"Chopping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we could fell a couple of them in a few 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 when he came up ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Ivy avenue cut his foot badly last week while chopping wood for a party on Willow street. He has been warned time and again not to chop wood when the sign was not right, but he would not listen to his friends. He not only cut off enough of his foot to weigh three or four pounds, but completely gutted the coffee sack in which his foot was ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... nature; when men shall wait upon others' necessity, broke by servants and instruments to draw them on, put off others cunningly that would be better chapmen, and the like practises, which are crafty and naught. As for the chopping of bargains, when a man buys not to hold but to sell over again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the seller and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, if the hands be well chosen that are trusted. Usury is the certainest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... than that of talking about things without mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor. Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such matters. He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country grocery while they were ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... skipper and the world! He remained there for an hour, smoking, listening, congratulating himself. By the thumping of the axes and the slow crashings of falling trees he knew that Bill Brennen had put a big crew at the chopping. This knowledge stilled his anxiety for the girl's safety. He knocked out his pipe and stowed it away and moved farther westward until he found a suitable camping-place behind a wooded hill. Here he made a fire, built a little shelter of poles and spruce branches, ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... sketching the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran), ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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 ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... by Fairway; the victim sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, and the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair as they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight to the four ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... much surprise, that his father had also slept late. Verner Hughes was just beginning to shave. Inside the kitchen, his mother and the girls were clattering pots and skillets; his younger brother, Hector, was noisily chopping wood. Going through the door, he filled another of the light-metal basins with hot water, found his razor, and went outside again, setting the basin ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... with his new friends. The master's sharp eyes noted that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to the new boy, and the superintendent of the wood-chopping department expressed his opinion that Jan's intelligence and dexterity were wasted among the fagots, and that his vocation was to be a brushmaker at least, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... where it is converted into a tumult, is there on a little plot of raised ground, a few steps from Ibarra's house. Pulleys screech and yells are heard amid the metallic sound of iron striking upon stone, hammers upon nails, of axes chopping out posts. A crowd of laborers is digging in the earth to open a wide, deep trench, while others place in line the stones taken from the town quarries. Carts are unloaded, piles of sand are heaped up, windlasses and derricks are set ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... both till a bright brown. Add soup till a smooth thickening is made, and pour it into the soup-kettle. Cut about half a pound of the cold meat into small square pieces,—dice they are called,—and put into the tureen. Make forcemeat balls by chopping a large cup of meat very fine; season with a saltspoonful each of pepper and thyme; mix in the yolk of a raw egg; make into little balls the size of a hickory-nut, and fry brown in a little butter. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon into the tureen with (or without) a wine-glass ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... a tree, in a land of jungles, where, for some unknown reason, everyone's very selfish with his trees, conceives that hammering stone wedges makes less noise than does the chopping of wood: he and his descendants, in a course of many years, cut down trees with wedges, and escape penalty, because it never occurs to a prosecutor that the head of an ax ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... mouths with bread, and chopping asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the contents scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches. It was a sad sight. Here was a poor shivering woman, hiding ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen throughout the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the seeds. The greater portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by chopping down the trees in the more accessible sections of the forest alongside of bridle-paths that cross the range. Sequoia seeds at first brought from twenty to thirty dollars per pound, and therefore were eagerly sought after. Some of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... 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 to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... seemed equally at home. It was easy to recognize in the great stone chimneys, with their heavy hooks and cross-bars, symptoms of banquets for which bullocks were roasted whole and sheep and calves slain by the dozen; but we needed her practised lips to suggest the uses of the huge stone chopping-blocks, the deeply sunk troughs, the narrow gutters that crossed the stone pavement, all illustrative of the primitive days when butcher and cook wrought simultaneously, and this contracted cellar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... from all directions to their assistance; and in a short time there were twenty-eight or thirty natives assembled. After a short parley with them in which they repeatedly asked for axes by imitating the action of chopping, we went on board, intimating to them our intention of returning with some, which we would give to them upon the restoration of the stand, which they immediately understood and assented to. The natives had ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... in the logging-camp all week, chopping, and I ache all over. Expect to be hard and not quite so weary by next week-end, and will call over for ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... have the privilege enjoyed, my dear, by you, Of chopping off a rival's head and quartering him too! Of vengeance, dear, to-morrow you will surely take your fill!" And GILBERT ground his molars as he ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... time some thirty boats had gathered, and through the long night, in every creek and cranny of the shore, from the extreme east of Inniscaw to the extreme west of Brefar, the search went on. The wind, chopping to the north-west, rose to a stiff breeze, and not only blew bitterly cold, with squalls of rain and sleet, but raised a sea that made it dangerous to explore the rocks closely. Nevertheless, not a single boat put back, and not ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the blankets against the roots of a great tree, over a bed of heathery scrub, very soft and springy; they had no axe or any means of chopping wood, but there was a thick carpet of dead stuff under the trees. Noticing dead branches hanging by thin strips of bark Marcella made a lasso with the swag straps and pulled them down. As far as warmth went, there was no need for fire ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... onwards, and now are again on the clearings, among the log-cabins of the Highlandmen. Although every settler has his governmental farm, yet nearly the whole of it is still in forest-land. A log hut and cleared-acre lot, with Flora McIvor's grubbing, hoeing, or chopping, while their idle lords and masters trot beside the mail-coach to hear the news, are the only results of the home patronage. At last we come to a gentle declivity, a bridge lies below us, a wider brook; we cross over to find a cosy inn and a rosy landlord on the other side; and John ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... her, even if one had been sent. The frequent bends in the river greatly delayed their advance, but they were cheered by the flight of sea-gulls over their heads. The river, too, widened day after day, and a constant strong wind from the S.W., raised a chopping sea that almost stopped their way; the blacks they met all assured them that the ocean was at hand. On the 9th February, Sturt landing to examine the country, saw before him the lake that terminated the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Hart was chopping wood, Jack kept laying his bill within two or three inches of the place where the axe fell. It seemed just as if he wanted his ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... neighbour on the head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands, like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say, "We are all responsible for this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day when we shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shall ever chop anything for ever and ever." Do we say, "Let bygones be bygones; why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can tell with what ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... little man standing there, he went off. The punishment followed; as he was chopping away at the tree, he hit himself in the leg so severely that he had to ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Their chopping finished, she and Bobby were reunited and were glad to enter the car and drive quietly home to luncheon. It was still raining, and they found the other girls impatient for ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... late in the afternoon he came to the woods and there he met a little boy of his own age, chopping down small trees. The boy's cheeks were rosy, and his eyes were bright. His arms, swinging the shiny hatchet, were tough with strong muscles. He looked as if he had eaten good food all his life, so the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the barn four days, and on the fifth they buried him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging the grave, chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday we breakfasted before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin. Jake and Jelinek went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in which it was frozen fast to ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... nor devise a religioun that is acceptable to God: butt man is bound to observe and keap the religioun that fra God is receaved, without chopping ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... had done such work in the surrounding neighborhood as could be obtained. My Saturdays and afternoons were spent in splitting rails, chopping wood, driving garden palings, and doing any other work that would enable me to exist. Although I had stinted myself and had often gone without food, at the end of the year I was $12 in debt. But this was not sufficient ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... under an irresistible impulse. When they got to the top of the stairs, they were scattered, and their chant died away. Nothing could any longer be heard but the tramp of all the shoes intermingled with the chopping sound of many voices. The crowd not being in a mischievous mood, contented themselves with looking about them. But, from time to time, an elbow, by pressing too hard, broke through a pane of glass, or else a vase or a statue ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... took his boy out to the shed. There, with a sigh as though his heart were breaking, the old man seated himself on the chopping block. He gathered his son across his ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... midwinter trips to the wilds, one day I coasted down a very steep slope and shot out of the woods into a little clearing—a snug log cabin stood there, buried in snow up to its eyes. In a snow trench, not far from the door, an old trapper was chopping wood. As I burst upon the scene he dropped his ax and stared at me. Then ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... of his success with horses—dangled in his right hand, while behind him followed the smart war-pony, covered with vermilion hand-prints as thickly as the spots on a brook-trout. The squaws ran from their fleshing, their chopping or their other work to look at the warrior who made all the camp talk. Wisdom mellowed by age, in the forms of certain old men, sat back and thought disturbedly of the future, as is the wont of those who have little time to ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... condition between sleeping and waking, so hard for any of us to leave without a sigh of regret. These sounds were quickly supplemented by the roll of the heavy carts which purveyed the only water suitable for drinking and culinary purposes; and by the sounds of wood-sawing and wood-chopping before the doors of the adjacent houses—sounds quickly blending themselves with the shuffling feet of the slaves cleaning the doorsteps and sidewalks, and chattering, singing, quarrelling the while with their neighbours, or with other early ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... was the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the machinery, the long soughing ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the bluff headland of the Ras el-Tarah to the north of the harbour, and behind it the Rughamat Makna, the greenish-yellow, flat-backed "horse" of Madyan, which, shimmering in the sunset with a pearly lustre, forms the best of landmarks. Finish to the south of the Wady with the quaint chopping outlines of the Jebel el-Fahisat, resembling from afar a huge alligator lying on the water; with the similar but lower forms to the north of the valley, both reflected in the Jibal el-Hamra (the Red Hills), whose curtains ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... bareheaded, with a white bundle in his arms. The glare was reflected on his bald head. The village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, as swarthy and black-haired as a gypsy, went up to the hut with an axe, and hacked out the windows one after another—no one knew why—then began chopping up the roof. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... stopped short. 'Herr Baron,' I said, 'the little Mamsell has got on my best black suit, and the trousers were made out of the Herr Pastor's own, and I tell you if I don't get my suit that I was confirmed in, I'll go to the gentlemen of the head-chopping company and tell them you've broken out of prison, which they certainly won't like. For by rights all the aristocrats ought to go to the "Gartine," or whatever you call it, so that we can have "egalite" and liberty, and we poor fellows can amuse ...
— The Story Of The Little Mamsell • Charlotte Niese
... same friends who had formerly rescued him in the time of his bitter discouragement before his engagement. In the spring of 1845, Bridge and Frank Pierce appeared on the scene, and finding Hawthorne at his daily task of chopping wood in the shed, they had a meeting of the old college-boy sort that brightens the page with one of those human scenes that, occurring seldom in Hawthorne's life, have ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... dead! The truth of it is imbedded in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind; with a heartlife in it; not dead, chopping barren logic merely! Out of all that rubbish of Arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties, rumors and hypotheses of Greeks and Jews, with their idle wiredrawings, this wild man of the Desert, with ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... from where he was chopping wood off in the trees, and together they got him into the house. It was days before he so ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... example is manifestly inconsistent with itself; and, in my opinion, the three possessives are all wrong: "The kitchen too now begins to give 'dreadful note of preparation;' not from armourers accomplishing the knights, but from the shop maid's chopping force meat, the apprentice's cleaning knives, and the journeyman's receiving a practical lesson in the art of waiting at table."—West's Letters to a Lady, p. 66. It should be—"not from armorers accomplishing the knights, but from ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you'd never believe it—the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer, he'll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the justice ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... yards away, out of the heart of that cup-like paradise which ran back through a break in the ridge, rose a spiral of white smoke, and with the sight of that smoke Peter heard also the chopping of axe. It made him shiver, and yet he made his way toward it. He was not old enough—nor was it in the gentle blood of his Mackenzie mother—to know the meaning of hate; but something was growing swiftly in Peter's shrewd little head, and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... behind me and a great burst of light. There were other lights in the passage and a noise of feet and shouting. My hand-grips were torn from the thing they held; I shut my eyes stupidly and heard a loud yell above me and then a heavy blow, like a butcher chopping meat and then ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... took his ax and set out for the woods up among the hills not very far from his home. It was a fine day in the early autumn, and the old man enjoyed the fresh air and was in no hurry to get home. So the whole afternoon passed quickly while he was chopping wood, and he had collected a goodly pile to take back to his wife. When the day began to draw to a close, he ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... torture their poor horses by sawing their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a moth-eaten paint-brush—if you call them Christians, then I suppose you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are, to say nothing of ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... to the ground with crooked sticks on every limb, and then applying the fire, by degrees, from the feet and hands, burning them gradually up to the head, whereby their pains are extravagant. For crimes of a less nature, gelding or chopping off half the foot with an axe.—For negligence, they are usually whipped by the overseers with lance-wood switches.—After they are whipped till they are raw, some put on their skins pepper and salt, to make them smart; at other times, their masters ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... tree elastic when a man is chopping it down, his ax bounces back from the tree with such force as nearly to knock him over, and no amount of chopping makes so much as a lasting ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... by Bigge, was transported from Sydney, for chopping off the right arm of his wife: he said she should "make no more dough-boy." The whites persuaded the natives, that the lighter hue of their half-caste children resulted from the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... simply to exchange expressions of dismay; so, groping about, to our joy we alighted suddenly upon several bundles of clean, fresh straw stowed away in the farthest recess of the opposite division. In a trice a dangerous corn-chopping machine had been removed, the straw loosened and spread out, and, covered with shawls and water-proof, it formed as comfortable a great bed of Ware as ever weary bones could desire. Forming a row, the tired wanderers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... 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 so—'you watch him, Lute,' says Scudder, 'and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... disease. She didn't know what a contagious disease was, but on the hypothesis that he had reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, but only two evenings, because John had only just got back from the woods where he had been chopping, and she had ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... one another, these grand ladies from the fashionable avenue. Meetings took place here and there; a conversation was begun; others arrived; groups were formed; little impromptu receptions were held before the chopping blocks of butchers' stalls, or on the sidewalk, around boxes ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... they resorted thither, to take pleasure of the new entring water, and are now become alike tame, with those in the Sicilian riuer Elorus, for which, Leonicus voucheth the testimony of Apollodorus. If they be absent, a knocking, like the chopping of their meat, serueth for a summons to call them, & confirmeth Plynies assertion, that fishes do heare. In the hotest Summer weather, they swimme with the ryme of the water; and in the Winter, keepe the depth. Lymy, or thicke puddelly water, killeth ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... down the forest, which would be a loss to the State: you would have to do something with your superfluous energy. And what would you do with your brain? Mere reading, when your arm ached from chopping, never would content you." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... thus—somewhat on the same principle that boys climb a chimney, for the hoop represented the chimney—he worked himself upward, and in much less time than I have taken to describe it, was astride on the lowest branch, and chopping vigorously at the hollow which contained the golden store. The use of the fishing-line now became apparent, for we bent on to its end a small tin billy (round can), used for making tea, and by hauling ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... a thousand pardons. But we can't do with any more of these riddles, Heaven knows! We can't do with any more head-chopping, Heaven knows, as if they were nothing but lettuces. The young man there has guessed right. The edict must be executed in its entirety. The bridecake has got to go into the oven. (To TARTAGLIA.) What do you say, ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... that moment. Somebody who had gone on the roof to clean out the gutters had left a cleat nailed to the side of the house about halfway between the window and the top of the back porch. Rebecca heard the sound of the sewing machine in the dining-room and the chopping of meat in the kitchen; so knowing the whereabouts of both her aunts, she scrambled out of the window, caught hold of the lightning rod, slid down to the helpful cleat, jumped to the porch, used the woodbine ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... their fire and was killed. Early the next morning they put to sea again, and finally found their ship half a league from them at anchor in a bay which furnished them a better anchorage than any they had previously discovered. More days were spent in taking on water, chopping wood, catching fish and killing goats. Terrible storms struck them, and the death of one of their mates made the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 'What logic are you chopping, Cytherea? Well, I don't mean on account of the verses, because I haven't read them; but for what he said when the fellows were talking ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... "I'll do my best to release you, my friend; but let me see how I can best manage it," he said. At first he thought of chopping away the bough, but then he saw that the man would suffer by the blows. He soon, on examination, determined how alone it could be done. With his axe he cut two pieces of wood, one of which would serve as a crowbar, the other thicker ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... chicken; clean and prepare it. Take a slice of ham fat four fingers wide and one finger long (or one tablespoon of good lard). Chop up very fine with a chopping knife, and put into a good-sized saucepan. Take one-half an onion, a small carrot, a piece of celery, and cut all into very small pieces and add them all to the fat. Then put in the chicken, the salt, pepper, and a pinch of allspice, and cover the saucepan. Cook until the chicken ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola
... squirrel, Lady Mary," replied her nurse; "one of my brothers caught it a month ago, when he was chopping in the forest. He thought it might amuse your ladyship, and so he tamed it and sent it to me in a basket filled with moss, with some acorns, and hickory-nuts, and beech-mast for him to eat on his journey, for the little fellow has travelled a long ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... satisfaction, Often came she to my chamber, Tore my sable locks in frenzy, With a visage fierce and frightful, With her eyeballs flashing anger, Scolding on and scolding ever, Ever speaking words of evil, Using epithets the vilest, Thought me but a block for chopping. Then I sought for other measures, Used on her my last resources, Cut a birch-whip in the forest, And she spake in terms endearing; Cut a juniper or willow, And she called me 'hero-darling'; When with lash ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... hold of a pistol anyhow I shall be glad. A pistol will always produce civility if one meets only one or two men. The other things I should want are a box of matches for making fires, a good knife, or better still, a small axe, for chopping wood, and a bottle or ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... station,—just at the foot of the hill. My first pilgrimage was to the old elm, which I remembered so well as standing by the tavern, and of which they used to tell the story that it held, buried in it by growth, the iron rings put round it in the old time to keep the Indians from chopping it with their tomahawks. I then began the once familiar toil of ascending the long declivity. Academic villages seem to change very slowly. Once in a hundred years the library burns down with all its books. A new edifice or two may be put up, and a new library begun in the course of the same ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and twigs of scrub oak and other trees form the largest part. The Ya-chou tea, when gathered and dried, is bought up and brought into the towns to be made into the brick tea of Tibetan commerce. The preparation consists in chopping fine the tea and adulterating leaves and twigs. After adding a little rice-water the whole is packed in cylinders of bamboo matting, each package weighing from sixteen to eighteen catties. It is estimated that the cost ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... should he?' asked the father, rather sharply. 'He ha'n't seen nothin' but the bush. One time I took him to Greenock, and he couldn't stop wonderin' what med all the houses come together. For all that, he ha'n't a bad notion of chopping, and can drive a span of oxen, and is growin' up as hardy as ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Montgomery, myself, and M'ling went across the island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed; M'ling carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood, and some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge cowherd's ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... was vain, his foe was not to be closed with; he did not shift or dodge about, but warded off the blows of his opponent with the greatest sang-froid, always using the guard which I have already described, and putting in, in return, short chopping blows with the swiftness of lightning. In a very few minutes the countenance of the coachman was literally cut to pieces, and several of his teeth were dislodged; at length he gave in; stung with mortification, however, he repented, and asked for another ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... in the household occurring at this time helped to divert the captain's thoughts. Mr. Tasker while chopping wood happened to chop his knee by mistake, and, as he did everything with great thoroughness, injured himself so badly that he had to be removed to his home. He was taken away at ten in the morning, and at a quarter-past eleven ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... in my back room, and soon I heard the chopping of sticks. Presently I heard the crackling of flames, and I knew that a fire had been lit. A dreamy partial unconsciousness destitute of all pain, and not in itself unpleasant, stole over me. I felt my boots cut from my feet. I was gently lifted up. Some ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his teaching, falling easily at that pull, to land across his opponent. Ennar, disconcerted by the too-quick success of his attack, was unprepared for this. Ross rolled, trying to escape steel-fingered hands, his own chopping out in edgewise blows, striving to serve ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... to pieces, then cut it in slices the other way, which will produce long cubes. Finally turn the onion on its side and cut through, when it will fall into dice-like pieces. The inconvenience and sometimes positive pain caused to the eyes by mincing or chopping the onions on a board is thus obviated, and a large quantity can be quickly prepared in the ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... the clock kept chopping off the seconds of life, calmly and precisely. At last the Little ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... entered the barn, seized the vehicle indicated by the shafts, and drew it out into the yard. He inspected it deliberately, and then sat weakly down on the chopping block near by. Apparently he was overcome ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... windows rattle, and the floors and furniture creak. This ceased, and after an interval that seemed but a few seconds was renewed with greater violence, and, he thought, with a distinctly undulatory movement, 'like that in the cabin of a small vessel in a very short chopping sea.'" ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... trenches! And then the regiments intended for the assault on Hilgard crept slowly and carefully out of the long furrows. The front ranks carried mattresses, straw-bags, planks and sacks of earth to bridge the barbed wire barricades in case they should not succeed in chopping down the posts to which the wires were fastened. A few American batteries behind La Grande began firing. ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... of tin," began the Emperor, "for in the beginning I was a man of flesh and bone and blood and lived in the Munchkin Country of Oz. There I was, by trade, a woodchopper, and contributed my share to the comfort of the Oz people by chopping up the trees of the forest to make firewood, with which the women would cook their meals while the children warmed themselves about the fires. For my home I had a little hut by the edge of the forest, and my life was one of much content until I fell in love with ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... guess she will listen to reason. When I read this piece in the paper to her this morning, at the breakfast-table, she was as mad as a wet hen. As for Oscar, he's so fired up about it that he is down in the wood-shed chopping wood to blow off steam. Hear him?" And Mr. Bryant laughed quietly, notwithstanding his rising anger over the ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... upper floors, which are constructed to bear almost unlimited 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
... like people who have these tender places," said aunt Rachel. "I never get hurt at what is said to me. No—never! To be ever picking and mincing, and chopping off your words—to be afraid to say this or that—for fear somebody will be offended! I can't ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... commercial pursuits. Labat, however, gives a special and peculiar reason for the fashion of mutilated speech in which, he declares, the Genoese indulge, telling us they call their superb city Gena, and not Genoa. He refers their 'chopping' pronunciation to their habitual economy—an economy distinctly traceable to their mercantile habits. 'Telle est leur economie,' he says, 'ils rognent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... asked Baijal to lead the dog but as the dog was a tiger he begged to be excused until they reached the jungle. So they hunted through the hills and valleys until they came to a clearing in which there was a man chopping up a tree. Then the bongas called to Baijal "There is a peacock feeding; take the dog; throw a stick and knock the bird over and then loose the dog at it." Baijal pretended not to understand and said that he could see no peacock; then they told ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... resolutely attacked this ridge, hoping to get over it and reach the French current in time. It proved to be a terrible struggle. The sea here was foaming and tumbling about in a fearful way for the voyager. It was not a regular roll or swell, but short, quick, chopping waves, tumbling about in all directions, that whirled him round and round, rolled him over and over, rendered his puny sail utterly useless and blinded him with foam and spray. It was a strangely fascinating spectacle to watch him in his hand to ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... edge, past rivers where he half waded, half swam. He was now faint from want of food; but fear spurred him on. The morning air was so cold that he found it better to run than rest. By four of the afternoon he came to a clearing in the forest, where was the cabin of a settler. A man was chopping wood. Radisson ascertained that there were no Iroquois in the cabin, and, hiding in it, persuaded the settler to carry a message to Fort Orange, two miles farther on. While he waited Indians passed the cabin, singing and shouting. The settler's wife concealed him behind ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... which Siena stands, and gave us views of the Duomo and its campanile, seemingly pretty near, after we had walked long enough to be quite remote from them. Sitting awhile on the parapet of a bridge, I saw a laborer chopping the branches off a poplar-tree which he had felled; and, when it was trimmed, he took up the large trunk on one of his shoulders and carried it off, seemingly with ease. He did not look like a particularly robust man; but I have never seen such an herculean feat attempted by an ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... highest hope, to such extremity that he lost his wits, and became the sport of the whole court at Rome, and was sent back, as a lesser evil, as a confirmed madman to Florence.' Varchi proceeds to relate how Lorenzino fell into disfavour with the Pope and the Romans by chopping the heads off statues from the arch of Constantine and other monuments; for which act of vandalism Molsa impeached him in the Roman Academy, and a price was set upon his head. Having returned to Florence, he proceeded to court ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... them call you ridiculous, then," said Mrs. Copley, chopping her words in the way people do when impatience has the management of them. "You had better not. The world is pretty ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... perhaps, a hay-cushion, or a buffalo-skin, or both, are placed. Two horses, good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, the positive and comparative degrees being the commonest, drag you along with a clever driver, who can turn his hand to chopping, carpentering, wheelwright's work, playing the fiddle, drinking, or any other sort of thing, and is usually an Irishman or an Irishman's son. For two dollars and a half a day he will drive you to Melville Island, or Parry's ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... but a barefoot boy he would often make political speeches to the boys in the neighborhood, and when he had reached young manhood and was engaged in the labor of chopping wood or splitting rails he continued this practice of speechmaking with only the stumps ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Chapter on the Corn-Laws, in this place; the Corn-Laws are too mad to have a Chapter. There is a certain immorality, when there is not a necessity, in speaking about things finished; in chopping into small pieces the already slashed and slain. When the brains are out, why does not a Solecism die? It is at its own peril if it refuse to die; it ought to make all conceivable haste to die, and get itself buried! The trade of Anti-Corn-Law Lecturer ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... their belongings, but had not yet left their dwellings, and were waiting meanwhile sitting on their boxes and feather beds under their windows. Part of the male population were hard at work ruthlessly chopping down fences and even whole huts which were near the fire and on the windward side. None were crying except the children, who had been waked out of their sleep, though the women who had dragged out their chattels were lamenting in sing-song voices. Those who had not finished ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that when their village Curate exhorts them, if they have 'faith' in the doctrine of a world to come, to add to it those 'good works' in which the sum and substance of religion consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as 'chopping a new-fashioned' logic. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... edges. Between his knees is a stout thong of wood, whittled round by the drawshave which his sleeping hand still holds in his lap. Against the side of his chair rests a thick wooden yoke and collar. Near him is a chopping-block. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... truly miraculous draught from the great ocean of London streets, whom I saw all comfortably bedded in one spacious dormitory. Downstairs were the implements and products of the day's work, dozens of miniature cobblers' appliances, machines for sawing and chopping firewood, &c., whilst, in a spacious refectory on the first floor, I was informed, the resident Arabs extended on a Friday their accustomed hospitality to other tribes, to such an extent, that the party numbered about 500. Besides the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... anything 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 ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... exulted. "I'd lie abed in the mornings on purpose, only everything is too good not to be up. And now you just play at chopping some firewood and catching a nice big perch, Man Friday, if you expect ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... material, wood, is to be seen in the doors. This Galerie is named after its proprietor, M. Vero Dodat, an opulent charcutier, (a pork-butcher) in the neighbouring street; but we are unable to inform the reader by how many horse power his sausage-chopping machine is worked. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... to write an article about a log-chopping competition. But the irony of writing such things with other things on one's mind is too much even for a war correspondent. One's pen goes on strike. One impression above all has been brought home in the two months we ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... fortunate that both these trees came down when they did! We would have to remove them as obstacles to our going out in the morning, and I would have had to hunt well before I could have found such fine tinder! So I've really saved myself a double chopping!" said Polly, as they tied up the last bundle of evergreen branches and started the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... round and wonders whether he ought to step into the next room, but since it's just I he walks out into the kitchen instead. There he seats himself in the fireplace, while I sit down on the chopping block. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... robed as an Arab and wearing a turban. Being a dwarf, the difficulty was that all the dresses proved too long for him. Finally it was found necessary to cut one down by the primitive process of laying it on a block of wood and chopping through ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... pardon to destroy? Ah! my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,, That sett'st the word itself against the word. Speak 'pardon' as 'tis current in our land; The chopping French we do not understand. Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there, Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear, That hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce, Pity may move thee ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... always so ready to work, that 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
... button that called the janitor, and the latter, who was still chopping away at the frozen steps, came to see ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... intent upon their work; and each had a light billhook stuck behind him in his belt, and while Dance was readjusting his faggot his chopping tool nearly slipped out of where it was slightly stuck, while in trying to save it from falling, the keeper, who had quite forgotten his bruises, glanced for a ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... planted as corn is, that is, dropped so far apart, but is planted in a continuous stream. After the cotton comes up out of the ground, when it is about three inches high, it is hoed by ordinary labor with a hoe, and is cut out or, rather, thinned. This is called "chopping out" and is for the purpose of removing the inferior or weak plants until only one strong plant is left. The distance between the plants depends on the nature of the plant, frequently about twelve inches ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... 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; vast, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the ravine Crump went along a path which led to Steve Marcum's cabin. There was a clump of rhododendron at the head of the ravine, and near Steve's cabin. About this hour Marcum would be chopping wood for supper, or sitting out in his porch in easy range from the thicket. Crump's plan was plain: he was about his revenge early, and ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... unexpectedly—when the idea struck him. But father pulled himself up in about thirty yards and started to grab up handfuls of dust and sand and throw them into the air. My idea, in the first flash, was to get hold of the axe, for I thought it was sun-stroke, and father might take it into his head to start chopping up the family before I could persuade him to put it (his head, I mean) in a bucket of water. But Joe came running like ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... strongest influence over my mind and actions; and I now lived in such an atmosphere of violence and cruelty, I heard of nothing but of slitting noses, cutting off ears, putting out eyes, blowing up in mortars, chopping men in two, and baking them in ovens, that, in truth, I am persuaded, with a proper example before me, I could almost ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... always was. You will like it in a way, but remember it is dreary long. Do you know the story of the American tramp who was offered meals and a day's wage to chop with the back of an axe on a fallen trunk. "Damned if I can go on chopping when I can't see the chips fly!" You will never see the chips fly in mission work, never; and be sure you know it beforehand. The work is one long dull disappointment, varied by acute revulsions; and those who are by nature courageous and cheerful, and have grown ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wheat is all in, and most all the oats. The corn is splendid in the old elm lot, and then the Major has been chopping down your old sugar camp, where we worked when you came home ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... 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 Kit, planting a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to growl either. The best thing to do is to pitch in and get through as fast as possible," went on Henry, and then set to chopping with renewed vigor. ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... Shakespeare's blank-verse defective, and painful to persons better endowed in that respect. It may have been his consciousness of his imperfect declamation of blank-verse that induced him to adopt what his admirers called the natural style of speaking it; which was simply chopping it up into prose—a method easily followed by speakers who have never learned the difference between the two, and that blank-verse demands the same care and method that music does, and when not uttered with due ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... back. Tricked by the feint, Louie lurched forward with a sweeping blow of the black-jack. The momentum of the swing of his arm drew his head down and with a quick slashing movement, like a pugilist chopping with his fist, John crashed the ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... "Somebody's chopping wood." The freshening wind brought the sound of the axe plainly to their ears. A second later they heard the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... the young king thought so too; but it was better to lose his hair than his head. So, I suppose, the men told him; for he suffered them to cut it all close to his head, laying down his head on a rough deal table, or a chopping-block, while his faithful friends with a large knife trimmed ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... 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 ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... cedar log from the lumber-stack, I fell to chopping it vigorously. The axe-strokes made a cheerful ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... 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
... seemingly in the way but your car swings to the left instead of climbing the door-step and suddenly you find you are facing a bog. The car may get through; it may not. So you switch off and just sit a minute, seeing how the land lies. A great singing and chopping of wood off to the left have kept the inmates from hearing the approach of a car. When you rap therefore you ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... under paganism should be thus beset under Christianity. Others desert the Empire altogether and (like St Augustine) put their hope in a city not made with hands—though Ambrose, it is true, let fall the pregnant observation that it was not the will of God that his people should be saved by logic-chopping. 'It has not pleased God to save his ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... 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 ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack! —clack-clack-clack!' and right away those odious rhymes fitted themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and set a syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been chopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and went to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth, and—well, you know what the result was. The thing went right along, just the same. 'Clack-clack ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... than the immemorially despised tailor, 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 ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... consisted of a ragged blanket. We had been in the new camp but little more than a week when we determined to make an attempt at escape. Preparatory to starting we concealed two tin cups and two blankets in the pine woods to which we had access during the chopping hours, and here was to be our rendezvous in case we were separated in getting out. Covering my shoulders with an old gray blanket and providing myself with a stick, about the size of a gun, from the woodpile, I tried to smuggle ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... of that day I spent moving my belongings from my tent to the sitting-room, taking stock of the contents of the larder, and chopping enough wood for the stove to last me for a week. After that, just before sunset, I went round the island a couple of times in my canoe for precaution's sake. I had never dreamed of doing this before, but when a man is alone ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... before you'll be of much use around a lumber camp," said the driver of the wagon. "It's hard work chopping down trees." ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... had opened the dykes and had begun to inundate the country. When we were about half-way to L'Ecluse, therefore, we found our way barred by a miniature river and no means of crossing it. It was in such circumstances that Roos was invaluable. Collecting a force of peasants, he set them to work chopping down trees and with these trees we built a bridge sufficiently strong to support the weight of the car. ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... these, when any swell is running, requires great care and experience; and the Royal George had too much beam to do it comfortably, even in the best of weather. And now what the sailors call a "chopping sea" had set in with the turn of the tide, although the wind was still off-shore; so that even to lie to at the mouth made rather a ticklish job of it. The men looked at one another, and did not like it, for a badly ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... it was found to be true that the Mexican troops had dispersed and fled to the mountains, just as the old Arapahoe chief had said they would. There, however, they commenced to fortify, by chopping away the timber so that their artillery could play to better advantage upon the American lines, and by throwing up temporary breastworks. It was ascertained afterward, on undoubted authority, that Armijo had an army of ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... to be quiet, Pete? You've been chopping wood since daybreak to make up for what he didn't do last week, and you only came in about ten minutes before he did. Why don't you speak out? You're getting to be pretty close to a man now, and it isn't suitable for you to let yourself be talked to that way. You always stand like a fool ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was beside a clear, running stream, where a plump and industrious maid was busily at work chopping wood. He fell promptly in love with her also, and for some time they lived together in her cosy house by the waterside. After their boy was born, the wanderer wished very much to go back to his Elder Brother and to show him his wife and child. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the 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 run ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... eyes, and all was more intensely, more horribly dark than before; but to the eye of a seafaring man, this short view was sufficient. He perceived that it was a large ship, within a quarter of a mile of the land, pressed gunnel under with her reefed courses, chopping through the heavy seas—now pointing her bowsprit to the Heavens, as she rose over the impeding swell; now plunging deep into the trough encircled by the foam raised by her own exertions, like some huge monster of the deep, struggling in her toils, and lashing the seas ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... burning glass to light a kitchen fire with. And it is no unworthy use of the Divine Spirit that God gives to His children, to say it will keep a man from hasty and precipitate decisions as to little things in life, and from chopping and changing about, with a levity of purpose and without a sufficient reason. If our religion is not going to influence the trifles, what is it going to influence? Our life is made up of trifles, and if these are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... kept up, and the winter term was usually only three or four months, at the outside. The farmer boy was needed to work almost the year round, and even while attending school, he arose early to attend to the feeding of stock, chopping fire-wood, doing chores, etc., and when school closed in the evening he was often, until after darkness set in, similarly engaged. The school hours were from 8 A.M. to 12 M. and from 1 to 5 P.M. Saturdays were days of hard ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... of the Middle West tell us, a man of Chicago named Young, who once, when his nerves were unstrung, put his mother (unseen) in the chopping-machine, and canned her and labelled her "Tongue". It is enough to say that the glance of disapproval which Percy cast upon his father at this juncture would have been unduly severe if cast by the Young offspring upon their parent at the ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... with bath-brick and rubbed them, too, with tow. Our walls were as white as snow, but they were whitewashed; the floors were bright and shining, but they were washed every day. The cat Bobtail (as a small child I had cut off a good quarter of his tail with the knife used for chopping the sugar, and that was why he was called Bobtail) was carried off to the kitchen and put in charge of Anisya; Fedka was told that if any of the dogs came near the front-door "God would punish him." But no one was so badly treated as the poor sofas, easy-chairs, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Maine, are acres upon acres, and miles upon miles, of evergreen forests. One wooded tract in Maine is so vast that it takes an army of choppers twenty years to cut it over. By the time it is done a new growth has sprung up, and an intermediate one is large enough to cut; so the chopping goes on year after year. The first or primeval growth is pine. That is most valuable. After the pines are cut, spruce and hemlock ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... 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 |
