"Ply" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the effect that may be expected of his design. The expansive canvas has been sized over, and an outline of the picture to be painted—a landscape, or an interior, as the case may be—has been boldly marked out by the artist. Then the assistants and pupils ply their brushes, and wash in the broad masses of colour, floods of light, and clouds of darkness. The dimensions of the canvas permit of many hands being employed upon it, and the work proceeds therefore with great rapidity. But the scene-painter is constant ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of shame my song restrains.' A woman's fancies lightly roam, and weave Themselves into a fairy web. Should I Refrain? Ah! soon enough this pleasure, too, Will flee! Verily I cannot conceive Why I'm extolled. For woman 'tis to ply The spinning wheel—then to herself ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... high water the land is scarcely raised at all above the water level. Mango-trees, dwarf palms, and reeds fringe the muddy banks, on which, raised upon poles and built partly over the water, are the huts of the fishermen, who, half naked, ply their calling in quaintly-shaped, dug-out canoes. To the north of the principal creek which connects Rangoon with Bassein stretches a vast plain of fertile "paddy" land, where each year is grown that enormous crop of rice ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... chamber, despatched him. On likewise did they with the rest of the Wazirs and Olema and Notables, slaying them, one after other, till they made a clean finish.[FN165] Then the King called the headsmen and bade them ply sword upon all who remained of the folk of velour and stowre; so they fell on them and left none whom they knew for a man of mettle but they slew him, sparing only the proletaires and the refuse of the people. These they drove ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... small tugs moored alongside, and one or two bigger craft—fruit boats, I judged, which used to ply in the Aegean. They looked pretty well moth-eaten from disuse. We stopped at one of them and watched a fellow in a blue nightcap splicing ropes. He raised his eyes once and looked at us, and then kept ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... what a lively scene the Lake presents in the height of the season, when, from the scores of hotels, resorts, camps, private residences, fishermen's camps, etc.; fishing-boats, row-boats, launches, motor-boats, and yachts ply to and fro in every direction, unconsciously vying with each other to attract the eye of the onlooker. The pure blue of the Lake, with its emerald ring and varying shades of color, added to by the iridescent gleam that ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... struck the railroad, and for three days the work went on of loading the weary men into the cars that were to take them to Chalons. Twenty-four hours after the last train rolled out of the station the Prussians entered the town. "Ah, the cursed luck!" said Picot in conclusion; "how we had to ply our legs! And we who should by rights have been ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... way. It is out of the path of the tourist. No excursion steamers ply those awesome river reaches. Across the sacred whiteness of that cathedral's imposing mass, no sign has ever been painted telling you the merits of the best five-cent cigar in the world! Few besides the hawks and the crows would see it, if it ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... in his coffin, floated side by side. The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed. Everywhere, upon the top of trees, upon the steeples of churches, human beings were clustered, praying to God for mercy, and to their fellow-men for assistance. As the storm at last was subsiding, boats began to ply in every direction, saving those who were still struggling in the water, picking fugitives from roofs and tree-tops, and collecting the bodies of those already drowned. Colonel Robles, Seigneur de Billy, formerly much hated for his Spanish or Portuguese blood, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Kelly, however, made such an attempt. They composed one of the boats' crews, and their task was to ply between the schooner and the shore, carrying a single cask each trip. Just before dinner, starting for the beach with an empty barrel, they altered their course and bore away to the left to round the promontory which jutted into the sea between them and liberty. Beyond ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... steamboat lines to Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Sault Ste Marie, Green Bay and other lake ports; and is connected by ferry with Mackinac and Pointe aux Pins. During a great part of the year small boats ply between Cheboygan and the head of Crooked Lake, over the "Inland Route." Cheboygan is situated in a fertile farming region, for which it is a trade centre, and it has lumber mills, tanneries, paper mills, boiler works, and other manufacturing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... be in the proportion of the cube root of 1 to the cube root of 2, or it would be 1.25 times greater. If, therefore, the existing speed were 10 miles, it would be increased to 12-1/2 miles by doubling the power, and the vessel would ply with about a fourth less coals by increasing the power in the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... dry out of the ground, Were of one colour with the robe he wore. From underneath that vestment forth he drew Two keys, of metal twain: the one was gold, Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, And next the burnish'd, he so ply'd the gate, As to content me well. "Whenever one Faileth of these, that in the key-hole straight It turn not, to this alley then expect Access in vain." Such were the words he spake. "One is more precious[1]: but the other needs, Skill and sagacity, large share of each, Ere its ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... so as neither to be too high nor too low, too far forward nor too far aft, and that the surface of the water may nearly rise to the extreme breadth amidships, and thus the ship will be enabled to carry a good sail, incline but little, and ply well to windward. A want of true knowledge in this department has led to putting too great a weight in ships' bottoms, which impedes their sailing and endangers their masts by excessive rolling, the consequence ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to their oars in the race— the ten tawny braves of Tamdoka; And hard on their heels in the chase ply the six stalwart oars of the Frenchmen. In the stern of his boat sits DuLuth; in the stern of his boat sits Tamdoka, And warily, cheerily, both urge the oars of their men to the utmost. Far-stretching away to the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... B." is independent of all other water transport in the Congo. Its river tonnage aggregates more than 6,000, and in addition it has many oil barges on the various rivers where its vessels ply. The capacity of some of the barges is 250 tons of oil. They are usually lashed to the side of the steamer. The decks of these barges are often piled high with bags of kernels and become a favorite sleeping ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... is for homely features to keep home— They had their name thence: coarse complexions And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply The sampler and to tease the ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... is a good navigable river, there you have many occasions for excursions. Steamers of all sizes, painted in the national colours of Bohemia, white and red, ply up and down the Vltava. In fact, from Prague, now that all the locks are completed, you may travel down the Vltava to the Elbe and right away to New York by water if you will—change ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... had taken their prowess elsewhere, and a circus had come to Madison Square Garden. Clavering had heard the roar of lions in the night. A far different crowd would stand under the arcade in a few hours, but the peanut venders would ply their trade, and a little booth for candies and innocuous juices had been erected in an alcove in the front wall, presided over by a plump pretty blonde. She alternated "jollying" and selling with quiet intervals of beading a bag, undisturbed either by ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... as his bonzes kneel and worship him, many a home-god grows heartily sick of the reverence with which his family-devotees pursue him, and sighs for freedom and for his old life, and to be off the pedestal on which his dependants would have him sit for ever, whilst they adore him, and ply him with flowers, and hymns, and incense, and flattery;—so, after a few years of his marriage my honest Lord Castlewood began to tire; all the high-flown raptures and devotional ceremonies with which his wife, his chief priestess, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... schooners and the captured British brig, the Caledonia. In size and armament they were absurd cockleshells even when compared with a modern destroyer, but they were to make themselves superbly memorable. Perry's flagship was no larger than the ancient coasting schooners which ply today between Bangor and Boston with cargoes of ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... surface. Rubber marks can be removed by rubbing in a direction the reverse of the marks with a half-dry rubber and increased pressure. When the work has received a sufficient body, in finishing the drying of the last rubber, ply it briskly the way of the grain to produce a clean dry surface ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... begin, some priceless hidden faculty to be developed into a future source of bliss and consolation for our descendants? some nerve that now can only be made to thrill and vibrate in a dream, too delicate as yet to ply its function in the light ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... With a sufficient water supply, the lava makes one of the richest and most productive of soils. Along the Snake and Columbia rivers, wherever there is a bit of bottom land, orchards have been planted. Little steamers ply along these rivers between the rapids, gathering the fruit and delivering it ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... right involved in its results was somewhat damped, but they believed that the settlement of those issues was still so incomplete that public interest would surely rekindle. For many years the ruling thought of the Republican party leaders was to be watchful of any opportunity to ply the bellows on the embers. Besides genuine concern over the way in which the negroes had been divested of political privileges conferred by national legislation, the Republicans felt a tingling sense of ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... no one asks the "who" or "why"; Where no one doth the sinner ply With his embarrassments of guile; Where's ne'er a frown but brings a smile, And cares are crimes,—'tis sin to sigh, 'Tis wrong to let a jest go by, And hope is truth, and life is nigh, The bourns of the Enchanted Isle— In ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... weather, the swell ran pretty high, and out in the open there were "skipper's daughters," when I found myself at last on the diver's platform, twenty pounds of lead upon each foot and my {172} whole person swollen with ply and ply of woollen underclothing. One moment, the salt wind was whistling round my night-capped head; the next, I was crushed almost double under the weight of the helmet. As that intolerable burthen was laid upon me, I could have found it in my heart (only for shame's sake) to cry ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... hoping for inspiration at the last moment, and eating is a grand resource! Ply them well with muffins ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... into the kitchen as we came to breakfast and mutter the unwelcome tidings to one another that old Mehitable was out there waiting—tidings followed immediately by two gleeful shouts of, "It isn't my turn!"—and glum looks from the one of us whose unfortunate lot it was to ply the dasher. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... which had been given for the same weapon: When he had got about an hundred yards distance, and thought himself secure of his prize, a musket was fired after him, which fortunately struck the boat just at the water's edge, and made two holes in her side; this only incited them to ply their paddles with greater activity, and the rest of the canoes also made off with the utmost expedition. As the last proof of our superiority, therefore, we fired a round shot over them, and not a boat stopped till they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... have a chance To play an even game, And thrift and virtue swift advance To happiness and fame; No more will robbers ply their trade, Nor shout the tin-horn's spiel; The world will call a spade a spade When Teddy ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... stitch or tie was six inches apart, and was formed thus: Three holes were bored in the upper plank and three in the lower,—the holes being above each other, that is, in a vertical line. Through these holes the cord was passed, and, when tied, formed a powerful stitch of three ply. Besides this, we placed between the edges of the planks, layers of cocoa-nut fibre, which, as it swelled when wetted, would, we hoped, make our little vessel water-tight. But in order further to secure this end, we collected a large quantity of pitch from the bread-fruit tree, with which, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the banks of the Bidor we descended as far as the Perak which we crossed in order to do a part of the journey in train and then board one of the steamers that ply between Telok Ansom and the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... floating vehicle was generally connected; yet, suggestive fancy could readily supply their place with kindred ideas culled from our more prosaic surroundings. We had, it is true, no crimson-sashed, ragged, ballet-costumed gondolier to "ply the measured oar;" because, in the first instance, we did not row up at all. We were a trifle too wise in our generation to pull up the river in a lumbering barge under a broiling sun, and fancy we were amusing ourselves! No, we had a horse ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stomach keen." "Is that the case?" the squire replied; "That air shall be directly tried." He gave command—a house he hired, And down he goes with hope inspired, And takes his cooks—a favorite train; But still they ply their art in vain. Perhaps 'twas riding did the feat: He rides,—but still he cannot eat. At last a friend, to physic bred, Perceived his case, and thus he said: "Be ruled by me, you soon shall eat, With hearty ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... which vice's moody mists most blind, Blind Fortune, blindly, most their friend doth prove; And they who thee, poor idle Virtue! love, Ply like a feather ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... was a little room with tinted plaster walls shut off from the "back-parlour" by sliding doors. A ply carpet covered the floor, a cheap piano stood across one corner of the room, and a greenish sofa across another. The mantelpiece was of white marble with gray spots; on one side of it stood an Alaskan "grass basket" full of photographs, and on the other an inverted section of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... seest not. For he among the fools is down full low, Whose affirmation, or denial, is Without distinction, in each case alike Since it befalls, that in most instances Current opinion leads to false: and then Affection bends the judgment to her ply. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... consider the Devil and his Affairs in a quite differing Situation: When the World first appeared peopled by the creating Power of God, he had only Adam and Eve to take care of, and I think he ply'd his Time with them to purpose enough: After the Deluge he had Noah only to pitch upon, and he quickly conquer'd him by the Instigation ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... his wont, when "business," as he called it, was on hand, seemed scarcely sober; but to obtain the use of the vehicle he required without the company of its driver, he had found it necessary to ply the latter with liquor till he became insensible, although the drunken man's instincts of good-fellowship bade him insist that his generous entertainer should partake largely of the fluids consumed at his expense. To ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... The idlers began to ply the occupants of the cab with a hundred questions which must be answered in some shape unless suspicion was to be aroused—and suspicion, under such circumstances, would mean the holding back of the train, and the failure ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... warriors were swept from the barricade by the Red Sticks' arrows, spears, tomahawks and balls. Others took their places, to ply bayonets and guns—stabbing, shooting. The uproar in the rear grew greater, and many of the Red Sticks behind the breast-works were being shot in the back; the voices of the prophets had weakened; no cloud appeared in the sky, bearing to the whites death ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... the Rhone, on the other side, is still more serviceable; for it not only supplies the town with all the above necessaries of life, but conveys its various manufactures down to the ports of the Mediterranean sea expeditiously, and at little expence. The small boats, which ply upon the Soane as ours do upon the Thames, are flat bottomed, and very meanly built; they have, however, a tilt to shelter them from the heat, and to preserve the complexion, or hide the blushes of your female Patronne:—yes, my dear Sir, Female!—for they are all conducted by females; many ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... 'tis time, our heads in mantles hiding, 2 Our feet on some stol'n pathway now to ply, Or with swift oarage o'er the billows gliding, With ordered stroke to make the good ship fly Such threats the Atridae, armed with two fold power, Launch to assail us. Oh, I sadly fear Stones from fierce hands ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... anchor in that neighborhood—of a woodcutter's axe. Sturdy were the blows, and steady the succession in which they followed: some even fancied they could hear that sort of groaning respiration which is made by men who use an axe, or by those who in towns ply the "three-man beetle" of Falstaff, as paviers; echoes they certainly heard of every blow, from the profound woods and the sylvan precipices on the margin of the shores; which, however, should rather indicate that the sounds were ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... God knows I'm afraid some American boat will run on a mine somewhere in the Channel or the North Sea. There's war there as there is on land in Germany. Nobody tries to get goods through on land on the continent, and they make no complaints that commerce is stopped. Everybody tries to ply the Channel and the North Sea as usual, both of which have German and English mines and torpedo craft and submarines almost as thick as batteries along the hostile camps on land. The British Government (which now issues marine insurance) will not insure a British boat to carry food ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... from their point of view, is criticism which draws down a reply; it is far more effectual than bald praise, forgotten as soon as read, and it costs more in consequence. Celebrity, my dear fellow, is based upon controversy. I am a hired bravo; I ply my trade among ideas and reputations, commercial, literary, and dramatic; I make some fifty crowns a month; I can sell a novel for five hundred francs; and I am beginning to be looked upon as a man ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... base traitors ply With purses of gold, Wanting to buy What is not to be sold,— The king's life and throne Wanting to buy: But our souls are our own, And to hell we'll not hie. No pleasure in heaven, As we know full well, To the traitor is given,— ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... the 29th, having got under sail with a light breeze at west, we stood to the north for the two high islands; but the wind, scanting upon us, carried us in amongst the low isles and shoals; so that, we had to ply, to clear them. This gave time for a great many canoes to get up with us. The people in them brought for traffic various articles; some roots, fruits, and fowls, but of the latter not many. They took in exchange small nails, and pieces of any kind of cloth. I believe, before they went away, they ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... called them clients), and aunt's walking-boots. One corner was Lucy's, which she occupied in conjunction with a little table, at which, from seven in the morning until bedtime, she worked with pen or needle (it was provoking she could not learn to ply both at one time), when she was not running about the house, or nursing a boarder's baby. On the rare evenings when her aunt could not find work of any description for her, Lucy was requested to take the Bible from the shelf, and read a chapter ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we hear of a "school" of jongleurs at Beauvais. In Lent they might not ply their profession, so they gathered at Beauvais, where they could learn cantilenae, new lays. [Footnote: Epopees Francaises, Leon Gautier, vol. ii. pp. 174, 175.] But by that time the epic ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... unpicturesque, especially if they have statues to help them out. The Spree abounds in bridges, and it has a charming habit of slow hay-laden barges; at the landings of the little passenger-steamers which ply upon it there are cafes and summer-gardens, and these even in the inclement air of September suggested ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the romance of the gondola days will be sadly invaded by the number of little "Citizen" steamers, which ply from pier to pier; but, as they will necessarily be confined to the traffic of the Grand Canal, the smaller canals will still be sacred ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... of mankind Hath said, that easier thro' the needle's eye Shall the huge camel [1] pass, than the rich man Enter the gates of heaven. "Ye cannot serve Your God, and worship Mammon." "Missioned Maid!" So spake the Angel, "know that these, whose hands Round each white furnace ply the unceasing toil, Were Mammon's slaves on earth. They did not spare To wring from Poverty the hard-earn'd mite, They robb'd the orphan's pittance, they could see Want's asking eye unmoved; and therefore these, Ranged round the furnace, ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... had one by one ceased to ply their useless oars, and the captain did not take notice of it, for he felt that unless God sent relief in some almost miraculous way, their continuing to row would be of no avail. It would only increase their agony without advancing ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... fog, and the elopers on board the Tempest Queen, one of the fastest and most palatial of the liners which ply between England and the Far East, and for ten years under the command of Captain Shadburn, formerly of the British Navy. For the elopement was now an established fact, and Hugh, looking back on their Atlantic voyage, hoped that in this new ship fortune would ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... of water spurt high into the air. Twenty feet it rose, and then descended full and fair upon his head. A mingled shout of defiance and joy told Hal that his aim had been good, and he continued to ply the hose. At the same moment eight cannon-balls, five at least of which hit him, were thrown at the harassed defender, whose helmet was now full ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... skies, Despotick by her killing eyes, Millions of slaves who don't complain, Confess her universal reign: And Cupid too well-us'd to try 265 His bow-string lash, and darts to ply, Her little Driver still we find, A wicked rogue, ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... one thing that the Republic of Venice will never alter: I mean the galleys, because the Venetians truly require such vessels to ply, in all weathers and in spite of the frequent calms, in a narrow sea, and because they would not know what to do with the men ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... from Luanda and Karagwe. This is hopeful, but I suspend my judgment. War rages between Mukamba and Wasmashanga or Uasmasane, a chief between this and Lusize: ten men were killed of Mukamba's people a few days ago. Vast numbers of fishermen ply their calling night and day as far as we can see. Tanganyika closes in except at one point N. and by W. of us. The highest point of the western range, about 7000 feet above the sea, is Sumburuza. We are to go to-morrow to Luhinga, elder brother of Mukamba, near Lusize, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... audience press and stare, Let stifled maidens ply the fan, Admire his doctrines, and his hair, And whisper, "What a good young man!" While he explains what seems most clear, So clearly that it seems perplexed, I'll stay and read my sermon here; And skulls, and bones, shall be ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Anderson of Birkenbog was known to me by sight—a huge, jovial, two-ply man, chin and waistcoat alike testifying to good cheer. He wore a large horse-shoe pin in his unstiffened stock. A watch that needed an inch-thick chain to haul up its sturdy Nuremburg-egg build, strained the fob on his right side, as if he carried a mince-pie concealed there. His laugh dominated ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... set out from Tadoussac, the Montagnais arrived at Quebec, to the number of sixty able-bodied men, en route for the war. They tarried here some days, enjoying themselves, and not omitting to ply me frequently with questions, to assure themselves that I would not fail in my promises to them. I assured them, and again made promises to them, asking them if they had found me breaking my word in the past. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... forgot, by the world. These things we discussed together four or five and thirty years ago. We were then, and at bottom ever since, of the same opinion on the justice and policy of the whole and of every part of the penal system. You and I, and everybody, must now and then ply and bend to the occasion, and take what can be got. But very sure I am, that, whilst there remains in the law any principle whatever which can furnish to certain politicians an excuse for raising an opinion of their own importance, as necessary to keep their fellow-subjects in order, the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... her. I see that the place is dangerous and quickly signal to the other boats to land where they can. This is scarcely completed when another wave rolls our boat over and I am thrown some distance into the water. I soon find that swimming is very easy and I cannot sink. It is only necessary to ply strokes sufficient to keep my head out of the water, though now and then, when a breaker rolls over me, I close my mouth and am carried through it. The boat is drifting ahead of me 20 or 30 feet, and ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... her that the wool was never so free from knots before. After she had said her prayers in the morning, and read a chapter with her mother, the little girl ate her frugal breakfast, and seated herself at her work, and so nimbly did she ply the cards, that her task was accomplished full half an hour before the usual time. She was just beginning her own pile when Charlotte came in; they sat down together, and worked away diligently. Charlotte said that her ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... here, and even more. They are in an excellent position for trade, for they are at a very few days' journey from all the islands of Maluco, Xlatheo [Matheo?], Borney, and Xaba, and they lie on the route of the galleons which ply between Yndia, Malaca, and Maluco, and which anchor at La Canela. The only thing to be feared is that the men from these galleons will enter the island, doing damage, and making a bad name for us. It would take a miracle to lose it. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... understand why he felt any anxiety to see Mrs. Errington refuse a beggar alms. Yet he would gladly have followed, like a spy, to behold a commonplace and dingy event. Despite the apparent reluctance of the beggar to ply his trade, Hindford felt convinced that presently the man would approach Mrs. Errington and be promptly sent about his business. Her negative would, no doubt, be eager enough even upon this exquisite and charitable morning. Wishing devoutly that, being a gentleman, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the Formosa channel, where the monsoons raise a mountainous sea, thousands of fishing-boats, far out of sight of land, ply their business in weather which would cause the masters of English ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... summit of the pass is an immense portal, or kind of triumphal arch, erected on the boundary line of the two Provinces of Quang-tong and Kiang-si. The teas, securely packed in chests wrapped in matting, are placed in the boats which ply upon the rivers flowing from the tea countries into the Poyang Lake, and after successive changes are at length brought to the foot of the Ineiling Mountain, carried over it on the backs of men, and reshipped on the south side of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of the crew of the "Dolphin" was, however, still ringing in the ears of Wilder. He made an impatient gesture to his attendants to ply their oars, cautiously steering the boat on such a course as should soonest lead her from beneath the guns of the freebooters. While passing under the stern of the "Dolphin," a hoarse hail was sent across the waters, and the voice of the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Denver's lowest slums and finally arrived at the headquarters of this gang of professional tramp beggars, who always prefer cities in which to ply their trade, and only strike out to visit smaller places and the country at large—and then only in separate pairs—when too many of them drifted into the same city, so as to make combing the public for money an unprofitable business, or when the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... the journey in the cheapest manner possible. He therefore went down the Vistula in a barge, one of the picturesque flat-bottomed craft that still ply on Poland's greatest river—the river which flows through two of her capitals and was, it is well said, partitioned with the land it waters from the Carpathians to the Baltic, On his way down the river he would, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... have furnished literal transcripts of what I heard in my conversations with my heroes and heroines, but my purpose throughout has been to hold a mirror up to Nature, to give a faithful interpretation of thought and character, and to show my readers some of the ply of mind and habits of life that still prevail among Yorkshiremen whose individuality has not been blunted by convention and who have the courage to express their reasoned or instinctive views of ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... head; my blood is worth as much as theirs, and it is time at last that I make it al pari with theirs. I will no longer serve as a target for all murderers, and then afterward only find the dagger, instead of seizing the hands that ply it. Let me once have hold of the hands, and all the daggers will ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... been dreaming of your marrying a prince or an ambassador, and Henderson comes like a jolt. Besides, Chuck will never be anything but a first-rate politician. You'll have to get used to cheap cigars and four-ply whisky. When is it going ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... he find to say to raillery which was quite new to him, and so for the sake of both of them as they stood at the gate Miss Nan had to ply an odd one-sided conversation till he found himself at his ease. By-and-by ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... quit their mooring, And all hands must ply the oar; Baggage from the quay is lowering, We're impatient, push from shore. "Have a care! that case holds liquor— Stop the boat—I'm sick—oh Lord!" "Sick, Ma'am, damme, you'll be sicker, Ere you've been ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... to ply their trade in several tents, the outside of which showed a collection of ludicrous portraits and prints of various kinds. The purpose of this stratagem was, of ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... those magnificent steamers that ply regularly between Panama and California. She had rather more than her full cargo of freight and passengers; but, among the hundreds of the latter, we have to do with ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... the oars, and putting only one man to an oar, continued down to the 16th century, during the first half of which came in the more modern system of using great oars, equally spaced, and requiring from four to seven men each to ply them, in the manner which endured till late in the last century, when galleys became altogether obsolete. Captain Pantero Pantera, the author of a work on Naval Tactics (1616), says he had heard, from veterans who had commanded galleys equipped in the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of the seed do remain, They’re vile as the thistles and briars of the plain; They ply for their neighbours the pick and the hoe: Thy murder, Brown William, fills Mona ...
— Brown William - The Power of the Harp and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... of your Polish nobles, Whose presence their country somehow troubles, And so our cities receive them; Nor one of your make-believe Spanish grandees, Who ply our daughters with lies and candies, Until the poor girls believe them. No, he was no such charlatan, Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-pan. Full of Gasconade and bravado, But a regular, rich Don Rataplan, Santa Claus de la Muscavado, Senor Grandissimo Bastinado. His was the rental ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... until Congress shall regulate their title. The quartermaster may, on the requisition of the Inspector of Settlements and Plantations, place at the disposal of the inspector one or more of the captured steamers to ply between the settlements and one or more of the commercial points heretofore named, in order to afford the settlers the opportunity to supply their necessary wants, and to sell the products of their land ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... know who arch a dome, And tunnel a hill. They chisel in marble and fashion in chrome, And measure the sky. They find the good and destroy the ill, And they bend and ply The laws of nature out of a will ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... great part of its length, on either side, by cactus-hedges, broken at various intervals by the grassy by-lanes that run out to the neighboring haciendas or parallel roads. At places where there is a slight elevation, the bottom of the road is worn several feet below the level by the carts which ply between Rivas and the lake. Opposite one of these, where the banks sloped at a sharp angle, we came upon General Henningsen and a detachment of musketeers resting on the right bank of the road, and halted beside ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... did the two old men sit and listen with breathless interest to the strange history of him who had come back to them as one risen from the grave. Every now and then they rose to embrace him, and then resumed their seats, only to devour him with their eyes and ply him with questions. ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... outward. It was the physical expression of an intense mental effort to gain control of herself. Her heart was leaping wildly in her breast—for the future that had held only horror and a living tomb, now opened out sweetly before her. She had only to ply her native wiles for a few precious moments ... and someone would have her in his arms, to hold her safe from harm! If the will of the awful Chinaman threatened to swamp her individuality, ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... From the day of Prometheus, men spent their lives in ceaseless enterprise, forced to take heed for food and raiment, since they knew how, and to ply their tasks of art and handicraft, They had taken unresting toil upon them, but they had a wondrous servant at their beck and call,—the bright-eyed fire that is the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... learn to wield the blade before the wrist grows stiff and old; Hardly we learn to ply the pen ere Thought and ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... are not so wide, because they are made of a single log of timber, but a galley could not keep up with them in rowing, for their motion is a thing beyond belief. And with these, they navigate through all those islands, which are numberless, and ply their traffic. I have seen some of those canoas with seventy and eighty men in them, each one with his oar. In all those islands, I saw not much diversity in the looks of the people, nor in their manners and language; ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply her ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... were made in Genoa. The process consisted in leaving the main ground in the original fine rib which resulted from weaving, while in the pattern these little ribs were split open, making that part of a different ply from the rest of the material, in fact, being the finished velvet as we now know it, while the ground remained uncut, and had more the appearance of silk reps. Velvet is first mentioned in England in 1295, but probably existed earlier on ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the shafts as snow. Though charging knights like whirlwinds go, Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow, Still ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and some gallant rescues, the most conspicuous of which was that of the battalion of marines, embarked on board the Governor; a steamer, as I recollect, not strictly of the river order, but like those which ply outside on the Boston and Maine coast. She went down, but not before her living freight had been removed by the sailing-frigate Sabine. The first lieutenant of the latter, now the senior rear-admiral on the retired list of the navy, soon afterwards relieved Drayton in command of the Pocahontas; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... must know that I am in my nightgown every morning between six and seven, and Patrick is forced to ply me fifty times before I can get on my nightgown; and so now I will take my leave of my own dear MD for this letter, and begin my next when I come home at night. God Almighty bless and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... forth on her last voyage, the Lady Nelson continued to ply between the settlements, carrying stores to them from the capital, and bringing the settlers' grain and other produce to Sydney for sale, and as the expansion of the colony proceeded, her sphere of usefulness ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... mountain itself; beyond that the great forest, with its eagles and big game; and the everlasting snow peaks overtopping all, as they lose themselves in the fairest of summer skies. Small boats ply to and fro between Douglas Island and Juneau, a mile or more up the inlet on the opposite shore. These ferries are paddled leisurely, and only the explosive element at Douglas Island gives token of the activity that prevails ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... a delicate piece of crochet lace, which she called her "spare time work," began to ply the glittering needle in and out fine intricacies of thread, her shapely hands gleaming like alabaster in the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Brooks, and he will be sure to force him to come. Say nothing of the boy; let him stay or come, as they think proper. To ask all might make them suspicious. They'll both come. They never yet resisted a spiritual temptation. When here, ply them well, and then we shall go on according to circumstances. Brooks carries the keys along with him: get him once in for it, and I'll take them from him. If he resists, or any ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to ply knife and fork again, and I went on with my story, continuing it until the parting with Salter Quick. When I came to that, the footman who stood behind Mr. Cazalette's chair was just removing his last plate, and the old man ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... latter part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed several hours daily in the Gallery, and made various notes on its ancient works of art. His thoughts were a good deal taken up also by the project of a steamboat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, to ply between Leghorn and Marseilles, for which he supplied a sum of money. This was a sort of plan to delight Shelley, and he was greatly disappointed when it ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... even, and vigorous stroke the young heroes from Hellas ply their oars, and the blue waters of the Euxine are flecked with foam. Here is an ideal picture. A band of enterprising young men, alert, active, ambitions—a scene typical of the highest conception of life. ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... hours drew towards midnight, the schooner at length opened communication with the land by means of signal lanterns, and immediately after boats commenced to ply between the clipper and the shore, and continued to do so for several hours. It was plain enough to any one who knew the usages and trade of these waters, that the schooner was preparing to run a cargo of Circassian ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... and by a number of native sailing craft. A stretch of seven miles of railway avoids the First Cataract, and joins Assuan and Shellal. Above Shellal a second flotilla of gunboats, steamers, barges, and Nile boats was collected to ply between Shellal and Halfa. The military railway ran from Halfa to Sarras. South of Sarras supplies were forwarded by camels. To meet the increased demands of transport, 4,500 camels were purchased in Egypt and forwarded in boats to Assuan, whence they marched ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... incidentally—" He hesitated. "I ply a trade. Will you hand me that pipe and those smoking things? So! You can't make coffee, eh? Well, try your hand. Cast down this screen—no—fold it up and so we'll go into the other room. I'll keep in bed all the same. The fire's a gas stove. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... slender collar of gold about his neck, on which those that were near enough to him and had quick sight might read in plain terms that he was a royal fool, one of those jesters whom the great loved to tend to their beck, that they might ply them with mirth in hours that were mirthless. When the fantastical fellow had reached the summit he flung himself at once onto the nearest seat that one of the fallen columns afforded, and sat for a space gasping and puffing and spitting out blasphemies between every ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... an all too enterprising individual chartered one of the fast little Seine boats, always so beplastered with "Dubonnet" advertisements, which ply along the river between the Quai du Louvre and St. Cloud. He announced that since it was now no longer possible to reach London via the train to Havre, he would transport Americans on his little boat to England, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... allowed to ply their vocation with impunity, they often had spirited encounters with the British ships in which there ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... in the afternoon, the wind, which had been at N.E., shifted at once to the southward. It was unsettled till six, when it fixed at S., which was the very direction of our course, so that we were obliged to ply up the coast. The weather was gloomy, and the air dry, but cold. We stood to the eastward till midnight, then tacked, and stood in for the land; and, between seven and eight in the morning of the 8th, we were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of "CARPET" cloth made exclusively from two-ply or two-fold coloured warp yarns, and thick black single weft yarns. The threads and picks are interwoven in two up, two down twill, directed to right and then to left, and thus forming a herring-bone ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... prostitutes ply their trade simply from poverty and want, being ashamed of it but profiting by it to maintain their family. But poverty acts chiefly ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... job. The strap fell across the man's upheld hands and over his shoulders, penetrating even the thick coat he wore—but it was not the blows that quelled him, it was the look in Bacon's eyes. He saw that the old man would stand there till sunset and ply that strap. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... worthy—forbade an attempt to replenish his pocketbook by revisiting the little rez-de-chaussee in the rue Roget and realizing on its treasures, he had determined to have a taximeter fitted to his car and ply for hire until time or chance should settle the question ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the habit grew of receiving not only linen warp but cotton weft from the merchant or middleman. Thus the ownership of the raw material entirely passed out of the weaver's hands, though he continued to ply his domestic craft as formerly.[47] This had grown into the normal condition of the trade by 1750. The stocking-trade illustrates one further encroachment of the capitalist system upon domestic industry. In this trade not only was ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... off from Shore, we soon fell in with a Fleet of Gardeners bound for the several Market-Ports of London; and it was the most pleasing Scene imaginable to see the Chearfulness with which those industrious People ply'd their Way to a certain Sale of their Goods. The Banks on each Side are as well peopled, and beautified with as agreeable Plantations, as any Spot on the Earth; but the Thames it self, loaded with the Product of each Shore, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... forbidden to read New Testament; might be hanged in early England when men could plead benefit of clergy; suffrage movement, origin of; progress; laws limiting labor of; may not stand; not sell liquor; nor ply street trades; constitutional right to labor; sale of liquor to forbidden; industrial employment of; legislation to protect in industrial matters; their health may be protected by statute; may not work ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... coming by a great sea that tumbles in on the shore for some time before they come, and by a black sky in the north-west. Upon these signs ships either get up their anchors, or slip their cables and put to sea, and ply off and on till the weather is over. Sometimes they are forced to do so 2 or 3 times before they can take in their lading; which it is hard to do here in the fairest weather: and for fresh water they send, as I have said, to Santa Cruz. Verdona is green, strong-bodied ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... they were in the warm sunny days of summer. The most severe winter cannot freeze a deep lake solid, and in the coldest weather a hole made in the ice will show water beneath the surface. Our ice boats cut and break the ice of the river, and through the water beneath our boats daily ply their way to and fro, independent of winter and ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... complexions And cheeks of every grain will serve to ply The sampler, and to teaze the housewife's wool; What need a vermeil, tinctured lip for that, Love-darting eyes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... and begged of Ella, as she loved her friend, to come and remain with her while yet life's taper burned. It was a fearful summons thus to break the suspending spell. That evening saw Ella sitting in the cabin of one of those large steamers which ply the western waters, anxiously wending her way to a retired yet pleasant village near the Ohio, for Mary's sadly declining health could no more mingle in the excitement of the city, and she had retreated to ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... necessity and charity, and dressing and selling meat in families, inns, cook-shops, &c. selling milk before nine in the morning, and after four in the afternoon, selling mackerell before or after divine service, and excepting also forty watermen, who may ply between ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... whole proceedings since the first moment of the common danger, flashed upon the memories of these rude men, and wrought an instant change. The soldiers calmed and encouraged, no longer objected to the departure of the officers and sailors for the other rock, and the boat at once began to ply between. As it would not carry but two persons at once, it took some time before the specified persons had passed over. At the last voyage there was but one to go. This officer as he took his place on the seat beside the rowers, called ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... hardly pass along Fourteenth street or Union Square, at night, without his being accosted by one of these girls, who, instead of asking him to purchase flowers, would invariably remark, "Give me a penny, mister?" by which term, afterwards, all these girls of loose character were known to ply their trade. Many of these girls were so exceedingly handsome as to be taken by gentlemen of means and well cared for, and one instance is known where a flower girl married a very ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe |
