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More "Blade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said she; "Let one have at one." When he heard this, he sprang to his feet and made for them with his sword and battle gear; and Masurah, the Knight, also sprang up and bore down upon him. Sharrkan met him like a lion and delivered a shoulder cut[FN200] which clove him to the middle, and the blade came out gleaming and glittering from his back and bowels. When the lady beheld that swashingblow, Sharrkan's might was magnified in her sight and she knew that when she overthrew him in the wrestle it was not by her strength but by her beauty and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... feels the hot blood of the nation beat high; With rapture she catches the rallying cry: From mountain and valley and hamlet they come! On every side echoes the roll of the drum. A people as firm, as united, as bold, As ever drew blade for the blessings they hold, Step sternly and solemnly forth in their might, And swear on their altars to die for ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Highlands, divination by looking into the shoulder-blade of a sheep was used to discover future events or things happening at a distance, a survival from pagan times.[873] The scholiast on Lucan describes the Druidic method of chewing acorns and then prophesying, just as, in Ireland, eating nuts from the sacred ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... always left Mess after that toast, and being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem on the table, when the Chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade. Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the Chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked him desperately in the stomach. Mr Bennett gasped and doubled up, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... hot blood of the Puritan Cavalier was soon at the boiling point. Disdaining to take advantage even of such a foe, he threw aside his gun, and springing upon the gigantic Peksuot, grasped at the knife which was suspended from his neck, the blade of which was double-edged, and ground to a point as sharp as a needle. There was a moment of terrific conflict, and then the stout Indian fell dead upon the ground, with the blood gushing from ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... contemporary with the rest of the chasing. He tried to open it, but the dampness had caused it to stick, so that he broke his nails upon the fastening. He took out his knife and attempted to lever its edges apart with the blade. At last, growing impatient, he set it on its hinges upon a rock and commenced to hammer it with a stone. At the third blow the fastening gave, and the sides fell apart. He could see that it contained a miniature, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... camp, not far from the Hudson, conversing with three soldiers—Van Campen, Perry, and Paul Sanborn, they being the three men who first discovered poor Boyd's body; and then noticed me a-digging in the earth with bleeding fingers and a broken blade. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... on their way, an I mistake not, to the prison at this moment. I came straight on here after the condemnation, to which I listened with true joy. Ah, citizen Bibot! the blood of these hated aristocrats is good to behold when it drips from the blade of the guillotine. Have a care, citizen Bibot, do not let the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... white waistcoat. This head had attracted my attention like the stain on the ceiling of which I spoke just now, like the Countess's black tooth, and despite myself I did not take my eyes off the angler as he passed the silver blade of his knife through a slice of that indigestible fruit which I like to see on the plates of others, but can ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... emerald-green empires. Turbulences of colour broke out above the departed sun; giants merged into mountains, and cities became seas, and new processions of other fantastic things sailed by. But the chalk slopes facing south smiled on with the same calm light, as though every blade of grass gathered a ray from the gloaming. All the hills faced the evening with that same quiet glow, which faded softly as the air grew colder; and the ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... while Peter Halket took out from his belt a small hunting knife with a rough wooden handle. A small flat stone lay near him, and he passed the blade slowly up and down on it, now and then taking it up, and feeling the edge with his finger. After a while he put it back in his belt, and rose slowly, taking up his small bundle and ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... accordingly, here left their horses under charge of five of their number, and as soon as it was dusk they commenced their stealthy approach to the camp. Sigenok and another young and active Indian undertook to look after me. Not a word was spoken after we set out—not a leaf was moved, scarcely a blade of grass was uselessly pressed down. On they crept slowly, and so gently that I could scarcely hear the footfalls even of my two companions. I imitated their way of walking, and as I had on mocassins I also was able to avoid making the slightest ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of the guillotine...." ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... barn and house, and brave The March rain and the winds that rave. ... O, landscape I am one who stands Returned with pale and broken hands Glad for the day that I have known, And finds the deserted doorway strown With shoulder blade and spinal bone. And you who nourished me and bred I find the spirit from you fled. You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast My soul's beginning rose and pressed My steps afar at last and shaped A world elusive, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... the estate, for no other purpose in life than that his conspicuously clandestine meetings with the fair Barbara should be misconstrued as an assignation. Ha! out, rapiers! and let us be ready for the moment when Barbara, rushing between the combatants, receives in her own bosom the blade intended for ——, etc. But of course not enough blade to endanger the happy ending. So there you are. A placid, undistinguished tale, that may be commended as nourishment or soporific according to the taste and fancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... veil of snow parted before the wind, as if cleft down the centre by a sword-blade, and Harley and Sylvia beheld a grand and awful sight. Before them were all the peaks and ridges, rising in white cones and pillars against the cloudy sky, and the effect was of distance and sublimity. From the clefts and ravines came a desolate moaning. Harley felt ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... might go on all day describing the curious plants, and trees, and animals, and birds I saw. I must speak of the ginger. The blade is not unlike that of wheat. The roots, which are used, are dug up and scraped free from the outward skin by the negroes. This is the best way of preparing it, and it is then soft and white; but often, from want of hands, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the gathering gloom. Fortunately, the road was almost level and free from mud-holes, and Frank Muller rode just ahead to show the way, his strong athletic form standing out clearly against the departing western glow. Silent was the earth, silent as death. No bird or beast, no blade of grass or breath of air stirred upon its surface. The only sign of life was the continual flickering of those awful tongues of light as they licked the lips of the storm. On for mile after mile, on through the desolation! They were ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... which we travelled rose but slightly. As we continued our course the scenery became more gloomy and barren, and, except on the ground beneath our feet, scarcely a blade of grass or plant of any description was to be seen growing in the clefts of the dark and sombre rocks. The atmosphere, seldom warmed by the rays of the sun, felt chilly in the extreme, and depressed our spirits, and had it not been for the assurance ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... and fools in the early days, though we stood aside to let your people run their vulgar course. It was your hired bully—your respected guardian—this dog of an espadachin, who let out a hint of the secret—with a prick of his blade—and a scandal. One of my peon women was a servant at the convent when you were a child, and recognized the woman who put you there and came to see you as a friend. She overheard the Mother Superior say it was ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... of lost opportunities! How much of the criminal history of the city might I not have learned, if I had paid longer visits to Herr Schreiber, and listened to his account of the notches in the blade, to each of which a ghastly history attached. But the antiquary's bedroom measured fifteen feet by seven, and the window was hermetically sealed; moreover, there was a stove in the room, and—Herr ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... of American scenery, and to the imperfect cultivation, intercepted with woodland, which yet characterizes the even the oldest portions of the United States, might revel for a time amid the sunny meadows. The waving cane fields, the verdant provision grounds, the acres of rich black soil without a blade of grass, and divided into beds two feet square for the cane plants with the precision almost of the cells of a honey comb; and withal he might be charmed with the luxurious mansions—more luxurious than superb—surrounded with the white cedar, the cocoa-nut tree, and the tall, rich mountain ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and leave the room. One only, the nearest and dearest, is requested to remain and witness the end. Rikiu then removes his tea-gown and carefully folds it upon the mat, thereby disclosing the immaculate white death robe which it had hitherto concealed. Tenderly he gazes on the shining blade of the fatal dagger, and in exquisite verse ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted sword with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the mantel-piece at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give me his old service sword, which used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at once, though I was only a lad of seventeen, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... orbicular, finely serrate or wavy-edged, with incurved, glandular-tipped teeth, apex rather abruptly acute or short-acuminate; base acute, truncate or slightly heart-shaped, 3-nerved; leafstalk slender, strongly flattened at right angles to the plane of the blade, bending to the slightest breath of air; stipules ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... out quickly—so quickly that they both flinched away—the long handled knife which, usually, I carried with me for cutting down alders or other growth which sometimes entangled my flies as I fished along the stream. "Listen," said I, "I swear the pirates' oath. On the point of my blade," and I touched it with my right forefinger, "I swear that I pondered on two things ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... Hubert van Eyck's 'Adoration of the Lamb.' The colouring is almost as bright and jewel-like as that of the fifteenth-century painters, for one of the theories of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was that grass should be painted as green as the single blade—not the colour of the whole field seen immersed in light and atmosphere, which can make green grass seem gray or ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... possible you have never handled a blade?" exclaims the other guy, like he couldn't have heard ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... said Tom Marshall—known as "The Oracle"—"I've heerd o' sich cases before: they ain't commin, but—I've heerd o' sich cases before," and he screwed up the left side of his face whilst he reflectively scraped his capacious right ear with the large blade ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... front of him the priests moved suddenly. From Naida burst a shriek. In the radiant glare of the council room flashed the long, thin, cruel blade of a sacrificial knife. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... head of this chapter. The Water of Kane. One finds suggestions and hints of this conception in many passages of Hawaiian song and story, sometimes a phosphorescent flash, answering to the dip of the poet's blade, sometimes crystallized into a set form; but nowhere else than in the following mele have I found this jewel deliberately wrought into shape, faceted, and fixed in a distinct ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... brought from the Tower in separate coaches, there was some dispute in which the axe must go—old Balmerino cried, "Come, come, put it with me." At the bar, he plays with his fingers upon the axe, while he talks to the gentleman-gaoler; and one day somebody coming up to listen, he took up the blade and held it like a fan between their faces. During the trial, a little boy was near him, but not tall enough to see; he made room for the child ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... done it again!" howled the lieutenant, leaping up from his seat. "You numskull! give me that oar." And he tried to wrench the blade from Larry's hand. ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... here's a house Full large to entertain a mouse; But where a rat is dreaded more Than savage Caledonian boar; For, if it's enter'd by a rat, There is no room to bring a cat. A little rivulet seems to steal Down through a thing you call a vale, Like tears adown a wrinkled cheek, Like rain along a blade of leek: And this you call your sweet meander, Which might be suck'd up by a gander, Could he but force his nether bill To scoop the channel of the rill. For sure you'd make a mighty clutter, Were it as big as city gutter. Next come I to your kitchen garden, Where one poor mouse would fare ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hollow road to the Altenberg, now in the shade, now in the full light, for the moon was shining with astonishing brilliancy. A few clouds floated idly across the zenith, seeming to want to clasp her in their long arms, but she ever eluded their grasp, and her rays, keen as a blade of steel, cut me to the marrow ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... One plunge of the blade in the animal's side made it yell like a thing possessed. Then Bob dug his thumbs into the lynx's neck and pressed his fingers into its throat, pulling towards him with all his might, to drag the animal ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... it clear to myself and understand," he thought, looking intently at the untrampled grass before him, and following the movements of a green beetle, advancing along a blade of couch-grass and lifting up in its progress a leaf of goat-weed. "What have I discovered?" he asked himself, bending aside the leaf of goat-weed out of the beetle's way and twisting another blade of grass above for the beetle ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... these circumstances," the bonze ventured to reply, "is enough to make you laugh! They amount to this: there existed in the west, on the bank of the Ling (spiritual) river, by the side of the San Sheng (thrice-born) stone, a blade of the Chiang Chu (purple pearl) grass. At about the same time it was that the block of stone was, consequent upon its rejection by the goddess of works, also left to ramble and wander to its own gratification, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... was almost entirely confined to seamen of the long voyage. One of its ends was suffered to blow about in the wind, but the other was brought down with care over the chest, where it was confined, by springing the blade of a small knife with an ivory handle, in a manner to confine the silk to the linen: a sort of breast-pin that is even now much used by mariners. If we add, that light, canvas slippers, with foul-anchors worked in worsted upon their insteps, covered his feet, we shall say all ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... during the midst of the confusion. When the surgeon came, he took him aside, and desired he would inform him freely whether the wound were mortal, because in that case, he said, he had some affairs to settle, relating to his family. The blade of the penknife, broken by the violence of the blow against a rib, within a quarter of an inch of the handle, was dropt out (I know not whether from the wound, or his clothes) as the surgeon was going to dress him; he ordered it to be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... are sins of men, who are on the whole making proficiency; which by those that judge rightly, are, after the rule of perfection, discommended, yet the persons commended, upon hope of future fruit, as in the green blade of growing corn. And there are some, resembling offences of foulness or violence, which yet are no sins; because they offend neither Thee, our Lord God, nor human society; when, namely, things fitting for a given period are obtained for the service of life, and we know not whether ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... her other timbers in proportion; and in her caulking was a species of moss peculiar to the country in which she was built. In the cabin and other parts of the vessel were found a human skull; a pair of goat's horns attached to a part of the cranium; a dirk or poniard, about half an inch of the blade of which had wholly resisted corrosion; several glazed and ornamental tiles of a square form; some bricks which had formed the fire hearth; several parts of shoes, or rather sandals, fitting low on the foot, one of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... had stopped the pony and was watching the inroads of numberless scissor-like mouths on a stub of corn near the roadside. The tassel was gone, the edges of the leaves were eaten away, and lines of hungry insects hung to the centre rib of each blade, gnawing and cutting at every inch ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the Golden Distaff, Goddess of the loud chase, a maiden revered, the slayer of stags, the archer, very sister of Apollo of the golden blade. She through the shadowy hills and the windy headlands rejoicing in the chase draws her golden bow, sending forth shafts of sorrow. Then tremble the crests of the lofty mountains, and terribly the dark woodland rings with din of beasts, and the earth shudders, and the teeming sea. Meanwhile ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... distance. Up one of the highest I sent Hopkins on, who reported that he could not see the end of it, and that all around looked blank and desolate. It is a singular fact that during the whole day we had not seen a drop of water or a blade of grass. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... day till the present, disappointment, trial and sorrow have entered largely into the life and experience of women. But of all clouds that have darkened their lives and among all sharp swords that have pierced their hearts, the cloud of the liquor traffic has been the darkest, and its blade the keenest. Myriads of women have looked with anguish on sacrifices offered and loved ones slain, not to save humanity or to draw men nearer to God, but destroyed at the hands of a tyrant as relentless as ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... array. The coat was dove-grey satin; waistcoat of dark red, finely figured, with silver buttons; small clothes of red, white silk stockings, and jewelled shoes with the red heels which are worn at Court. I also bought a new dress sword. It has an openwork silver handle and guard; the blade sheathed in a white scabbard, which is silver-mounted. I wore large frills and a small French hat finely laced with gold; and I bought besides ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the slopes stood out like lacework, but far down in the valley the light seemed to shimmer like waves on a sea of silver mist. It was all inexpressibly cold, and of a loneliness that was uncanny. Nothing stirred, not a twig, not a blade of grass. It seemed to Dick that if even a leaf fell on the far side of the mountain he could hear it. It was a great, primeval world, voiceless and unpeopled, brooding in a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the long, colourless grasses, rippling in faint waves like a still lake that reflects the sunshine and swaying lightly beneath myriads of gauzy-winged bees that flashed with a droning noise from blade to blade, to find rest in the yellow hearts of the damask roses. Across the white vaults and the low-lying marble slabs innumerable shadows chased, and from above the gnarled old locust trees swept a fringe of vivid green, the slender blossoms hanging in tassels from the branches' ends, and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... would thaw, but then a hard frost would come, glazing everything in an icy coating. This went on until late in April. By that time, almost every farmer in the district had used up his hay; every one of them was at the end of his store, and nowhere was there a blade of grass to feed the live-stock, for the land still lay frozen under its blanket of hard-packed snow and ice. When things had come to this pass, a general district meeting was called to discuss the situation and decide what should be done. Brandur's son-in-law ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... cakes nowadays, like those that Aunt 'Ritta made—glossy brown, all of a size, and porous as a sponge. It was great fun to butter them, and then press them with the flat of a knife-blade, to see spurts and spouts rise from the surface like so ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the bold Slave rear at last the Sword Of Vengeance? drench'd he deep its thirsty blade In the cold bosom of his tyrant lord? Oh! who shall blame him? thro' the midnight shade Still o'er his tortur'd memory rush'd the thought Of every past delight; his native grove, Friendship's best joys, and Liberty and Love, All lost for ever! then Remembrance ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the lively conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:—fine old ale; yes, English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born. Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind; nothing in sight but open meadows ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Aegisthus then the sacrificing sword Took from the basket, from the bullock's front To cut the hair, which on the hallow'd fire With his right hand he threw; and, as his slaves The victim held, beneath its shoulder plung'd The blade; then turning to thy brother spoke: "Among her noble arts Thessalia boasts To rein the fiery courser, and with skill The victim's limbs to sever; stranger, take The sharp-edg'd steel and show that fame reports ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... The handle either of a small sword or a huge knife, made of an elk's horn. Around the end where the blade had been inserted was a ferule of silver, which, though black, was not much injured by time. Though the handle showed the hole where the blade had been inserted, yet no iron was found, but an oxyde remained ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... Tuscarora expressed a variety of emotions while he thus remained stationary. At first, it was fierce, savage, exulting; then it became gentler, soft, perhaps repentant. He drew his knife from its buckskin sheath, and eyed the blade with a gaze expressive of uneasiness. Perceiving that a clot of blood had collected at the junction with the handle, it was carefully removed by the use of water. His look next passed over his whole person, in order to ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... which Christ promised to his followers was not of this world; the good gift he brought them was not peace, but a sword. It was no sword of territorial conquest, but that flaming blade of conscience and self-conviction which lightened between our first parents and their lost Eden,—that sword of the Spirit that searcheth all things,—which severs one by one the ties of passion, of interest, of self-pride, that bind the soul to earth,—whose ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... The woman Tara had produced from about her person a weapon of some kind. She thought she was unobserved, but from the angle at which I stood, I saw her. A gleaming metal object was in her hand. And then she launched it—a small flat disc of metal, thin, and with its circular edge keen as a knife-blade. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... pulled the slack of Gerry's shirt toward him and wiped the blade till it was gleaming again. Then he looked toward Walt. ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... throbbing he had watched—the heart that had throbbed for him only, the slave, out of all the world of men. He could feel his dagger bite through her white breast as he had felt the soft slice of flesh under his blade before; he could see the blood well up around the knife, slowly at first, with a quick, hot spurt when the steel was withdrawn. So she would remain all his, and none might take her from him. His thoughts maddened him. He groaned aloud and dropped his face in his hands on ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... pieces by Radigund queen of the Amazons (bk. v. 7), yet it reappears whole and sound (canto 12), when it is used with good service against Grantorto (the spirit of rebellion). Spenser says it was called Chrysaor because "the blade was garnished ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... black shape moved fast, and occasionally it gave forth a sinister glitter, as stray moonbeams fell upon blade or bayonet. It seemed to Harry that there was something deadly and inevitable about it, and he began to feel sorry for the Union troops who were besieging the village and who did not know that Stonewall Jackson ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... down until everything is in and well mixed. Then you put it down, half a pint at a time, four times a day. It's a sure cure, and inside of a week after taking seventeen quarts and rubbing the empty bottles on your left shoulder blade you'll feel like dancing a jig of ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... not one whit behind in drawing his own blade, and, as steel clashed against steel, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... to wipe away the contaminating touch of the cloak. His eyes were bothering him of late, and he had not read from his favorite book since he left Panurge hunting for the prophetess. Being now awake and having nothing to do, he took down his master's sword and began polishing the blade. He had scarce begun his labor when the door opened and the vicomte ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... sufficient reason. He was making a journey across country, and with him were a few natives, guides and packmen. Perhaps his head grew hot; anyhow, at some stage he took a penknife from his pocket, and ran the blade under the edge of the wig. The native nearest to him, suspicious of witchcraft, stared at this act, terror written on every feature. With a deft lift of the knife, Turner had the wig clear of his head. The native stayed no longer to consider 'Is this a sorcerer?' He whipped off, to what he considered ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached, not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... here and there, then a paved footway, then the railings round the close. In full view of the windows of the street rose the sixteenth-century church which plays as best it can the part of Cathedral to Manchester. Round it stretched a black and desolate space paved with tombstones. Not a blade of grass broke the melancholy of those begrimed and time-worn slabs. The rain lay among them in pools, squalid buildings overlooked them, and the church, with its manifest inadequacy to a fine site and a great city, did but little towards overcoming the mean and harsh ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... merely to fill up the gap caused by a deficiency in length of the plank of which it was the continuation. Between the two adjoining ends was a crack of some width, and into that crack did Archibald idly stick his chisel. It seemed to him that the crack widened, so that he was able to press the blade of the chisel down to its thickest part. He now worked it eagerly backward and forward, and, to his delight, the crack rapidly widened still further; in fact, the short board was sliding back underneath the wainscot. ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... procured sabre, quoit, and mace, Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place, While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... seem capricious or lazy, when really my only difficulty was in selecting a pleasure. The sun had climbed well over the high barriers which lay eastwards, and was shining brightly down through the quivering blue ether overhead; the frost sparkled on every broad flax-blade or slender tussock-spine, as if the silver side of earth were turned outwards that ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... surpassed their expectations. Priests, soldiers and officials came in companies, rank upon rank, of exalted and ornate dignity. Chariots and horses shone with gilding, polished metal and gay housings, while the marching legions clanked with pike and blade and shield. Now that the chief luminaries of the procession had passed, the rich and lofty departed with a great show of indifference to the rest of the parade. But the humbler folk, all unlearned in the art of assumption, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... long, with slightly arched nape, muscular and clean, showing no dewlap, and carried well up and forward. FORE-QUARTERS—His work underground demands strength and compactness, and, therefore, the chest and shoulder regions should be deep, long, and wide. The shoulder blade should be long, and set on very sloping, the upper arm of equal length with, and at right angles to, the shoulder blade, strong-boned and well-muscled, and lying close to ribs, but moving freely. The lower arm is slightly bent inwards, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... consisted in making the guide blade straight on the outside (instead of rounding, as then made by all others), from inner point back to bolt or gudgeon, and thick enough at the latter point to let water pass without being obstructed by said bolt ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... take deeper hold of them yet, if His power was to get the deeper hold of them, and, by and by, get hold of the needy crowds. The very setting of the words gives the new meaning to them. John had felt the keen edge of Herod's axe blade, and was now in the upper presence. They were up in the far northern part because of the growing danger threatening Him by ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... those of her four husbands, issued from under Fitzford gateway with the shade of Lady Howard inside. A coal-black hound ran in front as far as Okehampton, and on the return journey carried in its mouth a single blade of grass, which it placed on a stone in the old courtyard of Fitzford; and not until all the grass of Okehampton had been thus transported would Lady Howard's penance end! The death-coach glided ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... effort Endicott succeeded in smearing his face with a thin, stringy lather, and gingerly picked up the razor. The Texan looked on in owlish solemnity as the man sat holding the blade helplessly. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... out to the owner of the coveted top the frightful unsightliness of his treasure, and in other ways seeking to lower the price likely to be demanded as soon as negotiations opened, I at length secured the top in return for six marbles, a redoubtable horse chestnut, and a knife with a broken blade. My subsequent alarm, on missing so costly a possession, can be readily imagined. I could not be expected to endure so serious a deprivation without making a desperate effort to retrieve my fallen fortunes. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... supplication: "Ukko, mightiest of rulers, Loan to me thy sword of battle, Grant to me thy matchless weapon, And against a thousand armies I will war and ever conquer." Ukko, gave the youth his broadsword, Gave his blade of magic powers To the wizard, Kullerwoinen. Thus equipped, the mighty hero Slew the people of Untamo, Burned their villages to ashes; Only left the stones and ovens, And the chimneys of their hamlets. Then ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... and Abraham promised so faithfully that he would never deviate from the path of virtue again, now that his evil genius was removed, if they would only let him come back and graduate, that he was given the chance. Nothing new came up about the cutting of the wires except that the end of a knife blade was found on the floor under the place where the hole had been made in the wall. There were no marks of identification on it and nothing was ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... sharpe pointed knife in my hand to thrust it to my hart, that mine innocent bloud, doing the funerall honour, may beare witnesse before God of my vndefiled chastity, as being vtterly resolued honourablie to die. And that rather then to lose mine honoure, I may murther my selfe before you wyth this blade and knife in present hand." The king burning with amorous heate, beholding this pitifull spectacle, and consideringe the inuincible constancie and chastitie of the Countesse, vanquished by remorse of conscience, ioyned with like pitie, taking her by the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... and they think lots of him here," declared Paul, who was amazed to learn that his chum's parent could have, once upon a time, been reckoned a wild blade. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... time for a second thought on the seriousness of this event—my first fight in earnest—he was keeping me busy to parry his point and watch his dagger at the same time. I was half-surprised at my own success in turning away his blade, but after I had guarded myself from three or four thrusts, I took to mind that offence is the best defence, and ventured a lunge, which he stopped with his dagger only in the nick of time to save his breast. His look of being almost caught gave me encouragement, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the rest?" Thorvald had a thin steel of rage edging his voice. Almost, Shann thought, as if he could turn that blade of rage against one Shann Lantee for being yet alive when more ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... a blade of grass, slipped the end between her lips and chewed it gently, her face puzzled and concerned. She wasn't ordinarily afflicted with nervousness. Fifteen years old, genius level, brown as a berry and not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs, she was the youngest member of one of Orado's most ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... of Flower-Aspect."[271] Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy of the Celt's feeling in these matters, and how deeply Nature lets him come into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is called "faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth, when the dew of June is at the heaviest." And thus is Olwen described: "More yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemony amidst ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and so arranged as to serve as fingers to hold a switch bar (D) between them. This bar is also of copper or brass and is pivoted to the fingers. Near the other end of the base is a similar binding screw (E) and fingers (F) to receive the blade of the switch bar. The bar has a handle (G) of wood. The wires are attached to the respective binding screws ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... sword-hilt, Peyton had pulled the weapon a few inches out of the scabbard, and now, though he did not intend to draw while in the house, he unconsciously brought out the full length of what remained of the blade. For the time he had forgotten the sword was broken, and now he was reminded of it ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... plain For thee to follow; hold thou to the course Of Concentration Channel, and all things Shall come in answer to thy swerveless wish As comes the needle to the magnet's call, Or sunlight to the prisoned blade of grass That yearns all winter for ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wilderness of trees, had not long experience assured me that good game tracks would be found leading to it, and by one of them I reached it. It was in the afternoon, just after one of those tropical sun-showers which decorate every branch and blade with its pendant brilliants, and the little patena was covered with game, either driven to the open space by the drippings from the leaves or tempted by the freshness of the pasture: there were several pairs of elk, the bearded antlered ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... of the saw was always in his thoughts; it was as he had said. Last winter, when the roads were hard, he had carted up the big circular blade and the fittings, ordered from Trondhjem through the village store. The parts were lying in one of the sheds now, well smeared with oil to keep off the rust. He had brought up some of the beams too, for the framework; he could begin ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... along Princes Street, the High Street callously exhibits its back garrets. It is true, there is a garden between. And although nothing could be more glaring by way of contrast, sometimes the opposition is more immediate; sometimes the thing lies in a nutshell, and there is not so much as a blade of grass between the rich and poor. To look over the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full of crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society from another in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his followers had, therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out of the tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fastening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole. [384] The tithing men of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be found to the camp. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Where is the glory? Where is the reward, For sacrifice of comfort, quiet, peace? For sacrifice of children, wife, and friends? For sacrifice of firesides—genial homes? What hour, what gift, will ever make amends For broken health, for bruised flesh and bones, For lives cut short by bullet, blade, disease? Where balm to heal the widow's heart, or what Shall soothe a mother's grief for woes like these? Hold, murmurer, hold! Is country naught to thee? Is freedom nothing? Naught an honored name? What though the days be cold, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... people, they had forgotten for a moment the stranded boat and its small occupant. As they looked again, they saw she had stuck the oars in the mud, blade down, and was now evidently lashing them to the oar-locks. This done, she stood up and slipped off the blue flannel skirt of her little sailor suit, standing up in her short white petticoat. She hung the skirt by the hem over the oars, and immediately she had a very fair substitute ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... part, and sank red, though reluctant, beyond the Delectable Mountains. Thou moon, this is Ajalon! Be kindly, for by moonlight one still may labor, and here is labor to be done. Every blade in the Barlow knives is broken. The hole in the stump yields not to slashings, nor to attempts to pry it open. The prey is still unreached. What ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... already had my jack-knife out—unless I could cut through the scuttle and get at the hasp. The wood was old, frail, and half rotten,—in three minutes I had the point of the blade through. In five, I had cut a hole large enough to admit two fingers. I knew that I was safe from being seen,—anyone on that part of the roof would not be visible from the ground near the house. After cutting for a little while longer I put enough ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... many friends of his own age, and lived as most of them did, mixing in all the excitements of city life. He was now rather a wild, reckless young blade, as willing to draw his sword in a street fight as to pay compliments to a pretty maid of honor. One day he got into a fight at a tavern with a noisy braggart. He managed to throw the man into a chair and bind him with a ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... surging noise of the whistles as the falls dropped the boats from the davits; then the men, leaping down into cutters—silently and quick—no sound save the clash of a cutlass or the rattle of an oar-blade as they took their places and shoved off. Again an order ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... fight, louder swelled the din and tumult with the never-ceasing thunder of the guns; and amid it all Don Miguel paced to and fro, impassive as always, the blade of his long rapier gleaming here and there ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... were playing their part well, when an English knight came rushing up, having in his company a hundred men, furnished with various arms. He wielded a northern hatchet, with the blade a full foot long; and was well armed after his manner, being tall, bold, and of noble carriage. In the front of the battle where the Normans thronged most, he came bounding on swifter than the stag, many Normans falling before him and his company. He rushed straight upon ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snowshoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... there, too. Late at night, when all honest ducks, excepting somnambulists and such as have vindications on hand, are asleep, Quackalina led the way back to the old nest. But when she got there, although the clear, white moonlight lay upon everything and revealed every blade of grass, not a vestige of nest or straw or ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... jeune Lisette! Ah, belle Fifine! Anacreon's lesson all must learn; 'O kairos oxus; Spring is green; But Acer Hyems waits his turn! I hear you whispering from the dust, "Tiens, mon cher, c'est toujours so,— The brightest blade grows dim with rust, The fairest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the familiar lines of Pushkin about the golden moon of Spain flashed into my mind. And indeed this was a golden moon. At this moment she radiated rivers of golden light, poured forth liquid gold into the tossing lake at our feet, and sprinkled with golden dust every blade of grass, every pebble, as far as the eye could reach, all round us. Her disk of silvery yellow swiftly glided upward amongst the big stars, on their ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... earliest south winds softly blow Over the brown earth, and the waning snow In the last days of the discrowned March,— Before the silver tassels of the larch, Or any tiniest bud or blade is seen; Or in the woods the faintest kindling green, And all the earth is veiled in azure mist, Waiting the far-off kisses of the sun,— They lift their bright heads shyly one by one. And offer each, in cups of amethyst, Drops of the honey ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... to know about storms that leave the worst Northern trails a summer picnic, and muskegs and tundra that leave you searching for something bigger than miles to measure with, and barren, fly-ridden territory without a leaf or blade of grass and scored every way at once with rifts and water canyons so you can't tell the north from the Desert of Sahara? If you do, read the old report I've been writing. I'll hand you a story that won't shout credit for ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... some of the crevices in the stone wall, dwelt many a big, ugly, black spider always on the alert, peeping out of his nook ready to pounce upon any giddy fly or wandering centipede. One of my amusements consisted in tickling the spiders gently, very gently, with a blade of grass or a cherry-stalk in their webs. Mystified, they would rush out, fancying they had to deal with some sort of prey, while I would rapidly draw back my hand in disgust. Well, last year, on that fourteenth of July, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the scalpel very freely upon yourself, my boy," said Phillip Stanley, in his friendliest tone. "But let us see if there isn't a different kind of blade that will serve us better. If you were cruelly bound with thongs, and some friend should pass you a keen-edged knife, you would not sit hopelessly looking at your bonds and still continue to bemoan your bondage; you would instantly begin to sever the thongs and so regain ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... great marvel it is, Strange in the mouth that knoweth it not, How the point of the knife and the right hand, The thought of a man, and his blade therewith, Shaped me with skill, that boldly I might So deliver a message to thee In the presence of us two alone, That to other men our talk May not ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... credential. And, indeed, it was by means of this jewel that the faultless Sita had been able to support her existence. And the daughter of Janaka further told me as a token from her, that by thee, O tiger among men, a blade of grass (inspired with Mantras and thus converted into a fatal weapon) had once been shot at a crow while ye were on the breast of the mighty hill known by the name of Chitrakuta! And this she said as evidence of my having met her and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... much as upon my revolver, for, innocent and inoffensive as it looked, it was capable of most deadly execution. I had chosen it in preference to many other more pretentious weapons which had suggested themselves to me. It consisted of a small, flexible steel wire hardly bigger than the blade of a foil, surmounted by a good-sized lead ball, and the whole covered with a closely woven fabric. By grasping the cane by its lower end a tremendously heavy blow could be struck with the ball, and, if an attempt were made to shield the head by throwing up the arm, it was almost certain to fail ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... downe, Is left (suppos'd of eu'ry one for dead) But afterwards awaking from his swoone, By some that found him, was recouered: So Count Du Marle was likewise ouerthrowne: As he was turning meaning to haue fled, Who fights, the colde blade in his bosome feeles, Who flyes, still heares ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... a farm-bred grandfather to show them how easy it is to use a sharp shovel or how impossibly hard it can be to drive a dull one into the soil. Similarly, weeding with a sharp hoe is effortless and fast. But most new hoes are sold without even a proper bevel ground into the blade, much less with an edge that has been carefully honed. So after working with dull shovels and hoes, many home food growers mistakenly conclude that cultivation is not possible without using a rotary tiller for both tillage ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... even of the Mahomedan conquest of India, the Hindu infidels are sent to Jihannam with "the well-watered blade of the Hindi sword"; or the sword is personified as "a Hindu of good family." Coming down to later days, Chardin says of the steel of Persia: "They combine it with Indian steel, which is more tractable ... and is much more esteemed." Dupre, at the beginning of this century, tells us: ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... moves, speedily placing his wary adversary at the saddest disadvantage. But, having attained this height, his power seemed to pass away as from an over-tasked mind. With twice the weight of arm, and as keen a blade, he appeared quite unable to parry a single lunge of Lee's, quite unable to thrust himself. He allowed his corps commanders to be beaten in detail, with no apparent effort to aid them from his abundant resources, the while his opponent was demanding from every man in his command the last ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... have more subjects now than we should want for fifty years. War knocks the whole of their value on the head. We have fifty bodies as good as this, and are simply obliged to bury them. What I mean is, shall we pull the blade out?" ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... not a human being, not a tree, not a blade of grass—the only breaks in the monotonous whiteness are gaping cracks which in places show the layer of moist, ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... if there is any breeze blowing at all, because these insects cling to the salt hay or bog-grass and do not rise above it except in close, muggy weather where no breeze disturbs them. I have slept a few feet over bog meadows without being disturbed by mosquitoes when every blade of grass on the meadows was black with these insects, but there was a breeze blowing which kept the ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... not have dared use it in her father's hearing. He knew that he was a coward. No man had ever called Y.D. a coward; no man had ever known him for a coward; he had never known himself as such—until to-day. With all his roughness Y.D. had a sense of honor as keen as any razor blade. If he allowed himself wide latitude in some matters it was because he had lived his life in an atmosphere where the wide latitude was the thing. The prairie had been his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood. When responsibility is so centralized ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... which would have given almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass with its fine crystallisations. The rays of a bright morning sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin, perched upon the top of a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my window, was basking ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... struggle in that way was equalized. He turned in the gripping arms about him and the men were chest to chest. Neither spoke; each fought solely to get the other prostrate, while Nicholas developed a secondary pressure toward the blade buried in the wall. This Woolfolk successfully blocked. In the supreme effort to bring the struggle to a decisive end neither dealt the other minor injuries. There were no blows—nothing but the straining pull of arms, the sudden weight of bodies, the cunning ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... disregard for detail, "I found it was my own father, and I didn't claim the badge. That's the kind of luck I got. So I wouldn't try any more. 'Cause if you got bad luck you can't help it. I dropped my knife and the blade stuck in the ground—up at Temple Camp—and that's ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. As quickly ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... this drama. He began with really masterly moves, speedily placing his wary adversary at the saddest disadvantage. But, having attained this height, his power seemed to pass away as from an over-tasked mind. With twice the weight of arm, and as keen a blade, he appeared quite unable to parry a single lunge of Lee's, quite unable to thrust himself. He allowed his corps commanders to be beaten in detail, with no apparent effort to aid them from his abundant resources, the while his opponent was demanding from every man in his command the last ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... each side, several feet beyond the gunwale, and having on the outside a sort of double fence of upright sticks used for stowing away weapons and other gear. The paddles are five feet long, with a narrow rounded blade, and are very clumsily made. The cable is made of twisted climbers—often the Flagellaria indica—and a large stone serves for ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... no saying what might have happened, but for the Good Shepherd. For the little lamb got lost—lost among bleak, sandy hills, where it could find no green blade to eat, and got very hungry and footsore. It could hear no kind shepherd's voice that it used to love to listen to in happier days, but only terrible sounds like the bark of wolves, coming nearer, and lions prowling about when ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... inflections—words which pierced your heart, cold as a sword-blade: "Come, come!" says Robert, striving to drag Isabella away, ... and that simple word was made frantic, breathless, by the accent accompanying it. No one who has not heard Delsarte utter the word rival can conceive of all the mysteries of hate and ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... skins of the hares which I have shot and will make me something," he thought. He washed and cleaned them, but he needed a knife and he set about making one. He split one end of a tough piece of wood, thrust his stone blade in it and wound it with cocoa fibre. His stone knife now had a handle. He could now cut the skins quite well. But what should he do for needle and thread? Maybe the vines would do. "But they are hardly strong enough," he thought. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... where the young corn was coming up. The children were in the field—little living scarecrows—watching it, of course, as on a weekday, to keep off the birds. I made Israel observe this, who replied, 'Oh missis, if de people's corn left one whole day not watched, not one blade of it remain to-morrow; it must be watched, missis.' 'What, on the Sabbath day, Israel?' 'Yes, missis, or else we lose it all.' I was not sorry to avail myself of this illustration of the nature of works of necessity, and proceeded to enlighten Israel with regard to ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... noticed that they carried spears made of a straight sword-blade thrust into the end of a staff. On two or three of the spears were dangling one or more fresh scalps, on which the blood was yet scarcely dry. On pointing to them, one of the Indians drew his knife, and taking a weed by the top, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... took one look at the deathly faintly-breathing Wiggins; then he pulled off his woolen gloves, drew his knife from his pocket, opened the blade with his teeth for quickness' sake, tossed it to Erebus and cried: "Cut off his skates! Pull off ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... farthest hill. In desperation, she turned aside and galloped after a mailed horseman who was trotting down a clover-sweet lane with a rattle and clank that frightened the robins from the hedges. He reined in with a guffaw when he saw what mettle of blade it was that had ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... with a tense string of fibre. One end of the bow is placed against the mouth, and the string is then struck by the right hand with a small round stick, while with the left it is scraped with a piece of shell or a knife- blade. This excruciating instrument, I warn any one who may think of living among the Bubis, is very popular. The drums used are both the Dualla form—all wood—and the ordinary skin-covered drum, and I think if I catalogue fifes made of wood, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a righteous man, thou dost. There is a man sows his field with wheat, but as he sows, soon it is covered with great clods; now, that grows as well as the rest, though it runs not upright as yet; it grows, and yet is kept down, so do thy desires; and when one shall remove the clod, the blade will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... struck at the dwarf, so that the blade of the sword penetrated the solid rock. Thus Suaforlami became possessed of this sword, and he called it Tirfing. He bore it in war and in single combat, and with it he slew the giant Thiasse, whose daughter ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... halberd, a weapon having an ax-like blade and a steel spike mounted on the end of ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... strong, I ween, and my trusty blade is keen, And the courser that I ride is swift and sure, And I cannot break my oath, though to leave thee I am loth, There is one that I must ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 'There lies my ship'; for lying at anchor is a species of lying. From species to genus, as: 'Verily ten thousand noble deeds hath Odysseus wrought'; for ten thousand is a species of large number, and is here used for a large number generally. From species to species, as: 'With blade of bronze drew away the life,' and 'Cleft the water with the vessel of unyielding bronze.' Here {alpha rho upsilon rho alpha iota}, 'to draw away,' is used for {tau alpha mu epsilon iota nu}, 'to cleave,' and {tau alpha mu epsilon iota nu} again for {alpha rho upsilon alpha iota},—each ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged—to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block—with the kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the Afghan hates the half-moon blade. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the earth and fell crushingly upon him, choking the shriek the poor victim but just began to utter. Then, with monstrous imprecations, he twisted a tight knot around the gasping creature's neck, drew a clasp knife from his pocket, and touching the spring, the long sharp blade, too eager for its bloody ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... darning-needle sticking in it. Five apples, two mouldy. A square of hardbake. An old neck-ribbon. An odd cuff. Seven letters. A knife, with the blade broken. A bundle of pen-and-ink—well, I suppose they are ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the water and with a strong overhand stroke took a diagonal course to intercept the canoe. He could see the man bending to his paddle. Every stroke of the blade sent the phosphorescent water flying about the frail bark. The next few moments were of vital importance ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... your threat to aim at Branicki's head. This frightened him, and to keep your ball from his head he stood in such an awkward position that he missed your vital parts. Otherwise he would undoubtedly have shot you through the heart, for he can split a bullet into two halves by firing against the blade of a knife. It was also a lucky thing for you that you escaped Bininski, who never thought of looking for you ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and brave The March rain and the winds that rave. ... O, landscape I am one who stands Returned with pale and broken hands Glad for the day that I have known, And finds the deserted doorway strown With shoulder blade and spinal bone. And you who nourished me and bred I find the spirit from you fled. You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast My soul's beginning rose and pressed My steps afar at last and shaped A world elusive, which escaped Whatever love or thought could find Beyond the tireless wings of mind. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... almost free of the hearthrugs, broke his thumb-nail on the stiffest blade of his knife, a thick rustling and a sharp, heavy stumping sounded beyond ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... THE EMPEROR OF HAYTI.—A magnificent sword, intended to be presented to the Emperor Soulouque on his installation to the mysteries of the "Grand Masonic Order of Hayti," has been made at Birmingham, thirty-two inches in length. The blade is richly ornamented along its whole length with devices in blue and gold, bearing the inscription in French on the one side, "To the illustrious F. Faustin Soulouque, Emperor of Hayti," and on the other, "Homage of the Grand Order of Hayti." ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... that will settle what you feel. And so, though it is by a roundabout way, we can regulate our emotions. A man travelling in a railway train can choose which side of the carriage he will look out at, either the one where the sunshine is falling full on the front of each grass-blade and tree, or the side where it is the shadowed side of each that is turned to him. If he will look out of the one window, he will see everything verdant and bright, and if he will look out at the other, there will be a certain sobriety and dulness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Batailles and the Rue Cassini were at the other end of the world, and you must needs spend a couple of francs for the shortest drive which wasted an hour,—such was the fashion in which Balzac dreamed! And he would gaze at his acre of ground, bare, ploughed-up clay, without a tree or a blade of grass, and he found no trouble in transforming it mentally into an eden of "plants, fragrance and shrubbery." He planned to fill it with twenty-year magnolias, sixteen-year lindens, twelve-year poplars, birches and grape ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... all, but having replaced it gently, he searched the wagon for a spade. It was found in the box fastened to the end of the wagon, and with the spade, in the gathering darkness, he dug a grave near the mountainside. Between the strokes of the blade he sent searching glances over the prairie and along the sloping ridges of the overlooking range, but there were no witnesses of his work save the coyotes that prowled like gray shadows across the sands. When the grave was ready ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... approached and slipped something into the mouth of the executioner, who foamed at the lips. A Lama held his sword, while he turned up one sleeve of his coat to have his arm free, and the Lamas turned up the other for him. Then he strode toward me with slow, ponderous steps, swinging the shiny, sharp blade from side to side, with his bare ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... with the wound," said Quarles. "Sir Robert Gibbs and Dr. Williams agree that it could not have been self-inflicted. Sir Robert suggested that I should try to stab myself in the same way and see how impossible it was. Remember it was a stab and a pull of the blade to one side. It was impossible for a right-handed man, difficult even for a left-handed one, but not impossible. That was the first point I made a ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... utter recklessness, in wine and mirth, when one night, as I lay half unconscious in bed, I heard the door open. I started up and laid my hand on my sword, but melted into a sweat of fear as I saw the ghost of him I had slain, standing as if in life, his hand upon the wound my blade had made. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... however, makes no claims to lightning-like velocity. He bore all kinds of weather, was not liable to sickness except in one season of the year, and he was able to work two and even three days without more than a blade of grass. He was able to thrive on the grass of the veld, and when winter killed that product he needed but a few bundles of forage a day to keep him in good condition. He climbed rocky mountain-sides as readily as a buck, and never wandered from a path by darkest night. ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... best blade of his knife and set to work on the wall near the door. Perhaps he might make a hole which would enable him to open it from the outside should it be only bolted or should the key have been left in the lock. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... that northern hillside, dazzled with sun-gold when it turns its head to the east—it is with us, too. The waking birds are with us. A frog, crawling up out of a puddle and stopping to wonder at the morning—it is there. Even the little insect with diamonds on its wings—and the grass-blade with its pearl of dew, trying to mirror as much of the sky as it can—it is there, it is there, it is there. We are standing amid Love's first day, and there is no more talk of grace or doubt or faith or need of aid; only a rushing sound of music rising to heaven ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... our feet. Then in a moment a white blaze of sky came at us through the trunks, and we burst through the fringe of the wood to find ourselves facing the opposite side of a long cleft in the mountain and the blade's edge of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... galloping off to Graspan, their next position. The unwounded Boers who did remain remained—nearly all of them—for good; rifle bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters are deadly enough, but deadliest of all is the bayonet thrust. So much tissue is severed by the broad blade of the Lee-Metford bayonet that the chances of recovery are often very slight. As volunteer recruits know sometimes to their cost, the mere mishandling of a bayonet at the end of a heavy rifle may, even amid the peaceful evolutions of squad drill, inflict a painful wound. When the weapon is ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... eagerly. "Dr. Sebastian has pointed out to me a line of defence which would probably succeed—if we could only induce poor Hugo to adopt it. He has examined the blade and scabbard, and finds that the dagger fits its sheath very tight, so that it can only be withdrawn with considerable violence. The blade sticks." (I nodded again.) "It needs a hard pull to wrench it out.... He ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... myself. He and his friend, Sir Peter Howell, who was the admiral that took the French squadron, in the glorious administration of Billy Pitt, and afterwards took an island with this same General Denbigh: aye, the old admiral was a hearty blade; a good deal such a looking man ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... in my facts, if that is what you mean," said I. "The stiletto is an English heirloom, and bears on its blade, among other devices, that of Mr. Grey's family on the female side. But that is not all I want to say. If the blow was struck to obtain the diamond, the shock of not finding it on his victim must have been terrible. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... of dross in the white fires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, or one could not have loved her so. Her scorn of any baseness was bitterly scathing; the point of her sarcasm was keen as any thrusting blade of tempered steel; her will was to be obeyed, and was obeyed as sovereign law, else woe betide the disobedient. Also, though kind and gracious to all, tenderly solicitous for, and incessantly watchful of, the welfare of the least of her charges, she never feigned where she could not ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the world, merits a circumstantial description. Both Spaniards and Indians in that country are usually most excellent horsemen; and accordingly the hunters employed on this occasion are all mounted on horseback, armed with a kind of spear, which, instead of the usual point or blade in the same line with the shaft, has its blade fixed across. Armed with this instrument, they ride at a beast and surround him, when the hunter that is behind hamstrings him, so that he soon falls, and is unable to rise from the ground, where they leave ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Birt, extending for about 65 miles from N.E. to S.W. in a nearly straight line, terminating on the south at a very peculiar mountain group, the shape of which has been compared to a stag's horn, but which perhaps more closely resembles a sword-handle,—the wall representing the blade. When examined under suitable conditions, the latter is seen to be slightly curved, the S. half bending to the west, and the remainder the opposite way. The formation is not a ridge, but is clearly due to a sudden change in the level of the surface, and thus ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... managing editor threw his steel blade on the desk. "Sit down, I tell you. And understand this. If you come on this paper—I'm going to turn you over to Mr. Greenough, the city editor, with a request that he give you a trial—you'll be ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and sedentary habits had ill-fitted him for the rough customs of the colony. Besides having scarcely seen a grain of corn in its progressive state from the blade to its earing and harvest, he knew nothing of agricultural operations. Of stock he was equally ignorant, and of the comparative goodness or badness of soil he was, of course, no judge. Such a man, in the choice of a farm, was sure to be shaved by the shrewd Yankee proprietor, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... Trades to back it up it was fighting desperately against the steadily advancing North-west monsoon, drying up, as it fought, every drop of moisture left from last Wet. There was not a blade of green grass within sight of the homestead, and everywhere dust whirled, and eddied, and danced, hurled all ways at once in the fight, or gathered itself into towering centrifugal columns, to speed hither and thither, obedient to the will of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... was down, Ranier came to the court-yard, and raising his ax with the blade upward, he said aloud: "Ax! ax! hammer! hammer! and build for my profit!" The ax at once leapt forward with the hammer part downward, and began cracking the solid rock on which the court-yard lay, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... just as it was pushed off upon the swift tide. Full of Bersark rage, I cut one brawny copper-coloured thief down, and struck another with my fist between the eyes so that he went headlong into the water, sinking like lead, and deep into the great target of his neighbour's chest I drove my blade. Had there been a man beside me, had there been but two or three of all those silken triflers, too late come on the terraces above to watch, we might have won. But all alone what could I do? That last red beast turned on my blade, and as he fell dragged ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... tracts of nakedness where banks of stone had been torn out of the land and scattered upon it; dead beasts stuck jammed in the low forks of trees; swine, sheep and calves appeared, cast up in fantastic places, strangled by the water; sandy wastes, stripped of every living leaf and blade, ran like banks where no banks formerly existed, and here and there from their midst stuck out naked boughs of upturned trees, fragments of man's contrivances, or the legs of dead beasts. Looking up the coomb, desolation was writ large and the utmost ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... with her shall be my prize." So he turned back and mounted and drew his scimitar; then he gave his horse the spur and he started off with him, like an arrow from a bow, whilst he brandished his naked blade and cried out, "God is Most Great!" When the damsel saw him, she sprang to her feet and running to the bank of the river, which was there six cubits wide, made a spring and landed on the other side, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... He presented himself at the time arranged; the guards at the foot of the ladder demanded his arms, which he gave up readily, and ascended the ladder full of hope. Scarcely had the trap-door closed behind him when a pistol ball, fired from a dark corner, broke his shoulder blade, and he fell, but sprang up and attempted to fly. Ali issued from his hiding place and sprang upon him, but notwithstanding his wound the young bey defended himself vigorously, uttering terrible cries. The pacha, eager to finish, and finding his hands insufficient, caught ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... well be," said Emson, dismounting, and throwing his rein over his horse's head. "Yes; here we are. Your bullet caught him half-way up the back here; one of mine hit him in the side, and here's the other right through the left shoulder-blade. That means finis. But that shot of yours regularly paralysed him behind. Your lion, little un, and that skin will do for your museum. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... of opinion evidently occurred, completed, in the sleeping chamber beneath the willow-roots, a large, round nest. The magnitude of their labour could be easily inferred from the appearance of the nest: each grass-blade carried thither had been bitten into dozens of fragments, and the structure filled the entire space beyond the first of the exposed roots, though its interior, till from frequent use it changed its form, seemed hardly able to accommodate ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... little dirigible Balloons drifting about in all parts of the deep-blue Ether. His Tummy told him that some one had moved in and was giving a Chafing-Dish Party. Furthermore, a red-hot Awl had been inserted under each Shoulder Blade. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... advisable to substitute for the handsome but comparatively useless weapon that went with his uniform, and the next instant the two blades clashed together. The result was precisely what Dick had anticipated, the steel shattered the hardened and toughened copper blade as though the latter had been glass, and before Sachar in the least realised what had happened Dick had driven his sword hilt into his antagonist's face, causing the Uluan noble to stagger so that he would have fallen, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... commonly required, only one was used on the Pioneer. The safety valve is located on top of the steam dome. Pressure is exerted on the lever by a spring balance, fixed at the forward end by a knife-blade bearing. The pressure can be adjusted by the thumbscrew on the balance. The graduated scale on the balance gave a general but uncertain indication of the boiler pressure. The valve itself is a poppet held against ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... disarmed for a moment the resentment of outraged Rome. The Pope, on a report from Theiner, spoke of the book as one that might do good. Others said that it was pointless, that its point was not where the author meant it to be, that the handle was sharper than the blade. It was made much more clear that the Pope had governed badly than that Russia or Great Britain would gain by his supremacy. The cold analysis, the diagnosis by the bedside of the sufferer, was not the work of an observer dazzled by admiration ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of the lanyards was severed by the keen blade in Brook's hand. The others attached to the same shroud immediately began to render through the deadeye, throwing an extra strain upon the lanyards of the other shrouds, one of which immediately parted under Bob's knife; then twang, twang, twang, one after the other, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Cork, and was considered to be under fairy control. For a long time he suffered from "the falling sickness," owing to the long journeys which he was forced to make, night by night, with the fairy folk on one of his own cabbage stumps. Sometimes the good people made use of a straw, a blade of grass, or a fern, a further illustration of which is furnished by "The ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... turned and looked full at him. And then death, which had been banished for but a few minutes, swooped swiftly once more on the young man. While he stood peering, bewildered, at Craig, the huge warrior steadied his blade and drove it home through his unguarded chest. The man slid over the edge of the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... like those of Earth, but blue—blue as if each blade of grass were a blade of violet. And each field was thickly planted with bright little gleams like fireflies, winking, winking ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... am glad to make your acquaintance," he said, in his cheery way. The astonished physician came to an upright position like the clicking of the blade of a jackknife, and ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... around me insisted, however, on my pulling a piece of whalebone from the blade of the poor captured creature, one of those little bones which are used for women's corsets. I did not like to do this, as I feared to cause it suffering, and I was sorry for the poor thing, as three of us—Henry, the little Gordon girl, and I—had been skating about on its back for the last ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... book—and turns it over; and now she breathes gently and vertically on the exact center of it, and the fragile yet rebellious leaf that has rolled itself up like a hedgehog is flattened by that human zephyr on the little leathern easel. Now she cuts it in three with vertical blade; now she takes her long flat brush and applies it to her own hair once or twice; strange to say the camel-hair takes from this contact a soupcon of some very slight and delicate animal oil, which enables the brush to take up the gold-leaf, and the artist lays a square ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... hat from one of the deputies, and the clerk, in answer to a nod of assent from the Judge, passed Bud an ink-eraser with a steel blade in ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and treated him kindly. Then they asked him why he had come; and he told them how he was sent to find the Sword of Sharpness and the Cap of Darkness. And the fairies gave him these, and a wallet, and a shield, and belted the sword, which had a diamond blade, round his waist, and the cap they set on his head, and told him that now even they could not see him though they were fairies. Then he took it off, and they each kissed him and wished him good fortune, and then they ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... were actually becoming atrophied. So that if my grandfather wished to attract the attention of the two sisters, he would have to make use of some such alarm signals as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... With the axe here represented may be compared another, which is found on a clay tablet brought from Sinkara, and supposed to belong to the early Chaldaean period.30 The Sinkara axe has a simple square blade: the axe upon the cylinder has a blade with long curved sides and a curved edge; while, to balance the weight of the blade, it has on the lower side three sharp spikes. The difference between the two implements marks the advance ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... and away they all went sailing into midstream, the palefaces paddling for all their lives, and the black bear clinging on to the canoe. In their fright they had left their guns ashore, and while one paddled, the other beat the bear's head with the paddle blade. It was then that I first saw them. I stood on the shore with a very sickness from laughter in all my bones." Here he ceased talking, for Fish-Carrier and Wampum had broken into such bursts of merriment that Fire-Flower ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... horse that black man is holding for him! How he bows his neck, and champs his bit, and paws the ground!" said Willie, a harum-scarum, neck-or-nothing young blade of fourteen, who would have given his best leg to have been the owner of ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... hand came in contact with the handle of the ax. Seizing the tool, he sprang erect, poised for an instant upon the edge of the boat which was already awash, and with the next flash of lightning, brought its blade down upon the wire cable stretched taut as a fiddle gut. The rebound of the ax nearly wrenched it from his grasp, the boat shifted as the cable seemed to stretch ever so slightly, and the Texan noted with satisfaction that the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... between house and kitchen, and the children gathered for the sacrifice and their mouths watering; I know the crackling sound it makes when the carving-knife enters its end, and I can see the split fly along in front of the blade as the knife cleaves its way to the other end; I can see its halves fall apart and display the rich red meat and the black seeds, and the heart standing up, a luxury fit for the elect; I know how a boy looks, behind a yard-long slice of that ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... notice. His faculties were sharpened by contact with these children of the wilds, whose only class-room was the forest, their only teacher, nature. As the crushed blade or broken twig were of deepest import to the Indian scout, so no incident of his life was now too trivial for Brock to ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... the other is but the means for the operation of the condition. The one—being sons, 'joint-heirs with Christ,'—is the root of the whole matter; the other—the 'suffering with Him,'—is but the various process by which from the root there come 'the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear.' Given the sonship—if it is to be worked out into power and beauty, there must be suffering with Christ. But unless there be sonship, there is no possibility of inheriting ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... praised Martha, the servant whom Mrs. Thornton had found for them; had asked Edith for a little Greek air, about which she had spoken to Miss Thornton. Mrs. Thornton was fairly discomfited. Her sharp Damascus blade seemed out of place, and useless among rose-leaves. She was silent, because she was trying to task herself up to her duty At last, she stung herself into its performance by a suspicion which, in spite of all probability, she allowed to cross her mind, that all this sweetness ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pointed her bow, and the long blade of the figurehead warrior's spear, toward Keegark. The city grew out of the ground-mist, a particolored blur at the delta of the dry Hoork River, and then a color-splashed triangle between the river and the bay and the hills on the landward side, and then it took shape, cross-ruled ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... the captain. "I believe it is some sort of resin. Here, hold the lantern, and be careful of it." The captain took his jack—knife out of his pocket, and with the large blade began to dig into the substance which filled the joint around the slab, which was about eighteen inches square. "It is resin," said he, "or something like it, and it comes out very easily. This slab is intended to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... the sabre down. The dull blade split the cloth and clove the hardwood table. There ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... are concerned. If a writer must needs use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to give coup de grace to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to seize his edge-tool by the handle, and not by the blade. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and, indeed, the prospect was anything but inviting. On both sides of the creek the soil showed evidences of the severity of the past drought. Great gaping fissures—usun cracks we called them—traversed and zig-zagged the hot, parching ground, on which not a blade of grass was to be seen. Here and there, amid the grey-barked ghostly gums, were oases of green—thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... time he came within striking distance, and escaped. He half drew his knife, and at the movement Dixon sprang back until his shoulders touched the brush. Smilingly Gravois unsheathed the blade and tossed it behind him in the trail. His eyes were like a serpent's in their steadiness, and the muscles of his body were drawn as tight as steel springs, ready to loose ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... by step Jim had tracked them; sometimes losing the trail altogether, sometimes guided merely by a fresh-made scratch on the surface of a stone, or by a broken twig or bruised blade of grass. At last, he traced it far out into the bush, many miles beyond the furthest range of settlements, and then he lost it altogether. There had been a halt, for some time, at ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... confine himself to purposeless copying, without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by the inconsequent, but in the long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight, tall stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances sweetness, that elegance shall be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated Father Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a day; but a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a discount, suddenly made prices ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... really was the Provence! A clayey river with flakes of muddy sand, and endless shores of stone-gray gravel; pale-brown fields without a blade of grass, pale-brown slopes, pale-brown hills and dust-colored roads, and here and there near the white houses, groups of black trees, absolutely black bushes and trees. Over all this hung a whitish sky, quivering with light, which made everything still paler, still dryer and more wearily light; ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... for what it takes away. What, then, is it worth? Everything valuable has a compensating power. Not a blade of grass that withers, or the ugliest weed that is flung away to rot and die, but ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Wales; reckless robbers spoil my country; my subjects lie prostrate, their breasts crushed by the heel of the brutal Dane. Fate! thou hast done thy worst, and now thou standest before me resting thy hand on thy blunted blade. Ay; I see thine eye confront mine and demand why I still live, why I still hope. Pagan demon, I credit not thine omnipotence, and so cannot succumb to thy power. My God, whose Son, as on this night, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... carrots, 1 head of celery, 1 onion, 3 oz. of Allinson wholemeal bread without crust, 1 oz. of butter, pepper and salt, and 1 blade of mace. Wash, scrape, and cut the carrots into dice. Prepare and cut up the onions and celery. Set the vegetables over the fire with 3 pints of water, adding the mace and seasoning. Let all cook until quite soft, which will probably be in 1-1/2 hours. ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... of the plane must be fashioned at each end, so that when placed over the mortar it remains firm and not easily moved by the parallel pressure of the soap against its projecting blade. ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... a quick yank and the barbed harpoon came up with the blade as clean as though it had never been plunged ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... pushed his finger against a blade of the soft grass that covered the ground. Immediately a voice barked ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... here," he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. "Any date, man," he added, as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under the circumstances. "Put down day, month, and year, only don't go too far back; not ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... of the races that have lived, to the first being; and they will put forth new shoots without end, they will spread and ramify to infinity, through future ages. Look at our tree; it counts only five generations. It has not so much importance as a blade of grass, even, in the human forest, vast and dark, of which the peoples are the great secular oaks. Think only of the immense roots which spread through the soil; think of the continual putting forth of new ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... you, dear," said her husband. "But you must not do Westcott injustice. He has the reputation of being sharp as a knife blade, and of outwitting men in fair contest in court and out of it, but no shadow ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... serious thing, for it meant a big decrease in the amount of ice Paul could chop. But opening the small blade of the knife he kept ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... metallic little laugh. It was habit. She intended it to be reassuring, but too much of it made one nervous. It was the laugh without the soul in it—the eye open and lighted, but dead. It was a Damascus blade falling from the stricken arm to the stone pavement and not against the ringing ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... horse as an ugly animal I think of its beautiful moments, but when I hear a flow of indiscriminate praise of its beauty I think of such an aspect as one gets for example from a dog-cart, the fiddle-shaped back, and that distressing blade of the neck, the narrow clumsy place between the ears, and the ugly glimpse of cheek. There is, indeed, no beauty whatever save that transitory thing that comes and comes again; all beauty is really the beauty of expression, is really kinetic and momentary. That is true even of those ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... right he had to lose it, since he dishonoured the father of the people even in the face of the assembled clan. But the chiefs were noble in their ire; they punished with the sharp blade, and not with the baton. Their punishments drew blood, but they did not infer dishonour. Canst thou say, the same for the laws under whose yoke thou hast placed thy ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... bushes and down the tiny path until he came to where Tommy Grasshopper sat upon a blade of ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... flash of a blade, a hand, a portion of an arm, and then the clutching fingers of Slavin swept him down. He reached out blindly as he fell, his hand closing about the deserted knife-hilt. The two crashed down together upon the floor, the force ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... ran on Tom, "why, we mustn't worry, you and I, if the donkey doesn't. Just think,"—he made a fine diversion by pointing with his knife-blade up to the slender spire of the Matterhorn—"we're going up on a little jaunt to-morrow, to look ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... fall, for, although the majority of them evidently supported Moody in the rush for the boats, none had dreamt of going to the lengths he did; still, not a man stepped forward to seize the assassin, who, coolly throwing overboard the bloody blade with which the foul blow had been dealt, proceeded to carry out his original intention of casting loose the lashings of the long-boat and launching it over the side, several assisting him as he ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... constellation is a chapter. Every shining world is a part of it. You cannot interpolate it; you cannot change it. It is the same forever. My bible is all that speaks to man. Every violet, every blade of grass, every tree, every mountain crowned with snow, every star that shines, every throb of love, every honest act, all that is good and true combined, make my bible; and upon that ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... enumerated. It speaks volumes for the credulity of the age when we find in this list such things as the following:—A portion of Aaron's rod that budded; a portion of one of the five loaves that fed the five thousand; a shoulder-blade of one of the Holy Innocents; two pieces of the Virgin Mary's veil; part of the stone paten of the Evangelist S. John. The great relic of the house was the arm of S. Oswald. The date when this was acquired is not certainly known, some thinking that this ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... could be done that evening. The main hatch was just forward of the gun-room bulkhead; we seized a handspike apiece and went to work to prize the cover open. It was desperate tough labour; as bad as trying to open an oyster with a soft blade. The Frenchman broke out into many strange old-fashioned oaths in his own tongue, imagining the hatch to be frozen; but though I don't doubt the frost had something to do with it, its obstinacy was mainly owing to time, that had soldered it, so to speak, with the stubbornness ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... found, upon diligent inquiry, to have long outlived themselves, like the Archbishop of Granada; but here is a man, or was but the other day, in his eighty-second year, with the temper and edge and "bright blue rippling glitter" of a Damascus blade up to the very last; or rather, considering how he was last employed, with the temper of that strange tool, found among the ruins of Thebes, with which they used to smooth and polish their huge monoliths of granite, until they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... living things, whether they were plants or animals, should be kept alive. I am sure you know that without air you could not breathe; but perhaps you have never thought that without it no plant could live, not even the smallest blade of grass. Every green thing lives by breathing the air, and if there were no air which it could breathe, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... opponent steadily in the eye, like a true swordsman, he remained first on the defensive; and such was his skill that his long, straight blade was a shield as well as a weapon. Suddenly the dark eyes and features of his opponent raised before him the image of Rita Anderson; and he was so overcome for a second that the Confederate touched his breast with his sabre and drew ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... in Providence, for Providence is kind, An' bear ye a' life's changes wi' a calm an' tranquil mind, Though press'd an' hemm'd on every side, hae faith an' ye 'll win through, For ilka blade o' grass keps its ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... crow-bar on a stone in order to reduce it to the proper size. Bartholemy carefully knocked all the nails out of the board, and then finding a large flat stone, he rubbed down one of them until he had formed it into the shape of a rude knife blade, which he made as sharp as he could. Then with these tools he undertook the construction of a raft, working away like a beaver, and using the sharpened nails instead of his teeth. He cut down a number of small trees, and when he had enough of these slender trunks he bound them ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... must have food. I have prepared it for you, again. There are very good eggs, and a glass of milk, and coffee—coffee with a flavor! Come, there will be another day, and another. Sorrows pass in the good God's time; and even a blind sheep will find its blade of grass." Her hand was ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... brave scions, in anger array'd, Once defy'd a proud monarch and built a new nation; 'Gainst their brothers of Britain unsheath'd the sharp blade That hath ne'er met defeat nor endur'd desecration; So must we in this hour Show our valour and pow'r, And dispel the black perils that over us low'r: Whilst the sons of Britannia, no longer our foes, Will rejoice in our triumphs and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... him to make money than talk; he was ready to push the last of it over the voting-table for Norah, but he wasn't ready of tongue; he put his big honest hands in his pocket, and lest he should glower too openly at the fluent blade, sent his eyes after Freda Berglund's yellow head and fine shoulders. Norah ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... smiled with a gay confidence at me, I could not but surmise that my whole face was as a mask worn unwittingly over a grave spirit. But since a man must be judged largely by his outward guise and I had that of a gay young blade, I need not have taken it amiss if Catherine Cavendish had that look in her eyes when I set forth with her young sister alone save for those dark people which some folk believed ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when be tried to grasp at it it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... forget to put in the soldier's parcel, or don't see the point of, is talcum powder. Razors get dull very quickly, and the face gets sore. The powder is almost a necessity when one is shaving in luke-warm tea and laundry soap, with a safety razor blade that wasn't sharp in the first place. In the summer on the march men sweat and accumulate all the dirt there is in the world. There are forty hitherto unsuspected places on the body that chafe under the weight of equipment. Talc helps. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... arena a grim and fatal form, brandishing a short, sharp sword, and with features utterly concealed beneath its visor. With slow and measured step this dismal headsman approached the gladiator, still kneeling—laid the left hand on his humbled crest—drew the edge of the blade across his neck—turned round to the assembly, lest, in the last moment, remorse should come upon them; the dread signal continued the same; the blade glittered brightly in the air—fell—and the gladiator rolled upon the sand: his limbs quivered—were ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... ventured his life for us; indeed, but so did every soldier in his host. And am I bound to wed any ruffling blade among them, because he fought when the trumpet sounded? I wonder what, is the meaning of their devoir, as they call it, when it shames them not to claim the highest reward woman can bestow, merely for discharging the duty of a gentleman, by a distressed creature. A gentleman, said I?—The coarsest ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... craftily hath said, The day of chivalry is dead? I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Lady. Is Honor gone into his grave? Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave [271] To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Lady? Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady? For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... said Great-heart to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, Thou hast worthily behaved thyself. Let me see thy sword. So he showed it him. When he had taken it in his hand, and looked thereon a while, he said, Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade (Isa. 2:3). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his cover as soon as he saw Chippy begin to struggle. His patrol flag was fastened on a stout ashen staff, hard as iron, an old alpenstock cut down. He swung it up as he ran, and he was within a yard of striking distance, when he saw the spy's hand reappear with something in it glittering like the blade of ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... man," he said; "I must know you. I knew your father well, man, and I have broke a lance and crossed a blade with him; and it is to my credit that I am living to brag of it. He was king's-man and I was queen's-man during the Douglas wars—young fellows both, that feared neither fire nor steel; and we had some old feudal quarrels besides, that had come down from father to son, with our seal-rings, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was clear, I made an examination, and found a wound under the shoulder-blade. It was not dangerous, but might well have been so. I sent for my bag and dressed it, the boatswain looking on. All the time I made no comment, but when I had finished I turned and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... O Prince," I answered, "stretched out over Egypt and held in the black hand of some mighty god or spirit. See, there is the blade from which fall little clouds like drops of blood, there is the hilt of gold, and look! there beneath is the face of the god. Fire streams from his eyebrows and his brow is black and awful. I am afraid, though what I ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... world's face, quite a long time passes before one realises how the quality of the light has changed; and so, it was day before I knew it. Then the sun came up above the hills; dew began to sparkle, and colour to stain the sky. That first praise of the sun from every bird and leaf and blade of grass, the tremulous flush and chime of dawn! One has strayed far from the heart of things that it should come as something strange and wonderful! Indeed, I noticed that the beasts and birds gazed at me as if I simply could not be there at this hour which so belonged to them. And ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... morning. As in the Roman and African persecutions of the first three centuries, so now, the greatest danger to the Catholic community lay not in the unjust measures of the Government but in the indiscreet zeal of the faithful themselves. The world desired nothing better than a handle to its blade. The scabbard was already ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... prankling blade meet the children and go off down the ridge with his son, still not looking back. She thought it queer he did not look back at her just once. She soothed her chin ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... combination of these two drugs forms a Valuable Medicine in the treatment of complaints arising from Disorders of the Liver and Bowels, such as: Furred Tongue, Disagreeable Taste in the Mouth, Headache, Giddiness, General Lassitude, Pains in the Back—especially under the shoulder blade—and irregular action of the bowels and other excretory organs. Moreover these Medicines are made up into very small sized pills, which are covered with a tasteless pearly white film, and they will be found a most useful family medicine for ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... out, I did breake my blade this morning on foure that did waylay me: Ile goe fetch another, and ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... right To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, Each grass-blade's glory-glitter. Had I known The torrent now turned river?—masterful Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage—stone And stub which barred the froths and foams: no bull Ever broke bounds in formidable sport More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... in a row on the oilcloth-covered table and stood over them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the blade got fairly into them, they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound. He gave us knives, but no plates, and the top of the table was soon swimming with juice and seeds. I had never seen anyone eat so many melons as Peter ate. He assured us that they were good for one—better ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... cried out one oath—the Kid's own favorite oath—and in his own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter—made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the strength of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... would, or as a man might who felt a quick pain. A sword-prick stings, and the something leapt erect and with a curse turned at me, when I instinctively fell on guard. Another sword struck at mine, my blade slid up this other, caught in the handle and wrenched it from the unseen hand. The weapon fell among the bracken, but my man thought more of getting away than of looking for it, so he doubled round a tree and ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... corn is trodden out by oxen on a threshing-floor renewed every year. After winnowing with wooden forks, they make the grain into a pyramid, insert a sacred symbol, and pile upon it the threshing instruments and sacks, erecting an axe on the apex with its blade turned to the west, as that is the quarter from which demons are supposed to come. In the afternoon they feast round it, always giving a portion to the axe, saying, 'It is yours, it belongs not to me.' At dusk they pour it into the sacks again, chanting, 'May ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... and looked out to where, peeping out between roofs and trees, the gable window of the Elms glittered in the early sun. The morning breeze blew softly on his face, sweet with the scent of flowering pinks and mignonette. In the orchard all the birds were up and singing. Every blade of grass was gemmed with dew, sparkling through the yellow glory of dawn like diamonds through a primrose veil. But Callandar, usually so alive to every manifestation of beauty, saw nothing save the distant glitter of ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... grew up he developed into a wild and reckless young blade, making no amount of trouble ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... similar, and the distance between the buds being about the same, so is the width of the leaves. But the terminal branches of the Spanish Chestnut being much stronger, the leaves can safely be heavier; hence the width being fixed, they grow in length and assume the well-known and peculiar sword-blade shape. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... thickly sown with blackened tombstones that there is scant space for blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, step from tomb to tomb; in the time of the Brontes the village women dried their linen on these graves. Close to the wall which divides the churchyard from the vicarage is a plain ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... with a farewell, bear To the warriors dear of the muir and the valley— The lads that convene in their plaiding of green, With the curtal coat, and the sweeping eil-e. In their belts array'd, where the dark blue blade Is hung, with the dirk at the side; When the sword is at large, and uplifted the targe, Ha! not a foe the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... essential framework of the organization remains unchanged. Here, for instance, is a Porpoise: here is its strong backbone, with the cavity running through it, which contains the spinal cord; here are the ribs, here the shoulder blade; here is the little short upper-arm bone, here are the two forearm bones, ...
— The Present Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... looked at him, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... avoided looking straight at him (as etiquette prescribed), there was a loving expression on her face, and once, when about to go away with her companions, she pretended that her foot had been cut by a blade of kusagrass—but it was merely an excuse for turning her face. Thus, while her love is not frankly discovered, it is not covered either. She doubts whether the king loves her, and her agony throws her into a feverish state which her ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... up the countess's diamonds, held them in one hand, drew his sabre with the other, and began to strike with the flat of its blade such of the sleepers as he thought the most intrepid. He succeeded in awaking the colossal grenadier, and two other men whose rank it was impossible ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... an attempt had been made to establish the Toledo Blade as a newspaper. The town was young, and though giving promise of vigorous growth, was yet unable to make such a newspaper enterprise an assured success. About fifty numbers were issued, under several ownerships, and then the enterprise sank, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... will bury the blade in my own body!" she cried. "I know that you have the power to clasp me in your arms, but it will be a ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... down, Ranier came to the court-yard, and raising his ax with the blade upward, he said aloud: "Ax! ax! hammer! hammer! and build for my profit!" The ax at once leapt forward with the hammer part downward, and began cracking the solid rock on which the court-yard lay, and shaping it into oblong blocks, and heaping them one on the other. So much noise was made ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... numbness of shock wore off and the pain nerves carried their messages to his brain. He still lived, but there was unholy agony where the blade lay. Coughing and choking on what must be his own blood, he scrabbled at the knife and ripped it out. Blood jetted from the gaping rent in his clothing. It gushed forth—and ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... they looked,— That Poet stared as fierce as any! He was a mighty proper man, With blade on hip and inches many; The beaux all vowed it was their duty To toast ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... had almost said, bewitching—volumes, combining information and amusement, the lightest gossip, with solid and serviceable wisdom."—Yankee Blade. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... my blade, when a noise from behind caused me to leap to an upright attitude, and look round; at the first glance, I comprehended the noise. A huge dark object was passing the crest of the ridge, and rushing down the hill towards the spot where I stood. It was the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... lightening, thunder etc.' They can 'passe from place to place in the aire invisible.' They can 'keepe divels and spirits in the likenesse of todes and cats,' Paddock or Graymalkin. They can 'transferre corne in the blade from one place to another.' They can 'manifest unto others things hidden and lost, and foreshew things to come, and see them as though they were present.' The reader will apply these phrases and sentences ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... green chrysolite bare issue which, viii. 275. 'Ware how thou hurtest man with hurt of hearts, ii. 197. 'Ware that truth thou speak, albe sooth when said, x. 23. Was't archer shot me, or was't shine eyes, v. 33. Watch some tall ship she'll joy the sight of thee, ii. 20. Watered steel-blade, the world perfection calls, vii. 173. Waters of beauty e'er his cheeks flow bright, viii. 299. We joy in full Moon who the wine bears round, viii. 227. We left not taking leave of thee (when bound to other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... leaf; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts like a falling leaf; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. To give power, we must have plumes that can strike, as with the flat of a sword-blade; and to give perfect power, these must be laid over each other, so that each may support the one below it. I use the word below advisedly: we have to strike down. The lowest feather is the one that first meets the adverse force. It is ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... with a splendid new rapier, the blades of which were made of the best Toledo steel, of so fine a temper that it was possible, without injury to the weapon, to bend the point round until it met the hilt, the blade springing back, when released, to its original position and shape. This gift naturally delighted the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the slender Milanese poniard with the blade inlaid with gold and the great ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on the table between them. The shipmaster came in just then with some question, and the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... the ragged infant threaten war; There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil; There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; Hardy and high above the slender sheaf The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade; With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, And a ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... doing so the cord became loosened, and I ducked my head. For a second my right hand was freed, and I drew from my belt the long Italian knife which I often carry as a better weapon in a scrimmage than a revolver, and struck upward at the fellow who had sentenced me to death. The blade entered his stomach, and he fell forward with an agonised cry. Then slashing indiscriminately right and left, I quickly cleared myself of them. A revolver flashed close to me, but the bullet whizzed past, and making a sudden dash for the door I rushed headlong down the stairs and out into the ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... sanitary and spick and span—not a blade of grass out of place," was Polly's comment. "How do you ever manage it? I should not like to be a blade of grass on your land," she concluded, with ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... gone, had not Thomas Jefferson so opportunely come upon the scene. At his modest abode, No. 57 Maiden Lane, the two Randolph lads—John, seventeen, Theodorick, nineteen—were frequent visitors. Theodorick was a roistering blade, much opposed to his younger brother's reading habits, caring himself for nothing but pleasure. John was an eager politician. During the whole period of the reaction, first at New York, afterward at Philadelphia, finally in ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... illustrations: arguing that the carnivorous form of tooth necessitating a certain action of the jaw, implies a particular form in its condyles; implies also limbs fit for seizing and holding prey; therefore implies claws, a certain structure of the leg-bones, a certain form of shoulder-blade. Summing up he says, that "the claw, the scapula, the condyle, the femur, and all the other bones, taken separately, will give the tooth or one another; and by commencing with any one, he who had a rational conception of the laws of the organic economy, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... so pleasant did seem, That he thought it to be but a meer golden dream; Till at length he was brought to the duke, where he sought For a pardon as fearing he had set him at nought; But his highness he said, Thou'rt a jolly bold blade, Such a frolick before ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... structures to fit them for giving perfection to the senses of smell, sight, and hearing, so necessary to animals of prey. In short, the shape and structure of the teeth regulate the forms of the condyle, of the shoulder-blade, and of the claws, in the same manner as the equation of a curve regulates all its other properties; and as in regard to any particular curve all its properties may be ascertained by assuming each separate property as the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... eyes shining under levelled brows. She let the point of the great sword rest on the grass, and she leaned upon its mighty cross-piece, resting her cheek against its handle. Her red hair ran in ripples over her shoulders and over the hilt of the blade, red as ever the blood the blade had ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... send some simple experiments for the chemists' club. Put into a small chemist's mortar as much finely powdered potassium chlorate as will lie upon the point of a penknife blade, and half the quantity of sulphur; cover the mortar with a piece of paper having a hole cut in it large enough for the handle of the pestle to pass through. When the two substances are well mixed, grind heavily with ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in my mind, still unanswered, I took a light, went into my study, and drew from my escritoir the few small weapons which I had in possession. These are soon named. One was a neat little dirk—broad in blade, double-edged, short—sufficient for all my purposes. I examined my pistols and loaded them—a small, neat pair, the present of Edgerton himself. This fact determined me not to use them. I restored them to the escritoir; put the dagger between the folds of my vest, and prepared to ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Don't your mountaineers attack bears dagger in hand? And isn't steel surer than lead? Here's a sturdy blade. Slip it under your belt and ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the bones of the martyr. The remains were examined in the presence of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and sundry Abbots in 1129. The genuineness of the relics, so it is said, was established by appearances of the saint to divers persons as well as by miracles. One shoulder blade was missing; but this, as it afterwards appeared, had been given by a former Abbot, at the request of King Canute, to the reigning duke of some foreign land, who had founded a cathedral church on purpose to receive so precious a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... the tarpaulin. His blanket he used for a saddle blanket on Nagger. Of the utensils left by the Stewarts he chose a couple of small iron pans, with long handles. The rest he left. In his saddle bags he had a few extra horseshoes, some nails, bullets for his rifle, and a knife with a heavy blade. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... The brave Respect the dead; but you—you draw That ancient blade, the ass's jaw, And shake it o'er a ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... imitation of the sailor knives brought to the islands a hundred years before by the first white men, used to divide the coconuts in two so that the copra might be dried. It was a murderous weapon, and the blade, twelve inches long, was very sharp. Walker ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... short in median line of skull, posterior margin straight or with slight median posterior angle; incisive foramina tapered toward both ends, sometimes narrower anteriorly than posteriorly; anterior palatal spine usually forming a blade thickened on ventral edge, and right and left sides usually incompletely fused; nasal septum with a posterior notch separating vomer from maxillary; posterior margin of palate usually bearing single or double point, sometimes straight; interpterygoid fossa moderately wide, lateral margins concave; ...
— A New Subspecies of Wood Rat (Neotoma mexicana) from Colorado • Robert B. Finley
... Having succeeded in dragging Payne from off the bed, he receives over his shoulder two deep wounds down his back, inflicting injuries from which one side of (p. 433) his face and two fingers of one hand are still partially paralyzed. He received two more wounds under his left shoulder blade, which proved nearly fatal, and received blows about the head and face from the revolver. At last Payne, probably becoming alarmed for his own safety should he spend more time in the house, wrenched himself loose and fled, stabbing a messenger from the State Department on his way ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... faithfully that he would never deviate from the path of virtue again, now that his evil genius was removed, if they would only let him come back and graduate, that he was given the chance. Nothing new came up about the cutting of the wires except that the end of a knife blade was found on the floor under the place where the hole had been made in the wall. There were no marks of identification on it and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... moment did he rest content at any spot until he had investigated every corner. Wasn't that a boyish trait? When the whole house had been exhausted, he was over at the water wheel, and the boys followed, but they did not take in every arm and blade of the wheel, as he did. Then to the shop, and always leading the boys, who were after ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... first, the whole troop of pilgrims coming up to Valiant, and Great-heart to the front, spear in hand and parleying; and next, the same cross-roads, from a more distant view, the convoy now scattered and looking safely and curiously on, and Valiant handing over for inspection his 'right Jerusalem blade.' It is true that this designer has no great care after consistency: Apollyon's spear is laid by, his quiver of darts will disappear, whenever they might hinder the designer's freedom; and the fiend's tail is blobbed or forked at his good pleasure. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hues of the ribbons he was to purchase. As soon as he had started on the important mission, the old man laid aside his instrument, and taking his broadsword from the wall, proceeded with the aid of brick dust and lamp oil, to furbish hilt and blade with the utmost care, searching out spot after spot of rust, to the smallest, with the delicate points of his great bony fingers. Satisfied at length of its brightness, he requested Malcolm, who had returned long before the operation was over, to bring him the sheath, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... our men—a fine handsome Yorkshire lad of three or four and twenty—standing glaring and showing his set teeth, and his eyes with the white slightly visible round the iris. His left fist was firmly clenched, and in his right was his bare cutlass, with the blade quivering in his ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... city, When I shot a glance below, Shaken with a giddy laughter, Sick and blissfully afraid, Was a dew-drop on a blade, And a pair of moments after Was the whirling guess I made,— And the wind ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Pre-Raffaelite was capable of representing a meadow by two minutely accurate blades of grass. But two minutely accurate blades of grass are just as irrelevant as two million; it is the formal significance of a blade of grass or of a meadow with which the artist is concerned. The Pre-Raffaelite method is at best symbolism, at worst pure silliness. Had the Pre-Raffaelites been blessed with profoundly imaginative minds they might have recaptured the spirit of the Middle ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... all the European specimens of copper implements have been found in Ireland; and yet out of twelve hundred and eighty-three articles of the Bronze Age, in the great museum at Dublin, only thirty celts and one sword-blade are said to be made of pure copper; and even as to some of these there ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... waving their handkerchiefs, and male and female blending in a storm of applause that made the old walls ring with joy. Songs and speeches followed in quick succession, cutting as with a golden blade the hours of the dessert ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... united, after the same manner Sattwa and Kshetrajna exists in a state of union. The gnat born within a rotten fig is really not the fig but different from it. Nevertheless, as the gnat and the fig are seen to be united with each other, even so are Sattwa and Kshetrajna. As the blade in a clump of grass, though distinct from the clump, nevertheless exists in a state of union with it, even so these two, though different from each other, each existing in its own self, are to be seen in a state ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... out the best blade of his knife and set to work on the wall near the door. Perhaps he might make a hole which would enable him to open it from the outside should it be only bolted or should the key have been left in the lock. He ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... argued, "he sets the natives of that village to searching! What's to prevent him? You know the kind of job they'd make of it—blade by blade of grass—pebble by pebble. Where they found a trace of loosened ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... this jewel as a credential. And, indeed, it was by means of this jewel that the faultless Sita had been able to support her existence. And the daughter of Janaka further told me as a token from her, that by thee, O tiger among men, a blade of grass (inspired with Mantras and thus converted into a fatal weapon) had once been shot at a crow while ye were on the breast of the mighty hill known by the name of Chitrakuta! And this she said as evidence of my having met her and hers being really the princess of Videha. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... from the renegade Po Lun, who renounces the gods of his fathers. Send him forth to meet his fate—lest the blade of an ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... phantom curiously floating, now here absorb'd and arrested, The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,) The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets, The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press'd blade, Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold, Sparkles ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... "Dr. Sebastian has pointed out to me a line of defence which would probably succeed—if we could only induce poor Hugo to adopt it. He has examined the blade and scabbard, and finds that the dagger fits its sheath very tight, so that it can only be withdrawn with considerable violence. The blade sticks." (I nodded again.) "It needs a hard pull to wrench ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... from the corner, poor Beverly Calhoun, no longer a disdainful heroine, gazed piteously out into the shadows, expecting the murderous blade of the driver to meet her as she did so. Pauloff had swung from the box of the coach and was peering first into the woodland below and then upon the rocks to the left. He wore the expression of a man trapped ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... admiringly and caressingly examined the beautiful chased and engraved open-work steel hilt and guard, giving it a rub here and there with his dark velvet sleeve. Then he crossed to the great open carved mantelpiece, took hold of the point of the sword, passing the blade over so that the hilt rested beyond his right shoulder; and, using the keen point as a graver, he marked-out, breast high upon one of the supporters of the chimney-piece, which happened to be a massive half-nude figure, the shape of a heart—the figure being about four inches in diameter. Apparently ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... weapons lay there glittering in the sun. As he looked, the pile grew larger, for each Sikh cast his sword there. Raee also extended his arm, grasping his tulwar, but he did not let it go until an officer touched his shoulder and spoke. The blade fell then with a clang, and he turned away. He passed from the camp without seeing it, and took his homeward way as silently as he had come. The dreams of youth make the habit of age, and Raee had revered ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... sense is essential to success. Time and tide waits for no man. The tall sunflower and the little violet is turning its face to the sun. The mule and the horse was harnessed together. Every green leaf and every blade of grass ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... rings plain, and rings with jewels in setting, circling the fingers and thumbs; the ears, ankles, even the great toes, were ornamented in like manner. At the feet a sword of the fashion of a cimeter had been laid. The blade was in its scabbard, but the scabbard was a mass of jewels, and the handle a flaming ruby. The belt was webbed with pearls and glistening brilliants. Under the sword were the instruments sacred then and ever since to Master Masons—a square, a gavel, a plummet, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... deed and word Rebuke an age of wrong; The graven flowers that wreathe the sword Make not the blade ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... me an idea, or rather impressed upon me the necessity of preserving the outline of these tell-tale marks while they were still plain to the eye. Taking out my penknife, I lightly ran the point of my sharpest blade around each separate impression till I had fixed them for all time in the well worn ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... all haste for Dr. Rowell, but as yet he had not arrived, and the strain was terrible. There lay my young friend upon his bed in the hotel, and I believed that he was dying. Only the jewelled handle of the knife was visible at his breast; the blade was ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the prongs of an eel-stang. The pommel and guard are tinned, as we now tin the inside of kitchen utensils; an art which we should not have known that our forefathers at that period possessed but for such discoveries as this. The polish still remained on parts of the blade “admirably brilliant.” It bore the inscription Benvenutus on one side, and on the other me fecit , in Saxon characters; the name shewing that the maker was an Italian, the crosses probably implying that he (or the owner, if made to order) was a Christian; while ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the hedge and Barney approached the building, which proved to be a private garage. The doors were locked, as also were the three windows. Barney passed entirely around the structure halting at last upon the darkest side. Here was a window. Barney tried to loosen the catch with the blade of his pocket knife, but it wouldn't unfasten. His endeavors resulted only in snapping short the blade of his knife. For a moment he stood contemplating the baffling window. He dared not break the glass for fear of arousing the inmates of the house which, though he could ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it. What a fine fellow you have become, Ammalat! Your horse is not a horse, your gun is not a gun: it is a pleasure to look at you; and this is true. Let me look at your dagger, my friend. Surely this is the Koubatchin mark upon the blade." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... that made the coopering of the vats necessary. Olives and vines have pretty names, and call up associations of landscape beauty. But here they were in no way beautiful. The ground beneath them was turned up, and brown, and arid, so that there was not a blade of grass to be seen. On some furrows the maize or Indian corn was sprouting, and there were patches of growth of other kinds,—each patch closely marked by its own straight lines; and there were narrow paths, so constructed as to take as little room as possible. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Bilboa blade, by marchmen felt, Hung in a broad and studded belt; Hence in rude phrase the Borderers still Call noble Howard ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... and gourds full of water, and collected a quantity of boiled corn. As soon as this was done, we set off again, and entered the desert. We were astonished and terrified when we looked around us, not a single vestige of herbage, not a blade of grass was to be seen—all was one wide waste of barren sand, so light as to rise in clouds at the least wind, and we sank so deep in walking through it that at last we could hardly drag one foot after the other. But we were repaid for our fatigue, for when we halted at night, no fires ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... which you can just descry rising above that maze of buildings, in the upper hall of justice, is a species of glass shrine, in which the relic is to be seen; a sword of curious workmanship, the blade is of keen Toledan steel, the heft of ivory and mother-of-pearl. 'Tis the sword of Cordova, won in bloodiest fray off Saint Vincent's promontory, and presented by Nelson to the old capital of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... have that slight and indefinite adjustment of the bones, with much intervening cartilage, which fits the leg to be both a flexible and forcible instrument of natation, much superior to the ordinary oar-blade of the boatman. On the contrary, in Cetiosaur, as well as in Megalosaur and Iguanodon, all the articulations are definite, and made so as to correspond to determinate movements in particular directions, and these are such as to be suited for walking. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... may travel for miles and miles without seeing a tree, shrub, or blade of grass. The landscape consists of a rolling surface of rocks and sand. It is barren, dry, and destitute of all objects of interest. Sometimes for six months or more not a drop of rain falls to lay the dust. If we go into the section ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... whupped the mens. I used to work some in the tan'ry and we made the whips. They'd tie them down to a stob, and give 'em the whuppin'. Some niggers, it taken four men to whup 'em, but they got it. The nigger driver was meaner than the white folks. They'd better not leave a blade of grass in the rows. I seed 'em beat a nigger half a day to make him 'fess up to stealin' a sheep or a shoat. Or they'd whup 'em for runnin' away, but not so hard if they come back of their own 'cordance when they got hungry and sick in the swamps. But when they had to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... "blouse," and the other of a more permanent character, namely, a maimed hand. He and his band were surprised one night by gendarmes, and a fierce hand-to-hand fight ensued, during which an Austrian aimed a cut at Marko with his sword. Marko caught the blow on his hand and held the blade fast, but the gendarme drew back the weapon sharply and severed all the tendons of his hand. Marko cannot now open his hand, but his wounder was sped to the happy hunting-grounds there and then, as he ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... exhibiting to a number of gentlemen, who happened to be collected together in a druggist's store, some weapons which he claimed to have taken from Captain Pate in Kansas. Among them was a two-edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long, and he remarked that if he had a lot of those things to attach to poles about six feet long, they would be a capital weapon of defense for the settlers of Kansas.... When he came to make the contract, he wrote ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the sword to my saddle bow, while Evan took the horses. The leather scabbard was black with the bog water of the turf where it had been set, but the blade within it was yet ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... mate the one with the largest balloon, taking a position upon his back. After copulation had begun, the pair would settle down toward the ground, select a quiet spot, and the female would alight by placing her front legs across a horizontal grass blade, her head resting against the blade so as to brace the body in position. Here she would continue to hold the male beneath her for a little time, until the process was finished. The male, meanwhile, would be rolling the balloon about in a variety of positions, juggling ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the designated chair, which he mounted in front of the mantel piece, and thence reaching up to the portrait of President Lincoln, took it carefully down from the hook. With the blade of his pocket-knife, he loosened some tacks which secured the thin pine slats at the back of the picture, and removed them. He took everything from the frame, and blank dismay seized him, when the desired ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... an individual, not a grain of dust or a blade of grass. Don't be a sheep; be a man. It has taken nature a hundred million years to produce you. Don't make her sorry ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... been for the last part of the way looking and listening with the closest attention, struck almost directly to the spot, hardly a step astray. It was all below the surface of the earth, so that hardly any sound rose above; and there was no sign of any path to it, not a tree, nor shrub, nor blade of grass near, but an amphitheatre of rock, and the beautiful white river, in its leap into the canyon falling a hundred and ninety feet. The cliffs and jagged pinnacles of basaltic rock around it were several ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... so incensed over the damage to his automobile that he never even sent to inquire whether I lived or died. At a charity hospital they tried to mend my breaks and tinker up my anatomy. My shoulder-blade was shattered, my arm broken in three places, and four ribs were crashed in. The wounds in my head are mere abrasions of the scalp, and not serious. But it has taken me a long time to mend, and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... used with extraordinary force. And you notice that the clothing is screwed up slightly, as if the blade had been rotated as it was driven in. That is a very peculiar feature, especially when taken together with ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... broken voice, which had lost all semblance of threat, seemed to reveal instantly the whole sad story, and her heart gave immediate response. She reached out, touching gently the hand in which she saw the gleam of the knife-blade. There was no fear in her now, nothing but ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... bed, I heard the door open. I started up and laid my hand on my sword, but melted into a sweat of fear as I saw the ghost of him I had slain, standing as if in life, his hand upon the wound my blade had made. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... mechanical inginooty. Th' doctors has found th' mickrobe iv ivrything fr'm lumbago to love an' fr'm jandice to jealousy, but if a brick bounces on me head I'm crated up th' same as iv yore an' put away. Rockyfellar can make a pianny out iv a bar'l iv crude ile, but no wan has been able to make a blade iv hair grow on Rockyfellar. They was a doctor over in France that discovered a kind iv a thing that if 'twas pumped into ye wud make ye live till people got so tired iv seein' ye around they cud scream. He died th' nex' year iv premachure ol' age. They was another ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... yielding sand, Till he came to the verge of the haunted land. She was as lovely a pleasure boat As ever fairy had paddled in, For she glowed with purple paint without, And shone with silvery pearl within; A sculler's notch in the stern he made, An oar he shaped of the bootle blade; Then spung to his seat with a lightsome leap, And launched afar on the ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... didn't come across them, but the night after that I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... came on. Then when the little man's blade was already out, it swerved aside and went panting by them and past. The eyes of the little man followed its flight. "There was no foam," he said. For a space the man with the silver-studded bridle stared up the valley. "Oh, come on!" he cried at last. "What does it matter?" and ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... Democratic members of the last Assembly, he was the only one returned. He had earned the preferment by able service, and a disposition obtained generally among members to give him the right of way; but the state officials had not forgotten and could not forget that Seymour, whose supple and trenchant blade had opened a way through the ranks of the Radicals for the passage of the last canal appropriation, had further sinned by marshalling Governor Bouck's forces at the Syracuse convention on September 4, 1844; and to teach him discretion and less independence, they promptly warned ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time; and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would stretch out all quivering with life. After ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... of Mutton, roast it, and save the gravy, slice one half, and mince the other, and put it into a pipkin with the shoulder blade, put to it some strong broth of good mutton or beef-gravy, large mace, some pepper, salt, and a big onion or two, a faggot of sweet herbs, and a pint of white wine; stew them well together close covered, and being tender stewed, put away the fat, and put some oyster-liquor ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this.... The field is the world; the good seed ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... in such danger, Master Harry snatched up a heavy chair, and, flinging it at his enemy, who was preparing for another attack, he fairly ran for it out of the door, expecting every instant to feel the thrust of the blade betwixt his ribs. ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... block of straight-grained pine and cut out the shape, roughly at first, with the big blade; then I go over it a second time with the little blade, more carefully; then I put in the ears and tail with a drop of glue, and paint it with a 'non-poisonous' paint—Vandyke brown for the horses, foxes, and cows; slate gray for the elephants ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... the whole day getting their horses across Van Deusen's ferry and headed eastward in the rough road. Mr. Binkus wore his hanger—an old Damascus blade inherited from his father—and carried his long musket and an abundant store of ammunition; Jack wore his two pistols, in the use of which ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... along the trail. At a point where he thought he could dismount in safety and tear down the wire, he came across it dangling from the branches and he gave a shout of relief. He caught the loose end and dragged it free from its support, and then laying it across a rock pounded the blade of his knife upon it with a stone, until he had hacked off a piece some fifty feet in length. Taking this in his hand he mounted again and rode off with it, dragging the wire in the road behind him. He held it up ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... coaches, there was some dispute in which the axe must go—old Balmerino cried, "Come, come, put it with me." At the bar, he plays with his fingers upon the axe, while he talks to the gentleman-gaoler; and one day somebody coming up to listen, he took up the blade and held it like a fan between their faces. During the trial, a little boy was near him, but not tall enough to see; he made room for the child and placed him ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... make money than talk; he was ready to push the last of it over the voting-table for Norah, but he wasn't ready of tongue; he put his big honest hands in his pocket, and lest he should glower too openly at the fluent blade, sent his eyes after Freda Berglund's yellow head and fine shoulders. Norah could ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... owd Stooansnatch wor ready for 'em. Them 'at went honor bright up to th' door an' axed, he ordered abaght ther business, an' them 'at went creepin abaght th' haase after dark, he used to nawp wi' his stick if he could catch' em. But ther wor one, a reglar blade, he used to be allus playin some sooarts o' marlocks, but iverybody liked him except owd Stooansnatch. He'd gooan wi' a donkey hawkin puttates an' turnips an' stuff for a year or two, an' as he'd gooan his raand he'd seen Bessy,—'Bonny ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... mind flew to Hyde Park Corner, and then to the Lyceum stage with Irving in "The Bells." He spoke with assumed sincerity, cutting the air with his hands in the manner that a Cossack sweeps off a head with his blade. He sank his voice and hissed his words in a hoarse stage whisper, while pointing to the ceiling with a dramatic forefinger. In other words, he was the best actor it had been my pleasure to see for a long time—a second edition of his more famous colleague, the futile ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... glass-cutting knife. This article is sold in two forms, a bench knife (Fig. 11) and a pocket knife. The former is provided with a blade some 8 cm. in length and having two cutting edges. The cutting edge when examined in a strong light is seen to be composed of small closely set teeth, similar to those in a saw. The knife should be kept sharp ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... and so his father did, and so likewise it happened to the next sword—it broke in two halves. Back went the old man to the smithy; and the smith made a great sword; its like he never made before. "There's the sword for thee," said the smith, "and the fist must be good that plays this blade." The old man gave the sword to his son; he gave it a shake or two. "This will do," said he; "it's high time now ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Tom paused a moment, and gazed around him as if in quest of something. The naked sword caught his eye, and, with this weapon in his hand, he deliberately approached his captive, whose alarm prevented his observing that the cockswain had snapped the blade asunder from the handle, and that he had already encircled the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... throne of diamantine sheen, Which the blood-reeking feet of Mars degrade, The mad Manchegan's banner now hath been By him in all its bravery displayed. There hath he hung his arms and trenchant blade Wherewith, achieving deeds till now unseen, He slays, lays low, cleaves, hews; but art hath made A novel style for our new paladin. If Amadis be the proud boast of Gaul, If by his progeny the fame of Greece Through all the regions of the earth be spread, Great Quixote crowned in grim Bellona's ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... fall till they be cropt off, and after that, as in despight, will never weare them more. His taile is so essentiall to him, that if he loose it once hee is no longer an horse, but ever stiled a curtall. To conclude, he is a blade of Vulcan's forging, made for Mars of the best metall, and the post of Fame to carrie her tidings through the world, who, if he knew his own strength, would shrewdly put for the monarchie of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the casks of wine. He was a spare man, and his bald head, garnished with a few spare locks at the back of it, was pear-shaped in conformation. His sunken eyes, overtopped by heavy black brows and surrounded by discolored circles, his nose, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife, the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin, contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance,—something between that of a retired ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... ceremoniously saluted with his blade to the east. Then he laid it on the ground and stood astride its ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... Flobert," said Bobby without hesitation, "and it weighs five and a half pounds; and its ri-fling has one turn in twenty-eight inches; and it has a knife-blade front sight, and a bar rear sight; and it shoots 22 longs, 22 shorts, C B caps, and B B caps. Only B B caps aren't very ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... artery-forceps for the arresting of hemorrhage. I shall do but justice to him by describing his mode of proceeding. He seizes the divided vessel with a pair of torsion-forceps in such a manner as to hold and close the mouth of the vessel in its teeth. The slide of the forceps then shuts its blade, and the artery is held fast. The artery is then drawn from out of the tissues surrounding it, to the extent of a few lines, and freed, with another forceps, from its cellular envelope, so as to lay bare its external coat. The index and thumb of the left hand are ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... unwomanly, she cried out one oath—the Kid's own favorite oath—and in his own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter—made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the strength ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... beyond a certain amount, the latter acquires by labor or succession. If he slanders any of the other castes he pays only nominal fines graduated according to classes. Whatever crime he may commit his personal property cannot be injured, but whoever strikes a Brahman even with a blade of grass becomes an inferior quadruped for twenty-one generations. He is the physician for men's bodies as well as ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the box-handle of a dirk; it is mentioned by Shakspeare with the blade of the ideal dagger which Macbeth saw before him. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... wonderful thing, O king, a fact exceedingly marvellous on Earth, about the conduct of the great Rishi, which is well known in the three worlds. In days of yore, after Mankanaka had become crowned with success, O king, his hand, on one occasion, became pierced with a Kusa blade. Thereupon, a vegetable juice came out of the wound (and not red blood). Seeing that vegetable juice, the Rishi became filled with joy and danced about on the spot. Seeing him dance, all mobile and immobile creatures, O hero, stupefied by his energy, began to dance. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... small angle over the lower stalls, is crammed a small bas-relief, in oak, with the story of Margaret Nicholson, the King, and the Coachman, as ridiculously added and as clumsily executed as if it were a monkish miracle. Some loyal zealot has broken away the blade of the knife, as if the sacred wooden personage would have been in danger still. The Castle itself is smugged up, is better glazed, has got some new Stools, clocks, and looking-glasses, much embroidery in silk, and a gaudy, clumsy throne, with a medallion at top of the King's and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... profile sharp as a hawk's. The old man had come out of the house with a Toledo sword-stick, such as the King and his friend had used with the brigands, and as he saw the enemy he had to deal with, he had thrown away the bamboo stick. The long, thin blade glittered in the same light that showed me Dick, armed with an iron ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... service. I have but this—the scars of many wounds all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father's revolutionary sword. It was delivered to me from his venerable hand without stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war not for rank or fame (sic!), but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and hearths, the women and children, aye, and the men of my mother, ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... a mean-looking knife, with a buck-horn handle and a four-inch blade that leaped open on pressure of a spring. Its type was widely popular all over the West in those days, but one of them would be almost a curiosity now. But Jim had it out, anyhow, lying on his back with the Duke's knee on his ribs, and was whittling away before any man ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... pleasantly. "There were few pleasant memories I took with me into the wilderness, yet that was one. Ay, but we talked freely enough then, and there is naught since in my life to bring loss of faith. 'Tis my wish to serve you, be it with wit or blade." He bent lower, seeking the expression in my eyes. "This Hugo Chevet—he is a brute. I ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... cultivated. The full-grown seed-pod measures three and a-half inches vertically, and two and a-half in horizontal diameter. Early in February and March the bleeding process commences. Three small lancet-shaped pieces of iron are bound together with cotton, about one-twelfth of an inch of the blade alone protruding, so that no discretion as to the depth of the wound to be inflicted shall be left to the operator; and this is drawn sharply up from the top of the stalk at the base, to the summit of the pod. The sets of people are so arranged that each plant ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... position. A thrust "sur les armes" and he was lost; he made a spring backward, his foot slipped on the newly-waxed floor, and his sword-hand rose in spite of himself. Almost by instinct D'Harmental profited by it, lunged within, and pierced the captain's chest, where the blade disappeared to the hilt. D'Harmental recovered to parry in return, but the precaution was needless; the captain stood still an instant, opened his eyes wildly, the sword dropped from his grasp, and pressing his two hands to the wound, he ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... inches in length, that blade, and it came to a point drawn out thinner than the eye could follow. The end was merely a long glint of light. As for Ronicky Doone, he cried out in surprise and then sat down, balancing the weapon in his hand and looking down at it, with the silent happiness of ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... laughed, and we continued to talk in a sparring way—Mr. Carruthers sharp and subtle, and fine as a sword-blade; Lord Robert downright and simple, with an air of a ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... the fleeing clouds of heaven, Bending low at God's command, Spilled their tribute from the ocean On the long-forsaken land, And the sun, with mellow kindness Spread abroad his softened rays, Calling bud and blade and blossom From their sleep of many days, Billy heard, at last, the music Of the glad earth's jubilee, Felt a new strength stir within him, And a longing ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... chopping the domestic fuel. Some of these "dahs" are very finely finished, the handle and sheath of wild plum being bound by delicately plaited bands of bamboo fibre, in which the ends are most skilfully concealed, and the blade, often 2 feet long, is excellently ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... him once before Otoo felt it to be necessary to fight. I don't think it lasted four minutes, at the end of which time Bill King was the unhappy possessor of four broken ribs, a broken forearm, and a dislocated shoulder-blade. Otoo knew nothing of scientific boxing. He was merely a manhandler; and Bill King was something like three months in recovering from the bit of manhandling he received that afternoon on ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... bailiff to put his foot upon the lands; the next day the bailiff came again with police in numbers at his heels, and found the twenty acres which had yesterday been waving with green crops, utterly denuded. Every blade had been cut and carried in the night, and was then stacked on the ground on which no distraint could be levied. In twelve hours, and those mostly hours of darkness, twenty acres had been reaped, bound, carted, carried, uncarted, and ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... of these years is as silent as that of the dewdrop upon the blade of grass, but it is as real. God's voice is the still, small voice that ever speaks in quietness. The stillness of the moment at the mother's knee, the prayer repeated in the reverent, low tone of the mother's voice, the earnest prayer for him offered ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... walks with him! whom what he finds Of flavor or of scent in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad, majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, Prompts with remembrance ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... good King Arthur (How high is your desire?) His sword within its scabbard lay, The sword with blade of fire. ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... patrol flag was fastened on a stout ashen staff, hard as iron, an old alpenstock cut down. He swung it up as he ran, and he was within a yard of striking distance, when he saw the spy's hand reappear with something in it glittering like the blade of ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... either of a small sword or a large knife, made of an elk's horn. Around the end where the blade had been inserted was a ferule of silver, which, though black, was not much injured by time. Though the handle showed the hole where the blade had been inserted, yet no iron was found, but an oxyde remained ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... for another." When he heard this, he sprang to his feet and made towards them, with his sword and battle-gear; and Masoureh also sprang up and rushed on him. Sherkan met him like a lion and smote him with his sword upon the shoulder, that the blade came out gleaming from his back and vitals. When the princess saw this, Sherkan's prowess was magnified in her eyes and she knew that she had not overthrown him by her strength, but by her beauty and grace. So she turned to the knights and said to them, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... panelled up to the ceiling with old oak. The immense fireplace with its brass dogs and andirons tells of the yule log that still at Christmas burns upon the hearth, and trophies of arms of all ages—from the Toledo blade that can be bent by the point into a semicircle, so perfect is the temper of its steel, to the Sikh sword that was brought home after the Indian mutiny—form fitting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... thoroughfare made notorious by the dilettantism, the modishness, and the witticisms of art. It had an impressive aspect. From the portico of one highly illuminated house a crimson carpet stretched across the pavement to the gutter; some dashing blade of the brush had maliciously determined to affront the bourgeois Sabbath. George stamped on the carpet; he hated it because it was not his carpet; and he swore to himself to possess that very carpet ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... lord felt himself free, he sprang up, crying, "Help! help!" and ran as quick as he could back into the castle. Marcus Bork followed with Sidonia, who drew a knife to stab him, but he saw the glitter of the blade by the light of the lanterns (for one can easily imagine that the bells and the cannon had brought all the snorers to their legs), and giving her a blow upon the arm that made her drop the knife, dragged her through ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... penetrated to her innermost consciousness, cleaving their way sheer through the fog of doubt and mistrust and pride as the sharp blade of the surgeon's knife cuts deep into a festering wound. And before their clarifying, essential truth, Diana's soul recoiled ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... over and over until he lay against the skins. In the dim grayness he saw a bright blade moving carefully upward through the deer-hide. Then a long knife was pushed into the opening; a small, brown hand grasped the hilt. Another little hand followed and felt of the wall and floor, reaching ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... sinister: glory and crime, victory and death, seemed intertwined in its chorus. It was the song of patriotism, but it was also the imprecation of rage. It conducted our soldiers to the frontier, but it also accompanied our victims to the scaffold. The same blade defends the heart of the country in the hand of the soldier, and sacrifices victims in the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... burying-places of all conceivable kinds, and every one knows how prominent a feature they form in the English landscape. There is the dismal corner in the great city, surrounded by blackened walls, where scarce a blade of grass will grow, and where the whole thing is foul and pestilential. There is the ideal country churchyard, like that described by Gray, where the old elms and yews keep watch over the graves where successive generations of simple rustics ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Humaine, is that decadent, pornographic art, of which Balzac would have been ashamed, had he lived to see the vegetation that grew up from the seeds he had sown without knowing what they would bring forth. In Zola's novels the plant was already full grown; its earlier appearance as the slender blade was Champfleury's vulgar satire, the Bourgeois de Molinchart. More recently the blossom has revealed its pestilential rankness so plainly that no one can be deceived as ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... large pocket knives, which they never fail to use in a scuffle; and you may see a gentleman seated at the tavern door, balanced on two legs of a chair, picking his teeth with a knife, the blade of which is full six inches long, or cutting the benches, posts, or any thing else that may lie within his reach. Notwithstanding this, the Kentuckians are by no means more quarrelsome than any other people of the western states; and they are vastly less so than the people of Ireland. But when ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... December, were now at hand, in which I had the pleasing prospect of a very good crop. But here I met with a new problem; for the goats and hares, having tasted of the outshoot of the blade, kept it to short that it had not strengthen to shoot up into a stalk. To prevent this, I enclosed it with a hedge, and by day shot some of its devourers; and my dog which I had tied to the field-gate, keeping barking all night; so frightened ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... small sticks laid across occupies the centre of the canoe, extending on each side, several feet beyond the gunwale, and having on the outside a sort of double fence of upright sticks used for stowing away weapons and other gear. The paddles are five feet long, with a narrow rounded blade, and are very clumsily made. The cable is made of twisted climbers—often the Flagellaria indica—and a large ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... seen the two women, and bathing his temples, while Lord Castleton was binding his arm; and the marquis's favorite valet, who, amongst his other gifts, was something of a surgeon, was wiping the blade of the penknife that had served instead of a lancet. Lord Castleton nodded to me. "Don't be uneasy,—a little fainting fit; we have bled him. He is safe now,—see, he is recovering." Roland's eyes, as they opened, turned ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smiling at Geniality, the President becomes a formality, and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that his centenary should ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to cast about in my mind for some means by which I might drive the creatures away. I had a knife with a long, strong, sharp blade, attached to my neck by a lanyard, and I looked about me to see if there was anything available which I could convert into a spear by lashing the knife to it; but there was nothing; and I was still puzzling my brain when suddenly the two fish paused in their patrol, swung quickly round, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... sprang to his feet and made for them with his sword and battle gear; and Masurah, the Knight, also sprang up and bore down upon him. Sharrkan met him like a lion and delivered a shoulder cut[FN200] which clove him to the middle, and the blade came out gleaming and glittering from his back and bowels. When the lady beheld that swashingblow, Sharrkan's might was magnified in her sight and she knew that when she overthrew him in the wrestle it was not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... day of bitter scarcity, had cut bread for a starving mother, the same knife that, one summer evening at a farm at Orangis, Elodie had held in her lap, when she cried the forfeits. He opens it, tries to plunge it into his heart, but the blade strikes on a rib, closes on the handle, the catch giving way, and two fingers are badly cut. Gamelin falls, the blood pouring from the wounds. He lies quite still, but the cold is cruel, and he is trampled underfoot in the turmoil of a fearful struggle. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the chateau, Westerman put spurs to his horse, and changed his trot into a gallop; his troop of course followed his example, and as they.. came to the end of their journey they abandoned all precautions; each man dropped his scabbard to his side, and drew the blade; each man put his hand to his holster, and transferred his pistol to his belt, for he did not know how soon he might have to leave his saddle; each man drew the brazen clasps of his helmet tight beneath his chin, and prepared himself ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... scabbard with his left hand, and the handle of his sword with his right, he made a curving swing upward, while drawing the blade from its nestling place. There was always difficulty in doing this, since when the arm was extended to its limit, two or three inches of the point of the weapon remained in the sheath. The only way to overcome the hitch was to push downward and backward ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Pertinax with gleeful shout, Plucked forth his blade and fiercely laid about. "Ha, rogues! Ha, knaves! Most scurvy dogs!" he cried. While point and edge right lustily he plied And smote to earth the foremost of the crew, Then, laughing, pell-mell leapt on other two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... licking Round the faces of the drowned, And a cruel blade seems sticking Through ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... perceptible blue mark which rarely even bleeds. It was this mark I saw on the body of the Maire of Marseilles, and afterwards on one other in Paris besides poor Brisson. It was the mark found on the man in Greenwich Park; always just below the left shoulder-blade, struck from behind. Felini's comrades claim that there was this nobility in his action, namely, he allowed the traitor to prove himself before he struck the blow. I should be sorry to take away this poor shred of credit from Felini's character, but ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... at her side. All his life Tom had thought of Woodcote as his inheritance; every stone, every blade of grass, was dear to him. He would have to leave it, to go out into the world to fight for his living. How could she let him go? If she was silent, no one would be likely to guess that Rhoda was Lydia's child. She was not mentioned by name in the will. And she should ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... and gave back some shrewd blows himself. But catching his foot in the platters lying on the floor, with the remains of the pasty and conserves, he fell over backward. Finding himself on his back, a sword's point at his throat, he did seize the blade in his left hand; the man, snatching it back, cut off three of his fingers, and the sword was bent. Then, as the Duke d'Andria was heaving forward his shoulders to rise, one of the fellows struck him a blow ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... common with the rest of its genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity is the least security. This is the blade snake, who frequently glides up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents, and if the place be large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... regular, as one in quiet slumber. He bent and gazed into the upturned face—not a muscle quivered or a feature moved. Stealthily a hand crept round the collar of the cloak, and lifted a heavy lock of the raven hair. Smoothing it out on the grass, he drew forth a crooked blade, which, in accordance with the custom of his countrymen, ever hung in the girdle passed about the waist. It glittered in the moonlight; and with dexterous hand he cut the lock of hair: then, returning the knife to its resting-place, rose, and noiselessly retreating to his former position, some yards ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... round and stout, and wore striped shirts, and trousers which were like a knife blade in front; also, he fairly radiated prosperity. His talk was all of financial wizardry by which fortunes were made overnight. The firm of Manning & Isaacson was one of the oldest and most prosperous in the street, so he said; and its junior partner was in the confidence of some of the ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... a tree. As we did not carry a fifth wheel, it was not just the time or place to have any of our members crippled, and I had bodings of evil. But, thanks to the healing virtues of the balsam which must have adhered to the blade of the axe, and double thanks to the court-plaster with which Orville had supplied himself before leaving home, the wounded leg, by being favored that night and the next day, gave ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... in diameter). By putting the sun and planets in a row, and drawing a contour of the whole, we obtain the figure of a dirk, a bodkin, or an Indian club, in which the sun stands for the knob (disproportionately big), the inner planets for the handle, and the outer for the blade or body. Again, the average density of the inner planets exceeds that of the outer by nearly five to one, but the mass of any planet is greater than the combined masses of all which are smaller than it. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... trusty blade, an' laying bare his knotted arm, approached the dastardly ruffian with many a merry quip and jest, prepared ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... twisting her left arm round to the back, to a spot immediately below the shoulder-blade, as if in intense agony. Then, supported on either side, she ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... yonder lie the outlying mountains of the Bears, and through them we needs must pass, to our great peril. Nay, friend," she said, as he handled his sword-hilt, "it must be patience and wisdom to bring us through, and not the fallow blade of one man, though he be a good one. But look! below there runs a stream through the first of the plain, and I see nought for it but we must now rest our bodies. Moreover I have a tale to tell thee which is burning my heart; for maybe there ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... tree that well nigh robbed the little garrison of its brave leader. The corporal was just creeping forward to where he could rest his rifle on a little rock, and the Indian's bullet struck fairly in the shoulder, tore its way down along the muscles of the back, glanced upward from the shoulder blade, and, flattening on the rock overhead, fell almost before Ned's eyes. The shock knocked the old soldier flat on his face, and there came a yell of savage triumph from the tree, answered by yells from below and above. Ned, terror stricken, sprang to the ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... it combeth), and there it lieth (with turning every day four or five times) by the space of one and twenty days at the least, the workmen not suffering it in any wise to take any heat, whereby the bud end should spire, that bringeth forth the blade, and by which oversight or hurt of the stuff itself the malt would be spoiled and turn small commodity to the brewer. When it hath gone, or been turned, so long upon the floor, they carry it to a kiln covered with hair cloth, where they give it gentle heats ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... the resentment of outraged Rome. The Pope, on a report from Theiner, spoke of the book as one that might do good. Others said that it was pointless, that its point was not where the author meant it to be, that the handle was sharper than the blade. It was made much more clear that the Pope had governed badly than that Russia or Great Britain would gain by his supremacy. The cold analysis, the diagnosis by the bedside of the sufferer, was not the work of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... It seems to me that Minneapolis has nothing on Manchester. There were the same grey vistas of shops full of rubber tyres and metallic appliances; a man felt that he might walk a day without seeing a blade of grass; the whole horizon was so infinite with efficiency. The factory chimneys might have been Pittsburg; the sky-signs might have been New York. One looked up in a sort of despair at the sky, not for a sky-sign but in a sense for a sign, for some sentence of significance ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... he knelt staring at it, then he deliberately inserted his knife blade and raised it. The cloth had been glued to a heavy sheet of pasteboard the exact size of the trunk bottom. Beneath it lay half a dozen yellow letters, and face down two tissue-wrapped photographs. The Harvester examined them first. They were of a man close forty, having ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... to see the vegetation that grew up from the seeds he had sown without knowing what they would bring forth. In Zola's novels the plant was already full grown; its earlier appearance as the slender blade was Champfleury's vulgar satire, the Bourgeois de Molinchart. More recently the blossom has revealed its pestilential rankness so plainly that no one can be deceived as to ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... went Daunger, cloth'd in ragged weed, Made of bear's skin, that him more dreadful made; Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need Strange horror to deform his grisly shade; A net in th' one hand, and a rusty blade In th' other was; this Mischiefe, that Mishap; With th' one his foes he threat'ned to invade, With th' other he his friends meant to enwrap; For whom he could not kill he ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Ending.—And so HUGH, carrying a lamp in his right hand, and grasping the blade of his sword in his left, entered the cave of which he had heard so much. Will he ever ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... moments; and eventually, it became a kind of nightmare, which haunted him. He would start up from dreaming of it, his hair moist with perspiration, for, strangely enough, he was always on the point of doing it harm: either his teeth were meeting in it, or he had drawn the blade of a knife down the middle of the blue-veined whiteness, and the blood spurted out along the line, which reddened instantly in the wake ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, 'In the name of God.'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says: "Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises." And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the idea ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... brings back the thought of Mary and those stolen meetings. I have the minutest recollection of the misty bloom upon the turf, and the ragged, filmy carpet of gossamer on either hand, of the warm wetness of every little blade and blossom and of the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discolored boots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feel the same hungry freshness again at the thought of those stolen meetings. Presently came the sunrise, blinding, warming, dew-dispelling arrows ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... look and the touch of the meat whether it is done or not. This steak takes about twelve minutes you will find, but then Mary had taken care to have the fire clear and fierce, and the steak was cut evenly. Press the meat with the flat blade of a knife to find whether it is done. You will, after trying once or twice, know how it feels when it is sufficiently cooked. It should be nearly black outside and the inside should be red all the way through. There should not be a blue line of raw meat ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... thaw, but then a hard frost would come, glazing everything in an icy coating. This went on until late in April. By that time, almost every farmer in the district had used up his hay; every one of them was at the end of his store, and nowhere was there a blade of grass to feed the live-stock, for the land still lay frozen under its blanket of hard-packed snow and ice. When things had come to this pass, a general district meeting was called to discuss the situation and decide what should be done. Brandur's son-in-law Jon ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... however, seems to have been proof against sentiment, as she undoubtedly was against good looks. From all that I can gather, she appears to have made use of her adorer in furtherance of sundry political schemes, such as were so numerous at that period, and to have thrown him away, like a rusty blade, when she had no further occasion for his services. I cannot help thinking she despised him thoroughly. There are certain bills and memoranda, with his signature attached, relating to levies of men and great purchases of arms, which look as if he had ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... a broken spear in his withers, the shaft sticking up a foot and a-half from the blade, knocking over a horseman and wounding his horse; receiving two bullets—ten to the pound each—the first in his neck and throat, a very deadly part in all animals; the second breaking his jaw, and fired within a few feet of the muzzle; making ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... bed and went and looked out of the window. There was a heavenly hush everywhere. It was still very early. It had been the Catholic bells ringing for mass that he had heard. The dew was a-dazzle on every grass blade. The robins hopped briskly about at their business of worm-gathering. The morning glories all in fresh bloom climbed cheerfully over the picket fence. He hadn't seen a morning glory in years. It set him dreaming again, took him back to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... recalled the red-hot poker. I put a hand to my cheek; it came away covered with blood. From the shoulder down, my clothes were saturated with it, and I had left a crimson trail to mark each of my movements since the keen-edged blade ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... saddening spot was that marsh, as I wandered down on it all alone one Sunday afternoon. The ground was frozen and I could walk dry-shod, but there was not a blade of grass. Around me on all sides were cattle in great numbers—steers and big oxen—lowing in their hunger for a meal. They were beef for the army, and never again, I suppose, would it be allowed to them ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... an unopened box of cigars in a cabinet and he was inserting the blade of his pocket-knife under the lid when he said, with good-natured irony: "The primaries do the nominating in this State, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Brother, and get ye out of doors, and seek your Fortune. Stand still becalm'd, and let an aged Dotard, a hair-brain'd Puppy, and a Bookish Boy, that never knew a Blade above a Pen-knife, and how to cut his meat in Characters, cross my design, and take thine own Wench from thee, in mine own house too? ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the blade, and held the heavy basket-hilt toward her. She clasped her small white fingers around the rough, shark-skin handle and raised it over her head as naturally as a veteran leader desiring to command ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... death of Ochiali. His zeal runs clean away with him when he describes a stolo, or great flagship (capitanea galea) of Malta in her pomp and dignity and lordliness, as she rides the seas to the rhythmical beat of her many oars, or "easies" with every blade suspended motionless above the waves like the wings of a poised falcon. A galley such as this is "a princely, nay, a royal and imperial vassello di remo," and much the most suitable, he adds, for the uses of peace and of war in the Mediterranean Sea. A galley may be 180 or 190 spans long—Furttenbach ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... as of a startled beast, a tremendous heave, and a coarse brown hand made a dart at the sword-blade, and was snatched away with an exclamation of pain. Then in fiercely remonstrant tones ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... contentedly in the hot sun, with humped shoulders and legs far apart, and with his cap tipped far over his eyes. Every now and again he would pause, with a piece of cheese balanced on the end of his knife-blade, and look at the twisted figures by him on the grass, or he would dodge involuntarily as a shell swung low above his head, and smile nervously at the still forms on either side of him that had not moved. Then he brushed the crumbs from ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... distinction, from you, dear," said her husband. "But you must not do Westcott injustice. He has the reputation of being sharp as a knife blade, and of outwitting men in fair contest in court and out of it, but no shadow has ever ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... shade of the brambles, the hart's-tongue fern extended its long blade of dark glossy green. By the decaying stoles the hardy fern flourished, under the trees on the mounds the lady fern could be found, and farther up nearer the wood the tall brake almost supplanted the bushes. Oak and ash boughs reached across: in the ash the wood-pigeons lingered. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... seed-leaves on the mounds in the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing up of the young grass, the succulent dandelion, the coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods, the trodden chickweed despised at the foot of the gate-post, so common and small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was mine, as though I had planted it separately. They were all my pets, as the roses the lover of his garden tends so faithfully. All the grasses of the meadow were my pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... indicated,—by the huge carving-knife with which the general slashed his meat. He pointed suddenly with the knife, and, as he did so, the officer at whom it was leveled, sprang into action, to do as he was bidden, as if the shining blade had touched his ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... his fingers pressed on Frank's wrist. He looked up, hesitated, drew out his knife and opened the small blade. He moved so that his back was to Lorraine, and still holding the wrist he made a small, clean cut in the flesh. The three others stooped, stared with tightened lips at the bloodless incision, straightened and ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... right, Michel," the girl replied. "Thou hast done as thy soul answered to God's messages: thou hast fought when thou couldst, and thou hast sheathed thy blade when there was naught else to do. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pipe, for it was miserable indeed, and miserable the smell that came out of it, going there full steam on a hot afternoon of early autumn. Dad always carefully reamed out the first speck of carbon that formed in his pipe, and kept it reamed out with boring blade of his pocket knife. He wanted no insulation against nicotine, and the strength thereof; he was not satisfied unless the fire burned into the wood, and drew the infiltrations of strong juice therefrom. When his charge of tobacco burned out, and the fire came down to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... sword shall hide its lightning, Like his, the youth, whose ever-glorious blade Leapt forth like flame, the midnight banquet brightening;' And in the dust a despot victim laid. Blest youths; how bright in Freedom's story Your wedded names shall be; A tyrant's death your glory, Your ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... grasses wither, And never a flower doth fade; However a fair lad fadeth That once was a lusty blade. ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... how the preparations were going on. The gravel walks were all there, the stands for the bands, the Chinese lanterns hanging from the trees, but where was the grass? Alas! wherever it ought to have been were to be seen brown, sad-looking patches of bare earth, not a blade springing anywhere; what was worse, an army of gardeners were, at that moment only, sowing the seed in some patches, while others were being rolled, and watered with hose. Cosa de Espana! of course. It had been put off to manana, until ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... and ulna (the "funny bone") in the forearm, and the tibia and fibula in the leg. The shoulder-joint is made by the rounded head of the humerus fitting into the shallow cup of the scapula, or shoulder-blade. It is shallower than the hip joint to allow it freer movement; but this makes it weaker and much more easily dislocated, or put out of joint,—the most so, in fact, of any joint ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... both sides were driven in. Their scattered fire ceased, but a moment later the whole front of the Southern army burst into flame. It seemed to Dick that one vast sheet of light like a sword blade suddenly shot forward, and then a storm of lead, bearing many messengers of death, beat upon the Northern army, shattering its front lines and carrying confusion among its young troops. But the officers and a few ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rescinded, and of that side of Nature he had seen more than enough upon the earth. It was her gentler and harmless aspects from which he did not wish to part—from the flower and the fruit, from the springing blade and the ripened corn; from the beauty that brooded over sea and land; from the glory of the spreading firmament alive with light, and the winds that blew beneath it, and the rains that washed the face of earth; from the majestic passage of the ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterwards with a pocket knife, soon forced us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and majors of the old world; ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean To be ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... bugler from the adjoining barracks playing retreat at the moment of decision. All at once the matador seizes the favorable instant. He poises his sword as the bull rushes upon him. The point enters just between the left shoulder and the spine; the long blade glides in up to the hilt. The bull reels and staggers and dies. Sometimes the matador severs the vertebrae. The effect is like magic. He lays the point of his sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as a lady who touches her cavalier with her ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and set himself for a quick spring. As they drew nearer, he decided that there were two of them. Their movements were perfectly coordinated, since they were of one mind, one consciousness—that of Oren. The girl tapped his arm with the blade of ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... should the Japanese maiden slip the eye of the needle over the point of the thread? Perhaps the most remarkable, out of a hundred possible examples of antipodal action, is furnished by the Japanese art of fencing. The [8] swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it, indeed, as other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw; yet there is a pushing motion where we should expect a pulling motion in the stroke .... These and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... of fire-making were in use here, by drilling or by friction with a rope made of fibre or rattan across a block of wood. The Katingan does not know the art of doing inlaid work on the blade of the parang, in which Kenyahs and Kayans excel, and he makes no earthen ware. Hair that has been cut from the head must be placed in a tree. Their sacred number is seven, as is that of the Ot-Danum, Kapuas, and Kahayan. As usual with Dayaks, all members of the family ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... as a blade of grass I could rend it! Judge, then, of my safety. Fire, air, and water—all the elements—cannot have the power to hurt me; I hold a charmed life. The price ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... more On sea or on shore The ringing of my own true blade, Like lightning it quivered, And the hard helms shivered, As I sang, "None ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... slightest warning of treasure yet in store, the white beam was stabbed by a narrow, gleaming shaft of yellow sunlight. The glorious, radiant beauty of the picture presented is utterly indescribable, but it was of short duration, and in a few seconds the golden blade was withdrawn as suddenly as ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... such alternation is not the highest ideal of growth, either in the individual or in the community. Our Lord's own parables set forth a more excellent way—the way of uninterrupted increase, whereof the type is the springing corn, which puts forth 'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,' and passes through all the stages from the tender green spikelets that gleam over the fields in the spring-tide to the yellow abundance of autumn, in one unbroken season of genial months. So would our growth be best, healthiest, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... whose names he could not recollect—and paused in admiration near the transept, in front of a figure of Abraham fixed for ever in a threatening gesture, holding a sword over a crouching Isaac, the blade shining brightly against the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the glory? Where is the reward, For sacrifice of comfort, quiet, peace? For sacrifice of children, wife, and friends? For sacrifice of firesides—genial homes? What hour, what gift, will ever make amends For broken health, for bruised flesh and bones, For lives cut short by bullet, blade, disease? Where balm to heal the widow's heart, or what Shall soothe a mother's grief for woes like these? Hold, murmurer, hold! Is country naught to thee? Is freedom nothing? Naught an honored name? What though the days be cold, or the nights dark, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath of ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... he racked his memory to ascertain whether he had left his sword in its scabbard, or had laid the naked blade, as was his custom, by him while he slept. The more he tried to think the more confused his thoughts became. His forehead felt circled with burning iron, his lips were dry and parched, his step faltering as if under the influence ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... cutting as its name and a reputation dangerous enough to suit the most sensational fancy. Few persons connected with the practice of medicine in or about the great city, who had not first or last suffered some incision from the trenchant blade of the Scimetar, wielded by the wiry arm of the Doctor; and few humbugs but he had pricked and exposed, by the same means or in personal conversation, while he was himself the greatest humbug of all. Others habitually humbugged others: he humbugged himself, or tried ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... panting as an ox Among the mountains pants by peasants held 695 In twisted bands, and dragg'd perforce along; So panted dying Adamas, but soon Ceased, for Meriones, approaching, pluck'd The weapon forth, and darkness veil'd his eyes. Helenus, with his heavy Thracian blade 700 Smiting the temples of Deipyrus, Dash'd off his helmet; from his brows remote It fell, and wandering roll'd, till at his feet Some warrior found it, and secured; meantime The sightless shades of death him wrapp'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... convulsively at the handle of the protruded knife; but as soon as he nearly touched it, this end was immediately withdrawn, and the blade end substituted, which made the comic Macbeth instantly draw back again, and recommence his apostrophe. This scene had tickled the audience immensely, and Duncan, amid shouts of laughter, was just drawing the somewhat unwarrantable conclusion that ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... listened with all their ears. Henry had heard a light footfall, and then the faint sound of voices. He drew himself to the edge of the covert and he did it with so much skill that not a leaf or a blade of grass rustled. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ever." Everybody will be yelling and screaming them. Just think of that picture of the mercy and justice of the eternal Father of us all. If these words are necessary why are they not written now everywhere in the world, on every tree, and every field, and on every blade of grass? I say I am entitled to have it so. I say that it is God's duty to furnish me with the evidence. Here is another good book read in every Sunday-school—a splendid book—Pollok's "Course of Time." Every copy in the world of such books as that ought to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in which we must support the flag of our country, or surrender our Union and liberty without a struggle: that we cannot, we will not, we dare not, surrender them; and, if forced to draw the sword to defend our liberties, the motto will gleam on every blade: 'The Union shall be preserved.' For were it abandoned, life would not be a blessing, but a curse; and happiest would those be whose eyes were closed in death ere they beheld the horrors of those scenes to which with viewless and rapid strides we seem to hasten. Well, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enjoying every step of every day's journey, they went slowly and at their ease through the garden-land of Kent. Dickie loved every minute of it, every leaf in the hedge, every blade of grass by the roadside. And most of all he loved the quiet nights when he fell asleep under the stars with ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... territory, in the gorges of Andarlaza. Seized by two carbineers at the turn in a dark path, he had disengaged himself by drawing his knife to stab a chest with it: half a second, a resisting flesh, then, crack! the blade entering brusquely, a jet of warm blood on his hand, the man fallen, and he, fleeing ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... up her mind on the spur of the moment, and springing out of bed "Sir," quoth she to Messer Lambertuccio, "if you have any regard for me, and would save my life, you will do as I bid you: that is to say, you will draw your blade, and put on a fell and wrathful countenance, and hie you downstairs, saying:—'By God, he shall not escape me elsewhere.' And if my husband would stop you, or ask you aught, say nought but what I have ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... water, a bunch of herbs (thyme, parsley, chervil, bay leaf, basil, marjoram), three carrots, three turnips, three onions, three cloves stuck in the onions, one blade of mace. ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... once a young peasant called Jeannot, and he had a knife of which he took great care. He found that the blade was rusting and he changed the blade. Then he found that the handle was decaying from dry-rot, and he changed the handle; and so on. His friends laughed at him, and would not take the same care of their knives, which they lost—one breaking the blade, another the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... vara right—that's what I hae aften said; a kail-blade, or a colliflour, glances sae glegly by moonlight, it's like a leddy ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... traces were, indeed, more informing. To several of the bones, for instance, there adhered the dried egg-clusters of the common pond-snail, and in one of the hollows of the right shoulder-blade (the "infra-spinous fossa") was a group of the mud-built tubes of the red river-worm. These remains gave proof of a considerable period of submersion, and since they could not have been deposited on the bones until all the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... where the blood had run down from the furrowed wound that had caused his father's death, long after the war and just before the boy was born. The hilt was tarnished, and when he caught it and pulled, the blade came out a little way and stuck fast. Some one stepped on the porch outside and he turned quickly, as he might have turned had some one caught him unsheathing the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... of the Baltic Sea is situated the ancestral castle of the noble family Von R——, called R—sitten. It is a wild and desolate neighbourhood, hardly anything more than a single blade of grass shooting up here and there from the bottomless drift-sand; and instead of the garden that generally ornaments a baronial residence, the bare walls are approached on the landward side by a thin forest of firs, that with their ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Old Eng. adesa, of which the origin is unknown), a tool used for cutting and planing. It is somewhat like an axe reversed, the edge or the blade curving inward and placed at right angles to the handle. This shape is most suitable for planing uneven timber, as inequalities are "hooked off'' by the curved blade. (See ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... matter of that, in Spanish flesh and blood, to beat up in the teeth of such threatening lines of iron lips. The Spanish ships swung sullenly back to leeward, and the fleet of Don Cordova was cloven in twain, as though by the stroke of some gigantic sword-blade. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... exactly three feet long, returned it with a bow. Thereupon the gallant raised his hat and crying, 'God save the Queen!' passed on amidst the plaudits of the mob. Then came another - a better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... teaching. He had shortly before had to say, 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?' and soon 'they all forsook Him and fled.' But beneath misconception and inadequate apprehension there lived faith and love; and He saw 'the full corn in the ear,' when only the green 'blade' was visible, pushing itself above the surface. We may take comfort from this generous estimate of imperfect disciples. If He did not tend, instead of quenching, 'dimly burning wicks,' where would He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... the exaggerated worship of the ancients, was nearly hindering this movement of thought towards facts. Nevertheless learning did her work. She rediscovered, reconstructed, purified, commented on the texts of ancient authors. Then came in observation, which showed that more was to be seen in one blade of grass than in any page of Pliny. Rondelet was in the middle of this crisis a man of transition, while he was one of progress. He reflected the past; he opened and prepared the future. If he commented on Dioscorides, if he remained faithful to the theories of Galen, he founded in his 'History ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... indeed none of the citizens care for them, partly from the trouble of getting up them (especially when, as they often do, they have drunk heartily) as much as for the danger of getting down again. Their houses are all covered with large blade-bones, very neatly joined together. There are no free citizens admitted, but such whose employment has more immediately some relation to the table. Husbandmen, smiths, millers, and butchers, live in their colonies, who, when they have a belly of an unwieldy bulk, are promoted to be burgesses; to ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... a-horseback and fully armed, the best knight King Hugo hath. I will lift my sword and bring it down upon him in such wise it shall cleave helm and hauberk, saddle and steed, and the blade shall delve a foot ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... fallen thus into a corner of the heart, and, when it has been long forgotten, all at once put forth the blade and come into ear! It is a treasure laid aside in a time of ignorance, and we do not know its value till we find ourselves in need ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... other a staying hand To listen ere we dared to look, And in the hush we joined to make We heard, we knew we heard the brook. A note as from a single place, A slender tinkling fall that made Now drops that floated on the pool Like pearls, and now a silver blade. ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... shake the silly-shallow idols from their seats, his words will come straight from God's own mouth, and be thundered into the conscience. He will reason, teach, warn, and rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit" is keener than the brightest blade of Damascus. Such men rule a land, in the strength of justice, with wisdom and with power. Still, the men of dialectic subtlety often rule well, because in practice they forget their finely-spun theories, and use the trenchant logic of common sense. But when the great ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... in cutlery is the "musical knife" at the Louvre; the blade is steel, mounted in parcel gilt, and the handle is of ivory. On the blade is engraved a few bars of music (arranged for the bass only), accompanying the words, "What we are about to take may Trinity in Unity bless. Amen." This ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... page, and a chaplain. The king gave Joan armor and horses, and offered her a sword. But her Voices told her that, behind the altar of St. Catherine de Fierbois, where she heard mass on her way to Chinori, there was an old sword, with five crosses on the blade, buried in the earth. That sword she was to wear. A man whom Joan did not know, and had never seen, was sent from Tours, and found the sword in the place which she described. The sword was cleaned of rust, and the king gave her two sheaths, one of velvet, one of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... was ready to Borrow from the Humblest. The same Acquaintances who had tried to Stand In with him when Things were coming his Way, were cutting off Street-Corners and getting down behind their Newspapers to escape the Affectionate Massage, beginning at the Hand and extending to the Shoulder-Blade. It was No Use. He remembered them all, and no one got ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... rest there, blade! Entomb me where our chiefs are laid; But, hark, methinks I hear the drum, I would that holy man ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. The second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearly always do on a screw. When it snapped Colonel Tom ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... she dared not so much as whisper, Sihamba had not been idle, for with the blade of the assegai she was working gently at the thatch of the smoke-hole, and cutting the rimpis that bound it, till at last, and not too soon, she thought that it was wide enough to allow of the passage of her small body. Then watching until the guard leaned against the hut, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... of this tormented one to four generations back!" was prominently traced upon an unusually large shoulder-blade. "May they at this moment be simmering in a vat of unrefined dragon's blood, as a reward for having so undiscriminatingly reared the person who inscribes these words only to attain this end!" "Be ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... accustomed in her own country to assist in all field labours, toiled with him in piling and fencing as well as in planting and reaping. Even their young children learned to know that every twig they lifted off the ground left space for a blade of grass or grain; beginning with this, their assistance soon became valuable, and the labour of their hands in the field soon lightened the burthen of feeding their lips. Slowly and surely had Stephen ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... inside of his plate, and consumed it with his other fare, besides having the sport of pursuing the clots of congealed gravy over the plain of the table, and successfully taking them into his mouth at last from the blade of his knife, in case of their not first ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... almost imperishable, and from which the Mohammedans invariably make the ceilings of their mosques. The Indian cotton-tree looms up beside the South American aloe—this last, with its thick, bayonet-like leaves, is ornamented in wavy lines like the surface of a Toledo blade. The grouping of these exotics, natives of regions so far apart on the earth's surface, yet quite domesticated here, forms an incongruous ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... then! I'll make you!" The Swede had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the throat, and was dragging him from his chair. The other men sprang up. The barkeeper dashed around the corner of his bar. There was a great tumult, and then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power, was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon. The Swede fell with a cry ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... the ground. The female lays her eggs, 1,000 to 10,000 of them, on the ground or just beneath the surface. The young "seed-ticks" that hatch from these in a few days soon crawl up on some near-by blade of grass or on a bush or shrub and wait quietly and patiently until some animal comes along. If the animal comes close enough they leave the grass or other support and cling to their new-found host and ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... Cat went alone, and sowed the corn. The corn took root, the corn sprouted, it put forth the blade, and the ear, and the ripe corn in the ear. Then again the Cat came to ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... Dick, "Dan's scheme—-beg your pardon, old fellow—-is clumsy, grisly and likely to come back as a club to hit us over the head. Now, you all know Len Spencer, the 'Morning Blade' reporter. He's a regular 'fan' over the football and baseball teams, and follows them everywhere in the seasons. You also know that Len is a pretty good friend of mine. If I put Len up to a scheme that will furnish him with good 'copy' ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... themselves the questions he had propounded. It is the way of his kind. High words fanned the spark of their excitement. Two met with blows; one stumbled into the hot embers. He cursed, and the light flashed on a drawn blade. Instantly the noise redoubled. Mingled with it was the bleating of frightened sheep, the oaths of drovers who strove to check incipient stampedes. Nicanor hugged himself with joy. If but his father could be there to see! Melchior, that wonderful great-sire of his, could not have ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... conduct was that of a chief. I had great wealth, many wives, and ruled over a powerful people. I have destroyed many towns, and slain many in war." "Good, good," says the deputy, "just sit down on the blade of that oar, and refresh yourself in the cool breeze." If the ghost is unwary enough to accept the invitation, he has no sooner seated himself on the blade of the oar with his legs dangling over the abyss, than the deputy-deity tilts up the other ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... admiration, and only shame forbade me to ask him to allow me to try it on. Ideas haunt one. When I was a little child I insisted on wearing a turban and going out for a ride on the pony, flourishing a Damascus blade which my father had brought home from the East. Nothing else would have satisfied me; my father led the pony, and I have always thought this fantasy exceedingly characteristic; it must be so, for it awoke in me twenty years afterwards; and fanciful and absurd ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... was, there were certain courtesies, a certain element of punctilio. Thompson had an intuition that Ashe would not subscribe to even that simple code. In fact he began to have a premonition of impending conflict as he thrust stoutly on his paddle blade. Tommy had changed. He was no longer the simple, straightforward soul with whom Thompson had fought man-fashion on the bank of Lone Moose, and with whom he had afterward achieved friendship on a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Ceres made up her mind that not a stalk of grain, nor a blade of grass, not a potato, nor a turnip, nor any vegetable that is good for man or beast, should be allowed to grow till her daughter was sent back. She was so unhappy that she even forbade ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... something like wounds; I received them thirty years ago; now cough as loud as you can.' The King did so. ''Tis nothing at all,' said Landsmath; 'you must laugh at it; we shall hunt a stag together in four days.'—'But suppose the blade was poisoned,' said the King. 'Old grandams' tales,' replied Landsmath; 'if it had been so, the waistcoats and flannels would have rubbed the poison off.' The King was pacified, and passed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it in an easier or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled with him as an elderly fellow about town might be tickled by a pleasant and witty lad; he indicated that he was no precisian, but in his wildest times had never been such a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, but in vain. This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... officers of the Virginia, which otherwise might have led to bloodshed. The favorite amusement was cutting down hammocks. Dark forms might be seen on all fours making their way on the greasy and slippery deck in the direction of selected victims. The sharp blade of a knife would be drawn across the taut cord that supported the hammock. Then an uproar that awakened the entire steerage would take place. If the one who was cut down happened to be an Irishman, he would loudly challenge all the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... ass were equally unknown to ancient Egypt, and do not appear in the sculptures before the XV. and XVI. dynasties. But even then, the horse was only known as a draught animal, and the only representation of a horseman yet found in the Egyptian tombs is on the blade of a battle axe of uncertain origin and period.] that he was unknown to the Carthaginians until after the downfall of their commonwealth; and that his first appearance in Western Africa is more recent still. The Bactrian camel was certainly brought from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, in the trees, or in the distance, which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... manufactured from the soft native steel which takes an edge like a razor, and with a handle cut out of the tusk of a hippopotamus. For the rest, it was about a foot long, with three grooves running the length of the blade, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... as we now tin the inside of kitchen utensils; an art which we should not have known that our forefathers at that period possessed but for such discoveries as this. The polish still remained on parts of the blade “admirably brilliant.” It bore the inscription Benvenutus on one side, and on the other me fecit , in Saxon characters; the name shewing that the maker was an Italian, the crosses probably implying that he (or the owner, if made to order) was a Christian; while from the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... thrown back, and nostrils slightly distended. "Meadow-sweet!" she said softly to herself. "Isn't it out early? the dear. I must find it for Aunt Joy." She stooped, and passed her light, quick hands over the wayside grasses. Every blade and leaf was a familiar friend, and she greeted them as she touched them, weaving their names into ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... unnoticed grass by the roadside or in the field, he can see in each blade a system of masonry and architecture that no human skill has ever been able to equal. The stem is very slender, but is so elastic and strong that it waves gracefully in the breeze and bends to the earth in the storm without breaking, and assumes an upright attitude again. ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... beau-sabreur, whose blade A dozen desert spearmen faced and stayed, Stoops his high-shoulder'd stature To hear the twittering tones of Tiny TIM, A midget, but the soul of whit and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... swiftness he drew his heavy Sabra and leaped upon Dick. The boy tried to retreat, but slipped on the wet ground and went down. On the instant Tucker was upon him, and, with a fierce cry, the infuriated cavalryman raised his blade ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... well this parable. In chosen ground Only good seed a husbandman had sown, Yet when the blade sprang up, therewith he found Tares that amid the stifled wheat had grown. Then knew he well, how, entering unawares, This, while men slept, an enemy had done. And 'tis an enemy who, scattering tares Amid the corn sown in Creation's field, With deadly coil the growing ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... only index to the effect her labors had produced—was the tone of Galbraith's voice. It rang on her ear a little sharper, louder, and with more of a staccato bruskness than the directions he was giving called for. And it was not his practise to put more cutting edge into his blade, or more power behind his stroke, than was necessary to accomplish what he wanted. He was excited, therefore. But was it by the completeness of her success or the calamitousness of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and the village schoolmaster were meeting each other at nights, in the meadow-bottom at the end of her own park. It lies over that way,—I could take you to the very place. The schoolmaster was a noble-looking young man too, a devil-me-care blade of a fellow, with a turn for poetry, they said, and a merry man too, and much in request for a song at The Moonrakers of an evening. Many 's the night I've heard the windows rattling with the good company gathered round him. Yes, he was a noble-looking man, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... "A strong blade and a noble one," replied the elderly noble with unexpected martial ardor. The incident had not escaped the notice of Trusia. She arose, glass held high ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Ain't any one o' ye got a knife? I can't never get this here knot untied. Hand it here, Billy. Now watch the fun, fellers," and as he spoke Pet opened a blade of the borrowed knife, and proceeded to lay ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... their stern was opposite Harry's oar-blade. I was almost wild with excitement. I called upon the boys, with every entreaty I could think of, to pull harder; urging on Alfred, who was evidently the weakest oar, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... vain I called to him. My fingers could just reach his foot, and he heeded not at all my touch. Slowly Idaho was dragging his almost unconscious victim toward the knife. His fingers were touching the blade point, when, under a sudden inspiration, I pulled out my penknife, opened it with my teeth, and drove the blade into Baptiste's foot. With a blood-curdling yell he sprang down and began dancing round in his rage, peering ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... of man or beast, and I am not going to run away from a White Ghost," answered the redoubtable Bombyane, as he examined the blade of his ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... of sorrow and grief unending and pitiless pain and misery. Their life shall be as bitter to them as my death has been to me. Their music shall fill the world with sweetness and ravish the ears of listening nations, but to them it shall bring no joy; for life like a cruel blade shall flay and lay bare their hearts, and sorrow like a searching wind shall play upon their souls and make them tremble, even as the scabbard of my body trembled in the breeze; and just as from that trembling husk of ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... pounds, an hour and three-quarters, or even two hours. If a spit is used, put it in close to the shank-bone, and run it along the blade-bone. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the end of the year, the plane came into James' possession, and he lent it again; recovered it, and lent it a third and fourth time. It has passed into the hands of his son, who still lends it. Poor plane! how many times has it changed, sometimes its blade, sometimes its handle. It is no longer the same plane, but it has always the same value, at least for James' posterity. Workmen! let us examine into these ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... assured her, and turned the knife point toward her, with the infinitesimal wedge of cheese reposing on its blade. Jennie tried to keep her hand steady as she delicately picked it off, nibbled as she had seen that other woman do it, her head on one side, before it shook a slow negative. The effort necessary to keep from cramming the ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... read, a year since, in the London and Westminster, an admirable sketch of Armand Carrel. The writer speaks particularly of the use of which Carrel's experience of practical life had been to him as an author; how it had tempered and sharpened the blade of his intellect to the Damascene perfection. It has been of like use to de Vigny, though ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... much dislike being quartered there. It is an important position though, and is shortly to be strengthened, when water-tanks will be built, and attempts made to cultivate the soil. At present there does not appear to be a blade of vegetation, and on the side we passed, between the island and the coast of Arabia, nothing is to be seen but the little white lighthouse and the path leading up to it. On the southern side there is a very fair harbour ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Mr. Akermann, who introduced it from Mexico in 1829); Fig. 10.—Stem becoming cylindrical at an early age, and clothed with little clusters of spiny hairs; the branches are flattened out, and form broad, rather thin, blade-like growths, with the margins sinuately lobed (waved and notched). The flowers are large—over 6 in. in diameter—the petals, very acutely pointed and undulated along the edges; flower tube 2 in. long, with a few small scales scattered over its surface; stamens curved, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... however, to insert a forceps into a mass of granulations to grope blindly for a foreign body, with no knowledge of the presentation, the forceps spaces, or the location of branch-bronchial orifices into which one blade of the forceps may go. Dilatation of a stricture may be necessary, and may be accomplished by the forms of bronchial dilators shown in Fig. 25. The hollow type of dilator is to be used in cases in which the foreign body is held in the stricture ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood: but when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... first article I am going to offer for your inspection is a fine silver-steel blade knife with a mother-of-pearl handle, brass lined, round-joint tapped and riveted tip top and bottom a knife made under an act of Congress at the rate of thirty-six dollars per dozen there is a blade for every day in the week and a handle for ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... your manner is offensive." He turned impatiently to the table, and began rearranging the papers upon it. Holcombe shifted the weight of his body as it rested against the door from one shoulder-blade to the other and closed his hands ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that have been in vinegar, one anchovy, a small slice of onion and just a taste of garlic. Crush the resulting hash with the blade of a knife to make it very fine. Add a sprig of parsley, chopped together with some leaves of basil and dissolve the whole in very good olive ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... fell, but the rider leaped clear and, still holding the saber, sprang at his adversary. Ned snatched up his rifle, which lay on the ground at his feet, and received the slash of the sword upon its barrel. The blade broke in two, and then, clubbing his rifle, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enough, were to have been ready for him at Oczakow. But the flotilla had been detained by shallows, by waterfalls; not a boat was come, nor could anybody say when they were coming. Meanwhile nothing is to be had here; the very face of the earth the Turks have burnt: not a blade of grass for cavalry within eight miles, nor a stick of wood for engineers; not a hole for covert, and the ground so hard you cannot raise redoubts on it: Munnich ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... not one blade only, but two or three. With an exclamation of consternation he tore off the covering and ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... shoulders and examined them. They were multi-hinged, built of innumerable layers of laminated wood, which seemed to have been subjected to some special treatment. In the base of each, just where it fitted to the curve of the shoulder-blade, a tiny light ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... up out of the deep water with my paddle-blade and examined it; and sure enough it was a lamprey. There was the row of holes along its head, and its ugly suction mouth. I had noticed their nests, too, all along, where the water in the pools shallowed to a few feet and began to hurry toward ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the room full of moving shadows, with light only back of the bar. A white-clad figure rushed at Gale. He tripped the man, but had to kick hard to disengage himself from grasping hands. Another figure closed in on Gale. This one was dark, swift. A blade glinted—described a circle aloft. Simultaneously with a close, red flash the knife wavered; the man wielding it stumbled backward. In the din Gale did not hear a report, but the Mexican's fall was significant. Then ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Bridport, to-night," he said, "and I'll leave you here, Sabina; but be quite happy. I dare say Daniel will be all right. He's a pious blade and all that sort of thing and doesn't understand real life. And as some fool broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was too much for his weak nerves. I shan't take you very far off anyway. We'll have a look round soon. I'll go to a house agent or somebody ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... brush. A saw is necessary if stocks are to be cut back, and pruning shears are convenient for cutting scions into proper lengths and for trimming and pruning stocks. The knife most used is the grafting knife of Maher & Gross, with a three inch straight blade and a round handle ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... to ask For friendship's aid; Deign not to wear a mask Nor wield a coward's blade, But still persist, though ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... exists. They are written in no constitution, in no law, but they are inscribed in ineffaceable letters in the great book of Nature and are imprescriptible. From the cheese-mite to the elephant, from the blade of grass to the oak, from the atom to the star, ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... just giving up trying to understand it when she discovered in a corner a microscopic animal, which the rabbit could have eaten as easily as a blade of grass, and which was meant for a lion. Then she recognized the misfortunes of Pyramis and Thisbe; and, although she smiled at the simplicity of the designs, she felt happy at being surrounded by these pictures which ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... masks, we inherit generations of masks; and a trivial incident reveals the primordial which lurks in each one of us. Savages—Kitty with her stone hatchet and Hawksley swinging the curved blade of Hunk. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... we should strip; but she could not bear my fucking her dog-fashion. When I stripped and got into her on her belly, she would twist her legs right into mine in quite a snaky fashion, and sometimes lift her legs up till her heels were almost up to my blade-bones. She also like a few others I have poked seemed to have the power of holding my prick in her cunt quite tightly after I had spent,—perhaps because she had not spent herself, for about her pleasures in the copulation I am not sure, though she always ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... from some great solemn organ symphony. The fierce lightning twitched, as it danced in and out the crevices—inwards, outwards, upwards, then finally lost in one downward swoop towards the river, tearing open the liquid blackness with its crystal blade of fire. The rain ceased not. But soon the moon, peeping out from the tops of a jagged wall above us, looking like a soiled, half-melted snowball, shone full down the far-stretching gorge, and now its broad lustre shed itself, like powdered silver, over the whole scene, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... bell, Tough steel 'twould cut, if there were any need: I've had it tempered in the streams of hell By masters mighty in the mystic rede: I've had it tempered by the light of stars; Then let him come whose skin is stout as Mars; I've had it tempered to a trenchant blade; Then let him come who ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... enough to escape the charge. A trooper pursued him, overtook him before he reached the sidewalk, and knocked him down with a quick stroke given with the flat of his blade. His horse struck the boy with one of his hoofs as the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep, As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep, Caught this way? Death's to fear from flame or steel, Or poison doubtless; but from water—feel! Go find the bottom! Would you stay me? There! 120 Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass To plait in where the foolish jewel was, I flung away: since you have praised my hair, 'Tis proper to be ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... with crossed fingers, making the pressure of an iron band for her head, while her lips parted, and her teeth, and cheeks, and eyeballs were all of one whiteness. Her tragic, even, in and out breathing, where there was no fall of the breast, but the air was taken and given, as it were the square blade of a sharp-edged sword, was dreadful to see. She had the look of a risen corpse, recalling some one of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
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