and see the plumb finish of a thing," explained Yancy. "Otherwise you're frequently put out by hearing of what happened after you left; I can stand anything but disapp'intment of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... real bird, talkin'. An old gobbler is tellin' his hens that day is comin'. It's a plumb waste on his part, because they know it theirselves, but he must jest let 'em know what a smart bird he is. An' it's that pride uv his that will be his ruin. Git up, Paul; we must have him an' one uv his ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... shown by Fig. 13. As previously noted, this foundation face had been built very carefully to line. The back end of the form, of course, was blocked tightly against the end of the previously finished section, and the top was made plumb by the adjusting screwjacks shown in Fig. 16, B. At first these screws were -in., but they were afterward changed to 1-in. The only points which it was necessary for the alignment corps to give in setting these forms was a grade at each of the front ends for the top ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... "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' ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... wise—which God knows we are not— (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours—these delicate spinal clusters— Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, which scorned ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... all plumb crazy, and a fool and his money is soon parted—this being a saying he must have learned at the age of three and has never forgotten a word of—and he comes up to the house to see me. Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but he said ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... best building the Ecole des Beaux Arts can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blows over its windy plains, has managed ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... advised his frantic parents to throw water in his face. Chip told her exactly what he had told the Old Man, in exactly the same tone; so the Countess retreated, declaring that he wouldn't be let to act that way if he was her kid, and that he was plumb everlastingly spoiled. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... easily answered," he said. "For the miracle to happen, in fact, the sieve must be held as level as the top rail of a mason's T-shaped plumb-line frame, and as steady as if clamped in a vise. For a woman to carry water in a sieve the weather must be dry, for in damp weather the water would run through the meshes, even if the threads or wires were just oily enough and not too oily, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... again—"'cause he ain't got much appetite. But when he's eatin' good his legs is jest great. Why, there ain't no other dog in Golconda that's got as strong legs as Baldy when he's—when he's eatin' good," he repeated hastily. "An' Golconda's plumb ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... speaker's smiling face and twinkling eyes and laughed. "Well, yo're the foreman if you owns that badge," grinned Hopalong, cheerfully. "We don't need no guns, nohow, in this town, we don't. Plumb forgot we was toting them. But mebby you can tell us where lawyer Jeremiah T. Jones ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... of a lusher. One Saturday night, when he come home from the village in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket that was setting on his front steps. Then he got up and drawed back his foot unsteady to kick it plumb into kingdom come. Jest then he hearn Elmira opening the door behind him, and he turned his head sudden. But the kick was already started into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it. And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... he said, "I plumb forgot what I come over here for. They's goin' to be a dance over to town, an' I come to tell you about it. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... darned if the changeablest one ain't the kind to hold a feller longest. But it's h—l. I was married onct. Not any more for mine! A pal I had used to say thet whiskey riled him, thet rattlesnake pisen het up his blood some, but it took a woman to make him plumb bad. D—n if it ain't so. When there's a woman around there's ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... struck the shelter of the camp he was again in pursuit. His blood leaped a little excitedly when he found that Scottie Deane's trail was now almost as straight as a plumb-line and that the sledge no longer became entangled in hidden windfalls and brush. It was proof that it was light when Deane and Isobel had left their camp. Isobel was walking now, and their sledge was traveling faster. Billy encouraged his own pace, ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... at that letter it sure made me plumb mad. And I looked at it a hundred times a day and come near tearing it up every time. But I ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... with satisfaction when he looked up at the rear facade of Miller's Folly. Near the edge of the roof, was a chimney. A plumb line dropped from the center of the chimney would drop about three feet to the right of the only window in ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... had seen in the wet harvest of 1775 so much corn wasted that he 'was ambitious to set the patriotic example' of Sunday labour. One Sunday he 'promised every man who would work two shillings, as much roast beef and plumb pudding as he would eat, with as much ale as it might be fit for him to drink.' Nine men and three boys came. In a note in the edition of 1799, he says:—'The Author has been informed that an old law exists (mentioned by Dugdale), which tolerates ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... me," said the Doctor, leaning over to knock the ashes from his pipe. "I'm plumb certain she cares for you, and just as certain that you're making a mistake by running away." He stood up and scowled fiercely at the moon. "Well, I must be off. I'll see you to-morrow. You're not going ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... told him to stay the fore topmast plumb. He accordingly came forward, turned all hands to, with tackles on the stays and backstays, coming up with the seizings, hauling here, belaying there, and full of business, standing between the knight-heads to sight the mast,— ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... explained the driver in his slow way, "hit was like this. That there saloon were plumb full of sailor-men all exceptin' you an' me. I was a heap admirin' of the way you handled that big hombre what opened the meetin' and also his two pardners, who aimed to back his play. Hit was sure pretty ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state,—do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a right smart piece to whar I live. This here's grindin' day, an' I've been t' mill over on Fall Creek; the Matthews mill hit is. Hit'll be plumb dark 'gin I git home. I 'lowed you was a stranger in these parts soon 's I ketched sight of you. What might YER name ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... said Bud, bending his head. "Now, ain't thet a nice way to treat a feller? It made me plumb mad, it did." ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... was just 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
... scene before him slipped out of plumb. The sky and the lawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. The whirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of a lonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and the waves washing ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... fancy sought 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 ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... his haid an' neck down the chimney that way, he get 'em all black with soot. But he don't mind that. No, Sah, he don' mind that a bit. Fact is, he don' notice it. He so curious he don' notice anything, an' pretty soon he plumb fo'get where he is an' that he is listening where he have no business. He plumb fo'get all about this, an' he holler down that chimney. Yes, Sah, he holler ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... come up on the stoop and keep me company," continued Mrs. Clover; "I'm plumb tired of sitting round all alone. Moon'll be up before long; it's a purty sight, shining ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... they watched him picking out the mortar from between two big stones with his knife. In five minutes he had it loose, and, grasping it with both hands, he pushed it close to the edge, and then peeped over. The soldier was some yards from the plumb. Jack looked down at the shrubbery for guidance. The smith raised his hand to signify patience. Jack waited. Breathlessly the ambushed party watched the two soldiers, who were now talking together. Would they never return to their doors? ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... own, yet linked with it by Baroudi. She hated this woman, yet with her hatred was mingled a subtle admiration, a desire to touch this painted toy that gave him pleasure, a longing to prove its attraction, to plumb the depth of its fascination, to learn from it a lesson in the strange lore of the East. She came close up to the woman and stood ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... or wood, such structures may have rafters, sills, and main beams so decayed that new ones must be added. The foundation may need rebuilding and door and window frames may be so weathered that they also must be replaced. Beware of a house where floors slope and side walls are out of plumb. This means extensive shoring which is slow ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... country has changed a lot in a hundred years and I don't know just where we are. I'm only guessing, doing dead reckoning on our motor speed. But we ought to see the place I've got in mind, before plumb dark." ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... 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
... can you conceive any one copying out and posting one of these letters, or even taking it as the basis for composition? You cannot. That shows how little you know of your fellow-creatures. Not you nor I can plumb the abyss at the bottom of which such humility is possible. Nevertheless, as we know by that great and constant 'demand,' there the abyss is, and there multitudes are at the bottom of it. Let's peer down... No, all is darkness. But faintly, if we ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... with a laugh. "That was saying something, Jimmy. You surely hit the bull's-eye plumb in the center that time. Guess that will hold ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... pleasure of an hour with his little boy by an added gentleness to his wife—perhaps a bunch of violets, bought at the florist's on Maple Street where Lily got her flower pots or her bulbs. He was very lonely, and increasingly bothered about Jacky. ... "Lily will let him go plumb to hell. But I put him on the toboggan! ... I'm responsible for his existence," he used to think. And sometimes he repeated the words he had spoken that night when he had felt the first stir of fatherhood, "My ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Current is excessively Swift about this place N. 80 W. 3 ms to a pt. on S. S. passed a Isd. Called Sheeco Islan wind from the N W Camped in a Prarie on the L. S., Capt Lewis & my Self Walked out 3 ms. found the Country roleing open & rich, with plenty of water, great qts of Deer I discovered a Plumb which grows on bushes the hight of Hasle, those plumbs are in great numbers, the bushes beare Verry full, about double the Sise of the wild plumb Called the Osage Plumb & am ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... love, because the life in them, 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 ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... seen objections, you never would have caught Mrs. Van Astrachan going; for she was one of your full-blooded women, who never in her life engaged to do a thing she didn't mean to do: and having promised in the marriage service to obey her husband, she obeyed him plumb, with the air of a person who is fulfilling the prophecies; though her chances in this way were very small, as Mr. Van Astrachan generally called her "ma," and obeyed all her orders with a stolid precision quite edifying to behold. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fringe of it; but to a landsman sufficiently daunting while it lasted. Late in the afternoon I thrust my head up for a look around. We were weltering along in horrible forty-foot seas, over which our bulwarks tilted at times until from the companion hatchway I stared plumb into the grey sliding chasms, and felt like a fly on the wall. The Lady Nepean hurled her old timbers along under close-reefed maintopsail, and a rag of a foresail only. The captain had housed topgallant masts and lashed his guns ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... essays, and narratives of travel. Robert Mackenzie (b. 1845), President of San Francisco Theological Seminary, was born in Cromarty. Robert McIntyre (b. 1851), Methodist Episcopal Bishop of California, was born in Selkirk. Joseph Plumb Cochran, Medical Missionary to Persia, the "Hakim Sahib" of the natives, was grandson of a Scot. John Alexander Dowie (1848-1907), founder of the so-called "Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion," was born in Edinburgh. Mary M. Baker Glover Eddy (1821-1910), claimed ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... mind. Was she a coquette? The balance between the evidence that she did love him and that she did not was so nicely struck, that his opinion had no stability. She had let him put his hand upon hers; she had allowed her gaze to drop plumb into the depths of his—his into hers—three or four times; her manner had been very free with regard to the basin and towel; she had appeared vexed at the mention of Shiner. On the other hand, she had driven him about the house like a quiet dog or cat, said Shiner ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... wild bergamot's (q.v.), the bee balm belies its name, for, however frequently bees may come about for nectar when it rises high, only long-tongued bumblebees could get enough to compensate for their trouble. Butterflies, which suck with their wings in motion plumb the depths. The ruby-throated hummingbird - to which the Brazilian salvia of our gardens has adapted itself - flashes about these whorls of Indian plumes just as frequently - of course transferring pollen ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a man, you'll be plumb spoiled for your little old East." Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept the ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... desired him to be and do, and what he ought to be and do, but which conferred 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 abound. We find even in most children a disposition ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... proudly did not deny. "Dodrabbit ye, Pharo!" said our fond host, giving him another whirl, "yer hair 's pretty plumb 'fore, but she 's raked devilish well aft. Ye can't make no stand fer yerself! Ye're hungry, Pharo; ye're ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... which had seen better days. The big lumber-mill that had once kept it busy was burned down, and the business had slipped away to the prosperous neighbouring town of Machias. There were nice old houses with tall pillars in front of them, now falling into decay and slipping out of plumb. There were shops that had evidently been closed for years, with not even a sign "To Let" in the windows. Our dinner was cooked for us in a boarding-house, by a brisk young lady of about fifteen years, whose mother had gone to Machias for a day in the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... of this chaste, undecorated surface seems to me to be due to the fact that the wall was built under the eye of a master mason who knew not the straight edge, the plumb rule, or the square. He had no instruments of precision, so he had to depend on his eye. He had a good eye, an artistic eye, an eye for symmetry and beauty of form. His product received none of the harshness of mechanical and mathematical accuracy. The apparently ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... to be tied up on the Two-Bar and muzzled, for you're plumb mad, McNair! It's just that kind of firebrand talk that's hurting our cause. The farmers have got enough enemies now, God knows, without making a lot of new ones. Doggone your hide, Mac, what're you trying to do?—Stir up another rebellion like ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a boy if you've a mind to," he interrupted; "and maybe the Hatburns'll kill me—and maybe they won't. But there's no one can hurt Allen like that and go plumb, sniggering free; not while I can move ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... carried on beds, mothers luggin' babies and leadin' children. My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel! They're lyin' out over there in the slough now, as many as ain't gone to glory. It made me jest plumb murderous!" ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... slowly and inexorably onward. Then came three resounding crashes as the bombs dropped. One got the corner of a hangar and demolished it. Another burst into the open and did no damage, but the third fell plumb between two machines waiting to go up and left ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... the shootings forth of the affliction (now going out for the offence committed) be not too strong, too heavy, too hot, and of too long a time admitted to distress and break the spirit of this Christian; and if it be, he applies himself to the rule to measure it by, he fetches forth his plumb line, and sets it in the midst of his people, (Amos 7:8; Isa 28:17), and lays righteousness to that, and will not suffer it to go further; but according to the quality of the transgression, and according to the terms, bounds, limits, and measures which the law of grace admits, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Lieutenant Flipper is the first colored graduate of West Point. He went to the institution from Georgia, and graduated last June, fifty-fifth in a class of seventy-six. There is a preponderance of white blood in his veins, and in general appearance, except for color, he is a perfect image of Senator Plumb of Kansas. He reports that since he has struck the South he has been treated like a gentleman, which is something different from his experience in the North. He made the acquaintance of Senator Maxey at West Point— ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... The Address stated that 'This want of superior efficiency of the Zenith Tube (which, considered in reference to the expectations that had been formed of its accuracy, must be estimated as a positive failure) is probably due to two circumstances. One is, the use of a plumb-line; which appears to be affected with various ill-understood causes of unsteadiness. The other is, the insuperable difficulty of ventilating the room in which the instrument is mounted.'—On December 20th I circulated an Address, proposing ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the water, intent on dipping it, but the nymphs all clung to his hand, for love of the Argive lad had fluttered the soft hearts of all of them. Then down he sank into the black water, headlong all, as when a star shoots flaming from the sky, plumb in the deep it falls, and a mate shouts out to the seamen, 'Up with the gear, my lads, the wind is ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... seen the family, and on reaching the ranch, my father gruffly noticed me, but my mother and sisters received me with open arms. I was a mature man of twenty-eight at the time, mustached, and stood six feet to a plumb-line. The family were cognizant of my checkered past, and although never mentioning it, it seemed as if my misfortunes had elevated me in the estimation of my sisters, while to my mother I ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... George. But I don't mean to go into 'em. All that's dead and gone. There was a pack of fellows then on my shoulders—I was plumb tired of 'em. I had to get rid of—I did get rid of 'em—and you, too. I knew you were inquiring after me, and I didn't want inquiries. They didn't suit me. You may conclude what you like. I tell you those times are dead and gone. But it seemed to me that Robert Anderson was best put away for ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... warned Dextry. "I've seen men get plumb drunk on mountain air. Don't expand too strong in one spot." He went back abruptly to his pipe, its villanous fumes promptly averting any danger of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and the varietie: and finallie the ficklenesse and the follie that is in all degrees: insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancie of attire."[50] Each one aimed at making the best appearance. The long seams of men's hose were set by a plumb line, and beards were cut to suit the face, "If a man have a leane and streight face, a Marquess Ottons cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter-like, a long, slender beard will make it seeme the narrower." "Some lustie courtiers also, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Mayberry, as she watched the expedition wend its way down the white Road in the direction of the Bolivar pike, "the way the Deacon do love the children is plumb beautiful, and sad some too. I don't know what he would do without Jem or they without him. Seeing 'em together reminds me of that scraggy, old snowball bush in full bloom, leaning down to the little Stars of Bethlehem reaching up to it. What that good man have been to me only ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... bays heard him shout. "I give him one plumb in the eye! A fine shot! And we hit him besides with the boat. I guess he's ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... 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. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... was Edward Briscoe! What a pity, sure! It war a plumb mistake, Copenny," plained an elder man, whose rifle had not been fired. There was a regretful cadence in his voice akin to tears, and he held his long, ragged red beard in one hand as he peered ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... 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
... its shorter side, and upon any length of line which may be taken on the tracing-board as a base for elevation, an Equilateral Triangle will be found whose sides are of course all equal and therefore known, as they are equal to the base, and whose line joining apex to centre of base is a true Plumb line, forming at its foot the perfect right angle, so important in the laying of every stone ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... permanent government ownership and management. The railway labor organizations, that is, the four brotherhoods of the train service personnel and the twelve unions united in the Railway Employes' Department of the American Federation of Labor, came before Congress with the so-called Plumb Plan, worked out by Glenn E. Plumb, the legal representative of the brotherhoods. This plan proposed that the government take over the railways for good, paying a compensation to the owners, and then entrust their operation ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... 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)
... said Bud, as 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
... I wouldn't be ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico. But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do with me as you will; grab your ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... to the right from his house, going west. It's an unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... rip in the back of the shoulder where the padding is sticking through and your cuffs are frayed and your necktie's got a hole worn plumb through it where the wing of your collar rubs. You don't look like a tramp, of course, because you look clean and decent. It would be all right if you had to be like that. Only it's all so darned unnecessary. You could make good money if you'd only live like a regular person. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the eye is also being trained. The position of the image on the retina comes to stand for direction, and the eye finally develops so remarkable a power of perceiving direction that a picture hung a half inch out of plumb is a source of annoyance. The ear develops some skill in the perception of direction, but is ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... away from me: she scorns me: she is lost to me. Life without honour is the life of swine. Union without love is the yoke of savage beasts. O me miserable! Can the heavens themselves plumb the depth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me this, general, ter take ter you, an' she would hev it, though I told her she'd no business ter be botherin' yer with sich plumb foolishness." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... more blowing and care to fuse the metal than it did to melt lead or pewter. But he succeeded at last, melting down all his spare change to make the small, shining bullet. This was rammed down his gun, a deliberate aim taken, and Dick announced that it had struck the mark plumb in the ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... visitor," chuckled Jerry. "But, if she was scar't, she warn't plumb stunned in her tracks—no, sir! She gave a leap for the door and she swung it shut right against Mr. B'ar's nose. And then ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... the hands came along with a twenty-five-foot ladder, heavily weighted at the bottom with pigs of iron ballast, which Cunningham had caused to be constructed; and this they launched over the side, allowing it to hang plumb up and down, well secured, just abaft the main rigging. This was for Cunningham to descend by; and upon looking over the side I saw that it reached to within about four feet of the surface of the oyster bed. The getting of Cunningham into his suit, and ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... bullet straight as a plumb line an' quick as lightnin'," he had said to Preston. "It's as nat'ral fer him as drawin' his breath. That ere chap may git bored 'fore he has time to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... Who shall plumb the depth of the bitterness in this old man's heart, as he lay among his pillows, his head moving feebly from side to side, his attenuated fingers plucking at the coverlet, his tongue stealing slowly along his cracked and burning lips. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... 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. I never learnt to say a prayer, an' guess my style o' talk, ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... more ways than one, for I could not leave the ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute before closing it with ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... not 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 too. I ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... happiness. "It's ours—yours! And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I didn't tell you how well we're doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn't know us. She thought I was plumb nutty, at first!" ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... rose hurriedly when the plumb line figure of her neighbour appeared, ushered in by her husband, and received her with a somewhat embarrassed empressement, arising from the consciousness of goodwill disturbed by the fear of imputed ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... them two gals like a hot corn pone. He'd take Nella-Rose 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 act like the ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... of knowledge, and then to study the art and science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All we can do is to define clearly the true idea of the Teachers' ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... all the warmer for a temporary state of winter. To such do I address myself: not presumptuously imagining that I can satisfy by my poor thoughts all the doubts, cavils and objections of minds so keen and curious; not affecting to sail well among the shoals of metaphysics, nor to plumb unerringly the deeper gulphs of reason; but asking them for awhile to bear with me and hear me to the end patiently; with me, convinced of what ([Greek: kat' exochen]) is Truth, by far surer and stronger arguments than any of the less considerations here expounded as auxiliary thereto; to bear ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... And,—what is completely analogous,—in Amos vii. 1-3, the prophet beholds the approaching divine judgment under the image of a swarm of locusts, just as, in ver. 4, under that of a fire, and in ver. 7, under that of a plumb-line. All these three images are in substance identical; their meaning is expressed in ver. 9 by the words: "The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be destroyed." The locusts denote ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... around and gather up their guns," said Pringle. "Pick out one for yourself. I left yours where I threw it when I picked it out of your belt. I meant to knock you out, Chris—there wasn't any other way; but I didn't mean to plumb kill you. You hit your head on a rock when you fell. It wouldn't have done any good to have got the drop on you. You had made up your mind not to surrender. You would have shot anyhow; and, of course, I couldn't ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... 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 ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Horn," interrupted Clayton. "Poe was plumb drunk! It is the infernal corn whiskey he drinks that puts the devil in him. It may be he can't get anything else, but it's a damnable concoction all the same. Kennedy has about given him up—told me so yesterday, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 landed ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... yourself between my knees and lie still. Lie on me with a hot, plumb, live weight, heavy as a stone, passive, ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... the bartender, "an' we could of had a bank, too, but we don't want none. If you want a town to go plumb to hell just you start up a bank. Then everyone runs an' sticks their money in an' don't spend none, an' business stops an' the town's gone plumb ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed this extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... "Mr. Clemens, you can start at the front door and you can go plumb to the upper gate and tread on one of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... resolution to submit to the State Legislatures 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... manor-house, where they no longer ate snails, they were quite extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the mastery over them—it was a whole forest of burdocks. Here and there stood an apple and a plumb-tree, or else one never would have thought that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two last ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... little conference, an impromptu affair, at the mess the morning after the alarm of fire. Willett stock had been running down before that episode, and went "plumb out of sight" for several hours. It was held by Bonner, Bucketts, Briggs and Strong a most womanish thing on his part to have raised such a row and then "wilted." It was Bentley, the most disgusted man ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... glory nothing but the beams of gold; The first young lord, which in the mall you meet, Shall match the veriest huncks in Lombard-street, From rescu'd candles' ends, who rais'd a sum, And starves to join a penny to a plumb. A beardless miser! 'tis a guilt unknown To former times, a scandal all our own. Of ardent lovers, the true modern band Will mortgage Celia to redeem their land. For love, young, noble, rich, Castalio dies: Name but the fair, love ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... "Plumb locoed," Bill described the excited seekers. "The government's charging $2.50 to $4.00 an acre for that land. I drive 'em right over vacant homesteads just as good for $1.25. Think ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Guildhall, is curiously similar in its interior, having only a nave and aisles. The stone pillars are so slight that they are scarcely of much greater diameter than the wooden ones in the civic structure, and some of them are perilously out of plumb. There is much old glass in ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... quiet, and I see that bamboo sticking in her, with that hen squatting on it. 'Queer!' says I. And just as Billy here was letting her have it, the hen gives a squawk and comes flopping aboard; and Billy lets her have it, and Dick here lets her have it, and she goes plumb down sudden. Then up she comes and starts, like she was going to see her Ma and knew her own mind, and up this channel she comes, and runs aground foolish. I never see a whale act so foolish. Thought she might be a friend of yours," says he, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... well plumb full of nitroglycerin in your back yard; suppose there was a forest fire comin' your way from all sides; would you like to have people talk about the nitroglycerin and that forest fire meeting? Even the talk would give you chills. That's the way it is with Pierre and McGurk. When they ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... into a bunch of them rustlers that Macdonald he'd fetched over there, and two more of our men was killed. It looks like a body's got to fight night and day for his rights now, since them nesters begun to come in here. Well, we was here first, and Saul says we'll be here last. But I think it's plumb scan'lous the way them rustlers bunches together and fights. They never was known to do it before, and they wouldn't do it now if it wasn't ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... Carolyn June Dixon and Chaperon: Sorry, but there's an epidemic of smallpox at the Quarter Circle KT and you can't come. Chuck is dying with it. Old Heck's plumb prostrated, Bert is already broke out, Pedro is starting to and Skinny Rawlins and the Ramblin' Kid are just barely able to be up. I love you too much to want you to catch it. Please go back to Hartville and give my regards to your pa and don't expose yourself. Answer by ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... pole of hardwood is fixed vertically in the ground; it is carefully adjusted with the aid of plumb lines, and the possibility of its sinking deeper into the earth is prevented by passing its lower end through a hole in a board laid horizontally on the ground, its surface flush with the surface of the ground ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... 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 fatal ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... yo' quit 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' be, ef yo're ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... first went to wait upon his mother's friends, he found our old acquaintance, Mr. Draper, of the Temple, sedulous in his attentions to her; and the lawyer, who was married, told Mr. Warrington to look out, as the young lady had a plumb to her fortune. Mr. Drabshaw, a young Quaker gentleman, and nephew of Mr. Trail, Madam Esmond's Bristol agent, was also in constant attendance upon the young lady, and in dreadful alarm and suspicion when Mr. Warrington first made his appearance. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... got to looking 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 them to go ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... corresponding to the old conception of patron saints. If they did there would be a Patron Saint of Plumbers, and this would alone be a revolution, for it would force the individual craftsman to believe that there was once a perfect being who did actually plumb. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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
... and prepared another strip, humbly and without any attempt at style. This time, too, I did not consider the line of the ceiling, but conformed to the vertical edge of Westbury's final strip, allowing my loose section to dangle like a plumb-line several moments before permitting it to get its death-grip on the wall. I will not say that this second attempt was an entire success, but it was a step in that direction. With a little smudging, a slight wrinkle or two, and a small torn place, it would do, and I was really quite pleased ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of appreciation, believe me. But I've a young lady here who is 'plumb crazy' over posies and, coming along on the steamer, I promised her a glimpse of some of Yarmouth's garden 'cosy corners.' I know none lovelier than your own; and as for your window-plants—I'm afraid if we don't take her away from temptation ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... household use. Often, the forge and the anvil, with tools for rough iron working, were added to the equipment of the farm. In those days, farming required a knowledge of the use of tools; the square, the level, the plumb-bob; the hammer, the saw and the plane; were as necessary to the farmer, as they were to ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... was up here 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
... inches by 8 inches, halved at the ends or corners, and nailed together with large nails. Having laid the sills upon the foundation, the next thing in order is to put up the studding. Use 4 by 4 studs for corners and door posts, or spike two 2 by 4 studs together, stand them up, set them plumb, and with stay laths secure them in position. Set up the intermediate studs, which are 2 by 4 inches, and 16 inches between centres, toe or nail them diagonally to the sill. Then put in the floor joists for first floor, each joist to be placed alongside each stud, and nailed to it and ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... confirm the impression that the drawing was made after, but not by Bewick. In the cuts scattered throughout the text the same difference in execution and portrayal of the little schoolmistress is noticeable. Margery, upon her rounds to teach the farmers' children to spell such words as "plumb-pudding" "(and who can suppose a better?)," presents her full face in the Newbery edition, and but a three-quarter ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him. A square in the floor opened as the trap was flapped back upon its hinges, and through the opening the haltered form shot straight downward to bring up with a great jerk, and after that to dangle like a plumb-bob on a string. Under the quick strain the gallows-arm creaked and whined; in the silence which followed the hangman was heard to exhale his breath in a vast puff of relief. His hand went up to his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... ranch, and she was scared of the thunder and lightning. That's every word of sense I could get outa her. She ain't altogether ignorant—she knows how to climb on a horse, anyway, and she kicked about having to ride sideways on account of her skirts. She was plumb out of her head, and talked wild, but she handled her reins like a rider. And she never mentioned Bob, nor anybody else excepting some fellow she called Charlie. She thought I was him, but she only talked to me friendly. She didn't pull any love ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the Age of Reason—a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down of the pauses, and at the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... longshoreman. There was no more sleep, though no more was wanted. By putting out my hand to the table I managed to keep where I was, even when, in those moments of greatest insecurity, the screw was roaring in mid-air. Our fascinating hanging lamp would perform the impossible, hanging acutely out of plumb; and then, when I was watching this miracle, rattle its chain and hang the other way. A regiment of boots on the floor—I suppose it was boots—would tramp to one corner, remain quiet for a while, and then clatter elsewhere in ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... but scolded feebly, as if worn with his long trip. "W'y d' y' fret a man 'fore he c'n git down an' into th' house?" he demanded. "Ah'm plumb fruz t' ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates |
