"Gimlet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cabin, chargeth him to conceal for a time, a piece of service, which he must in any case consent to do aboard his own ship: that was, in the middle of the second watch, to go down secretly into the well of the ship, and with a spike-gimlet, to bore three holes, as near the keel as he could, and lay something against it, that the force of the water entering, might make no great noise, nor be discovered by ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... up," said Dank, "I'll kill Papa for killing Tibby. I'll bore holes in his face with Mark's gimlet. I'll cut pieces out of him. I'll get the matches and set fire to his ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the old black silk—the one with the gimlet curls and the accelerated lap-cat. Doesn't she average about as ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... a chair with a gimlet in his hand, and screwed it tightly into the wainscotting as high as he could reach; then he took a cord from the sacking of his bed, secured it to the gimlet, made a noose, put his head in, kicked the chair away—and swung by ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the shoemaker's shop. Denys louted low; the worshipful lady nodded graciously, but rapidly, having business on hand, or rather on foot; for in a moment she poked the point of her little shoe into the sleeper, and worked it round in him like a gimlet, till with a long snarl he woke. The incarnate shutter rising and grumbling vaguely, the lady swept in and deigned him no further notice. He retreated to his neighbour's shop, the tailor's, and sitting on the step, protected it from the impertinence ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... no open package of the lead to be tested, a sample can most easily be obtained by boring into the side or top of a keg with a gimlet, and with it taking out the required quantity; care should be used to free it entirely from the borings or particles of wood, and it should not be larger than the size mentioned; a larger quantity can be ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... was a strong smell of rats; and John Joiner spent the rest of the morning sniffing and whining, and wagging his tail, and going round and round with his head in the hole like a gimlet. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... hand holds an instrument which deserves a passing comment. It is a trephine, a surgical implement for cutting round pieces out of broken skulls, so as to get at the fragments which have been driven in, and lift them up. It has a handle like that of a gimlet, with a claw like a hammer, to lift with, I suppose, which last contrivance I do not see figured in my books. But the point I refer to is this: the old instrument, the trepan, had a handle like a wimble, what we call a brace or bit-stock. The trephine is not mentioned ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... examined the rungs of every chair in the Hotel, and indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing—any unusual gaping in the joints—would have sufficed ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the answer increased Darrow's interest in Miss Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the heart ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... actual work or the improvement in tool design that had occurred since Moxon's Exercises. From Nicholson's list of the tools required by the carpenter—"a ripping saw, a hand saw, an axe, an adze, a socket chisel, a firmer chisel, a ripping chisel, an auguer, a gimlet, a hammer, a mallet, a pair of pincers, and sometimes planes"—there would seem at first glance slight advance since the 1600's. The enumeration of the joiner's tools, however, indicates a considerable proliferation, particularly when compared to earlier writers. ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... the Vier Prison," he said. Mattingley had been slowly solving the problem of his salvation. His eye, like a gimlet, had screwed its way through Ranulph's words into what lay behind, and at last he understood the whole beautiful scheme. It pleased him: Carterette had been worthy of herself, and of him. Ranulph had played his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... preferring the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses, then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred years ago? There is a problem. That girl's letters to her mistress are simply throbbing with ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... amazed. What won't these investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely as not to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. You can't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... and do 'em all with a couple of scrubs. They couldn't get into mischief I suppose in there. Yet I don't know. Tommy is so bad that he would if he could. Let me see,—what could he do? If he had a gimlet he'd bore holes in the boards, and stick pins through to make the others cry. I must be sure to see if he has any gimlets in his pocket before I put him in. Oh, dear, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... more, and the surplus must run off the surface, carrying whatever it can find with it. A 4-foot drainage will be constantly tending to have four feet of soil ready for the reception of rain, and it will take much more rain to saturate four feet than two. Moreover, as a gimlet-hole bored four feet from the surface of a barrel filled with water will discharge much more in a given time than a similar hole bored at the depth of two feet, so will a 4-foot drain discharge in a given time much more water than a drain of two feet. One is acted on by a 4-foot, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... feet wide, and three feet long were the exact dimensions of the box, lined with baize. His resources with regard to food and water consisted of the following: One bladder of water and a few small biscuits. His mechanical implement to meet the death-struggle for fresh air, all told, was one large gimlet. Satisfied that it would be far better to peril his life for freedom in this way than to remain under the galling yoke of Slavery, he entered his box, which was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops, and was then addressed by his next friend, James A. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... falsehood, But at length I answer truly. By my art a boat I fashioned, By my songs a boat I builded, 250 And I sang one day, a second, And at length upon the third day, Broke my sledge as I was singing, Broke the shaft as I was singing, So I came for Tuoni's gimlet. Sought in Manala a borer, That my sledge I thus might finish. And with this might form my song-sledge. Therefore bring your boat to this side, Ferry me across the water, 260 And across the straight convey me, Let me come across ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... So he found a strip of board about a foot long and two or three inches wide, which was hollowed out on one side. Into this hollow he fixed the tube by common tacks and small wire. Then through the middle of this strip he bored a large gimlet hole, and put in a long screw, and went to the workshop in the basement to make a standard into which to screw the strip which held the tube. He couldn't find nor make just what he wanted soon enough—the ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... house in a state of thorough repair!! And on a skating experience of one of them—Mr. Arthur a Beckett—comes that well-known design of a youth at the mercy of a skate-tout at the ice-edge. "Look out!" he cries; "you are running the gimlet into my heel!" "Never mind, sir," responds the man, persuasively; ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... he, "yes, I can't explain how it is that I knows it, but I do know it. Bless you, Susan, I can see through a four-inch plank in thick weather without the aid of a gimlet hole. You may believe it or not, but I know that Miss Emma has falled in love with Dr Lawrence, but whether Dr Lawrence has failed in love with Miss Emma is more than I can tell. That plank is at least a six-inch one, an' too much for my wision. But have a care, Susan, don't mention wot I've ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... him strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes, snorted out a laugh, clapped his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse—the barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel—here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole in the candle—timed to blow the place up at one o'clock this morning, provided ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... at Vida and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it was from sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at her with his gimlet eyes and says: ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... heap of stones, where Hugh had hid them, and were fixed on the piece of timber, one end of which was just afloat in the stream. By their side was placed some lengths of fuse, a brace of pistols, a long gimlet, some hooks, and cord. Then just as it was fairly dark the log was silently pushed into the water, and swimming beside it, with one hand upon it, the little party ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... examined their butt-ends under the electric light. I saw what he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the portable tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he opened the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I tucked the small end under my arm, and presented the other ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... entirely from the burned base, he secured a thin piece of board from one of the boxes near him, from the miscellaneous tools in another box found a gimlet, and made the necessary perforations. And soon he had the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... between them and the prisoners without. The counter of the ship was covered with hard oak plank, four inches thick; and through this we undertook to cut an opening sufficiently large for a man to descend; and to do this with no other tools than our jack knives and a single gimlet. All the occupants of the Gun-room assisted in this labor in rotation; some in confidence that the plan was practicable, and the rest for amusement, or for the sake of being employed. Some one of our ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... on our own horse, though he do not gallop as gracefully and will "break up" when others are passing. There is a work for us all to do, and God gives us just the best tools to do it. What folly to be hankering after our neighbor's chalk line and gimlet! ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... as symptoms of some constitutional disorder and do not in themselves require treatment. The treatment should be applied to the disease which causes the abnormal temperature of the horns. The usual treatment for the supposed hollow horn, which consists in boring the horns with a gimlet and pouring turpentine into the openings thus made, is not only useless and cruel, but is liable to set up an acute inflammation and result in an abscess of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... carried his years well; he was very tall, and in build reminded you of the canons of the good old times. The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you don't, you 're made a fool of by your ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have been found buried in the bodies of baleen whales, which the narwhale attacks with invariable success. Others have been wrenched, not without difficulty, from the undersides of vessels that narwhales have pierced clean through, as a gimlet pierces a wine barrel. The museum at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris owns one of these tusks with a length of 2.25 meters and a width at its base ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... guest. And he, with shoulders so abnormally broad as to appear deformed, clad in sober Puritan garb, ate serenely on, unconscious of her glances, making use of both his huge hands in the operation, his little gimlet eyes twinkling greedily, his head, oddly resembling a cone, blazing like a fire whenever a ray of sun chanced to fall across it. I noticed he occasionally stole shy glances at her, nor could I wonder, for, in spite of fatigue and exposure, Madame remained a winsome sight, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... two eyes as bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, And working his face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in dismay from the gimlet-eyed cacique who had said there would be no more fighting. He looked at Naida, well aware of the fact that it was her interference which had made Kirby extend his demand. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you first as last. Marry, an you will have it, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... face in the papers." I mentioned my name and then went right on to say, "I wanted to tell you the first thing, I hadn't nothin' to do with that slightin' piece about you you probable read in the Jonesville Auger. The Nation knew I had writ for it, and for the Gimlet, and I wuz awful afraid you'd think it wuz me, and be mad at me, but I'm as innocent as a infant babe. Keturah Snyder writ it, and she's been through with trials enough to make her bitter but bein' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... alone, defiantly as she thought, but in truth slavishly and abjectly, subject to every wave of the melody, and probed by the gimlet-like gaze of her fascinator's open eye; keeping up at the same time a feeble smile in his face, as a feint to signify it was still her own pleasure which led her on. A terrified embarrassment as to what she ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... jumped as if somebody had run a gimlet into him, and even Psmith started slightly. They had not heard Mr Bickersdyke approaching. Mike, who had been stolidly entering addresses in his ledger during the latter part of the conversation, was ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... underneath the helmet. I doubt whether there ever was any age of chivalry. . . . . It certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days. The point of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to acquaint me the heifer was brought to Matavai. I immediately went on shore and found that he had been as good as his word. The purchase money was paid, which consisted of a shirt, a hatchet, a spike nail, a knife, a pair of scissors, a gimlet, and file; to which was added a small quantity of loaf-sugar. Teppahoo appeared well pleased with his bargain; and I sent the heifer to Poeeno's residence near which was ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... these gimlet-eyed fellows hunt up the markings. This edition was gotten up by Sunderland for a high-low-jack pack, and was read the first night. The profession never use it, the marks are so apparent. Try ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi. But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time. Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of oil, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... pleadingly; he looked greatly puzzled, and very, very much disturbed. Then she looked at the gimlet-eyed man in the chair and saw his eyes rove from one to another of the girls questioningly. He began to speak ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the anchor round on its fluke, so that the motion of the stock appears similar to that of the handle of a gimlet when it is employed to bore a hole. To turn anything round on ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth |
