"Hobnailed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... portmanteau through the prying and unutterably dirty hands of the custom-house officials I was accosted by a man dressed in the garb of a Tyrolese mountaineer—short leathern breeches reaching to the knee, gray stockings, heavy hobnailed shoes, a nondescript species of jacket of the roughest frieze, and a battered hat adorned with two or three feathers of the capercailzie and a plume of the royal eagle. Old Hansel was one of the gamekeepers on a large imperial preserve close by, with whom some years previously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... them slightly to emphasize his command. One hung on his hand, limp as a rag. The other showed fight, kicking our friend liberally about the shins, with hobnailed boots which ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... appliances of almost all kinds. In short, there is hardly any other material whose abundance would contribute more to our comfort and convenience. Noise is an automatic alarm indicating lost motion and wasted energy. Silence is economy and resiliency is superior to resistance. A gumshoe outlasts a hobnailed sole and a rubber tube full of air is better than a ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... accent was barbarous; and he, like a low comedian, seemed to relish its vulgarity. As he spoke he came in among them for shelter, and propped his spade against the wall of the chalet, kicking the soil from his hobnailed ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... walls, over which in the distance he could descry them swarming, and forming a sort of semicircle around the entrance door. The vanguard were led by a drum and a violin. The expressions on the faces of the men were wild and haggard, most wore greasy bonnets of wool, some huge wooden shoes, some hobnailed ones, and over their shoulders or in their hands protruded their weapons—pitchforks, scythes, flails, knives, clubs, and rusty guns. All must have been several thousand, collected from every hamlet in his territory. They seemed like a legion of some spectre army of Hunger and Ignorance. In the commander ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the fragments of stone over the lower ice fields. We were not roped together like mountain climbers in the Swiss or Tyrolean Alps; we got the real thrills by using our own hands and feet without ice pick, staff or hobnailed shoes. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... the bed, shoved the logs in the fireplace with his hobnailed boots until the sparks whirled upward, and the little flames ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... said Mr. Lawrence, 'was made to live in barracks or in a stable. Probably he is only in his right place when he is on a horse. Could any one but he live at Bowshott and dress in shabby shooting clothes, and smoke cigarettes in a room where Charles I. made love, and wear hobnailed boots to go up and down a ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... road. They could not belong to the wagoner's son. He would be bringing his horse and cart. The footsteps were light, too—light and hurried, and not to be associated with hobnailed boots. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sordido. A wretched hobnailed chuff, whose recreation is reading of almanacks; and felicity, foul weather. One that never prayed but for a lean dearth, and ever wept in a ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the ground, but between them appeared the bare floor. It was paved with blue stone for the most part, though here and there a square of white broke the color; and the white patches had worn lower than the rest under many generations of hobnailed boots. A faint odor of hams was in the air, and the slight, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... labours on the farm during Philip's absence. The three brothers started together. Their life in Toronto was very different to what it had been in the bush—round hats, frock-coats, and Wellington boots, superseded wideawakes, shooting-jackets, and hobnailed shoes or mocassins; and their hammers, saws, and axes, were exchanged for books, while social meetings of various sorts occupied many of the evenings when there were no lectures to attend. Harry and Charley now and then sighed for the woods and their ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... that the traces of a trail marked by flattened leaves might not be his trail? Once, on that little sheet of sand left by rain in the torrent's wake, you found the imprint of a hobnailed shoe such as the Hun hunters wear," she reminded him. "And there we first saw the flattened trail of last year's leaves—if indeed it ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... to his room, put on hobnailed boots, filled a canteen, and hurried back to the corral. Yaqui awaited him. The Indian carried a coiled lasso and a short stout stick. Without a word he led the way down the lane, turned up the river toward the mountains. None of Belding's ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... laughing, "you are a pretty little mountaineer, but you are blistering your white hands and in spite of your hobnailed shoes, your stick and your martial air, I see that you ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... stood here. If you will scrutinize the ground you will see the imprint of their hobnailed boots. They stood facing each other, just as you and I are doing at this moment. All at once they turned facing the trail and took a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... lighter flotsam which swept before the onrolling wave. Lodged in this strange pile was the body of a horse. Deep among the meshes a terrible spectacle presented itself. There were the bodies of three people—a woman, a child and a laborer with hobnailed shoes. They were beyond the reach of the workers who are clearing the wreck near to the bridge and the latter will be unable to reach the corpses until a considerable amount of blasting with dynamite ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... flooding of light into the place and the rush of hobnailed shoes on the stairs recalled even the ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... hobnailed boot appeared, his corduroy leg followed, and next moment he stood in the room with a menacing look and attitude and a short thick bludgeon in his knuckly hand. Bill quickly stood beside him. After another cautious look round, the two advanced with extreme care—each step so carefully taken ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... were interrupted by the strains from a brass band which went crashing by, while ten thousand hobnailed boots of the regiment striking the pavements in unison beat out time ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... his legion as a private infantry soldier. He is in the "hobnailed" service. But if our young noble, Publius Silius Bassus, enters upon a military career, he will probably become one of the 120 Roman horsemen attached to the legion, and will be serving as a "knight" or ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Trembling as usual the child came and gave her the books, and then with stammering tongue began saying a chapter of sacred history, when Manin's entrance interrupted them. He came in with his eternal green jacket, short breeches and rough manners, making the floor tremble under his hobnailed boots. It was this costume, which even in the country was out of date, that chiefly gave rise to the notoriety and fame he had been supposed to have as a formidable bear-hunter. He entered with his head down as usual; he peered in at ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... strange party we were, the youthful Sister, going in front, treading so softly, and we two soldiers, dusty, tattered and squalid, trying to make as little noise as possible with our heavy hobnailed boots! The nun's rosary clinked at each step against a bundle of keys that ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... violent protest, scratched the gravel with his hobnailed shoes: "I'll ask you: Am I responsible for the pressure, or the water company?" Sawdy undisturbed, continued to stroke his heavy mustache. "The water it takes to cover you, Henry," sputtered McAlpin, "would run a locomotive from ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... labour, but now with an earthen cylinder of Hofbraeu in her hands. The gentleman beside her, obviously wooing her, is third fireman at the same hotel. At the next table, a squad of yokels just in from the oberland, in their short jackets and their hobnailed boots. Beyond, a noisy meeting of Socialists, a rehearsal of some liedertafel, a family reunion of four generations, a beer party of gay young bloods from the gas works, a conference of the executive committee of the horse butchers' union. Every second drinker has brought his lunch wrapped ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... dwellings, indeed,—such is the ingenious contrivance of this piece of pictorial mechanism,—seem to have arisen, at various points of the scene, even while we have been looking at it. The forest- track, trodden more and more by the hobnailed shoes of these sturdy and ponderous Englishmen, has now a distinctness which it never could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many Indian moccasins. It will be a street, anon! As we observe ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... depravity, the sympathetic distinction of French grotesqueness. How unterrible they were, who preferred the fist to the noiseless and insidious knife! who fought with their hands instead of their feet, quite loyally; and reserved the kicks of their hobnailed boots for their ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al |
