"Whetstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one sharpened ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the hone that "City's Lord" essayed, To make the whetstone of his rebel sword; On me, with mischief rife, rebellious Cade Sat whilst he thought and dubbed himself a Lord; And bade my conduit pipe for one whole year At city's cost, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... porticoes filled with busy lawyers; bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Naevius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... rearrange the tribes: this man was an augur whose equal has never been seen. Tarquinius, angry at his opposition, took measures to abase him and to bring his art into contempt. So, putting into his bosom a whetstone and a razor, he went among the populace having in his mind that the whetstone should be cut by the razor,—a thing that is impossible. He said all that he wished, and when Attus vehemently opposed him, he said, still yielding not a particle: "If you are not opposing me out of quarrelsomeness, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... into his present quarters. That implement he had fashioned for himself with infinite pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise. Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a sharp ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... done at all. Not that Isak was above taking advice from his son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year. Eleseus did ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... literary hack, Whetstone, who wrote a poetical memoir of George Gascoigne after his death, entitles it a remembrance of "the well employed life and godly end" of his hero. It is not necessary to dispute that Gascoigne's end was ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and my line, my flote and my lead, My hook, & my plummet, my whetstone & knife, My Basket, my baits, both living and dead, My net, and my meat for that is the chief; Then I must have thred & hairs great & smal, With mine Angling purse, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... Even less profitable did it become under the management of the supposed widow and her daughter. They struggled courageously and faithfully, but they were at a disadvantage. The mowing-machine and the reaper had taken the place of the scythe and cradle. The singing of the whetstone upon steel was heard no longer in the meadows nor among the ripened grain. The harrow had cast out the hoe. The work of the farm was accomplished by patent devices in wood and steel. To utilize these aids, to keep up with the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... when I had signified my eagerness to hear, "that I graduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, but blue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was a clergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covered a multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, and consequently twenty when, at the beginning of sophomore year, I came under the charge of Professor Regnier. He was ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... reluctance returned to Jamaica, having not only lost a leg, but also received a large wound in his face, and another in his arm, while he in person attempted to board the French admiral. Exasperated at the treachery of his captains, he granted a commission to rear-admiral Whetstone and other officers, to hold a court-martial and try them for cowardice. Hudson, of the Pendennis, died before his trial: Kirby and Wade were convicted, and sentenced to be shot: Constable, of the Windsor, was cashiered and imprisoned: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... collection of chap books did they print, reviving the quaint old "Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," "Guy, Earl of Warwick," "Seven Champions," "Mother Shipton's Life and Prophecies," "Wise Men of Gothan," "Adam Bell," "Robin Hood's Garland," "Jane Shore," "Joaks upon Joaks," "Strapho, or Roger the Clown," "Whetstone for dull Wits," "St. George and the Dragon," "Jack Horner:" and hundreds of ballads, garlands, carols, broadsheets, songs, ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... not raise his eyes, but drew a damp cloth up and down the counter, slowly and heavily, as a man sharpens a knife on a whetstone. ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... showed me that if, in sharpening your knife, you hold the little whetstone between the thumb and middle finger of the left hand you are less likely to put a feather edge on it. A feather edge is something to clip the sprouting wings of any budding saint of a grafter. When you get the right edge on your knife often you can use it the whole day ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und so weiter. Warble your death-song, sweet Thekla! ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an inch thick. The two perforations are 2-1/2 inches apart; they have been bored from opposite sides, and show no evidence of use. Nine notches have been cut in one end of the tablet. It has been much injured by recent use as a whetstone. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... than six editions between 1576 and 1613.[17] The year after Pettie's first edition appeared R. Smyth's Stravnge and Tragicall histories Translated out of French. In 1576 was also published the first of George Whetstone's collections of tales, the four parts of The Rocke of Regard, in which he told over again in verse several stories already better told by Painter. In the same year, 1576, appeared G. Turberville's Tragical Tales, translated out of sundrie Italians—ten tales in verse, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... mail; and after a nap, talked very unrestrainedly with me on the present state of France, on Buonaparte, the criminal law, and the wisdom of the Justices at sessions. I was determined—like Horace's whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put an edge on him—to say something deep and decisive on some of the subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk. Perhaps (like the character with ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... one, as Panaetius tells Tubero, worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know, but I cannot bear them; not because they have anything in them particularly ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Peraduenture this is not Fortunes work neither, but Natures, who perceiueth our naturall wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this Naturall for our whetstone: for alwaies the dulnesse of the foole, is the whetstone of the wits. How now Witte, whether wander you? Clow. Mistresse, you must ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... see what he dare do; cut off his ears! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I'll run my rapier ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... all, yere hanner; but I spat in his face and went home and told my uncle Tourlough, who forthwith took out a knife and began to sharp it on a whetstone, and I make no doubt would have gone and stuck the fellow like a pig, had not my poor aunt begged him not on her knees. After that we had nothing more to do with the Methodists as far ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... in the wind, and crashing down beneath the weight of the gathering freezing snow, when all beasts and men lay close in their lairs, would they sit long hours about the house-fire with the knife or the gouge in hand, with the timber twixt their knees and the whetstone beside them, hearkening to some tale of old times and the days when their banner was abroad in the world; and they the while wheedling into growth out of the tough wood knots and blossoms and leaves and the images of beasts and warriors ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that is the badge ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... hunting-point (Fig. N.) is put on by slitting the arrow and inserting the flat handle of the arrow point, and wrapping it with silk, sinews, or copper wire. These points can be sharpened along the line A B on a whetstone, and will cut like knives. The hunting arrow looks ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... shoulder. His powder horn and bullet pouch hang under his right arm. In his bullet pouch he also carries spare flints, steel and various odds and ends. Beneath the broad belt which encircles his waist there is a large butcher knife in a sheath of buffalo hide. There is a whetstone in a buckskin case made fast to the belt, and also a ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... though the name of the author himself is not known.,' The uncertain authority of these statements, and the plausibility of the preceding explanation, have caused philologists to accept the derivation from al and jabara. Robert Recorde in his Whetstone of Witte (1557) uses the variant algeber, while John Dee (1527-1608) affirms that algiebar, and not algebra, is the correct form, and appeals to the authority ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that it might be the Custom among the Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the brains in the morning of those they had feasted over-night. Yet, as there never was Schoolboy, I suppose, but delighted in Soiling of his raiment, and making himself as Black as any sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I begin to feel something like a Pleasure in being masqueraded up to this Disguise, and began to wish for a Pistol such as Captain Night had in his Hand, and such a Diamond Ring as he wore ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... would have painted a hundred portraits, as strong, as vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by Velasquez or Hals. But if Nature had willed him so, I do not think we should have had the Nocturnes, which are clearly the outcome of a highly-strung, bloodless nature whetted on the whetstone of its own weakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light. It is hardly possible to doubt that this is so when we look on these canvases, where, in all the stages of her repose, the night dozes and dreams upon our river—a ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... against Tully himselfe; if Mother Hubbard, in the vaine of Chawcer, happen to tel one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vaine of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit an hundred dogged fables, libles, slaunders, lies, for the whetstone. But many will sooner lose their liues than the least jott of their reputation. What mortal feudes, what cruel bloodshed, what terrible slaughterdome have been committed for the point of honour ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... 'we are the very pink and perfection of the true Attic' 'Done with you!' says Callicles, 'frequent quizzings are a whetstone of conversation' 'For my part,' cries Eudemus, '—it grows chill—I like my liquor stronger, and more of it; I am deathly cold; if I could get some warmth into me, I had rather listen to these light- fingered gentry of flute and lyre.' 'What is this you say, Eudemus?' says I; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... night withal, and returned for answer, that she knew of no other books in the house than her young mistress's (as she always denominated Mistress Martha Trapbois) Bible, which the owner would not lend; and her master's Whetstone of Witte, being the second part of Arithmetic, by Robert Record, with the Cossike Practice and Rule of Equation; which promising volume Nigel declined to borrow. She offered, however, to bring him some books from Duke Hildebrod—"who ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college. It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment; the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, and Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied the matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract is extravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with great vehemence, but only in that temper which permitted the young Juvenals of the hour to ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would try the best of you. You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you see. There's thousands of couples among you getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the Divorce Court in a cart. Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide; but in a cart it does come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a cart ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... still some scope for their ancient trade. But in British territory the Sikligar has degenerated into a needy knife-grinder. Mr. Crooke [505] describes him as "A trader of no worth. His whole stock-in-trade is a circular whetstone worked by a strap between two posts fixed in the ground. He sharpens knives, razors, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... time a knife slipped out of his sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round; and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... actors, was indispensably necessary. The "comedians of Ravenna," who were not "tied to any written device," but who, nevertheless, had "certain grounds or principles of their own," are mentioned in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582, and references to such performers are also to be found in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and Ben Jonson's "Case is Altered." In "Antony ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... that the cruel boy-god "who sharpens his arrows on the whetstone of the human heart" had found the moment to avenge himself for the neglect of his altars and the scorn of his power? Must that redoubted knight-errant, the hero of this tale, despite the Three Fishes on his charmed shield, at last veil ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be curious to discover Whether to you I am a friend or lover, Let them read Shakespeare's sonnets, taking thence A whetstone for their dull intelligence 100 That tears and will not cut, or let them guess How Diotima, the wise prophetess, Instructed the instructor, and why he Rebuked the infant spirit of melody On Agathon's sweet lips, which as he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... custom, I have procured an animal—a fox—to illustrate my instructions, and, the learner having got out the whole of the knives (previously figured) and the whetstone, may proceed to ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the garden for supper, threw white screening over the imposing loaves of bread still cooling on the side table, and was sharpening a knife on a whetstone, preparatory to carving thin slices from a veal loaf that stood near by, when she was accosted by some one appearing suddenly in ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now, In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[418][10.H.] And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj] No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... answer, I busied myself writing, and as I had no stationery I wrote on the walls. Beginning as high as I could reach, I wrote in columns, each about three feet wide. Soon the pencil became dull. But dull pencils are easily sharpened on the whetstone of wit. Stifling acquired traits, I permitted myself to revert momentarily to a primitive expedient. I gnawed the wood quite from the pencil, leaving only the graphite core. With a bit of graphite a hand guided ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... left the prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see, near Venice, a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword. This he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in two with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... peasants instead, and beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, Which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. Although no writer, I may yet impart To writing folk the precepts of their art, Whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, And how a work is made, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... beyond, lay the naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana—white with poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect, to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. You ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... shift to hobble seven miles more: The way to Dunchurch, foul with dirt and mire, Able, I think, both man and horse to tire. On Dunsmoor Heath, a hedge doth there enclose Grounds, on the right hand, there I did repose. Wit's whetstone, Want, there made us quickly learn, With knives to cut down rushes, and green fern, Of which we made a field-bed in the field, Which sleep, and rest, and much content did yield. There with my mother earth, I thought it fit To lodge, and ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... brought with me a battle-axe I had found in the stores of Niksich and taken as my part of the booty, but had not noticed that it had never been sharpened, so that it was useless for cutting. One of the men at the convent took it, and with a common whetstone (for there was nothing in the nature of a grindstone in the place) brought it to razor edge,—a job which a carpenter alone can appreciate; and, when I tried to give him something for it, he put his hands behind him and then ran out of sight. A little fellow, not over four years ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... whetstone clear out to the tip Of his snake-handled, snubnosed old blade; And he swung his straw hat with a sweep and a rip With the sun ninety-four in ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... millet were the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Ku was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears run ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... of Whetstone Park is called by its present title, and the western half is Phillips Rents. He mentions it as "once famous for its ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... thou not tell a tale of varied life, That gave Time's annals their recording name? No notes of Cade, marching with mischief rife, By Britain's misery to raise his fame? Wert thou the hone that "City's Lord" essay'd[5] To make the whetstone of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... experience. With this view I took up my pen, and dashed off a few lines, in which I made no allusion, either to my first interview, or the affair of the dinner; but simply putting forward a few general observations on the state of the country, signed with my own name, and dated from Whetstone-park, which was, at that time, my residence. The following was the reply I received from the duke, which I print verbatim, as an index—short, but comprehensive, as an index ought to be—to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... short dinner, not better than one of mine commonly of a Sunday. After dinner up to my Lord, there being Mr. Kumball. My Lord, among other discourse, did tell us of his great difficultys passed in the business of the Sound, and of his receiving letters from the King there, but his sending them by Whetstone was a great folly; and the story how my Lord being at dinner with Sydney, one of his fellow plenipotentiarys and his mortal enemy, did see Whetstone, and put off his hat three times to him, but the fellow would not be known, which my Lord imputed to his coxcombly ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... five different agencies, viz.: the Upper Missouri, or Crow Creek agency, on the east side of the Missouri; the Grand River agency, at the mouth of the Grand River; the Cheyenne River agency, at the mouth of the Cheyenne River; the Whetstone agency (so called from its former location at the junction of the Whetstone with the Missouri Rivers), on the White River, about two hundred and twenty-five miles west of the Missouri; and the Red Cloud agency, at present on the North Platte, ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... populace. Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would fain have closed his ears. But for his life he dared not. And presently a cripple in a beggar's garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature with matted hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him a whetstone. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... and not rocking. This whetting turns a light wire edge over on the flat side. In order to remove this wire edge, the back of the chisel, that is, the straight, unbeveled side, is held perfectly flat on the whetstone and rubbed, then it is turned over and the bevel rubbed again on the stone. It is necessary to reverse the chisel in this way a number of times, in order to remove the wire edge, but the chisel should never be tipped so as to put any bevel at all on its ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... great spiritual exaltation the barrier crumbles and becomes, in places, less insuperable. Such ages are commonly called great religious ages: nor is the name ill-chosen. For, more often than not, religion is the whetstone on which men sharpen the spiritual sense. Religion, like art, is concerned with the world of emotional reality, and with material things only in so far as they are emotionally significant. For the mystic, as for the artist, the physical universe is a means to ecstasy. The mystic feels ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... were especially ingenious in the matter of puns, anagrams, {355} and similar conceits. The death of the Rev. Samuel Stone, of Hartford, afforded an opportunity of this sort not to be missed, and his threnodist accordingly celebrated him as a "whetstone," a "loadstone," ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... trouchman was an interpreter [literally, a truceman]: "For he that is the Trouchman of a Straungers tongue may well declare his meaning, but yet shall marre the grace of his Tale" (G. Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582). ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Burd so blithe Had driven them in this haste; But the old, old man, so lean and lithe, That afar behind us paced; So lean and lithe, with shoulder'd scythe, And a whetstone at his waist. ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... educators—they fill one with discontent and drive a person onward and upward to the ideal. A whetstone is dull, but it serves ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... unpaged. Wanting M 4 (? blank). Epistle dedicatory to William Fleetwoode, signed George Whetstone and dated July 29, 1578. Printer's address to the reader, signed R. I. Argument. Part II has a separate titlepage within woodcut border, 'The seconde part of the Famous Historie of Promos and Cassandra. Set forth in a Comical Discourse ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... called Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, which are the earliest remains of human abodes in Wales, are by the people called Fairy Whetstones, but, undoubtedly, this name was given them from their resemblance to the large circular whetstone at present in common use, the finders being ignorant of the original ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... and accomplished courtier. Rather thank heaven, Piercie Shafton, which hath sent thee a subject, wherein, without derogating from thy rank, (since the honours of the Avenel family are beyond dispute,) thou mayest find a whetstone for thy witty compliments, a strop whereon to sharpen thine acute engine, a butt whereat to shoot the arrows of thy gallantry. For even as a Bilboa blade, the more it is rubbed, the brighter and the sharper will it prove, so—But what need I waste my ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... victory for Athens. In the morning the soldiers have breakfast, then the lines are carefully arrayed a little beyond bowshot from the enemy, who are preparing themselves in similar fashion. Every man has his arms in order, his spear point and sword just from the whetstone, and every buckle made fast. The general (probably in sight of all the men) will cause the seers to kill a chicken, and examine its entrails. "The omens are good; the color is favorable; the gods are with us!"[*] he announces; and then, since ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... neither to march nor fight. As they lay in the woods, and the pickets, firing on the enemy's patrols, kept up a constant skirmish to the front, the laugh and jest ran down the ranks, and the unfortunate Pope, who had only seen "the backs of his enemies," served as whetstone for ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... innocence, knew little of the law of opposites, or how an intellectual or scientific man will sometimes select for his life companion a woman of only ordinary intelligence, who will, nevertheless, adorn her husband's home by her simple domestic virtues. A wife does not need to be a moral whetstone to sharpen her husband's wits by the fireside, neither would it enhance his happiness to find her filling reams of foolscap paper with choice specimens of prose and poetry; intelligent sympathy with his work is all ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... rusty keys. He could not find them. He searched on this side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stone," I take to mean a "jagged whetstone," very unfit for its purpose; but what is the force of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... mountains in travail and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge in medias res, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for genius, ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... as well as Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone the vehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, but she was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deep understanding of a man, or the domineering spirit of a crude lad, jealous ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... by its former owner in several tournaments and there borne itself handsomely. This done, well or ill, his armour must be seen to, and Dick's also, such as it was; his lance tested, and all their other weapons sharpened on a whetstone that Sir Geoffrey borrowed. For this was a task that Grey Dick would ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... round Globul, or drop, which will hang at the end of the thread; and if further you stick several of these upon the end of a stick with a little sealing Wax, so as that the threads stand upwards, and then on a Whetstone first grind off a good part of them, and afterward on a smooth Metal plate, with a little Tripoly, rub them till they come to be very smooth; if one of these be fixt with a little soft Wax against a small needle hole, prick'd through a thin Plate of Brass, Lead, Pewter, or any other ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... booke, and laie them both togither: and where the childe doth well, either in chosing, or true placing of Tullies wordes, let the master // Children praise him, and saie here ye do well. For I // learne by assure you, there is no such whetstone, to // prayse. sharpen a good witte and encourage a will to learninge, as is praise. But if the childe misse, either in forgetting a worde, or in chaunging a good with a worse, or misordering the sentence, I would not haue the master, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... stopped again, looked round over all that power of corn which still had to be cut and beyond, over that swarming plain, which lay scorching, so hugely far, under that merciless sun. He saw Zalia look askant because he did not go on working and, to account for his resting, drew his whetstone from his trouser-pocket and began slowly ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... like may neuer light vpon this land, but may be auerted and turned away from all christian kingdomes, through his mercie, whose wrath by sinne being set on fire, is like a consuming flame; and the swoord of whose vengeance being sharpened with the whetstone of mens wickednesse, shall hew them in peeces as ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... omitted] complains that T has deprived him of many letters that ought to begin with [Greek Sigma omitted]. 84. If Jovis or Jupitris. 85. The celebrated Roman grammarian. A proverbial phrase for the violation of grammar was "Breaking Priscian's head." 86. Livy says, Actius Nevius cut a whetstone through with a razor. 87. A kind of lizard that was supposed to ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... eulogy of Chief Justice Dyer, who died March 24, 1582, Whetstone gives proof that in Elizabethan England purity was the exception rather than ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... me that the very contradiction and opposition we meet with from our fellow-men, ought to rouse our spirit to love them more, for they serve as a whetstone ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... their principal canons of faith, and the one best observed in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen edge of the eyes. Semble—as the lawyers say—that this idea was born of great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better than the way to spell it; and when, if his outlook were sharpened by a friendly wring from the captain of the watch, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of second-hand embroidery, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "A whetstone is no carving instrument, But yet it maketh sharpe carving tooles; And, if thou know'st that I have aught miswent,* *erred, failed Eschew thou that, for such thing to thee school* is. *schooling, lesson Thus oughte wise men to beware by fooles; If so thou do, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, .. that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted Steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... as a whetstone," commented Jackson Hines, "an' I don't blame him. This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the devil with his horns ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of the Bone.*—Prepare a section of bone for microscopic study as follows: With a jeweler's saw cut as thin a slice as possible. Place this upon a good-sized whetstone, not having too much grit, and keeping it wet rub it under the finger, or a piece of leather, until it is thin enough to let the light shine through. The section may then be washed and examined with the microscope. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... whistled as he strove mightily with the weeds. Now and then, he sharpened his scythe with his whetstone and attacked the dense undergrowth with yet more vigour. The little yellow mongrel capered joyfully and unceasingly, affecting to hide amidst the mass of rubbish, scrambling out with sharp, eager barks when his master playfully buried him, and ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... of a whetstone, is significant of sharp worries and close attention is needed in your own affairs, if ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... "What a whetstone for the imagination the business sense is!" I commented. "Perhaps if your grandfather owned shares in the Eclipse, you will be able to see the second signal station erected the next year on Point Lobos, just beyond the Fort. From there a vessel could be decried many miles outside the Heads ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... to Barnet, and was hastening thither with Hassell and another friend, when he was stopped at Whetstone turnpike by a lumber or jockey cart, driven by two persons, one of them a chimney-sweep, who were disputing with the toll-gatherer. Morland endeavored to pass, when one of the wayfarers cried, "What! Mr. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone from his pocket, spat on it, and fell to sharpening ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see {h}), the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see {gabriel}), the SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See also {machoflops}, {MIPS}, {smoke ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Mr. Jones. And I will warn you, in time, of one man in particular. His name is John Mason. Keep clear of him, if you wish to keep out of trouble. He's as smooth and oily as a whetstone; and, like a whetstone, abrades every thing he touches. He's a bad man, that ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... trotting, and sometimes running, for he wished to reach the camp before night. It was late in the afternoon when he came to the river, waded across and reached the camp. He went into his father's lodge and sat down. His father was at work making a whetstone. He looked up at his son, and said, "Ha, you have returned," and he turned to his wife and said, "Give our son something to eat." His mother was cooking a little dog, the last one they had, and she gave Sun's Road a piece of it and he ate. Then he took ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... this the Whetstone of your sword, let griefe Conuert to anger: blunt not the heart, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Indian walked into my house and asked me for a whetstone. I gave it, not daring to refuse him. He sat down and sharpened his knife, feeling its edge and pointing often ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... "Smooth as a whetstone, straight as an arrow," meaning the cliff. Perhaps because of their pictorial descent, the characters did not shock one. Unlike the usual branding of nature, they seemed not out of keeping with the spot. Not far beyond, the butts of the winter's neve, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... so bad," said Uncle Remus, putting an edge upon his axe with a whetstone held in his hand, "hit wuz a mighty long time 'fo' he could ramble 'roun' en worry ole Brer Rabbit. Der time Cousin Wildcat fetch'd 'im dat wipe 'cross de stomach, he tuck'n lay de blame on Brer Rabbit, en w'en he git well, he des tuck'n juggle wid de yuther creeturs, en dey all 'gree dat dem ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... old man, and in much haste. "I ain't goin' to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!" And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on the wall, and at once went out ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... of the big red brick wall one bright winter's day, for the time had gone by very quickly. Old Brownsmith had a sharp knife in his hand, and I was holding the whetstone and a thin-bladed saw that he used to cut ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... out-parishes in the Counties of Middlesex and Surrey which are comprehended within the bills of mortality, and esteemed part of this great town. And first, St. Giles's in the Fields contains these chief streets and places: Great Lincoln's Inn Fields, part of Lincoln's Inn Garden, Turnstile, Whetstone Park, part of High Holborn, part of Duke Street, Old and New Wild Street, Princes Street, Queen Street, part of Drury Lane, Brownlow Street, Bolton Street, Castle Street, King Street, the Seven Dials, or seven streets comprehending Earl Street, Queen Street, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... saying, "Come, augur, consult your birds, and tell me, whether the thing I have now in my mind can be done, or cannot be done." Accius proceeded according to the rules of his art, and told the king it could be done. "What I was thinking of," replied Tarquinius, "was whether you could cut this whetstone in two with this razor." Accius immediately took the one instrument and the other, and performed the prodigy in the face of the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself. At last he found what he seemed to want—a rusty old butcher knife and a whetstone. Then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. The winds sighed around the lonely place, the mysterious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thereafter they talked in whispers for an hour or more, and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt's were sharpening themselves anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if possible, but no more than that. They must pick the best out of that score of survivors of the Monmouth men that Colonel Bishop had acquired. Men ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... to observe that all the poetry of the midsummer harvesting has not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. The line of mowers was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and the sound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewy morning, was ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the few men with whom he sat at ease. It was Steele who drew his friend towards the days to come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. Steele said in one of the later numbers of his Spectator, No. 532, to which he prefixed a motto that assigned to himself only the part of whetstone to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... work he was going to do in the fields. Mike rented a farm of about fifteen acres, at least ten of it was grass; he grew an acre of potatoes and some corn, and some turnips for his sheep. He had a nice bit of meadow, and he took down his scythe, and as he put the whetstone in his belt Bryden noticed a second scythe, and he asked Mike if he should go down with him and help him ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... such as both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were. Ha! yes. This is a right wonderful blade we have now in our hand. For this sword was forged in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable sharpness on no earthly whetstone. But, best of all for us, when a good soldier of Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is able then to go forth against himself with it; against his own only and worst enemy—that is, against himself. As here, against his own wildness of head and pride of heart. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the argillaceous schist to be traversed by quartz, transforming it, in part, into whetstone and silicious schist; the latter sometimes containing carbon, and being then capable of producing galvanic effects on the nerves. The highest degree of silicifaction of schist is that observed in ribbon jasper, a material ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... righteous causes had chastened him to a degree and purged away somewhat of the violence of his nature. On this particular morning he looked haggard and ill,—yes, and he looked, too, as blue as a whetstone. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... have upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding speech, which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing loth. Mother of my mother was Stymphalian Metope[11] of fair flowers, for she bare Thebe the charioteer, whose pleasant fountain ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... in the prime of life, and had a young wife and one little baby. He was professedly a sceptic, and gloried in his creed—if he can be said to have any creed who believes in nothing but himself. Of course the Bible to him was simply a whetstone on which to "sharpen his tongue like a serpent, that he might shoot out his arrows, even bitter words." As for conscience, he ridiculed the very idea of such an old- fashioned guide and monitor. "No," he would say, "as ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... her approval. The first of these was only a little thing,—a failure to keep shaved. Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was no one to see him except Virginia and the guide. The stubble matted and grew on his lips and jowls. Bill, in contrast, shaved with ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... horsemen. 1 pair shoes, for horsemen. 3 towels. 1 gutta percha poncho. 1 broad-brimmed hat of soft felt. 1 comb and brush. 2 tooth-brushes. 1 pound Castile soap. 3 pounds bar soap for washing clothes. 1 belt-knife and small whetstone. Stout linen thread, large needles, a bit of beeswax, a few buttons, paper of pins, and a thimble, all contained in a small ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Feare God: be true to thy Prince: and obey the Lawes. At London. Printed by Richarde Jones, dwelling at the Signe of the Rose and Crowne, neere Holborne bridge, 1587, 4to. The author was George Whetstone. An Address to the Reader signed T. C. [Thomas Churchyard] sets forth that "my good friend M. G. W. at his departure into the Country, left this most honest work to be censured by me; being right well assured, by the continuance of our true friendshippes, that I would not deceiue him with ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... same thought is found in George Whetstone's epitaph on the good lord Dyer, 1582: Et semper bonus ille bonis fuit, ergo bonorum Sunt illi demum pectora ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... were much struck with the speed and skill with which this was done, and they all called out together to ask if the whetstone was for sale. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... loadstone, a specimen of which I have with me; you can examine it when you visit this country. The next rock crystal, of which I have two specimens.[7] The fourth is alum, of which I procured a small quantity, as I did not visit the cave where it is to be obtained. The fifth is oil and whetstone, of which there is a great abundance in that quarter. The sixth is asbestus. In a word, the subjects are worthy the attention of those who wish to be instrumental in enlarging or developing that ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... amelioration of her health. And I never knew any human being to be more sincerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with crocus powder, "to put an edge on." He had a remarkably fine whetstone, "the best in England; it was worth half a sovereign," and this he often and vainly begged me to accept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an evening to the lodging-house, he would ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... a whetstone and some knives in his hand, and smiling at Durtal, he said: "I am going to polish the knives of the monastery, for they want it badly." And he placed them on a table in a small room attached ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... conversational gift as any of its predecessors. Its thumbnail sketches, if somewhat more subdued and less elaborate, are not less full of character. John Jones, the Dissenting weaver, who served Borrow at once as a guide and a whetstone of Welsh in the neighbourhood of Llangollen; the "kenfigenous" Welshwoman who first, but by no means last, exhibited the curious local jealousy of a Welsh-speaking Englishman; the doctor and the Italian barometer-seller ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Protectorate, were the following;—(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... found meat and mead and ate and drank. Then Eric washed himself, combed out his golden locks, and looked well to his harness and to Whitefire's edge. Skallagrim also ground his great axe upon the whetstone in the yard, singing as he ground. When all was ready, the horses were caught, and ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as a whetstone." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... sulky helplessness—but the overthrow of the CHAMPION of LIBERTY, the ORATOR whose eloquence was to have been the passing dirge of Justice—his overthrow was the overthrow of thousands. With his, hearts sunk, and menaces grew silent; the monster at his whetstone dropped the half-sharpened dagger at the conviction of Henry Hunt; and the tool of his excitement unscrewed the pike-head and threw away the musquet. I have no hesitation in declaring, that all the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt |
