"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Abe—tol' Jeb that Polly Ann had seed him in Hazlan (which she hadn't, of co'se), an' had said p'int-blank that he was the likeliest feller she'd seed in them mountains. An' he tol' Polly Ann that Jeb was ravin' crazy 'bout her. The pure misery of it jes made him plumb delirious, Abe said; an' 'f Polly Ann wanted to find her match fer languige an' talkin' out peert—well, she jes ought to strike Jeb Somers. Fact is, stranger, Jeb Somers air might' nigh a idgit; but Jeb 'lowed he'd rack right over on ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... about the next couple of hours. 'Cordin' to my reckonin' they was years and we'd ought to have sailed plumb through the broadside of the Cape, and be makin' a quick run for Africy. But at last we got into smoother water, and then, right acrost our bows, showed up a white strip. The fog had pretty well blowed clear and ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of siliceous gravel are cemented together by a siliceous cement, and are called breccia; as the plumb-pudding stones of Hartfordshire, and the walls of a subterraneous temple excavated by Mr. Curzon, at Hagley near Rugely in Staffordfshire; these may have been exposed to great heat as they were immersed in ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... in Isaiah Thomas' list of "books Suitable for Children of all ages," we find less serious books. "Tom Jones Abridged," "Peregrine Pickle Abridged," "Vice in its Proper Shape," "The Sugar Plumb," "Bag of Nuts Ready Crack'd," "Jacky Dandy," "History of Billy and Polly Friendly." Among the "Chapman's Books for the Edification and Amusement of young Men and Women who are not able to Purchase those of a Higher Price" are, "The Amours and Adventures of Two English Gentlemen in Italy," ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... sunken-eyed slip of humanity had a spell for those who heard him speak. There was no subject, moral, intellectual, or philosophic too remote or too profound for him to measure it at a moment's notice, with the ever-ready, fallacious plumb-line of his brilliant vanity. He would talk for hours: be eloquent, convincing, almost noble; and afterwards accompany his audience to ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... he chuckled. "If you was to get a leg over a bronc', and the bronc' should find it out—Say, I've got a li'l' blue horse out on my place in the Antelopes that'd plumb give his ears to have you try it; he shore would. You take my advice, and don't you go huntin' a job night-ridin' in the greasewood hills. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... projected towards the captain, quite out of line, while the barrel rested on his own shoulder. Still, as his arms were extended to the utmost, the county Leitrim-man fancied he was performing much better than common. Jamie had correct notions of the perpendicular, from having used the plumb-bob so much, though even he made the trifling mistake of presenting arms with the lock outwards. As for the Yankees, they were all tolerably exact, in everything but time, and the line; bringing their pieces down, one after another, much as they were in the practice of following their ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... so good, 'cause I's been feelin' poorly for a spell and I ain't so young no more. Law me, when I think back what I used to do, and now it's all I can do to hobble 'round a little. Why, Miss Olivia, my mistress, used to put a glass plumb full of water on my head and then have me waltz 'round the room, and I'd dance so smoothlike, I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. You'll do this job, and you'll do it my way. Maybe you got another ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... three, an' he was all there was left. They wasn't very well-to-do, but nothin' was too grand fer Jimmy, and when the boy begun ter draw them little pictures of his all over the shed an' the barn door, they was plumb crazy. There wan't no doubt of it—Jimmy was goin' ter be famous, they said. He was goin' ter be one o' them painter fellows, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... we are a credulous lot of people. Old Bismarck himself once cynically remarked that there was a special Providence that watched out for plumb fools and Americans. More recently, Von Papen, whom our Government asked to have withdrawn from his post as German military attache at Washington, referred to us affectionately as "those idiotic Yankees." Consequently, ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... do not misunderstand this, he cautions—that the pretense here around the broken automobile grows shallow enough to plumb. There is nothing here. Two dozen men standing dead on a curbing, tricked into confessional by a ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... lieutenant-colonel, Elisha S. Kellogg, Derby; major, Nathaniel Smith, Woodbury; adjutant, Charles J. Deming, Litchfield; quartermaster, Bradley D. Lee, Barkhamsted; chaplain, Jonathan A. Wainwright, Torrington; surgeon, Henry Plumb, ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... football match in the first part and the cricket match in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... hear of Roberts as sailing, in honest employ, as master of the Princess (Captain Plumb), from London in November, 1719, bound for the coast of Guinea to pick up a cargo of "black ivory" at Anamaboe. Here his ship was taken by the Welsh pirate Howel Davis. At first Roberts was disinclined for the pirate life, but soon changed ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... "Plumb chuck full of malaria," soliloquized the owner of the weapon, playfully running its business end over the Chicago man's anatomy. "Shakes worse'n a pair of dice. Here, Fatty. Load up with quinine and whisky. It's sure good for chills." The man behind the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... its place a chaste Greek Temple of a building looks rather contemptuously down its classic columns upon the farmer's wagons drawn up along the curb. If Fanny Brandeis' sense of proportion had not been out of plumb she might have realized that, to Winnebago, the new First National Bank building was as significant and epochal as had been the Woolworth Building to ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... among the pillars of the hall, upon his throne of beaten gold, and around him stood the speaking statues which Daidalos had made by his skill. For Daidalos was the most cunning of all Athenians, and he first invented the plumb-line, and the auger, and glue, and many a tool with which wood is wrought. And he first set up masts in ships, and yards, and his son made sails for them: but Perdix his nephew excelled him; for he first invented the saw and its teeth, copying it from the back-bone of a fish; and invented, too, ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... minor portions of rock may be; for I never mark an angle unless enough of the upper or lower surface of the beds be smoothly exposed to admit of my pole being adjusted to it by the spirit-level. The pole then indicates the strike of the beds, and a quadrant with a plumb-line their dip; to all intents and purposes accurately. There is a curious distortion of the beds in the ravine between the Glacier des Bois and foot of the Montanvert, near the ice, about a thousand feet above the valley; the beds there seem to bend suddenly ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... that his force to fly, his will to see, His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, Had come of many a grip in mastery, Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, And of his bosom made him lord, to keep The starry roof of his unruffled frame Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep Below, above, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brig's that?' But none of these tricks will answer with t'other, who misses the whipping off the end of a gasket, as soon as any first luff of us all. And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as the back of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wooden outer blinds the same shape; the line of the level roof runs along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible red, or green, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... next, but on the first day of calm, red, sunset sky, went Quonab to his hill of worship; and when the little fire that he lit sent up its thread of smoke, like a plumb-line from the red cloud over him, he burnt a pinch of tobacco, and, with face and arms upraised in the red light, he sang ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and dusty, and I was plumb crazy for water. Somehow I managed to work my way out to a big clear space on the side of the hill. The brush and weeds were up to your neck. At the foot of the hill was a piece of marshy land where there had once been a spring. It had long since dried ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... real live street car would look as big to me right now as a three-ring circus," Jack summed up his world-hunger with a shrug. "By the time I've wintered over there I'll be running round in circles trying to catch my shadow. Plumb bugs, that's what I'll be; and don't I ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... have daily. Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner, and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a mountain of plumb-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... shorter side, and upon any length of line which may be taken on the tracing-board as a base for elevation, an Equilateral Triangle will be found whose sides are of course all equal and therefore known, as they are equal to the base, and whose line joining apex to centre of base is a true Plumb line, forming at its foot the perfect right angle, so important in the laying of every stone of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... far. It glanced from Mr. O'Rourke's leg, went plumb through the Bilkins mansion, and knocked over a small marble slab in the Old South ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Flipper is the first colored graduate of West Point. He went to the institution from Georgia, and graduated last June, fifty-fifth in a class of seventy-six. There is a preponderance of white blood in his veins, and in general appearance, except for color, he is a perfect image of Senator Plumb of Kansas. He reports that since he has struck the South he has been treated like a gentleman, which is something different from his experience in the North. He made the acquaintance of Senator Maxey at West Point— the Senator ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... I. M. (slapping him warmly on the back). My dear chap, you've just hit the nail plumb on the right head. That's what I've said all along. The whole country's being simply ruined with all these blessed Councils. Every man will have to be his own Council before long, if they go on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... which shall not be Declared to them by the Owners thereof." The draughtsman of this dignified little Act it is clear was greatly addicted to capitals. Probably he thought they heightened effect, much as Charles Lamb spelt plum pudding with a b—"plumb pudding," because, he said, "it reads fatter and more suetty." At the time this Act came into being, railways in the eye of Parliament were public highways, upon which you or I, if we paid the prescribed tolls, could convey our traffic, our vehicles, or ourselves. In the years 1838-1840 ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... happiness. "It's ours—yours! And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I didn't tell you how well we're doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn't know us. She thought I was plumb ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... We wish thee also well aware of this: The atoms, as their own weight bears them down Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, In scarce determined places, from their course Decline a little—call it, so to speak, Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, Like drops ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... peartness," his mother sarcastically rejoined. "'Pears ter me like the chile hain't never hed good sense; afore she could walk she'd crawl along the floor arter ye, an' holler like a squeech-owEL ef ye went off an' lef' her. An' ye air plumb teched in the head too, Birt, ter set sech store by Tennie. I look ter see her killed, or stunted, some day, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... a tragic hand towards the engine, and Evan saw for himself what had happened. The main shaft on the port side had broken clean through. The sudden shifting of the strain had thrown the walking-beam out of plumb, and the connecting rods had snapped off and threshed wildly about. The ruin was complete, but fortunately, all above ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... homestead of the family. It was unspeakably decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates—to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof hollowed about the chimney, with great stains ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hadn't eaten anything. I hadn't slept worth speaking of for three nights. The whole game was up for me. I was worse than ruined. I had half a crown in my pocket. I had ten or twelve pounds in the bank—and they wouldn't let me overdraw a farthing. I tell you, I was just plumb busted. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... go'n' a' do fo yo', Mahstah Majah. Ah steddied huh all out twell she's plumb systemous. Miss Cahline sh' ain't wantin' huh breakfus' twell yo's done, an' she'll tek huh dinneh uhliah. Ah manage, Mahstah Majah. Ah mek all mah reddiments, yes, seh—yo's go'n' a' be jes' ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the greater the slave; and so it was that, falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... him, and after six weeks came to the conclusion that a strike is a game that more than one can play at. He strikes now only in his holidays. He never now forgets his tools or leaves taps running. He does a good day's plumb for a good day's pay. And he sings while he works. Strange to say that little tooth of his has given up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... Botolph's. ... Such a verdant covert wood Stothard might paint for the haunting of Dioneus, Pamphillus, and Fiammetta as they walk in the novel of Boccacce. The ground shadowed with bluebells, even to the formation of a plumb-like bloom upon its little knolls and ridges; and ever through the dell windeth a little path chequered with the shades of aspens and ashes and the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... he said. "For the miracle to happen, in fact, the sieve must be held as level as the top rail of a mason's T-shaped plumb-line frame, and as steady as if clamped in a vise. For a woman to carry water in a sieve the weather must be dry, for in damp weather the water would run through the meshes, even if the threads or wires were just oily enough and not too oily, even if the meshes were just the right size to favor ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... raised his hand in weary protest, as he smiled apologetically at the court. "Darned if I didn't plumb forget one thing," he said. "We got to swear in these witnesses before they can chatter. Is there anybody got a Bible around 'em? Nope? Montana, I wished you'd lope over to that house and see what they got ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Parsons wear it more than once. I was mad at Miss Harrow for the way she treated me, an' just out of mischief I took the ring an' opened the inkwell an' dropped it in. It was in the inkwell that had red ink in it, an' the ring went plumb out o' sight." ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... from the church to the Grove; and there partook, as they had been invited to do, of beef and pudding, and good home-brewed beer. The young Mortimers waited upon them at dinner, and before they left the Lodge, presented them each with a plumb cake; and Mrs. Mortimer gave them each an amusing little book to read to themselves and their parents, who had not like themselves possessed the advantages of learning ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... little conference, an impromptu affair, at the mess the morning after the alarm of fire. Willett stock had been running down before that episode, and went "plumb out of sight" for several hours. It was held by Bonner, Bucketts, Briggs and Strong a most womanish thing on his part to have raised such a row and then "wilted." It was Bentley, the most disgusted man at the post, who now came to the rescue. "He was dumped on the porch like a sack of potatoes," ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... explained the driver in his slow way, "hit was like this. That there saloon were plumb full of sailor-men all exceptin' you an' me. I was a heap admirin' of the way you handled that big hombre what opened the meetin' and also his two pardners, who aimed to back his play. Hit was sure ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... ignores the existence of these faces bleached by moral or physical suffering; but, then, Paris is in truth an ocean that no line can plumb. You may survey its surface and describe it; but no matter how numerous and painstaking the toilers in this sea, there will always be lonely and unexplored regions in its depths, caverns unknown, flowers and pearls and monsters of the deep overlooked or ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... you are on the high seas. Surely, you will now float serenely down the eternities! But by-and-by there is a kink. You find, that, though the line runs off so fast, it does not go down,—it only floats out. A current has caught it and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... followed the son of Atreus to Troy. The steeds of the descendant of Pheres were indeed by far the most excellent, which Eumelus drove, swift as birds, like in hair, like in age, and level in [height of] back by the plumb-line.[134] These, bearing with them the terror of Mars, both mares, silver-bowed Apollo fed in Pieria.[135] Of the heroes Telamonian Ajax was by far the best, whilst Achilles continued wrathful, for he was by far the bravest; and the steeds ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Say, didn't I tell you I shook hands with this boy an' was plumb glad to meet him?" demanded Laddy, with considerable heat. Manifestly he had been affronted. "Tom Beldin', he's a gentleman, an' he could lick you in—in half a ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count—but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... what in the sacred name of Time are you meanin' to do with that dummy? For the good land's sake! Have you gone plumb crazy, or ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... me, What pleasure would thy toils reward beneath the deep-green sea! O deep sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?— The hoary monster's palaces!—Methinks what joy 'twere now To go plumb-plunging down, amid the assembly of the whales, And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails! Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn, And send him foiled and bellowing ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... was another man. He didn't even look the same. Sich eyes! Al'ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They'd give anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after that—said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with him—he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away from that grave—you don't want to look odder than ye are by ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... its place, as if dropped from heaven with a plumb-line, a wreath of artificial flowers landed lightly on his temples, while a woman's laugh, soft and silvery, accompanied with its ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... pay a woman's bills; I enjoyed seeing her garments lying about on my chairs. In time that exultation wore off. But I was not unhappy, I didn't expect much, I was always so sure that no woman could ever plumb the well of ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... island," he impressed upon me with an intention I was yet to plumb. "Dole," he exclaimed, "it's a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nuthin'; but, right whar th' grass was tread up th' worst on th' spot whar we saw th' man killed, I found this—" and the hand came out of the pocket and was extended toward the alcalde, holding on its palm a button. "Now I'd plumb forgot all about th' findin' of this button, not settin' any store on it, when, jest as I was a-leavin' th' witness stand, th' thought popped intew my head, that, if th' prisoners happened tew have on th' same ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... other letter I was afraid that you would think me plumb bold about the little Bo-Peep, and was a heap sorrier than you can think. If you only knew the hardships these poor men endure. They go two together and sometimes it is months before they see another soul, and rarely ever a woman. I ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... I should be seeking admittance to that house among the trees. In fact so great was my anxiety to plumb the depths of the mystery in the hope of recovering some new fact which should exculpate Coverly, that nothing but the unseemly lateness of the hour had deterred me from ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... that thrilled me. Next to that the work of my new find absorbed me. I gloated over his easy, deceiving swing. I rose out of my seat when he threw that straight fast ball, swift as a bullet, true as a plumb line. And when those hard-hitting, sure bunting Bisons chopped in vain at the wonderful drop, I choked back a wild yell. For Rube meant the world to me ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my horse went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set afoot. Uh course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you don't half know all that might signify to imply." This last in open imitation of Branciforte. "It implies that I was in one hell of a fix, to put it elegant. I was sixty miles ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... I'm hell bent for peace. I'm going to stop him. I'm not arguing that point, for it won't bear arguing, and I'm not trying to convert you. But you're in my power, and though I sure would hate to inconvenience a lady, I'm that plumb remorseless I'd separate you from Ali Higg for ever unless you helped me call him off ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... open to him was the theatre. Badly as it paid the outside author, there was nothing that paid better. Venus and Adonis brought "more praise than pudding," if one may venture a guess. With the freedom of the theatre Will could soar to all heights and plumb all depths. No such opportunity had Burns, even if he could have used it, and, owing to a variety of causes, his spirit soon ceased to soar high ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... then with a sudden change of humor, "and now I'll do a little talking. I've listened to you just as long as I'm going to. I have Radway's contract in that safe and I live up to it. I'll thank you to go plumb to hell!" ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air. There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin life by ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... lynched. The cost of living is so high that it's economy to die; and death is so expensive, then, that corpses want to live again. The trusts have robbed us left and right, and there's no remedy in sight; the government is out of plumb and should be ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... Little Two-Shoes taught her to spell words of one syllable, and she soon set up pear, plumb, top, ball, pin, puss, dog, hog, fawn, buck, doe, lamb, sheep, ram, cow, bull, cock, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... speaker's smiling face and twinkling eyes and laughed. "Well, yo're the foreman if you owns that badge," grinned Hopalong, cheerfully. "We don't need no guns, nohow, in this town, we don't. Plumb forgot we was toting them. But mebby you can tell us where lawyer Jeremiah T. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... conscious of his love for Katiousha; especially if it were sought to persuade him that he could and must not link his fate to that of the girl, he would very likely have decided in his plumb-line mind that there was no reason why he should not marry her, no matter who she was, provided he loved her. But the aunts did not speak of their fears, and he departed without knowing that ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... of the range, plumb rough an' on-refined, An' wild an' keerless in my ways, like others of my kind; A reckless cuss in leather chaps, an' tanned an' blackened so You'd think I wuz a Greaser from the plains of Mexico. I never learnt to ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... said to him, "Try more air, son. You can have the buckboard and a driver every day if you'll go. Try a week or two in one of the cow camps. I'll fix you up plumb comfortable. The ground, and the air next to it—them's the things to cure you. I knowed a man from Philadelphy, sicker than you are, got lost on the Guadalupe, and slept on the bare grass in sheep ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... him slipped out of plumb. The sky and the lawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. The whirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of a lonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and the waves washing up almost at ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... accession King George has been confronted with trials and troubles enough to daunt the stoutest heart, and none of us can plumb the depth of anguish that must have been his through the awful years of the Great War. He has been tried and proved in the fierce fires of adversity, and has emerged ennobled by pain, and dowered by sorrow with a gift of expression that has placed ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... candy sucker from a baby. 'Curly' let go of that 'six' like he was plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over the ear just oncet. Then he turned on the room; and right there my heart went out to him. He took in the line up at ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the case of brick walls, however, no deduction is made provided that they are still standing plumb, but they are always valued at what they cost to build. Hence in some states we may see public buildings and private houses, as well as those of kings, built of brick: in Athens, for example, the part of the wall which faces Mt. Hymettus and Pentelicus; at Patras, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... why I call it a coup d'etat?" Arobin had put on his coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She told him it was, looking no higher than the tip ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... not, have been one of the fifteen. I'm not quite clear on that point. Indeed I'm somewhat muddled in the main; but I suspect the SQUIRE is up to some deed of infamy, and I have done my best to plumb its slimy depths." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... creature, I doubted not, wanted to instruct me how to answer the Captain's home put. I knew how I intended to answer it—plumb, thou may'st be sure—but Dorcas's message staggered me. And yet I was upon one of my master-strokes—which was, to take advantage of the captain's inquiries, and to make her own her marriage before him, as she ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... his face. Chip told her exactly what he had told the Old Man, in exactly the same tone; so the Countess retreated, declaring that he wouldn't be let to act that way if he was her kid, and that he was plumb ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... know many folks hyarabouts yit," he said with impetuous suddenness. "I'd plumb love ter hev ye ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth Notion of private property in truth Only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas Opinions Out of plumb when they sit side by side Overestimate of our special individuality Pathological piety Perpetual insult to mediocrity Plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world Presumption in favor of any particular belief Pseudo-science Question everything Saying one thing ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... allus was. She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... jibed when he could speak. "You must figger I'm plumb loco. Any fool ought to know anybody would hold off till you located the mine. Even supposing I was going to plant you, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... He was going to plumb their secret places,—not only for the missing man, but for the lost mine he had sought so long. He must not only fight his own battles, but he had in his charge a helpless, tender thing of whom his body must be a shield. Never, it seemed to him, had he met the wilderness ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... for me to do but to come out here in this ol' woodshed where nobody wouldn't see me ac' like a plumb baby. ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... untroubled eyes which seemed to plumb his heart and to appraise all which Perion had ever thought or longed for since the day that Perion was born; and she was as beautiful, it seemed to him, as the untroubled, gracious angels are, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... To make Plumb-Porridge:—Take a leg and shin of beef to ten gallons of water, boil it very tender, and when the broth is strong, strain it out, wipe the pot, and put in the broth again; slice six penny-loaves thin, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o' Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I looks up, he's plumb absent. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... lower branches set with flowering orchids like hothouse plants upon a window-ledge. The dense foliage allowed only a random beam of sunlight to pass through and pierce the pool, like a brilliant, quivering javelin. Long vines depended from the limbs above, falling sheer and straight as plumb-lines; a giant liana the size of a man's body twined up and up until lost ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... fluttering of agonized wings, as of a soul struggling up out of the purgatorial smoke, the music- bird sprang aloft, and broke into a wild but unsure jubilation. Then, as if in the exuberance of its rejoicing it had broken some law of the kingdom of harmony, it sank, plumb-down, into the purifying fires again; where the old wailing, and the old struggle began, but with increased vehemence and aspiration. By degrees, the surrounding confusion and distress melted away into forms of harmony, which sustained the mounting cry of longing and prayer. Then all the cry vanished ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Who shall plumb the depth of the bitterness in this old man's heart, as he lay among his pillows, his head moving feebly from side to side, his attenuated fingers plucking at the coverlet, his tongue stealing slowly along ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... he observed. "You'll have a chance to rest decent to-night, and I got a team uh bays that'll yank yuh to the Meadows in four hours 'n' a half. My wife'll be plumb tickled to have yuh. They ain't much more'n half a dozen white women in ten miles uh the Meadows. We keep a boardin'-house. Hope ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... you fellows branch out?" Bagsby always ended. "What do you want to stick here for like a lot of groundhogs? There's rivers back in the hills a heap better than this one, and nobody thar. You'd have the place plumb to yoreselves. Git in where the mountains is ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... extremely difficult to convey any idea. Compared with the English of the country, there is apparently very little difference between them; but still there is a difference, and of no small importance in a moral point of view. The country peculiarity is like the bloom of the plumb, or the down of the peach, which the fingers of infancy cannot touch without injuring; but this felt but not describable quality of the town character, is as the varnish which brings out more vividly the colours of a ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a more uncertain quantity. Sometimes he could get it at the expense of pitch, sometimes at the expense of pace. Some days he could get all three, and then he was an uncommonly bad man to face on anything but a plumb wicket. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... boys dat one ever did see. At dat time Claude, he 'bout two year old and Clarence, he 'bout four er mebbe little less. Ella, she worked in da house cooking for Miss Fannie an' nussin' de chillun and she plumb crazy 'bout de chillun an' dey just as satisfied wid her as dey was wid dere mama and Ella thought more dem chillun dan she did anybody. She just crazy 'bout dem boys. Mars Luch, he gibe me job right 'way sort flunkying for him and hostling at de lot an' barn and 'twasn't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the ledge up and down the gulch and to estimate the probable extent of that pay streak. Then he gave it up in self-defense. "I've got to watch my dodgers," he admonished himself, "or I'll go plumb loco and imagine I'm a millionaire. I'll pan what I can get at and let it go at that. And I've got to count what gold shows up in the sack—and no more. Good Lord! I can't afford to make a fool of myself at this ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... near That mystery 'yond thought to plumb, Perchance sometimes in loathed fear They heard ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... we move," was the laconic but excellent speech of Mr. Henry Plumb. He already had his forefinger on ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... he's as strong as a railway engine," returned Jim, "and he goes plumb daffy. Murder or anything else doesn't matter a hill of beans to him at a time ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... be as hard and tough as leather, to be able to go for days without food or drink, to know the country well, to sleep when he does sleep with his ears open, to be up to every red skin trick, to be able to shoot straight enough to hit a man plumb centre at three hundred yards at least, and to hit a dollar at twenty yards sartin with his six-shooter. If you feel as you have got all them qualifications you can start off as soon as you like, and the chances aren't more'n twenty to one ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... said he was just plumb ruined. He said he'd snatch Ikey bald-headed, and do a lot of other things to him, if he didn't walk right out into State street and bring back that Little Brass God. Holy Moses! You ought to have seen how scared Little ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... grub, an' not trouble, I reckon you'd better hang up out here," Stevens was saying, as he mounted. "You see, towns an' sheriffs an' rangers are always lookin' fer new fellers gone bad. They sort of forget most of the old boys, except those as are plumb bad. Now, nobody in Mercer will take notice of me. Reckon there's been a thousand men run into the river country to become outlaws since yours truly. You jest wait here an' be ready to ride hard. Mebbe my besettin' sin will go operatin' in spite of my good intentions. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... were wise—which God knows we are not— (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours—these delicate spinal clusters— Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, which scorned ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... stepper in the mazes of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken. Still he didn't ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... snake oil!" Chow said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under water ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... and took his young friend by each shoulder. "Son," he pleaded, "please let me build this dam. I was never so plumb interested in any job before. I'll take a chance. I know what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it, and you aren't going to be obligated the least little bit. Isn't John Parker stuck for it all, in the long run? Why, I've got that ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... enough if she'd have him, but barrin' her, he hangs to Marg so as ter be nigh Nella-Rose in any case. And right here Burke Lawson figgers. Burke's got two naturs, same as old Satan. Marg can play on one and get him plumb riled up to anythin'; Nella-Rose can twist him around her finger and make him ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... shall the soul thereby Unto the All draw nigh? Shall it avail to plumb the mystic deeps Of flowery beauty, scale the icy steeps Of perilous thought, thy hidden Face to find, Or tread the starry paths to the utmost verge of the sky? Nay, groping dull and blind Within the sheltering dimness of thy wings— Shade that their splendour flings Athwart Eternity— We, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... his arm and pointed eastward. Had he seen another man going on in this fashion alone in the dark, among side-tracked freight cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. "And I guess Boston'll have to get along without me for a spell, too," continued Lin. "A man don't want to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin' with the hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that hog chap's. Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank, he'd say to me 'How do you do, brother?' ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... political leaders conceded it. In this frame of mind, delegates found it easy to nominate Horatio Seymour for governor and Sanford E. Church for lieutenant-governor. The next day the Abolitionists, tired of their union with Hunkers and Barnburners, nominated William L. Chaplin and Joseph Plumb. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... astonished," he said, "(1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the "Age of Reason,"—a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down of the pauses, and the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... bad as all that," he said casually. "Gotta make that grub pan out, somehow. I told you I was rough—an animal. Don't look so plumb sober. I lived for a month ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... hole, which usually starts by being about three times too large for the requirements at the surface, but narrows in like a funnel at 10 feet or less. A shaft, say 4 feet by 2 feet 6 inches and sunk plumb, the ends being half rounded, is large enough for all requirements to a considerable depth, though I have seen smart men, when they were in a hurry to reach the drift, get down in a shaft even less ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... "That's plumb foolishness, Clint. The Mexican—what's his name?—killed Ford because he was jealous, an' if it hadn't been for you, he'd 'a' paid for it long ago. But that ain't what I came to talk about. I'm here to tell you that I've got evidence to prove that Ford was a rustler an' a hold-up. If ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... these muscle-joint experiences, the eye is also being trained. The position of the image on the retina comes to stand for direction, and the eye finally develops so remarkable a power of perceiving direction that a picture hung a half inch out of plumb is a source of annoyance. The ear develops some skill in the perception of direction, but is ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... quadrant (fig. 46), invented by Tartaglia about 1545, was an aiming device so basic that its principle is still in use today. The instrument looked like a carpenter's square, with a quarter-circle connecting the two arms. From the angle of the square dangled a plumb bob. The gunner laid the long arm of the quadrant in the bore of the gun, and the line of the bob against the graduated quarter-circle showed ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state,—do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... way into this woman's life, a life so strangely different from her own, yet linked with it by Baroudi. She hated this woman, yet with her hatred was mingled a subtle admiration, a desire to touch this painted toy that gave him pleasure, a longing to prove its attraction, to plumb the depth of its fascination, to learn from it a lesson in the strange lore of the East. She came close up to the woman ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... cannot be precisely formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency, for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... is too strong meat for babes. Now I'm Orthodox to the core" (here she lowered her voice as if there might be a stray deacon in the garden), "but 'pears to me if I was makin' out lessons for young ones I wouldn't fill 'em so plumb full o' brimstun. Let 'em do a little suthin' to deserve it 'fore you scare 'em to death, ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Uncle Zeke, down at the country store, "I'd been a farmer all my life—fur twenty year or more— Until one day my noddle here, it got plumb out o' fix, Er-swellin' with the idy that I's ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... the weapon landed plumb in the middle of the German's forehead. He had opened his mouth to shout, but no sound came forth. The rifle fell from his hands and he went ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... she also possessed a copy of the book. But—well, can you conceive any one copying out and posting one of these letters, or even taking it as the basis for composition? You cannot. That shows how little you know of your fellow-creatures. Not you nor I can plumb the abyss at the bottom of which such humility is possible. Nevertheless, as we know by that great and constant 'demand,' there the abyss is, and there multitudes are at the bottom of it. Let's peer down... No, all is darkness. But faintly, if we listen ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult at present to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things, that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb. Monsieur Rostand, in his description of the Battle of Wagram, does not shrink from bringing about the Duke's ears the frightful voices of actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when the Duke, terrified at these dreadful appeals, asks them for their final word, they ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... has led me along many devious routes," Zircon continued. "I have tried, with some success and many failures, to plumb the mysteries of Nature. But while I have tried to make the business of our natural universe my own, I have never thrust my not-inconsiderable nose into the business of neighbors. However, this admirable reticence has limits, since, as a ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... time no doubt he was running through the list in his head. Then, 'That's all right,' he announced cheerily. 'You'll set watches, Mr. Grimalson, and keep her in easy hail. The weather will certainly hold fine for a bit, and early to-morrow I'll be alongside again with instructions. Plumb south our course lies, for the present. I'll tell you why, later. You have ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his own language he ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... right, all right," murmured Cousin Egbert in a sort of ecstasy, as we drew up at the Floud home. "And yet one of them guys back there called him a typical Britisher. You bet I shut him up quick—saying a thing like that about a plumb stranger. I'd 'a' mixed it with him right there except I thought it was better to have things nice and not start something the minute the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... in Princeton. I knew the pedigree and fightin' weight of every white, black, or brindle pup in four States. Now, a whole lot of fellows come out of college who don't know that much; or if they do, they don't know how to apply their knowledge. Now dogs, that's plumb useful. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... and nailed together with large nails. Having laid the sills upon the foundation, the next thing in order is to put up the studding. Use 4 by 4 studs for corners and door posts, or spike two 2 by 4 studs together, stand them up, set them plumb, and with stay laths secure them in position. Set up the intermediate studs, which are 2 by 4 inches, and 16 inches between centres, toe or nail them diagonally to the sill. Then put in the floor joists ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... Churchill's till plumb after the war. My father died before the war was over. They paid my mother some money and said she would get the balance. That means there was more to come, doesn't it? But they didn't no more come. They all ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... interesting as a pound of baking powder. What with fishing for his Bradstreet rating, and inventing lies to keep him from going out and seeing the town, and watching the horizon for predatory Alfalfa Delts and Chi Yis, we were plumb worn out. We were so skittish that, when the bell rang about eight o'clock, we let it ring four times more before we answered it; and when the ringer claimed to be an Eta Bita Pie from Muggledorfer who had come over to attend Siwash, we made him repeat ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch |
