"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every side; that the paths which lead to these beautiful walks can only be entered by the road of experience, the portals of which are alone opened to those who apply to them the key of truth: this key is of very simple structure, has no complicated intricacy of wards, and is easily formed on the anvil of social intercourse, merely by not doing unto others that which you would not wish they ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... the rest of the pantheon, but he was indispensable to the dynasty, and to none more than his father and mother, who were often unkind to him; he had his smithy in Olympus in the vicinity of the gods, and the marvellous creations of his art were shaped on an anvil, the hammer of which was plied by 20 bellows that worked at his bidding; in later traditions he had his workshop elsewhere, and the Cyclops for his servants, employed in manufacturing thunderbolts ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... none could recall his first coming to the land, and his wisdom embraced all things known to men. He had great skill in all the arts of peace, but chiefly was he famed for the mighty works he had wrought at the forge and upon the anvil. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... not beheld thee born of foam; A foreign Vulcan forged thee on a diamond anvil With a gold hammer; and the bard who touches thee, Bound with thy magic beauty's charms, ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... over-complacency, but Pattison is only one of many examples how much more it may lose in a man who has ability, but no fight and no mastery in him. As we have all been told, in this world a man must be either anvil or hammer, and it always seemed as if Pattison deliberately chose to be anvil—not merely in the shape of a renunciation of the delusive pomps and vanities of life, but in the truly questionable sense of doubting both whether he could do anything, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... expelling of Culpepper's uncle from the floor of the Assembly Ball by the order of Folinsbee. This much Madrono Hollow knew and could swear to; but there were other strange rumors afloat, of which the blacksmith was an able expounder. "You see, gentlemen," he said to the crowd gathered around his anvil, "I ain't got no theory of this affair, I only give a few facts as have come to my knowledge. Culpepper and Jack meets quite accidental like in Bob's saloon. Jack goes up to Culpepper and says, 'A word with you.' Culpepper bows and steps aside in this way, Jack ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... go, Peregrine, for your goddess has the supper to prepare!" Reluctantly I obeyed her, and coming back, found the Tinker seated upon his anvil, lost in a ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... bones. For crushing the bones there is in every tent a hammer, consisting of an oval stone with a hollow round it for a skin thong, with which the stone is fastened to the short shaft of wood or bone. The bones which are used for food are finely crushed with this implement against a stone anvil or a whale's vertebra, and then boiled with water and blood, before being eaten. At first we believed that this dish was intended for the dogs, but afterwards I had an opportunity of convincing myself that the natives themselves ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... quarrel with four European nations, who had done us no harm, in order to arouse a feeling of Americanism in the Confederate States, was an outgrowth of this conviction. It was an indefensible proposition, akin to that which prompted Bismarck to make use of France as an anvil on which to hammer and weld Germany together, but it was not an unpatriotic one, since it was bottomed on a desire to preserve the Union ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... know of a master plumber, who twenty years ago, as a child of eleven, made friends with the blacksmith and the tinsmith in the little village where he lived, and taught himself the elements of his trade at the blacksmith's anvil and with the tinsmith's tools. At fourteen that boy knew practically a great deal about the properties of metals, could handle simple tools deftly, and was well prepared to learn his trade readily when ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Caius MS. Archbishop Ussher's examination of the Latin version, thus discovered, induced in his mind a suspicion that Bishop Grosseteste was himself the translator. A marginal note, for example, betrayed the nationality of its author; 'Incus est instrumentum fabri; dicitur Anglice anfeld [anvil].' Who so likely to have had the ability to translate from a Greek version as Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few Greek scholars of his age? Evidence is not wanting that the Ignatian Epistles were imported from Greece, and translated under the Bishop's direction by one or ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... to the labored breathings, and adding the torture of its leaden weight to the dying struggles. We are curiously made. In all the throng of gaping and sympathetic onlookers there was not one with common sense enough to perceive that an anvil would have been in better taste there than the Bible, less open to sarcastic criticism, and swifter in its atrocious work. In my nightmares I gasped and struggled for breath under the crush of that vast book for many ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... some titanic blacksmith were pounding on a mighty anvil to a devil's chorus of laughter. And I was bound to the steel, and each blow awakened hideous echoes which went resounding through my ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... thousand years, had not yet penetrated Colorado. Islanded in a cruel brown ocean of sand, she hid her treasures of gold and silver in her virgin bosom and dreamed, unstirred by any echoes of civilization. When she woke at last it was to the sound of an anvil chorus—to the ring of the mallet and drill, and the hoarse voices of men greedy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... food, and the farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together and balance each other. So, too, with labour. Wages are dependent upon the relation between the number of those who desire to buy and to sell labour. Diminish ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... "considerable of his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Defago were at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with patches of alternate red and black; Defago, in slouch hat and moccasins in the part of the "badlands" ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... field. Hartigan liked Shives, enjoyed the shop with its smoke and flying sparks, and took a keen relish in the unfettered debate that filled in the intervals between Shives's ringing blows on the anvil. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... plied his trade only a few yards west of the ancient brick church. Many blacksmiths worked at Jamestown (there was one among the first group of settlers). In the Jamestown collection are many tools which they left behind, including pliers, pincers, chisels, punches, hammers, and a small anvil. ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... (min, pleasant. Gaelic). Moryenni yook Good man. Gyami Bad (cam. Gaelic). Probably the origin of the common canting term gammy, bad. Ishkimmisk Drunk (misgeach. Gaelic) Roglan A four-wheeled vehicle. Lorch A two-wheeled vehicle. Smuggle Anvil. Granya Nail. Riaglon Iron. Gushuk Vessel of any kind. Tedhi, thedi Coal; fuel of any kind. Grawder Solder. Tanyok Halfpenny. (Query tani, little, Romany, and nyok, a head.) Chlorhin To hear. Sunain To see. Salkaneoch To taste, take. Mailyen To feel ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... that "the profits, pleasures, and vanities of the world" will one day "give thee the slip, and leave thee in the sands and the brambles of all that thou hast done." The careless man lies "like the smith's dog at the foot of the anvil, though the fire sparks flee in his face." The rich man remembers how he once despised Lazarus, "scrubbed beggarly Lazarus. What, shall I dishonour my fair sumptuous and gay house with such a scabbed creephedge as he? The Lazaruses are not allowed ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... they reached the Smithy, and Schlorge had soon turned his anvil into an operating table, on which they laid the uncomplaining little sufferer. The Snimmy's wife said there were plenty of onions at home in the sugar-bowl, and Schlorge offered to send a Gunkus after them; but the Kewpie would not hear of it, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... sentimental sing-song of my own to fill up,—and how does it take, eh? and where the devil is the second edition of my Satire, with additions? and my name on the title page? and more lines tagged to the end, with a new exordium and what not, hot from my anvil before I cleared the Channel? The Mediterranean and the Atlantic roll between me and criticism; and the thunders of the Hyperborean Review are deafened by the roar ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... found to a great extent of the missing ships: tin canisters in hundreds, pieces of cloth, rope, wood—in large fragments and in chips; iron in numerous fragments, where the anvil had stood, and the block which supported it; paper, both written and printed, with the dates 1844 and 1845; sledge marks in abundance; depressions in the gravel, resembling wells which they had been digging; and the graves of three men who had died on board the missing ships in January and April ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of terrible consequence to this kingdom, by their power with those who were in office, and by their arts in managing or deluding others with oaths, affability, and even with dinners. If Wood's brass had in those times been upon the anvil, it is obvious enough to conceive what methods would have been taken. Depending persons would have been told in plain terms, that it was a "service expected from them, under pain of the public business being put into ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had planted himself square in front of his antagonist just as a second tomahawk was on the tip of leaping at him, which he sent ringing after the other, before it had quitted ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... and seen the sun lying broad among the wreck, and heard the silence broken only by the tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the royal family about the battered palace, and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a grand tutti of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room; the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red mineral bounding and thundering down the iron chute. And now all gone—all fallen away into this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the winter months; add to these the various changes produced in the forms of mankind, by their early modes of exertion; or by the diseases occasioned by their habits of life; both of which became hereditary, and that through many generations. Those who labour at the anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry sedan-chairs, or who have been educated to dance upon the rope, are distinguishable by the shape of their limbs; and the diseases occasioned by intoxication deform the countenance with leprous eruptions, or the body ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... glory in the shuttle's song; There's triumph in the anvil's stroke; There's merit in the brave and strong Who dig the mine ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... speaking of the cautious deliberation of some men, "A second-best position to-day is better than a first-best to-morrow, when the occasion has passed." Strike while the iron is hot! and between reading and thinking my iron was very hot by the time I laid it on the anvil. Moreover, I had to meet the emergency of lecturing, one of the main ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... strong, solid and self-sufficient on the outside. But inside, like every Court, it was a den of quibble, quarrel, envy, and the hatred which, tinctured with fear, knocks an anvil-chorus ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... on blast, The sooty smithy jars, And fire-sparks, rising far and fast, Are fading with the stars. All day for us the smith shall stand Beside that flashing forge; All day for us his heavy hand The groaning anvil scourge. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... note of a bird in a wood, when passing over the mountain, named the Ferreirinho (little Blacksmith), from the resemblance of the note to the ringing sound of a smart blow from a small hammer on an anvil, terminating in ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the ground with his face downwards, the officers of justice sent away two of their number, who speedily returned with a blacksmith's anvil and forehammer. On this they placed one of their victim's ankles, and Flaggan now saw, with a sickening heart, that they were about to break it with the ponderous hammer. One blow sufficed to crush the bones in pieces, ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... The glowing anvil, Beaten by the winds; Star sparks, Burning and dying in the heavens; The furnace glare Red ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... earliest times. Egyptians evidently understood the use of solder, for the Hebrews obtained their knowledge of such things from them, and in Isaiah xli. 7, occurs the passage: "So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, 'It is ready for the soldering.'" In the Bible there are constant references to such arts in metal work as prevail in our own times: "Of beaten work made he the candlesticks," Exodus. In ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... trying a part of this powder on an anvil with a hammer, it exploded very violently, the comparison of which to that prepared by ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... are excellent blacksmiths, producing a result that would astonish an English workman, considering the rough nature of their tools, which are confined to a hammer, anvil, and tongs; the latter formed of a cleft-stick of green wood, while the two former are stones of various sizes. Their bellows consist of two pots about a foot deep; from the bottom of each is an earthenware pipe about two feet ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... was so valuable as arms, of whatever style and fashion they might be. The bellows blew, and the hammer clanged continually upon the anvil, while the blacksmiths were repairing the broken weapons of other wars. Doubtless, some of the soldiers lugged out those enormous, heavy muskets, which used to be fired with rests, in the time of the early Puritans. Great horse-pistols, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... small make great, And dost abase the ignorantly proud, Of our scant people mould a mighty state, To the strong, stern,—to Thee in meekness bowed! Father of unity, make this people one! Weld, interfuse them in the patriot's flame,— Whose forging on thine anvil was begun In blood late shed to purge the common shame; That so our hearts, the fever of faction done, Banish old feud in our ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... warning them that by untying the first knot they would have a gentle and favorable wind, at the second knot a stronger wind, and at the third knot a violent and dangerous gale. He says, moreover, that the Bothnians, striking on an anvil hard blows with a hammer, upon a frog or a serpent of brass, fall down in a swoon, and during this swoon they learn what ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... sixteen. At that time there were but five boys of that age who had become full-fledged puddlers. Of these young iron workers, I suppose there were few that "doubled in brass." But why should not an iron worker be a musician? The anvil, symbol of his trade, is a musical instrument and is heard in the anvil chorus from Trovatore. In our rolling mill we did not have an anvil on which the "bloom" was beaten by a trip-hammer as is done in the Old Country. The "squeezer" which combines the functions ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... drove, the wheels rattling over the stones, past the Forum, past the Coliseum, in view of St. Peter's. Soon we entered a dusty road. The houses were small now, broken and old. At last we drew up into an open space surrounded by little buildings: a blacksmith's shop where the anvil was ringing, little bakeries, markets where vegetables and bologna were vended. Ragged Italian children, gay and soiled with healthy dirt, were playing in the dust, turning somersaults, chasing each other, laughing. Beyond us was the Campagna, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... should Carleton go? There were but few fields to conquer, for the slaveholders' rebellion was swiftly nearing its end, and Carleton felt his work with armies and amid war would soon and happily be over. He knew it was now time for Grant to deliver his blows, and make the anvil at Petersburg ring. Eager to be in at the death of treason, he hastened home, shortened his stay with wife and friends, and hurried on to City Point. As usual, he was present in the nick of time. He was able ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... it improbable so to find him in the evening, he determined to postpone his task. But in doing so he felt that he should be at a loss. The eager words were hot now within his memory, having been sharpened against the anvil of his thoughts by his colloquy with Mary Lawrie. To-morrow they might have cooled. His purpose might be as strong; but a man when he wishes to use burning words should use them while the words ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... and proudly reared its crest, covered with grey slate, above the thatched hovels by which it was surrounded. The adjoining smithy betokened none of the Sabbatical silence and repose which Ebenezer had augured from the sanctity of his friend. On the contrary, hammer clashed and anvil rang, the bellows groaned, and the whole apparatus of Vulcan appeared to be in full activity. Nor was the labour of a rural and pacific nature. The master smith, benempt, as his sign intimated, John Mucklewrath, with two assistants, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... a good anvil, let him deal sound blows on the irons for the pier, repeated and strong, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... blew on the crucibles, sending deft blasts on every side, now to aid his labour and now anon howsoever Hephaistos willed and the work went on. And he threw bronze that weareth not into the fire, and tin and precious gold and silver, and next he set on an anvil-stand a great anvil, and took in his hand a sturdy hammer, and in the other ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... possession positive plates, five to six years old, completely peroxidized, though there remains in the interior a thin core of metallic lead sufficient to give passage to the current. The adhesion of the peroxide is such that to detach it, it must be beaten with a hammer upon an anvil. The next four points—i.e., the rapidity of charge; the yield, much greater than that of any other system in proportion to its surface; its small weight in comparison with its yield; and its capacity, which for an equal weight is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... applicable to general subjects. The Tippecanoe fever then began to spread with great virulency, and such was the power of its contagion that John Crispin threw away his lapstone, and Peter Vulcan hung up his anvil, and both went about the country delivering themselves of great speeches, with which they deluded the simple-minded villagers, who forced greatness upon them at every step. And so forcibly did the opinion that they were great men ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... you enter a high, narrow defile, or pass, in a portion of which, called the Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, covered with beautiful dog's tooth spar, called the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with stardust, atoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... squalid man, with a beard, and hair neglected; half naked; his habit reaching down to his knee only, and having a round peaked cap on his head, a hammer in his right hand, and a smith's tongs in his left, working at the anvil, and usually attended by the Cyclops, or by some of the gods or goddesses ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... whole—although maintaining an attitude of mutual antagonism—which appears to be the aim of modern phases of national life, was a thing foreign to antiquity. In ancient times it was necessary to be either anvil or hammer; and in the final struggle between the victors victory remained with the Romans. Whether they would have the judgment to use it rightly—to attach the Latin nation by still closer bonds to Rome, gradually to Latinize Italy, to rule their dependents in the provinces as subjects ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in her hand below a veil, and at her feet Zeno of Elea, who is reading. Arithmetic is holding the tables of the abacus, and below her is sitting Abraham, its inventor. Music has the musical instruments, and below her is sitting Tubal-Cain, who is beating with two hammers on an anvil and is standing with his ears intent on that sound. Geometry has the square and the compasses, and below, Euclid. Astrology has the celestial globe in her hands, and below her feet, Atlas. In the other part are sitting seven Theological ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... the way of heat under the pressure of the air; we therefore would conclude that nitro-glycerin carried about exposed cannot explode, even if you drop a coal of fire into it; if the liquid is confined, or is under pressure, then an explosion will ensue; if paper be moistened with it and put on an anvil and a smart blow given with a hammer, a sharp detonation ensues; if gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... carbonate of soda, and argol for fluxes; while for reducing lead I had recourse to the lining of a tea-chest, which lead contains no silver—John Chinaman takes good care of that. My mortar was a jam tin, without top or bottom, placed on an anvil; the pestle a short steel drill. The blacksmith at Mundi Mundi Station made me a small wrought iron crucible, also a pair of bent tongs from a piece of fencing-wire. The manager gave me a small common red flower pot ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... case they will not go far," returned Gallito and rubbed his hands. His reply had been quick and sharp as the beat of a hammer on an anvil; but now he spoke more softly: "But will she go at all, my friend? You, like myself, have ever played for high stakes. Then you know and I know that this is a world where a man may never look ahead ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... which continued in full chorus one of the psalms, interrupted by blows of the hammer—an infernal deed beating time to celestial songs. One might have supposed himself near a smithy, except that the blows were dull, and manifested to the ear that the anvil was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep that visited him, and held him for the best part ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... now, during which I could count every throb of my heart, and throat, and temples—my whole frame was transfigured into an anvil, on which a thousand tiny hammers seemed to ring. Yet I could not move, nor speak, nor weep—no wretchedness was ever more supreme than this cataleptic seizure. Evelyn was the first to break ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... whom my father and brethren, the smiths down yonder at Buxton, thought but scorn of, but we'd taken a sup together at the Ebbing Well, and it played neither of us false, so we held out against 'em all, and when they saw there was no help for it, they gave Bob the second best anvil and bellows for my portion, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... iron on the anvil, see God's goods across the counter, put God's wealth in circulation, teach God's children in the school,—so shall the dust of your labor build itself into a little sanctuary where you and God may ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was very wide awake indeed when it was time for meals. One day his master pretended to be disgusted at this, and when he had thrown him a bone as usual, he said, "What on earth is the good of a lazy cur like you? When I am hammering away at my anvil, you just curl up and go to sleep: but no sooner do I stop for a mouthful of food than you wake up and wag your ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... tongs, and the red sparks radiated in showers as the hammer thumped dully on the soft metal—thumps sharply punctuated by the clean ring of steel as the polished face of the tool bounced merrily upon the chilled surface of the anvil. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... walls that shut the east away from the high tree-tops, the garish street light would have kept it dim. The trees were silent and stirless, as quiet as the graves beneath them—more quiet; in fact; for there issued from a grated hole among the tombs the sound of an anvil, deep down and muffled, but unmistakably ringing, as if Governor Winthrop were forging chains in his vault. Then came a rush, a deadened roar, and an emanation of dank gaseous breath, such as the dead ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... perfect light. An iron ladder swung from the skylight and was hooked up against the ceiling by a hasp fastened to a staple over a work-bench. On one side of the room was a tiny blacksmith's forge, an anvil, hammers and a complete set of tools for working in rough iron. A small gasoline engine supplied the power which turned his lathe and worked the drills, saw and plane. On the other side of the room was arranged a fairly complete chemical laboratory with several retorts, and an oxyhydrogen ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... believed indispensable to composition. Balzac had his oval writing-room, when he grew rich, and the creamy white colour of the tapestries played a great part in his thoughts. The blacksmith loves the smoke of the forge and the fumes of hot iron on the anvil, and the chiseller's fingers burn to handle the tools that are strewn on the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... cave heard all these strange noises; the crowing of the cocks, the hammering on the anvil, the chopping of wood, the music of the koto, the clappering of the hard wood, the tinkling of the bells, the shouting of Uzume and the boisterous laughter of the gods. Wondering what it all meant, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... came down from McCloskey's office, and for perhaps twenty minutes he had been seen lounging at the lunch-counter in the station end of the Crow's Nest. At about eleven one witness had seen him striking at the anvil in Hepburn's shop, the town marshal being the town blacksmith in the intervals of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... political arena. National parties would again crystallize upon legitimate questions of National interest—questions of tariff, finance, and foreign relations. The disastrous conflict between Federal and State jurisdiction would cease. North and South, no longer hammer and anvil, would forget and forgive the past. School-houses and churches would be our fortifications and intrenchments. Capital and population would flow, like the Mississippi, toward the Gulf. The black race would gravitate by the law of nature toward ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... words, I dug my spurs into my horse and hurled myself against him; then at the very moment my horse struck his with a tremendous shock, I brought down my iron whip-handle with all the force that was in me upon his head. The blow rang as if I had struck upon an anvil, while at the same moment he, without swerving, clutched my cloak with both hands. I could feel that they were bony, hard hands, armed with long, crooked, sharp talons like an eagle's, which pierced through ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... fairest, and with circling wall Clasped to her single breast the sevenfold hills. Ay, ere the reign of Dicte's king, ere men, Waxed godless, banqueted on slaughtered bulls, Such life on earth did golden Saturn lead. Nor ear of man had heard the war-trump's blast, Nor clang of sword on stubborn anvil set. But lo! a boundless space we have travelled o'er; 'Tis time our ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... harmless always as the dove.... The time requireth thee, as pilots require winds, or as a storm-tossed mariner a haven, so that it may find God.... Be sober, as God's athlete.... Stand firm as an anvil under the stroke of the hammer. It becomes a great athlete to endure blows and to conquer.... Show thyself more zealous than thou art.... Let nothing be done without thy consent, neither do thou anything without God's consent, as indeed thou doest ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... stormy strong man to hammer and weld the state like a smith. Our strong men were too strong for us, and too strong for themselves. They were too strong for their own aim of a just and equal monarchy. The smith broke upon the anvil the sword of state that he was hammering for himself. Whether or no this will serve as a key to the very complicated story of our kings and barons, it is the exact posture of Henry II. to his rival. He became lawless out of sheer love of law. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the mother of invention, made them deft and handy with axe and adze, bradawl and waxed end, anvil and forge. The squire himself was no mean blacksmith, and could shoe a horse, or forge a plough coulter, or set a tire as well as ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... bright beams of coruscant authority do shine and cherish, thither followeth and sitteth he; the gnathonic parasite sweareth to all that his benefactor holdeth; the mercenary pensioner will bow before he break; he who only studieth to have the praise of some witty invention, cannot strike upon another anvil; the silly idiot (with Absolom's two hundred, 2 Sam. xv. 11,) goeth, in the simplicity of his heart, after his perverse leaders; the lapped Nicodemite holds it enough to yield some secret assent to the truth, though neither his profession nor his practice testify ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... huge iron works in the country to send them out by the ton; and such articles were scarce and high. The boy was set to work to make nails, and for two years pursued his vocation steadily. He was a manly little fellow, and worked at his hammer and anvil with a will, resolved that he would become thorough master of his trade; but when he had reached the age of eleven, the sudden death of his father made an entire change in his career, and threw him upon the world a ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... with a sneer of enjoyment, mixed with scorn, curling upon his lip, which his habitual dissimulation could not altogether disguise—"you groan; but be comforted. This Henry Smith knows his business: his sword is as true to its aim as his hammer to the anvil. Had a common swordsman struck this fatal blow, he had harmed the bone and damaged the muscles, so that even my art might not have been able to repair them. But Henry Smith's cut is clean, and as sure as that with which my own scalpel ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... mites to swell the blaze through which the pigs as usual were driven. In one place, apparently not far from Wolfenbuettel, the needfire is said to have been kindled, contrary to custom, by the smith striking a spark from the cold anvil.[700] At Gandersheim down to about the beginning of the nineteenth century the need-fire was lit in the common way by causing a cross-bar to revolve rapidly on its axis between two upright posts. The rope which produced the revolution ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... dandyism, fancying all the while that bluster is manliness. No, sir. You may make shoes, you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins knotted, your hands grimed; and yet you may be a hero. And, on the other hand, you may write verses and be a clown. It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to become divine; nor shall ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Why was Jimmy in the room at that time? Why had he a torch? What had he been doing? The questions shot from her brain like sparks from an anvil. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... undersized boy, who was two or three years younger than Ike, and not strong enough for work at the anvil, was a great tactician. It was his habit, in doing a favor, rigorously to exact a set-off, and that night when the blacksmith had left ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... rounded the last turn in the lane, she heard the ring of Daniel Greensmith's hammer on the anvil, and a few minutes' more walking brought her in sight of the smith himself, who laid down his hammer and shaded his eyes ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... Hercegovina. Albania had already been conquered after stubborn resistance in 1478. There remained only the mountainous coastal province of Zeta, which had been an independent principality ever since 1371. Just as inland Serbia had perished between the Turkish hammer and the Hungarian anvil, so maritime Serbia was crushed between Turkey and Venice, only its insignificance and inaccessibility giving it a longer lease of independent life. Ivan Crnojevi['c], one of the last independent rulers of Zeta, who had to fly to Italy in 1480, abandoning his capital, [)Z]abljak, to ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... centre of the primitive civilization, had soon an expectant group in its widely flaring doors, for the smith had had enough of the war, and had come back to wistfully, hopelessly haunt his anvil like some uneasy ghost visiting familiar scenes in which he no more bears a part;—a minie-ball had shattered his stanch hammer-arm, and his duties were now merely advisory to a clumsy apprentice. This was a half-witted fellow, a giant in strength, but not to be trusted with ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... had known many women, but impersonally. He was late to mature, and all his younger energies were used for what he had believed to be the world's work, but what he now perceived were the activities of a vain, ego-driven intellect, that delighted to attract the passing eye by the ring of the anvil and a great show of unsleeved muscle. Much of this early work had kept him afield, and his calls home to New York had inflicted upon him the fatal stimulus for quantity. His still earlier years were passed in a home where ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... so, he can instantly transport himself to the times of the wooden "trencher," and the "pewter" mug and pitcher, to the days when iron rails for tramways were unknown, and when even the "strap-iron," always necessary, was rudely and slowly hammered out on an anvil. [Footnote: About 1720, nails were the most needed of all the articles of a new country. Farmers made them for themselves, at home. The secret of how to roll out a sheet and split it into nail-rods was stolen from the one shop that knew how, at ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties if he nullified the marriage. The pope complained truthfully that he was between the anvil and the hammer. There was little for him to do except to temporize and to delay decision as long ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... nature and likeness of a star suddenly drops and becomes a meteor! What more piteous sight can the pious man behold? What can more sharply stir the bowels of his pity? What can more easily melt a heart hard as an anvil into hot tears? On the other hand, let us recall from past experience how much it has profited the whole Christian commonwealth, not indeed to enervate students with the delights of a Sardanapalus or the riches of ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... iron on the anvil without heating it at the forge; he simply hammered it hot and forged nail after nail, without the use of either anvil or bellows. None of the judges had ever seen a blacksmith wield a hammer more masterfully, and the Haerjedal smith ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... through the windows of rough dwellings and others moving about in the hands of workers. From the open door of, a blacksmith shop poured a yellow glow from a forge, and against the roar of the stamps arose the musical clink of hammer on anvil. ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... again on an old battered anvil, and seemed with his bright eyes to be beholding something in the land of dreams. A gallant dream it was he dreamed; for he saw himself with his brothers and friends about him, seated on a throne, the ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... glen; While from yon lowly roof, whose circling smoke O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise. With dovelike wings Peace o'er yon village broods; The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness. Less fearful on this day, the limping hare Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large; And as his ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only bleached, stamped and sold, by the Dutch," says Busching. A Country, in our days, which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... upon the hardwood seemed to reverberate through the whole building. He walked a few steps on tiptoe, and then decided that in case anyone should see him, the tiptoeing would look furtive. So he walked to the foot of the stairway, his footsteps sounding in his ears like the ring of a hammer on an anvil. As he ascended the stairs he called out, "Hey, isn't there any one here? I am locked in, and can't get out! Hello! Someone show ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... tree, bringing my sword in my hand and all the gold along with me. However, when they came to the tree they found what I had done, and making further use of their hellish art, one of them was changed into a smith's anvil and another into a piece of iron, of which the third soon made a hatchet. Having the hatchet made, she fell to cutting down the tree, and in the course of an hour it began to shake with me. At length it began to bend, and I found that one or two blows at the most would put it down. I then began ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... joy in the world." The little poet coloured with delight at the flattery. "You have saved me, I avow, from the forge and anvil of Hephaestus. What a vulgar mob! Do stand apart; then I can try ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Rehearsals began immediately. Our parts were assigned to us. For the first concert the bouquet of artists sang Spirit Immortal (Verdi), and sextette, Chi Mi Frena (Donizetti); second concert, Sleepers, Awake (Mendelssohn), male chorus; The Soldier's Farewell; Anvil Chorus, full orchestra, anvils, artillery, etc.; third concert, Inflammatus, Mrs. Marriner, soloist, bouquet of artists and grand chorus; Spirit Immortal repeated; Chi Mi Frena repeated; America, Hallelujah Chorus; ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... Norway, black jet comes from England, black glass jewellery comes from Germany. Jet is the lightest, the most precious, the most costly. Imitations can be made in France as well as in Germany. What is needed is a little anvil two inches square, and a lamp burning spirits of wine to soften the wax. The wax was formerly made with resin and lampblack, and cost four livres the pound. I invented a way of making it with gum shellac ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... modeled, only its rate of decrease towards the summit is considerably less, and it is truncated. From the exact middle of the mansion it soars from the cellar, right up through each successive floor, till, four feet square, it breaks water from the ridge-pole of the roof, like an anvil-headed whale, through the crest of a billow. Most people, though, liken it, in that part, to a razed ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... in the course of that night that Thetis visits Vulcan's forge and in the attitude of a suppliant implores the divine blacksmith to make an armor for her son. Not only does Vulcan consent, but hurries off to his anvil, where he and Cyclops labor to such good purpose that a superb suit of armor is ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... When the two substances are well mixed, grind heavily with the pestle, when rapid detonations will ensue; or after the powder is mixed, you can wrap it with paper into a hard pellet, and explode it on an anvil with a sharp blow of ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the links of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain, On that red anvil where ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... experienced soldier's confidence unjustified; for, although the blows of the despairing robber fell like those of the hammer on the anvil, yet the quick motions and dexterous swordsmanship of the young Archer enabled him to escape, and to requite them with the point of his less noisy, though more fatal weapon; and that so often, and so effectually, that the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... will have no patching of the sword: that sword was Wotan's and subject to his will; he grinds it to powder, and makes one of his own, with which he will face either man or god. In the making of it he sings the glorious Sword-song; and when it is made he tests it by splitting the anvil with it. Here the first act ends. There are two Siegfried themes to notice; the first, the Hero, has been ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Fakes up ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... work may serve as an antidote. On the other hand, we have the well-knit strenuous verse of extreme realism, wrought out by a poet in his shirt-sleeves, with rhymes clear-sounding like the tap of hammer on anvil, who sings of rough folk by sea and land, and can touch national emotion in regard to the incidents or politics of the moment. He paints without varnish, in hard outline, avoiding metaphor and ornamental diction generally; ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... is made for Mabon, the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from between his mother and the wall. The seekers go first to the Ousel of Cilgwri; the Ousel had lived long enough to peck a smith's anvil down to the size of a nut, but he had never heard of Mabon. 'But there is a race of animals who were formed before me, and I will be your guide to them.' So the Ousel guides them to the Stag of Redynvre. The Stag ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... closing up the inside of the Cylinder, drives the Air out of the Cylinder through the Pipe: Two of these Trunks or Cylinders are placed so nigh together, that a Man standing between them may work them both at once alternately, one with each Hand. They have neither Vice nor Anvil, but a great hard Stone or a piece of an old Gun, to hammer upon: yet they will perform their work making both common Utensils and Iron-works about Ships to admiration. They work altogether with Charcoal. Every Man almost is a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer, Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things that Sam had thought it worth while to learn something ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... larger holders have been as ruthlessly ruined. For, while the rents were lowered, the charges on the land, made on the larger basis, were kept to their same value; and the fate of the landlord was sealed. Between the hammer and the anvil as he was and is placed, his times have not been pleasant. Families who have bought their estates on the faith of Government sales and Government contracts, and families who have owned theirs for centuries and lived on them, winter and summer—who ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... the behaviour of the song-thrush when it takes a wood-snail in its beak and hammers it against a stone, its so-called anvil. To a young thrush, which she had brought up by hand, Miss Frances Pitt offered some wood-snails, but it took no interest in them until one put out its head and began to move about. The bird then pecked at the snail's horns, but was evidently puzzled when the creature retreated within ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces: made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to the human shape—they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped—that ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... namely, the marriage, which was thought very probable and very near, of Napoleon with the sister of the Czar. Thus imprisoned between two vast empires, between that of the East and that of the West, as if between hammer and anvil, what would become of Austria, shorn of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... writers. One of these could not get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid little and late and died early. The other writer could get published, but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger apprentices. They were at present in the same stage as any other new business—they were building ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... in the blue cap, of whom we have spoken; then, with a furious bound, overturning three or four prisoners who separated him from Germain, he sprung upon Skeleton, and struck him on his head, between the eyes, such a torrent of blows with his fists that the sound was like a hammer upon an anvil. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... strokes of a hammer upon an anvil. Eli intended to shoot. He was a man of his word. He made no threat that he was not prepared to execute, and Indian Jake knew that Eli would shoot ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... say the truth, many a neighbor, less forehanded and thrifty, felt the benefit of this arrangement of Mr. Zebedee, and would drop in to see if he "wouldn't just tighten that rivet," or "kind o' ease out that 'ere brace," or "let a feller have a turn with his bellows, or a stroke or two on his anvil,"—to all which the good man consented with a grave obligingness. The fact was, that, as nothing in the establishment of Mr. Marvyn was often broken or lost or out of place, he had frequent applications to lend ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... to be wondered at. A man who spends his life climbing into people's mouths and playing "The Anvil Chorus" on their molars with a monkey-wrench, who says, "Now this won't hurt you in the least," and then deals one a smart rap on a nerve with a pickaxe—such a man cannot expect to be popular. He must console ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... a forge and seen a blacksmith at work? It is quite exciting, I assure you, to see the flames being fanned by the bellows, and myriads of sparks flying upwards and outwards on all sides, while the blacksmith hammers the red-hot metal on the anvil and shapes it into horseshoes and other useful things made ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... carefully shaped me after a pattern of her own. However else one may feel, one must be fair to the ambitions of others, even though one is the mere material that is heated and beaten into form on the anvil of another's will. But I am ripe for revolt. The devil is in me,—a restrained, quiet, well-appearing devil, but all the more ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of their might with a vicious strength from which there would be no escape, until, in the climax of the river's madness, the object of its angry sport would be dashed against the cliff, and torn, and crushed, and hammered by the terrific weight of the rushing flood against that rocky anvil, into a battered ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with a heavy difficulty. He is fashioning a sword for Siegfried,—still another sword, after ever so many,—realising even as he works that no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands. "The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... which mark the variety of moods which (p. 114) swept over him during the summer and autumn of 1789, there was also a continual succession of songs on the anvil in preparation for Johnson's Museum. This work of song-making, begun during his second winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... will enable just enough pressure to be exerted at any particular place as may be thought proper. This is, of course, assuming that some iron substance is at hand that will answer the purpose of an anvil. The thickness of the iron wire must depend upon the requirements and size of the work in repair, a viola of course taking stouter wire than a violin, a 'cello still more so. A useful average for violin work would be ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... finished speaking than Hephaistos went to his work-bench and set his bellows—twenty were there—working. And the twenty bellows blew into the crucibles and made bright and hot fires. Then Hephaistos threw into the fires bronze and tin and silver and gold. He set on the anvil-stand a great anvil, and took in one hand his hammer and in the other hand ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... evening that Prince Florizel's friend, under the name of Mr. Morris, was giving a party in one of the houses of West Kensington. In one at least of the houses of that brick wilderness human spirits were being tested as on an anvil, and most of them tossed aside. So also, in, The Rajah's Diamond, it was a quiet suburban garden that witnessed the sudden apparition of Mr. Harry Hartley and his treasures precipitated over the wall; it was in the same garden that the Rev. Simon ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... know what Master laid thy keel, What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast and sail and rope, What anvil rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... beating that he flies back howling "to his swamp." After a time, the soldier induces the whole of the fiendish party to enter his knapsack, prevents them from getting out again by signing it with a cross, and then has it thumped on an anvil to his heart's content. Afterwards he carries it about on his back, the fiends remaining under it all the while. But at last some women open it, during his absence from a cottage in which he has left ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... almost every street in Sierra Leone I heard the voice of praise and local prayer from the numerous aspirants to clerkships and civil service employ; but I am compelled to deny that I ever heard the sound of mallet and chisel, of mortar, pestle, and trowel, the ringing sound of hammer on anvil, or roar of forge, which, to my practical mind, would have had a far sweeter sound. There is virgin land in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone yet untilled; there are buildings in the town yet unfinished; there are roads for commerce ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... impeding all progress, till he shall have untwisted its Gordian knot, but bidding him forward from strength to strength with each successive release. No romance of court or camp surpasses the romance of the forge. A blacksmith at his anvil seems to us a respectable, but not an eminently heroic person; yet, walking backward along the past by the light which he strikes from the glowing metal beneath his hand, we shall fancy ourselves to be walking in the true heroic age. Kings and warriors have brandished their swords right royally, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... thickened, and a look of unreality came over familiar objects. And then through the wavering gloom there suddenly towered a great dark mass topped by something which rose against the wild dimness like a colossal blacksmith's anvil. It might have been Vulcan's own forge, so strange and fabulous a thing it seemed! The boy's heart leaped with his pony's leap. His imagination spread its swift wings ere he could think; but in another instant he reminded himself. This was not an awful apparition, but a real ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... a clamp here just the right size to hold one of these," he explained, fitting the ribbon into place and threading its free end into a loop on a spool which looked as though made for it. But his excitement had passed; he now cautiously set a small anvil between himself and the apparatus, and then, with the aid of a long stick, he threw on ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... the scale of general favour on the inferior clergy's side, who with a profound duty to her Majesty, are perfectly pleased with the present turn of affairs. Besides, curious people will be apt to enquire into the dates of some promotions, to call to mind what designs were then upon the anvil, and from thence make malicious deductions. Perhaps they will observe the manner of voting on the bishops' bench, and compare it with what shall pass in the upper house of convocation. There is, however, one comfort, that under the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... appoint his time, when they shall come to have their work done. Which when he hath appointed them, they come at the set time, and bring both Coals and Iron with them. The Smith sits very gravely upon his Stool, his Anvil before him, with his left hand towards the Forge, and a little Hammer in his Right. They themselves who come with their work must blow the Bellows, and when the Iron is to be beaten with the great Maul, he holds it, still sitting upon his Stool, and they must hammer it themselves, he only with his ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... rocks. We soon discovered the cause; in a hollow of the rocks I saw a very hot fire, which Jack was blowing through a cane, whilst Fritz was turning amidst the embers a bar of iron. When it was red hot, they laid it on an anvil I had brought from the ship, and struck it alternately with hammers to bring it ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the "Plow, the Loom and the Anvil," upon the strength of materials, and especially upon bridge-building, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied into the English "Practical Magazine." They served at any rate to raise Philip ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... There's an inn, "The George"; There's a blacksmith's forge, And in the neat little inn's trim garden The old men, each with his own churchwarden, Bent and grey, but gossipy fellows, Sip their innocent pints of beer, While the anvil-notes ring high and clear To the rushing bass of the mighty bellows. And thence they look on a cheerful scene As the little ones play on the Village Green, Skipping about With laugh and shout As if no Darville ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... it came to the anvil part of the work, Peter found so many faults with the handling and the execution generally, that at length the lad threw down the tongs with a laugh and an ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... him the Nibelung treasure. The drama opens in Mime's hut in the depths of the forest. The dwarf is engaged in forging a sword for Siegfried, complaining the while that the ungrateful boy always dashes the swords which he makes to pieces upon the anvil as though they were toys. Siegfried now comes in, blithe and boisterous, and treats Mime's new sword like its predecessors, blaming the unfortunate smith for his incompetence. Mime reproaches Siegfried for his ingratitude, reminding him of the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... was not complete without the addition of chains to the feet, that is, extending from one leg to the other, the joints being fastened with nails, which were riveted upon an anvil. The blacksmith employed upon my legs, in this operation, observed to one of the guards, thinking I knew nothing of German, "So ill as he is, one would think they might spare him this sort of fun; ere two months be over, the angel ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... blade. In the spaces on either side are a number of trade emblems—a square, an axe, an adze, a mallet and chisel, a millrind, an axe-pick of the kind used by millers for dressing the mill-stone, the coulter of a plough, a hammer and anvil (?), and an auger, indicating probably the various mechanical aptitudes of the deceased. The connection of the family of Reidheuchs or Ridochs with Strathearn began in 1502, when King James IV. granted a charter ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... handed it to the first black. Then the kneeling man lifted out a small block of iron, which looked like a pyramid with the top flattened, clapped it on the floor, and the first black began to manipulate Humpy as a blacksmith would a horse he was about to shoe, dragging him to the little anvil with one hand, using the hammer-handle to poke him into ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 'Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand?'— 'I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant greenwood.' Kindness fadeth away, but ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott |
