"Shears" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the oath. They went one by one to kiss the cross and salute the usurper. After them came the garrison soldiers. The company's tailor, armed with his great blunt-pointed shears, cut off their queues; they shook their heads and kissed the hand of Pougatcheff, who declared them pardoned and received into his troops. This lasted for nearly three hours. At last Pougatcheff rose from his arm-chair and went down the steps, followed by his chiefs. A white ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... also, with a buck or stand, if wood is burned), a hammer, a tack-hammer, a mallet, three or four gimlets and bradawls of different sizes, two screw-drivers, a chisel, a small plane, one or two jack-knives, a pair of large scissors or shears, and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... watches her as she trims and arranges the flowers.] Awfully long fingers you have! Wish I was a rose, or a ring, or a pair of shears! I say, d'you ever notice what a devil of a fellow I am for originality, what? [Unlike JOHN, is evidently impressed by her.] You've got a delicate little den up here! Not so much low livin' and high thinkin', as low lights and no thinkin' at ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... Patty had said, there was a luxuriant growth of goldenrod in many parts of the island. Patty had brought a pair of garden shears, and by setting to work vigorously, they soon had as much ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... a clear sky paling to green at the horizon. A still cold falls upon the world, and I feel that it is the end. Shears in hand, I cut everything I can—nasturtiums down to the ground,—leaves, buds, and all,—feathery sprays of cosmos, asters by the armful. Those last bouquets that I bring into the house are always the most beautiful, for I do not have to save buds for later cutting. There ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... the sunny side of the house; the auctioneer, at the window, was selling pots and candles and pruning-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt somehow curiously aloof, and almost like an intruder, in this crowd of people, all of whom had known each other for long years in Asquam. They shouted pleasantries across intervening heads, and roared as one when somebody called "'Lisha" bought an ancient ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... shears were then rigged up over the hold, on which a running tackle with blocks and falls was rigged; when, after several puncheons of rum had been hoisted out, it was found that the lover tier of the cargo had lurched over at the ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Guayaquil of an immense size, formed of logs as large as a frigate's foremast. These are intended for conveying goods to Paita, and other places along-shore. The balsa generally carries only one large sail, which is hoisted to what we call a pair of shears, formed by two poles crossing at the top, where they are lashed together. It is obvious that it would be difficult to step a mast securely to a raft in the manner it is done in a ship. It is truly astonishing to see how fast these singular ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... went yesterday; My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee, Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree, As girls do, any more: it only may Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears, Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral-shears Would take this first, but Love is justified,— Take it thou,—finding pure, from all those years, The kiss my mother left ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Nelson, a big boat from Pittsburg was there with a big cargo, mostly of hardware—nails pretty much. There were several steamers that had come from down the Ohio. When the ice shut in, it cut the "Arcola" in two just as if it was a pair of shears and she a paper boat. She sank at once. It shoved the "Falls of St. Anthony" a good sized steamer way out of the water on the niggerheads. The "Pioneer" sank. It broke the wheels of the "Nelson" and another boat and put them out ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... first evening; for when he put on his grandfather's coat, his mother planned a long while to see if there was not some way by which she could make it look better. Once she took the shears and was going to cut off the tail, but Paul stopped her. "I don't want ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... previously, hangs over their heads in balls. When a row of knots is finished, it is pressed down to the underlying woof by a long and heavy comb with metal teeth. Then the tufts are clipped close with shears, to make the pile. In the finer rugs there are seldom more than two, or at the most three, threads between every two rows of knots, but in the coarser kinds there are more threads. In many districts every family possesses a loom, and it is generally small ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... the station hands are cowed into touching their hats and saying "Sir." Also stations are of all sizes, and the man who is considered quite a big squatter in the settled districts is thought small potatoes by the magnate "out back," who shears a hundred and fifty thousand sheep, and has an ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... white flame, seemingly as solid as a blade of metal, spurted for the length of a foot from the tool's tip. Arlok began cutting the plate with the flame, the blade shearing through the heavy metal as easily as a hot knife shears ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... dirty work which is enveloped in white kid? What Prometheus was to the physical, Stultz is to the moral man—the one made human beings out of clay, the other cuts characters out of broad-cloth. Gentility is, with us, a thing of the goose and shears; and nobility an attribute—not of the mind, but (supreme civilisation!) of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... of the old ewes—no ewes are sold but such as are old—go to England where a lamb or two is got from them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves breeders, and are kept till they are three years old—"three shears" as they are technically called—and sold fat into the south country. There they get what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells them as "prime ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... this time was very different from that of the boy who, less than a year before, had left the old chateau of his fathers with tear-stained cheeks. His long curls had fallen under the shears, and his closely cropped hair showed to advantage his well-formed head. He was tall for his age, his muscles had hardened with constant exercise, and his face, neck, and hands were tanned to a ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... bliss seem sad besides what we know to be the truth. Here, too, lived the three Fates, always spinning the threads of men's lives; Clotho held the distaff, Lachesis drew out the thread, and Atropos with her shears cut it off when the man was to die. And, though Jupiter was mighty, nothing could happen but by Fate, which ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a hammer with which to knock off the rough frame of boards that almost formed a box around the package, and Ruth ran for the shears to cut the stitches ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... "Sharks without doubt. Look here, the twisted wire is regularly cut through, as if by a pair of shears," he continued, as he held up the end of the line he had drawn in. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... delightful process, the making of that banner; and Maggie's voice rang out loud and clear as she saw how cleverly Henry Warner managed the shears, cutting the red coat into stripes. The arrangement of the satin fell to Maggie's lot; and while George Douglas made the stars, Theo looked on a little doubtfully—not that her nationality was in any way affected, for what George Douglas sanctioned was by this time right with ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... frowning, while Ying peered out from his hiding-place at the passing throngs, exposing a tiny, limp, pink-ribbon tongue. If Kurtz, armed only with a pair of shears and a foolish tape, had won to affluence, why couldn't another? Stock-broking was no longer profitable; none of Bob's friends had earned their salt for months; and old Hannibal's opposition evidently forced a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... one morning and asked for the editor. He was not in. Apparently nobody was. I wandered through room after room, all empty, till at last I came to one in which sat a man with a paste-pot and a pair of long shears. This must be the editor; he had the implements of his trade. I told him my errand ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... listen I To the celestial Sirens' harmony That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres And sing to those that hold the vital shears And turn the adamantine spindle round Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, And the low world in measured motion draw After the ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a bell-cord, and a soft faraway jingle was heard. Then an old man came slowly around the corner of the house. His bare head was quite bald. He wore a short canvas apron and carried pruning-shears in one hand. Without a word of greeting to his mistress or scarce a glance at her half recumbent form, he mounted the steps of the piazza and assisted Phibbs to lift ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... this one a little. Remember this trunk must not go in the hold of the ship. Have it marked "Wanted" and "This end up." I will lie with my head this way. I'll put the shears in here, and I can cut another hole from the inside if it gets ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... for at least the next half-hour, when, the leaf-mould having been transported from the wood, he went round to the front of the house to trim the edges of the lawn. He was on his knees on the gravel path, busily engaged with a pair of shears, when he heard the amazing sound of the front door opening and shutting. He looked round over his shoulder, to see the same apparition that had appeared to him from the wood, walking calmly down the steps and in the direction of the drive. Apparently she ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... Mediterranean craft. But we must not philosophise; we must enjoy. The fresh morning breeze runs merrily over the ripples and plucks off their crests; our vessel leans prettily, and you hear a tinkling hiss as she shears through the lovely green hillocks. Sometimes she thrusts away a burst of spray, and in the midst of the white spurt there shines a rainbow. It may happen that the rainbows come thickly for half an hour at a time, and then we seem to be passing through a fairy scene. Go under ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... and a Sheraton cabinet and table were bare of all contents. On the floor reposed countless shattered articles of glass and porcelain; jumbled together with blotters an pastepot and shears and ink-stand and other utensils. Ink had been poured in grotesque pattern on rugs and ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... with aught it struck. He springs forward, he louts low and sweeps upwards with Whitefire. Skallagrim sees the sword flare and drops almost to his knee, guarding his head with the axe; but Whitefire strikes on the iron half of the axe and shears it in two, so that the axe-head falls to earth. Now the Baresark is weaponless but unharmed, and it would be an easy task to slay him as he rushes by. But it came into Eric's mind that it is an unworthy deed to slay a swordless man, and this came into his mind ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... great height in the anand, after wheeling about for a few moments, pro-cipitate themselves downwards with amazing violence in a wild zigzag, opening and shutting the long tail-feathers like a pair of shears, and producing loud whirring sounds, as of clocks being wound rapidly up, with a slight pause after each turn of the key. This aerial dance over, they alight in separate couples on the tree tops, each couple joining in a kind of duet of ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of the plates of a boiler should have the holes for the rivets punched, and the edges cut straight, by means of self-acting machinery, in which a travelling table carries forward the plate with an equal progression every stroke of the punch or shears; and machinery of this kind is now extensively employed. The practice of forcing the parts of boilers together with violence, by means of screw-jacks, and drifts through the holes, should not be permitted; as a great strain may ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... that Marcus and Elkan Lubliner had preceded him, for when he entered the showroom Marcus approached with a broad grin on his face and pointed to the cutting room, where stood Elkan Lubliner. In the boy's right hand was clutched a pair of cutter's shears, and guided by chalked lines he was laboriously slicing up a roll ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... few precious spare-time moments in the graveyard. She clipped the blueberry shrubs and long, tangled grasses from the grave with a pair of rusty old shears that blistered her little brown hands badly. She brought ferns from the woods to plant about it. She begged a root of heliotrope from Nan Gray, a clump of day lilies from Katie Morris, a rosebush slip from ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to buy a hat. Said the hatter, "I've none that will do, Unless with the shears I shorten your ears, Which ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... common interest of Europe, which demands the preservation of peace." Here is just recognition of peace as the common interest of Europe, to be assured by disabling France. How shall this be done? The German Minister sees nothing but dismemberment, consecrated by a Treaty of Peace. With diplomatic shears he would cut off a portion of French territory, and, taking from it the name of France, stamp upon it the trade-mark of Germany. Two of its richest and most precious provinces, for some two hundred years constituent parts of the great nation, with that ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... added Mr. Clare; "they, at least, are inoffensive pets. I dreaded the shears without your superintendence, but Joe insisted that they ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... silk, which, if you take by the right end you may wind off at pleasure on the bottom or card of your discourse in a tale or so—how you will; but if you light on the wrong end you will pull all into a knot or elf-lock, which nothing but the shears or a candle will ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... his tent, and opened one of the trunks which he had brought with him, and which were supposed to contain the clothes and personal effects he had bought in Lima. This trunk, however, was entirely filled with rolls of cheap cotton cloth, coarse and strong, but not heavy. With a pair of shears he proceeded to cut from one of these some pieces, rather more than a foot square. Then, taking from his canvas bags as many of the gold bars as he thought would weigh twelve or fifteen pounds, trying not to count them as he did so, he made a little package of them, tying the corners of the cloth ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... and she files it and she trims it and she softens it with hot water and hardens it with chemicals and parboils it a little while and then she cuts off the hang nails—if there aren't any hang nails there already she'll make a few—and she shears away enough extra cuticle to cover quite a good-sized little boy. She goes over you with a bristle brush, and warms up your nerve ends until you tingle clear back to your dorsal fin and then she takes one of those orange wood stobbers ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... he was out of it, the mystery was solved and he could go his way in peace of mind. It was a fortunate ending, come just in time. There was no need now for any more folly or philandering. They were cut off short, romance snipped by Fate's shears, a full stop put at the last word of the sentence. He had no fears of Pancha, she knew too much to make trouble, and anyway there was nothing for her to make trouble about. He had treated her with a consideration that was nothing short of chivalrous. Even if there had been anyone belonging ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows when the sun is ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... and a small wood saw with fine teeth. A bit stock, or a ratchet drill, if you can afford it, with a variety of small drills; two wood chisels, say of 3/8-inch and 3/4-inch widths; small cold chisels; hack saw, 10-inch blade; small iron square; pair of dividers; tin shears; wire cutters; 2 pairs of pliers, one flat and the other round-nosed; 2 awls, centering punch, wire cutters, ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... he called; and on the soldier coming, he blurted out in scorn, "Here's this English captain can't go to supper without Voban's shears to snip him. Go fetch him, for I'd rather hear a calf in a barn-yard than this whing-whanging for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Roast unstuffed, three young tender turkeys, or six full grown chickens. Take the white meat only, cut it fine with shears, cutting across the grain, while hot. Let cool, then mix it with ten hearts of crisp celery cut in bits, two heads of tender white cabbage, finely chopped, rejecting hard stalks—use three heads if very small—and set in a cool place. For the dressing boil thirty fresh eggs twenty minutes, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... commanded sharply. "Nothing dreadful is the matter, but that Dicky bird of yours needs his wings clipped a bit, and I think I am the person to apply the shears." ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... buds all around Brierley Cottage; the honeysuckles made the porch into an arbour; the garden was something of a wilderness, but a wilderness of lovely, old-fashioned things. One warm afternoon, Dolly with a shears in her hand had gone out into the garden to cut off the full-blown roses, which to-morrow would shed their leaves; doing a little trimming by the way, both of rose-bushes and other things; the wildering ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... far from the neighbourhood where such trees grow. Though they have no fore-teeth in their upper jaw, yet they are enabled somehow or other to crop from the willows and birch trees twigs of considerable thickness, cutting them off as clean as if the trees were pruned by a gardener's shears. ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... with tears upon his sublime cheeks, "I do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal punishment any of the children of men." Think of it! And I saw there at the same time another instrument, called "the scavenger's daughter," which resembles a pair of shears, with handles where handles ought to be, but at the points as well. And just above the pivot that fastens the blades, a circle of iron through which the hands would be placed, into the lower circles the feet, and into the center circle the head would be pushed, and in that position he would ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of these sheets a length sufficient to make a gun barrel is cut off by a pair of steam-moved shears, of which the lower jaw is stationary and the upper weighs a ton, of which plenty of examples may be seen in ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... somewhat apart from the other ranch buildings, with a system of pens at its back, with chutes and swinging wickets for "cutting out" lambs from their mothers destined for the shears, and other incidental purposes. The shed was a roof of bearded mesquite-grass, stayed by boughs and supported on live-oak or pecan posts, the outside or bounding rows of which were sheathed up with boards four feet or so, the remainder space up to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... afterwards a workman in light steel articles, as buckles, chains, and other articles of that class, who in 1822 gave impulse to the steel-pen manufacture. Previous to his entering the business the pens were cut out with shears and finished with the file. Gillott adapted the stamping press to the requirements of the manufacture, as cutting out the blanks, forming the slits, bending the metal, and impressing the maker's name on the pens. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... That our infirm affection here below Thou mov'st to boasting, when I could not choose, E'en in that region of unwarp'd desire, In heav'n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! Yet cloak thou art soon shorten'd, for that time, Unless thou be eked out from day to day, Goes round thee with his shears. Resuming then With greeting such, as Rome, was first to bear, But since hath disaccustom'd I began; And Beatrice, that a little space Was sever'd, smil'd reminding me of her, Whose cough embolden'd (as the story holds) To first offence the doubting ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the railed fence. They stopped up the openings with boards. This thwarted the inhabitants. To protect himself from the sun Bouvard wore on his head a handkerchief, fastened so as to look like a turban. Pecuchet wore his cap, and he had a big apron with a pocket in front, in which a pair of pruning-shears, his silk handkerchief, and his snuff-box jostled against one another. Bare-armed, side by side, they dug, weeded, and pruned, imposing tasks on each other, and eating their meals as quickly as ever they could, taking care, however, to drink their ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... located her mistress down in the back parlour, occupied with shears and a heap of old magazines. Missy was clipping sketches from certain advertisements, which she might trace upon cardboard squares and decorate with water-colour. These were to be the "place-cards"—an artistic commission Missy had put ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers 280 A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... buildings of half Oriental and half Western design, and blocks of private flats, each flat with a deep verandah and all bedecked with flags, and gay figures on the roofs and in the verandahs. In the centre of the grass were shears with a stone hanging from them on block and tackle. To our left was a raised dais with red and yellow striped tent roof supported on pillars topped with spears and flags and the three golden feathers of the Prince of Wales. In front of the circle ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... creatures were put through another ordeal, to which after a brief struggle they quickly resigned themselves. Father did the shearing, while I at times held the animal's legs. Father was not an adept hand with the shears and the poor beast usually had to part with many a bit of her hide along with her fleece. It used to make me wince as much as it did the sheep to see the crests of those little wrinkles in her skin ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... nor comb his hair, until he has subdued all the land with scatt [taxes] and duties and domains, or die in the attempt. Trust me! he is like to die in the attempt; and since his Kingship is to be so little occupied with his hair, it would please me well if he would use his time and his shears in clipping the tongue of the wench that set him on so foul an errand. All this thou knowest, Hilda, as well as I; but thou dost not know that men have been at the stede to-day, who tell us that the King is advancing north, and is victorious ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... hurry, but take a little time to consider of it; perhaps, there may not be so much cause for being angry with these bushes, as you at present seem to imagine. Have you not seen the shepherds about Lammas, with great shears in their hands, take from the trembling sheep all their wool, not being contented with a few ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... off to the north. Next they caught and began to saddle their horses. The great white tilted waggons of the various laagers filed along the road around the eastern end of Bulwana. Lastly, up went a pair of shears over 'Long Tom,' and at this he descended to the earth with the good news that the enemy ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... them, and their Vices are as objectionable now as they were three thousand years ago. If a sailor falls overboard, the Contiguous Shark considers it a casus belli, and immediately makes a pitch at the tar, with the intention of putting itself outside of him. Failing in that, it generally shears off a limb before it sheers away. Herds of sharks instinctively follow fever-ships, and when the dead are thrown into the sea, are seen by the seamen in the shrouds, ready to perform the office of Undertakers. In the vicinity of the Trades, they sometimes ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... a wooden chair with a broken back, and the old man proceeded, with trembling hands, to cut his black locks with a pair of large shears, which he kept ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... time, fearing the cold and the steep stairs; he selected his best wines, knocked his head hard against the ceiling as he came up again, and thought he was going to choke when he reached the top of the stairs with his full basket. Then he went to the garden with his shears; ruthlessly he cut his finest roses and the first branches of lilac in flower. Then he went up to his room again, shaved feverishly, and cut himself more than once. He dressed carefully and set out for the station. It was seven o'clock. Salome had not succeeded in making him take ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... he had attracted a moment's attention. She looked gravely down at him; then took her chair. A pair of blue yarn socks was in her hand. "I never see sech darnin' ez Aunt Sairy Ann do fur ye, dad; I hev jes tuk my shears an' cut this heel smang out, an' I be goin' ter do ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the beautiful sweetheart of Ilbrec, son of Manannan, that was put into the shape of a crane through jealousy. And it was in Manannan's house it used to be, and there were treasures kept in it, Manannan's shirt and his knife, and the belt and the smith's hook of Goibniu, and the shears of the King of Alban, and the helmet of the King of Lochlann, and a belt of the skin of a great fish, and the bones of Asal's pig that had been brought to Ireland by the sons of Tuireann. All those treasures would be in the bag at full tide, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... cornfields, who follow the chase to city suburbs, where often his game is at covert; his quiver hangs by his side stuffed with silver arrows, which he shoots against church-gates and private men's doors, to the hazard of their purses and credit. There went but a pair of shears between him and the pursuivant of hell, for they both delight in sin, grow richer by it, and are by justice appointed to punish it; only the devil is more cunning, for he picks a living out of others' ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... on a goat, and he carried his shears and the goose he ironed with. He balanced himself pretty well until a bird sat on his queue, and that bent him over backward so that he nearly ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... box, keep in the basket, common scissors; small shears; a bag containing tapes, of all colors and sizes, done up in rolls; bags, one, containing spools of white, and another of colored, cotton thread, and another for silks, wound on spools or papers; a box or bag for nice buttons, and another for more ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... our "rights," and some of us have a very exalted idea of the range which those precious "rights" should cover. One of our poets goes so far as to inquire in an amiable way, "What have we done to thee, O Death?" He insinuates that Death is very unkind to ply the abhorred shears over such nice, harmless creatures as we are. Let us, for manhood's sake, have done with puerility; let us recognise that our "rights" have no existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life, labour, and death that are laid upon us. We can ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... and we'd have it out and cracked open as pretty as you please," said Bill. "Set up a couple o' spars for shears, stay 'em from the bank, rig double blocks, and grapplin' irons for a diver to ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... to blame and opprobrium. And the finer and the more affectionate any man's heart and character are, the more he feels and shrinks from the coarse treatment this world gives to those whom it has its own reasons to hate and assail. They had the stocks and the pillory and the shears in Bunyan's rude and uncivilised day, by means of which many of the best men of that day were exposed to the insults and brutalities of the mob. The newspapers would be the pillory of our day, were it not that, on the whole, the newspaper press is conducted with ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... put up: "John Adrian, tailor, from England—all orders promptly and neatly executed." Then John took out his shears and "goose," crossed his legs and seated himself with a jacket to make, in front of the window, where pedestrians could see that he was at his post, ready ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... piece of money that they turned out. For one thing, their cut and hammered coins had no carved rims round their edges as all our gold and silver and even copper coinage now has. And, accordingly, the clever rogues of that day soon discovered that it was far easier for them to take up a pair of shears and to clip a sliver of silver off the rough rim of a shilling, or a shaving of gold off a sovereign, than it was to take of their coats and work a hard day's work. Till to clip the coin of the realm soon became ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... symphony of the hundreds of bees drawing their treasure from the golden hearts of the roses; and did not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in hand, with which he had been cutting out dead blossoms, gazing at her with that hungry, admiring, speculative look with which he had regarded the young women ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... greater richness and elaboration, and inscriptions were added, and also some device which showed the trade, rank, or profession of the departed. Thus the chalice and paten denoted a priest; a sword showed the knight; an axe, a forester; an ink-horn, a notary; shears, a wool merchant. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... undertake. And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forced them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offered him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads of human life. At his fair feathered feet the engines laid Which th' earth from ugly Chaos' den upweighed. These he regarded not but did entreat That Jove, usurper of his father's ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... once was called a garden! Britain still Bears on her breast full many a hideous wound Given by the cruel pair, when, borrowing aid From geometric skill, they vainly strove By line, by plummet and unfeeling shears To form with verdure what the builder formed With stone. . . Hence the sidelong walls Of shaven yew; the holly's prickly arms Trimmed into high arcades; the tonsile box, Wove in mosaic mode of many a curl Around the figured carpet of the lawn. . . The terrace mound ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... up, cut three small saplings, one of which should be twelve feet long and the other two, ten feet long. Tie these two together at the ends making what the sailors call a "shears." Take the twelve-foot pole and run it down the ridge inside the tent, and out through the hole in the back. Now raise the ridge pole with one end stuck in the ground and the front end resting on the two shear poles and tie all three of them together. At the end of each seam along the hem ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... office of the evening newspaper. He found a man in the counting-room, catching flies and trimming their wings with a large pair of office shears. He said, "Can you put an advertisement for me in your ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... images of St. Nicholas and Our Lady, &c., and speaketh unto the images, desiring them to take charge of the child, that he may live and believe as a Christian man or woman ought to do, with many other words. Then, coming back from the images, he taketh a pair of shears and clippeth the young and tender hairs of the child's head in three or four places; and then delivereth the child, whereunto every of the godfathers and godmothers lays a hand. Then the priest chargeth them that the child be brought up in the faith and fear of God or ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... we come to describe Elzevirs of the first flight, let it be remembered that the "taller" the copy, the less harmed and nipped by the binder's shears, the better. "Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is," says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original form. The Elzevirs we have may be "dear," but they are certainly "dumpy twelves." Their ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... temperament. His dress was brown, not black, and over his other vestments he wore, in honour of Calvin, a Geneva cloak of a blue colour, which fell backwards from his shoulders as he posted on to the pulpit. His grizzled hair was cut as short as shears could perform the feat, and covered with a black silk scull-cap, which stuck so close to his head, that the two ears expanded from under it as if they had been intended as handles by which to lift the whole person. Moreover, the worthy divine wore spectacles, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... them through the window. Dan managed to get in but one blow. He ripped the coat down the man's back as neatly as though it had been done with shears, one clean straight cut from collar to bottom seam. A quarter of an inch nearer would have split the fellow's backbone. As it was, he escaped without even ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... merry grey eyes, which twinkled like stars as they rested on Villiers. His hair was greyish, and inclined to curl, but could not follow its natural inclination owing to the unsparing use of the barber's shears. He wore a coat and trousers of white flannel, but no waistcoat; canvas shoes were on his feet, and a juvenile straw hat was perched on his iron-grey hair, the rim of which encircled his head like a halo of glory. He had small, well-shaped hands, one of which grasped a light cane, and the ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... prey, to giddy youth, Devoid of talents, principles, and truth. 'Tis right they should suppose, still two are found; Who take their course continually round. The first that in your pleasure grounds appears; I'd have you, on his wings, to use the shears. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... 1633, they bought from the Indians a strip of land on the river, one Dutch mile in length by one third of a mile in width, and they paid for it with "one piece of duffel [that is, heavy cloth] twenty-seven ells long, six axes, six kettles, eighteen knives, one sword-blade, one pair of shears, some toys and a musket." On this land, which is now in the city of Hartford, the first block-house in Connecticut was built and was called the "House of Hope." Although two small cannon were mounted upon it the Dutch said the place should be a peaceful ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... you together through the key-hole of the closet one night, like Saul and the witch of Endor, turning the sieve and shears, and pricking your thumbs, to write poor innocent servants' names in blood, about a little nutmeg grater which she had forgot in the caudle-cup. Nay, I know something worse, if I would ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... of shears are biting, Finger not their edges keen; When man and wife are fighting, He faces ill who comes between. JOHN BULL, in our grief delighting, Take ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... sum of his discourse. But in the end (like an orator long without exercise), when he saw what a difficult piece of work he had taken in hand, he gave over his travel, and only drew the picture of a naked man[1], unto whom he gave a pair of shears in the one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end he should shape his apparel after such fashion as himself liked, sith he could find no kind of garment that could please him any while together; and this he called an Englishman. Certes this writer (otherwise being a lewd popish ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Use a pair of long-bladed shears and fold a piece of cardboard once to lie astride your own or some one else's finger. Put the finger, protected by the cardboard, between the two points of the shears. Then squeeze the handles of the shears together. See if you can bring the handles together ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... the rolling waves and days went by; the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the thing, I've a World on't. I shou'd go and bespeak a Pair of Mittins and Shears for my Hedger and Shearer, a pair of Cards for my Thrasher, a Scythe for my Mower, and a Screen-Fan for my Lady-Wife, and many other things; my Head's full of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... for what principles we are combating. We know too well that the British aristocracy is not with us. We know what the West End of London wishes may be result of this controversy. The two halves of this Union are the two blades of the shears, threatening as those of Atropos herself, which will sooner or later cut into shreds the old charters of tyranny. How they would exult if they could but break the rivet that makes of the two blades one resistless weapon! The man who of all living Americans had the best opportunity of knowing ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the clothes herself for men and women too. I 'spect her big shears an' patterns an' old cuttin' table are over at the house now. Miss Julia cut out all the clothes an' then the colored girls sewed 'em up but she looked 'em all over and they better be sewed right! Miss Julia bossed the whole plantation. She looked after the sick folks and sent the doctor ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... Couldn't break. All our power couldn't! So then—then I acted foolishly. Damn foolish. But we were all a little crazy. A nightmare, you know. Couldn't believe our eyes—those seals outside, mocking us. So I called for volunteers. Four men. Put 'em in sea-suits, gave 'em shears and grappling prongs. ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... etc. If you have no wire-cutters, or large shears, you can cut large or small wires by hammering them against the sharp edge of another hammer, an anvil, or a piece of iron. Do not let the hammer itself hit upon the edge of the anvil. The above process will make a V-shaped dent on one side of even large wires, ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... the empty shells were seen along the canals outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the shell and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction when the lips are applied to the shell. In the canals there are also large numbers of fresh water eel, shrimp and crabs as well as fish, all of which are collected and used for human food. It is common, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... world. There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and curiosity about the life to come. One end of the thread is between our fingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos' shears. ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... Universal Joint. Trammel for Making Ellipses. Escapements. Simple Device to Prevent a Wheel or Shaft from Turning Back. Racks and Pinions. Mutilated Gears. Simple Shaft Coupling. Clutches. Ball and Socket Joints. Tripping Devices. Anchor Bolt. Lazy Tongs. Disk Shears. Wabble Saw. Crank Motion by a Slotted Yoke. Continuous Feed by Motion of a Lever. Crank Motion. Ratchet Head. Bench Clamp. Helico-volute Spring. Double helico-volute. Helical Spring. Single Volute Helix Spring. Flat Spiral, or Convolute. Eccentric ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... on a cattle station, they have what is called a 'bang tail muster'; that is to say, all the cattle are brought into the yards, and have the long hairs at the end of the tail cut off square, with knives or sheep-shears. . . The object of it is. . .to find out the actual number of cattle on the run, to compare with the number entered on the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... of sugar. They had found on breaking open the cask that the sugar was somewhat damaged by the sea-water, but this had not penetrated far, and by drying and repounding that touched by the water, no great harm would have been done. The next morning the shears were erected, and they set to work. It took them two days' labour before they could clear enough of the cargo out to get at the cases. They were not troubled much by water, for at the stern-post there was but a depth of ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... project," answered Philip; "and how long do you think a finance minister must be in office before he can lay his shears on the flock to get wool enough for ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... is done by printing the titles in bronze upon glazed colored paper, which is pasted lengthwise on the back. A small font of type, with a hand-press, will suffice for this, and a stabbing machine, with a small pair of binding shears, constitutes the only other apparatus required. The cost of binding pamphlets in this style varies from seven to twelve cents each, according to the material employed, and the amount of labor paid for. The advantages of the method are too obvious to all acquainted ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... foolery, of the English for foreign customs, dresses, and languages, is not an affair of to-day or yesterday—it is of very ancient date, and was very properly exposed nearly three centuries ago by one Andrew Borde, who, under the picture of a "Naked man with a pair of shears in one hand, and a roll of cloth in the other," {313} inserted the following lines along ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... a master-stroke of those arch-ironists of the shears and spindle to duplicate her own story in her daughter's. Mrs. Lidcote had always somewhat grimly fancied that, having so signally failed to be of use to Leila in other ways, she would at least serve her as a warning. She had even abstained from defending herself, from ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... hill, looking clean over the town, that lay in the bottom of the basin, and away at the old quarries on the opposite side of the space. Mrs. Forbes was in the garden. She was a tall woman with white hair. She came up the path taking off her thick gloves, laying down her shears. It was autumn. She wore ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... then, as he lifted his hand for the third time, the hum of the machine ceased abruptly, the door opened, and he turned to confront a small woman with wispy hair and untidy clothes, whose bodice was adorned with innumerable pins, and at whose side hung a pair of scissors large as shears. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... 1 medium skinning knife 1 larger skinning knife 1 pair scissors, fine points 1 pair shears, heavy, short 2 pairs flat nose pliers, large and small. 1 pair ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... note on Ilex. The efficient cause which renders the hollies prickly in Needwood Forest only as high as the animals can reach them, may arise from the lower branches being constantly cropped by them, and thus shoot forth more luxuriant foliage: it is probable the shears in garden-hollies may produce the same effect, which is equally curious, as prickles are not ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... a pair of shears quite a yard long, was sitting at his desk clipping jokes for the fiction page. He was humming a weary little tune to the effect that "Billy Enny took a penny but now he hadn't many—Lookie They!" with which he whiled away ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... of firmness and decision, offering the strongest possible contrast to the gentle, irresolute expression of her stepmother's sweet face. Without a moment's delay, not waiting to detach the enormous shears that hung at her side, or to disembarrass herself of the needles and pins which glittered on her breast like a cuirass, the girl slipped into a seat next to Jack. The presence of the strangers did not abash her in the least. Whatever she had to say she said, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... nevermore be a marvel to me; for there, where appetite is not perverted, I mean in Heaven, I myself gloried in thee. Truly art thou a cloak which quickly shortens, so that, if day by day it be not pieced, Time goeth round about it with his shears. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... and with the other trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in his leathern coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black hair, with soot, stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the lustrous wing with one hand while he used his smallest pair of shears with the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... all that thought themselves courtiers fell into the former vice, and contended with women in their long haires." Henry, the King, appears to have been quite uninfluenced by the dreams of others, for even his own would not induce him a second time to undergo a cropping from priestly shears. It is said, that he was much troubled at this time by disagreeable visions. Having offended the church in this and other respects, he could get no sound refreshing sleep, and used to imagine that he saw all the bishops, abbots, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... overlooking the confluence of the Saulteau River with the Lesser Slave—a bold and beautiful spot, the woods at the angle of the two rivers, down to the water's edge, showing like a gigantic V, as clean-cut as if done by a pair of colossal shears. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... over the Tsavo rapidly neared completion. As the piers and abutments progressed in height, the question of how to lift the large stones into their positions had to be solved. We possessed no cranes for this purpose, so I set to work and improvised a shears made of a couple of thirty-foot rails. These were bolted together at the top, while the other ends were fixed at a distance of about ten feet apart in a large block of wood. This contrivance acted capitally, and by manipulation of ropes ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... your liking: but for that, Alas, your shears do come untimely now To clip the bird's wings that 's already flown! Will you see ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... reckless, uppish, heedless sort of tyrant. She rushes into huts, palaces, and even into the grand stand, and lays about her with her scissors, snipping off threads with the utmost abandon. She wields her shears without any sort of apology or by your leave. Not even a check-book can stay her ravages. Her devastation knows neither ruth nor gentleness. I don't like her, and have no compunction about playing a joke at her expense. I don't imagine ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... to rock, Incessant bleatings run around the hills. At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed, Head above head: and ranged in lusty rows, The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears. The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... all the world, Aimed together and then hurled, Would be stiller in his ears Than a closing of still shears On a thread made ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... appertaining to personal habits. Here at any rate the man would expect to be still his own master, acting for himself and independent of all outer control. Our English Hodge, when taken from the plow to the camp, would, probably, submit without a murmur to soap and water and a barber's shears; he would have received none of that education which would prompt him to rebel against such ordinances; but the American citizen, who for awhile expects to shake hands with his captain whenever he sees him, and is astonished when he learns that he must not offer him drinks, cannot at once ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... clover heads; and, if there had been, one could not have been used on these dropping terraces, so populous with slabs and so closely set with turfed mounds and oblongs of early flowering annuals and bedding plants. Mr. Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks. Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time, and leave a screening ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... but I felt that someone was there who wished to see the young monk's grave. For a moment I stood there. Then I went to the house where I kept my tools for my work in the cemetery, and got a shears which I used for lopping the cypress trees. I took a ladder quickly, set it against the wall, mounted it, and from the cypress I had seen moving I lopped some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As the boughs ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... crooked over their heads, each shearer, even the two boys, had an air of going at it in his own way. In their white canvas shearing suits they worked very steadily, almost in silence, as if drowsed by the "click-clip, click-clip" of the shears. And the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of legs or head, lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense perhaps of the fitness of things, even when, once in a way, they lost more than wool; glad too, mayhap, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... spiers:[14] The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet; Each tells the uncos[15] that he sees or hears; The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view. The mother, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars[16] auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... advance, in spirit, even of his still active and powerful frame. With these must be connected a snub nose—a double chin, adorned with grisly honors, which are borne, like the fleece of the lamb, only occasionally to the shears of the shearer—and a small, and not unhandsome, mouth, at certain periods pursed into an expression of irresistible humour, but more frequently expressing a sense of lofty independence. The grisly neck, little more or less bared, as the season ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... man who by his superior skill and expertness 'tops the score'—that is, shears the highest number of sheep ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the windlass are inserted into them so that the axles may turn freely. Close to each end of the windlass are two holes, so adjusted that handspikes can be fitted into them. To the bottom of the lower block are fastened shears made of iron, whose prongs are brought to bear upon the stones, which have holes bored in them. When one end of the rope is fastened to the windlass, and the latter is turned round by working the handspikes, the rope winds round the windlass, gets taut, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... for a while, turning her head from side to side to see the bright ringlets glisten; then, with an unsteady hand the severed, one by one, the shining tresses, on which her tears fell like rain as she gathered them in a paper and put them away, wondering if the prison shears would cut closer or shorter, and wondering if it would make any difference that she was only a substitute, or at ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... through her twirling thread There spires one strand of warmest red, Tinged from the homestead's genial heart, The stamp and warrant of her art; With this Time's sickle she outwears, And blunts the Sisters' baffled shears. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intervention of animals that the farmer gets the product of his land into such a shape that it will bear transportation. For instance, he feeds out his hay to his sheep, attending them with care and skill all the winter. In the spring he shears off their fleeces; and now he has got something which he can send to market. He has turned his grass into wool, and thus got its value into a much more compact form. The wool will bear transportation. Perhaps he gave a whole load of hay to his sheep, to produce a single bag of wool. So the bag ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... say. Master Langdon 's actin' under my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring down a pair of pinchers and a file,—and—stop—fetch a pair of shears, too; there's hosshair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet, Told of a many thousand warlike French That were embattailed and ranked ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Fates, was quickly turning with her left hand a spindle, while her right hand was leading a fine thread which the third sister, Atropos by name, used to cut with a pair of sharp shears at the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Oileus' son Stood forth with Teucer, they which in the race Erewhile contended. Far away from these Agamemnon, lord of spears, set up a helm Crested with plumes, and spake: "The master-shot Is that which shears the hair-crest clean away." Then straightway Aias shot his arrow first, And smote the helm-ridge: sharply rang the brass. Then Teucer second with most earnest heed Shot: the swift shaft hath shorn the plume away. Loud shouted all the people as they gazed, And praised him without stint, for ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Such luck had been enough to sate A hunter wise and moderate. Meantime a boar, as big as e'er was taken, Our archer tempted, proud, and fond of bacon. Another candidate for Styx, Struck by his arrow, foams and kicks. But strangely do the shears of Fate To cut his cable hesitate. Alive, yet dying, there he lies, A glorious and a dangerous prize. And was not this enough? Not quite, To fill a conqueror's appetite; For, ere the boar was dead, he spied A partridge by a furrow's ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... 18— my frend, the editor of the Baldinsville Bugle, was obleged to leave perfeshernal dooties & go & dig his taters, & he axed me to edit for him dooring his absence. Accordingly I ground up his Shears and commenced. It didn't take me a grate while to slash out copy enuff from the xchanges (Perhaps five per cent. of the Western newspapers is original matter relating to the immediate neighborhood, the rest is composed of "telegraphs" and clippings from the "exchanges"—a general term applied ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... become cloudy, and a little menacing, for the last, few days, and Bob proposed that they should lower the awning, get up shears on the rock, and step the mast of the pinnace before they launched her, as a means of saving some labour. The spar was not very heavy, it was true, and it might be stepped by crossing a couple of the oars in the boat itself; but a couple ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... ambulance, and we went together,—the Colonel and I; and though two men were never more unlike, we worked together like two brothers, or like two halves of a pair of shears. That we got in was owing, perhaps, to me; that we got out was due altogether to him; and a man more cool, more brave, more self-reliant, and more self-devoted than that quiet "Western parson" it never was my fortune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Brooms or Whisks.—Worn brooms or whisks may be dipped into hot water and uneven edges trimmed off with shears. This will make the straw harder, and the trimming makes the broom almost as good ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... stem, stripped of its ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical form, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "perpetual" flowering section has done blooming, cut back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be promptly removed; weeds ought not to be allowed to grow a second pair of leaves—much less to flower—before being exterminated. Trailing and climbing ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... resembled those of women. The clergy thundered against this effeminate fashion, but with no effect. At last, a priest preaching before the King on Easter Sunday, ended his sermon by taking out a pair of shears and cropping the entire ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... madde or lunatycke or frantycke or demonyacke, to be kepte in safegarde in some close house or chamber where there is lytell light; and that we have a keeper the whiche the madde man do feare." The remainder is conceived in quite a kindly spirit. The patient is to have no knife or shears; no girdle, except a weak list of cloth, lest he destroy himself; no pictures of man or woman on the wall, lest he have fantasies. He is to be shaved once a month, to drink no wine or strong beer, but "warm suppynges three tymes a daye, and a lytell ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... who knows how much his own personal comfort is dependent upon the adroit ministrations of the "Sons of the Shears," cordially seconds the appeal ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... communicating in whispers now, and with a finger at his lips the cook gave us a warning glance. He then laid hold of the rope that was made fast to a shears overhead, swung out, and slid down to the very keelson. Silently, one at a time, we followed. The only sound was our sibilant breathing and the very faint shuffle of feet. Now we could see, almost midway between the hatches, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... dreamy-eyed damsel known as Inspiration. T. A. Buck, her husband-partner, accused her of being on intimate terms with the lady. So did the adoring office staff of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. Out in the workshop itself, the designers and cutters, those jealous artists of the pencil, shears, and yardstick, looked on in awed admiration on those rare occasions when the feminine member of the business took the scissors in her firm white hands and slashed boldly into a shimmering length of petticoat-silk. When she put down the great shears, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... locks, and black locks, Red locks and brown, Topknot to love-curl The hair wisps down; Straight above the clear eyes, Rounded round the ears, Snip-snap and snick-a-snick, Clash the Barber's shears; Us, in the looking-glass, Footsteps in the street, Over, under, to and fro, The lean blades meet; Bay Rum or Bear's Grease, A silver groat to pay - Then out a-shin-shan-shining In ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... years existed in that city 'for the relief and discharge of persons confined for small debts,' of which O'Leary was an active and conspicuous member. This association had its origin in the humane mind of Henry Shears, Esq., the father of two distinguished victims to the political distractions of their country in 1798: and a literary production of that gentleman, which in its style and matter emulated the elegance and morality of Addison, strengthened and matured the benevolent ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... And still He trains the branch of good Where the high blossoms be, And wieldeth still the shears of ill To prune and prime ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with the nursery shears Cut off both the baby's ears; At the baby, so unsightly, Mamma raised ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little roan with the big shears." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... they sat making merry with the savages, feasting and taking tobacco and seeing the dances, Powhatan himself appeared and was received with great show of honor, all rising from their seats except King Arahatic, and shouting loudly. To Powhatan ample presents were made of penny-knives, shears, and toys, and he invited them to visit him at one of his seats called Powhatan, which was within a mile of the Falls, where now stands the city of Richmond. All along the shore the inhabitants stood in clusters, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... breast fair and ample; Dull brain, and dim eyes, and deaf ears, Feel not the cold touch on your temple, Heed not the faint clash of the shears. It comes!—with the gleam of the lamps on The curtains—that voice—does it jar On thy soul in the night-watch? Ho! Samson, Upon thee the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon |
