"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Further, the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 1) mentions many kinds of vices as belonging to covetousness which he calls illiberality, for he speaks of those who are "sparing, tight-fisted, skinflints [*kyminopristes], misers [*kimbikes], who do illiberal deeds," and of those who "batten on whoredom, usurers, gamblers, despoilers of the dead, and robbers." Therefore it seems that the aforesaid enumeration ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... scowl, replied, "Clasp not my knees, vile dog! nor speak to me of parents! Such evil hast thou done me, that I could devour thee raw! Not for thy weight in gold would I give thee to thy queenly mother, to mourn over thee; but dogs and birds shall batten on ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I chose ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the general name for a curtain of canvas—painted to represent some scene and stretched on a batten—a long, thick strip of wood—pocketed in the lower end to give the canvas the required stability. Sets of lines are tied to the upper batten on which the drop is tied and thus the drop can be raised or lowered to its place ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... flower of age Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame, And never burn with one same lust of love, And never in their habits they agree, Nor find the same foods equally delightsome— Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats Batten upon the hemlock which to man Is violent poison. Once again, since flame Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks Of the great lions as much as other kinds Of flesh and blood existing in the lands, How could it be that she, Chimaera lone, With triple body—fore, a lion ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... I'll calm down. But as for swearin'—well, if you knew how full of cusswords I was there one spell you wouldn't find fault; you'd thank me for holdin' 'em in. I had to batten down my hatches to do it, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have then an outer circle, composed partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... going to allow the brazen little beast to know or see what her words meant to her; she was not going to tell her of Michael's disappointment. If she had betrayed him and robbed him of Akhnaton's treasure, she was not going to let her batten on the suffering she had caused, so ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... was not displeased to keep the lad in low conversation. The song had let loose a flood of jest and anecdote which lost none of their ribaldry in the telling. They were ill suited for a boy to hear and batten on. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... man.[2] This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? [Sidenote: wholsome brother,] Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore?[3] Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day[4] in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Judgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? [A] What diuell was't, That thus hath cousend you at hoodman-blinde?[5] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... and Riis calls the gang a club run wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. A young tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashed into the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gave himself up. They batten on the yellowest literature. Those of foreign descent, who come to speak our language better than their parents, early learn to despise them. Gangs emulate each other in hardihood, and this is one cause of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... had blown out ever clip, 'N' 'blooed the hammunition for the little box of tricks. Each took a batten in his fist. Sez Billy "Let 'er rip!" But Son he claws his stubble. Sez—he: "Hold a brace of ticks." Then "Yow!" he pipes 'n' "Strewth!" he sez, ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... scarcely happen to us, I think, with the small spread of canvas that we are showing. But it will be bad enough when it comes, I doubt not; so go below and call Murdock, the cook, and the cabin boy, and say I want them to come on deck, as I am about to batten down the fore scuttle. And when eight bells comes, you will have to go aft and stretch yourselves out on the cabin lockers, for the forecastle will be closed until this ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... The stranger was drawing the batten blinds together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within; then the bolt was ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... became tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gewgawish and idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church of England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the Church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated. So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage—an order I belong to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be better trained to all ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... that Watton had found opportunity to show Tressady that morning a paragraph from one of the numerous papers that batten on the British peer, his dress, his morals, and his sport. The paragraph, without names, without even initials, contained an outline of Lord Ancoats's affairs which Harding, who knew everything of a scandalous nature, declared to be well informed. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scorned to use their wings, they preferred walking to flying; one might kill them in millions, yet other, and hungrier millions would still come on, rejoicing in the death of their predecessors, as they now had not only men's eyes and wounds to eat, but could batten upon the bodies of their slaughtered friends also. Strange to say, we were not troubled here with ants; had we been, we should only have required a few spears stuck into us to complete our happiness. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... beef being apt to batten or fatten those that eat it. The cove has hushed the battner; i.e. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... world assurance of a man. This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore? Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Iudgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? What diuell was't, That thus ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband.—Look you now what follows: Here is your husband, like a milldew'd ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, Else could you not have motion: but sure that ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... differ by eleven days from those of the English accounts. The Dutch hamlet of Saratoga, surprised by Marin, was near the mouth of the Fish Kill, on the west side of the Hudson. There was also a small fort on the east side, a little below the mouth of the Batten Kill.] Albany was left uncovered, and the Assembly voted L150 in provincial currency to rebuild the ruined fort. A feeble palisade work was accordingly set up, but it was neglected like its predecessor. Colonel Peter Schuyler was stationed there with his regiment in 1747, but was ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... bygone piracy. The great black ceiling beams, heavy-legged table of two-inch planks, floor laid like a dhow's deck—making utmost use of odd lengths of timber, but strong enough to stand up under hurricanes and overloads of plunder, or to batten down rebellious slaves—murmurings from rooms below, where men of every race that haunts those shark-infested seas were drinking and telling tales that would make Munchhausen's reputation—steaminess, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... and, in the end, the necessity of returning to the tower and removing the traces of the two murders, the frightful punishment of climbing that tower, of touching those skeletons, of undressing them and burying them. That will be enough. We will not ask for more. We will not give it to the public to batten on and create a scandal which would recoil upon M. d'Aigleroche's niece. No, let us leave this disgraceful ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... jewels and endeavoring to raise a force, landed at Burlington, with four ships, having succeeded in evading the ships of war which the Commons had dispatched to cut her off, under the command of Admiral Batten. That night, however, the Parliament fleet arrived off the place, and opened fire upon the ships and village. The queen was in a house near the shore, and the balls struck in all directions round. She was forced to get up, throw on ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... while she's melted that a-way, he pours it into these yere auger holes an' lets it cool. It gets good an' hard, this arsenic-tallow does, an' then Coyote drags the timber thus reg'lated out onto the plains to what he regyards as a elegible local'ty an' leaves it for the wolves to come an' batten on. Old Coyote will have as many as a dozen of these sticks of timber, all bored an' framed up with arsenic-tallow, scattered about. Each mornin' while he's wolfin', Coyote makes a round-up an' skins an' counts up his prey. An' son, you hear me! ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... camp life proved to be monotonously dreary. Ivan was not of the type of man to press his popularity and batten upon it. Rather, flattery, and the inevitable toadyism of weaker natures, revolted him; and he began once more to retire into himself, and to live again with dreams, which now formed themselves round any one of three topics: first and highest, his music, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... disdain Spurns with his foot, and cries aloud, "Lie there, Proud youth, and tell thy terrors to the slain. No tender mother shall thy shroud prepare, No father's sepulchre be thine to share. Thy carrion corpse shall be the vultures' food, And birds that batten on the dead shall tear Thee piecemeal, and the fishes lick thy blood, Drowned in the deep sea-gulfs, or drifting on ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Dead and undone for ever, while he lived And flourished. Heaven hath turned this turbulence To fall instead upon the harmless flock. Wherefore no strength of man shall once avail To encase his body with a seemly tomb, But outcast on the wide and watery sand, He'll feed the birds that batten on the shore. Nor let thy towering spirit therefore rise In threatening wrath. Wilt thou or not, our hand Shall rule him dead, howe'er he braved us living, And that by force; for never would he yield, Even while he lived, to words from me. And yet It shows base metal ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... pointed over his shoulder toward a hill just descended.... It's tuberculosis mainly. You see them here living a life designed to bring anything but a corpse back to health. When the winter comes they go to the houses, batten the windows, heap up the fires, and sit beside them, sleep and have their food beside them, twenty in a room. Before Spring, the touched ones cough, and are carried out. They seem to know that the race is passing. They ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... filaments to form the 'sheds'; second, throwing the shuttle, or performing some operation that amounts to the same thing; third, after inserting the weft thread, driving it home, and adjusting it by means of the batten, be it the needle, the finger, the shuttle or ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Strom, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once—for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... ardent people over whom he was to rule. He spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which, locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings cast themselves upon the resources ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... strike my topmast to Death himself first—so the devil go with them! The blind gods may crush—they shall not conquer! They may kill—but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death! A pretty pickle, indeed! Batten down the hatches, Ramsay. Lend Jean a hand to get the guns ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... struck deep there. Who, indeed, would care for her, guard her against the world with its beasts of prey that batten their lusts upon beauty and innocence? And who would help her against herself? The desire to hold her for himself and for her sprang up fierce within him. Could he desert her, leave her to fight her fights, to find her way through the world's treacherous paths alone? That ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... wife, young woman, and a daughter of about fourteen years of age; the young woman and daughter sleep in a kind of box under the man and his wife. In another part of the yard is a Gipsy tent, where God's broad earth answers the purpose of a table, and a "batten of straw" serves as a bed. There is a woman, two daughters, one of whom is of marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a youth I should think about sixteen years of age. I should judge that the mother and her two daughters ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined with those blackguards. We have a right to Home Rule, an abstract right to manage our own affairs, and I believe ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... attacked—probably by their fathers. Well, I shall have none of them. They and their like are the curse of Kosnovia. Who will pay taxes to keep me in the state that becomes a King? Not they. Who will benefit by good government and honest administration of the laws? Assuredly not they, for they batten on corruption; they are the maggots not the bees of industry. Over ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... recess a pair of trousers hung limply, while Henrietta's scant wardrobe was ranged along the black-painted wall outside. The long, cobweb-hung windows, bare of blind or curtain, showed a black-mirrored surface against the batten shutters. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Master Commanding, John A. J. Brooks; Acting Ensign and Executive Officer, Milton Webster; Acting Master's Mates, Charles F. O'Neill and John Maddock; Acting Assistant Paymaster, J. Woodville Sands; Acting Assistant Surgeon, John M. Batten; Engineers—Second Assistant in charge, James M. Battin; Acting Third Assistant, John Minton; Acting Master ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... fork of a tree, alias a wheel-less water-trolly. The horse was hitched to the butt end, and a batten nailed across the prongs kept the cask from slipping off going uphill. Sandy led the way and carried the bucket; Dad went ahead to clear the track of stones; and Joe straddled the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... be clean? Is human nature normally and habitually corrupt when it comes to governing a city? The Mayor and all his appointees are simply wading through the vast quagmire of the common citizen's indifference, fought every step by the vile creatures who batten on the administration of the city's affairs. Do you suppose that if the schools laid tremendous stress on clean citizenship and began in the kindergarten to teach children how to govern in the most practical way, it would help? I believe it would. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold. "You've done all I can ask. Hurry! Get out!" and they got out and then turned to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and spouted to the top of the funnel—great gouts of the devouring element pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and shrivelled ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... place on a board a dozen inches wide. My petticoats have to be firmly wrapped around me, and care taken that no fold projects beyond the sledge, or I should be soon dragged out of my frail seat. I fix my feet firmly against the batten, and F—— cries, "Are you ready?" "Oh, not yet!" I gasp, clinging to Mr. U——'s hand as if I never meant to let it go. "Hold tight!" he shouts. Now what a mockery this injunction was. I had nothing to hold on to except my own knees, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... arouse thy soul To exultation. Sing hosanna, sing, And halleluiah, for the Lord is great, And full of mercy! He has thought of man; Yea, compass'd round with countless worlds, has thought Of us poor worms, that batten in the dews Of morn, and perish ere the noonday sun. Sing to the Lord, for he is merciful: He gave the Nubian lion but to live, To rage its hour, and perish; but on man He lavish'd immortality and Heaven. The eagle falls from her aerial tower, And mingles with irrevocable dust: ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement, Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night. We eat our own and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of others' meat. We bless our fortunes when we see Our own beloved privacy; And like our living, where we're known To very ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... features you see here never were common—locks seven inches across; several windows without sashes, but with sturdy iron gratings and solid iron shutters. On the fourth floor the doorway communicating with the main house is entirely closed twice over, by two pairs of full length batten shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks eighteen inches long, two to each shutter. And yet it was through this doorway that the ghosts—figuratively speaking, of course, for we are dealing with plain fact and ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... complained of the Plague that is Scarlet—moaned and cried out and turned in her misery.... But ye failed me. Then my peoples were weaklings and their hearts all were craven; the Scarlet Evil dismayed them; they fled from its power and left it to batten on me ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... varnished, and packed in boxes or bundles for the market. Many sawn sticks, however, are supplied with bone and horn handles, which are fastened on with glue; and then of course there is less wood waste, as a larger number of them may be cut from one batten. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... whitewashed, the clay floor swept, and clean sheets of newspaper laid on the slab mantleshelf under the row of biscuit tins that held the groceries. I thought that his wife, or housekeeper, or whatever she was, was a clean and tidy woman about a house. I saw no woman; but on the sofa—a light, wooden, batten one, with runged arms at the ends—lay a woman's dress on a lot of sheets of old stained and faded newspapers. He looked at it in a puzzled way, knitting his forehead, then took it up absently and folded it. I saw then that it was a riding skirt and jacket. ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... is this. Who shall move the King? Will reports of his ambassadors that Cleves, or Charles, or Francis miscall the Queen? You know they will not, for the King is aware of how these princes batten on carrion. Will broad sheets of the Lutheran? You know they will not, for the King is aware of how those coggers come by their tales. Will the King go abroad among the people any more to hear what they say? You know he will not. For he is grown too old, and ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... who was still governor of Connecticut. Plymouth was represented by its governor, Josiah Winslow, with the younger William Bradford; Massachusetts by William Stoughton, Simon Bradstreet, and Thomas Danforth. These strong men were confronted with a difficult problem. From Batten's journal, kept during that disastrous summer, we learn the state of feeling of excitement in Boston. The Puritans had by no means got rid of that sense of corporate responsibility which civilized man has inherited from prehistoric ages, and which has been ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... again she returned to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin, her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As they turned to pupae he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be chrysalis, there would then issue, in place of gorgeous butterfly, a host of dingy hymenoptera. So would ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... difficult to get at the fire on account of the small hatchway, and notwithstanding the laboured efforts of all hands, we were at last obliged to batten the hatches down and to trust to a lucky 'slant' to put us within hail of assistance. The water which we had so fruitlessly poured below had all to be pumped out again to get the ship in sailing trim; and heart-breaking work it was, with the wheezy old pump ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... or wort or beet, Whatever comes, Content makes sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement; Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night: We eat our own, and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of other's meat. We bless our fortunes, when we see Our own beloved privacy; And like our living, where we're known To very few, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... It is most unreasonable to flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust steward. He does not want light, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shrivelled rhizome—"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected." ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of the fife to his mouth, blew out all the flour, and in this humble imitation of the smoke of a gun, poor puss was run up to the batten, where she hung till she was dead. I am ashamed to say I did not attempt to save the kitten's life, although I caused her foul murder to be revenged by ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... marine punishment unknown, except by name, in the British navy; but formerly inflicted by the French for grave offences, thus: the criminal was placed astride a short thick batten, fastened to the end of a rope which passed through a block hanging at the yard-arm. Thus fixed, he was hoisted suddenly up to the yard, and the rope being then slackened at once, he was plunged into the sea. This chastisement ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... soul.' They hung from the gallows for half-an-hour. On the platform, in front of the gallows, was placed the block and two sacks of sawdust, and on a bench two axes, two sharp knives, and a basket. The block was a long piece of timber supported at each end by pieces a foot high, and having a small batten nailed across the upper end for the neck to rest upon. The body of Brandreth was first taken down from the gallows, and placed face downwards on the block. The executioner, a muscular Derbyshire coal miner, selected by the sheriff for his proficiency in wielding the pick, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... a school or pack or flock of Octopus gigas would be found busy picking the sailors off a stranded ship, and then in the course of a few score years it might begin to stroll up the beaches and batten on excursionists. Soon it would be a common feature of the watering-places—possibly at last commoner than excursionists. Suppose such a creature were to appear—and it is, we repeat, a possibility, if perhaps a remote one—how could it be fought ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... chip!" Wombold broke in. "Five thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, on salary, with ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... she will be able to console herself for those and similar bitternesses by the knowledge that on the whole the world honours those who battle against ill-fortune without complaint far above the needy crowd of spongers who strive to batten without effort on the crumbs that fall from the tables ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in St George's, to batten on the spoils of poor Jonathan, having monopolized all the good things of the place. I happened to be acquainted with one of them, and thereby had less reason to complain, but many a poor fellow, sent ashore on duty, had to put up with but Lenten fair at the taverns. At length, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... yet I went on. Finally, in the fifth ballot, I saw a good chance to slide down and let the crowd in again as I had done on former occasions. I slipped out of the window and down the side of the barn about two feet, when I was detained unavoidably. There was a "batten" on the barn that was loose at the upper end. I think I was wearing my father's vest on that day, as he was away from home, and I frequently wore his clothes when he was absent. Anyhow the vest was too large, and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... music, provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the brunnens of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and opened. First he lifted out some soft padding. A small tin box honey-combed inside came to light. With infinite precaution Barnett picked out an object that looked like a 22- calibre short cartridge, wadded some cotton batten in his hand, set the thing in the wadding, laid it on the rock, carefully returned the small box to the large box and the large box to the boat, took up the cartridge again and waded back to the cliff. They watched ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I could. It seemed a rash thing to go down to the afterhold, where any one might batten me down. But, there being no help for it, I took the bucket and went. I filled it well up to the brim from the second cask, returned to deck, and handed it to the man who stood behind Martin. They took it, pretty respectfully, and went below, Martin still ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the front And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans Feed and envenom, as the milky blood Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake. Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts, And batten on his poisons? Love forbid! Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love. O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... womanhood, that the red cross of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The man with whom she enters the primrose path feels ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and marrow and life of the struggling people, you heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy shops of a private country village, are each a scorpion curse to the people. Your very existence is a libel upon the laws by which ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Seriously," she hastened to add, in earnest tones, "I have all I want. And if I try presently to earn more, it will be because I think everybody ought to earn his living or hers. You earned yours. I despise people who just batten on the earnings of others, and never do a hand's turn ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... will shortly appear. We have more readers and fewer students. The person known as "the general reader" is nowadays fond of literary dram-drinking—he wants small pleasant doses of a stimulant that will act swiftly on his nerves; and, if he can get nothing better, he will contentedly batten on the tiny paragraphs of detached gossip which form the main delight of many fairly intelligent people. Books are cheap and easily procured, and the circulating library renders it almost unnecessary for any one to buy books at all. In myriads of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... mystic, and to a large amount of credulity, has made Russia for two hundred years the happy hunting-ground of charlatans and impostors of various sorts claiming supernatural powers: clairvoyants, mediums, yogis, and all the rest of the tribe who batten on human weaknesses, and the perpetual desire to tear away the veil from the Unseen. It so happened that my chief at Lisbon had in his youth dabbled in the Black Art. Sir Charles Wyke was a dear old man, who had spent most of his ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... side, while I nailed a fifth athwartships on the deck at the point where I intended to rear my planks. The length of the battens being three inches more than the combined width of the three planks, the projecting ends of the top batten afforded me a very convenient shoulder for the support of my shrouds and stay, which I cut from ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... denunciation with which, when we met three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your own perfidy. You shall tread the path of your ambition childless and objectless and hopeless. Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame. The worm shall batten upon your heart. You shall have honours and enjoy them not; you shall gain your ambition, and despair; you shall pine for your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the hour in which he was born. Mark me, man,—I am dying while I speak,—I know that I am a prophet in my ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Clear weather. At 1/2 past 8 p.m. Anchored in the Entrance of Plymouth Sound in 9 fathoms water. At 4 a.m. weighed and worked into proper Anchoring ground, and Anchored in 6 fathoms, the Mewstone South-East, Mount Batten North-North-East 1/2 East, and Drake's Island North by West. Dispatched an Express to London for Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander to join the Ship, their Servants and Baggage being ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... I, 'it does look as if we would have to take up gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves. This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten than bant any day.' ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... to the royal family had been confiscated to the state. I had just seen the belongings of the royal family trampled as by cattle. First one tyrant and then another rose up to tell us what we should do, to batten himself off the wretched commonwealth, and then go to the guillotine before his successor. As a good citizen I should have turned these jewels and stones and coins over to the state. But I was acting the part of Jacquot, and as an honest peasant I whipped them under ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers. It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism important, and it is this that makes them dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously upon the evils of our ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... her last voyage to Calabria, having taken macaroni from Amalfi and bringing back wine of Verbicaro. A fine boat, the Giovannina, able to carry twenty tons in any weather, and water-tight too, being decked with hatches over which you can stretch and batten down tarpaulin. A pretty sight as she ran up to the end of the breakwater, old Luigione standing at the stern with the tiller between his knees and the slack of the main-sheet in his hand. She was running wing and wing, with her bright new ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... kept my job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere they would do the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Half mad to batten on their own devilries, And mark what heaven-born splendours they could quell, She held him quivering in ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... more, and the father confessor will seal my last words with the seal of sanctity when his holy office is done. They of the outside world may send their creatures into wrecked homes and death-smitten firesides, and their newspapers will batten on blood and tears, but with me their spies must halt before the confessional. They know that Tessie is dead and that I am dying. They know how the people in the house, aroused by an infernal scream, rushed into my room and found one living and two dead, but they do not know what ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... imperious urgency to curtain closely the night of Tasso, throwing all its consequences upon Victor's masterful tongue. Whence it ensued (and here is the danger for illogical individuals as well as vast communities, who continue to batten upon fiction when the convenience of it has taken the place of pleasure), that they had need to exalt his eloquence, for a cloak to their conduct; and doing it, they fell into a habit of yielding to him; they disintegrated under him; rules, principles, morality, were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... etc., are kept about officers, and my search proved fruitless, more especially as the records at Woolwich for the period required were destroyed by fire some years ago. The best evidence I have obtained is that of General Gordon's tailors, Messrs Batten & Sons, of Southampton, who write: "We consider, by measurements in our books, that General Gordon was 5 ft. 9 in." As he had contracted a slight stoop, or, more correctly speaking, carried his head thrown forward, he looked in later ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the wind blew fresh from the north-west, which occasioned the sea to break very high across the Dolphin bank; and in the night such a heavy broken sea came into the bay that we were obliged to batten all the hatchways down, and to keep everybody upon deck all night though the rain came down in torrents. The ship rolled in ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Thirkle. "We've got to get out of here. Give him lip, Buckrow, so he'll come down, or he'll batten down on us until morning, and ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the skull, the weapon simply crashes through the bone, disintegrating it at the point of entrance, and cracking or splintering it for a variable, but limited, distance beyond. On the other hand, when the head is struck by a "blunt" object—for example, a batten falling from a height—the force is applied over a wider area and the elastic skull bends before it. If the limits of its elasticity are not exceeded, the bone recoils into its normal position when the force ceases to act; but if the bone is bent beyond the point from which it can recoil, a ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Rome, from which a lively and vigorous society keeps itself tolerably free—Rarity-hunting and Expertise. These parasites can get no hold on a healthy body; it is on dead and dying matter that they batten and grow fat. The passion to possess what is scarce, and nothing else, is a disease that develops as civilisation grows old and dogs it to the grave: it is saprophytic. The rarity-hunter may be called a "collector" if by "collector" you do not mean one ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... day is dawning, Let her have a weaver's shuttle, 60 And a batten that shall suit it, And a loom of best construction, And a treadle of the finest. Make the weaver's chair all ready, For the damsel fix the treadle, Lay her hand upon the batten. Soon the shuttle shall be singing, And the treadle shall be thumping, Till the rattling fills ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was below consciousness, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... valuable and curious selection which will be welcomed by readers of all ages.... The illustrations by Mr. Batten are often clever and irresistibly humorous. A delight alike to the young people ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... fleet of Greece. So they with prayers importuned, and with tears Their son, but him sway'd not; unmoved he stood, Expecting vast Achilles now at hand. 105 As some fell serpent in his cave expects The traveller's approach, batten'd with herbs Of baneful juice to fury,[3] forth he looks Hideous, and lies coil'd all around his den, So Hector, fill'd with confidence untamed, 110 Fled not, but placing his bright shield against A buttress, with his noble heart ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... a lifting of the eyebrows, and a pursing of the mouth, in an anxiety not altogether burlesque. He knew himself the prey of any one who chose to batten on him, and his hospitality was subject to frightful abuse. Perhaps Mr. Norton has somewhere told how, when he asked if a certain person who had been outstaying his time was not a dreadful bore, Longfellow answered, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... him. Or, if I might here be indulged in a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for security and repose; Cobbett lets his pour out upon the plain like a flock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for those to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goes more into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal, is more desultory and various, and appears less ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... or garotter, or, indeed, a common thief Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef, Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford, - A cut above the diet ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... said, "high water soon, and den ship go in smooth—batten down hatches though, case sea ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... EIGHTEEN.—This is the way the Irish representation now stands, eighty-six men in favor of making Ireland a nation, eighteen wanting to keep her a province, and a province on which they can selfishly batten. The elections in every way have borne out the forecast of the Irish leaders, who calculated eighty-five as the minimum strength of the National party. Mr. Gladstone will now be gratified to learn that in response to his late Midlothian ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... wreckers, whose lair is secure past compare, All who batten on bones with a maw debonair, And the carcase of Poverty torture and tear With historical fraud, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... red-ruled margins, and on the parchment were inscribed services and "verse-anthems" and "ffull-anthems," all in engrossing hand and the most uncompromising of black ink. Therein was a generous table of contents— Mr Batten and Mr Gibbons, Mr Mundy and Mr Tomkins, Doctor Bull and Doctor Giles, all neatly filed and paged; and Mr Bird would incite singers long since turned to churchyard mould to "bring forthe ye timbrell, ye pleasant harp and ye violl," and reinsist ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... has cleft its way each coign into, For wood and stone searching her bosom through. Astonishingly high she took the blue, Yet weeping molten dross shall meet the ground— A sight for grief profound to gaze across. Flame follows flame, each like a giant worm, To feast and batten on her beauteous form. Through gold and silver doors they sinuous swarm And crop the carven flowers with gust enorme; Till all is emptiness. Then with hellish shout The embruted Gentiles in exultant rout Into her Holy of Holies ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... am getting up now to do the business of a man; and am I out of humor for going about that which I was made for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then designed for nothing but to doze and batten beneath the counterpane? I thought action had been the end ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... gratulations roar, Fright'ning old Father Thames from shore to shore;— For King or etiquette while nobles caring, To Buckingham-house by hundreds are repairing, With gorgeous Dames, to whom this day a bliss is; Accompanied by smiling lovely misses Of eager appetite, who long to gorge And batten on the favours of King George; While London's Mayor and Aldermen set out In Civic state, to grace the royal rout; While strut the Guards in black straps and white gaiters In honour of their Patron and Creators;{1}— ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... good to have been kept waiting ten years or more. You're spoilt; that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire too easily. You think this world is your own damn playground. And it isn't. Understand? You're put here to work, not play; to develop yourself, not batten on other people. You won her like a man in the face of desperate odds. You paid a heavy price for her. But even so, you don't deserve to keep her if you forget that she has paid too. By Heaven, Piers, she must have loved you a mighty lot to have ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... be left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in life had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... otherwise have possessed. There was loss, there was discredit, in having recourse to such characters, when honest wants could be fairly supplied by upright men, and on liberal terms. Such reptiles have been confined in Scotland to batten upon their proper prey of folly, and feast, like worms, on the corruption in ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... lady into the sea, living or dead," said Mr. Thompson, with an ominous lift of his eye, "you go with her, Mr. Batten. Remember who brought her here and how ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... has been already described; in addition to these the threads are further controlled by a reed board which acts both as warp spacer and beater-in. All being ready for the weaving, the shed is opened by raising one of the heddle sticks, and a heavy knife-shaped batten of wood is slipped into the opening. This is turned sideways to enlarge the shed, and a shuttle bearing the weft thread is shot through. By raising and lowering the heddle rods the position of the warp is changed as ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Clarendon Press, who agreed to publish the Dictionary. The first part was published in 1884, and the second in 1885.[17] It is hoped that in future it will be possible to issue a part every six months. At present the alphabet is carried down to Batten. This is one of the most magnificent pieces of work that has ever been produced in any country, and it is an honour to every one concerned. To the Philological Society who conceived it, to Dr. Murray and his staff who have devoted so much labour and intellect ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... fire, hastening his return to the Crescent City, where he was soon forced to make an assignment of the remaining property. A score of hungry lawyers hovered around the sinking estate, greedily jealous lest some one of their number should batten too gluttonously at this general collation. It was the one topic of interest in the musty, dusty courthouse until the end appeared with the following announcement in ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... humming sound as of sawmills far away. But this was long before you took your malaria of mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell to a vast smug redness—that physiological, or psychological, moment for which you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Edward Pepys, was dead, died at Mrs. Turner's, for which my wife and I are very sorry, and the more for that his wife was the only handsome woman of our name. So up and to the office, where the greatest business was Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten against me for Sir W. Warren's contract for masts, to which I may go to my memorandum book to see what past, but came off with conquest, and my Lord Barkely and Mr. Coventry well convinced that we are well used. So home to dinner, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of the opportunity this number affords of upholding the poor author's right, of censuring the greedy spoliation of publishing tribe, who would live, batten, and fatten upon the despoiled labours of those whom their piracy starves—snatching the scanty crust from their needy mouths to pamper their own ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... July 12th, the anchor was raised, the cat falls manned, and we bade New York good-by once more. A brisk northeast breeze was blowing, kicking up an uncomfortable sea, and when Sandy Hook was passed it became necessary to close all ports and batten down hatches. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... That obscure heritage of foes, The exceeding bitter heritage Which still a jealous God bestows From inappellable age to age, The ghostly worms that softly move Through every grey old corse of love And creep across the coffined years To batten on our blood and tears; And there were hooded shapes of death Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind, Stealing softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, slowly stealing near; While all the gloom that round them rolled With intertwisting ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... danger to Monny; but you see, as I've told you, the convent isn't far from Monaco. I got off the Laconia there, to visit Esme, and when I came on board again, Monny and Mrs. East and Rachel came with me. They'd been in Italy and France, and had picked up Miss Guest, who was only too enchanted to batten on Monny's kindness and dollars. It was I who had engaged their staterooms, on a cable from Monny, long before. And if there were a spy anywhere, he might have the idea that I wanted to smuggle Esme out of her convent ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... repeated it. "One thing! In Potsdam, on that cloudless July night, when the world, on which he proposed to batten, slept, toiled, feasted, fasted, occupied with its futile loves and hates, that thing ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... unlatched wicket in some porte-cochere—red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... love the plot-interest of the game," he said, "and so does dear Jessie here. We both of us adore it. As long as I find such good pickings upon you, I certainly am not going to turn away from so valuable a carcass, in order to batten myself, at considerable trouble, upon minor capitalists, out of whom it is difficult to extract a few hundreds. It may have puzzled you to guess why I fix upon you so persistently. Now you know, and understand. When a fluke finds a sheep that suits him, that fluke lives upon him. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... of Mayors of the city from 1654 to 1887, we notice nearly twenty of the names as having been given by Dickens to his characters, viz. Robinson, Wade, Brooker, Clarke, Harris, Burgess, Head, Weller, Baily, Gordon, Parsons, Pordage, Sparks, Simmons, Batten, Saunders, Thomson, Edwards, and Budden. The name of Jasper also occurs as a tradesman several times in the city, but we are informed that this is a recent introduction. In the Cathedral burying-ground occur the names of Fanny Dorrett and Richard Pordage. Dartle, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... your true Creole was, and still continues to be, properly, yea, delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds; and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and happy, with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of snowy ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable |
