"Whetstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... camp before daylight and commenced ascending the Coteau des Prairies, the highest table-land in this section of the United States, and full of lakes. A chain of twenty or more lakes could be seen from the highest point, which form the headwaters of the Lac qui Parle, Yellow Medicine, and Whetstone Rivers, on one side, and furnish many tributary streams to the Big Sioux on the west side,—many miles of land and bluffs, prairies, and lakes seeming as not ten miles distant. At various points we passed through fields of buffalo bones. Arrived ...
— History of Company E of the Sixth Minnesota Regiment of Volunteer Infantry • Alfred J. Hill
... up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... you or any one else in the duty of governing this empire; I am too young and inexperienced. They put gold to the test when they wish to learn if it is fine. And so it is my wish, in brief, to try to prove myself, wherever I can find the test. In Britain, if I am brave, I can apply myself to the whetstone and to the real true test, whereby my prowess shall be proved. In Britain are the gentlemen whom honour and prowess distinguish. And he who wishes to win honour should associate himself with them, for honour is won and gained by him who ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... teacher," said Captain Cy, pushing forward a rocker. "My! but I'm glad to see you. 'Twas bluer'n a whetstone 'round ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and, as they say, mocking at his art, said, "Come, thou diviner, tell me, whether what I have in my mind can be done or not?" When Attus, having tried the matter by divination, affirmed that it certainly could, "Well, then," said he, "I was thinking that you should cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, then, and perform what thy birds portend can be done." Thereupon they say that he immediately cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, was erected in the comitium, close to the steps on the left of the senate-house, on the spot ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... hands, and broke into the house of his debtor, who had gone to the tavern and had left his door fastened with the lock hanging down outside, and his children playing within. Ailward carried off as security for his debt the lock, a gimlet, and some tools, and a whetstone which hung from the roof. As he sauntered home, however, his furious neighbour overtook him, having heard from the children what had been done. He snatched the whetstone from Ailward's hand and dealt him a blow on the head with it, stabbed ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... to observe that all the poetry of the midsummer harvesting has not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. The line of mowers was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and the sound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing- machine and the patent reaper ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's Show. Money-droppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to St. James', his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... implement he had fashioned for himself with infinite pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise. Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a sharp octagonal-pointed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Cinthio's Hecatommithi which formed the basis of Othello existed in a French translation; and his form of the plot of Measure for Measure came to Shakespeare through the English dramatic version of George Whetstone. The version of the bond story in The Merchant of Venice closest to the play is in Il Pecorone of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, but the tale is widespread. Incidents in The Merry Wives have sources or parallels in the same work, in Straparola's ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... lapse away beneath Their cool Athenian shade: And I a string for myrtle-wreath, A whetstone ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... him: a little, great man, a man of cunning plots and contrivances, very bold and determined and crafty beyond words. He is moreover a notable good seaman and commander, quick of hand and eye. Dangers and difficulty are but a whetstone to set a keener edge to his abilities. He was once a chief of buccaneers and is now a baronet of England and justice of the peace, aye, and I think a member ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Nivernais, nor the coming ambassador, de Guerchy, a man far from wealthy, had the faintest desire to pay the bills. Angry and tactless letters, therefore, passed between d'Eon in London and de Guerchy, de Nivernais, and de Praslin in Paris. De Guerchy was dull and clumsy; d'Eon used him as the whetstone of his wit, with a reckless abandonment which proves that he was, as they say, 'rather above himself,' like Napoleon before the march to Moscow. London, in short, was the Moscow of little d'Eon. When de Guerchy arrived, and d'Eon was reduced to secretariser, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Round his waist he wore a belt, in which was stuck a large knife in a sheath of buffalo-hide, made fast to the belt by a chain or guard of steel. It also supported a little buckskin case, which contained a whetstone, a very necessary article; for in taking off the hides of the beaver a sharp knife was required. His pipe-holder hung around his neck, and was generally a gage d'amour, a triumph of squaw workmanship, wrought with beads and porcupine ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... its predecessors. Its thumbnail sketches, if somewhat more subdued and less elaborate, are not less full of character. John Jones, the Dissenting weaver, who served Borrow at once as a guide and a whetstone of Welsh in the neighbourhood of Llangollen; the "kenfigenous" Welshwoman who first, but by no means last, exhibited the curious local jealousy of a Welsh-speaking Englishman; the doctor and the Italian barometer-seller ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... had wept at the introduction of the word. The rump was the filthy nickname of an odious faction—the history of this famous appellation, which was at first one of horror, till it afterwards became one of derision and contempt, must be referred to another place. The rump became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in "burning rumps" of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... should be steady and not rocking. This whetting turns a light wire edge over on the flat side. In order to remove this wire edge, the back of the chisel, that is, the straight, unbeveled side, is held perfectly flat on the whetstone and rubbed, then it is turned over and the bevel rubbed again on the stone. It is necessary to reverse the chisel in this way a number of times, in order to remove the wire edge, but the chisel should never be tipped so as to put any bevel at all on ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there's no stirring on the road. I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward, so they are come back ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... mail; and after a nap, talked very unrestrainedly with me on the present state of France, on Buonaparte, the criminal law, and the wisdom of the Justices at sessions. I was determined—like Horace's whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put an edge on him—to say something deep and decisive on some of the subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk. Perhaps (like the character with the Greek ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... spoken dialogue was also resorted to. In such cases the "extemporal wit," or gagging of the comic actors, was indispensably necessary. The "comedians of Ravenna," who were not "tied to any written device," but who, nevertheless, had "certain grounds or principles of their own," are mentioned in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582, and references to such performers are also to be found in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and Ben Jonson's "Case is Altered." In "Antony and Cleopatra" ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... eulogy of Chief Justice Dyer, who died March 24, 1582, Whetstone gives proof that in Elizabethan England purity was the exception rather ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... scientific man will sometimes select for his life companion a woman of only ordinary intelligence, who will, nevertheless, adorn her husband's home by her simple domestic virtues. A wife does not need to be a moral whetstone to sharpen her husband's wits by the fireside, neither would it enhance his happiness to find her filling reams of foolscap paper with choice specimens of prose and poetry; intelligent sympathy with his work is all he demands, and a loving, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How now, wit? whither ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... an Indian walked into my house and asked me for a whetstone. I gave it, not daring to refuse him. He sat down and sharpened his knife, feeling its edge and pointing often and looking significantly ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... directions were basilicae, or halls of justice; porticoes filled with busy lawyers; bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Naevius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and many another, handed ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and began to swing his scythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quiet folk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemed intent upon his own thoughts, and, like the Gladiator's, they were far away. He was ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... shouldn't wonder if he wasn't a trull's bully from Lewknor's Lane or Whetstone Park. The rascals pass themselves off as sparks of fashion at ridottos, masquerades and what not and live by robbery and blood money. I warrant I'll soon run your fine gentleman to earth. He talks about telling his father. Pooh! That was but to bait the trap and you walked ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... compare Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a visit, and, pretending ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... not tell a tale of varied life, That gave Time's annals their recording name? No notes of Cade, marching with mischief rife, By Britain's misery to raise his fame? Wert thou the hone that "City's Lord" essay'd[5] To make the whetstone of his rebel blade? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... oil-stone, was discovered at the Breen cabin. On this stone were the initials "J. F. R.," which had evidently been cut into its surface with a knife-blade. Mrs. V. E. Murphy and Mrs. Frank Lewis, the daughters of James F. Reed, at once remembered this whetstone as having belonged to their father, and fully ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... hunting-point (Fig. N.) is put on by slitting the arrow and inserting the flat handle of the arrow point, and wrapping it with silk, sinews, or copper wire. These points can be sharpened along the line A B on a whetstone, and will cut like knives. The hunting arrow ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... that the very contradiction and opposition we meet with from our fellow-men, ought to rouse our spirit to love them more, for they serve as a whetstone to sharpen our virtue. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... distress the faithful Raoul. They quarrelled for the future part of their lives in plenty, just as they had formerly quarrelled in poverty; for wrangling curs will fight over a banquet as fiercely as over a bare bone. Raoul died first, and Gillian having lost her whetstone, found that as her youthful looks decayed her wit turned somewhat blunt. She therefore prudently commenced devotee, and spent hours in long panegyrics ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... discovered in the circular huts, called Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, which are the earliest remains of human abodes in Wales, are by the people called Fairy Whetstones, but, undoubtedly, this name was given them from their resemblance to the large circular whetstone at present in common use, the finders being ignorant of the original use of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... not Fortunes work neither, but Natures, who perceiueth our naturall wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this Naturall for our whetstone: for alwaies the dulnesse of the foole, is the whetstone of the wits. How now Witte, whether wander you? Clow. Mistresse, you must come away to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... ought to begin with [Greek Sigma omitted]. 84. If Jovis or Jupitris. 85. The celebrated Roman grammarian. A proverbial phrase for the violation of grammar was "Breaking Priscian's head." 86. Livy says, Actius Nevius cut a whetstone through with a razor. 87. A kind of lizard that was supposed to kill all ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the gods. And beyond, and again beyond, lay the naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana—white with poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect, to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. You ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... down, and while they were preparing a dinner for him, he took out a big knife and sharpened it on a whetstone, repeating his threat of searching the house and killing ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... Mrs. Ramsey doesn't get out to her concerts any more, on account of her leg, and that makes her bluer'n a whetstone, but otherwise I guess we're all pretty much of a muchness. Everybody misses—land t' goodness," she caught herself up, "I guess there is one piece of news! I guess there is one ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... said, Mr. Jones. And I will warn you, in time, of one man in particular. His name is John Mason. Keep clear of him, if you wish to keep out of trouble. He's as smooth and oily as a whetstone; and, like a whetstone, abrades every thing he touches. He's a bad ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... diameter. Heat the tube in an alcohol or Bunsen flame and then, by drawing the two portions apart and twisting at the same time, the tube may be drawn to a sharp point. An opening of any desired size is made in the point by rubbing it on a whetstone. Owing to the fact that the style of universal joint described has so little friction, the stylus point ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... among the Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the brains in the morning of those they had feasted over-night. Yet, as there never was Schoolboy, I suppose, but delighted in Soiling of his raiment, and making himself as Black as any sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I begin to feel something like a Pleasure in being masqueraded up to this Disguise, and began to wish for a Pistol such as Captain Night had in his Hand, and such a Diamond Ring as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... wire nails. Three lbs. oakum. Two large files. Two hammers. One jack blade. One large whip saw. One hand saw. One hundred and fifty feet 5/8" rope. A draw knife. Two chisels. One jack knife. One whetstone. Two buckets. Two miner's gold-pans. One frying-pan. One kettle. One Yukon stove. One enamelled iron pot. Two plates. One cup. One teapot. Three knives. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... like may neuer light vpon this land, but may be auerted and turned away from all christian kingdomes, through his mercie, whose wrath by sinne being set on fire, is like a consuming flame; and the swoord of whose vengeance being sharpened with the whetstone of mens wickednesse, shall hew them in peeces as wood for ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true representative of the ancient Mime, but afterwards degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella; the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... changes, and transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time. That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy itself as much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as a whetstone, nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't feel like girding at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I recognize and realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned to accept this truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the power of throwing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one sharpened ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... during the discussion. He seated himself, and recommenced his favorite task of stropping his knife upon a whetstone. At the Cockney's last words ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... bad—just what I expected, and I like to deal with clever people. Did you put yourself on the whetstone before you came here? I'll go ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... who knows the secret of making a willow whistle! He must know the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by a crowd of spectators, some ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... sometimes disappears in compounds, e.g. Cunliffe, earlier Cunde-clive, and Topliff; but Ayliffe is for AElfgifu or AEthelgifu and Goodliffe from Godleof (cf. Ger. Gottlieb). The older form of Stone appears in Staines, Stanhope, Stanton, etc. Wheatstone is either for "white stone" or for the local Whetstone (Middlesex). In Balderstone, Johnston, Edmondstone, Livingstone, the suffix is -ton, though the frequence of Johnston points to corruption from Johnson, just as in Nottingham we have the converse case of Beeson from the local Beeston. In Hailstone the first element may be Mid. Eng, half, holy. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... busied myself writing, and as I had no stationery I wrote on the walls. Beginning as high as I could reach, I wrote in columns, each about three feet wide. Soon the pencil became dull. But dull pencils are easily sharpened on the whetstone of wit. Stifling acquired traits, I permitted myself to revert momentarily to a primitive expedient. I gnawed the wood quite from the pencil, leaving only the graphite core. With a bit of graphite a hand guided by the unerring insolence ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... also useful as a whetstone upon which you sharpen your wits. William Morris had nothing on me when I added Jarvis ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... oration, "it is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic for ever, like the old Man of the Sea, upon his back!"[141]—FADLADEEN, it was plain took this last luckless allusion to himself and would treasure it up in his mind as a whetstone for his next criticism. A sudden silence ensued; and the Princess, glancing a look at FERAMORZ, saw plainly she must wait for ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und so weiter. Warble your death-song, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me and my child, here is goody Harrison. And the child lying on the outside I took it and laid it between me and my husband. The child continued strangely ill about three weeks, wanting a day, and then died, had fits. We felt a thing run along the sides or side like a whetstone. Robert Francis saith he remembers his wife said that night the child was taken ill, the Lord bless me and my ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... found meat and mead and ate and drank. Then Eric washed himself, combed out his golden locks, and looked well to his harness and to Whitefire's edge. Skallagrim also ground his great axe upon the whetstone in the yard, singing as he ground. When all was ready, the horses were caught, and Eric spoke ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... a whetstone, straight as an arrow," meaning the cliff. Perhaps because of their pictorial descent, the characters did not shock one. Unlike the usual branding of nature, they seemed not out of keeping with the spot. Not far beyond, the butts ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... The teeth of these people also, whatever they may suffer in their colour by chewing betel, are an object of great attention: The ends of them, both in the upper and under jaw, are rubbed with a kind of whetstone, by a very troublesome and painful operation, till they are perfectly even and flat, so that they cannot lose less than half a line in their length. A deep groove is then made across the teeth of the upper jaw, parallel with the gums, and in the middle between ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... not as apparent to others as it should, by all that was consistent, have been. Lute, evidently, observed no traces of transcendent happiness, when I encountered him in the back yard, beside the woodpile, sharpening the kindling hatchet with a whetstone, a process peculiarly satisfying to his temperament because it took such a long time ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... me, can that which I think in my heart be done, or no?" Attus answered, having first made trial of his art, "Of a surety it can be done." Then said the King, "I thought this thing in my heart, that thou shouldest cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, therefore, and cut it asunder; for thy birds will have it that thou canst." And straightway Attus took the whetstone and cut it asunder. So they made a statue of him, standing with his head covered, in the place where the thing was done; even in the place of assembly, ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... was cared for in the Post hospital. After her recovery she married the hospital steward. Her former husband had been killed by the Indians. Our prisoners were sent to the Whetstone Agency, on the Missouri, where Spotted Tail and the friendly Sioux were then living. The captured horses and mules were distributed among the officers ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... WHETSTONE, GEORGE (1544?-1587?).—Dramatist, one of the early, roistering playwrights who frequented the Court of Elizabeth, later served as a soldier in the Low Countries, accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland in 1578, and was at the Battle ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year. Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked away till his hands ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the Second Protectorate, were the following;—(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's Council, and was now a member ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... it when you visit this country. The next rock crystal, of which I have two specimens.[7] The fourth is alum, of which I procured a small quantity, as I did not visit the cave where it is to be obtained. The fifth is oil and whetstone, of which there is a great abundance in that quarter. The sixth is asbestus. In a word, the subjects are worthy the attention of those who wish to be instrumental in enlarging or developing that branch ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... in whispers for an hour or more, and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt's were sharpening themselves anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if possible, but no more than that. They must pick the best out of that score of survivors of the Monmouth men that Colonel Bishop had acquired. Men who understood ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... with Tullies booke, and laie them both togither: and where the childe doth well, either in chosing, or true placing of Tullies wordes, let the master // Children praise him, and saie here ye do well. For I // learne by assure you, there is no such whetstone, to // prayse. sharpen a good witte and encourage a will to learninge, as is praise. But if the childe misse, either in forgetting a worde, or in chaunging a good with a worse, or misordering the sentence, I would not haue the master, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... religion, and for religious men. I always called another cause, when any of my libertine companions, in pursuance of Lord Shaftesbury's test (which is a part of the rake's creed, and what I may call the whetstone of infidelity,) endeavoured to turn the sacred subject into ridicule. On this very account I have been called by good men of the clergy, who nevertheless would have it that I was a practical rake, the decent rake: and indeed I had too much pride ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... did not quite meet with her approval. The first of these was only a little thing,—a failure to keep shaved. Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was no one to see him except Virginia and the guide. The stubble matted and grew ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... was an interpreter [literally, a truceman]: "For he that is the Trouchman of a Straungers tongue may well declare his meaning, but yet shall marre the grace of his Tale" (G. Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582). ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... blue as a whetstone," commented Jackson Hines, "an' I don't blame him. This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the devil with his horns ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... thence that night, although my bones were sore, I made a shift to hobble seven miles more: The way to Dunchurch, foul with dirt and mire, Able, I think, both man and horse to tire. On Dunsmoor Heath, a hedge doth there enclose Grounds, on the right hand, there I did repose. Wit's whetstone, Want, there made us quickly learn, With knives to cut down rushes, and green fern, Of which we made a field-bed in the field, Which sleep, and rest, and much content did yield. There with my mother earth, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had no doubt that sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah passed on to that undiscovered country, with a ripe experience and a long ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... croaked the old man, and in much haste. "I ain't goin' to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!" And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on the wall, and at once went out of ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... such like, which Cardan includeth under the word Mustela: also of the otter, and likewise of the beaver, whose hinder feet and tail only are supposed to be fish. Certes the tail of this beast is like unto a thin whetstone, as the body unto a monstrous rat: as the beast also itself is of such force in the teeth that it will gnaw a hole through a thick plank, or shere through a double billet in a night; it loveth also the stillest rivers, and it is given to them by nature to go by ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... stay, let's see what he dare do; cut off his ears! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I'll run my rapier ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... and dashed off a few lines, in which I made no allusion, either to my first interview, or the affair of the dinner; but simply putting forward a few general observations on the state of the country, signed with my own name, and dated from Whetstone-park, which was, at that time, my residence. The following was the reply I received from the duke, which I print verbatim, as an index—short, but comprehensive, as an index ought to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... whetstone for the imagination the business sense is!" I commented. "Perhaps if your grandfather owned shares in the Eclipse, you will be able to see the second signal station erected the next year on Point Lobos, just beyond the Fort. From ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of which there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible tragedy, the Promos and Cassandra of George Whetstone, is supposed, from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the subject of livestock; and she smilingly acquiesced in his larger knowledge. "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers like these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer'n a whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to run arter him. I put the case last Thursday. Mebbe he'll ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the shiftless ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and my line, my flote and my lead, My hook, & my plummet, my whetstone & knife, My Basket, my baits, both living and dead, My net, and my meat for that is the chief; Then I must have thred & hairs great & smal, With mine Angling purse, and so you ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... his hand behind under his coat, 'You med have un for sixpence,' he says, and produces a partridge into whose body the point of the scythe ran as she sat on her nest in the grass, and whose struggles were ended by a blow from the rubber or whetstone flung at her head. He has got the eggs ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Academy. It is not large, but it is a golden book, and one, as Panaetius tells Tubero, worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... their way home. It rejoices me to give them my seat in the city car. They have stood and hammered away all day. Their feet are weary. They are exhausted with the tug of work. They are mostly cheerful. With appetites sharpened on the swift turner's wheel and the carpenter's whetstone, they seek the evening meal. The clerks, too, have broken away from the counter, and with brain weary of the long line of figures, and the whims of those who go a-shopping, seek the face of mother, or wife and child. The merchants are unharnessing themselves from their ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... half-dozen going where there ought to be forty or fifty, as a matter of right, not of charity. Call it official conservatism, inertia, treachery, call it by soft names or hard; in the end it comes to this, I suppose, that it is the whetstone upon which our purpose is sharpened, and in that sense we have apparently got to be thankful for it. So a man may pummel his adversary and accept him as a means of grace at the same time. If there were no snags, there would be no wits to clear ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... you have both a first- rate sword and a first-rate swordsman, such as both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were. Ha! yes. This is a right wonderful blade we have now in our hand. For this sword was forged in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable sharpness on no earthly whetstone. But, best of all for us, when a good soldier of Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is able then to go forth against himself with it; against his own only and worst enemy—that is, against himself. As here, against his own wildness of head and pride of ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... verses were especially ingenious in the matter of puns, anagrams, {355} and similar conceits. The death of the Rev. Samuel Stone, of Hartford, afforded an opportunity of this sort not to be missed, and his threnodist accordingly celebrated him as a "whetstone," a "loadstone," an "Ebenezer"— ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... satirical and insulting names. Finally he took the bold step to call himself king of Denmark and Norway, a baseless claim which he proposed to enforce. He made a vow never to use a hat until he had driven out Margaret, and sent her a whetstone several yards long, advising her to use it to sharpen her scissors and needles instead of using a sceptre. He was much too hasty, as he had only a weak hold upon Sweden even, whose nobles did not like his habit of bringing in Germans to fill the posts of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. Steele said in one of the later numbers of his Spectator, No. 532, to which he prefixed a motto that assigned to himself only the part of whetstone to the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... survived Mr. Burne-Jones' desertion of his old associates, as it would survive art itself. I for one should regret its disappearance. It is a whetstone for wit, like everything established and respectable. I am only sorry we have no Academy of Letters. It gives one such a standing not to be a member—almost as good a standing as to be one. If you are left out in the cold you loudly pity those asphyxiating in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the case of the choicest specimens of lacquer work this is usually a pine-wood of fine grain—it is first coated with a preparation composed of clay and varnish, which, after being permitted to dry, is smoothed down with a whetstone. When this operation has been concluded, the article proposed to be lacquered is covered with some substance, either silk, cloth, or paper. It is then given from one to five coats of the foregoing mixture, each coat being permitted to dry before the next ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... is more rime on the posts and rails around the rickyard, and the thatch on the haystack is white with it in places. He draws out the broad hay-knife—a vast blade, wide at the handle, the edge gradually curving to a point—and then searches for the rubber or whetstone, stuck somewhere in the side of the rick. At the first sound of the stone upon the steel the cattle in the adjoining yard and sheds utter a few low 'moos,' and there is a stir among them. Mounting the ladder he forces the knife with both hands into the hay, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of your wits upon the whetstone of indiscretion, that your words may shine like the razors of Palermo[165]: [to POPPEY] you have learning with ignorance, therefore speak ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... whetstone from his bosom, Odin proceeded to sharpen the nine scythes, skilfully giving them such a keen edge that the thralls, delighted, begged that they might have the stone. With good-humoured acquiescence, Odin tossed the whetstone over the wall; but as the nine thralls simultaneously sprang ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... were clattering in the wind, and crashing down beneath the weight of the gathering freezing snow, when all beasts and men lay close in their lairs, would they sit long hours about the house-fire with the knife or the gouge in hand, with the timber twixt their knees and the whetstone beside them, hearkening to some tale of old times and the days when their banner was abroad in the world; and they the while wheedling into growth out of the tough wood knots and blossoms and leaves and the images of ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... 1-1/2 inches wide, and half an inch thick. The two perforations are 2-1/2 inches apart; they have been bored from opposite sides, and show no evidence of use. Nine notches have been cut in one end of the tablet. It has been much injured by recent use as a whetstone. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... Gwalior, where there is probably still some scope for their ancient trade. But in British territory the Sikligar has degenerated into a needy knife-grinder. Mr. Crooke [505] describes him as "A trader of no worth. His whole stock-in-trade is a circular whetstone worked by a strap between two posts fixed in the ground. He sharpens knives, razors, scissors ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Hackney, Old Ford, and Bow 5 Hackney Dalston and Islington 2 Ditto Hornsey, Muswell Hill, to 8 Whetstone Tottenham The Chase, Southgate, &c., 6 called Green Lanes Enfield Wash Enfield Town, Whetstone, 10 Totteridge, to Edgworth From London Hampstead, Hendon, and 8 Edgworth Edgworth Stanmore, to Pinner, to 8 Uxbridge London Harrow and Pinner Green 11 ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... With the utmost diligence they rowed back and forth all day. They made nine trips. They had now on shore a surprising quantity of all kinds of tools, goods and weapons. They had all kinds of ware to use in the kitchen, clothes, and food. Robinson prized a little four-wheeled wagon and a whetstone. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... all callings is not to be disliked, 'tis ingeniorum cos, as one calls it, the whetstone of wit, the nurse of wit and valour, and those noble Romans out of this spirit did brave exploits. There is a modest ambition, as Themistocles was roused up with the glory of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... as strong, as vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by Velasquez or Hals. But if Nature had willed him so, I do not think we should have had the Nocturnes, which are clearly the outcome of a highly-strung, bloodless nature whetted on the whetstone of its own weakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light. It is hardly possible to doubt that this is so when we look on these canvases, where, in all the stages of her repose, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... in front of the big red brick wall one bright winter's day, for the time had gone by very quickly. Old Brownsmith had a sharp knife in his hand, and I was holding the whetstone and a thin-bladed saw that he used to ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... black from his trade, with big rollicking eyes. At times he was not easy to please, but if he took a liking, he was for joking at once. He approved of Parpon, and never lost a chance of sharpening his humour on the dwarf's impish whetstone of a tongue. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... imitation of several then recent popular treatises of a similar title, is only to be pardoned on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college. It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment; the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, and Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied the matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract is extravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with great vehemence, but only in that ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... would, we could see no signs of Flossie and her donkey, so at last we had to come down disappointed. On reaching the veranda I found Umslopogaas sitting there, slowly and lightly sharpening his axe with a small whetstone ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... built, I believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster's house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some fifty years ago. It is of white limestone from quarries belonging to Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about L12,000. To build it now would cost nearly three times as much. In ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... ain't much to look at," he said, "and as I told you, Mister, he ain't got no fancy gait; but he can bust the middle out of the breeze when he lays out a straight-ahead run. Ain't a horse on this range can touch his tail when old Whetstone throws a ham into it ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a moment, please?" though what for is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of their principal canons of faith, and the one best observed in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen edge of the eyes. Semble—as the lawyers say—that this idea was born of great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better than the way to spell it; and when, if his outlook were sharpened ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... For things are come to this; the merest dunce, So but he choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, Which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. Although no writer, I may yet impart To writing folk the precepts of their art, Whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, And how a work is made, and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... liked to hear Mike tell of the work he was going to do in the fields. Mike rented a farm of about fifteen acres, at least ten of it was grass; he grew an acre of potatoes and some corn, and some turnips for his sheep. He had a nice bit of meadow, and he took down his scythe, and as he put the whetstone in his belt Bryden noticed a second scythe, and he asked Mike if he should go down with him and help him to finish ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... into a secret, though you won't believe it. Thirteen year of temper in a Palace would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would try the best of you. You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you see. There's thousands of couples among you getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the Divorce Court in a cart. Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide; but in a cart it does come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a cart is so ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... Bruncknow house, whose inmates were away at the time on some expedition of their own. Sometimes they saw the smoke of signal-fires over in the Dragoons; sometimes the slender columns rose from the summit of the Whetstone Mountains in the north. One morning—they had spent the previous night out here in the hills—they awoke to find a fresh trail in the bear-grass within a hundred yards of where they had been sleeping, and in the middle ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... I'm the hone that "City's Lord" essayed, To make the whetstone of his rebel sword; On me, with mischief rife, rebellious Cade Sat whilst he thought and dubbed himself a Lord; And bade my conduit pipe for one whole year At city's cost, run ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various |
