"Chopping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inscriptions over them, a Large Bread Bakery; a Book Bindery; a Dry Goods Store; and a Carriage Repository; the last-named establishment looking very like an exceedingly small retail coal-shed. On the pavement under our window, a black man is chopping wood; and another black man is talking (confidentially) to a pig. The public table, at this hotel and at the hotel opposite, has just now finished dinner. The diners are collected on the pavement, on both sides of the way, picking their teeth, and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... his conscience, literary-artistic and simply human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... minutes; but even if we had them, we should not dare use them, for the chances are that the villagers are forbidden to cut down trees anywhere near the castle, and the sound might bring people up from below to see who was chopping. I was thinking of burning two of them down, but in this dry weather the flames might run up them, and we should get a blaze that would bring all the villagers up here." He beckoned to Osgod, and ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... trees had been felled by the banks of the river and three hundred Northmen were busily at work. The frames of two great galleys had already been set up, and they were now engaged in chopping out planks for their sides. Two huts were erected in the middle of the clearing. One was large, and Sweyn's banner floated from a spear before it. The other which stood close by was much smaller, and Edmund doubted not that ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... FORCEMEATS, SPECIAL ATTENTION IS NECESSARY. The points which cooks should, in this branch of cookery, more particularly observe, are the thorough chopping of the suet, the complete mincing of the herbs, the careful grating of the bread-crumbs, and the perfect mixing of the whole. These are the three principal ingredients of forcemeats, and they can scarcely be cut too small, as nothing like ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... these women! And she be not in love either with Prince Richard or this lad, let Block's head be made a chopping-block. [Exit BLOCK. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... onions, and when tender sift through a colander. Cook one quart of oysters in their liquor until the gills separate; strain, and chop the oysters in a chopping bowl. Return the liquor to the saucepan, and cook with three tablespoonfuls of flour and three tablespoonfuls of softened butter, rubbed together, stirring constantly until well thickened and smooth. Season with one teaspoonful and one-half ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... pretty," she decided, surveying the situation; then she moved on, with perhaps less eagerness in her gait, and boldly entered the side door of the house. She could hear the sound of an axe in the shed, as if some one were chopping up kindlings. When she caught sight of the empty kitchen she dropped her bundle into the nearest chair, and held up her hands in what was no affectation of an appearance ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... existence. The old mill hummed away through the day, and often late in the evening if time pressed, upon the grists which added a thin, intermittent stream of tribute to the family income. Whenever work was "slack," Friend Barton was sawing or chopping in the wood-shed adjoining the kitchen; every moment he could seize or make he was there, stooping ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... was not that he was much more of a bad man than many opposed to him, but he was the kind of bad man whom bad men and good do combine to oppose. In a sense subtler than that of the legal and parliamentary logic-chopping invented long afterwards, he certainly managed to put the Crown in the wrong. Nobody suggested that the barons of Stephen's time starved men in dungeons to promote political liberty, or hung them up by the heels as a symbolic request for a free parliament. In the reign ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... northward from the pole, chopping the muddy waves of the river. Around the floating camolotes, islands of weeds, were little swirls. The poplars and willows of the banks grew more distant, as Maid of the Isles cut eastward under all sail. As he tramped fore and aft, Buenos Aires dropped, dropped, dropped ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... writes of John Cotton's works: "These are indeed clear and cogent in reasoning; the language is well enough, but that is all. There are almost no remarkable merits in thought or style. One wanders through these vast tracts and jungles of Puritanic discourse—exposition, exhortation, logic- chopping, theological hair-splitting—and is unrewarded by a single passage of eminent force or beauty, uncheered even by the felicity of a new epithet in the objurgation of sinners, or a new tint in ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Polly eyed him sharply. "You been out there chopping wood too long in this hot sun. What did I ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... all the morning at my Tangier accounts, which the chopping and changing of my tallys make mighty troublesome; but, however, I did end them with great satisfaction to myself. At noon, without staying to eat my dinner, I down by water to Deptford, and there coming find Sir W. Batten ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... elder-flowers, and ten gallons of spring water, boil the water, and pour in scalding hot upon the flowers, the next day put to every gallon of water five pounds of Malaga raisins, the stalks being first pick'd off, but not wash'd, chop them grosly with a chopping knife, then put them into your boiled water, stir the water, raisins and flowers well together, and do so twice a day for twelve days, then press out the juice clear as long as you can get any liquor; put it into a barrel fit for it, stop it up two or three days till it ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... &c 180; mighty, towering, fine, magnificent. corpulent, stout, fat, obese, plump, squab, full, lusty, strapping, bouncing; portly, burly, well-fed, full-grown; corn fed, gram fed; stalwart, brawny, fleshy; goodly; in good case, in good condition; in condition; chopping, jolly; chub faced, chubby faced. lubberly, hulky, unwieldy, lumpish, gaunt, spanking, whacking, whopping, walloping, thumping, thundering, hulking; overgrown; puffy &c (swollen) 194. huge, immense, enormous, mighty; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... high and bulky; let the fire burn never so clear in the frosty days there is always a regular supply of firewood. It is the same with coal. Yet there is no copse attached to the place, nor is the landlord ever seen chopping for himself, nor are the farmers in the habit of receiving large orders for logs and faggots. By the power of some magic spell all things drift hitherward. A magnet which will draw logs of timber and faggots half across the parish, which will pull pheasants off ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... took my first trip of the season. The afternoon was very clear and warm,—real vernal sunshine at last, though the wind roared like a lion over the woods. It seemed novel enough to find within two miles of the White House a simple woodsman chopping away as if no President was being inaugurated! Some puppies, snugly nestled in the cavity of an old hollow tree, he said, belonged to a wild dog. I imagine I saw the 'wild dog,' on the other side of Rock Creek, in a great state of grief and trepidation, running ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... hardship she must have undergone, if she had tried to carry out her threat, that she was obliged to take it in some sort as a favor; and while the vehicle rose and sank over the surface left rough, after building, in front of the house, like a vessel on a chopping sea, she was silent for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there was a bridge some seven or eight miles up the river, near Gaylesville, and procured new guides and pushed on as rapidly as possible in order to reach the bridge before the enemy should take possession of it. We had to pass over an old coal-chopping for several miles, where the timber had been cut and hauled off for charcoal, leaving innumerable wagon-roads running in every direction, and the command was so worn out and exhausted that many were asleep, and in spite of every exertion I could make, with the aid ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... at mid-day a pint and a half of thick soup, and at night rather less than a pint of thin soup. On three occasions only did we get potatoes, but never once meat. Cabbage soup was the usual thing and after a certain time it turned our stomachs. Certain prisoners were employed in chopping up the cabbages to make sauerkraut, and they had to keep the broken leaves, as these were used ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... lard, and salt in the chopping-bowl and chop till well mixed. Then add the water, a little at a time, turning the paste and chopping till smooth, but never touching with the hand. Put a very little flour on the pastry-board and lift the crust on this, and with a floured rolling-pin lightly roll ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... shed at the back came the sound of sawing and chopping, and Heidi listened to it with pleasure, for it was the old familiar sound she had known from the beginning of her life up here. Suddenly she jumped up and ran round, for she must know what her grandfather was doing. In front of the shed door already stood a finished new chair, ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... the girl. "If my father or any one else makes you an offer, I should like you to take it. In one sense, chopping trees and shoveling gravel on ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... back to the penitentiary, where he remained about six months. At the end of this time (December, 1907) he was granted another parole, and went to work for a man named George Hall, on a farm in Minnesota. He was there nearly two months, when he cut his foot while chopping wood. He says that after this accident he was not able to do much work, and his employer did not seem to like to have him hanging around, so he went back to prison, which he says paroled prisoners were supposed to do when ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... of Mr. Williamson was visible behind his chopping-table. He saw me and touched his hat—a bowler; nothing very extraordinary about the bowler. The brim was certainly a great deal flatter than I like personally, but quite in keeping with the general tastes of those ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... more brush or chopping I set Pop to laying stone wall and said I would employ him steadily for a year. But that was a mistake. Old Pop was a free lance, a knight errant. Anything that savored of permanency smelled to him ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... are so peculiarly alive to all that is obnoxious to them that I could as soon preach my eyes into blindness, or my ears into deafness, as put down my feelings with chopping logic. If people will be affected and ridiculous, why must I live in a state of warfare with myself on account of the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... was either a genius or fool. Perhaps I was much of both. But this is a digression. I did not pay any attention to women. I shunned them. I said that to be a great author and a philosophical thinker, one must not be a man of society. I never went to a wood-chopping, to an apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a barn-raising, nor indeed to any of our rustic feasts. I suppose this piqued the vanity of the girls, and they set themselves to catch me. I suppose they thought that I would be a trophy worth boasting. I have noticed that hunters estimate ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Gummy after him," commented Janice, busy with the onion she was chopping to season the hamburger roast, and trying to keep the juice of the onion out of ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... face rather red from the sun and half hidden by a fine gray mustache. He was a little bald and his forehead was high and round. As the two Generals shook hands it was so still that the noise of a man chopping wood in our lines nearly half a mile away was plainly audible. Immediately at their backs the staffs of the two watched. The escort watched. Back along the Spanish and the American trenches thousands of men stood in line ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... on which the three climbed up to the moon together. There they saw a great castle on which was inscribed: "The Spreading Halls of Crystal Cold." Beside it stood a cassia tree which blossomed and gave forth a fragrance filling all the air. And in the tree sat a man who was chopping off the smaller boughs with an ax. One of the sorcerers said: "That is the man in the moon. The cassia tree grows so luxuriantly that in the course of time it would overshadow all the moon's radiance. Therefore ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... through the head. We then knew that the redskins were on the warpath, and determined to find the other men. Going a short distance we found my eldest son killed and stripped naked. The four horses were gone. About a quarter of a mile further on we saw more Indians in the timber where my husband was chopping wood, so we concluded we had better not go any further in that direction, and made our way to the hills. My youngest son, a boy of thirteen years of age, was herding sheep about a mile from the house when he was killed. They shot ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... the house, and seeing us standing there by the chopping-block wasting time in idle talk, she tells Grindhusen he'd better start ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... allusions? Forgive me, I speak as I feel, I've pondered and made my conclusions— As the mill grinds the corn to the meal; So man striving boldly but blindly, Ground piecemeal in Destiny's mill, At his best, taking punishment kindly, Is only a chopping-block still. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... floating ice, with a cocked hat on, and his coat flaps trimmed with buff nankeen stuff, a sort of a male Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," getting away from the hounds that were chasing her to chew her pants. I was always thinking of George either chopping cherry trees, or standing on a pedestal to have his picture taken, but here at the old farm, with dad to inspire me, I was just mingling with Washington, the planter, the neighbor, telling the negroes where they would ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... he will. Don't be a hypocrite, Barbara. He will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter, chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it: knee drill, I think you call it. It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible in ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... might be supposed, began the building of the city: the clearing of the forest, the chopping of wood, the sawing of beams, the digging of foundations, the ringing of hammers, and the uprising on every side of the dwellings of civilization. And certainly steps were taken to provide the company with ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... nor thou either, beloved reader: for, mark what happened. In the afternoon, she (I mean my child) went up the Streckelberg to seek for blackberries, as old Paasch had told her through the maid that a few bushes were still left. The maid was chopping wood in the yard, to which end she had borrowed old Paasch his axe, for the Imperialist thieves had thrown away mine, so that it could nowhere be found; and I myself was pacing up and down in the room, meditating my sermon; when my child, with her apron full, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... job. Nothing was stipulated as to the cost; that was left entirely to the honour of the employing party. At an appointed time the carpenter came with his staff of helpers and learners. Even now their only tools are a felling-axe, a hatchet, and a small adze; and there they sit, chop, chop, chopping, for three, six, or nine months it may be, until the house is finished. Their adze reminds us of ancient Egypt. It is formed by the head of a small hatchet, or any other flat piece of iron, lashed on, at an angle of forty-five, to the end of a small piece of wood, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... edge with his thumb. "Low"—Mabel's face twitched. He had persisted in the idiotic and indecorous names, and her face always twitched when he used them—"Low, do you keep my axe for chopping coal or what?" And he addressed Mabel. "I'm getting fat, I think. I don't want the axe to cut lumps off myself, though. I'm going to chop a marking peg. I've done a heavyweight world's record on that ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Cryer got tea made, and pork and potatoes cooked, and about 7.30 a.m. twelve stalwart Indians sat down to breakfast. Then axes were shouldered, the oxen yoked, and we started for the farm land a little way back from the house. We mustered twenty-two in all and had a good days' work—chopping down trees and brush-wood, grubbing up roots, and making huge fires to burn all up. About twelve acres were cleared sufficiently for ploughing, and this will be fenced round. In the evening, when the men all came in for supper, I showed then my ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... Butter, unless fresh, should be washed several times in cold water and dried in a napkin. Lard should be sweet, and is best when tried out from leaf lard. If suet is used it should be fresh, chopped fine and freed from all skin. During the process of chopping it should be dredged with flour. Beef dripping should be clarified, and if the dripping has any odor or by-taste a very disagreeable flavor will be imparted to the paste. Strict cleanliness must be observed. All utensils used for pastry making should be clean ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... "changed work" with the neighbors, and after we had helped them awhile they turned to in the clearing of our farm. We felled the trees in long, bushy windrows, heaping them up with brush and small wood when the chopping was over. That done, we fired the rows, filling the deep of heaven with smoke, as it seemed to me, and lighting the night ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... remember how shocked Mrs. Fox was to come in and find the elder son of the Prince of Wales chopping sticks in her kitchen; for these two young princes six years ago spent a cadet's life of two years, and lived with the others, and worked and played ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... One reason why these men talk so much is that all their work must be accompanied by some sound. Up in the diamond fields I watched a native chopping wood. Every time the steel blade buried itself in the log the man said: "Good axe. Cut deep." He talked to the weapon just as he would speak to a human being. It all goes to show that the Congo native is simply a ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... beneath her chin, that she might pray till the last moment: the executioner's assistant drew them away, for fear they should be cut off with her head; and as the queen was saying, "In manes teas, Domine," the executioner raised his axe, which was simply an axe far chopping wood, and struck the first blow, which hit too high, and piercing the skull, made the crucifix and the book fly from the condemned's hands by its violence, but which did not sever the head. However, stunned with the blow, the queen made no movement, which ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I hate to leave tools dirty; and was doubting whether I should try for another glance at the seven rooks' nests, or whether it would be too dark for it. It was now a quarter of an hour mayhap, since I had made any chopping noise, because I had been assorting my spars, and tying them in bundles, instead of plying the bill-hook; and the gentle tinkle of the stream was louder than my doings. To this, no doubt, I owe my life, which then (without my dreaming it) was ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... an hour and a half—taking their turns at chopping—almost without speaking. At length the top of the tree began to waver, and a loud crack announced that it was about to fall. Frank and Archie were chopping, and the blows of their axes resounded with redoubled force, and the other boys caught ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master Low and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where they had been all morning chopping logwood. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... first two or three minutes the men appeared not to hear him, and continued their planing and chopping as before, the moment came when the soft tenor accents caught and held the men's attention, as they trickled and burbled forth. Then, screwing up his bright eyes with a humorous air, and twisting his curly beard between ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Perhaps Morris himself justified himself in his own heart by as simple an argument, and was, as the socialist D... said to me one night walking home after some lecture, 'an anarchist without knowing it.' Certainly I and all about me, including D... himself, were for chopping up the old king for Medea's pot. Morris had told us to have nothing to do with the parliamentary socialists, represented for men in general by the Fabian Society and Hyndman's Socialist Democratic Federation and for us in particular by D... During the period of transition mistakes must be made, ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... he has no neighbours was sufficient, in those times of mutual wants and mutual benefactions, to make the churl infamous and execrable. A failure to ask a neighbour to a raising, clearing, a chopping frolic, or his family to a quilting, was considered a high indignity; such an one, too, as required to be explained or atoned for at the next muster or county court. Each settler was not only willing but desirous to contribute his share to the general ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... run. However, they tell me that this fellow Brother George has a good deal of common-sense. He has been running their house in Malta, where he's done some good work. I gave them the land to build a mother house so that they could train people for active service, as it were; but Burrowes keeps chopping and changing and sending untrained novices to take charge of an important branch like Sandgate, and now since Rowley left he talks of opening a priory in Chatsea. That's all very well, and it's ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... a passenger, round Cape Horn, for England, full late in the season, the wind and currents setting strong against us, our ship drove more southernly, by several degrees, than the usual course, even to the latitude of 75 or 76; when the wind chopping about, we began to resume our intended way. It was about the middle of June, when the days are there at the shortest, on a very starry and moonlight night, that we observed at some distance a very black cloud, but seemingly of no extraordinary ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... winter, it occurred to me that soaking spoiled the flavor of bark, and that the beavers might like a fresh bite. So I cut a hole in the ice on the pool above their dam. Of course the chopping scared the beavers; it was vain to experiment that day. I spread a blanket and some thick boughs over the hole to keep it from freezing over too thickly, and ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... cutting and chopping, ale was handed round, and Worm and the pig-killer listened to John Smith's description of the meeting with Stephen, with eyes blankly fixed upon the table-cloth, in order that nothing in the external world should interrupt their efforts ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... three of the sloops continued exchanging fire over a narrow tongue of land with the vessels of the enemy, consisting of one brig and six armed sloops, mounted with great guns and swivels. At length the channel being discovered, and the wind, which generally blows down the river, chopping about, captain Millar, of the London buss, seized that opportunity; and, passing the bar with a flowing sheet, dropped anchor on the inside, where he lay till night exposed to the whole fire of the enemy. Next day he was joined by the other small vessels, and a regular ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the chopping seas which usually prevailed in the Straits; and of the rapid tide, which is also referred to by Ausonius (380), "Quum virides algas et rubra ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... when Doctor Williams, with Mammy Juliet's Pete chopping the way for him up the hazardous path, reached the end of his journey of mercy, there was a bright fire crackling on the hearth, and Miss Dabney was sitting before it, holding little Tom, who was still sleeping. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... long- shoring, ditch-digging, coal-shovelling—anything, to keep the life in the missus and the kiddies. The trouble was the jobs didn't hold out. And there he was, matched to fight with me, behind in his rent, a tough old chopping-block, but weak from lack of food. If he did not win the fight, the landlord was going to put them ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... every nerve was on edge. When her Uncle Duke, with his chopping utterance, said something short to her at their very early breakfast he was surprised by an answer equally short. Her uncle retorted sharply. A second curt answer greeted his rebuff, and while he stared at her, Nan left the table and ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... this is a vain attempt. A raccoon can cling like a burr. Try to drag your pet 'coon off the top of a fence, and if he chooses to resist, you may pull him limb from limb before he will let go. So they take the severer method of chopping the branches, until the poor little beast has none left to clutch in falling, and comes down a heap of fur and teeth and claws into the midst of the dogs. Instantly there follows a scrimmage, where often an honest bark is changed in the middle to a yelp of pain, until ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... say that the housekeeping of Bob and Jack had not always been of the tidiest kind. They were boys, and they were in a hurry. But Columbus had the tastes of a girl about a house. He did not do any cooking or chopping to speak of, but he fixed up. He kept the house neat, cleaned the candlestick every morning, and washed the windows now and then, and as spring advanced he brought in handfuls of wild flowers. The boys declared that they ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... between the "six-mile extent" of Salem and Ipswich River. Some of his sons had gone with him. They had two dwelling-houses, cultivated meadows, orchards, &c. Isaac Burton says, that, one day, when near John Nichols's house, he heard a tree fall in the woods; and that he went to see who was chopping there. It seems that Jacob Towne and John How, Topsfield men, had come in defiance of John Putnam, and cut down a tree before his face. As they were two to one, Putnam had to swallow the insult; but he was not ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... morning I began to consider of means to put this measure into execution; but I was at a great loss about the tools. I had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians;) but with much chopping and cutting knotty hard wood, they were all full of notches, and dull; and though I had a grind-stone, I could not turn it and grind my tools too. This caused me as much thought as a statesman would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... persuasion, the two boys fell upon each other, tooth and nail, while Quilp, holding up the cage in one hand, and chopping the ground with his knife in an ecstasy, urged them on by his taunts and cries to fight more fiercely. They were a pretty equal match, and rolled about together, exchanging blows which were by no means child's play, until at length ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... floor-joists overhead. Here in this dark apartment was the suffering object whose moans had attracted their attention. A large billet of wood, about six feet long and three feet square, which had the appearance of being used for a chopping-block, laid near. A poor negro man, apparently advanced in years, was stripped naked and bent over the block, in the shape of a horse-shoe, with his hands and feet closely pinioned to stakes, driven ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... as rigid as that of a military system; each man knows his own particular duties, and must attend to them promptly and faithfully. Trees are not chopped down, as used to be the custom; with the exception of a little chopping on either edge, a saw run by two men does the work. Oxen are seldom used, as in early days on the Atlantic coast, to haul out the logs, for they have given way to "donkeys,"—not the long-eared, loud-voiced little animals, but ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... most good in the world. Humdrum affairs needn't be humdrum in the doing of 'em. It is my maxim," said the old gentleman, looking at his companion with a singularly open, pleasant smile, "that a man may be great about a'most anything chopping wood, if he happens to be in that line. I used to go upon that plan, Sir. Whatever I have set my hand to do, I have done it as well as I knew how to; and if you follow that rule out you'll not be idle nor humdrum ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... guides to bushing out the carry across to Forked Lake, about three and a half miles, through perfectly pathless woods; for we found Sam's statements as to the carry being chopped out entirely false; only a blazed line existed; so all the guides, except one, set to work with myself bushing and chopping out, while the other guide and the rest of the party spent the day in hunting. At the close of the day we had completed nearly two miles of the path, and returned to Constable's Camp to sleep. The next day we succeeded in getting the boats ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... and precious few of 'em are fit for more than to kick the scabbard. Slashing comes easier to them: a plaguey cut, if it does cut—say, one in six. Navy too. Their cutlass-drill is like a woman's fling of the arm to fetch a slap from behind her shoulder. Pinking beats chopping. These English 'll have their lesson. It 's like what you call good writing: the simple way does the business, and that's the most difficult to learn, because you must give your head to it, as those French fellows do. 'Trop de finesse' is rather their fault. Anything's better than loutishness. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the last strip of woods. Soon they heard voices and saw figures moving about in the distance, and presently they came upon the rest of the girls on the shore of the tiny lake. Some of the girls were lying at full length on the soft ground; others were preparing supper. Hinpoha was chopping wood with her hatchet; Sahwah was shaving chocolate with hers. The fire was built close to the water's edge and the firelight shone out redly ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... in the kitchen she came upon a newly sharpened cleaver, its edge invisibly thin and its broad, flat side gleaming in the sun. Mrs. Lennon was by the window and from without came the sounds of Deems chopping wood. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Thread Man was too much for him, and a second later he was thrusting an ax into the hands accustomed to handling a thread case. Then he led the way to the tree, and began chopping at the green hickory. It was slow work, and soon the perspiration streamed. Jimmy pulled off his coat and threw it aside. He assisted the Thread Man out of his and tossed it behind him. The coat alighted in the fire, and was badly scorched before it was rescued. But the Thread ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... said the old man smiling. "It's in your way rather, you see, both of you being a bit fond of chip-chopping stones; not that there's many up there now, for you see his aunt makes the lad clear 'em away now and then. Won't have the litter, she says. But I've got 'em all in a box down in my toolshed, where the boy can ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... confess, you have given me a reason. Well, good woman, I 'll tell you what you must do. You must lay your husband's leg upon a table, and with a chopping-knife you must lay it open as broad as you can, then you must takeout the bone, and beat the flesh soundly with a rolling-pin, then take salt, pepper, cloves, mace, and ginger, some sweet-herbs, and season it very ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... to his daughter and bade her come with him into the forest to cut wood. They worked hard all day, but in spite of the chopping they were very cold, for it rained heavily, and when they returned home, they were wet through. Then, to his vexation, the man found that he had left his axe behind him, and he knew that if it lay all night in ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... birch is to be had. But to reduce the high temper of the American axe, the hunter can heat the head in fire until it becomes a slight bluish tinge and then dip it in either fish oil or beaver oil. The sizes of axes run: "Trappers," 1 1/2 lbs.; "Voyageurs," 2 1/2 lbs., "Chopping," 3 1/2 lbs., and "Felling," ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... practices, however unreasonable or perverted. In that amber any fly is apt to be enclosed. Hence the whimsicalities of savage custom. In Primitive Culture Dr. Tylor tells a good story about the Dyaks of Borneo. The white man's way of chopping down a tree by notching out V-shaped cuts was not according to Dyak custom. Hence, any Dyak caught imitating the European fashion was punished by a fine. And yet so well aware were they that this method was an improvement ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... manure is said to be the dry chips gathered from the open pastures; these are brought home, chopped up fine and mixed with horse manure. The time and expense incurred in collecting and chopping these "chips" completely overreach any advantages that might be derived from them, no matter how desirable they may be. The next best kind of cow manure is that of stall-fed cattle, to which dry food only, as hay and grain, is fed. This ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... further hindrance to their progress. The sound of chopping grew louder, and a little later the sled turned into a clearing, about which were strewn many big, fallen trees. Mr. Ford's eyes ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... English, and nowhere is it so badly cooked; it is always coarse and gritty because so little trouble is taken with it, and I can assure you that the smooth, delicate dish which we call Flano di spinacci is not produced merely by boiling and chopping it, and turning it out ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... work standing all in a row swinging your arms about like windmills, chopping nothing, and poking at the air, and pretending that someone's trying to stab you. I wouldn't mind if it was real fighting, but ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... had not closed an eye throughout that horrible night. She was now reduced to six hundred francs a year. Madame Descoings, like all fat women fond of good eating, was growing heavy; her step on the staircase sounded like the chopping of logs; she might die at any moment; with her life, four thousand francs would disappear. What folly to rely on that resource! What should she do? What would become of them? With her mind made up to become a sick-nurse rather than be supported by her children, Agathe ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... we stopped long enough to build a fire, and was the principal labor which he took upon himself at such times,—we collected fuel for the night, large wet and rotting logs, which had lodged at the head of the island, for our hatchet was too small for effective chopping; but we did not kindle a fire, lest the moose should smell it. Joe set up a couple of forked stakes, and prepared half a dozen poles, ready to cast one of our blankets over in case it rained in the night, which precaution, however, was omitted the next night. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... treasures. We give here some hints on one case the full explanation of which would need as large a volume as this volume is. During the building of Etzler's machine George Karle found John Zeigler in a hermitage in which he employed one half of his time to chopping wood and the other to studying the Bible and to prepare for a happy home in the spirit world. Karle gave him some instructions regarding our mission and some of my books. Zeigler discovered soon that by ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... handle a boat, although I was not to go to sea; and when they got the Vicar in the boat on the summer evenings (for he was always ready for a sale though he was a very bad sailor), I believe they used to steer as near the wind as possible, and get into short chopping seas on purpose. But I don't think he was ever frightened, though he used sometimes to be ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... The sound of chopping soon resounded through the timber, and by degrees quite a pile of wood had been accumulated. But all this was simply to loosen up the muscles of the competitors; for they were not to be allowed to use any of this fuel, which was ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Papineau, on the other side of the slender partition, and a general scurrying of small feet and the moving of washbasins. When she came out Mrs. Papineau had already kindled the wood in the fireplace and was stirring the hot embers in the stove. From without she heard sounds of lusty chopping. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... must be made, to prevent the deleterious effects of the charcoal. A box and mill, for spice, pepper, and coffee, are needful to those who use these articles. Strong knives and forks, a sharp carving-knife, an iron cleaver and board, a fine saw, steelyards, chopping-tray and knife, an apple-parer, steel for sharpening knives, sugar-nippers, a dozen iron spoons, also a large iron one with a long handle, six or eight flat-irons, one of them very small, two iron-stands, a ruffle-iron, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... chopped, perfectly free from skin, and quite sweet; during the process of chopping, it should be lightly dredged with flour, which prevents the pieces from sticking together. Beef suet is considered the best; but veal suet, or the outside fat of a loin or neck of mutton, makes good crusts; as also the skimmings in which a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... must then leave me, and go along some half a mile further, where some men were at work, chopping down a bee-tree. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... of liquor but the name, you narrow, nasty, pitiful alley of a fellow, with a kennel for a body, and a sink for a soul; give me my change and my gin, you scoundrel! Humph, is that all right, you Procrustes of the counter, chopping our lawful appetites down to your rascally standard of seven-pence half-penny? Why don't you take a motto, you Paynim dog? Here's one for you—'Measure for measure, and the devil to pay!' Humph, you pitiful toadstool of a trader, you have no more spirit than an empty water-bottle; and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely KNOWS that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it. This inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it. That vast literature of proofs ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... went on chopping. Every day after that the Twins followed their father to the little cove and watched him work. Every evening they nearly burst trying not to tell. One day when they went down to the cove, they found their father taking out the last chips from ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... won't see him up there at all after this—for a spell, that is. I write, you know, books. I like to go up to the hut to work. Not so likely to be interrupted there. I don't want chopping ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... porch ran across the entrance to the inn, and Jack Hicks was already seated on it, with a pipe in his mouth, and his feet upon the railing. His drowsy gaze was turned upon the woodpile hard by, where an old negro slave was chopping aimlessly into a new pine log, and a black urchin gathering chips into a big split basket. At a little distance the Hopeville stage was drawn out under the trees, the empty shafts lying upon the ground, and on the box a red ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... vigour of his work. "There's no better out-door fun that I know of," said he, "than chopping down a tree. I couldn't think of ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... he could find to do. Chopping was his principal occupation. When the snow began to go off he looked around for a farm to rent for us and father to live on when he came, but he found none such as he needed. He now got a letter from father telling him that he had good news from a friend named Cornish who said that good land ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... encounter, one bright September day in the garden, where, after his wont, old Tummus had been to what he called "torment them there weeds," to wit, chopping and tearing them up with his hoe, and leaving them ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... once our sergeant, Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to another, saying it was not fair. I always remembered it with gratitude. But this feverish languor passed away at once with a little chopping of wood, bringing ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... weight, divided into rows of stalls with aisle space between. Harness rooms, cleaning rooms, harness repair shop, hospital for sick horses, paint room, etc., together with the most modern machinery for grinding and chopping feed. ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... They heard him chopping, and presently he came back with a flat piece of very dry Balsam Fir, a fifteen-inch pin of the same, a stick about three feet long, slightly bent, some dry Pine punk and ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... comprehend. Death, the complete stoppage of the machine that creates vital force, is perfectly comprehensible; there is nothing terrible about it. There was once a boy named Youra who went to college and fought with his comrades, who amused himself by chopping off the heads of thistles and lived his own special and interesting life in his own special way. This Youra died, and in his place quite another man walks and thinks, the student, Yourii Svarogitsch. If they were to meet, Youra would ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... and, alas! his case is nearest that of most of us. And it is curious to notice how we rejoice in, rather than lament, this inevitable result of that great law of differentiation, which one may figure as a terrible machine hour after hour chopping up mankind into more and more infinitesimal fragments. We feel a pride in being spoken of as 'specialists'—and yet what is a specialist? The nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of a man. Call me not an entomologist, call me a lepidopterist, if you will—though, really, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... either of these means of travel had presented itself in vivid hues of disadvantage all the way from Rome to the Papal port, where the French steamer for Leghorn lay dancing a hornpipe upon the short, chopping waves, while we approached by railway. We had leisure enough to make the decision, if that was all we wanted. Our engine-driver had derived his ideas of progress from an Encyclical Letter, and the train gave every promise ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Castleconnel people. I have had several pleasant interviews with Lady de Burgho, whose territory embraces some sixty thousand acres, and who, during a widowed life of twenty-two years, has borne the stress and strain of Irish estate administration, with its eternal and wearisome chopping and changing of law, its labyrinthine complications, its killing responsibilities. Lady de Burgho is, after all, very far from dead, exhibiting in fact a marvellous vitality, and discoursing of the ins and outs of the various harassing ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... through a room and a passage to the kitchen. They shared a pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she paused and spoke to an old woman chopping up vegetables. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... charging a blunderbuss, he is not to interfere till it is fired off?' MAYO. 'He must be sure of its direction against the state.' JOHNSON. 'The magistrate is to judge of that.—He has no right to restrain your thinking, because the evil centers in yourself. If a man were sitting at this table, and chopping off his fingers, the magistrate, as guardian of the community, has no authority to restrain him, however he might do it from kindness as a parent.—Though, indeed, upon more consideration, I think he may; as it is probable, that he who is chopping off his own fingers, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... impudence!" broke out Sir Morton again, resuming with some reluctance his seat at the breakfast table, and chopping at the fried bacon on his plate till the harder bits flew far and wide,—"'Happy to reimburse me!'—the snivelling puppy! Why the devil he was allowed to sneak into this living, I don't know! The private purchase of advowsons is a scandal—a disgraceful scandal! ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... sufficient parsley to make a brimming tablespoonful when chopped. Add this to half a pint of butter sauce, with a little pepper, salt, and lemon juice. It is very important to blanch the parsley, i.e., throw it into a little boiling water before chopping. ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... blood-poisoning it would show if the finger was placed on wood and the patient looked toward the sun. She said the person who looked at the finger could then see if there was any poison. So the man placed his finger on the chopping-block and before he could bat his eye she had chopped off the black, swollen finger. It was so sudden and unexpected that there seemed to be no pain. Then Mrs. O'Shaughnessy showed him the green streak already starting up his arm. The man seemed dazed and she was afraid ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... poor lad fell to chopping thistles again; and quitted Fairoaks shortly, leaving his friends there very much disquieted about his prospects, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I'm to blame, teacher?" exclaimed Luther, earnestly, "There wasn't a stick of wood to be had in our house this morning! And I've had to be off, all day, chopping, with Scudder—you ought to have seen the black snake we killed this morning. It was six feet long. If you don't believe it, Scudder's got the carcass. It was lying all curled up in the bushes with its head up ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... make a scene, please. Don't you know it's a question of your life, of your future? Come, quick! [Snatches the bird away from her, carries it to the chopping block and picks up an axe. MISS ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... And when they returned, sure enough they hadn't seen an Indian any more than if they had been, all the time, chopping wood in my clearing. This closed my career as a warrior; and I am glad of it; for I like life now a heap better than I did then. And I am glad all over that I lived to see these times, which I should not have done if ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... gone out of the Big Aspohegan with a rush. There was an air of expectation about the camp. Everything was ready for a start down-stream. The hands who had all winter been chopping and hauling in the deep woods were about to begin the more toilsome and perilous task of "driving" the logs down the swollen river to the great booms and unresting mills about its mouth. One thing only remained to be done ere the drive could get under ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... chopping wind now became apparent. From our elevation we could see piled thunder-clouds looming up from the west. They were spreading upward and outward in the swift, rushing manner of tropic storms; and I saw I must hustle if I was to get my fire ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White |
