"Grindstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "get the grindstone ready. And Green, get the cutlasses up on deck and give them a thorough good sharpening. We may ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... caused by his hand being crushed between wheels. June 16th, a youth in Saddleworth seized by a wheel and carried away with it; died, utterly mangled. June 29th, a young man at Green Acres Moor, near Manchester, at work in a machine shop, fell under the grindstone, which broke two of his ribs and lacerated him terribly. July 24th, a girl in Oldham died, carried around fifty times by a strap; no bone unbroken. July 27th, a girl in Manchester seized by the blower (the first machine that receives the raw cotton), and ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... preserve him thus upon my favour, You know his temper, tye him to the grindstone, The next rebellion I'le be rid of him, I'le have no needy Rascals I tye to me, Dispute my life: come in ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Will I lose all the good we have gained for the sake o' bad temper? The end's in sight,—the blessed end o' the secrecy, an' the weary struggle o' keepin' me gineral's nose to the grindstone, and now to leave go? Not while Cleena Keegan draws a free breath, an' can handle a silly ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... was more woman, and therefore more divine! He could hardly recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance—pure joy. He saw her ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... a Turk, with pockets like large bags hanging down inside of them, then the boy rebels and refuses to go anywhere. If he goes he takes his road through Stone's Woods, and comes home the back way by the wagon-house. The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and buys him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the life of so many weak stomachs depends. Have you ever amused yourself by watching a large ox lying down in a meadow? Long after he has finished grazing, his jaw continues to work, turning round and round like the grindstone of a painter when he is rubbing down his colors. Look, and you will see that he will remain there for hours together, motionless and contemplative, absorbed in this incomprehensible mastication, rolling about in his throat from time to time some invisible food. Do ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... spite of himself. "Well, you've seen me with my nose to the grindstone anyhow. You can tell Daisy I'm working like a troop-horse for her and the boy! Jove! What a knowing little beggar that youngster used to be! He isn't very ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... At Lynch's this evening were members, Federalist and Republican, of the two Houses, with citizens, planters, visitors enough of either principle. When the general talk turned upon the Albemarle Resolutions and the morning's proceedings in the House of Delegates, it was as though an invisible grindstone had put upon ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... bread of affliction. He was developing his arm-muscles and he was literally watering the said bread of affliction with the sweat of labour. As the heavy drops trickled from chin and nose into the meal around the grindstone, it pleased Moussa Isa to reflect that his enemy should eat of it. Since the shadow of Moussa was pollution to these travesties of men and warriors, let them have a little concrete pollution also. But in the cook-house, while arm and soul wearied together, one heavy day of copper sky and brazen ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... cat remembered; she drove her teeth deep into Hall's hand and fought with a feline fury that is always terrifying. Jim was gazing in big-eyed silence, when Hall, enraged, thrust the cat into the leg of a boot and growled, "I'll fix yer biting," and held her teeth to the grindstone till the body ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... give an answer to these questions was made by Thomas Wright, an instrument maker in London, in a book published in 1750. He supposed the stars of our sidereal system to be distributed in a vast stratum of inconsiderable thickness compared with its length and breadth. If we had a big grindstone made of glass, in which had become uniformly imbedded a vast quantity of grains of sand or similar minute particles, and if we were able to place our eye somewhere near the centre of this grindstone, it is easy to see that we should ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I'm a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... afford to set up one," he confided. "And anyway, I haven't much leisure. Of course, when a good fellow like you comes along I can take a day off, once in a way. But generally my nose is down to the grindstone." ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... could use the file he needed to put a proper handle on it, and to make a handle he went to look for a sapling in the bush, but to cut the sapling he found that he needed to sharpen up the axe. To do this, of course, he had to fix the grindstone so as to make it run properly. This involved making wooden legs for the grindstone. To do this decently Juggins decided to make a carpenter's bench. This was quite impossible without a better set of tools. Juggins went to the village to get the tools required, and, ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... here, among other elements of difficulty, that Cecil's maid Grindstone was a thorough Dunstonite, who 'kept herself to herself,' was perfectly irreproachable, lived on terms of distant civility with the rest of the household, never complained, but constantly led her young mistress to understand that she ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saw the corporal coming across the road, with a hatchet in his hand. He had been to grind it at the mill, where there was a grindstone, ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... the water on its surface, covering about three-fourths of it, and being more mobile than the solid earth, is, by centrifugal force, made to roll around the earth, the same as the water is made to move around the grindstone when in motion, a thing familiar to every body that uses that instrument. In the Southern Ocean this motion of the water is so well known to mariners who double Cape Horn in sailing from San Francisco to New York, that they now run considerably lower down in order to ride this ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... zackly see where the lafture come in. I riz and we embraced agin. We careered madly to a steep bank, when I got the upper hands of my antaggernist and threw him into the raveen. He fell about forty feet, striking a grindstone pretty hard. I understood he was injured. I haven't ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too—things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why I raked up you. Come, out with your iron, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... weak, and opportunity is afforded to observe this action, and see its character exhibited. A common example of weak centripetal force is the adhesion of water to the face of a revolving grindstone. Here we see the deflecting force to become insufficient to compel the drops of water longer to leave their direct paths, and so these do not longer leave their direct paths, but move on in those paths, with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... pliers, cutting, flat, and round. In selecting brushes, you will have to be very particular and secure the open and straight bristle brushes, which are also hard to find these latter years. Take all the coarser brushes and hold them on a coarse grindstone, running them whole length, both ways; this takes off the new rough end of the bristles before using first time. Then there are punches, broaches, drills, calipers, countersinks, files, etc., etc. Besides this, I have adopted the plan of making any tool I happen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... very depressed lot at Dixon's cottage that evening. Dixon was never anything else but taciturn, and the disappointment of the day was simply revolving in his mind with the monotonous regularity of a grindstone. They had lost, and that's all there was about it. Why talk it over? It could do no good. He would nurse up Lucretia, and work back into her by mile gallops a fitting strength for the Brooklyn Derby. With incessant weariness he rocked back and forth, back and forth ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... hand with the aid of pinchers and hammer. He strung two wires between two trees and twisted them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone—attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... and tool-sheds attached to the home premises of Stoke Revel, and presently emerged, furnished with the object he had made diligent and particular search for; this he proceeded to carry in an inconspicuous way to a distant cottage where he knew there was a grindstone. He spent a happy hour with the object, the grindstone, and a pail of water. Whirr, whirr, whirr, sang the grindstone, now softly, now loudly—"this is an axe, an axe, an axe, and a strong arm ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it doan't work, an' dat's how I've been swindled, Mistah Swift. Yo' see, I done traded mah ole grindstone off for dis yeah lawn-moah, an' ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... Surface of a Ball. Solidity of a Sphere. Contents of a Cone. Capacity of a Pipe. Capacity of Tanks. To Toughen Aluminum. Amalgams. Prevent Boiler Scaling. Diamond Test. Making Glue Insoluble in Water. Taking Glaze Out of Grindstone. To Find Speeds of Pulleys. To Find the Diameters Required. To Prevent Belts from Slipping. Removing Boiler Scale. Gold Bronze. Cleaning Rusted Utensils. To Prevent Plaster of Paris from Setting Quickly. The ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Shall I call at the factory and explain your wishes about the grindstone? I will tell them I was mistaken, and that they had better have one ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... holdings, Mrs. Pence had forty-five shares in the Grindstone National. This was her favourite bank. Her accounts with the great retail houses along Broad Street were always settled by checks on the Grindstone, as well as her obligations to the insatiable cormorants that trafficked in "robes and manteaux" ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... it. I came to that conclusion, in regard to myself, long and long ago. Sick wife, hungry children, and four or five backs to cover; no wonder a poor man's nose is ever on the grindstone. For my part, I am sick of it. When I was a single man, I could go where I pleased, and do what I pleased; and I always had money in my pocket. Now I am tied down to one place, and grumbled at eternally; and if you were to shake me from here to the Navy Yard, you wouldn't get a sixpence out of me. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... my brain and mixed themselves with my talk; and the absurdities thus created helped to arouse me. Speaking of seeing some wolves in the woods of California, I gravely continued: "I took out my sword, sharpened it on the grindstone and dared him to come on," when a punch in the ribs stopped me. Another time, while talking of hippopotami in the White Nile, I said: "If you want any skins, you must go to the Hudson's Bay Company. They have a depot of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... I might have known you'd say that. All your people want to go one better than anybody else. But I can tell you it doesn't do for Englishmen. They want their noses kept to the grindstone. That's my experience! Of course it was a great pity Manisty ever went into Parliament at all. He'd been abroad for seven or eight years, living with all the big-wigs and reactionaries everywhere. The last thing in the world he knew anything about was English politics.—But then his father had been ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... process of sharpening tools is a very important one, it must be reserved for another place. Should tools be seriously blunted or broken they must be reground. This can be done by the carver, either on a grindstone or a piece of gritty York stone, care being taken to repeat the original bevel; or they may be sent to a tool shop where they are in the ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, 'keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... post-office, Mr. Van Brunt?" she asked one morning, as she stood watching the sharpening of an axe upon the grindstone. The axe was in that gentleman's hand, and its edge carefully laid to the whirling stone, which one of the farm boys ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... die," stated the old man, "I'm going to live to turn into a grindstone and wear out. But it's a fact. There's plenty left can ride a log all right, but they're a tough lot. It's ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Courcy family, had tied up every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie, in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her, scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon the grindstone of his matrimonial settlement, as though the future bread of his, Gazebee's, own children were dependent on the validity of his legal workmanship. And for this he was not to receive a penny, or gain any advantage, immediate or ulterior. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... life in which all men must act alike, be they saints or sinners, be they believers, Agnostics, Mohammedans, Turks, Jews, or anything else. There are two ways of doing the same thing. If two women were sitting at a grindstone, one of them a Christian and the other not, the one that pushed her handle half round the circle for Christ's sake would do it in a different fashion from the other one who took it from her hand and brought it round to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... its edge was ever over-keen," replied Lambourne. "When I was a youth, I had some few whimsies; but I rubbed them partly out of my recollection on the rough grindstone of the wars, and what remained I washed out in the broad waves of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... to keep the automobile and buy another plough, not for my children's sake any more than for my own. There was an old man living in this house when I bought it who moved back into the city and took with him, among other things, a big grindstone and two long-handled hayforks—for crutches, did he think? and to keep a cutting edge on the scythe of his spirit as he mowed the cobblestones? When I am old and my children compel me to move back near the asylums and hospitals, I shall carry into the city with me a plough; ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... his tusks, too, Re-sharpened till they looked like new; In fact, the Ape's new grindstone strong Was working ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... o'clock, William amused himself all the way home with the idea of being at liberty to spend the next day, except the few hours' duty at chapel, at the turning-bench; but recollecting that the tools wanted sharpening, they ran with them and a lantern to their landlord's grindstone in a public yard, where, very naturally, they did not wish to be seen on a Sunday morning. But William was soon brought back by his brother, almost swooning with the loss ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... and flour of sulphur, 1 part; mix them well together on a mortar, and keep them dry. When required for use, take 1 part of the mixture, and 20 parts of clean borings, mix thoroughly, and add a sufficient quantity of water. Note.—A little grindstone added improves ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... tales discussed by Bolte-Polivka (2 : 201-202) in connection with "Hans in Luck" (Grimm, No. 83). It will be recalled that in the Grimm story the foolish Hans exchanges successively gold for horse, horse for cow, cow for pig, pig for goose, goose for grindstone, which he is finally glad to get rid of by throwing it into the water. "A counterpart of this story," say Bolte and Polivka, "is the Maerchen of the 'profitable exchange,' in which a poor man acquires from another ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Well, I'll tell you how it is. I want rest and quiet, and the woods, for a week or two. This is how it happened: I have been steadily at the grindstone, except for a while in the hospital; and that, you will admit, is not much of a vacation. The work interests me, and I am always in the thick of it. Now, it's like this in the newspaper business: Your chief is never the person to suggest that you take a vacation. He is usually short ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Latin life with the same ease which it showed in possessing itself of that bygone English life whence sprung the Canterbury Tales, or As You Like It. So that his tutor, who was much attached to him, and who made it one of his main objects in life to keep the boy's aspiring nose to the grindstone of grammatical minutiae, began about the time of Sir Mowbray's letter to prophesy very smooth things indeed to his mother as to his future success at college, the possibility of his getting the famous St. Anselm's scholarship, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... red, yellow, blue and black clay very solid and greasy, and should be suitable for many purposes; earth for bricks and for tiles, mountain-chrystal, glass like that of Muscovy, green serpentine stone in great abundance, blue limestone, slate, red grindstone, flint, paving stone, large quantities of all varieties of quarry stone suitable for hewing mill-stones and for building all kinds of walls, asbestos and very many other kinds applicable to the use of ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... land, one plough and two harrows for every ten families; and to help you to put up houses we give to each Chief for his band, one chest of carpenter's tools, one cross-cut saw, five hand saws, one pit saw and files, five augers and one grindstone. Then if a band settles on its reserves the people will require something to aid them in breaking the soil. They could not draw the ploughs themselves, therefore we will give to each Chief for the use of his band one or two yokes of oxen according ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... on an estate, and not an inconsiderable one, arises from tools not being sharpened over night, or by some one before the arrival of the people, and nothing is more common than to see a group of coolies hanging round the grindstone in the morning waiting to have their axes or knives sharpened. Ten minutes may here easily be lost, and on six men this leads to the loss of one hour's work. Then time by a slow manager is often lost in getting his gangs under weigh and setting them to work. Where the work can be done by contract, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the last and final and most precious reward All beggars, each in his own way Always an incompleteness somewhere, and the shadow Assent to what must be Ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone Beating the dirge of yesterday or the tattoo of to-morrow Begum, of Bengal, days out from Canton—homeward bound! Best friend I have ever had, but is the best man I have known Brown's Hotel Byron Casanova & Pepys & Saint Simon Cats really owned Stormfield Certainty Chastity, ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone—a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart electricity to other bodies, and that bodies so electrified ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... mutual affairs. "I have to protest against this mortgage, John. We ought to keep a small home free at least, and instead of putting more on this eighty we ought to sell enough of the stuff to pay off on this part. Every farmer in this country has his nose on the interest grindstone, and my life has been spoiled with it ever since I can remember. Please, dear, let's not put a second mortgage ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... cried Mr. Blake. "Tom Swift, there's something wrong here! Let you and me talk this over. I begin to see how I may be able to take a peep through the hole in the grindstone," a colloquial expression which was as well understood by Tom as were some of ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... whose nose had been too close to the grindstone to permit of dalliance, and who now, monied and retired, found himself terribly alone in the pale sun of St. Martin's Summer, and to the little charming woman of forty, led back to life by an ardent and impetuous girl, this quite ordinary everyday incident, which seemed to them to be touched ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... sounding as if a scythe-blade were being held against a rapidly-revolving grindstone, and then ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Section of the cliffs of the South Joggins, near Minudie, Nova Scotia (from north to south through coal with upright trees and sandstone and shale). c. Grindstone. d, g. Alternations of sandstone, shale, and coal containing upright trees. e, f. Portion of cliff, given on a larger scale in Figure 440. f. Four-foot coal, main seam. h, i. Shale with ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... lion's skin. The little hare jumped out through the mouth with a single spring, and fled away like lightning, all the hyaenas in full pursuit uttering great cries. As he turned a corner the little hare cut off both his ears, so that they should not know him, and pretended to be working at a grindstone which lay there. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... old-fashioned spark-producing "electrical machine" of our youthful days, in which a glass cylinder or disk was rotated by a handle while a rubber of silk pressed against it, has nothing in common with the dynamo-electric generator, except that in both something turns upon an axis as a grindstone or the barrel of a barrel-organ may do. In the modern "dynamo" we cannot help having friction at the bearings and contact pieces, it is true, but there should be no other friction. The moving coils of wire or "armatures" should rotate freely without touching the iron pole-pieces of the fixed portion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... Norris, "the trouble with you is that you never want to do anything; you always want to do something else. I begin to think that there are compensations to a man in having fate hold his nose to the grindstone. He learns ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Hammer Bit brace Assortment, drills and bits, 1/2 in. and less. Drawshave Screwdriver Small grindstone or corundum wheel Chisels, two or three sizes 1 wood rasp 1 cabinet rasp 1 chopping block, made of ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... difference between us, though," remarked Thorpe. "He won't start with his nose held down to the grindstone by an old father hard as nails. He'll start like a gentleman—the nephew of a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "the great pilferer Time hath since then taken away a little from my hair, and added somewhat (saving your presence) to my belly; and my face hath not been improved by being the grindstone for some hundred swords. But I do ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... very freely, and I was fully determined to grind the sword that I had not seen, and which perhaps had not yet been made, as sharp as a razor. It would be very easy, I thought, when I got it, to make old Sam turn the grindstone at home, while I put on a tremendous edge and tried it on the thin branches of ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... books again, and was visibly preparing for an assault. He saw it all now. He had been, in some vague way, deluded. He had given confidential audience to the niece of one of the Great Claimants before Congress. The inevitable axe had come to the grindstone. What might not this woman dare ask of him? He was the more implacable that he felt he had already been prepossessed—and honestly prepossessed—in her favor. He was angry with her for having pleased him. Under the icy polish of his manner there ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... oblivion or something like joy; I found there the worst thing in the world, ennui trying to live, and an Englishman who said: "I do this or that, therefore I amuse myself. I have spent so many pieces of gold, therefore I experience so much pleasure." And they wear out their life on that grindstone. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... martinet for training, hereafter," Purcell declared earnestly. "I'm going to be a worse stickler than old coach himself. And I'm going to exercise my right as a senior to watch the other fellows and hold their noses to the training grindstone." ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... is just the man," he exclaims. "He is honest and firm to a thread, and keen enough to see through a grindstone if you turn fast ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Mountaineer. As through the bustling streets they go, All was alive with martial show; At every turn, with dinning clang, The armourer's anvil clashed and rang; Or toiled the swarthy smith, to wheel The bar that arms the charger's heel; Or axe or falchion to the side Of jarring grindstone was applied. Page, groom, and squire, with hurrying pace, Through street and lane and market-place Bore lance, or casque, or sword; While burghers, with important face, Described each new-come lord, Discussed his lineage, told his name, His ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... booty, but had not noticed that it had never been sharpened, so that it was useless for cutting. One of the men at the convent took it, and with a common whetstone (for there was nothing in the nature of a grindstone in the place) brought it to razor edge,—a job which a carpenter alone can appreciate; and, when I tried to give him something for it, he put his hands behind him and then ran out of sight. A little fellow, not over four years old, stumbled upstairs ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... is practically the same. I have a good knife with two parallel blades that can be taken off, and put on the grindstone, and got as sharp as a razor. For some things I use a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... through the long and picturesque gorges of Bugey, and crossed the Rhone at the foot of the rock of Pierre-Chatel. The narrowed river eternally rushes past the base of this rock, with a current wearing as the grindstone and cutting as the knife, as if to undermine and overthrow the state-prison, whose gloomy shadow saddens its waters. I slowly ascended the Mont du Chat by the paths of the chamois-hunters; arrived at its summit, I perceived stretched out before me in the distance the valleys ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... from his private manufactory of acids by hearing Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor some of the recent occurrences at Brighton. Simeon's tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word; he was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at five the next morning. Before the leading brigade was over it was fired upon by the enemy from a commanding position; but they were soon driven off. It was evident that the enemy was covering a retreat from Grand Gulf to Vicksburg. Every commanding position from this (Grindstone) crossing to Hankinson's ferry over the Big Black was occupied by the retreating foe to delay our progress. McPherson, however, reached Hankinson's ferry before night, seized the ferry boat, and ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... waste. It required Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked and really ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... I found some old files in the barn. Some were three-cornered, and some were flat. I thought the flat would be the best shape, and I asked your father if he would give me one of them. He said he would; and so I ground the ends square, and the sides smooth, upon the grindstone. Then, when I went after the watch, the man rubbed it for me, and it makes ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... see men throw away their tools the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure in their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much. The very grindstone 'll go on turning a bit after you ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... very common forms of evil spirits and lost souls driven away from the sacred building. A legend is connected with a corbel stone near the west end of the north aisle. It is fashioned into the likeness of a grindstone and it is handed down by tradition that once upon a time towards the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth a nobleman ran away with a blacksmith's wife, but afterwards repented of his sin and had imposed on him ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... expense of the advertising column. They tell us the article they wish recommended will have a highly beneficial effect upon the Church and world. It is a religious churn, or a moral horse-rake, or a consecrated fly trap. They almost get us crying over their new kind of grindstone, and we put the letter down on the table while we get out our pocket-handkerchief, when our assistant takes hold the document and gives it a ruthless rip, and pitches it into ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... was wondering whether he was really as mad as he sounded, or whether he was some impudent charlatan who had an axe of his own to grind, and thought that he had found in me a grindstone, he had vanished from the room. I moved ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... spare moments making crude experiments with an air-pump, or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... how wouldst do but for rain? What's a fair house without water coming to it! Let me see how a smith can work, if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife? the grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps, sets a point upon it, and scours it as bright as the firmament. So I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle; it grinds out all gaps, it makes him forget all scars and wounds, and fight in the thickest ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... one heap. But what could I do, wife? We must hear the news of Gerard. I saw that in thine eyes, and felt it in my own heart. And she is backed by our undutiful but still beloved son, and so is she stronger than we, and brings our noses down to the grindstone, the sly, cruel jade. But never heed. We will hear the letter; and then let her go ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... only a few minutes in the wild waters of the Atbara, when, bob! and away it went! I had a very large reel, with nearly three hundred yards of line that had been specially made for monsters; down went the top of my rod, as though a grindstone was suspended on it, and, as I recovered its position, away went the line, and the reel revolved, not with the sudden dash of a spirited fish, but with the steady determined pull of a trotting horse. What on earth ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... might bring about something in that quarter which would not otherwise have happened, and he writhed at the fancy of that sort of good fortune for Ellen, but held his mind to it resolutely as to some terrible but necessary grindstone for the refinement of spirit. "It would be a heap better for her," he said to himself, quite loud, and two men whom he was passing looked at him curiously. "Drunk," said ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pathetic for Brown, who had to get out his handkerchief and wipe the gathering tears from his eyes. It wasn't long before he melted and gave his hand to his neighbor, and they had a regular love-feast. After a parting that would have softened the heart of a grindstone, Brown had about reached the room door, when the sick man rose up on his elbow and said, 'But, see here, Brown, if I should happen to get well, mind that old grudge stands!' So I thought if this nation should ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... excellent a dwelling. And this is all the more manifest when we consider the advantages which we obtain from this same water for the cleaning of our household utensils, of our clothing, and of other matters.... When one goes into a grinding-mill one sees that the grindstone must always be kept wet and then one will get a still greater idea of the use ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like and profitable. They were rarely ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... brings everything to a grindstone,' said Steerforth, and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... sweetness, a sudden burst of children's voices reached her ear, and Ellen and the two little boys came around the corner of the house, and settled down under the window. A group of lilacs, with feathery purple blossoms, made a deep, cool shade, where the children sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac stars floating ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... The 'six hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each minute' nearly ceased to flow, and dwindled away into the appearance of a mere milldam. The rapids above the falls disappeared, leaving scarcely enough on the American side to turn a grindstone. Ladies and gentlemen rode in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore, over solid rock as smooth as a kitchen floor. The Iris says: 'Table Rock, with some two hundred yards more, was left dry; islands and places where the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the Grand River (Government) Boarding School has demonstrated in their midst what faithful teachers can do for the children, the whole community are ready to show their appreciation, from good old Chief Grindstone to the wee little folk who carry flowers to their white friends in the school; and every little circle of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... the door which opens into the kitchen is a large dresser, with long rows of brass and copper cooking-utensils and bright-colored dishes, the little grindstone for sharpening knives, half-buried in its varnished case, and the egg-dish, old enough ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... journey to-day was varied by the utter collapse of the wagon in a vain charge upon an obstinate stump; and perforce we walked for miles, till reaching a camp of the road workers on the farther bank of Grindstone River, we joyfully forded and found shelter from the noontide heat and mosquitoes; while the German sutler, who alone remained, busied himself in his primitive al fresco cookery, which we enjoyed, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... we moved south and after a rapid march reached the Elkins ranch on Grindstone, a tributary of Crooked River. It was known that the Indians were returning practically by the same route they had previously traveled, and our duty was to prevent raids from the main body and protect the property of the settlers as far as ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... add, that the sword which leapt from its scabbard in front of Fort Fisher, has fallen from the grasp of the "bottled" chieftain, whether from an invincible repugnance to warlike deeds, like that which pervaded the valiant soul of the renowned Falstaff, or because an axe on the public grindstone is a more congenial weapon in the itching palm of a Knight of Spoons, has not yet been determined ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin
... say he's the cleverest fellow in the school; but he must be reined up a bit now. I'll clap on a double curb and martingale. I'll get him a situation in the counting-room at the fort (puff), where he'll have his nose held tight to the grindstone. Yes, I'll fix both their flints to-morrow;" and old Mr. Kennedy gave vent to another puff so thick and long that it seemed as if all the previous puffs had concealed themselves up to this moment within his capacious chest, and rushed out at last in ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... museums, too. Mrs. MacGregor knew nothing of art, except that, as she said to Nancy, well-bred persons simply had to know something about it. After their walk came lessons, grueling, dry-as-dust, nose-to-the-grindstone lessons, during which Nancy's speech was vivisected. At two o'clock they lunched, and Nancy had further critical instructions. The dishes she had once been allowed to order were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power by machinery, of the perpetual motion ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... along the edge of the wood, was a cluster of low red farm buildings. The two hastened forward. Flush with the wood was the apple orchard, where blossom was falling on the grindstone. The pond was deep under a hedge and overhanging oak trees. Some cows stood in the shade. The farm and buildings, three sides of a quadrangle, embraced the sunshine towards the wood. It was ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... our money, and we are going to have satisfaction, somehow or other," added Grimme, in explanation. "We are not going to stand this sort of thing. We must teach Lowington and the professors that they can't put our noses to the grindstone." ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... one body to another and transformed from one form to another form. Whenever work is done, energy is transferred from the body doing the work, to the body upon which the work is done. During this process there may, or may not, be a transformation of energy. In turning a grindstone, kinetic energy is passed to the stone and used without transformation, but in winding a clock, the kinetic energy from the hand is transformed into potential energy in the clock spring. Then as the clock runs down this is retransformed into kinetic energy, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... minutes we were descending a lane so narrow that the gipsy van only cleared the walls of the houses on either side by three or four inches. This lane had been paved centuries ago with stones of all sizes, from a moderate grindstone to that of a football. When people had wished to build a new house, they had taken up a few stones to make a foundation; the street was a series of pitfalls filled with mud and filth, including miniature ponds of manure-coloured ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... husband, as she was desired to give him a message that the Canon had not written out of consideration for his eyes. He laughed the laugh that always jarred on her. 'So Master Mark has got his nose to the grindstone, has he?' was his first exclamation, and, after some cogitation, 'The fellow wants to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... between, the reapers were being put into shape for the cutting of the grain. That morning, while the biggest and the youngest brothers were repairing the broken rakes of a dropper, the eldest had sharpened the long saw-knife, aided by the little girl, whom he compelled to turn the squeaking grindstone. They had begun early, working under the tool-shed, and for hours the little girl had labored wearily at the winch-handle, with only an occasional rest. By eleven o'clock her arms were so tired that she could ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... would capsize everything before finding it, then not bring it up till an officer had called him twice, and take as much time to put things in order again. Marline-spikes were not to be found; knives wanted a prodigious deal of sharpening, and, generally, three or four were waiting round the grindstone at a time. When a man got to the mast-head, he would come slowly down again to get something which he had forgotten; and after the tackles were got up, six men would pull less than three who pulled "with a will." When the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... this one was where Montesquieu's secretary worked. He was the drudge of a literary man, who was probably not exempt from the constitutional irritability of those who carry a whirling grindstone within their brains for the sharpening and polishing of thought. The unremembered scribe may have done good service to literature while undergoing his ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... back the crying child, and had watched the little girl, who now darned away as skilfully as ever, the Ogress took down a huge knife from the wall, and began to sharpen it on a grindstone in a corner of the kitchen. As she sharpened the knife, she glanced from time to time at the little maid, and soon perceived that she ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... provided for it, till it lighted on the edge of both wheels at the same instant. Of course it would not rest there, not the ten-thousandth part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore, till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of course, feel the world's attraction all ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... vibratory movements are opposed by the same property. A grindstone, a tuning-fork, and an atom of hydrogen require, to move them in their appropriate ways, an amount of energy proportionate to their mass or inertia, which energy is again transformed through friction into ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... round the world. I knew that one ought to see for one's self, and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many acquaintances. In short, I held my nose to the grindstone. The upshot of it all is that I have got rid of a superstition. We have so many, that one the less— perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real difference in one's comfort. The superstition in question—of course you have it—is that there is no salvation but through Europe. ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... warriors stood on the bank, watched them push it in place, and then the sawmill was started. The process of turning out lumber with the saw was marvelous. Every part of the shop was filled, as the boys set the grindstone, the lathe, and the gristmill ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... turned the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, his head performing a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the wheel. Oak stood somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of sharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... After grinding a number of dull blades,—of whom it was remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grindstone,—he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished divers others for special ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... question was propounded to him. "Tell him," said he, "that I shall have ten cows and a bull too, if it be but a little one. Also a dress of blue sendall for mother and a red one for Joan; with five acres of pasture-land, two scythes, and a fine new grindstone. Likewise a small house, with stalls for the cows, and thirty-six gallons of beer ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "the old French priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil's procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth is the prioress ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Miss," he said, "and see if we can't pick up some odd fragment of zirconia when it's smashed in the grindstone there. Then ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... Amherst went on, "that anything can be said to convince me that I ought to alter my decision. These months of idleness have shown me that I'm one of the members of society who are a danger to the community if their noses are not kept to the grindstone——" ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... acquainted with the French, the fire was extinguished in the great temple at the White Apple village by the lazy watcher. Knowing his fate, he stealthily lighted it from profane fire. Great misfortunes following this, and shortly thereafter the loss of the holy fire in the other temple near the Grindstone ford, on the Bayou Pierre, in Claiborne County, Mississippi, they sought after the legal and holy manner to procure fire from the White Apple village. Yet the calamities continued. The watch who had suffered the fire to fail in the first temple, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... old lady, "don't bubble and boil. I have a great regard for you, and care a great deal more for you than I do for her, and it is only people that I care a great deal for that I stir up. Go back to your grindstone, or whatever you were at work at, and do not worry your mind about your little Cicely. It may be that I shall like her enough to wish that I ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... they had till then. Now, I think they must have had quite a lot of stuff along, all the time. They had whisky, for instance—they drank the last of it right here at the Great Falls, and Uncle Dick says that was the first time Montana went dry! They had a grindstone. And they had an iron boat—or the iron frame of a boat—brought it all the way from Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, where ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... chatter so much," said Sir George Staunton, "you will have the boat on the Grindstone—bring that white rock in a line with ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a grindstone—steady undertune to the "click-nick" of knives in the pen; the wrench and shloop of torn heads, dropped liver, and flying offal; the "caraaah" of Uncle Salters's knife scooping away backbones; and the flap of wet, open ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... you shall find, that to afford the deepest Blue, which caeteris paribus has the greatest particles or sands; and if you further divide, or grind those particles on a Grindstone, or porphyry stone, you may by comminuting the sands of it, dilute the Blue into as pale a one as you please, which you cannot do by laying the colour thin; for wheresoever any single particle is, it exhibits as deep a Blue as the whole mass. Now, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... was hot, and Dorothy was tired. But where in that wide and not over-clean place should she find anything fitter than a grindstone to sit upon? Never yet, through all her acquaintance with the workshop, had she once seated herself in it. Looking about, however, she soon espied, almost hidden in the corner of a recess behind the furnace, what seemed an ordinary chair, such as stood in the great ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... would have believed herself capable of doing a few days earlier. She had travelled far in search of something new, and this was the first time she had tasted the biting green tea with the reek of the smoke about it from a blackened pannikin. Grindstone bread baked in a hole in the ground was also a novelty, and the crumbling flakes of salmon smoked by some Siwash Indian a delicacy, while she wondered if it was only the keen mountain air which made the flesh of the big trout so good, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table; photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter's grindstone and tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry lamps; galley-fittings en bloc; flags and flag-locker; clocks, chronometers; the forward compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Aroostook River, the three boats, as well as the party, having been transported from Grindstone by rail, and launched at the junction of the Masardis with the first ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... striker, Geordie Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o' Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... that that's why he's so fond of wearing it. (Practically.) Well, I must take these down to the grindstone and ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... orator of such set trash of phrase Ineffably—legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile; Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of endless torments ...
— English Satires • Various
... I would not let my nose be kept to the grindstone, as yours is, for any one living. I've too much spirit, for my part to be made a fool of as some people are; and all for the sake of being called a vastly good daughter, or ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... by yielding, before they were driven quite to the last extremity, by the tide of public sentiment in England, they should escape from all philanthropic interference and surveillance, and be able to bring the faces of their unyoked peasantry to the grindstone of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Mackay, and gave him land on which to build his home. More important to Mackay than even his hut was his workshop, where he quickly fixed his forge and anvil, vise and lathe, and grindstone, for he was now in the place where he could practise his skill. It was for this that he had left home and friends, and pressed on in spite of fever and shipwreck to serve Africa and lead her to the worship of Jesus Christ by ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... left, I intend to put my shoulder to the wheel and aim so high that you will have just cause to be proud of me when I become a Doctor of Medicine. I see that I shall have to cut out all idea of amusements and pleasure and put my nose to the grindstone. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... churning, The grindstone's turning, John is sawing, Charles hurrahing, Old Dobson's preaching, The peacock's screeching; Who can live in ...
— Little Songs • Eliza Lee Follen
... I am going to take you—now—out to an old farm that I loved as a boy where there are turkeys and geese and guineas and pigs and pigeons, cows and horses and mules, cats and dogs, chickens and bees and sheep, and a hornets' nest and a nest of flying squirrels in the same old grindstone apple-tree, and a pair of barn owls in the old wagon house, and—I don't know what else; for there was everything on the old farm when I was a boy, and I suppose we ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... which the men had dressed down had been lifted from their supports, the cod livers dumped into the gurry-butt, and the tables removed from the rails. The two men on the first watch were sharpening the splitting knives on a tiny grindstone and walking forward occasionally to see that the anchor and trawl buoy ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... he continued after a pause. "He's always ready to shell out when I ask him for money, but he keeps poor John with his nose to the grindstone all the year round. I suppose he expects me to pay him in glory. He's set his heart on my being a judge,—Judge Hawthorne of Hollywood. Sounds euphonious, and I verily believe the old gentleman has begun to roll it like ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... it!' returned I, advancing toward a broad circular stairway that wound downward far into the regions below, where I expected to find Fourney and Company holding the General down upon the grindstone, while Uncles Caleb and Jeff turned, and Marcy stood by to say when enough of the rough was got off. 'There! in my soul he's going down into the kitchen!' The fellow bawled out as I passed down, and soon disappeared, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... place.] But I warn you that when I am neither coaxing and kissing nor laughing, I am just wondering how much longer I can stand living in this cruel, damnable world. You object to the siren: well, I drop the siren. You want to rest your wounded bosom against a grindstone. Well [folding her arms] ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the Albany, did Fledgeby, and maintained a spruce appearance. But his youthful fire was all composed of sparks from the grindstone; and as the sparks flew off, went out, and never warmed anything, be sure that Fledgeby had his tools at the grindstone, and turned it ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... his part sent word to Smith to visit him, to send him men to build a house, give him a grindstone, fifty swords, some big guns, a cock and a hen, much copper and beads, in return for which he would load his ship with corn. Without any confidence in the crafty savage, Smith humored him by sending several workmen, including four Dutchmen, to build him a house. Meantime with two barges and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... been long up and about, for the farm-yard was in order for the day, the carts gone a-field, and the cattle-sheds empty. George and Philip Burton were busily engaged near the barn door, the one in turning a grindstone, the other in sharpening an axe; and from the barn itself came the melodious voices of Lillie and her brother Jack. Presently they came out, she leading a long-legged horse which I immediately recognized as answering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... soap, etc., etc., which would benefit all Illinois; but I mean fraud free sugar, and fraud free whiskey, and a hundred per cent tax on rice—these are the things to hit. On these the Democrats are placed with their noses on the grindstone. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... 727; bodkin &c (perforator) 262; belduque^, bowie knife^, paring knife; bushwhacker [U.S.]; drawing knife, drawing shave; microtome [Micro.]; chisel, screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite^; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate^, set, strop, grind; chip (flint). cut &c (sunder) 44. Adj. sharp, keen; acute; acicular, aciform^; aculeated^, acuminated^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... meet. The Senator is a tall, lank, ungainly looking man; thin lipped, with mean, cunning eyes, strained ever for the main chance. A few tufts of reddish hair are flattened on either side of his cranium, and his nose and chin were sharpened on the grindstone of necessity and early hardship into twin beaks. Verily a vulture, battening now on the Trusts, and feared and hated by other birds of smaller body and weaker wing. With him, Selfishness is indeed the main-spring of Ambition! His features are well-known to the public ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... two Persian knife-grinders, with a young Dervish from Eastern Asia. The Dervish wore long hair, and was dressed in a garment entirely made up of patches of cloth of various colours. These people had travelled with our caravan for two days, each carrying the heavy grindstone in turns. It had often much amused us to watch the care of the young Dervish, despite his fatigue, not to part with his alms bag, attached to the end of a long staff, when taking the ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator |
