"Sharpened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Set apart for this peculiar duty, their services in the sanctuary only tended to prepare them for their sterner duties in the field of battle, where the zeal of the Christian soldier may be supposed to have been somewhat sharpened by the prospect of the rich temporal acquisitions, which the success of his arms was sure to secure to his fraternity. For the superstitious princes of those times, in addition to the wealth lavished so liberally ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... of his brother! Before the Indians had dealing with the whites, they made their own weapons: their bows were strung with the sinews of deer; their arrows were headed with flint; their knives were sharpened bone; their war-clubs were formed of wood, cut into different shapes, and armed with sharp stones; and their tomahawks, or hatchets, were of the same materials: but now, many of their weapons, such as hatchets, spear-heads, and knives, are made of iron, being procured from the ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... youth. Moreover, an ungovernable impulse drove him into whatever indulgence, bodily or mental, was forbidden him. His sarcasm was so much the more cruel as it was witty and piquant, and as it seized with precision upon every point open to ridicule. All this was sharpened by a vivacity of body and of mind that proceeded to the degree of impetuosity, and that during his early days never permitted him to learn any thing except by doing two things at once. Every form of pleasure he loved with a violent avidity, and all this with ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Bremner, who, being one of the principal masons, had to attend chiefly to the digging out of the foundation-pit of the building, and knew that his tools could not be sharpened unless the forge ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... after a sea-experience of six years from the time when I dodged about London streets, a ragged Arab, with wits sharpened by the constant fight for food, I found myself roaming the streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts. How I came to be there, of all places in the world, does not concern this story at all, so I am not going to trouble my readers ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Lord. Now she happened to have in the house a pair of fatted ganders[FN482] and she also had a lover whom she kept in the background. Presently the man came to visit her and seeing beside her the plump birds felt his appetite sharpened by them, so he said to her, "O Such-an-one, needs must thou let cook these two geese with the best of stuffing so that we may make merry over them, for that my mind is bent upon eating goose flesh." Quoth ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to make a rabbit pot-pie, with dumplings. They had seen such things made at home and went at the task with care. When the pot-pie was served all declared it "the best ever." Perhaps the dumplings were a trifle heavy, but what of that? Living in the open air had sharpened their appetites wonderfully and nobody was disposed to quarrel over ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... before his look her own gaze wavered. If they had been alone it is barely possible that ... but they were not alone. Mrs. Tidditt was there and, by this time, as Judah would have said, "her neck-feathers were on end" and her spurs sharpened for battle. She hopped into the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... as to the use that has been made of it. Our crowded slums do not proclaim the glory of Watt and Stephenson as the heavens remind us of Kepler and Newton. Selfishness has grown fat on ill-paid labour, and jealous nations have sharpened their weapons with every device that science can suggest. But a sober judgement, as well as the clearest evidence of history, dictates a more hopeful conclusion. Industry, the twin brother of science, has vastly increased our wealth, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... tanks get thoroughly rusted, then scrape off scale and rust with files sharpened to a chisel edge, rub down large surfaces with sandstone, and use No. 3 emery cloth between rivet heads, etc., then wash off with turpentine. This will give you a good solid ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... often made a charge against professing Christians that their religion has very little to do with common morality. The taunt has sharpened multitudes of gibes and been echoed in all sorts of tones: it is very often too true and perfectly just, but if ever it is, let it be distinctly understood that it is not so because of Christian men's religion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... balancing the sandwiches and milk precariously, and they proceeded to make a hearty lunch, their appetites sharpened by the clear Western air, in a measure compensating for the sawdust bread and the ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... need of beef perhaps he would be so obliging as to come there and eat it, bringing with him, as grace before meat, the amount of a certain small account which had long been outstanding. Not at all intimidated by this rebuff, but rather sharpened in wits and appetite, Mr Swiveller forwarded the same message to another and more distant eating-house, adding to it by way of rider that the gentleman was induced to send so far, not only by the great fame and popularity its beef had acquired, but ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... He thinks I live too long, So joined the Moors to hurl me from my throne, Guided their councils, sharpened their resentment, And, when they ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... Joe sharpened one end of each sapling and forced them into the ground back of the log, and on the saplings she stretched one of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... over two months now since Maurice had seen her, and he was startled by the change that had taken place in her. Her face seemed to have grown longer; and there were hollows in the fine oval of the cheeks, in consequence of which the nose looked larger, and more pinched. The chin-lines were sharpened, the eyes more sunken, while the shadows beneath them were as dark as though they were plastered on with bistre. But it was chiefly the expression of the face that had altered: the lifelessness of the eyes was new to it, and the firm compression of the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Fanny had learned more about the management of a boat in that brief half hour than she had ever known before, for the consciousness that her own life and that of her passenger depended upon her skill, sharpened her perceptions and quickened her judgment to such an extent that those moments of thrilling experience became equivalent to months of plodding study when the mind is comparatively dull ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... shadow, and between acute attacks of pain, she talked about art, poetry, the scenes of travel, of which her brain was so full, and the phases of her own condition, with an eloquence for which even those who knew her best were quite unprepared. Every faculty seemed sharpened and every sense quickened as the "strong deliveress" approached, and the ardent soul was released from the frame that could no longer ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... his estate and neighborhood, though he had once held a seat in Parliament for part of a term. Middleton could not but contrast him, with an inward smile, with the shrewd, alert politicians, their faculties all sharpened to the utmost, whom he had known and consorted with in the American Congress. Hammond had slightly informed him that his companion was an American; and Mr. Eldredge immediately gave proof of the extent of his knowledge of that country, by inquiring whether he came from the State of New England, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... then, one second," said Walter, and, disembedding a huge piece of stone, he rolled it with all his force to their right, listening with senses acutely sharpened by danger and excitement. The stone bounded once, then they heard in their ears a rush, a shuffling of loose and sliding earth, the whirring sound of a heavy falling body, and then for several seconds a succession of distant crashes, startling with fright the rebounding mountain echoes, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... did not wait for a spring: she made the first attack herself. When the she-tiger made its stroll towards her, and was in the act of turning, she flung herself into a sudden leap, striking viciously at its eye with her sharpened bone. A roar from the onlookers acknowledged the stroke. The cave-tiger's eye remained undarkened, but the puny weapon had dealt it a smart flesh wound, and with a great bellow of surprise and pain it scampered away to gain space for a rush and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... bound to believe it; but in some patients the faculties seem strangely sharpened in convalescence, and despite her mother's assurance Rhoda felt convinced that something was being kept back—that something had happened to Evie which she was not to be allowed to know. She asked no more questions, but with sharpened eyes watched the faces of the visitors ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Charlemagne was a French sword, and its name was Joyeuse. But the sword of Haroun was of the finest steel, forged in Toledo, tempered at Cordova, blessed in Mecca, damascened (as one might imagine) in Damascus, sharpened upon Jacob's Stone, and so wrought that when one struck it it sounded like a bell. And as for its name, By Allah! that was very subtle—-for it ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... chin with a white lather while he looked at himself in the glass; then he sharpened his razor on the strop and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... wound, and by midnight he knew no one. The surgeon, who came over in the evening, ordered cloths constantly soaked with fresh water to be placed round his head, and that he should be given, whenever he desired it, barley water sharpened by ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... is sharpened and brought nearer. The deep blue of the real sea, beyond the lagoon, grows deeper; the great fields of mud (if it is low tide) gleam and glisten. And ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... steps and voices restored her equanimity, and a listening look gradually displaced the emotion on her countenance. Over the half-door of the shop appeared two men, each bearing on his shoulder the socks (shares) of two ploughs, to be sharpened, or set. The instant she saw them she tumbled off her perch, and before they had got the door opened was half way to it, crying, "Dooie! Dooie!" Another instant and she was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... flushed Virginia's sharpened features, mounting to the thin little curls on her forehead. These little curls, to which she sentimentally clung in spite of the changes in the fashions, were a cause of ceaseless worry to Lucy, who had developed ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one ecstasy, death-dividing bird! Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven! Pour out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that he had only to leave her free, guiding her thoughts with his lightest touch into newer channels. The talk had grown merrier now, and he soon discovered that she possessed a sharpened wit as well as a ready tongue. From subject to subject she passed with amazing swiftness, bearing down upon her favourite themes with the delightful audacity of the talker who is born, not made. She spoke of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... would let Him. But He wanted to give them more. He knew this other was only temporary. He was more concerned about healing the spirit of its disease, and giving the more abundant life. And full well He knew that only the knife could help many. And the knife had to be freshly sharpened, and used with strong decisive hand, if healing and ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... time, conceived the possibility of not securing the letters at all. The thought that his hopes might be dashed to the ground, that he might be no nearer his goal at the end of the interview than before, sharpened his wits. It was to be a deal in subtlety rather than the obvious thing that he had expected—well, he would play ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... sharpened by fancy of a lurking menace which seemed everywhere about the Planetara this voyage, ran rife with fears for Johnny Grantline. He had promised to communicate this voyage. It was now, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... taken to the northwest corner of the proposed inclosure. Katherine, who carried the mallet, gave it to Estelle and then climbed to a sitting posture on the latter's shoulders. Then Azalia stood the stake on its sharpened end and Katherine took hold of it with one hand and began to drive down on the upper end with the mallet, which Estelle ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... heard from the boy that an English gentleman was here, and judging that the larder was not likely to be stocked, he put a couple of bottles of claret, a cold chicken, and some bread into my wallet, so we can have breakfast while they are looking for your horse. The ride has sharpened my appetite." ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... into the room, revealing with painful clarity the changes which the last three months had wrought in her. Never at any time robust in appearance, she seemed the slenderest, frailest thing as she lay there, the delicate angles of her face sharpened by fever and weakness, her cheeks so hollowed that the violet-blue eyes looked almost amazingly big and ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Port Desire was found very favourable for careening and graving of ships, as the tide there ebbed and flowed considerably. At this place the savages wounded two of the Englishmen with their arrows, which were made of canes or reeds, tipt with sharpened flints. These savage natives of the country round Port Desire were exceedingly wild and rude, and as it would seem of a gigantic race, as the measure of one of their foot marks was eighteen inches long.[48] This agrees well with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... slowly read the series in pairs, but without analysis, without trying to ascertain and realise the exact relation between the words. This is the method of Vacuity or Dawdling formerly mentioned. But his study of the three Laws in learning the Building Series has so sharpened and quickened his appreciation of In., Ex., and Con., that he learned the one hundred words in this wrong way ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... Miss Lamarque, confide to her the statement of Christian Garth, relate to her what my eyes had seen, and be guided by her determination and judgment, with those of her brother, a man of sense, I saw, and whose instincts, no doubt, would all be sharpened by the jeopardy ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... for sugar-making by overhauling the sap "spiles," resharpening the old ones, and making new ones. The old-fashioned awkward sap-gouge was used in tapping in those days, and the "spiles" or spouts were split out of basswood blocks with this gouge, and then sharpened so as to fit the half-round gash which the gouge made in the tree. The dairy milk-pans were used to catch the sap, and huge iron kettles to boil ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the west to the east window and back again; rather nervously examined his arms, and laid a sword and a pair of pistols on the table. He knew of no special danger; but for the last fortnight he had been living in a state of watchfulness which had sharpened all his senses and kept him unusually sleepless. Now he longed for the night to be over; for his present charge weighed upon him heavily. It was certain that in sending Angelot away to keep the tryst with Cesar he had made himself responsible for Helene. He thought over all the foolish ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... conviction, and his own emotion suffered a check in his amazement at the change in the countenance before him. He had seen nothing like this in the thirty-two hours he had been in his presence; his jaw was set; his nostrils white and sharpened; the pupils of his eyes contracted to pin points; and into the sallow cheeks, up to the forehead knotted as with intense pain, into the sunken temples, the blood rushed with a force that threatened physical disaster, only to recede as quickly, leaving the face ghastly white, the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... The bleeding is performed with a small cupping horn, to which suction is applied in the ordinary manner, after scarification with a flint or piece of broken glass. In the blood thus drawn out the shaman claims sometimes to find a minute pebble, a sharpened stick or something of the kind, which he asserts to be the cause of the trouble and to have been conveyed into the body of the patient through the evil spells of an enemy. He frequently pretends to suck out such an object by the application of the lips alone, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... our hero was very much in earnest in his desire to improve. He knew that, in order to grow up respectable, he must be well advanced, and he was willing to work. But then the reader must not forget that Dick was naturally a smart boy. His street education had sharpened his faculties, and taught him to rely upon himself. He knew that it would take him a long time to reach the goal which he had set before him, and he had patience to keep on trying. He knew that he had only himself to depend upon, and he determined to make ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... eventually come upon Sacrapant and their sister making merry together at a feast. At once the lady is sent indoors, thunder and lightning herald disaster, and Sacrapant's magic takes them captive. Subsequently they are set to a task, with Delia standing over to speed their labours with a sharpened goad. It now becomes known that Sacrapant's power depends on the continued existence of a light enclosed within a glass vessel and buried in the earth. Delia has a lover, Eumenides. Acting on a generous impulse, this youth pays for the burial of one, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of the constellations, their comparative brilliancy, the precise moments of their rising and setting and culmination, together with the more or less rapid movements of the planets, and their motions towards or from one another. To their unaided eyes, sharpened by practice and favoured by the transparency of the air, many stars were visible, as to the Egyptians, which we can perceive only by the aid of the telescope. These thousands of brilliant bodies, scattered apparently at random over the face of the sky, moved, however, with perfect regularity, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he strove mightily with the weeds. Now and then, he sharpened his scythe with his whetstone and attacked the dense undergrowth with yet more vigour. The little yellow mongrel capered joyfully and unceasingly, affecting to hide amidst the mass of rubbish, scrambling out with sharp, eager barks when his master playfully ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... is a happy man! He dibbles, and sniggles, and fills his can! With a sharpened hook, and a sharper eye, He sniggles and dibbles for what comes by, Oh, who so merry as he! On the river or the sea! Dibbling Nibbling Chub, and quibbling Over the price Of a nice Slice Of fish, twice As much ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... HARPAGO. A spear or javelin with a barbed point, used to strike whales and other fish. The harpoon is furnished with a long shank, and has at one end a broad and flat triangular head, sharpened at both edges so as to penetrate the whale with facility, but blunt behind to prevent its cutting out. To the other end a fore-ganger is bent, to which is fastened a long cord called the whale-line, which lies carefully coiled in the boat in such a manner as to run out without being interrupted ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... his wits abnormally sharpened, he set to work to devise how to meet his brother, and even as he was meditating how to trick him, his heart was full of affection for his little Vidal. Poor Vidal! How he must have suffered to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... afforded no notch or foothold for a Bushman's naked foot. They rose nine or ten feet above the willow, so that the total height of the palisade was about twelve feet, and the tops of the stakes were sharpened. The construction of such palisades required great labour, and could be carried out only by those who could command the services of numbers of men, so that a small proprietor was impossible, unless within the walls of a town. This particular stockade was by no means an ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... good deal sharpened up, here, in some ways, and that is one of them. Numbers and sizes and distances are so great, here, that we have to be made so we can FEEL them—our old ways of counting and measuring and ciphering wouldn't ever give us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hogs are the longest, lankest, boniest animals in creation. I am reminded of this by that broth of an Irish lad, Conway, who says, in substance, and with a broad Celtic accent, that their noses have to be sharpened every morning to enable them to pick ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... heard Sunny's voice raised in song, and he listened intently, wondering the while if the loafer had any idea of its quality. It was harsh, nasal and possessed as much tune as a freshly sharpened "buzz-saw." But his words were distinct. Far too distinct Bill thought with ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... any bailiffs were on the watch; while the others sat down, and with the help of the turnip lantern "busked" their spears; in other words, fastened on the steel—or, it might be, merely pieces of rusty iron sharpened into a point at home—to the staves. Some had them busked before they set out, but that was not considered prudent; for of course there was always a risk of meeting spoil-sports on the way, to whom the spears would tell a tale that could not be learned from ordinary staves. ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... beneath the old tower," answered Creasy. "And it's just as I found it. I'll give it to you, sir, to take to Superintendent Polke in Scarnham—he knows me. But just let me point something out. I ain't a detective, but in my eight-and-forty years I've had to keep my wits sharpened and my eyes open. Point out to Polke, and notice yourself—that whenever that pipe was dropped it was being smoked! The tobacco's caked at the surface—just as it would be if the pipe had been laid ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... planks to shore up dugouts; some were constructing short ladders out of the trunks of slender green saplings; some filled sacks with earth to fill the gaps on the parapet above; others sharpened pegs and drove them into the dirt facade of the trench, one above the other, as footholds for the men when a charge ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... seated himself at the table. His pen had fallen on the floor, and not being able to find it, he quickly sharpened a pencil with a keen-edged poniard which he drew from the depths of ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Boone's wits seemed to be sharpened by his despair, for he said suddenly, after a ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... brief. The former warriors of his holiness had no weapons, it is true, but they knew their trade, and it was not difficult in those days to find weapons for an army. A few straps, or pieces of rope for a sling, a dart or a sharpened stick, an axe, or a heavy club, a bag of stones, and another of dates, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... trees of black ants, which was received at the Pennsylvania department of agriculture's division of zoology, elicited the following from Prof. H. A. Surface, State Zoologist. You can do this by finding the nesting places of the pests and making holes into the interior of them with a sharpened stick like a broom handle and pouring into each hole a half tea cup of carbon bisulphide. Fill the hole with earth and cover with a wet cloth or blanket to keep down the fumes and the ants will be destroyed at once. This is the best possible ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... The thought sharpened his vision. He saw a thin shadow a little darker than the gloom of the river; it grew into shape; something grated lightly upon sand and pebbles, and then he heard the guarded plash of feet in shallow water and saw some one pulling ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and all hands set about preparing the hoccos for roasting, by first plucking the fowls, removing the intestines, and sticking them on a sharpened stake in front of ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... was partly old associations that induced the fascination of watching Tom G. at his work, but there were other reasons. With his axe, the edge beautifully ground and sharpened to a razor-like finish, he could trim a piece of wood, or shape it, so neatly that it presented almost the appearance of having been planed; his saw, with no apparent effort, raced from end to end ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... abandoned. Soon after this, one morning at dawn, we were aroused by the sound of the unwelcome warwhoop. Although only a child, I sprang up and was about to rush out, as I had been taught to do; but my good grandmother pulled me down, and gave me a sign to lay flat on the ground. I sharpened my ears and ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... prevails throughout the entire Negrito territory of sharpening the teeth. Usually only the upper teeth are so treated, but numerous cases were noted where the teeth were sharpened both above and below, and still there were others where they were not sharpened at all. This sharpening is not performed at any certain age, and it is apparently not obligatory; I do not believe parents compel their children to submit to this practice. The object ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... them all. I sometimes grieve that God made me a woman that I might not be putting on the red coat too, and following the drum. And still and on, I would have no son of mine a soldier. Three fozy, foggy brothers—what did the armies do for them? They never sharpened their wits, but they sit and dover and dream, dream, even-on, never knowing all that's in their sister Mary's mind. And here you are, a boy, yet you get to my thoughts in a flash. Oh! I think I am going to be very ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... life in roaming about the streets had sharpened her wits. Adversity had taught her much. It had given her a knowledge of persons and things denied to those to whom life had always been made easy. She had had sundry acquaintances among the pretty orange girls ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... the operation, one being a piercing instrument made of pig bone and sharpened, and the other being a small wooden plug, also sharpened. The operator first visibly, but silently, engages in two incantations, during the former of which he holds up the thumb and first finger of his right hand, and during the latter of which he holds up the two instruments. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... that which is displayed in the Letters of Junius, and in the Memoires and Political Letters of Walpole and that the sarcasm of equivocal praise was the favourite weapon in the armoury of each, though it certainly appears to have been tempered, and sharpened, and polished with additional care for the hand of Junius? When did Francis ever deal in compliment or in equivoque? In his vituperation there was always more of fury than of malice: but Junius and Walpole were cruel. Madame du Deffand says to the latter, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... reeds and palm-leaves, using as a pen an iron point; now they write their own letters, as well as ours, with a sharpened quill, and, as we do, on paper. They have learned our language and its pronunciation, and write it even better than we do, for they are so clever that they learn anything with the greatest ease. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... have they their poets who make and sing songs, which they call "Arentos," both of their ancestor's deeds and praises of their gods. A sufficient probability, that if ever learning comes among them, it must be by having their hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet delight of poetry; for until they find a pleasure in the exercise of the mind, great promises of much knowledge will little persuade them that know not the fruits of knowledge. In Wales, the true remnant of the ancient Britons, as there ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... bright and yet at enmity with the appearances they so definitely disclose. The sea, which had now covered all the mud and had run into the harbour and was lifting the ships on to an even keel, was the colour of a sharpened pencil-point. The green of the grass was acid. Under the grey glare of the sky the soft purples of the bare trees and hedges became a rough darkness without quality. Yet as they walked down the field-path to the floor of the marshes Ellen was well content. This, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... joyous countenance worked, as if the struggle within was about to dissolve the connection between her soul and that more material part, whose deformity was becoming so loathsome. Inez and Ellen were utterly ignorant of the nature of her interview with her husband, though the quick and sharpened wits of the latter led her to suspect a truth, to which the entire innocence of the former furnished no clue. They were both, however, about to tender those sympathies, which are so natural to, and so graceful in the sex, when their necessity seemed suddenly to cease. The convulsions in the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened at the lower end, and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... thwart an old shoe-knife which had been ground down to one third of its original width. It had been well sharpened for this important occasion, but he had provided an old whetstone as a further precaution against a dull blade. To skin a perch neatly and expeditiously is a nice operation; but Paul had had sufficient practice in the art to render him ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... amazingly entertaining, to be sure. He remarked what a torment of his life Mr. Reed, the postmaster in Cambridge, was. He is an old man, about a hundred and forty years old, who always made him think of the little end of nothing sharpened off into a point. He had but one joke—to tell people sometimes when they asked for a letter that they must pay half a dollar for it; and then, if in their simplicity they gave it, he would laugh, and say ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... hid his shirt, and reached up to his ears. Then he went toward the Palais Royal, entered a celebrated restaurant, and ordered his dinner. For breakfast he had only taken a bite at a pastry-cook's in the Boulevard, so his appetite, which had been sharpened by the excursion, did wonders. He ate and drank as he did at Fontainebleau. But the bill seemed to him hard to digest: it was for a hundred and ten francs and a few centimes. "The devil!" said he; "living has become dear in Paris!" Brandy entered into the sum total for an item ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... is thick and black, and is covered with small scales. So powerful is this member that the opossum can hold on with it to the bough of a tree, and even when desperately wounded it does not let go. Its face is long and sharpened, the mouth very determined, and armed with numerous sharp teeth. It has thin, naked, round, and blackish ears, edged with a border of white. It has short legs, the feet being armed with claws, and the interior toes of the hind-feet are flat ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... said that Densie Densmore had heard less of that strange story than any one else, but her hearing faculties had been sharpened, and not a word was missed by her—not a link lost in the entire narrative, and when the narrator expressed his love for his daughter, she darted upon him ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... a keenness of hearing sharpened by anxiety, she caught the sound of her son's steps on ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... and, grasping their cutlasses, stood ready to obey his directions. Now came the tug of war. The other canoes got up and crowded round them, but again the undaunted seamen cheered, and firing their pistols right and left among the pirates, laid about them most lustily with their well-sharpened cutlasses. As they cheered, what was their surprise to hear their cheers answered, and at the same moment five dark objects on the water were seen coming round the next point. Murray exclaimed that they were men-of-war boats. They must have made out that ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... the bottom. It can be split straight from end to end like a cane. When the flour has been removed the wood remains, as has been said, three inches thick. Of this the people make short lances, not long ones, because they are so heavy that no one could carry or handle them if long. One end is sharpened and charred in the fire, and when thus prepared they will pierce any armour, and much better than iron would do." Marsden points out that this heavy lance-wood is not that of the true Sago-palm, but of the Nibong or Caryota urens; which does indeed ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... freebooters made still less progress; want of food had totally exhausted them, and they were frequently obliged to rest. At length they reached a plantation, where they found a vast quantity of maize in a granary that had just been abandoned. What a discovery was this to men whose appetites were sharpened by such long protractions! A great many of them devoured the grains in a raw state; the rest covered their shares with the leaves of the banana-tree, and thus cooked or roasted the maize. Reinvigorated by this food, they pursued ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... liked to break in upon his scanty hoard, but the morning air had sharpened his appetite, and he felt that he must have something to eat. Besides, he remembered one thing which fortunately Mr. Holden did not know, that in addition to the five dollars which Dr. Kent had given him he had the ten dollars sent him by his uncle, and not only that, but a little ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... women's interest, on the other hand, was bent on domestic activities—in caring for their children and developing the food supplies immediately around them. From the hearth-home, or shelter, as the start of settled life, and with their intelligence sharpened by the keen chisel of necessity, women carried on their work as the organisers and directors of industrial occupations. Very slowly did they make each far-reaching discovery; seeds cast into the ground sprouted and gave the first start of agriculture. ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... obsessed with altogether false ideas. He could not reason as other men, and he became dangerous and explosive. Time after time I have seen him committed to prison, until he became a hopeless prison habitue. My experience has also shown me that physical deprivations are equally likely to lead to sharpened wits and perverted moral sense as to explosive and cruel violence. Probably this is natural, for nature provides some compensation to ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... story about anything," explained Mrs. Somers, giving her pencils to Will to be sharpened, "and I leave a space before every noun. When I have written it, you each give me adjectives in turn to fill in the spaces, and I write them just as you supply them. Of course they never fit, and a very funny hodge-podge is the result. Now, while I'm writing ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... outwards, forming one vast abattis, which, as a Massachusetts officer says, looked like a forest laid flat by a hurricane.[623] But the most formidable obstruction was immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the quills of a porcupine. As these works were all of wood, no vestige of them remains. The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of Montcalm are ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... pretty—but homely? by no means. Her thin face slanted to a sharpened chin. Her hair, drawn to the corner of either eye, left a white triangle whose apex pointed to the highest reach of the forehead. Thus the face, in all its contour, was rising, or falling, to a point. This sharpness ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... sharpened by anxiety, made out the figure of the woman. She spoke,—and he was startled to hear the deep voice ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'Tis like a duel. I have already recorded sentence of death, five or six times, against the movers of political conspiracies, and who can say how many daggers may be ready sharpened, and only waiting a favorable opportunity to be buried in ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he runs a stick or a bone, and scarifies his body, the charms of which increase in proportion to the number and magnitude of seams by which it is distinguished. The operation is performed by making two longitudinal incisions with a sharpened shell, and afterwards pinching up with the nails the intermediate space of skin and flesh, which thereby becomes considerably elevated and forms a prominence as thick as a man's finger. No doubt but pain must be severely felt until ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... expression appeared more mature and tense, though still ingenuous. Later again there was a decidedly stern look, with the face less oval and thinner. The rough fingers of war had chiseled this face, and sharpened and strengthened it. I looked from the picture to him, and I realized that, compared to his former pictures, his expression had now indeed acquired something terrible. But just then he laughed, and the ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... teacher, doctor;—so he came into the Gurney garden that night, shrewd, defiant, priding himself on detecting shams. His waistcoat and trousers were of coarser stuff than suited his temperament; a taint of vulgarity in his talk, his whiskers untrimmed, the meaning of his face compacted, sharpened. It was many a year since a tear had come into his black eyes; yet tears belonged there, as much as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... by a doubt as to Mme. de Marville's probable reception of him. That grain of sand, grating continually on the fibres of his heart, so far from losing its angles, grew more and more jagged, and the family in the Rue de Hanovre always sharpened the edges. Indeed, their unceremonious treatment and Pons' depreciation in value among them had affected the servants; and while they did not exactly fail in respect, they looked on the poor relation as ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... resting. At this period of life routine and habit are everything; and nothing is considered but the elevated position, and how to make it redound to the advantage of his family. A pope now arrives at sovereign power with a mind sharpened by being accustomed to intrigue, and with a fear of making powerful enemies who may hereafter revenge themselves on his family, since his successor is always unknown. In fine, he cares for nothing but to live and die in peace. In the seat ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... can furnish," said Sybil, "and use despatch. You have appetites to provide for, sharpened by a long ride ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was naturally quick and whose natural shrewdness was sharpened by his personal interest, mastered the details of the business, and felt ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of a milk-cart with a sharpened horse, and drove to Knype. Horse fell once, but he picked himself up again. Cost me a sovereign. Only just caught the train. Shouldn't have caught it if they hadn't sent off the Birmingham part before the London part. I was astonished, I can ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... scent of the firs and limes; we found a point of view presenting the boat-house, the water, the poplars, and the mill, in a most felicitous combination; the little straw fruit basket made a capital table; and refreshed and sharpened and pointed by our trusty lacquey's excellent knife (your country boy is never without a good knife, it is his prime treasure), the pencil did double duty;—first in the skilful hands of Emily, whose ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Knight had no sooner reached his pavilion, than squires and pages in abundance tendered their services to disarm him, to bring fresh attire, and to offer him the refreshment of the bath. Their zeal on this occasion was perhaps sharpened by curiosity, since every one desired to know who the knight was that had gained so many laurels, yet had refused, even at the command of Prince John, to lift his visor or to name his name. But their officious inquisitiveness ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... as she lay thus praying, her senses, sharpened by watching, discerned a sound of steps treading under her window, and then a low whistle. Her heart beat violently, and she soon heard the door of Moses's room open, and then the old chamber-stairs gave forth those inconsiderate creaks and snaps that garrulous old stairs always will ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to-night," I remarked. "No," said some one, "and he'll have a hard time of it out there in the rain." There was nothing to do but wait. Pete rummaged in his bag and produced a candle (we had a dozen in our outfit), sharpened one end of a stick, split the other end for two or three inches down, forced open the split end and set the candle in it and stuck the sharpened end in the ground, all the while working in the dark. Then ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... a sharpened peg in the ground and took out the little silver watch that had been given him ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the other,—"nothing harder than a sharpened white-pine match should ever go between the teeth. Brush thoroughly but not violently once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush dipped in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops of the tincture ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... rescuing the girl. They could not tell what these were, and only guessed at them by what they saw in his hands. It was nothing that could be called a weapon—only a piece of bamboo, pointed at one end, which he had taken from among the embers of last night's fire and sharpened with his knife, when he went off in search of the Singapore oysters. It was the same stick he had been using to probe for them under the sand. On seeing the gavial as it started toward the girl, he had quickly drawn ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... already mentioned, the young children have one, which was much played at, and shewed no small degree of dexterity. They take a short stick, with a peg sharpened at both ends, running through one extremity of it, and extending about an inch on each side; and throwing up a ball, made of green leaves, moulded together, and secured with twine, they catch it on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Atropos, the eldest of the dread Parcae sisters, has sent word to me that the fatal scissors, with which she cuts the threads of human lives, have become so dulled by the great amount of work my trusty blade has given her to do with them, that she has been obliged to send them to Vulcan to be sharpened, and she begs for a short respite. So you see, Scapin, I must put force upon myself and restrain my natural ardour—refrain for a time from wars, massacres, sacking of cities, stand-up fights with giants, killing of monsters and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... along at the head of his squad, got this notion quite well fixed in his mind. Then, though, he saw smoke jets issuing from bushes and trees on ahead of him where the ridges of the slope sharpened up acutely into a sort of natural barrier like a wall; and likewise for the first time he now heard the tat-tat-tat of machine guns, sounding like the hammers of pneumatic riveters rapidly operated. To him it seemed a proper course that his squad should take such cover as the lay of the land ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... such hearty denunciations for all those who were seeking its destruction, while the war was raging, I am sure we might have been spared some years of war, some millions of money and rivers of blood and tears." This utterance was sharpened and made significant by the manner and by the accent of Mr. Raymond. No more pointed rebuke, no more keen reproach (not intended for Mr. Finck personally, but for his party) could have been administered. What the Administration or especially what Mr. Seward desired, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a half, to level the foundation with their picks, some of the sailors being employed in clearing away the chips, and conveying the iron tools to and from the smiths on the beacon, where they were sharpened. When the sea broke in and overflowed the pit, the party returned in boats ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... these If these come here! I do not wish to dwell Where he is, whom I hated rightfully, Being a covetous and witless prince, Whose deed it was that in wild fields of war Brothers and friends by mutual slaughter fell, While our swords smote, sharpened so wrathfully By all those wrongs borne wandering in the woods: But Draupadi's the deepest wrong, for he— He who sits there—haled her before the court, Seizing that sweet and virtuous lady—he!— With grievous hand ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... shore, as the lake breathes." In the stillness Nature's god speaks, and in the patient face of the woman, shading her eyes where she watches him from the cabin door, is sweeter and nobler dreaming than ever finds resting place in the sharpened and querulous features of our modern ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... glancing at the faces of my companions lying about in the bottom of the boat, I could not help shuddering. They had a strange and unnatural look—a miserable expression of pain and weakness. All that was familiar and pleasant to look upon, had vanished from those sharpened and haggard features. Their closed eyes seemed singularly sunken; and their matted hair, sunburned skin, and soiled clothing, added something of wildness to the misery ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... sense. So much depended upon it that I was rather relieved than otherwise not to know the answer too soon. I waited in fact a year—the year for which Limbert had cannily engaged on trial with Mr. Bousefield; the year as to which through the same sharpened shrewdness it had been conveyed in the agreement between them that Mr. Bousefield was not to intermeddle. It had been Limbert's general prayer that we would during this period let him quite alone. His terror of my direct rays was ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... not easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind; his enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to be convincing; he had no waste lands nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharpened to a point. "He was bred to no profession," says Emerson; "he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... killing a sleeping man was a cowardly way to terminate another's existence. But special conditions demand special solutions, and he was no match for the heavily armored man in open combat, therefore the assassin's knife. Or rather sharpened horn. He managed to doze fitfully until some time after midnight, then slipped silently from under his skin coverings. Silently he skirted the sleepers and crept into ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... a dangerous thing and can sometimes be made annoying; in Susan's case it was a weapon sharpened with honeyed phrase and consolatory bearing, for she was not slow to discover nor to avail herself of the irritating power this knowledge gave her. Constance's pride and reticence, however, made it difficult for Susan to discern when her shafts went true. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... ordinary seekers in the Scriptures, and the need of a wider entrance to a broader road to heaven than the strait gate and narrow way of the Gospels. But let such men come to Crossbourne, and have to deal with these people of shrewd and sharpened intellects, strong wills, strong passions, and strong temptations, and they will find that the old-fashioned gospel is, after all, the only thing that will meet all man's moral and spiritual needs. I have never been more struck with this than in the case of a ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... day, the great day of the revelation which the Contessa had promised. There had been a great deal of discussion and speculation about it in the company. No one, even Sir Tom, knew what it was. Lucy, though she was not clever, had her wits sharpened in this respect, and she had divined; but no one else had any conception of what was coming. Two of the elder men had gone, very sorry to miss the great event, whatever it was. And young Montjoie had ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... friend forever—no question about that. Victor would not hesitate an instant—indeed, Sofia felt sure he was only waiting for some such pretext to get rid of his secretary. She was anything but unobserving, this child of Soho, whose wits had been sharpened in the sophisticated atmosphere of a French restaurant; and more than once she had seen Victor's face duplicate the expression Papa Dupont's had so often assumed on his discovering that some patron of the cafe was taking too personal an interest in the pretty young dame du comptoir. A look of insensate ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... on for half an hour, Charlie, convinced that the animal was dead, dismounted from his elephant. He had with him a heavy, double-barrelled rifle of the rajah's; and Hossein, carrying a similar weapon, and a curved tulwar which was sharpened almost to a razor edge, prepared to follow immediately behind him. Three or four of the most courageous shikaris, with cocked ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... the Well-served. "The sense he had by nature," says his historian Chastellain, "had been increased to twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and perilous dangers, which sharpened his wits perforce." "He is the king of kings," was said of him by the Doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good judge of policy; "there is no ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... twirl so that none of its sides might have reason to complain at not receiving its share of the heat. The lower end roasted first, seeing which, George took the goose off, reversed it and set it twirling again. After a time he sharpened a sliver of wood, stuck it into the goose ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Adversity had sharpened his wits. Even the wholesale stationers were not turning white-headed men from their portals. To Edward was accorded the privilege of displaying the rather agreeable contents of his parcel. After he had unpacked it and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Life History, McIlhenny wrote as an inheritor. Initially, he was a hunter-naturalist, but scientific enough to publish in the Auk and the Journal of Heredity. Age, desire for knowledge, and practice in the art of living dimmed his lust for hunting and sharpened his interest in natural history. His book on the wild turkey, an extension into publishable form of a manuscript from a civilized Alabama hunter, is delightful and ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... black, taking out the heavy pieces of wood, one of which was very much curved, rounded over one side, flat on the other, both having sharpened edges, such as would make them useful in times of emergency as wooden swords. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... lips, drawn tight together, curved downwards, indifferently captious; a short white beard grew sparsely on the chin; the skin of the narrow neck was fantastically drawn and creased. His limbs were thin, the knees and elbows sharpened to a fine point; the hands very long, with blue, corded veins. As a rule his clothes were a distressing combination of black and dark blue; either the coat, the waistcoat, or the trousers would be black, the rest blue; the trousers had the old-fashioned flap-pockets, like a sailor's, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... beaming faces of the happy parents. In a side-road which led to the railway station he saw a cab; entering the cab with every appearance of furtive haste were the dark-visaged couple who had been so plausibly eager for the "pretty idea." The sharpened instinct of cowardice lit up the situation to him in one swift flash. The blood roared and surged to his head as though thousands of floodgates had been opened in his veins and arteries, and his brain was the common sluice ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... at him as he turned away, and in the middle of his own misery it struck him that poor Maudie would have to wait many years before Booty could afford to marry her, and that already her proud beauty was a little sharpened and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the world so tragic or terrible as that of men and women for each other. And so Myra had her homesickness for the city transfused and sharpened by her overmastering love. She fought with herself bitterly; she resolved to wait for one more mail. Nothing ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... went with him were killed. He has told them the whole story. They are getting ready for war. Every one able to fight is going with this man back to the Snakes. Only a few will be left to guard the camp. The mother of that bad woman is going, too. She has sharpened her axe, and told what she will do when she sees her daughter. All are ready. The best horses have been caught up and saddled, and the war party has started,—hundreds and hundreds of warriors. They are strung out over the prairie as ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... down, and while they were preparing a dinner for him, he took out a big knife and sharpened it on a whetstone, repeating his threat of searching the ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... knees and throw him to the ground, and then Scaevinus was to deal the fatal blow. The theatrical conduct of Scaevinus—who took an antique dagger from the Temple of Safety, made his will, ordered the dagger to be sharpened, sat down to an unusually luxurious banquet, manumitted or made presents to his slaves, showed great agitation, and finally ordered ligaments for wounds to be prepared,—awoke the suspicions of one of his freedmen named Milichus, who hastened to claim a reward for revealing ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Russia, acquiring coastal patrol boats in 1997 to replace Russian border units along the Black Sea coast. In 1998, Georgia assumed control of its Black Sea coast and about half of its land border with Turkey in line with a June 1998 agreement with Russia. Since 1997, Georgia's parliament has sharpened its rhetoric against Russia's continued military presence on Georgian territory. In February 1998 an assassination attempt was made against President SHEVARDNADZE by supporters of the late former president Zviad GAMSAKHURDIA. In October 1998, a disaffected military officer led a failed mutiny ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Dove Dulcet, the poet, came into our kennel and found us arm in arm with a deep demijohn of Chester County cider. We poured him out a beaker of the cloudy amber juice. It was just in prime condition, sharpened with a blithe tingle, beaded with a pleasing bubble of froth. Dove looked upon it with a kindled eye. His arm raised the tumbler in a manner that showed this gesture to be one that he had compassed before. The orchard nectar began to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... was an outbuilding, part of which was used as a tool-house, in which stood the grindstone; and thus the sound had reached Elsie at a moment when perhaps her slumber was not as deep as usual. The noise continued, with pauses at regular intervals, when whatever was being sharpened was removed from the stone. Taking care not to disturb her elder sister, Ida, whose heavy breathing showed that she was sound asleep, the little girl slipped out of bed, and crept softly over to the window. By straining her neck, and pressing ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... we mean an experiment in starving the senses, there is little harm in it. Nature will soon reassert her dominion, and very likely our perceptions will be sharpened by the trial. But "natural asceticism" is a thing hardly to be distinguished from functional weakness. What is natural asceticism but a lack of vigor? Does it not tend to close the avenues between the soul and the universe? "Is it not so ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... lamp-post. You don't realize that Gay is a bankrupt snob and married Trudy only because he could play off cad behind his pretty wife's skirts. Men will like Trudy and the women ridicule and snub her until she finds she has a real use for her claws. Up to now she has only halfway kept them sharpened. In a few years you will find Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord Vondeplosshe in Hanover society with capital letters, hobnobbing with Beatrice O'Valley and her set and somehow managing to exist in elegance. Don't ask how they will do it—but they will. However, they would never ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... always marked 96 or 97,—100 symbolizing such perfection as could be attained in the mortal world of Riverboro,—Alice, not only Daughter, but Scribe of Zion, sharpened her pencil and wrote a few well-chosen words of introduction, to be used when the records of the afternoon had been made by Emma Jane ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this car I can make—" Even as the chauffeur replied, Miss Redmond's sharpened senses detected a passage of glances between him and the stranger, now ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... people were armed with long, thin, lances of bluewood all sharpened to fine points at one end, they prepared to march once more against the invaders. Their sticks were twice as long as those of the Pinkies, and the Boolooroo chuckled with glee to think what fun they would have in punching holes in the round, ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... picture in Olive Schreiner's story, the work took on brighter and more wonderful colour, whilst the painter became paler and paler. Narrowness of vision and purpose became essential conditions of efficiency, and gradually human attributes became sharpened into fanatical weapons of assault. Few reformers live to see the triumph of their cause, and fewer still succeed in preserving ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... is melancholy, and a fearful sign Of human frailty, folly, also crime, That Love and Marriage rarely can combine, Although they both are born in the same clime; Marriage from Love, like vinegar from wine— A sad, sour, sober beverage—by Time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour Down to a very homely ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... his left arm an iron bracelet, with spikes on the inside which were pressed into the flesh, we feel as though we had taken a long journey from our happy land. When we read that the bracelet was made of steel wire, with the points specially sharpened, and the whole so clamped on to the arm that it could never come off, but had to be cut away after death, we might suppose that we had reached the world where Yogi and Sanyasi wander in the saffron robe, or sit besmeared ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... so pitiably old and helpless as he looked now. The fever and chill of alternating hope and despair had dried, and withered, and wasted him. The angles of his figure had sharpened. The outline of his face had shrunk. His dress pointed the melancholy change in him with a merciless and shocking emphasis. Never, even in his youth, had he worn such clothes as he wore now. With the desperate resolution to leave no chance untried of producing an impression ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... increasing, condemned him to solitude; and his resentment of solitude sharpened his asperity. He was not, however, totally deserted; some men of learning, and some women of elegance, often visited him; and he wrote, from time to time, either verse or prose; of his verses he willingly gave copies, and is supposed to have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... brother became as a panther of the south; he sharpened his knife; he took it in his hand; he stood behind the door of his stable to slay his younger brother as he came in the evening to bring his cattle into ...
— Egyptian Literature
... in his hand, and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me, that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... amazed to hear a Bonza reasoning like a schoolman, that turning to Edward de Gama, who was by him, "See," says he softly in Portuguese, that he might not be understood by the Japonians, "see how the devil has sharpened the wit of these his advocates." In the mean time, one of the Bonzas coming up to the charge, said, according to the same principle, "That if God had foreknown that Adam would sin, and cast down, together with himself, his whole progeny into an abyss of miseries, why did he create him? At least, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... and little feet were kept in ceaseless action, forced into unnatural activity by blows from the heavy hands and feet of the merciless overlooker, and the infliction of bodily pain by instruments of punishment invented by the sharpened ingenuity of insatiable selfishness." The children were fed upon the cheapest and coarsest food, often the same as that served to their master's pigs. They slept by turns, and in relays, in filthy beds that were never cool. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... pay a foreman's wages. The once easy-going journeyman was a terror to his "bears" and "monkeys." Where poverty ceases, avarice begins. From the day when Sechard first caught a glimpse of the possibility of making a fortune, a growing covetousness developed and sharpened in him a certain practical faculty for business—greedy, suspicious, and keen-eyed. He carried on his craft in disdain of theory. In course of time he had learned to estimate at a glance the cost of printing per page or per sheet in every ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the most part, dwarfs that rolled over and over on a set of parallel bars, Alsatian lasses with flaxen hair, and gay tops—were exposed on a row of tables a few feet back from the window. By the Porte Maillot, some of the iron saw-horses with sharpened points, which had formed part of the barricade built there in the days of the Great Retreat, lay, a villainous, rusty heap, in a grassy ditch of the city wall; a few stumps of the trees that had been then cut down were still visible, and from a railroad tie embedded in the sidewalk ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... Haegberg's smithy it looked as if it were going to be not only blue Monday,[2] but blank Tuesday too. With the exception of one solitary figure, it was black and empty. Outside the door a row of iron picks, spades and crowbars, were waiting to be sharpened for the navvies on the new ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... atoms arranged as on the end triangles of a prism. This form recurs very often, and was noted, last month, as seen in copper (Plate VI, 3); it revolves with extreme rapidity around its longitudinal axis, and looks like a pencil sharpened at both ends, or a cigar tapering at both ends; we habitually spoke of it as "the cigar." It appears to be strongly coherent, for, as will be seen below, its six atoms remain attached to each other as meta-compounds and even when divided into two triplets ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater |
