"Axle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he want you down there In the Nether Glooms where The hours may be a dragging load upon him, As he hears the axle grind Round and round Of the great world, in the blind Still profound Of the night-time? He might liven at the sound Of your string, revealing you ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... showed the greatness of his soul. In the confusion of the moment we had run afoul of a stout young oak, which obstinately menaced the integrity of our axle. It was only possible to back out of the predicament, but Barney scorned the thought of retreat. Not all the blandishments of the Small Boy, whether brought to bear in the form of entreaties, remonstrances, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... to the cove below. It was necessary, therefore, to make the attempt, but it was impossible for the best built carriage to travel long on such a road; and when we had half descended the bank, which led into the ravine on its north side, the axle-tree broke short in the middle. The baggage was therefore taken off and carried down to the bottom, where the tents were pitched at eleven A.M., the wheels being left where the cart broke down, as sound ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... wheels on a broad base-line had been brought for the purpose, and the chassis, engine included, was rested on the axle. Relays of men steadied and propelled the heavy load, others armed with axes and entrenching spades going on ahead to clear the path. Other parties transported the floats and planes, while advance and rear guards and flankers were thrown out to guard against a possible ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... He became a country peddler, trading between Polotzk and Yuchovitch, and taking in all the desolate little hamlets scattered along that route. Fifteen rubles' worth of goods was a big bill to carry out of Polotzk. The stock consisted of cheap pottery, tobacco, matches, boot grease, and axle grease. These he bartered for country produce, including grains in small quantity, bristles, rags, and bones. Money was seldom handled in ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... dexterous commodore, the time, as well as the vessel, was rapidly gliding along; the latter being assisted by a little breeze that rippled the surface of the water. So, after a three miles' ride, we approached Fort Plain, which boasts of numerous factories, and also the largest spring and axle works of the world. The Clinton Liberal Institute, one of the leading military schools of the State, occupies a commanding position, overlooking the valley. The site of old Fort Plain, of revolutionary memory, is within ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... and greatlye admyred in Paris, where shee oftetimes out-Frensheth ye Frennsh themselves. As for mee, I doe avowe that I adore her, for as muche as shee is a noble bricke, and, as DAN LYDGATE sayth, 'a whole teeme, whyppe and alle, wyth a Dalmatian coache-dog under ye axle.' And thatt shee may go itt like a Countesse whyle shee is younge, and a Duchesse whenn shee is olde, is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... two-ton Hawkesbury, with seven-and-a-half tons of load, was down to the axle-beds; and the Cornstalk was endeavouring, by means of extracts from the sermons of Knox's soundest followers, to do something like justice to the contingency. Thompson sighed, glanced toward the ram-paddock, and hooked his team in front of Cooper's. Mosey, who had been ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... different from that which we find in the human machine. In the motor cycle all the levers are of that complex kind which are called wheels, and the joints at which these levers work are also circular, for the joints of a motor cycle are the surfaces between the axle and the bushes, which have to be kept constantly oiled. No, we freely admit that the systems of levers in the human machine are quite unlike those of a motor cycle. They are more simple, and it is easy to find in our bodies examples ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... deny that my feelings rose to 104 in the shade. "The idea! That this long-eared animal this literary kangaroo this illiterate hostler with his skull full of axle-grease—this....." But I stopped there, for this was not the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... felloe. A second and third shot smashed rapidly through the spokes of the staggering wheel. A threatening boulder lying to the right of the wagon's course could not be avoided. The men on the line jerked and swore. It was useless. One side of the wheel collapsed, the front axle swung around and the blazing wagon straddled the troublesome boulder like a stranded ship. The men guiding heaved to on the line—it parted; the cabin ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... diameter. Cut two of them and tack them together. The diagram "b" is easier to cut out and will serve the purpose just as well. When the two are temporarily tacked together, bore a hole through the centre for the axle. The eight spokes should be of light material and not too pointed or they will sink in the ground and prevent accuracy. The spokes are tacked on one disc as shown in "c" and then the other disc is ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... from the axle of the wheel to the step higher would have been a graceful spectacle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dreary mist. The streams which rushed down the gorges to the Shenandoah had swelled to brawling torrents, and in the hollows of the fields the water stood in sheets. Men and horses floundered through the mud. The guns sunk axle-deep in the treacherous soil; and it was only by the help of large detachments of pioneers that the heavy waggons of the train were able to proceed at all. It was in vain that piles of stones and brushwood were strewn upon the roadway; the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and looked at ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... a time. As the cluster of barrels revolves each one is fired at the lowest point, and reloaded as it completes the revolution. The gun is mounted on a wye-shaped trunnion; the lower end of the wye passes down into a socket in the axle. The gun is pointed by a lever just as one points a garden hose or sprinkler, with the advantage that the gun can be clamped at any instant, and will then continue to sprinkle its drops of death over the same row of plants until the clamps are released. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... axle, a pole; next a prince; a high order or doyen in Sainthood especially amongst ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... not so much as ruffle. About a thousand of them were housed there, each in its little chamber, encouraged to grow plump, and to breed, in perfect self-content. From perch to perch of the great axle-tree in the centre, monastic feet might climb, gentle monastic hands pass round to every tiny compartment in turn. The arms of the monastery were carved on the keystone of the doorway, and the tower finished ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... deadly road! It was all we could do to crawl to Krasnoyarsk and my trap had to be repaired twice. The first thing to be broken was the vertical piece of iron connecting the front of the carriage with the axle; then the so-called circle under the front broke. I have never in all my life seen such a road—such impassable mud and such an utterly neglected road. I am going to write about its horrors to the Novoye Vremya, and so won't ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... to take the lid off my transmission-box and gaze at my wondrous works. He was always tightening my axle-burrs, or dosing me with kerosene through my hot-air pipe, or toying with my timer. While he was never so smart as Willie about such things, he was intelligent and quick to learn; and this was not surprising to me after I discovered the nature ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... passenger coach was painted yellow. He described the first locomotive as having a tall smoke stack, a single wheel, and a crank axle, with no cab, the engineer standing unprotected through wind and weather. He said it required a cord of two-foot wood to make the trip from Lexington to Frankfort and return, that the engineer stopped ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... the town, what a strange collection of baggage animals, horses, camels, and donkeys! What a mass of carts, drays, buggies, wheelbarrows, handbarrows, and many queer makeshifts for carrying goods—the strangest of all a large barrel set on an axle, and dragged or shoved by means of two long handles, the proud possessor's belongings turning round and round inside until they must surely be churned into a most confusing jumble. Then we see the "Swagman" with his load on his back, perhaps ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... relieve the pain without doing anything to remove its cause, merely make the latter state of that individual worse than the first. Headache is always and everywhere nature's vivid warning that something is going wrong, like the shrieking of a wagon-axle or the clatter of a broken cog ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... did not care to take any risk. Strange to say, they had come to take pride in their son's wife; for even General and Mrs. Armour, high-minded and of serene social status as they were, seemed not quite insensible to the pleasure of being an axle on which a system of social ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... if the loads of material for the work are still more colossal in size and weight, we shall not entrust them to a windlass, but set in an axle-tree, held by sockets as the windlass was, and carrying on its centre a large drum, which some term a wheel, but the Greeks call it [Greek: amphiesis] ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Avarice, that grasped his guilty gold; 50 These, as the sorceress her loud sistrum rung, Their dismal paean sung; And still, far off, pale Pity hung her head, Whilst o'er the dying and the dead The victor's brazen wheels with gory axle rolled. Now look on him, in holy courage bold; The asserter of his country's cause behold! He lifts his gaze to heaven, serenely brave, And whilst around war's fearful banners wave, He prays: Protect us, as our cause is just; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... drop a few shells among the enemy! Then suddenly he conceived a daring project, nothing less than to repair the injury there and then, under that terrible fire. Assisted by one of his men he ran back to the caisson and secured the spare wheel that was attached to the rear axle, and then commenced the most dangerous operation that can be executed on a battlefield. Fortunately the extra men and horses that he had sent for came up just then, and he had two cannoneers to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... timber of that country both for beauty and duration. The bark of this tree makes excellent oakum for that part of ships which is under water, but does not answer when exposed to the sun and air. They export also the wood of a tree named luma, for axle-trees and the poles of carriages; of a particular kind of hazle for ship-building, which answers excellently for oars; they likewise make chests and boxes of a species of cypress, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... by mid-morning, he had all the wood cut. He had seen a circular stone, mounted on a trestle with a metal axle through it, and judged it to be some sort of a grinding-wheel, since it was fitted with a foot-pedal and a rusty metal can was set above it to spill water onto the grinding-edge. After chopping the wood, he carefully sharpened the ax, handing ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... the drays sank up to their axle-trees, and the horses above their fetlocks at every step. The fields of polygonum spread on every side of us, like a dark sea, and the only green object within range of our vision was the river line of trees. In several instances the force of both teams was put to one dray, to extricate ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... it to be no accident. A burr does not easily work off the end of an axle. He had greased the old wagon just before he started for the store, and he knew he had replaced each ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... boiling water and ceasing to breathe. Whenever he did this, a cold, smarting rain drove through the water on his face and forced him to breathe, but he managed to sink deeper and deeper, till at last he felt the throb of the great world on its axle going round, and saw the stars below him, and knew ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the shady gloom Had given day her room, The sun himself withheld his wonted speed, And hid his head for shame, As his inferior flame The new enlightened world no more should need: He saw a greater sun appear Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... is known as a cable road, there being a single sleeper with three rails, one on the top which really bore the weight, and one on each side near the bottom, which supported the wheels, which coming out from the axle at a sharp angle, prevented the vehicle from being overturned. The road covers the last 4,000 feet of the ascent, and the power house is at the bottom, a steel cable running up, passing round a wheel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... sure it was impossible, but sure they might do it." And they talked and screamed together in English and Irish equally unintelligible to us, and in spite of all remonstrance about breaking the pole—pole, and wheels, and axle, and body, they seized of the carriage, and standing and jumping from stone to stone, or any tuft of bog that could bear them, as their practised eyes saw; they, I cannot tell you how, dragged, pushed, and screamed the carriage over. And Sir Culling got over his way, and Lady Smith would not be ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... your body over it, feet foremost. At first, in all probability, your legs will go angling in the air convulsively, and come down with nothing caught; but ere long we shall see you dispense with the spring from the ground and go whirling over and over, as if the bar were the axle of a wheel and your legs the spokes. Now spring upon the bar, supporting yourself on your palms, as before; put your hands a little farther apart, with the thumbs forward, then suddenly bring up your knees on the bar and let your whole body ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... of imposture thus raised was quickly silenced by fresh proof. Robert Sherringham, farmer, deposed that 'about two years since, passing along the street with his cart and horses, the axle-tree of his cart touched her house and broke down some part of it; at which she was very much displeased, threatening him that his horses should suffer for it. And so it happened; for all those ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... wrong. He was no longer angry and defiant, but his grief was dry and harsh, and his sensibilities creaked like a dry axle. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... deck of a ship in case it was to be used in naval warfare. The heaviest gun manufactured in Germany was of 4-1/4-inch calibre, throwing a shell of forty pounds weight. This could be mounted directly over the rear axle of a heavy motor truck. To protect the structure of the car from the shock of the recoil these guns are of course equipped with hydraulic or other appliances for taking it up. They are manufactured also in the 3-inch ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Old Monte hitches the Navajo to the hind axle with a lariat which French brings out, an' then the stage, with the savage coastin' along behind, goes rackin' off to the No'th. Later, Monte an' the passengers hangs this yere remainder up in a pine tree, at an Injun crossin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... they were locoed; it was a wonder the stage wasn't upset, racing this way and that, up the bank and down on the other side. Jim Bailey crawled out on the axle, picked up the dragging reins and got back just in time to keep Leonard from bouncing out. He heaved him up and held him round the body, and when he got the horses going straight, took a look at him. That first time he thought he was dead, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... cursed tyira lupului[33] the axle of my coach gave way. I have always said that that bad bit of road ought to be seen to, this is at least the sixth time that ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... weapon; his whip would be but little good against a monstrous beast twelve foot in length and six foot about the waist. But whilst the giant went for his club, bethinking him of a very good weapon, he made no more ado, but took his cart, turned it upside down, and took axle-tree and wheel for shield and buckler. And very good ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... to-day; And icy moons, with weary sameness, weave From their own light their fullness and decay: Home to the Poet's land the Gods are flown; Light use in them that later world discerns, Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown, On its own axle turns. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... absolutely practical, than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round very fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the cause of such phaenomena, and ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... those of the burghers who held together had reached Luneburg, and shortly afterwards they had got completely away from the British columns. The weather was atrocious, and the lumbering wagons, axle-deep in mud, made it impossible for troops who were attached to them to keep in touch with the light riders who sped before them. For some weeks there was no word of the main Boer force, but at the end of that time they reappeared in a manner which showed that both in numbers and in ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the chaise, in order to offer what help was in my power. "Help me," said the poor fellow, as I drew nigh; but before I could reach the horses, they had turned rapidly round, one of the fore-wheels flew from its axle-tree, the chaise was overset, and the postillion flung violently from his seat upon the field. The horses now became more furious than before, kicking desperately, and endeavouring to disengage themselves from the fallen chaise. As I was hesitating whether to run to the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... straightens, And whack!—strikes his forehead. The man begins roaring, Abusing the bully, The duffer, the block-head. Another comes driving A cart full of wood-ware, As tipsy as can be; He turns it all over! The axle is broken, 250 And, trying to mend it, He ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... the stage of numbness and melancholy. She had just ordered the coachman to drive home, when the rear of the carriage suddenly sank a little and a wheel ground against the side. Edna screamed, and the driver stopped the horses. People came running up from the walks, and the words "broken axle" went round. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... baked, plenty of cheese and butter bought, and meat cooked for the more respectable people. The ship was provided with four wheels, or rather four great rolling stocks, fenced about with iron, with great big axle-trees in them, well greased against the appointed day. I had been loading in the wood that day, and sending the team forward, I went to see the business—and a pretty piece of business it turned out. All the food was eaten, the drink swallowed to the last drop, the ship drawn ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... that about two years before, as he was passing along the street with his cart and horse, the axle-tree of his cart touched Rose Cullender's house, and broke down some part of it, at which she was very much displeased, threatening him that his horses ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... underneath with flints or iron spikes, on which either the driver rides or some heavy weight is imposed in order, as it is drawn around, to separate the grain from the chaff: others use for this purpose what is called the punic cart, consisting of a series of axle trees, equipped with toothed rollers, on which some one sits and drives the cattle which draw it, as they do in hither Spain and other places. Others cause the grain to be trodden out under the hoofs of a herd of driven cattle, which ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... "Whoa" than to "Hadaap." Podagrous beasts, yet not stiffened to immobility. Gayer steeds would have sundered the shackling drag. These would never, by any gamesome caracoling, endanger the coherency of pole with body, of axle with wheel. From end to end the equipage was congruous. Every part of the machine was its weakest part, and that fact gave promise of strength: an invalid never dies. Moreover, the coach suited the day: the rusty was in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... bullocks, and all must have been precipitated. No one knew what could be done until some one proposed to bring up an elephant, and let him manage it his own way. The elephant took a moment's survey of the fix, put his trunk under the axle of the free wheel, and waited. The surrounders, who saw what he meant, moved the bullocks gently forward, the elephant followed, supporting the axle, until there was ground under the wheel, when he let it quietly ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... each player takes the name of a part of a coach, as the axle, the door, the box, the reins, the whip, the wheels, the horn; or of some one connected with it, as the driver, the guard, the ostlers, the landlord, the bad-tempered passenger, the cheerful passenger, the passenger who made puns, the old lady with the bundle, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... carts, junks, chairs, tables, chopsticks, etc., which we still see in China, are probably very much those of two thousand years ago. Mencius, of the third century B.C., observed that written characters had the same form, and axle-trees the same breadth, all over the empire; and to this day an unaltering uniformity is one of the chief characteristics of the Chinese people in ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... which thus in godlike accents spoke:— 'The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?' 'Yes,' the man replied. 'Well,' said the voice, 'I'll aid thee now; Take up thy whip.' 'I have ... but, how? ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... salt pans and windmills. One of these windmills is especially pleasing; it consists of five or six dummy ships with real sails on a pond; these ships form, as it were, the rim of a wheel lying on its side, the spokes being poles which attach the ships to the axle, an island in the middle of the pond. The wind blows and the ships race after one another round and round the pond, causing the poles to work the mechanism ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... materials being delivered at convenient points by chutes. As the tops pass by these men quickly bolt them into place, and the completed body is sent to a place where it awaits the chassis. This important section, comprising all the machinery, starts at one end of a moving platform as a front and rear axle bolted together with the frame. As this slowly advances, it passes under a bridge containing a gasoline tank, which is quickly adjusted. Farther on the motor is swung over by a small hoist and lowered into position on the frame. Presently the dash ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... quarter of an hour, beyond making the car secure, he had accomplished nothing. The key which bound the wheel on its axle was rusted and jammed. He hammered at it with one hand and held on the best he could with the other, but the wind persisted in swinging and twisting his body, and made his blows miss more often than not. Nine-tenths of the strength he expended was in trying to hold himself steady. For fear ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... put his arms around the axle and tried to get one leg over; but as soon as he took his foot off the ground, the wheels began to go. He put his foot down again and made the wheels go faster, hanging on to the axle with his arms and paddling on the ground with his feet, for ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... proudly, as he freely and fully assented to the measure which promised such an abundant harvest. Vainly did the despairing and dispirited pedler implore a different judgment; the huge box which capped the body of his travelling vehicle, torn from its axle, without any show of reverential respect for screw or fastening, was borne in a moment through the capacious entrance of the hall, and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... machinery drew up the chain was this: The end of the chain, which was within the mill, was wound around an axle, which was made to revolve by the machinery. The axle, thus revolving, wound up the chain, and, in this manner, drew it gradually in, by which means the log, which was attached to the lower end of it, was ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... held counsel with the gods and decided to destroy the reckless race of men. At first he wanted to turn his lightnings over all the earth, but the fear that the ether would take fire and destroy the axle of the universe restrained him. He laid aside the thunderbolt which the Cyclops had fashioned for him, and decided to send rain from heaven over all the earth and so destroy ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... down a certain number of axles an hour. At definite, brief intervals a fragment of an automobile would move along the assembling track and pause beneath his spout—and his axle must be ready. There was a constant procession of fragments, and a second's delay brought up to his ears pointed commentary from below. ... The more pointed that those below knew who was ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... who stands in the way of the men who assemble here perishes. He who would oppose them takes his life in his hands. You are, young man, as if I had led you to the center of the earth, and I had placed your hand upon the very pivot, the well-oiled axle, upon which, noiselessly, the whole great globe revolves, and from which the awful forces extend which ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Sam jacked up the axle of the automobile and put on a new tire—inner tube and shoe combined—Sam set to work and cleaned up the roadway, throwing all the glass into the bushes. Then the new tire was pumped up ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... hub and eight radial spokes bent upward toward the ends at an angle of 45 deg.. The hub and spokes are supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the altitude of the luminary. The heater is composed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... the results of an accident may be dreadful, therefore the danger of the accident occurring at all is very great. On land, a slight derangement of a rail, a slight obstacle on a track, the breaking of a wheel or of an axle, may plunge a railroad train to frightful disaster; but we know from annual experience that while such accidents do happen, and sometimes with appalling consequences, the chance of their happening ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... like lambs, while I set to work to repair damages. The pole was snapped, and the whiffletree smashed, so that the traces were useless. I did some fair jury work with a lucky bit of spruce wood, the whiffletree, and the axle, and got the pole spliced. It struck me that even so we should have to do the rest of the way to Billy Jones's at a walk, but I saw no sense in saying so. I got the horses back on the pole, and Paulette in the wagon holding the reins, still talking to the horses quietly and by name. But as I jumped ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... descends her blushing car; Each circling wheel a wreath of flowers intwines, And gem'd with flowers the silken harness shines; The golden bits with flowery studs are deck'd, And knots of flowers the crimson reins connect.— 65 And now on earth the silver axle rings, And the shell sinks upon its slender springs; Light from her airy seat the Goddess bounds, And steps celestial ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... pessimistic attitude. Penrod felt in a dark corner of the box and laid hands upon a simple apparatus consisting of an old bushel-basket with a few yards of clothes-line tied to each of its handles. He passed the ends of the lines over a big spool, which revolved upon an axle of wire suspended from a beam overhead, and, with the aid of this improvised pulley, lowered the empty basket until it came to rest in an upright position upon the floor of the storeroom at ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... wisest, should not frown as Power, but smile As kindness, watching all, till the true must Shall make her strike as Power: but when to strike— O Tostig, O dear brother—If they prance, Rein in, not lash them, lest they rear and run And break both neck and axle. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... holds in his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it as it dries up, as a fisher watches a grain of sand in his hand? That mighty law of attraction that suspends the world in space, torments it—and consumes it in endless desire—every planet that carries its load of misery and groans on its axle—calls to each other across the abyss, and each wonders which will stop first. God controls them; they accomplish assiduously and eternally their appointed and useless task; they whirl about, they suffer, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... after leaving Florence trouble began with the carts. The sand of the dry prairie got into the wooden hubs and ground the axles so that they broke, and constant delays were caused by the necessity of making repairs., No axle grease had been provided, and some of the company were compelled to use their precious allowance of bacon to grease the wheels. At Wood River, where the plains were alive with buffaloes, a stampede ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... wrists betraying the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... again and rode to the rear of the buckboard. Taking the braided hair rope that hung from the pommel of his saddle he made a hitch around the center of the rear axle. Then he wheeled his pony until it faced away from the buckboard, rode the length of the rope carefully, halted when it was taut, and then slowly, with his end of the rope fastened securely to the saddle horn, pulled the buckboard to a level on ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... noise of a primitive conveyance behind him. It was a telega. Curiously primitive, the telega is four-wheeled, with two planks thrown crudely across the axle-trees. Rouletabille gave the man who was seated in it thee roubles, and jumped into the planks beside him, and the two little Finnish horses, whose manes hung clear to the mud, went like the wind. Such crude conveyances are necessary on such crude ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... doesn't understand what he meeans, he doesn't meean wars, he meeans 'at things will ha to be turned raand. Nah my dowter tells me 'at th' world's in a revolution allus, that is, it keeps turnin raand ov its own axle tree throo morn to ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... and indirectly prevented our rejoining the train. Your mother and Frances were walking on ahead; you and Georgia were asleep in the wagon; and father was walking beside it, down a steep hill. It had almost reached the base of the incline when the axle to the fore wheels broke, and the wagon tipped over on the side, tumbling its contents upon you two children. Father and uncle, in great alarm, rushed to your rescue. Georgia was soon hauled out safely through ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... always gamble; and when you're in good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Drove onward, yoke even with yoke, now one And now the other leading by a head. Through all the courses but the last that youth Ill-starred stood safely in an upright car. But at the last, slackening his left-hand rein, As his horse turned the goal, he unawares The pillar struck and broke his axle-tree. Out of the car he rolled, still in the reins Entangled, while his horses, as he fell, Rushed wildly through the middle of the course. The whole assembly, when they saw him fall, Raised a loud cry of horror at the fate Of him that was the hero ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... mules in rear to it, and carrying the end to men on the opposite shore. The bank down to the water was steep on both sides. A rope long enough to cross the river, therefore, was attached to the back axle of the wagon, and men behind would hold the rope to prevent the wagon "beating" the mules into the water. This latter rope also served the purpose of bringing the end of the forward one back, to be used over again. The water was deep enough for a short distance to swim the little Mexican ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... without anything to reveal the presence of a human being amid the solitude. At last the sculptor alighted and saw that the left wheel of the carriage, which was grazing the edge of the precipice, had lost its linch-pin and was on the point of leaving the axle-tree, which would almost inevitably have hurled ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... back to the city, we came down by a tower that was used by carriages to approach the Chateau. The sloping gravelled walk turns around a stone axle like the steps of a staircase. The arch is dark and lighted only by the rays that creep through the loop-holes. The columns on which the interior end of the vault rests, are decorated with grotesque or vulgar subjects. A dogmatic intention seems to have presided over their composition. It ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... and down the carriage-road, his countenance as demure as if he had no idea of suddenly departing when my back should be turned. The wheels of the goat carriage uttered the most heartrending noises I had ever heard from ungreased axle; so I persuaded the boys to dismount, and submit to the temporary unharnessing of the goat, while I should lubricate the axles. Half an hour of dirty work sufficed, with such assistance as I gained from juvenile advice, to accomplish the ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on, His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his axle Is immortality...." ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... it is to wake at night, When over all there reigns the ultimate spell Of complete silence, darkness absolute, To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree, In slow gyration, with no sensible sound, Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched In vigilance of ecstasy among Ethereal paths and the celestial maze. The rumour of our onward course now ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... know each other like two faithful friends, as the earth knows her moon, the moon her earth. What is one without the other? Why must they be separated? Did you ever walk along a forest path? The tracks of two wheels run side by side and never touch. The axle holds them asunder, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mischief—was conscripted into the national service and set to laying eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it would be as nutritious as any other—to one who has no imagination. Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of those tropical islands that we are so ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... the road - no cart. Transfer the scene to Vailima, where on a sudden to Fanny and me, the cart appears, apparently at a hard gallop, some two hours before it was expected; Henry radiantly ruling chaos from the bench. It stopped: it was long before we had time to remark that the axle was twisted like the letter L. Our first care was the horses. There they stood, black with sweat, the sweat raining from them - literally raining - their heads down, their feet apart - and blood running thick from the ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in cider apples heaped under Devon apple-trees, nor, next day, the sportsmen banging off guns at the partridges around Salisbury. The slow, jolly life of England on either side of the high road turned leisurely as a wagon-wheel on its axle, while between hedgerows, past farm hamlets, church-towers and through the cobbled streets of market towns, he had sped and rattled with Collingwood's dispatch in his sealed case. The news had reached London with him. His last post-boys had carried it to their stables, and ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with the spirit of the half-tamed beasts and the feebleness of the drivers, accidents were not uncommon, and we passed several unhappy groups who had been tumbled with their property into a ditch, or who were standing in anxious debate round a cracked shaft or a broken axle. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... met a young chap going to Chinchilla this morning, and he told me to try and straighten the axle of his buggy, and take it ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... spoke their own Highland tongue. Volumes might be written of this, the colonists' first year in their Promised Land: how the rude Plain Rangers conveyed them to the buffalo hunt in their {387} creaking Red River carts,—carts made entirely of wood, hub, tire, axle, and all, or else on loaned ponies; how when storm came the white settlers were welcomed to the huts and skin tents of the French half-breeds, given food and buffalo blankets; how many a young Highlander came to grief in the wild stampede of his first buffalo hunt; how when the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... that in common decency he should offer to lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest tug and was twisting stoutly at ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... talk dat goes 'round," said Uncle Eben, "ain' no mo' real help in movin' forward dan de squeak in an axle." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... ran the ropes rapidly around the rear axle and jumped on the sleds. A shout, a sudden jerk, and they were off, swinging around the corner on Southern Avenue with a momentum which shot them far to one side. John drew a breath of relief, for it was his first experience at the sport. Bill looked up from ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... at length to patch up the wagon by tying the "rocker" of the wagon body to the forward axle with the rope halter, and reloading our meal bags, drove slowly home without further incident. Addison, having captured the reins, retained possession of them, much to my mental relief. Halstead laid the blame alternately to the woman and to Addison's effort to ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... considerable extent by hand carts of the general type shown by Fig. 12, which illustrates one made by the Ransome Concrete Machinery Co. The bowl of this cart has a capacity of 6 cu. ft. water measure. It is hung on a 1-in. steel axle; the wheels are 42 ins. in diameter with staggered spokes and 2-in. half oval tires. The top of the bowl is 29 ins. from the ground. Owing to the large diameter of the wheels and the fact that no weight comes on the wheeler, ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... and heavy, smashed the German trenches on the hill opposite. The headquarters men and I looked over the valley and saw the line of bursting shells. Much to their amusement, I told them that this was my music, that I had ordered the shoot. I felt like the fly on the axle of a cart, who said to his companion fly, "Look at the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... was in a bad condition, owing to the recent wet weather, and on each side of the five canadas, or small rivers, which we had to ford, there were deep morasses, through which we had to struggle as best we could, with the mud up to our axle-trees. Just before arriving at the point where the stream had to be crossed, the horses were well flogged and urged on at a gallop, which they gallantly maintained until the other side was reached. Then we stopped to breathe the horses and to repair damages, generally ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... standing room for a row of from ten to twenty persons upon the wheel. Their weight, the first moving power of the machine, produces the greatest effect when applied upon the circumference of the wheel at or near the level of its axle; to secure therefore this mechanical advantage, a screen of boards is fixed up in an inclined position above the wood, in order to prevent the prisoners from climbing or stepping up higher than the level required. A hand rail is fixed upon ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... of evil which is so much dreaded by the Breton peasantry as the Ankou, who travels the duchy in a cart, picking up souls. In the dead of night a creaking axle-tree can be heard passing down the silent lanes. It halts at a door; the summons has been given, a soul quits the doomed house, and the wagon of the Ankou passes on. The Ankou herself—for the dread death-spirit of Brittany is probably female—is usually represented as a skeleton. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... that night. The horse was an aged mare, with high withers, and galls on her shoulders and fetlocks unshorn, after the fashion of Belgian horses; and the dogcart was a venerable ruin, which creaked a great protest at every turn of the warped wheels on the axle. We had been able to buy the two— the mare and the cart—only because the German soldiers had not thought them ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Paulin. Nolan. apud Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 397, No. 5.) Yet pomp is well exchange for convenience; and a plain modern coach, that is hung upon springs, is much preferable to the silver or gold carts of antiquity, which rolled on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... extremity.—This property has lately been prettily applied in ornamental clocks. A piece of glass, twisted so that its surface acquires a ridge in the form of a screw, is inserted in the mouth of some figure designed to represent a fountain. One end of the glass is attached to the axle of a wheel, which the clock-work keeps in a state of constant rotation, and the other end is concealed in a vessel, designed to represent a reservoir or basin. The continual rotation of the twisted glass produces the appearance of a progressive motion, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... set, His Mirror, with full face borrowing her Light From him, for other Lights she needed none In that aspect, and still that distance keeps Till Night; then in the East her turn she shines, Revolv'd on Heavns great Axle, and her Reign With thousand lesser Lights dividual holds, With thousand thousand Stars! that then ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 'The axle is broken ... it caught fire,' he replied gloomily, and he suddenly arranged the collar on the off-side horse with such indignation that it was almost pushed over, but it stood its ground, snorted, shook itself, and tranquilly ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... score rods. Each street ends in the illimitable open, and it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... his mules, and the heavy carriage rocked upon its creaking axle, whilst the king of France, alone, cast down, annihilated, did not dare to look either behind ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Sam. "It's another brake, one that Dick heaved overboard." And he pointed to the ropes and hooks. One hook, the biggest, had caught in a rock lining the gully, and the ropes were in a mess around the wheels and the rear axle. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... winter quarters. In the meantime our eight little pups are thriving on board; they have a grand world to wander round—the whole fore-deck, with an awning over it. You can hear their little barks and yelps as they rush about among shavings, hand-sledges, the steam-winch, mill-axle, and other odds and ends. They play a little and they fight a little, and forward under the forecastle they have their bed among the shavings—a very cozy corner, where 'Kvik' lies stretched out like a lioness in all her majesty. There they tumble over each other in a heap round her, sleep, yawn, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen |
