"Hammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fallen. Other flashes succeeded, one of them striking a granite block, which it shivered to pieces, although it weighed many tons, and in the shock appeared itself to be broken; that is, it seemed like the first stroke of a smith's hammer upon a red hot piece of iron, when the sparks fly off in every direction. I dare not go along that path, although it was now probably the safest; but as I went towards the beach I could see the lightning run among the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... world of the desperate and undeserving? Sard thought not. But one matter still troubled him; the lock of the pantry door had been shattered. To remedy this he moused around until he discovered some long nails and a claw-hammer. When he was ready to go to sleep he'd nail himself in. Sard chuckled again for the first time since he had set eyes upon the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... "I dreamed that I was lookin' for a hammer at your house, an' I thought that you hadn't one to give me; but your daughter Mave came to me, and said, 'here's a hammer for you, Donnel, an' take care of it, for it belongs to Condy Dalton.' I thought I took it, an' the first thing I found myself doin' was drivin' ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half a minute. He then proceeded to break some bottles on a piece of felt. He pounded away on the glass with a hammer till he had reduced the greater part to nearly a powder. He carefully pushed the larger pieces of glass on one side and stood ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... be eaten fresh or dry, or make a decoction and drink. Two teaspoonfuls of the berries two or three times a day is considered a dose. It is well to bruise them thoroughly by breaking the seeds with a hammer before taking." The decoction is more effective. This helps the dropsy by acting on ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... fills, But mars their bloom the while, And steals from nature's face its joyous smile: And here and there, below, The stream's meandering flow Breaks on the view; and westward in the sky The gorgeous clouds in crimson masses lie. The hammer's clang rings out, Where late the Indian's shout Startled the wild fowl from its sedgy nest, And broke the wild deer's and the panther's rest. The lordly oaks went down Before the ax—the canebrake is a town: The bark canoe no more Glides noiseless from the shore; And, sole memorial ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... missionary school, where he picked up a smattering of English and a trifle of geography and arithmetic; but although a stout, sturdy hunter, and an intelligent man, he was a lazy student, and gave the good missionary much trouble to hammer the little he knows into his thick skull. At last he grew tired of it, and returned to his tribe; but he brought his Bible with him, and I am told is very diligent in the study of it. His education has gained for him a great reputation as a fetishman, ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer. "Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a party he has enough to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... towing-line which had been brought along for emergencies, Dunston Porter and Mr. Basswood set to work to loosen the rock which held the wheel. This was no easy task, but finally, with the aid of a hammer and a small crowbar, it was accomplished, and the rock slid down the roadway. Then the automobile began to ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... to see four children starve, because ane is drowned? It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... is, a free, true, fearless hero, such as Wagner found in his Siegfried, is needed to slay, with his invincible sword, the dragon of sordid materialism, and awaken the slumbering bride of genuine art. A storm-god is wanted to swing his hammer and finally dissipate the clouds that obscure the popular vision. Some one has called for a plumed knight at the literary tournament, with visor down, lance in hand, booted and spurred for the fight with prevalent errors. One is equally needed ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... hammer at arms temp. Hen. VIII., and "the halbert" a black bill temp. Hen. VII. The only weapons correctly described are ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... dig? Well, what about an article, then—we'd get Neilson to do one—on the whole tribe of fiction-writing fools, taking Lady Pinkerton for a peg to hang it on? ... After all, we are the organ of the Anti-Potter League. We ought to hammer at Potterite fiction as well as at Potterite journalism and politics. For two pins I'd get Johnny Potter to do it. He would, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... Tanqueray would have us think." Another praised "his large undecorated splendour." They split him up into all his attributes and antitheses. They found wonder in his union of tenderness and brutality. They spoke of "the steady beat of his style," and his touch, "the delicate, velvet stroke of the hammer, driven by the purring dynamo." Articles appeared ("The Novels of George Tanqueray;" "George Tanqueray: an Appreciation;" "George Tanqueray: an Apology and a Protest"); with the result that his publishers reported a slight, a very slight improvement ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... hand, the butternut has a reputation for being short lived because of susceptibility to various diseases. The seedling trees which are usually sold are slow in bearing. The common wild nuts are hard to crack with a hammer, and the better named varieties are not well known or widely grown. The trees also have a reputation for being difficult to propagate. Of these faults, probably the difficulty of propagation and cracking are the most important in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... transmitting mechanisms, it is to the working machine we must look in order to get a clear idea of the differences between machines and tools. A tool may be quite simple in form and action as a knife, a needle, a saw, a roller, a hammer, or it may embody more complex thought in its construction, more variety in its movement, and call for the play of higher human skill. Such tools or implements are the hand-loom, the lathe, the potter's-wheel. To these tools man stands in a double relation. He is handicraftsman ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... what good you are doing me! courage, my brother, courage; strike harder; strike harder still!" Another of these fanatics had, if possible, a still greater love for a beating. Carre de Montgeron, who relates the circumstance, was unable to satisfy her with sixty blows of a large sledge hammer. He afterwards used the same weapon, with the same degree of strength, for the sake of experiment, and succeeded in battering a hole in a stone wall at the twenty-fifth stroke. Another woman, named Sonnet, laid herself down on a red-hot brazier without flinching, and acquired ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... preparing for entering the breach. The erection of the Christian Church in India is a most arduous, and at the same time a most glorious, enterprise, and a variety of workmen is required. Those who handle the trowel and the hammer act very unwisely in depreciating those who plan the structure, clear away the rubbish, and lay the foundation, or who in other ways help on the building. These illustrations require no enlargement. They indicate the views which every succeeding period of my ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... advantage that he was not slow to improve. They assured him firm footing on the slippery floor and enabled him to turn quickly, as without trying to strike he contented himself with eluding Jabe's mad charges and sledge-hammer blows. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something—a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... communication between the owner and the man next to the chauffeur? There is always a telephone to the chauffeur, but none to the overflow guest on the box. So that when the host sees an old manor-house which he thinks the guest hasn't noticed he has to hammer on the glass and do semaphore; and the guest thinks he is being asked if he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... a little surprised when the auctioneer's hammer fell, and he shouted, "Sold! for five dollars, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... one evening by a blacksmith's shop, and hearing the sound of the hammer much later than usual, stepped in to inquire the cause. The man told him that one of his neighbors had just been burned out, and had lost every thing; and he had undertaken to work an hour earlier in the morning and an hour later at ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... her to. So dey takes her by de arms and lifts her off it. Dey didn't hurt her any. Den dey brekks de lock and comes down in dere. I didn't see whay dey hadn't found us kids, 'cause my heart beatin' like de hammer. Dey turned dat hogshead over and all us kids skinned out dere like de Devil after us. One de Yanks hollers, 'Look what ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the knowledge which he acquired from Geoffrey which had much to do with Walter's position among his comrades. The skill and strength which he had acquired in wielding the hammer, and by practice with the sword rendered him a formidable opponent with the sticks, which formed the weapons in the mimic battles, and indeed not a few were the complaints which were brought before Giles Fletcher of bruises and hurts ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... who was with him during a part of this campaign, says: "He wore a mixed-jeans coat, claw-hammer style, short in the sleeves and bobtail,—in fact, it was so short in the tail that he could not sit down on it,—flax and tow linen pantaloons, and a straw hat. I think he wore a vest, but I do not remember how it looked. He wore pot-metal boots. I went with him on one of his electioneering ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... his amazement he saw nothing of his victim. The flat slope and the leafy ground were free from anything resembling a human being. He stood peering from behind the tree, and at his wit's end to know what it meant. He held his rifle so that the hammer could be raised the moment the necessity came, and he must have felt that the wiser course was for him to leave the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... anchored under the bank at Loch Merrick, where Gavin had used it as a shelter. The driver of the "six-fifty up" train had seen him walking soberly along toward The Huts (and the Railway Inn), letting his long surface-man's hammer fall against the rail-keys occasionally as he walked. He saw him bend once, as though his keen ear detected a false ring in a loose length between two plates. This was the last that was seen of him till ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... goes to work, and first by heating a piece of an old broken chisel in the fire, and then with the help of his file, he made himself several kinds of tools for his work. Then he takes three or four pieces of eight, and beats them out with a hammer upon a stone, till they were very broad and thin; then he cuts them out into the shape of birds and beasts; he made little chains of them for bracelets and necklaces, and turned them into so many devices of his own head, that it is ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... to have the 'possum grins, like Bragg looked, and as they passed our regiment, you never heard such fun made of a parcel of soldiers in your life. Every fellow was yelling at the top of his voice, "Yaller-hammer, Alabama, flicker, flicker, flicker, yaller-hammer, Alabama, flicker, flicker, flicker." I felt sorry for the yellow-hammer Alabamians, they looked so hacked, and answered back never a word. When they had passed, two pieces of ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... services begin. The Greeks and Armenians beat and hammer upon pendent plates or rods of metal; the Roman Catholics play on the organ, and sing and pray aloud; while the priests of other religions likewise sing and shout. A great and inharmonious din is thus caused. I must confess that this ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... listening by his den, but steals Abroad, in safety, to the clover field, And crops its juicy blossoms. All the while A ceaseless murmur from the populous town Swells o'er these solitudes: a mingled sound Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash Upon the stony ways, and hammer-clang, And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks, And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet, Innumerable, hurrying to and fro. Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings No pause to toil and care. With early day Began the tumult, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... these countries have learnt all the trades used among us in Spain, having their shops, manufactories, and work-people. Their goldsmiths and silversmiths, both those who make cast work or who use the hammer, are excellent. Their lapidaries or engravers on precious stones, especially emeralds, execute the nicest representations of the holy acts and passion of our blessed Saviour, in such a manner as could not be believed from Indians. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... some common commodity which passes through all or most of the stages of manufacture in your community, as, for example, a hammer, a shoe, flour or canned goods. Make a list of the various individuals who are connected with the production of this commodity. By whom are these various individuals paid? Does it appear to you that their services bear a ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... long enough in the service of the police to effect the arrest, and witness the condemnation of Lassalle, the last of the four assassins, who escaped the silver hammer of the maniac girl, to die by the hand ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better. For he loved to have the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself, and to have all business still under the hammer, and like clay in the hands of the potter, to mould it as he thought good; so that he was more in operatione than in opere. And though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on. So that although your Majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy persons left, yet ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... a laugh, and presently were at it, hammer and tongs. I may say that we were all fairly intimate friends, and thus had the advantage of entire liberty of speech. I looked daggers at the husband; he looked daggers at me, and occasionally looking at his wife, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... to beat a retreat before superior numbers, they formed an intrenchment behind the large table, which they raised by main force; whilst the two others, arming themselves each with a trestle, and using it like a great sledge-hammer, knocked down at a blow eight sailors upon whose heads they had brought their monstrous catapult in play. The floor was already strewn with wounded, and the room filled with cries and dust, when D'Artagnan, satisfied with the test, advanced, sword in hand, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of old overalls and men's coats and, hats. The chairs stand irregularly about the large table; a couple of old soft hats are on the water filter. The former posters have been replaced by two new ones. One shows a brawny workman with whiskers, paper cap, and large sledge hammer leaning upon an upright piano. Rubrics: "The Freedom and Fraternity Cooeperative Upright." "The Piano You Ought to Support." The other poster shows a workman with a banner upon which is printed: "No Capital! The ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... this morning with my axe and hammer to mend the fence along the public road. A heavy frost fell last night and the brown grass and the dry ruts of the roads were powdered white. Even the air, which was perfectly still, seemed full of frost crystals, so that when the sun came up one seemed to walk in a magic world. I drew in ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... drawn back. A sight of the massive arms and sledge hammer fists of the young giant they had derided, and his prompt measures with one of their cronies, dissuaded them from any ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... around holding him up, and fanning him, while his son leaned over him crying aloud. Tiche says it was dreadful to hear the poor boy's sobs. All day our vis-a-vis, Baumstark, with his several aids, plies his hammer; all day Sunday he made coffins, and says he can't make them fast enough. Think, too, he is by no means the only undertaker here! Oh, I wish these poor men were safe in their own land! It is heartbreaking to see them die here like dogs, with ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... when O'Connor got his first glimpse of him. He continued to swing his hammer listlessly, without looking up, when the door opened to let in the warden and his guests. But something in the ranger's steady gaze drew his eyes. They were dull eyes, and sullen, but when he saw that Bucky was an American, the fire of ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... his wrist, fixed his eye, and swung the truncheon meditatively to and fro by one end. He then launched off the shoulder a mighty down-fling, calmly, watching it strike the prisoner to earth, like an ox under the hammer. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... boy of fifteen or sixteen. He was armed with a revolver, and bore himself valiantly. But his revolver was more dangerous in appearance than in effect, for the cylinder would not revolve, the hammer was broken short off, and there were no cartridges. Everywhere the weapon was examined with curiosity blended with awe, and I imagine that the Chinese were told strange tales of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... can get some notion of the importance of this illusion. Its explanation is difficult and it may be merely a single instance of a whole series of unknown auditory illusions resting on the same basis. Another and similar phenomenon is the "double beat of the hammer.'' If you have an assistant strike the table with a hammer while you hold both ears with your fingers and then open them half a second or a second after the blow, you hear the blow again. And if you open and shut your ears quickly you can hear the blow several times. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... rhymings and acrostics, in which occurred allusions to himself and his sister Jane when they were children. Continuing their journey, father and son reached Ecton, where so many successive Franklins had plied the blacksmith's hammer. They found that the farm of thirty acres had been sold to strangers. The old stone cottage of their ancestors was used for a school, but was still called the Franklin House. Many relations and connections they hunted up, most of ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... quarreled about the price, although no blow was struck on either side. A little later, however, Crawford was arrested by a local policeman and a crowd of idlers from the public square rushed to give him a whipping for his "impudence." He promptly knocked down the ringleader with a hammer. The mob then set upon him, nearly killed him, and at length threw him into the jail. A few hours later, fearing that the sheriff would secretly remove the prisoner, it returned, dragged the wounded man forth, and then hanged and shot ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... brought a small tackhammer—the only "'ammer in the 'ouse," according to Sparks, who pounded at the foliated steel grille and broke the hammer off short. ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... changes horses at Renner's Springs for the "Downs' trip"; and as his keen eyes run over the mob, his voice raps out their verdict like an auctioneer's hammer. "He's fit. So is he. Cut that one out. That colt's A1. The chestnut's done. So is the brown. I'll risk that mare. That black's too fat." No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or approved, until the team is complete; and then driving them before him he faces ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... he threw pieces of iron into a retort, made a projection, and obtained crystals the colour of blood. The other examined the salts and made a flippant remark. The alchemist, furious, threw himself upon him, struck him with a hammer, and had to be overpowered and carried in a strait-jacket to Saint Anne, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... and silversmiths had attained very great proficiency. They could melt the metals in furnaces, cast them in moulds made of clay and gypsum, hammer their work with remarkable dexterity, inlay it, and solder it with great perfection. The gold and silver work of these artists was extremely abundant in the country at the time of the Conquest, but Spanish greed had it all melted for coinage. It was with articles ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... sails, ropes, and spars of the mainmast, which was still standing, were fringed with icicles; and there came over me a feeling almost of relief in that never again should I have to pull and haul on the stiff tackles and hammer ice so that the frozen ropes could run through the frozen shivs. The wind, blowing half a gale, cut with the sharpness that is a sign of the proximity of icebergs; and the big seas were bitter cold to look ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... was so placed that it was protected by the whole depth of the grove between it and the lagoon; and fortunately, too, it was sheltered by the dense foliage of the breadfruit, for suddenly, with a crash of thunder as if the hammer of Thor had been flung from sky to earth, the clouds split and the rain came down in a great slanting wave. It roared on the foliage above, which, bending leaf on leaf, made a slanting roof from which it rushed in a ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... fascinated him more than ever with her little demurenesses and half-confidences. She even said "Thee" to him once in reproach for a cutting speech he began. And the sweet little word made his heart beat like a trip-hammer, for never in all her life had she said ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... wide and four feet high, but he left at each end of one a long point. Doing this at home gave him the advantage of a saw. Then with these and two shorter boards, each two feet long and six inches wide, he sneaked out to Glenyan, and there, with some nails and a stone for a hammer, he fastened them together into a door. In the ground log he pecked a hole big enough to receive one of the points and made a corresponding hole in the under side of the top log. Then, prying up the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... psychic's hands. Her feet were twenty-three inches from the nearest leg of the table. We carefully examined the tapes which were sewed to her sleeves. They were tied, and the doubled ends tacked precisely as described so many times, and to remove the tacks we were forced to use a hammer. It is useless to talk of a possible release of her arms during the ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... in your shipyard. I can't stand this typewriter-tapping any longer. I'm going mad. I want to swing a hammer or something. You told me that women could build a whole ship if they wanted to, and I want to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... that of a guinea-pig. The flaky fur gleamed like the finest silk, and one felt that the coat of the minute creature would be as floss to the touch; whereas in reality it possessed the rigidity of steel. Literally one could have done it little damage with a hammer. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... appear to be afraid, and what astonished us most was that they seemed ready to take charge of us. They made signs that we should go ashore, and one of them, who appeared to be a chief, attempted to drive Janstins into the sea by hitting him with a kind of hammer with a wooden handle, and at one end a black conch shell. Janstins laughingly disarmed his small antagonist, which seemed to surprise him as well as the others, and brought them ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... three times, and lay me down your silver groat on that other flat stone, walk out of the circle, sit down on the west side of that little thicket of bushes, and take heed you look neither to right nor to left for ten minutes, or so long as you shall hear the hammer clink, and whenever it ceases, say your prayers for the space you could tell a hundred—or count over a hundred, which will do as well—and then come into the circle; you will find your money gone ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... auctioneer's in Piccadilly, to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the price, asked for the lot to look at,—and coming amongst others to a certain book with handwriting in it, said, "Why, here's one with Martin Tupper's autograph,"—on which a buyer called out, "I'll give you eighteenpence more for that,"—suggestive to me of my auction value,—as ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... woman who will be quite unworthy of him. It's always the case. The block of ice you can not smash with your biggest hammer is broken into smithereens by a needle. That's the peril before Stafford—but let us hope he will prove the exception to the rule and escape. He's safe ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... who told him, that if the empress would drink wine she might be fruitful. But he told them, like a simpleton as he was, That he had rather his wife should be barren and sober, than be fruitful and drink wine. And the empress, being informed of the wise answer of the imperial ninny-hammer, her husband, said full as wisely, That if she was to be put to her choice, to drink wine or die, she should make no manner of hesitation, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... anchorage." I made inquiry at the captain of the steamer, regarding this submerged deposit, but he had never heard of it. There are, however, many such on the coasts of both Britain and Ireland. We staid at Oban for several hours, waiting the arrival of the Fort William steamer; and, taking out hammer and chisel from my bag, I stepped ashore to question my ancient acquaintance, the Old Red conglomerate, and was fortunate enough to meet on the pier-head, as I landed, one of the best of companions for assisting in such work, Mr. Colin Elder, of Isle Ornsay,—the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... on the door, "don't know enough about jimmies. Against them an ordinary door-lock or window-catch is no protection. With a jimmy eighteen inches long, even an anemic burglar can exert a pressure sufficient to lift two tons. Not one door-lock in ten thousand can stand this strain. It's like using a hammer to kill a fly. Really, the only use of locks is to keep out sneak thieves and to compel the modern, scientific educated burglar to make a noise. This fellow, ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... tapping of the wheels with a hammer is a mere ceremony? Well, I don't know exactly; I should not like to say. It's not often that the chaps find anything wrong. They may sometimes be half asleep when a train comes into a station in the middle of the night. You would be yourself. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... these mayors was Charles, surnamed Martel, "the Hammer," from the terrible defeat which he administered to the Mohammedans near Tours, in central France. [11] Charles Martel was virtually a king, but he never ventured to set aside the Merovingian ruler and himself ascend ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... you have, and how patient and strong you have grown, and how you have learned to put up with Fraeulein's little ways and not aggravate her with your untidiness.' And here Jill's hand—and it was by no means a small hand—closed my lips rather abruptly. But I was used to this sort of sledge-hammer ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which was undoubtedly true. And he then showed his absorbing interest in literary studies by neglecting the society of Mr. Verdant Green and immersing himself in the perusal of one of those vivid accounts of "a rattling set-to between Nobby Buffer and Hammer Sykes" which make "Bell's Life" the favourite reading of many ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... spur protruding from the Hog's Back, are the ruins of St. Catharine's Chapel, built in the fourteenth century. The local tradition tells that this and St. Martha's Chapel, on an adjacent hill, were built by two sister-giantesses, who worked with a single hammer, which they flung from hill to hill to each other as required. St. Catharine's Chapel long since fell in ruins, and not far away on the slope, St. Catharine's Spring flows perennially. On Albury Down is a residence of the Duke of Northumberland, Albury Park, laid out ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... quieter than she had been before. Her face, which now seemed younger than ever, wore a look of important seriousness as though she were conscious of the indecency of her earlier excitement. She spoke very little, but no one could be in her presence without feeling the force of her vitality like some hammer, silent but of immense power, beating relentlessly upon the atmosphere. Its effect was the stronger in that one realised how utterly at present she was unable to deal with it. Her very helplessness was half of her power—half of her danger ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... though I suspect the aged knave Had been of all her servitors the chief Had he but known a fig's reluctant leaf Is more than e'er she wore on land or wave. No, David served not Naked Truth when he Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race; Nor did he hit the nail upon the head: For reason shows that it could never be, And the facts contradict him to his face. Men are not liars all, for some ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Nuernberg Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,—is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Garibaldi the right arm. Germany, vast in power and numbers, lay strongly entrenched in the central area of the Continent, but failed to kindle into national life at the same democratic moment. She was fashioned into political existence by a Thor's hammer, which, as it rose and fell, dealt shattering blows on friends as well as foes, in Austria as well as France, on Danes and Poles, on Liberals and Socialists, on little kings and great ecclesiastics. And now this Frankenstein creation among states ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... I caught it, ach! but I was pulverized and left speechless by these devotees of the Hammer-philosopher, Nietzsche. I was told that Wagner was a fairly good musician, although no inventor of themes. He had evolved no new melodies, but his knowledge of harmony, above all, his constructive power, were his best recommendations. As for ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... drinking horn, the sign He made of the Cross divine As he drank, and muttered his prayers; But the Berserks evermore Made the sign of the Hammer of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... well-hammer'd soles protect thy feet, Thro' freezing snows, and rain, and soaking sleet. 1677 GAY: Trivia, Bk. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... cannot understand how men can allow themselves to act as though it were Bad Friday, as though they could hear the hammer nailing Christ to the cross. A high churchman's conscience is a wonderful thing, and in nothing is it so surprising as this, that it can allow itself to act as though Jesus were slain and in His ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... racer. Yes, Molly understands at last. She has seen in the starlight the lariat as it missed Tam's head, and she knows perfectly well that only Tam's speed and sure-footedness can save them. Her heart beats like a trip-hammer; but she keeps a firm hold upon the rein, with a watchful eye for any sudden inequalities of the road, while her ears are strained to catch every sound. Tam's leap forward had given him a moment's advantage, and he keeps it up bravely, his dainty feet ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... they had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the woman appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue claw-hammer coat and brass buttons, and white kid gloves. As the noose was adjusted around his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical flourish, so as to show his embroidered white handkerchief. I never, never knew of a couple who enjoyed hanging more than ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... will venture to say that I have measured them as accurately as any geologist going could do." But he adds: "I have been working at so many things that I have not got on much with geology. I suspect the first expedition I take, clinometer and hammer in hand, will send me back very little wiser and a good deal more puzzled than when I started." ("L.L." I. page 189.) Valuable aid was, however, at hand, for at this time Sedgwick, to whom Darwin had been introduced by the ever-helpful Henslow, was ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... contrived a plot against the two Ruthvens, he had not taken his two nobles, Mar and Lennox, and these other gentlemen, and Murray of Arbany, into the scheme. He had not even arranged that another of his retinue should bring them from their futile hammer-work, to his ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... by the noted mantelpiece in the drawing-room. Only with the coming of smaller fireplaces came those elaborate mantelpieces. But the great fireplaces of our ancestors yielded slowly, inch by inch, as it were; and something of the goodly proportions they yet had in Colonel Byrd's day, the hammer and chisel have ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... essayed to hammer Into our heads the points of grammar; We're oft obliged to set at nought The different force of should and ought; And oft are sorely puzzled whether We should make use ...
— The Nightingale, the Valkyrie and Raven - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... of, demanding and rewarding, our most strenuous efforts. No man can, and no man will, strike such effectual blows on things present as the man, the strength of whose arm is derived from the conviction that every stroke of the hammer on things present is shaping that which will abide ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... paddles. Hurry was furious when he found that he was deprived of the means of proceeding. He first approached the Indian with loud menaces, and even Deerslayer stood aghast at the probable consequences. March shook his sledge-hammer fists and flourished his arms as he drew near the Indian, and all expected he would attempt to fell the Delaware to the earth; one of them, at least, was well aware that such an experiment would be followed by immediate bloodshed. But ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... find weapons, arrowy sleet, Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail, And snow that often blinds the traveller's course, And wraps him in an unexpected tomb. Silently as a dream the fabric rose. No sound of hammer or of saw was there. Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one. Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumined every side. A watery light Gleamed ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... for a considerable length of time. Being fond of reading he studied law in his shop, when not much pressed with business, and found a greater delight in the law-telling strokes of a Blackstone than in the hard-ringing strokes of a blacksmith's hammer. He finally abandoned his trade and engaged in the practice of the law, in which he was successful. He was a man of strong intellect, sound judgment, and keen observation. He wrote a piece called the "Mecklenburg Censor," abounding ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... opened their well-drilled eyes, The penknives felt shut up, no doubt; The scissors declared themselves cut out. The kettles, they boiled with rage, 'tis said; While every nail went off its head And hither and thither began to roam, Till a hammer came ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... falls to thanking God for blessing him with such a daughter, at the same time taking no small credit to himself for having bred her to such perfection, and in the midst of his encomiums, being down in the hollow searching for his hammer, he cries: ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... sides of one of London's innumerable private parks, wherein spring foliage glowed a tender green in artificial light; now and again it crossed brilliant main arteries of travel, and eventually emerged from a maze of backways into Oxford Street, to hammer eastwards to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... caught her—caught her by her long, glistening, golden hair. Mr. Sharp shouted to him. He saw the rope, and swam toward it, his strong right arm beating the water back with hammer-strokes—his left motionless, ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... Alpujarras, on a skirt of which stands Granada. A common occupation of the Gitanos of Granada is working in iron, and it is not unfrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy smiths and their families, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of the earth. To one standing at the mouth of the cave, especially at night, they afford a picturesque spectacle. Gathered round the forge, their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appear like ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... money," said he. "You will soon have an opportunity of laying out some of it to great advantage. Several collections of really good pictures, belonging to persons who have mixed themselves up in this Bonapartist restoration, must come within a few weeks to the hammer. You can do wonders when these sales commence. There will be startling bargains! Reserve yourself for them. I shall let you know all about it. By-the-by," he said, stopping short as he approached the door, "I was so near forgetting. There is to be next ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... chattered much more than was agreeable to either philosopher. Various remedies were tried to cure it of its garrulity, but in vain; and one day Thomas Aquinas was so enraged at the noise it made, when he was in the midst of a mathematical problem, that he seized a ponderous hammer and smashed it to pieces. [Naude, "Apologie des Grands Hommes accuses de Magie ;" chap. xviii.] He was sorry afterwards for what he had done, and was reproved by his master for giving way to his anger, so unbecoming in a philosopher. They made ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Victor, with hammer and nails and scraps of scantling, was patching a corner of one of the galleries. Mariequita sat near by, dangling her legs, watching him work, and handing him nails from the tool-box. The sun was beating down upon them. The girl had covered ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... available except a rather heavy hammer which had been brought up an hour earlier that very night to fix a nail in the wall for hanging a lamp. Mr. Jones took this up and waited for the spirit of Smith at ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... sufferers that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms; and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he should cease to become an anvil only that he may become a hammer." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... well-filled storeroom, among them an unopened case of battle-axe brandy. This was the centre of attraction. For a moment even the man on guard craned his neck to watch, as the leader of the gang, the man they called the Mopoke, produced a chisel and a hammer and proceeded ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... Brantme, "what of that? See how long it was of building? Good workmen like to be quick finished. With our king it was otherwise. Take Fontainebleau and Chambord. When they were projected, when once the plumb-line, and the compass, and the square, and the hammer were on the spot, then in a few years we saw ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... addressed to him by the Captain, seized a pair of tongs, swung open a furnace door, and plucking thence a glowing brand, whirled it with practised ease, and setting it upon the dies beneath a huge steam-hammer, nodded his head. Instantly that mighty engine fell to work, thumping and banging with mighty strokes, and with each stroke that glowing steel bar changed and changed, grew round, grew thin, hunched a shoulder here, showed a flat there, until, lo! ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... the line of stone houses and board shacks, never ending. At last he reached the outskirts of Marco and espied the building and sign he was so eagerly seeking. Resounding hammer strokes came from the shop. Outward coolness, an achievement habitual with him when excitement mounted to a certain stage, came with effort and he paused a moment to gaze at the sweeping country, green and purple, ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... beyond the reach of the receding waves. Thoreau wrote for nearly every number. Margaret Fuller, less attractive in print than in conversation, did her part as a contributor as well as editor. Theodore Parker came down with his "trip-hammer" in its pages. Mrs. Ellen Hooper published a few poems in its columns which remain, always beautiful, in many memories. Others, whose literary lives have fulfilled their earlier promise, and who are still with us, helped forward the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... own expression, they had been in 'various swims'. Now and then they'd take an office, as they called it, — make a dash Into business life as 'agents' — something not requiring cash. (You can always furnish cheaply, when your cash or credit fails, With a packing-case, a hammer, and a pound of two-inch nails — And, maybe, a drop of varnish and sienna, too, for tints, And a scrap or two of oilcloth, and a yard or two of chintz). They would pull themselves together, pay a week's rent in ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... when the world re-awoke from the fear of thieves, he feigned a limp at a cottage door, and borrowed a hammer to straighten a pinching shoe. Five minutes behind a hedge, and his anklets had dropped from him; and, thus a free man, he took to the high road. After all he was persuaded to desert London and to escape a while from ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... would be to play billy with the labels!" chuckled Mr. Wickham. "By George, here's a tack-hammer! We might send all these things skipping about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... body should swell gradually into an oblong shape. When these things shall have been provided by you, let your Next care be to roast well the beans with flames, and to grind them when roasted. Nor should the hammer cease to crush them with many a blow, Until they lay aside their hardness, and when thoroughly ground, Become fine powder; which forthwith pack either in a bag or a box made for such uses. And wrap it in leather, and smear it over with soft wax, lest ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to be nailed is such that the nail is to be driven straight into the substance of it to its whole length. In fact, this hardness and stiffness is an advantage, for, in consequence of these properties, the nail is less likely to bend under the hammer. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... morning. Between that hour and daylight the house would be erected and finished. Sometimes the house would be put together with nails, but when too near the residence of the landholder in possession, screws would be used to prevent the sound of the hammer attracting attention. Very few of this class of settlers remained upon their claims above a few days, but soon returned to their ordinary occupations ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... house slope half an inch to the foot from back to front, so as to insure drainage; let it also be close, hard, and perfectly smooth; so that it may be cleanly swept out. A capital plan is to mix a few bushels of chalk and dry earth, spread it over the floor, and pay a paviour's labourer a trifle to hammer it level with his rammer. The fowl-house should be seven feet high, and furnished with perches at least two feet apart. The perches must be level, and not one above the other, or unpleasant consequences may ensue to the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... I believe, derived from Pailee Maille, a game somewhat analogous to cricket, and imported from France in the reign of the second Charles: it was formerly played in St. James's Park, and in the exercise of the sport a small hammer or mallet was used to strike the ball. I think it worth noting that the Mallie crest is a mailed arm and hand, the latter ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... despair. The kitchen door, at the top of the first flight of stairs, was locked with a triple turn of the key. My amiable companion was tall, slight, and elegant, but not strong. I besought him to go down and fetch a hammer, a hatchet, or something, but just at that moment, a newcomer wrenched the door open by a violent plunge with his shoulder against it. This new arrival was no other than M. Sohege, a friend of mine. He was a most charming and excellent man, a broad-shouldered Alsatian, well known ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... of the early Greeks refer to the miracle of the morning. Aurora mirrors to us in a mystic way the significance of this hour to the Greeks. Athene was born by the stroke of the hammer of Hephaestus on the forehead of Zeus, and thus the stroke of fire upon the sky became the symbol or myth of all civilization. Even Daphne, pursued by Apollo, and turned into a tree, is doubtless the darkness fleeing before dawn until the trees stand out clearly ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... beheld the Heavenly Twins apparently intent upon organizing a revel. They were very busy at the moment, and had been for some hours evidently, for they had collected an organ man with a monkey; a wandering musician with a harp; a man with a hammer who had been engaged in breaking stones; a Punch and Judy party, consisting of a man, woman, and boy, with their Toby-dog; five christy minstrels in their war paint; a respectable looking mechanic with his wife and three children who were tramping ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... He carefully lowered the hammer of the pistol, his cane stuck upright in the sand before him. Then he put the weapon back in the inside pocket of his coat. He tapped the knob of his cane for a pinch of snuff before he said another word. His mighty ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... reign through victory, Or a servant kneel and lose, Suffering or triumph choose, Th' anvil or the hammer be. ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... you have no asbestos, brown paper, or even newspaper saturated with oil, will do for the time being; if a wheel has to be taken off, a fence-rail makes an excellent jack; if a chain is to be riveted, an axe or even a stone makes a good dolly-bar and your wrench an excellent riveting hammer; if screws, or nuts, or bolts drop off, —and they do,—and you have no extra, a glance at the machine is sure to disclose duplicates that can be removed temporarily to the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... and Broken.—Frequently a tradesman will strike the thumb or finger a serious blow with a hammer, in missing a stroke. If not treated properly, the whole hand may be destroyed, but if promptly plunged into warm clean water and kept there, even the broken bones can be handled quite comfortably, and all pain and uneasiness ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... him now. The shell that encloses a young French girl had been broken by the hammer of war and she had stepped forth, a woman with a thinking and reasoning mind of uncommon power. It seemed often to John that the soul of the great Lannes had descended upon this slender maid who was of his own blood. Like many ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mental exploration, and distinguished from purely motor exploration of the trial and error variety. Suppose you need the hammer, and go to the place where it is kept, only to find it gone. Now if you simply proceed to look here and there, ransacking the house without any plan, that would be motor exploration. But if, finding this trial and error procedure to be laborious and almost hopeless, you ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... silence followed. Every fellow could feel his heart pounding against his ribs like a trip hammer, and he wondered whether the sound were loud enough to betray his nervous frame of mind to his companions, never dreaming that they were all ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that—it's something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, under-ground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... prudent page that he would be cautious; and as he now distinguished, not indeed the ringing of bells, but the tinkling of something like a hammer against the side of an old mossy, green, inverted porridge-pot that hung in an open booth, of the size and shape of a parrot's cage, erected to grace the east end of a building resembling an old barn, he asked Callum ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... But when it came to reconstructing society there was a clash that mounted to a cataclysm. For Dick, shaking his head violently, demanded a government that should regulate everything and Casper waving a vicious, flat-nosed hammer, battered down all government and stood for the untrammeled and unhampered liberty of the individual. Night after night they looted civilization and stained the sky with their fires and the ground with the oppressor's blood, only to sink their claws and tusks ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... during my retired life at my father's, by unwearied diligence and industry, so far recovered the rules of grammar, in which I had once been very ready, that I could both read a Latin author and after a sort hammer out his meaning. But this change of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me. It was now harder to me to read than it was before ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... an age, when slept that Saint in death, Passing his isle by night the sailor heard Saint Cuthbert's hammer clinking ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... Culm, stands Bradfield; an avenue of cedars leads up to the house, which is an Elizabethan one in a very perfect condition. The banqueting-hall is panelled throughout, and its fine carved roof is supported by elaborately carved and pierced hammer-beams. High at one end is the minstrels' gallery, and at the other is a latticed window, which opened on to a corridor, and is said to have been used by the lady of the house, who could see from it anything that might be happening in the hall. A high ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... moments, Theodora had pictured Cicely as a dainty, clinging little maiden who would cajole and coddle Allyn out of his unfriendly moods. Cicely certainly did rouse Allyn from those moods; but it was by no process of feminine cajolery. She went at him, as the phrase is, hammer and tongs. Good-tempered herself, she demanded good temper from him. Failing that, she lectured him roundly. Failing again, she turned her back upon him and left him severely alone, with the result that, in an inconceivably short time, Allyn generally came to terms and exerted himself to ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... on his own account. The cashier stumbled over a chair in trying to get at Mr. Bingle to grasp his hand, and the chairman of the board began pounding the helpless bookkeeper on the shoulder with a hand that had all of the weight and some of the resilience of a sledge hammer. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... by newcomers, they press on by the direct road to Ypres, where they can count on the support of a strong body of Calvinists. Unopposed, they break into the cathedral, and mounting on ladders they hammer to pieces the pictures, hew down with axes the pulpits and pews, despoil the altars of their ornaments, and steal the holy vessels. This example was quickly followed in Menin, Comines, Verrich, Lille, and Oudenard; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... inside with the crowd—surged along the passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great east room. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... whilst the hammer was poised in mid air and Hun Rhavas' furtive glance darted on the praefect to see if he were still indifferent! Menecreta prayed with all her humble might to the proud gods enthroned upon the hill! she prayed that this cycle of agony might ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... you boys follow me," said the General, cocking his pistol and letting the hammer down to see if it ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer at the business with dull, lifeless blows, and flings down his pen in despair. There are successive months during which this mood hangs upon him like an incubus; then it passes suddenly, like a cloud, and the air (as at Seville) wooes him to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... travel, combined with a dip in the Mississippi. The remainder of the collection was composed of worse pictures than are offered to connoisseurs at a pawnbroker's sale in London. The proprietor informed me that they were to be brought to the hammer and sold without reserve in a few days, when he anticipated a lively sale for the large pictures, the quantity of raw material used up in the work being a great consideration with the lovers of art here. I looked upon the mere fact of such a speculation being made in these countries as creditable ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... time before 'Ivanhoe' appeared, that Baron von Hammer Purgstall had published his theory that the Knights Templars were, although most unjustly treated, still guilty, in a certain sense, of the extraordinary charges brought against them. It seems at least to be tolerably certain that during their long residence in the East they had acquired ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was to hammer 'n out flat like an' nail un down to bottom, 'long wi' oakum an' drop o' white ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of Thunder, for whom Lei Tsu is often mistaken, is represented as an ugly, black, bat-winged demon, with clawed feet, monkey's head, and eagle's beak, who holds in one hand a steel chisel, and in the other a spiritual hammer, with which he beats numerous drums strung about him, thus producing the terrific noise of thunder. According to Chinese reasoning it is the sound of these drums, and not ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... almost aqual to my gineral coorse," he he added; "but I must try and hold in till I can get the laddy by himself. Then I'll hammer him, out of pure love, ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... equal horizontal bands of red (top) and black with a centered yellow emblem consisting of a five-pointed star within half a cogwheel crossed by a machete (in the style of a hammer and sickle) ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... were a great number of periphrastic but vividly picturesque metaphorical synonyms (technically called kennings). Thus the spear becomes 'the slaughter-shaft'; fighting 'hand-play'; the sword 'the leavings of the hammer' (or 'of the anvil'); and a ship 'the foamy-necked floater.' These kennings add much imaginative suggestiveness to the otherwise over-terse style, and often contribute to the grim irony which is another ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... "I'm trying to hammer some common sense into your head. Your chance for a safe getaway rests on one thing. You've got to have friends in the Lone Lands who'll hide you till you can slip out of the country. Can you do that if the trappers—friends of McRae, nearly all of 'em—carry the word of what you ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... to be accidentally infinite when its existence as such is not necessary, but accidental. This can be shown, for example, in the work of a carpenter requiring a certain absolute multitude; namely, art in the soul, the movement of the hand, and a hammer; and supposing that such things were infinitely multiplied, the carpentering work would never be finished, forasmuch as it would depend on an infinite number of causes. But the multitude of hammers, inasmuch as one may be broken and another used, is an accidental ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... geologist as a musty and stooped individual, with a bag, hammer, and magnifying glass, collecting specimens to deposit in a dusty museum, will doubtless survive as a caricature, but will hardly serve to identify the economic geologist in his present-day work. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... a penn'orth of tacks, a hammer borrowed from a neighbor, and an hour's cheerful work completed the fortification of the Englishman's house against the inquisitiveness of passers-by. But the landlord frowned anxiously as ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... buffaloes, he had not rested content until he had pounded the breath out of the body, which was found embedded and literally stamped tight into the mud, with only a portion of the head above the marsh. Sali had not even cocked his gun, the hammer being down on the nipples when found. I will not allow these men to come to grief in this way; they are a reckless set of thoughtless cowards, full of noise and bluster, fond of firing off their guns like children, and wasting ammunition uselessly, and in ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... pomp in the mausoleum erected by his father, amid the lamentations of the people, rarely poured forth over the tomb of a deceased grand vizir. The character of this great minister has been made the theme of unmeasured panegyrics by the Turkish historians; and Von Hammer-Purgstall (in his History of the Ottoman Empire) has given us a long and elaborate parallel between the life and deeds of Ahmed Kiuprili and of the celebrated vizir of Soliman the Magnificent and his two successors, Mohammed-Pasha Sokolli; but we prefer to quote the impartial and unadorned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... of the room, behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker's table, took all the work which was cut out before them and began to stitch, and sew, and hammer so skilfully and so quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker could not turn away his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done, and stood finished on the table, and they ran ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... bellows, I forge the steel, In all the shops of trade; I hammer the ore, and turn the wheel Where my arms of strength are made; I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint; I carry, I spin, I weave; And all my doings I put into print, On every ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... as if he had called it a thousand times; suddenly he stopped short, listening, his heart beating like a hammer, then standing still in his breast. It couldn't be—but, oh, it was, ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... you like being a soldier. How many soldiers are there in the same house with you? Give them my love and tell them we hope they liked the cake we put in your box for them. Roy came down to old Principle's with me yesterday. He showed us a hammer out of his cave he dug up. He says you will not be a full blown soldier for a year. He had a cousin who was a sergeant in India—and had his brains burst out in battle. When do you begin to fight? Tell us if you feel funky, and what the enemy looks like, and who they are. We think ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... instruments of the jack or tangent kind. Even Beethoven's sonatas up to Op. 27, inclusive, were published for "Clavicembalo o Pianoforte." The Germans have the convenient generic term "Clavier," which includes the old and the new instruments with hammer action; hence, they speak of a Clavier Sonate written, say, by Kuhnau, in the seventeenth, or of one by ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... candle and match and squeaked in affright. But her scare did not prevent her from drawing a sixshooter. He heard the click of the hammer, and whispered desperately, "Molly! Molly! It's ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... consultant containing a considerable sum of money, as it is surrounded by dots. The future, shown by the bottom of the cup, is not clear, and betokens adversities; but the presence of the hammer there denotes triumph over these, a sign confirmed by the hat on the side. The consultant will be annoyed by somebody whose name begins with 'J,' and assisted by one ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... was walking through a side street in one of our large cities, I heard these words ringing out from a room so crowded with people that I could but just see the auctioneer's face and uplifted hammer above the heads ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... uttered by any of our garrison. The insurgents, finding that the gate would not yield, shouted for some one in the chateau to open it. No one replied. Again and again they shook it. At last we heard the sound of loud blows, as if it were being struck by a sledge hammer, while several figures appeared on the top of the wall, ladders having been procured to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... onset! And the rock was almost more terrible to grapple with than they. Jagged and pointed, it was like needles and razors to walk on; and it was brittle as it was hard. While it could sometimes resist a hammer, it would at others smash under our feet like a tea-cup. It looked like some metallic dross long since vomited up from the ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... seat and set himself resolutely to hammer out something which, though it might not be literature, would at least be capable of being printed. A search through his commonplace book brought no balm. A commonplace book is the author's rag bag. In it he places ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... coached, he ironically added when he spoke the expansive truth at home, by his mother and Jeff. They were ready to bring kindling to boil the pot, Mrs. Choate in her grand manner of beckoning the ancient virtues back, Jeff, as Alston told, him, hammer and tongs. Jeff also began to make speeches, because, at one juncture when Alston gave out from hoarseness—his mother said it was a psychological hoarseness at a moment when he realised overwhelmingly how he hated it all—Jeff had taken his place and "got" the men, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Quartermaster, as they say in the settlements of their creaturs," cried Pathfinder, laughing; "but it would take a long time to build a house with a hammer no better than yours. Jasper, here, will show you how a nail is to be started, or the lad has lost some of his steadiness of hand and sartainty of eye. You would have done better yourself, Lieutenant, had you not been so much bent on soldierizing ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper |
