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More "Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own, and yet I have never encouraged him. But now! if a danger threatened him or a sorrow, and if by any means I could save him from it, indeed—indeed—though I never could bear pain well, and am afraid of death, I would let them nail me to a cross for him, as Thou wast crucified ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that lies in my power," answered Reuben, in a voice of emotion; "and never feel shut up altogether from the world; even when the outer door be locked and guarded by a watchman. I have already hung a bell within our house, and the cord is tied here upon this nail. In any time of need you have but to ring it, and be sure that the summons will be ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to sincerity. If you hold slavery so damnable a sin, why do you so greedily covet the fruits of the wages of that sin? The demand of your markets for slave produce enhances the value of the slave, and in so doing clenches another nail in the coffin, of his hopes." I confess I can give no reply, except the humiliating confession which, if the feeling of the nation is to be read in its Parliamentary acts, amounts to this—"We have removed slavery from ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... could discern nothing, but, after a short search, he caught hold of the handle and turned it slowly. The door remained immovable. By another exploration he discovered a large key suspended from a nail near the centre of the door. This he inserted in the lock, and turned—with all the caution he could command. It was not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and took his hat from a nail on the wall. He felt the utter futility of trying to express what was in his mind and walked down the stairs to the street with the file of boys following in embarrassed silence and stumbling in the darkness of the hallway at his heels. At the street door he stopped and faced ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... sat and thought, and when she was warmed, she lay down by the side of Kora; and he wore tied to his waist a nail-cutter; she unfastened this and cut her throat with it as she lay. Her death struggles aroused Kora, and he got up and saw the ground covered with her blood and he saw that she had killed herself with his nail-cutter; then he took counsel with himself and also cut his throat in the same ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... Men of Congress. Does he mean the Cast-iron members or the Pig-iron members? For instance there are the rusty Heavy-weights, and then there are the fellows who are greedy about Tariff. Members of the scrap-iron and ten-penny nail order are, of course, not alluded to. All these are iron men, but, as every body knows, are not men of Iron. In view of its rusty legislation and legislators, we recommend Congress to hang out a sign—"Highest prices ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... clearly the best course to make off at once. She remembered now that she had noticed a tiny hole no bigger than a nail-hole in the door, and had found that upon the other side it was just above a row of books in the shelves somewhat lower in height than the rest, and was evidently intended to enable the occupant of ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... landlord, Mr. Lemuel Hamilton, we could never have given you this pleasure, and had not our helpers been so many, we could never have made the place so beautiful. Before the general dancing begins there will be a double quadrille of honor, in which all those will take part who have driven a nail, papered or painted a wall, dug a spadeful of earth, or done any work in or about ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... out-millioned By the splendours of her vest. Lo, the Ark this holy tide is The un-handmade Temple's guest, And the dark Egyptian bride is Whitely to the Spouse-Heart prest! He the Anteros and Eros, Nail me to Thee, sweetest Cross! He is fast to me, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the village. The red sun was sinking over the plain, a ball of fire; the mist was creeping up from the low-lying fields; the moon hung, like a white nail-paring, high in the blue sky. We went to the little inn, where we had been before. We ordered tea—we were to return by train—and Maud being tired, I left her, while I took a turn in the village, and explored the remains ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... yard. He went straight through the open gates, glancing about, to explain matters to the farmer if necessary, but, not seeing him, went up the rickety stairs, groped his way across to the window, took down his socks from the nail an which he had hung them last night, and ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... shelter and such unlooked-for convenience for our purposes, can only be estimated by those who have experienced them; and it is only to strangers to such feelings that it will appear ridiculous to say that even the nail to which our thermometer had been suspended was the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... have I seen! How white was the turnep, the col'wart how green! What a lovely appearance, while under the shade, The carrot, the parsnip, the cauliflow'r made! But now she mills doll, tho' the greens are still there, [6] They none of 'em half so delightful appear: It was not the board that was nail'd to the wall, Made so ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... long strings of amber and carved peach-stones glide through their cool fingers. Some of them sell galbanum and nard, and curious perfumes from the islands of the Indian Sea, and the thick oil of red roses, and myrrh and little nail-shaped cloves. When one stops to speak to them, they throw pinches of frankincense upon a charcoal brazier and make the air sweet. I saw a Syrian who held in his hands a thin rod like a reed. Grey threads of smoke came from it, and its odour as it burned was as the ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... offerings, the whole in silver gilt, and beautifully engraved. By the orders of his Majesty, transmitted through the minister of the interior, there was also presented to M. d'Astros, canon of Notre Dame, a box containing the crown of thorns, a nail, and a piece of the wood of the true cross, and a small vial, containing, it was said, some of the blood of our Lord, with an iron scourge which Saint Louis had used, and a tunic which had also belonged to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Miller exclaimed fiercely. "I don't like you, Tallente, I hate your class and I distrust your presence in the ranks of the Democratic Party. Against your leadership I shall fight tooth and nail. Dartrey," he went on, "you cannot give Tallente supreme control over us. You will only court disaster, because that article will surely appear and the whole position will be made ridiculous. I am strong enough—that is ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that old Otto gave him a piece of bread, and patted him on the head, and when he woke his teeth chattered, and he moved to another stone to see if it was drier. At last he heard his mistress' step, and they went into the house together. She lit a candle, and walked to the Boer-woman's bedroom. On a nail under the lady in pink hung the key of the wardrobe. She took it down and opened the great press. From a little drawer she took fifty pounds (all she had in the world), relocked the door, and turned to hang up the key. The marks of tears were ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... hopes upon a nail Or laid them on the shelf; Then pricked its conscience with its tail, And sat ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... chanced to glance over the code, since, besides many wise and good laws, it regulated the minute etiquettes and perquisites of the royal household. If any one should insult the King, the fine was to be, among other valuables, a golden dish as broad as the royal face, and as thick as the nail of a husbandman who has been a husbandman, seven years. Each officer's distance from the royal fire was regulated, and even the precedence of each officer's horse in the stable—proving plainly the old saying, that the poorer ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... gutted an' dried on a nail That grannie had reested her ham on, Weel rubbed wi' saut, frae the head to the tail, An' kipper'd as 't had been a sa'mon, a sa'mon, An' kipper'd as 't had been ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... which called itself Anti-State Communist, a name invented by Mr. Joseph Lane of that body. William Morris, who was really a free democrat of the Kropotkin type, backed up Lane, and went for us tooth and nail. Records of our warfare may be found in the volumes of the extinct magazine called 'To-day,' which was then edited by Hubert Bland; and they are by no means bad reading. We soon began to see that at the debates the opposition to us came from members of the Socialist League, who were present only ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling[23] cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... cowslips we shall get!" observed Mary, as she took down Fanny's basket from the nail on which it hung, and then her own. "We are each to have a basket, mamma says, that we may not quarrel. What shall we do with ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... I'm thinkin'," the little man replied. "Gin ye haud Shep's the guilty one I wad, by all manner o' means—or shootin'd be aiblins better. If not, why"—he shrugged his shoulders significantly; and having shown his hand and driven the nail well home, the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... lassiky stormed to his support: "She does so!" and drove it home with the last nail of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... continued his work as long as his rude spade was adequate to a disturbance of the soil. The boy looked up as the gate latch clicked, and stood surveying Lyman with his feet far apart and his hands in his pockets. Lyman spoke to him, and bringing a nail out of his pocket he held it out to the visitor as an offering of his hospitality. Lyman tossed him a piece of money; he caught it up and with a shout he disappeared in the shrubbery. The visitor's knock at the door was attended by a frail, tired woman. She stood with her hand on the door as if ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... and the breadth of it," Jim said, as he took up his knife and fork. There was only a small portion of the beef-steak left, and this he ate gluttonously, and, finishing the last remaining beer, he leaned back in the happiness of repletion. He crammed tobacco into a dirty clay, with a dirtier finger-nail, and said— ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... apparently mere rounded lumps of jelly: one is of dark purple dotted with green; another of a rich chocolate; another of a delicate olive; another sienna-yellow; another all but white. Take them from their rock; you can do it easily by slipping under them your finger-nail, or the edge of a pewter spoon. Take care to tear the sucking base as little as possible (though a small rent they will darn for themselves in a few days, easily enough, and drop them into a basket of wet sea-weed; ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... centered his soul on the dull hurt of a hang-nail on one of his fingers. He should have clipped it away that morning—it was hurting then—he decided; and he resolved, once clear of the crevasse, that it should immediately be clipped. Then, with short focus, he stared at the hang-nail and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... President. "Fight us tooth and nail though you may, we intend to have you married. You have happened upon us by chance, and you shall have no reason to repent of it. We are in earnest ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... hiding-places, and where the Consul was seldom seen of an afternoon. The ship on the stocks was at once his joy and his pride; he crept all over her, inside and out, above and below, scrutinizing every plank and every nail. At length he had begun to have quite a knowledge of the art of ship-building, and had gained the friendship of Tom Robson, Anders Begmand, and the other shipwrights. The ship was to be the finest the town had yet produced, and when this fact came into his thoughts ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... scolding I am going to defend myself tooth and nail. In the first place, by all my Gods and No Gods, neither Green, nor Martineau, nor the Cairds were in my mind when I talked of "Sentimental Deism," but the "Vicaire Savoyard," and Charming, and such as Voysey. There are two chapters of "Rousseauism," I have not touched yet—Rousseauism ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nurse had nothing else to do. Your wife has to clean and mend for you, and cook your dinner and mow the lawn and nail the carpets down." While she said it she looked at Robin as if ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... conscious of the manger where the horned oxen fed, the lowly birth, the obscure years, in the sublime conception that He had come forth from God. He looked forward, and was hardly conscious of the cross, the nail, the thorn-crown, and the spear, because of the sublime consciousness that He was stepping back, to go to Him with whom He realized His identity. He looked on through the coming weeks, and knew that the Father had ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... hat to the table and opened a door at one end of the room. Before them was a hallway; a few steps down were two doors, one on each hand, heavy old doors of thick slabs of oak, hand-hewn and with rough iron bands across them, top and bottom, the big nail heads showing. Howard threw one open, then ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... impossible to drive a nail properly if it was started wrong, and the skillful workman will draw it out and start it over again. But such a blunder in lecturing cannot be remedied—at least for that occasion. A stale or confused beginning haunts and depresses ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... old places. Two of these pieces of china were brought here by Sarah Greenleaf, Whittier's grandmother. The bull's-eye watch over the mantel is a fine specimen of the olden time, and hangs on the identical nail from which uncle Moses ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... possible that human features and human lineaments essentially alike, can be wrought into such heaven-wide contrast? MAN is he who stands there, lofty and spotless, in bleeding patience! Men also are those brutal soldiers, alike stupidly ready, at the word of command, to drive the nail through quivering flesh or insensate wood. Men are those scowling priests and infuriate Pharisees. Men, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who shout and curse without knowing why. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to her feet; wondering still more, followed his lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep, but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise there was no move. Look where ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever forward and rash—"a door-nail!" But the world is wrong. There is a thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I. Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... many foes to fight— There are many ills to conquer, there are many wrongs to right, For the glory of the moment, for the triumph by-and-bye; For the love of truth and duty, up and dare, and do or die, And though fire and shot and whirlwind join to tear the standard down, Up and nail it to the masthead, as ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... anger a man appeared at the doorway, Bringing in uttermost haste a message of urgent importance, Rumors of danger and war and hostile incursions of Indians! Straightway the Captain paused, and, without further question or parley, Took from the nail on the wall his sword with its scabbard of iron, Buckled the belt round his waist, and, frowning fiercely, departed. Alden was left alone. He heard the clank of the scabbard Growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in the distance. Then he arose from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... above his head and taking a cap that matched his plaid coat from a nail on the wall, he winked at Sam. "Come on, Old Top. I've got to get ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... went towards the capitol, as soon as he understood that the people were assembled there; but before he got out of the house, he stumbled upon the threshold with such violence, that he broke the nail of his great toe, insomuch that blood gushed out of his shoe. He was not gone very far before he saw two ravens fighting on the top of a house which stood on his left hand as he passed along; and though he was surrounded ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... property to the extent of half a million, the interruption of the employment of 7000 people, and the loss of 100 lives, has been the consequence. Surely there never was a more striking illustration of the Old Richard proverb: 'For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... wife made their way to the outer stairs and to bed, leaving Regina to put out the lights and lock up the kitchen. She lost no time in doing this, ran up the steps in the dark, hung the key on its nail in the entry, and went to her attic, making a loud noise with her loose slippers, so that the couple might hear her. She came down again in her stockings almost at once, carrying the slippers and a small bundle containing her belongings. She made no noise now, though it ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... will be five hundred pounds on the nail—that would be no bad hit, and she a good, clever, likely girl. I'll pop the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... was a washcloth, her skirt was a towel, She looked down at him with a horrible scowl; One hand was a brush and the other a comb, Her forehead was soap and her pompadour foam! Her foot was a shoebrush, and on it did grow A shiny steel nail file in place of a toe! Gunther Augustus Agricola Gunn, He had a fright if ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... sixty portraits of himself, and among his etchings we find about two score more. Some of them are large and finished, as the deservedly popular "Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill" (No. 168), which is a perfect example of the possibilities of the etching-needle; others are mere thumb-nail sketches of various expressions of face. He used his mother many times, and also his wife and son. In all these is apparent a delightful sense of joy in his work. Nor is this desirable quality lacking in the wonderful ...
— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman
... the customs connected with old-time English funerals, Misson says: "The relations and chief mourners are in a chamber apart, with their more intimate friends; and the rest of the guests are dispersed in several rooms about the house. When they are ready to set out, they nail up the coffin, and a servant presents the company with sprigs of rosemary: Every one takes a sprig and carries it in his hand till the body is put into the grave, at which time they all throw their sprigs in after it. Before they set out, and after they return, it is usual to present the guests ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... sunshine beyond the great nail-studded door was like entering another world. She turned her face up to the brightness ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... might say. This is how it happened. When Grandpa Ford and I got up to the attic, we saw the string of sleigh bells hanging from a nail, where you children must have left them when you last played with them. But we couldn't see any one near them who might have rung them, and there was no one in the attic, as far ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... hit the nail of the coffin on its head this time," chuckled Day. "I don't see a sovereign from one year's end to t'other, and don't 'spect to till my time has expired, so that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... they had at the parsonage itself. True, it was only a half-timbered building covered with boarding, but extra stout built, with iron clinches at the corners, and covered with one-inch plank from Isak's own sawmill. And Sivert had hammered in more than one nail at the work, and lifted the heavy beams for the framework till he was near fainting. Sivert got on well with his father, and worked steadily at his side; he was made of the same stuff. And yet he ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a bit cut off, fragment, nail- paring, and here un diminutif. I have described this scene in Pilgrimage iii. 68. Latro often says, "Thy gear is wanted by the daughter of my paternal uncle" (wife), and thus parades his politeness by asking in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... nature of its powersWas it to be an efficient body, armed with the right of full inquiry and wide examination, or was it to be a polite official contrivance for exonerating Dr. Andrew Smith? The War Office phalanx closed its ranks, and fought tooth and nail; but it was defeated: the Bison was bullyable. 'Three months from this day,' Miss Nightingale had written at last, 'I publish my experience of the Crimean Campaign, and my suggestions for improvement, unless there ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... damned long way with a woman, Perry!" he was saying. "I'm married and I know! That evening suit o' yours with the lavender-flowered waistcoat is bound to rivet her eye—nail her regard, d'ye see! Then there's your new riding suit, I mean the bottle-green frock with the gold-crested buttons. She must see you in that and there's few look better astride a horse than yourself—" here I became lost again in the vile gibbering of my demons until these ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... with painful and unwilling labour. We must take up our cross and bear it if we would walk in the Spirit. If we suffer it to drag behind us, it will only hinder instead of helping us. Each sorrow, each loss, or bereavement, is as a nail to fasten us closer to our cross. Let us stretch out our hands willingly to receive the nail, sharp though it be. Remember we must be crucified with Jesus if we are to be glorified with Him. Again, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... frightful. As I heard the waves rushing along the sides of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his prey: the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a seam, might give ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... drops do," she said, carefully bending over the leaf, and crushing one crystal drop with her delicate little nail. "When I," she said, "am grown up, I shall wear real diamonds, exactly like ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... making, and together they made the best pencils in New England. Whatever he undertook, he did thoroughly. He had no tolerance for the shoddy or for compromises. Exact workmanship was part of his religion. "Drive a nail home," he writes in Walden, "and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... and intelligent; and when I ask you to define for me the difference between the farmers of Ohio, as typified by my cousins and their neighbours in Summer County, I shall be surprised if you don't exactly hit the nail on the head. They'll surprise you a little at first, I warn you, and for about ten minutes maybe you won't know what to make of them. But I count on you to see the point in spite of all ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... let these rough-and-tumble doctors touch it. They'd amputate at the shoulder for a hang-nail. I don't ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... house containing a sweetheart had a branch of birch, the door of a scold was disgraced with alder, and a slatternly person had the mortification to find a branch of a nut-tree at hers, while the young people who overslept found their doors closed by a nail over ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and greater, and the curse is due to all sin, greater and smaller. There, the believer would not suffer one sin, seen and discovered, to lie unpardoned, but on the first discovery thereof, take it away to Christ, and nail ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... leave the disinherited one shilling, not out of a shilling's worth of kindly feeling, but that he might not be able to say his name was omitted through inadvertency, so Mrs. Dodd inserted this postscript merely to clench the nail and tantalise her enemy. It was a masterpiece ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of my gun the whole crowd were on their feet, and a moment later were at the scene of war. We went to the place where it lay, and beheld a very large white wolf lying there, "dead as a door nail." ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... which was readily caught by Dame Gillian, although she was not probably aware of the cause. But Rose Flammock, unbidden, followed her mistress without hesitation, as Berwine conducted her through a small wicket at the upper end of the apartment, clenched with many an iron nail, into a second but smaller anteroom or wardrobe, at the end of which was a similar door. This wardrobe had also its casement mantled with evergreens, and, like the former, it was ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... master. "It is said in a very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a learned man, certainty know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot bear to touch grey paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every limb if one rub a pane of glass with a nail: I have just such a feeling on hearing you say thou to me; I feel myself as if pressed to the earth in my first situation with you. You see that it is a feeling; that it is not pride: I cannot allow you to say thou to me, but I will willingly ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... cat bounded from her bed on the window ledge with a thud and mewed plaintively for admittance as he stood with one hand on the screen door, and fumbled in his pockets. Sinkers, spare hooks, a line with a nail at one end on which to string possible victims of his skill, "eats," his dollar watch that he might know when breakfast time came around—all ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... important. The prosimii, or "half apes," including the lemurs, are nearly all arboreal forms. Perhaps they were driven to this life by their more powerful competitors. The arboreal life developed the fingers and toes, and most of these end, not with a claw, but with a nail. The little group has much diversity of structure, and at present finds its home mainly in Madagascar; though in earlier times apparently occurring all over the globe. The brain is more highly developed than in the average ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... how to mention without more emotion than my love of quiet willingly admits. Among the inferior professors of medical knowledge, is a race of wretches, whose lives are only varied by varieties of cruelty; whose favourite amusement is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive; to try how long life may be continued in various degrees of mutilation, or with the excision or laceration of the vital parts; to examine whether burning irons are felt more acutely by the bone or tendon; and whether the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... home-made calico-covered cushion and pillows, set at right angles with the large, black, speckless stove; a wooden rocking-chair, made comfortable in like manner, on the other side; the sink in the corner, clean, freshly rinsed, with the bright tin basin hung above it on a nail. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... In this way increased space for the storage of tools was gained, besides room for a desk containing the government working drawings and specifications, pay-rolls, etc. In addition to its door, fastened at night with a padlock, and its one glass window, secured by a ten-penny nail, the shanty had a flap-window, hinged at the bottom. When this was propped up with a barrel stave it made a counter from which to pay the ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... they showed no mercy. One of them carried two great nails, such as those portrayed in pictures of the Crucifixion; the other bore a mallet: the first placed a nail upright over one of the old man's eyes; the other struck it with the hammer, and drove it into his head. The throat was pierced in the same way with the second nail; and thus the guilty soul, stained throughout its career ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... representatives to the national or State legislature; for what you cannot conscientiously perform yourself, you cannot ask another to perform as your agent. Circulate a declaration of DISUNION FROM SLAVEHOLDERS, throughout the country. Hold mass meetings—assemble in conventions—nail ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... even looked at times as if they were a new species of Indian, collecting political scalps! All manner of people accused them of all manner of things. In the East they were called "blacksmith-shop politicians, nail-keg economists, grousers and soreheads"; in the West they were dubbed "corner-grocer statesmen ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... woods, and destroyed many thousands of pheasants, partridges and woodcocks. His stable-doors are patched with noses that belonged to foxes of the Knight's own hunting down. Sir ROGER shewed me one of them, that for distinction sake has a brass nail struck through it, which cost him about fifteen hours riding, carried him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of geldings, and lost above half his dogs. This the knight looks upon as one of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... as he flirted a few drops on the steps outside, and returned the tin dipper to the rusty nail over the bucket. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Baracouta, a calabash of palm-wine was produced, which, in consequence of some imperfection in the vessel, leaked out its contents; in order to cure this defect, the hospitable chief took off his hat, and, scraping with his thumb-nail a portion of the clay and grease from his head, effectually checked further leakage, with this veritable ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... its master was vexed, and never failed profoundly to reduce the inner stress. This "Kirschius'' was inherited from my great-grandfather and it did not suffer much damage. When, however, some poor apprentice tears the fence, on a nail of which his only coat ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... have a better Guard without, that waits; Do you see this man, Don Curate? 'tis a Paratour That comes to tell ye a delightfull story Of an old whore ye have, and then to teach ye What is the penaltie; Laugh at me now Sir, What Legacie would ye bequeath me now, (And pay it on the nail?) to ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... my brain that I at last pinched myself to make sure that I was awake. In doing this I seemed to feel in one of my coat pockets a hard substance. Putting my hand into the pocket, I felt the sharp corner of a letter pricking between a finger and its nail. The acute pain assured me that I was awake. I pulled out the letter. It was the one that the servant at the bungalow had given me in the early morning when I called to get my bath. I read the address, which was in a handwriting I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... on the wall, walking softly and extending his hands as though to touch it gently, and murmuring, "So boss; so boss," as he went. From the box he removed a tin of condensed milk, which he set on the table. In his pocket he found a nail, and with a hammer quickly made two ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... would lower a boat and row to the ship they had hailed, in a sea that would swamp any other boat in half a minute, and so they would bring their letters on deck. Those who knew their story refused to take the letters, and then the sailors would nail them to the mast or lay them on the deck, with a heavy weight to keep them from blowing away, and go back to their own ship. So the letters sometimes reached their homes, for it was said to bring bad luck either to take their letters willingly or to throw them away when they ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... special line of thought, man firmly believes that woman cannot sharpen a pencil, select a necktie, throw a stone, drive a nail, or kill a mouse, and it is very certain that she cannot cook a beef-steak in the finished style of which his lordship ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... kitchen, wherein I hear the drip of water. I see a room whose curtains invest it with broidered light. There is a bed in it, with a cover of sky-blue satinette shining like the blue of a chromo. It is Marie's room! Her gray silk hat, rose-trimmed, hangs from a nail on the flowery paper. She has not worn it since my aunt's death; and alongside hang black dresses. I enter this bright blue sanctuary, inhabited only by a cold and snow-like light, and orderly and chaste ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... a loose nail in the stair-carpet, which, apparently resenting her hasty progress past it, had torn a yard of filmy ruching off her skirt before she realized what ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... that's your big fellow in his football suit,' said Jim. 'The biggest part of him is hanging up in there on a nail.' ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... man preach at Bedford in a way that shook my soul. He described the crucifixion in a way that put the scene before his people—no fine words, and metaphors: but first one nail struck into one hand, and then into another, and one through both feet—the cross lifted up with God in man's image distended upon it. And the sneers of the priests below—'Look at that fellow there—look at him—he talked ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... He seemed immovable, like a figure of stone. His bare arms gave the impression of a taut rope. A heavy timber which they lifted from across his back, where it had lain like a seesaw, must have all but broken his spine. A rusted nail in it had torn his poor, shabby coat almost in twain, and there was blood on the flannel shirt beneath it. Blood was flowing freely from a wound in his head and dripping down from his neck ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... fool," he thought, as he drove in a nail. Then he fell to thinking of a girl in his own village whose father was as rich ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... at home the figurehead of the old sloop Faith and Prudence. It is the image of a man, with a nose not unlike the one Master Lillie carries on his face. Let us saw the head off, nail it to a pole, and set it up in front of his shop with a notice attached warning all honest ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... furtiveness on my part, you have all the materials for a nice, yellow mystery. I haven't the slightest doubt that when that telegraph editor in New York gets down to his office about one o'clock to-day, the very first thing he does, after hanging his coat on the nail, is to wire his correspondent to begin operating ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... four-handed animals, distinct from the monkeys and approaching the insectivorous quadrupeds in some of their characters and habits. Its members have the nostrils curved or twisted, and a claw instead of a nail upon the first ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... equal circumference, and therefore makes room for a larger volume of air. In doing so the tube straightens itself, and assumes the position indicated by the dotted lines. Hang an empty "inner tube" of a pneumatic tyre over a nail and inflate it, and you will get a good illustration ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... size could pass, and showed so great an inclination to go through a hole in the open-work fire-board that I hastily covered it up. After a while he tested the matting and carefully investigated, by light taps of his bill, each separate nail. His step was heavy, and he did not hop, but ran around with a droll little patter of the feet, like a ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... the toenails thicken, and often in their trimming they are cut so closely at the corners that sometimes a condition results known as ingrowing nails. Such are very painful and must receive special attention. First of all, the nail is cut squarely, and after scraping it thin the corner is lifted and cotton so placed under it that the nail's downward and inward growth ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... are made of many woods, Of ash, of oak, and maple; Well seasoned is this stock of goods, Some kinds are very staple. Some are made with iron plates, To clinch the screw or nail, But when we would a peg shoe make, To use these plates would fail. Made, also, for men and boys, Women and girls, for each Has on this art a special claim, Their feet to train and teach. To dwell here longer would not do, The last we want's in ...
— How to Make a Shoe • Jno. P. Headley
... cherished years; But love, whose speechless ecstasy Had overborne the finite, now Throbs through thy being, pure and free, And burns upon thy radiant brow. For thou those hands' dear clasp hast felt, Where still the nail-prints are displayed; And thou before that face hast knelt, Which wears the scars the thorns ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... "The two to nail him must be on foot," said he. "You can creep upon him on foot as you never could with a horse; but I will remain mounted in the road and ride him down ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... would," said Kate. "If I were married to a man like Robert Gray, I'd fight tooth and nail before I'd let him fall below his high ideals. It's as much your job to keep him up, as it is his to keep himself. If God didn't make him a father, I would, and I'd keep him BUSY on the job, if I had to ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and the year as well as the day was in its morning. The watch which young Carl Bristoll drew from his pocket was very thin and exquisite, and he did not look at its face. Instead he touched a delicate spring with his finger-nail and listened to the tinkle of its low, silvery chime. This watch might have spoken the hour to a blind man as well as to eyes as clear and engaging as those of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... pious Theodelinda Could be recompense more sweet Than the nail, forever sacred, That once pierced her Saviour's feet? Which, when rounded to a circlet, (To fine wire beaten down,) Then became the precious basis ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... be satisfied unless he answered; whenever he was comfortably settled down with a book she would want something done and would come to him with a cork she could not draw or a hammer to drive in a nail. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... elegance or style? It had occupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a "toilet," which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail (from which hung a bunch of seed onions,) and the smoked outline of something which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far from the same width. In front of this drab outline Jeb Hilson always stood to shave. His memory was so tenacious that I never ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... Protestants get the upper hand, their vengeance is marked by brutality and rage; when the Catholics are victorious, the retaliation is full of hypocrisy and greed. The Protestants pull down churches and monasteries, expel the monks, burn the crucifixes, take the body of some criminal from the gallows, nail it on a cross, pierce its side, put a crown of thorns round its temples and set it up in the market-place—an effigy of Jesus on Calvary. The Catholics levy contributions, take back what they had been deprived of, exact indemnities, and although ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... drama but flattering—and Haskins, after some argument and much suggestion, was entitled "Claw-Hammer." Such titles as "Deer-Foot," "Rail-Hopper," "Back-Flip Bill," "Wind-Splitter," and the like were discarded in favor of "Claw-Hammer"—for the unfortunate Bill had stepped on a rusty nail in his recent exodus from the lion's den, and was at the time suffering from a swollen and inflamed foot—really a serious injury, although scoffed at by the good-natured Bill himself despite Mrs. Bailey's solicitude and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of the shoe, the horse was lost; For want of the horse, the rider was lost; For want of the rider, the battle was lost; For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost; And all from the want ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... generally indicate the cutting of teeth, in addition to the inflamed and swollen state of the gums, and increased flow of saliva, are the restless and peevish state of the child, the hands being thrust into the mouth, and the evident pleasure imparted by rubbing the finger or nail gently along the gum; the lips are often excoriated, and the functions of the stomach or bowels are out of order. In severe cases, occurring in unhealthy or scrofulous children, there are, from the first, considerable fever, disturbed ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... work forthwith, and turned to the pile of electrical tubings which was built up against the side of the dock wall, twice as high as a man's head. A pale lantern swung from the edge of the same wall, above them, hanging suspended from a nail; another hung on the opposite side from a post. By the light of these two lamps they could see a knot of men assembled in the centre of the dockyard, talking together in low whispers, while down below, at ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... to make the hole bigger just as an amateur carpenter makes a nail hole bigger, so he can pull out the nail, by twisting it around," explained Tom. "The motion may be a bit unpleasant, ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... he cried; and in his gyrations brought without warning his nail-spiked sandal down on Hito's foot. Hito bellowed and danced upon one foot with pain, and once dancing, found that ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... years. The storm came on suddenly, blowing 30 to 40 miles an hour. It increased during the night, and the next day was blowing over 75 miles an hour. In order to save the tar-paper roof, we decided it would be necessary to get out in this wind and nail down more securely certain parts that were especially exposed. When I ascended the ladder and reached the edge of the roof, the wind caught under my large coat, blew it up around my head and bound my arms till I was perfectly helpless. Wilbur came to my assistance and ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... found a piece of wood upon the beach with a nail-hole in it: it had probably been part of a Malay proa; for a fleet of such visitors, consisting of twenty-six vessels on the trepang fishery, was seen in this neighbourhood by the French in 1801;* and, according ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... how much of indifference, of alienation from, if not of antagonism against, the law of God, go to every trifling transgression, you will think twice before you call it small. And if it be small, a microscopic viper, the length of a cutting from your finger nail, has got the viper's nature in it, and its poison, and its sting, and it will grow. A very little quantity of mud held in solution in a continuously flowing river will make a tremendous delta at the mouth of it in the course of years. And however small ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... one steady stream all the way. I was sleepy and the carriage very noisy; and take it altogether, what a farce life is sometimes! the intercourse of human beings outsides touching outsides, the heart and soul lying to all intents and purposes as dead as a door-nail. Do you ever feel mentally and spiritually alone in the world? Perhaps ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... go on," Fanny Assingham a trifle grimly declared, "while there's a scrap as big as your nail. But we're not yet, luckily, reduced only to that." She had another pause, holding the while the thread of that larger perception into which her view of Mrs. Verver's obligation to Maggie had suddenly expanded. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... taking a large key from a nail over his head, disappeared down the garden walk, and in a few moments returned, driving before him the whole body of captives which had fallen to the share of his master. As he had reported, they were of good quality, the best of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... serious thought, while Virginia moved a small nail back and forth on the floor with the toe of her shoe. She wouldn't cry again, but something in the low, sad voice made her throat ache. After the man had been quiet for a long time, she ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... y) is best made, for convenience of elegant construction, square—that is, the part y turns at right angles to k and is made thicker than k and at the same time deeper; or, to make a comparison to a clumsy article, y is like the head of a nail, which is all on one side. Some makers bend the horn k to a curve and allow the end of the horn to arrest or stop the gold spring; but as it is important the entire detent should be as light as possible, ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... it to him, Nora; it's on a nail by the white boards. I hung it up this morning, for the pig with the black ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... day and in the face of the world. This custom appears to have continued to a late date. Thus, if O'Keeffe the dramatist may be believed, there was in the centre of Limerick Exchange a pillar with a circular plate of copper, about three feet in diameter, called "the nail," on which the earnest of all Stock Exchange bargains had to be paid. At Bristol there are said to have been four pillars called "the nails" in front of the Exchange, the purpose being the same; and similarly, at Liverpool, bargains were completed on a plate of copper, also called ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... uprights, about eight feet apart, resting on 8x8x12 concrete blocks with a half inch iron rod imbedded in the concrete and countersunk in lower end of upright 4x4 to keep the latter in place. Nail ties of 2x4 are used, and to these are nailed common lumber surfaced. The roof consists of 2x4 or 2x6 rafters, usually three feet apart, with 1x6 boards spaced about three feet apart as sheeting. The covering in this case is of galvanized corrugated iron, suitable length, of No. 26 gauge. The ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... cautious Marsden, twitching it this way and that, and testing the material with his thumb-nail, which he kept long and sharp apparently for the purpose of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... tooth and nail. I took Ottilia's part; Gurli called her an old maid; I continued to champion her. On this afternoon Ottilia did not turn up. She wrote a chilly letter, making excuses and winding up by saying she could see that she was not wanted. I protested and suggested ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... cathedral presents a mixture of architectural styles, and in it are the tombs of the Earls of Berkeley, who were its benefactors for generations. Among them was Maurice, Lord Berkeley, who died in 1368 from wounds received at Poictiers. The abbot, John Newland, or Nail-heart, was also a benefactor of the abbey, and is said to have erected the magnificent Norman doorway to the west of it leading to the college green. The most attractive portion of the interior of the cathedral is the north aisle of the choir, known as the Berkeley ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... that every married man, who is at all attached to his wife from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elder Corneille, seek a rope and a nail; foenum habet ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... bail flail slay fray nail bait frail vain mail gray clay paid dray bray main wail pray raise saint stray snail faint staid away paint faith train gayly spray chain plain maid stain strain waist braid drain grain praise strait twain claim sway sprain raisin ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... brainless puppy— I'm wrong, am I? we'll see about that, you rag-shop.' This last in allusion to Barty's picturesque garb. 'I've found out all I want from you, and I'll track her down, and put her in gaol, and hang her—hang her till she's as dead as a door nail.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... if I were not right, as we stood in front of the hall-fire before the rest of the party had assembled for dinner, and he told me that I had indeed hit the nail on the head in this instance, though for his own part he never laid much stress himself on such an occurrence, having found it prove misleading in the extreme to draw any conclusion from it. He further informed me that Miss Derrick was the young lady with dark hair who ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... father was hurriedly interviewed by Philip's mother, and he agreed to nail a box on the end of the stable, far beyond the reach of prowling cats, and Philip, armed with twenty-five cents, set forth gaily on his five-mile walk. It was Saturday morning, and a beautiful day of glittering April sunshine. The sun was ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... gives this definition of a felon in his first edition: "This is on one of the fingers, thumb or hand and is very painful. It is often situated at the root of the nail." The latter is the kind, and also that of the structures above the covering of the bone that are eased by local treatment. Especially the superficial, about the nail, etc. Steaming with herbs will do such good, or any hot poultice will do good. Dr. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... dinner when Longmore sat down, and he was still in his place when they rose. She had hung her bonnet on a nail above her chair, and her companion passed round the table to take it down for her. As he did so she bent her head to look at a wine-stain on her dress, and in the movement exposed the greater part ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... carpenters to go to the country." The Sunday papers gave a lurid account of the sentiment of the Carpenters' Union and its sympathetic attitude toward the striking hoisters. The forecast was that there would not be a nail driven if the strike were not settled by Tuesday night. It seemed that I had not moved a day too soon. On Monday thirty-seven carpenters applied at my office. Most of them had union tickets and were not considered. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... he, and hands over all he had in stock. I went back on the jump. We made a wad half as big as your head, soaked it in the clove oil and rammed it down with a nail-hammer. It was the fromage, all right. And say! Ever see an elephant grin and look tickled and try to say thank you? The way he talked deaf and dumb with his trunk and shook hands with us and patted ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... and blue bunting from tree to tree and nail to the trees flags of sixteen different countries; the flags to be numbered. Provide each guest with a card containing as many numbers as there are flags. The guests are requested to fill out the cards with the names of countries the flags represent, and are allowed fifteen minutes ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... You know that we give a party to-morrow to celebrate the birthday of the crown prince, and I wished to wear that dress. Now, I knew what no one else knew, that the last time I wore it I had torn it by a nail in the wall, on crossing the corridor. If I had informed my maid of this mishap, I should have been unable to wear it again, for custom, I believe, forbids queens to wear mended dresses. I was, however, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of the liquor. Now the poor thing had already done much. Liquor in these far inland countries, where there are no distilleries, reaches the enormous price of from sixteen to twenty dollars a gallon. So she mildly but firmly refused, upon which Golpin seized from the nail, where it was hung, a very heavy key, which he knew to be that of the little cellar underground, where the woman kept the liquor. She tried to regain possession of it, but during the struggle Golpin beat ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to roof the spacious palace halls Glitter with war's array; With burnished metal clad, the lofty walls Beam like the bright noonday. There white-plumed helmets hang from many a nail, Above, in threatening row; Steel-garnished tunics and broad coats of mail Spread o'er the space below. Chalcidian blades enow, and belts are here, Greaves and emblazoned shields; Well-tried protectors from the hostile spear, On other battlefields. With these good helps our work of war's begun, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Teddy. They did. Then you see that great thing there like a great big rusty nail sticking up higher than all the houses, and that one yonder, and that, and how something's fell in between 'em among the houses. They was parts of the mono-rail. They went down to Brighton too and all day and night there was ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Driving a large nail or iron spike into the vent, which will render the cannon unserviceable until removed. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to the back of the loft and personally attended to the shipment of ten garments to a customer in Cincinnati. Under his supervision a stock boy placed the garments in a wooden packing box, and after the first top board was in position Abe took a wire nail and held it 'twixt his thumb and finger point down on the edge of the case. Then he poised the hammer in his right hand and carefully closing one eye he gauged the distance between the upraised hammer and the head of the nail. At ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... recognized; 'season' for 6, because they reckoned six seasons; 'sage' or 'vowel,' for 7, from the seven sages and the seven vowels; and so on with higher numbers, 'sun' for 12, because of his twelve annual denominations, or 'zodiac' from his twelve signs, and 'nail' for 20, a word incidentally bringing in finger notation. As Sanskrit is very rich in synonyms, and as even the numerals themselves might be used, it became very easy to draw up phrases or nonsense verses to record series of numbers by this ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... a white beam through the little square window of old Uncle Tim's cabin, it formed a long panel of light upon its smoke-stained wall, bringing into clear view an old banjo hanging upon a rusty nail. Nothing else in the small room was clearly visible. Although it was Christmas eve, there was no fire upon the broad hearth, and from the open door came the odor of honeysuckles and of violets. Winter is often in Louisiana only a name given by courtesy ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... you hit the nail on the head that time, Perk and it's heading this way in the bargain. Why d'ye suppose we didn't see the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... suggestion, "Get thee hence, Satan"? Cultivate a tender sensitiveness about sin. The finest barometers are the most sensitive. Whatever be your besetting frailty—whatever bitter or baleful passion you are conscious aspires to the mastery—watch it, crucify it, "nail it to your Lord's cross." You may despise "the day of small things"—the Great Adversary does not. He knows the power of littles; that little by little consumes and eats out the vigor of the soul. And once the retrograde movement in the spiritual life begins, who can predict where ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... secretly, and promised him a piece of gold if he would do her a service. There was in the town a great dark gate-way through which she had to pass morning and evening with her geese, and she asked the man to take Falada's head and to nail it on the gate, that she might always see it as she passed by. And the man promised, and he took Falada's head and nailed it fast in ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... swore with sudden fierceness; but between his outbursts Anne heard a plaintive cry from the little building in the yard which served Mr. Harrison as a toolhouse. Anne flew to the door, unhasped it, and caught up a small mortal with a tearstained face who was sitting forlornly on an upturned nail keg. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... word for you, sir! You are a scoundrel, sir—a cheat, an impostor! And if I could have my way with you, I would have you publicly whipped: I would visit you with the utmost rigour of the law: I would nail you up, ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... say farewell; perhaps we shall never see each other again." "What," he replied, "do you think I am going to die?" "No sir," she returned, "but neither you nor I seem likely to live very long." The nail was fastened in a sure place. Immediately on her return to York he sent for her, saying to his mother, "You know whom I want; she must come every day." The account of the visit is given in her own words. "I called upon ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... there'll be no match between Miss Kathleen and that vagabond, Bryan M'Mahon. I think we helped to put a nail in his ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... mere flag which is followed or sworn by, but that he is in person the gonfaloniere in whose hands is the good banner, the oriflamme of the nations. Lafayette is perhaps the most prominent and influential speaker in the Chamber of Deputies. When he speaks, he always hits the nail, and his nailed-up enemies, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... you ask in a letter, A short rhyme at random, no more and no less, And you may insert it, for want of a better, Or leave it, it doesn't much matter, I guess; And as for a tip, why, there isn't much in it, I may hit the right nail, but first, I declare, I haven't a notion what's going to win it (The Champion, I mean), and what's more, I don't care. Imprimis, there's Cowra—few nags can go quicker Than she can—and Smith takes his oath she can fly; While Brown, Jones, and Robinson ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... with which a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar-bound antiquity to a merely middle-aged bottle, only served to heighten the general resemblance to a prison door; a resemblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped iron-work, the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads. A miser, or a pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have invented these fortifications. A leaden sink, which received the waste water of the household, contributed its quota ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... on to say of literary composition, "Genius without labor, we all know, will not keep the pot boiling. But I doubt whether one may not put too much labor into his work as well as too little, and spend too much time in polishing. Rough vigor often hits the nail better than the most studied and polished sentences. It doesn't do to write above the heads or the tastes of the people. I make it a rule to put a little good and a little bad into every page I write, and in that way I am likely to suit the taste of the average reader. The average ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... he said, "treat 'em, eh? Wal, now, 'pears likely they'd eat you out of house and home. I never see a boy yet that couldn't go through a tenpenny nail, ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... of his size could pass, and showed so great an inclination to go through a hole in the open-work fire-board that I hastily covered it up. After a while he tested the matting and carefully investigated, by light taps of his bill, each separate nail. His step was heavy, and he did not hop, but ran around with a droll little patter of the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... I don't like to encourage anybody in goin' round beggin' for money to buy her own promotion to a high seat in the synagogue.'—You ought to seen Miss Jaynes's face then! It was redder'n any beet, for I'd hit the nail square on the head, as it happened, and the ladies could scurcely keep from smilin'.—'Then,' says I, 'I shouldn't be my father's daughter, if I'd give a cent for a preacher that isn't smart enough to get his own livin' and pay for his own clothes and eddication. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... when the steward jammed a splinter under his nail, she was greatly concerned, and manipulated the tweezers and pulled it out. The Elsinore reminds me of a slave plantation before the war; and Miss West is the lady of the plantation, interested only in the house-slaves. The field slaves are beyond her ken or consideration, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... not Avena Foljambe to me. I care not a brass nail for Avena Foljambe. Hand me yonder weary gear. It is better than ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the daylight. The submarine world was almost deserted (except by a huge lobster and a shark, who were drinking lemonade) when Grover entered upon his quest for the vanished water-nymph. He investigated two or three grottoes, with no result except to tear his cloak on an exposed nail and knock a hole in his helmet. He was just about to resort to a classical imprecation, when the necessity for it was suddenly dissipated. There stood the daughter of Rhine, wonderful to behold, in sweet converse with her chaperone, the black domino. The young man lost no ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... later became Lord Chatham (S538), was one of the warmest friends that America had; but he openly advocated this narrow policy, saying that if British interests demanded it he would not permit the colonists to make so much as a "horseshoe nail." Adam Smith, an eminent English political economist of that day, vehemently condemned the British Government's colonial mercantile system as suicidal; but his condemnation came too late to have any effect. The fact ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... particular, forming a sublime and frightful whole. The Redeemer was extended on a cross laid on the ground, one of the executioners placed a knee against His side, while another spread His fingers abroad, and a third hammered in a flat-headed nail as broad as a crown, and so long that the point came out behind the wood. And when the right hand was riveted the torturers saw that the left would not reach to the place they intended to pierce, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... pockets. Just before he got to the fair, he made several slits in the hide, put a penny in each slit, walked into the best inn of the town as bold as if it belonged to him, and, hanging the hide up to a nail in the wall, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... have shown the embryo bunches, a number of men enter the vineyard with switches and knock off the tender ends of the runners, which in a gentler method of cultivation would be picked off with the finger and thumb-nail. Sometimes goats are turned in to nibble off the shoots in order to save labour, and at the same time to feed the animals; they of course damage the vines, but the Cypriote thinks the system pays. The young ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... was just out of college, a reviewer, a poet, and once, momentarily, an atheist. It was Newland who was present and said such a remarkable thing when Julia had the accident to her thumb-nail in closing the double doors between the living-room and the library, where her peculiar old father sat reading. "To see you suffer," Newland said passionately as she nursed her injury:—"to see you in pain, that is the one thing ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... busy Jack Frost was! No one saw him swing a hammer; no one heard him drive a nail: but, by the time morning had come, he had laid right across the ponds and the river a floor of ice smoother than any wooden floor ever put down by ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... in your twines, Curb me about, ye gadding vines, And oh, so close your circles lace, That I may never leave this place! But, lest your fetters prove too weak, Ere I your silken bondage break, Do you, O brambles, chain me too, And, courteous briars, nail me through. ... Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There, like a bird, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... about noon next day when I reached Valcartier and after a month of solid work, the like of which I had never before experienced, I was as hard as a nail, and as tough, as indeed was every man in that honor division ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... Newmark had closed his desk, picked his hat from the nail, and marched precisely down the street to Heinzman's office. He found the little German in. Newmark demanded a private interview, and without preliminary plunged into the business that had brought him. He had long since taken Heinzman's measure, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... then she descended to the basement and mechanically looked it over. Everything that could be counted hers by the most fastidious sense of property had been left behind him in the utmost neatness. On their accustomed nail, just inside the furnace-room, hung the blue overalls. They looked like a suicidal Lemuel ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... head on you, old chap," he said, affectionately. "It certainly seems as though you have hit the nail on the head this time. I understand, now, why their leader was so anxious to have us move away. They expect to encounter the Indians somewhere in this neighborhood and they do not want any witnesses. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... desolate, and dreary. High up overhead, through the dingy panes, he could see the little fleecy clouds floating about in peaceful unconcern. May was a slack month. And at its end came June—June, with its four weeks' inventory period wherein each stick and stone of the entire plant, each ten-penny nail, each carriage bolt, would have to be listed, valued, and carried into an imposing total. It meant working late into the night under a pitiless glare with handkerchief tied about one's neck like a washer. It meant cramped fingers, and hot dry eyes, and a back that ached when it didn't feel crawly ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Poh, poh! That is just one of Tim's large stories. I do assure you it was not, at first, bigger than my thumb nail, and I am certain it ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the Fourth St. Methodist church was threatened with discipline, for nailing her cook to the fence by the ear with a ten-penny nail. The preacher in charge witnessed the punishment from a back window of his residence. Hundreds of others witnessed it, called by the shrieks of the victim; and his reverence protested, on the ground that such scenes were calculated ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Prince with the Lip's Power is in, to make such a huff at this Time, shall come under Examination by and by; in the mean time the Solunarians have clench'd the Nail, and secur'd the War to last as long as ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... 'I must just hammer the head of this tenpenny nail first; meantime, you can just climb up into the pear-tree, and pluck yourself a pear to gnaw at; you must be, both hungry and thirsty ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... "And you disapprove—tooth and nail?" she queried gently. "I hoped you were different. You don't know how tired we are of eternal disapproval from ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... impossible to make Ra declare his name to her by ordinary methods, and she therefore thought out the following plan. It was well known in Egypt and the Sudan at a very early period that if a magician obtained some portion of a person's body, e.g., a hair, a paring of a nail, a fragment of skin, or a portion of some efflux from the body, spells could be used upon them which would have the effect of causing grievous harm to that person. Isis noted that Ra had become old and feeble, and that ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the money given by strangers to the women was no longer placed on the altar but put into a chest to form marriage-portions for them. It is a custom to be found in Japan and various other parts of the world, notably among the Ouled-Nail of Algeria,[138] and is not necessarily always based on religious prostitution; but it obviously cannot exist except among peoples who see nothing very derogatory in free sexual intercourse for the purpose ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... will do it, Miss O'Carroll. If I were to take all the mean and sordid qualities of a money-dealing Jew, and tack on to them, as with a nail, the quality of extreme benevolence, I should have a very decent hero for a modern novel; and should contribute my quota to the fashionable method of administering a mass of vice, under a thin and unnatural covering of virtue, like a spider ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... he replied. 'But I've got a motive, as my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and nail. I mustn't be put upon, as a numble person, too much. I can't allow people in my way. Really they must come out ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... girl, Isa; you've hit the nail fair on the head, for I heard him in his drunken swagger boast of his intention to do that very thing. Now, will you take in hand, lass, to give the letter back to Mrs Martin, and explain how you ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... treasure recovered by the party. Mr. Tubbs took evident pride in the numerous aforesaids and thereofs and other rolling legal phrases of his composition, and Miss Browne listened with satisfaction as he read it off, as though each word had been a nail in the coffin of my hopes. I signed the clause in a bold and defiant hand, under the attentive eyes of the company. A sort of sigh went round, as though something of vast moment had been concluded. And indeed it had, for now the way ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... plate of iron, or even a small piece of that metal, as the head of a nail, a very different effect was produced, for then the galvanometer immediately showed its sensibility, and the perfection of ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... completed within five years. There were, however, still tough battles to be waged over subsequent efforts to obtain sanction for certain deviations and extensions, against which the Great Western continued to fight tooth and nail with a counter-offensive of their own. No fewer than three distinct schemes were now before the public, with all sorts of loops and junctions at Rednal or Mile End, near Whittington, and branches from Bettisfield to Wem, or to ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... disturbed you," he said meekly. "I have torn the sleeve of my coat on a nail. I would like to borrow a needle and thread to mend it. I must keep myself looking as well as I possibly can, for my lawyer may call any moment to inform me that I have won my suit and am a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... and stretched out his foot. The cobbler took down from its nail his tape line and measured him. And the twilight deepened and the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... do not remain passive in this fearful conflict. The children! you cry,—but do not smile; one of my friends has just seen a poor boy whose eye has been knocked in with the point of a nail. It happened thus. It was on Friday evening in the principal street of Neuilly. Two hundred boys—the eldest scarcely twelve years old—had assembled there; they carried sticks on their shoulders, with knives and nails stuck at the end of them. They ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... examining the trunk, but to their dismay, they found that the hinges, instead of being on the outside of the trunk, were arranged differently, and they could not get at them. Again it was John who suggested a plan whereby they could accomplish their desires. "Just take a nail," he said, "and turn the head of it around in the lock. I've watched my father do that, and he ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... of course he's here!" he stormed. "My God, man, he dived out head first; I saw him. He'll be dead as a door nail now. Come on with that lantern, Turner. Where in thunder is the ladder—does any ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... your levity hits the nail on the head sometimes," said Carne, "though the blow cannot be a very heavy one. Nature has not fashioned me for enjoyment, and therefore affords me very little. But some little I do expect in the great inversion coming, in the upset of the scoundrels who have ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... may be of interest to refer in some detail to several subjects mentioned in the preceding pages. The mnemonic songs are in nearly every instance incised upon birch bark by means of a sharp-pointed piece of bone or a nail. The inner surface of the bark is generally selected because it is softer than the reverse. Bark for such purposes is peeled from the trunk during the spring months. On the right hand upper corner of Pl. ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... of two nations—Sachem and Sagamore, Iroquois and Algonquin, with the tall lodge-poles of the pines confirming it, and the pale ghost-flowers on the moss fulfilling it, and the stars coming one by one to nail our lodge door with silver nails, and the night winds, enchanted, chanting the Karenna ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Northwest of Southampton by the London and Southwest railway, but the 311th did not take the L. & S. W. The hob-nail limited was the official troop train and the route covered ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... preceding, is quite a modern toy. A small wooden box containing a magnet and a tiny top made of a red wooden button with a steel nail driven through it. Set the top spinning with a twirl of the fingers; then hold the magnet over the nail, and the top will leap up to the magnet and there continue to spin, suspended ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... slowly. And she added, pressing the nib of her pen on her finger-nail, "They say he doesn't marry just because he is ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... line, (The wimbles for the work Calypso found) With those he pierced them and with clinchers bound. Long and capacious as a shipwright forms Some bark's broad bottom to out-ride the storms, So large he built the raft; then ribb'd it strong From space to space, and nail'd the planks along; These form'd the sides: the deck he fashion'd last; Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast, With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind; And to the helm the guiding rudder join'd (With yielding osiers fenced, to break the force Of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... is strictly true: whatever subject may turn up is laid hold on, tooth and nail, by the Ins and Outs of the day, who, dividing upon it, lift banners, and under the chosen war-cry, be it "Masonry," "Indian treaties," or "Bank charter," fairly fight it out; a condition of turmoil, which, viewed on the surface, may appear anything but desirable ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... had a minstrel show, wearing masks of black cambric, with red mouths painted on them; you should have seen us, all in a dusky semicircle, seated on boards supported by nail-kegs: it was a scene better imagined than described. This is certainly the ideal way to live in summer-time, and we should be perfectly happy and content if you could only shake off your troublesome cough and come to share our pleasure. We feel incomplete without you; and no matter how large our ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of Mine, when you go home greet them all for me. And if ever you go to rummaging about in the attic remember you must never open the square trunk with the brass nail heads unless Mary Wentworth is there to explain. Tell Mary I love her and that I am ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... it is not impossible that Mr. John Tyrrell hit the nail on the head. Much satisfied with his little oration, he went off to don a jacket and enjoy a cigar ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... plain iron shaft about a foot in diameter rising in the centre of the enclosed space to a height of something over twenty feet. "Its base is sunken deeper in the ground than the upper part is high. It is in truth a gigantic nail, which, according to popular tradition, was constructed by an ancient king who desired to play Jael to a certain Sisera that was in his way. It is related that King Anang Pal was not satisfied with having conquered the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... the church giggled at my expense. The simple Squire, thinking it was a nail or a hook, thanked the man who had aided him in his distress, and advised him to take out the troublesome hook. Cato, however, shook his black head and said, "Guess naughty Pickaninny did de queue of Massa's wig. Neber mind, Cato no make trouble; queue no feelins; ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... between us? My affection, my gratitude, all warred against the idea of working with those who wronged him so bitterly. But the cry of starving children was ever in my ears; the sobs of women poisoned in lead works, exhausted in nail works, driven to prostitution by starvation, made old and haggard by ceaseless work. I saw their misery was the result of an evil system, was inseparable from private ownership of the instruments of wealth production; that while the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... to give. So if you know how to read, find someone who can't. If you've got a hammer, find a nail. If you're not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble—seek out someone ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... six months here, has a full, pleasant life, and I s'pose that fine son fills it. Wasn't she fortunate to get him out o' the war safe? You'd ought to 'a' seen him in his Naval Aviation uniform, Charlotte. He looked like a prince; but he could 'a' bitten a board nail because he never got to go across the water. I s'pose his mother's average patriotic, but I guess she thanked Heaven he couldn't go. She didn't dare say anything like that before him, though. It was a terrible ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... water; then cover the vessel, and continue the steaming for several hours, or until the saponification shall be completed. This may be known when a sample of the soap when cold gives a smooth and bright surface on being scraped with the finger-nail, and at the same time, breaks with a crackling noise. By this process the fat or oil is decomposed, its acids uniting with the lime to form insoluble lime-soap, while the eliminated glycerine remains in solution in the water along with the ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... caught at his funny work," suggested Shelley, hitting the nail directly on the head, ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... could employ was determined by law in each locality; or how, under the guild system, in which the different trades were distinguished by law from one another in the most exact manner, and each master could carry on only one of them—so that, for instance, the tailors and the nail-makers of Paris for centuries had lawsuits with the menders of clothes and the locksmiths, in order to draw lines between their respective trades—how, under such a guild system, could production be possible with a system of machines which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... it of course, though?' said Bailey. 'I know better than that. Hers an't. Why, I see it hanging up once, on that nail by the winder. Besides, I have gone behind her at dinner-time and pulled it; and she never know'd. I say, young ladies, I'm a-going to leave. I an't a-going to stand being called names by her, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... lion's blow. The skull, which had received its full force, was completely shattered, as if it had been a cocoa-nut struck with a hammer, and several of the lion's claws had penetrated through the bone, as though they had been driven like a nail. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... gave a little contented sigh. "And then they might want to take me away—and I'd fight, tooth and nail, if they ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Add to this that there are very few with whom I care to plead; all the other advocates are bumptious, and for the most part young men of no standing, who come over here to do their declamations with such utter want of respect and modesty that I think our friend Atilius just hit the nail on the head when he said that mere boys begin their forensic career with cases in the Centumviral Court, just as they begin with Homer in the schools. For here as there they make their first beginnings on the hardest subjects. Yet, by ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... but brief justice to the pedler to say, that, whatever, in fact, might have been the true character of his commodities, the very choicest of human fabrics could never have resisted the various tests of bone and sinew, tooth and nail, to which they were indiscriminately subjected. Immeasurable was the confusion that followed. All restraints were removed—all hindrances withdrawn, and the tide rushed onward with a ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... is imagined, exceed five shillings the acre.—To prevent slugs from getting into fruit trees. If the trees are standards, tie a coarse horse-hair rope about them, two or three feet from the ground. If they are against the wall, nail a narrow slip of coarse horse-hair cloth against the wall, about half a foot from the ground, and they will never get over it, for if they attempt it, it will kill them, as their bellies are soft, and the horse-hair will ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... out, therefore, but found the woodhouse was closed. Driven by trembling curiosity, I ran into the house, took the key of the woodhouse from its nail, and in a minute, through the crevice between two planks, I was looking into that mysterious ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... good mother to Jim, and let him do whatever he pleased—go in swimming as much as he wanted to, stay out of school, or anything. He had to catch drift-wood for her to burn when the river was high; once she came down to the river herself and caught drift-wood with a long pole that had a nail in the end of it to catch ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... would not enter, having, as he assured himself, the strength of mind to forego this temptation. However, he reckoned without his window, for in it there was an old object newly displayed which caught his attention as effectually as a half-driven nail arrests the hem of a cloak. On the central shelf of the window stood an hour-glass, its framework of some wood as black as ebony. He stood gazing at it for a moment, then turned to the door and went inside, greeting the ancient shopman, whom ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... consomme; and to every quart of stock is added two ounces of one of these pastes blanched as follows. Put the paste into plenty of boiling water, with one tablespoonful of salt to each quart of water, and boil until tender enough to pierce with the finger nail; then drain it, and put it in cold water until required for use, when it should be placed in the two quarts of hot soup long enough to ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... git up long 'fore day Chris'mas mawnin'. Us used ter hang our stockin's over de fire place, but when Chris'mas mawnin' come dey wuz so full, hit would of busted 'em to hang 'em up on a nail, so dey wuz allus layin' on Ma's cheer when us waked up. Us chillun won't 'lowed to go 'round de big house early on Chris'mas mawnin' kaze us mought 'sturb our white folkses' rest, and den dey done already seed dat us got plenny Santa Claus in our own ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... ago stopped her work and was sitting huddled in the doorway on a nail-keg with weary, folded hands and a strange wistfulness on her apathetic face. A fine silence had settled over the group as the girl, recognizing her power, and the pleasure she was giving, sang on. Now and then the ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... to take care now about fastening the door, Arni of Bali said to himself as he wrapped the string around the nail driven into the door-post of the outlying sheepcote. Then he turned around, took out his handkerchief, and, putting it to his nose, blew vigorously. This done, he folded the handkerchief together again, wiped his mouth and nose, and took out ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the key to the front door with me, an' I thought I'd jest step round an' nail up t'other one," he said, in the tone of one conscious of right. "There was some nails in the wood-shed. Then I heard somebody steppin' round inside, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and all at once I felt burning hot, and like I was all dried up into a cinder, and I think they must have drawn a circle of fire round the child. And then I had that fearful feeling that you have when you're near a horseshoe nail. There must have been one somewhere about. You couldn't mistake that feeling—as if needles of ice were going all through and through you. And so I was driven back and could get ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... having lessons in dancing and singing, with voice and hand, in order to make their lovers sevenfold madder than before; on again into the dining hall where they were taught coy smartness in eating; into the cellar, where potent love philtres were being mixed of nail parings and the like; in the upper rooms we could see one in a secret chamber twisting himself into all shapes, practising gentlemanly behaviour when in his mistress' presence; another before a mirror learning ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... house than Chatham's denunciations of the practice of employing the Indian tribes in our army, arising from the fact that the orator handled the subject with clean hands. Colonel Barre, excited by it, declared that if it were printed and published he would nail it on every church-door by the side of the king's proclamation for a general fast; and Governor Johnson said it was fortunate for Lord North and Germaine that the galleries had been cleared before the speech was uttered, as the indignation and enthusiasm of strangers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... consists of one or more violins and a guitar or two. The New Mexican guitar is strung conversely: the base-string is where we put the treble, and vice versa. The strings are generally struck with the thumb-nail or with a piece of horn or wood like the ancient plectrum. This produces a harsh metallic sound, without any rotundity. Few New Mexican fiddlers or guitar-players are capable of playing in any time except dancing time, and the character of the baile, funeral and sacred music is the same. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... hanging on a nail beside the kitchen door. Hetty dipped out a small quantity of the milk, sipped, straightened up with a jerk and spewed the milk out into the yard. "Yaawwwk," she spluttered, "that ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... the path on the lee side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body. My host wondered at my want of taste, and I at his want of feeling; for, to our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the nail on the head that time," said Aunt Mary, without any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm; then she re-read the note and ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... smell of the paraffin candle spoiled the aroma of the opium," I suggested; to which Thorndyke made no reply but continued his inspection of the room, pulling out the drawer of the washstand—which contained a single, worn-out nail-brush—and even picking up and examining the dry and cracked cake of soap in ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Patty tried to turn the key from her side by means of a button-hook, a nail file, a hairpin, and a glove stretcher. Needless to say her ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... or drowning out a gopher, and the fellows who help the dog when they are boys, are the ones who are mighty apt to get the business woodchuck when they grow up. I will bet you ten dollars that if you pick out the most successful business man in town, and go look at his left thumb nail, you will find a scar on it where a half-drowned gopher bit him, because he was at the hole at the right time. Now, go and have fun, and be sure and play fair with the dog," and Uncle Ike took down a broom and shook it at them as they scattered down ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... ears of the Ward-room that the work contained reflections somewhat derogatory to the dignity of the officers, the volume was seized by the master-at-arms, armed with a warrant from the Captain. A few days after, a large nail was driven straight through the two covers, and clinched on the other side, and, thus everlastingly sealed, the book was committed to the deep. The ground taken by the authorities on this occasion was, perhaps, that the book was obnoxious to a certain clause ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Osmund catch thee carrying so much as a thumb-nail of Sir William's carcase, he 'll wring thy neck as wry as the chapel weathercock. My lady goes nigh crazed with his ill humours. I warrant thee, Sir William's ghost gaily snuffs up the sport. I have watched him up and down the old stairs, and once i' the chapel; and he told me"—whispering close ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... surfaces of lumber used for these houses may or may not be planed, care must be taken that all pieces are sawed or planed to the correct sizes with edges and ends square and true so there will be no bad cracks for drafts and rain to enter. Be careful to nail the pieces together so that they will not have occasion to crack or warp. A good way to save time and lumber is to prepare a piece of stock, getting it of the right thickness, width and length, and then to saw up this stock on lines carefully ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert
... sworn into the service of the Spanish king. Fuentes agreed to the bargain and paid the adroit tradesman, who knew so well how to turn a penny for himself, a large portion of the twenty-five thousand crowns upon the nail. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... SHANGAI BREED.—Size great; wing-feathers short, arched, much hidden in the soft downy plumage; barely capable of flight; tail short, generally formed of 16 feathers, developed at a late period in the young males; legs thick, feathered; spurs short, thick; nail of middle toe flat and broad; an additional toe not rarely developed; skin yellowish. Comb and wattle well developed. Skull with deep medial furrow; occipital foramen, sub-triangular, vertically elongated. Voice peculiar. Eggs rough, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... fake letters to back the card, you are in the watch trade. Pebblemarsh is the nearest town, only five miles down the road; there's a station there, but you'd better avoid that. There's a garage. You could get a car to London. If they nail you, scream like an excited Jew, produce your credentials, and if the worst comes to the worst refer to me and come back here. I would love that interview. Country policeman, lunatic asylum man, Mr. Isaacson highly ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... But a better place ye have named for me Than by my father's grave. For truth and right, 'gainst treason's might, This hand hath always striven, And ye raise it up for a witness still In the eye of earth and heaven. Then nail my head on yonder tower— Give every town a limb— And God who made shall gather them: I ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... of these islands were excellent carpenters and ship-builders. "They make many very light vessels, which they take through the vicinity for sale in a very curious manner. They build a large vessel, undecked, without iron nail or any fastening. Then, according to the measure of its hull, they make another vessel that fits into it. Within that they put a second and a third. Thus a large biroco contains ten or twelve vessels, called biroco, virey, barangay, and binitan." These natives were ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... finished his work and dispatched the team, the three partners went into the private office, which was monopolized by Mr. Strout. It contained one desk and two chairs. Hiram brought in an empty nail ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... but I hear none of the effects you fancy you are making; you must deliver everything much more clearly: distinctness of utterance is of prime importance.'' Then he shows how clearness and distinctness may be acquired. The fingers must be rendered firm, with no giving in at the nail joint. A technical exercise which he gives, and which I also use in my teaching, trains the fingers in up and down movements, while the wrist is held very low and pressed against the keyboard. At first simple five-finger forms are used; when the hand has become accustomed to this tonic, some ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... proud of heavy heads of hair, they do not look with equal favor on face and body hairs. These are plucked out either by grasping them between a knife blade and the thumb nail, or with a bamboo device known as iming. This consists of a section of bamboo split into several strips at one end. A hair is placed in one end of the slits, and the bamboo is bent into a half circle, causing it to take a firm hold, when it is ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... lying about. There were few traces of occupation visible; only a pair of felt slippers under the bed, a large bath sponge on the washstand, and a dressing-gown hanging on the nail behind the door. In his tooth-glass by the bedside was a rose Claire had worn and given him. It was put there with meticulous care; its stalk had been re-cut and its leaves freshened. Beside it lay a small New Testament and a ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... centuries ago, but programme music as an important branch of music is a modern phenomenon. Beethoven encouraged it by his "Pastoral Symphony," and the French Berlioz did some very remarkable things in this line in his dramatic symphonies; but it remained for Liszt to hit the nail on the head in his symphonic poems. The French Saint-Saens followed him, rather than his countryman Berlioz; so did Tschaikowsky, Dvorak, and most modern composers, up to Richard Strauss, whose symphonic poems ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... ball began, he was too vain of his rank and precedency to suffer any one else to lead the bride down the first dance; but she was not, I believe, much obliged to him for his politeness; it cost her the tail of her wedding-gown and a broken nail, and she continued lame during the remainder of the night. In making an apology to her for his want of dexterity, and assuring her that he was not so awkward in handling the enemies of his country in battle as in handling friends he esteemed in a dance, he gave no quarter to an old ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the ruder manufactures were home productions for home consumption, and the same hands tended the sheep which furnished the wool, and spun and wove the wool for family use. The smith was in a far fuller sense the maker of the horse-shoe or the nail or bolt than he is to-day; the wheelwright, the carpenter, and other handicraftsmen performed a far larger number of different processes than they do now. Moreover, each household, in addition to its principal employments of agriculture and manufacture, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... acquired from twelve to fourteen good leaves, and are about knee high, it may be well to begin to top them, by nipping off the bud with the aid of the finger and thumb nail (washing the hands after this in water is necessary, as the acid juices of the plants, otherwise, soon produce a soreness on the fingers), taking care not to destroy the small leaves immediately near the bud: for if the land is good and the season favorable, those very small top leaves will ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep. And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storm The lightning ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Group they found, amongst other things drifted over the reef, some planks, one of which was very thick, with trunnell holes in it, and a piece of moulding from some ship's upper works, painted yellow, with nail holes showing signs of iron rust: probably the remains of some wrecked European ship. At Comango, where they anchored on ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... It was incumbent on me to extricate myself as speedily as possible. I attempted to lift the door. My first effort was successless. Every inspiration was quicker and more difficult than the former. As my terror, so my strength and my exertions increased. Finally my trembling hand lighted on a nail that was imperfectly driven into the wood, and which, by affording me a firmer hold, enabled me at length to raise it, and to inhale ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... summerset, or maybe a couple if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything—and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this flor—Dan'l Webster was the name of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sum they named To pay the doctor's bill and tide me over. It's that or fight, and I don't want to fight— I just want to get settled in my life, Such as it's going to be, and know the worst, Or best—it may not be so bad. The firm Promise me all the shooks I want to nail." "But what about your flora of the valley?" "You have me there. But that—you didn't think That was worth money to me? Still I own It goes against me not to finish it For the friends it might bring me. By the way, I had a letter from Burroughs—did ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... hung an old trophy of armour, a helmet and a cuirass, black with age. The boy climbed quickly up upon the choir-stalls, took the helmet down, enclosed his own curly head in it, and then knelt down suddenly on the altar-step; after which he replaced the helmet again on its nail. "What put it into your head to do that?" I said. "Oh," he said lightly, "I thought of the old man who wore it; and they used to kneel before the altar in their armour when they were made knights, didn't they? I wanted just to feel ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Laws. 4. The Imaginative Tales and Poems. 5. National Monuments, such as cromlechs and pillar stones, &c., which supplied the place of the brazen tablets of Roman history, the libri lintei,[71] or the chronological nail.[72] ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Charles if I were not right, as we stood in front of the hall-fire before the rest of the party had assembled for dinner, and he told me that I had indeed hit the nail on the head in this instance, though for his own part he never laid much stress himself on such an occurrence, having found it prove misleading in the extreme to draw any conclusion from it. He further informed me that Miss Derrick was the young lady with dark hair who had poured ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Unless ground off with a bevel on both sides it cannot be controlled to cut accurately. A light hatchet is preferable to a heavy one. It should never be used for nailing purposes, except in emergencies. The pole of the hammer—that part which is generally used to strike the nail with—is required in order to properly balance the hatchet when ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... without abating an atom of his nonchalance, "there, my dear Superintendent, you hit the nail on the head. Only, instead of thousands, you might have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... is ill-faur'd enew to scare Satan himsel', for that matter; though it's true what you say. Ay, ye're reet tul a trippet, thar; for Beelzebub dar'n't show his snout inside the church, not the length o' the black o' my nail." ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... several acres of ground, and consisted of a group of huge buildings which were divided into different departments, and in these the railway company manufactured almost every article used on the line—from a locomotive engine to a screw-nail. ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a long breath, "there you've hit the nail—the whole difference between you ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hosses an' men. But thar was four o' 'em, an' a big fellow ahead breakin' trail. Course I thought it was Le Fevre; I wa'n't lookin' fer no one else, an' soon as I dared, I let drive. He flopped over dead as a door nail, an' then I popped away a couple o' times at the others. One fell down, an' I thought I got him, but did n't wait to make sure; just turned and hoofed it fer cover, knowin' the storm would hide my trail. I 'd got the man I went after, an' just natch'ally did ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... upon the square of Lower Provins the front of the building which Brigaut had been examining; also the interior arrangements of the house and its handsome furniture. The contractor did not drive a nail without consulting the owners, without requiring them to sign the plans and specifications, without explaining to them at full length and in every detail the nature of each article under discussion, where it was manufactured, and what were ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... mean?" said Faith more gravely; "the minister?"—"Now that's what I call hitting the nail," said her visitor. "Well if he's here, just tell him to come up the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the teeth with the finger nail and noticing the odor you can convince yourself of the presence of decomposing organic matter not healthful to be carried into the stomach. By applying a little iodine and then washing it off with water, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... this time, affecting the "wide and arched-front sublime" of a juvenile Fetter Laner), and then yet another, and so on through the evening until, at last, I forgot the watercress-beds altogether. It was only when I had purified myself from the evening consultations with hot water and a nail-brush and was about to sit down to a frugal supper, that I remembered the newspaper and fetched it from the drawer of the consulting-room table, where it had been hastily thrust out of sight. I folded ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... other words of the same import, Vali and Sugriva rushed to the encounter, fighting with Sala and Tala trees and stones. And they struck each other down on the earth. And leaping high into the air, they struck each other with their fists. And mangled by each other's nail and teeth, both of them were covered with blood. And the two heroes shone on that account like a pair of blossoming Kinshukas. And as they fought with each other, no difference (in aspect) could be observed so as to distinguish ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the forefront of the assailing column, assured the shorts that they could not settle too quickly, since it remained with the ring, now holding calls for one hundred millions, either to kindly compromise at 150 or to carry the metal to 200 and nail it there. This threat was accompanied by consequences in which the mailed hand revealed itself under the silken glove. The movement had intertwisted itself deep into the affairs of every dealer in the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... time for the Burrow, but it was long before he brought himself to make any for Eudoxia Pence. He came to see a great deal of the Bunnies; in a month or two he quite had the run of the place. There were friendly fellows who heaved big lumps of clay upon huge nail-studded scantlings, and nice little girls who designed book-plates, and more mature ones who painted miniatures, and many earnest, earnest persons of both sexes who were hurrying, hurrying ahead on their wet canvases ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the impression of having been dropped where he sat, all in a heap. My first instinctive feeling was not one of recoil or even of hostility, but rather a sudden desire to pick him up and put him where he belonged, the instinct, I should say, of the normal man who hangs his axe always on the same nail. When he saw me he gathered himself together with reluctance and stood fully revealed. It was a curious attitude of mingled effrontery and apology. "Hit me if you dare," blustered his outward personality. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Red Cross ladies from up Craigswold way were here this morning, to have me nail that sign on the store," reported the postmaster. "They're making a tour of all the towns hereabouts. They asked me to try to int'rest folks at Hampton in their show, too, and get them to make entries. They left me a ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... laugh. I did not take her hint, but drove my prick into her quim and pushed in the regular fashion. Thinking of the pictures excited me and without knowing what I said, I suddenly pulled it out saying, "Let me put it into the other." "Not tonight," said she, "put your thumb a little way in, your nail is quite short" (she had noticed that I used to bite my thumbnails short). I instantly did, the next moment spent, and dropped over her back, waiting for the last drop of sperm ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... near swallowing a nail; so near that his eyes bulged at the feel of it next his palate. Tom Aldershot dropped his end of the strip of paper, which tore with a dull sound of ripping, and remarked that he would be damned. Necks craned, up on the roof, and startled eyes peered down like ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... shifty eyes paused in passing to say, "You'll find out how different the boy is onct he's put to the test. He's the same breed, an' it's just like Jake Vodell said last night, there ain't one of the greedy capitalist class that wouldn't nail a laboring man to the cross of their damnable system of slavery if ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... she sat suddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm-book which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of her love-story. In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays that the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastly regarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous words of Dandie - heard, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... followed, therefore; and a cross section being made of the hollow trunk, the shaggy hair was at length reached, and then the body of Bruin, who was found to be dead as a nail! ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... you are! You're frozen through! A nice state to come into a house! Come, take off those rags, you villain!" and as with one hand, and with feverish haste, he dragged off the boy's rags which tore into shreds, with the other he took down from a nail a man's shirt, and one of those knitted jackets which are up to this ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... invention: the children of light contrary. The worldlings, if they spy profit, gains, or lucre in any thing, be it never such a trifle, be it never so pernicious, they preach it to the people (if they preach at any time), and these things they defend with tooth and nail. They can scarce disallow the abuses of these, albeit they be intolerable, lest in disallowing the abuse they lose part of their profit. The children of the light contrary, put all things in their degree, best highest, next next, the worst lowest. They extol things necessary, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... knocks when in doubt about a reply. Dan asked if the house would be set on fire, and the reply was three loud knocks on the floor, meaning yes; and a fire was started about five minutes afterwards. The ghost took a dress belonging to Esther that was hanging on a nail in the wall near the door, rolled it up, and, before any of the persons in the room could remove it from under the bed, where the ghost had placed it before their very eyes, it was all in a blaze. It was extinguished, however, without being ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... at each stroke felled, hurt, or slew. L Thus fought they long, yet neither shrink nor yield, In equal balance hung their hope and fear: All full of broken lances lay the field, All full of arms that cloven and shattered were; Of swords, some to the body nail the shield, Some cut men's throats, and some their bellies tear; Of bodies, some upright, some grovelling lay, And for themselves eat ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and Gyges from the depths of the shadow-filled angle where he stood concealed could examine at his ease the proud and charming face of which he had before obtained only a hurried glimpse; that rounded neck, at once delicate and powerful, whereon Aphrodite had traced with the nail of her little finger those three faint lines which are still at this very day known as the 'necklace of Venus'; that white nape on whose alabaster surface little wild rebellious curls were disporting and ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... devised of securing the powder by means of the lead, we should not have had a single charge of powder at this time. three of the canesters which had been accedentally bruized and cracked, one which was carelessly stoped, and a fifth that had been penetrated with a nail, were a little dammaged; these we gave to the men to make dry; however exclusive of those five we have an abundant stock to last us back; and we always take care to put a proportion of it in each canoe, to the end that should one canoe or more ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... ghost could do no less than make his appearance, and he arose from his place of partial concealment as majestically as he could, considering the fact that the sheet had been caught upon a nail, and he was obliged to stoop two or three times to unfasten it. But he did succeed in rising at last, and then, to make himself look as much like a spectre as possible, he held both arms straight out as he walked slowly ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... [that of a hammer with a note, "hit the nail on the head"] signifies that the student makes a capital hit; in other words, a decided rush.—Yale Banger, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... had had one brother, who had died some ten years before, when he was twenty. The north chamber had been his room, the bureau drawers were packed with his clothes, and the silk hat which had been the pride of his early manhood hung on the nail where he had left it, and also his Sunday coat. His mother would not have them removed, but kept them there, with frequent brushings, to guard against dust ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... picked the dirt all over with a big nail, and pried it loose, and then he had pretended that his shovel was a big iron scoop that could scoop the dirt out just the way the big scoop did when it ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... to go dis bressed night An' put out dat turkey's light, 'N I'll nail him lak a cobblah. Take keer, 'Cindy, lemme pass, Ain't a-g'ine to take no sass Off ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... seen. But between three and four in the morning the first faint champing of marching feet could be heard and the Hun came down from the bedroom looking as pale as death. He opened the door and stood there listening. The insolent crunch, crunch, crunch of heavy nail-studded service boots came nearer, and a khaki column appeared on the winding road. The housewife, whose aching eyes had searched the road for Boudru all ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... days later, when Cap'n Jacka walked up to his own door, he carried the cinder-sifter under his arm; and that, before ever he kissed his wife, he stepped fore and hitched it on a nail right in the middle of the wall over the chimney-piece, between John Wesley and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... is locked. Did he take out the key? It is always hung in one place, and the nail is empty. He cudgels his brains for remembrance, but surely he left the ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool. She held a letter out. "Your uncle is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with chloroform vapour, and nail it out on a board (as for a necropsy); moisten the hair thoroughly with 2 per ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the old statesman died, and his fiddle was heard no more across the valley in the quiet of the evening, but was left untouched for the dust to gather on it where he himself had hung it on the nail in the kitchen under his hat. Then when life seemed to the forlorn girl a wide blank, a world without a sun in it, Angus Ray went over for the first time as a suitor to the cottage under Castenand, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... is all nonsense, but I wish it wasn't. Anyway, it's what I mean to do myself; and I'm awfully much obliged to you, Dad, for giving me this chance. You've hit the right nail on the head this time. Farming was what I was meant for; I feel it. I would have hated being a barrister, setting people by the ears and making my living out of other people's troubles. Being a farmer you feel that in doing good to yourself you are doing good all round. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... provoke his conductors by shewing that he distrusted them. The hunters led the way, with a lamp; the Count and St. Foix, who wished to please their hosts by some instances of familiarity, carried each a seat, and Blanche followed, with faltering steps. As she passed on, part of her dress caught on a nail in the wall, and, while she stopped, somewhat too scrupulously, to disengage it, the Count, who was talking to St. Foix, and neither of whom observed the circumstance, followed their conductor ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Anne heard a plaintive cry from the little building in the yard which served Mr. Harrison as a toolhouse. Anne flew to the door, unhasped it, and caught up a small mortal with a tearstained face who was sitting forlornly on an upturned nail keg. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gasped. And she wrenched to free herself. One of his hands slipped, his nail tore a long gash in her neck; the blood spurted out, she gave a loud cry, an exaggerated cry— for the pain, somehow, had a certain pleasure in it. He released her, stared vacantly at the wound he had made. She rushed into her room, slammed ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only tall Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are worth collecting. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of Lilliput was taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a nail, and that his altitude filled the minds of all with awe. Well, the Philistine may think a few millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of little importance. When he comes to sell, he will discover ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... and gritted out an oath of congratulation. "That's where you hit the proper nail on the head!" he exclaimed. "He's the king-pin of the whole machine, and if you can pull him out, the machine will fall to pieces. What charge did you put in the warrant? I only hope it's big enough ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... roofing tin or copper, locate the troublesome crack, and gently insert a piece of the sheet metal, trimmed to the right size, beneath the cracked shingle. Properly done, you should not find it necessary to nail the piece of sheet metal because the shingles themselves will hold it in place. While making this repair, be careful not to walk on the roof more than is absolutely necessary. Your weight and the pressure of your feet may ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... of the engines with which some of his servants had done wonderful things. They showed him Moses' rod; the hammer and nail with which Jael slew Sisera; the pitchers, trumpets, and lamps too, with which Gibeon put to flight the armies of Midian. Then they showed him the ox's goad wherewith Shamgar slew 600 men. They showed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... matting, consignments of crude sugar from the Sandwich Islands than the remains of human beings. The bodies of a pappoose and of a very little child, which probably died at birth or soon after it, have sea-otter skins around them. One of the feet of the latter projects, with a toe-nail visible. The ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... joke for him!" said the gambler, catching the last word. "But some one was bound to try this dodge sooner or later. Why, as far back as I can remember, people said he kept his money hidden away at the bottom of nail kegs and under heaps of scrap-iron." He took a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and struck a match. "Well, I wouldn't want to be the other fellow, Colonel; I'd be in all kinds of a panic; it takes nerve ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... time I had in a brig off Hatteras," observed Teddy, who had somewhat recovered his composure; "we had to cut away both masts, you persave, and to scud under a scupper nail driv into the deck, wid a man ready to drive it ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... floor formed from the plain surface of hewed logs, and a door made of boards split from the log, hastily smoothed with the drawing-knife, united firmly together with wooden pins, hung upon wooden hinges, and fastened with a wooden latch. Not a nail nor any particle of metal enters into the composition of the building—all is wood from top to bottom, all is done by the woodsman without the aid of any mechanic. These primitive dwellings are by no means ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... was too stupid to say anything. The snake said, "Here is a terrible row all at once, I must make for a hole." He had a keen eye for a hole, and he soon saw one. It was a small one, in Philip's mattress, almost hidden by the seam, and had been made most likely by a splinter or a nail. The snake put his head in it, saying, "Any port in a storm," then drew in his whole length, and settled himself ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... 'tis! now, for an hundred pound, could I have gratified him with a waiter's place at the custom-house, that had been worth to him an hundred pound a-year upon the nail. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the conservatory door was hanging on a nearby nail, and taking it down they unlocked the door, and the two boys passed into the darkness ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... been gathering roses together in the Priory garden, and, in straining up to reach a particularly lovely bloom that hung from the roof of the pergola, Cara's thin muslin sleeve had caught on a projecting nail which had ripped it apart from shoulder to elbow. As the torn sleeve fell hack it revealed a trickle of blood where the nail's sharp point had scored the skin, and above that, marring the whiteness of the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... in its every particular, forming a sublime and frightful whole. The Redeemer was extended on a cross laid on the ground, one of the executioners placed a knee against His side, while another spread His fingers abroad, and a third hammered in a flat-headed nail as broad as a crown, and so long that the point came out behind the wood. And when the right hand was riveted the torturers saw that the left would not reach to the place they intended to pierce, therefore they attached a rope to the arm, pulled it with ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... not!” I replied quietly. “Pickering was right on my heels, and my absence was known to his men here. And it would not be square to my grandfather, —who never harmed a flea, may his soul rest in blessed peace!—to lie about it. They might nail me ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... like. We'll stay here. Mrs. Owen,—the thicker the merrier." But Elsley had vanished into a chamber bestrewn with plaids, pipes, hob-nail boots, fishing-tackle, mathematical books, scraps of ore, and the wild confusion ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... could never have given you this pleasure, and had not our helpers been so many, we could never have made the place so beautiful. Before the general dancing begins there will be a double quadrille of honor, in which all those will take part who have driven a nail, papered or painted a wall, dug a spadeful of earth, or done any work in ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Nicholas could assist him but little with his advice. After many pros and cons, like all other difficult matters, it was postponed.—"Really, Newton, I can't say. The property certainly is not yours, but still we are not likely to find out the lawful owner. Bring the trunk on shore; we'll nail it up, and perhaps we may hear something about it by-and-bye. We'll make some ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... which were all Satan's seed, to have Him put to death. The cry "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" was inspired by himself. He used man to dishonor the Son of God, to revile Him, spit in His face, to scourge Him and finally to nail Him to the Cross. Did he think that he might yet get the victory and keep the Lord Jesus from finishing the work the Father gave Him to do? We do not know if such was the case, but we know that while the Son of God gave Himself, Satan had also his ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... which he thinks wise, for he cannot endure that Copyhold should be touch'd, as you may see more plainly a little further, where he says in Loves Labour Lost, the Curate plays the fool egregiously; and so does the Poet too: there he clenches the Nail, there he gives Shakespear a bold stroke, there obstinacy and malice appear in true colours: And yet if a parcel of the ones Plays, were set up by way of Auction against t'others Sermons and Essays; nay, tho the Loyal and Politick Desertion discussd was ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... often repeated, which refers the motives of Pizarro's conduct, in some degree at least, to personal resentment. The Inca had requested one of the Spanish soldiers to write the name of God on his nail. This the monarch showed to several of his guards successively, and, as they read it, and each pronounced the same word, the sagacious mind of the barbarian was delighted with what seemed to him little short of a miracle,—to which the science of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... similar; the ponderous weight and slow motion is far more effective in displacing this ball, for the reason that time is essential to the distribution of the motion. If the body to be struck be small as, for instance, a nail, a greater motion and less matter is more effective than much matter and little motion. Hence, we have a distinction applicable to the difference of momentum of luminous and calorific rays. The velocity of a wave of sound through the atmosphere, is the same ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... short, belong to that valuable class to which, while it gives pleasure to the cultivated reader, the most commonplace and Philistine man of business cannot refuse the to him supreme praise of being eminently "practical." They hit the nail on the head in nearly every case, and they take the plainest and most direct route to their point, dealing in rhetoric and metaphor only so far as the strictly "business" ends of the argument appear to require. Nothing, for ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... which the following is the substance:—The cross is commonly used in China, and consists of any flat boards of sufficient size, the upright shaft being usually eight to ten feet high. The transverse bar is fixed by a single nail or rivet, and is therefore often loose, and may be made sometimes to traverse a complete circle. It is not so much an instrument of punishment in itself, as it is an operation-board whereon to confine the criminal, not with nails, but ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... repeated with a smile. "Well, must is a nail that drives through wood, no doubt; but if it hits iron it is apt to bend. Not that I am so hard as that; but money, money, money! And whose money do you mean, little maid? If you want money of mine to spend in bread, or in cakes, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a party,' says Boggs, 'who once immerses a ten-penny nail in a quart of Red Dog licker, an' at the end of the week he takes it out ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the materials from which sages spin their dry and ethereal webs. But this narrative is concerned only with the facts in the case. Therefore it is necessary to know only that when Jimmy Sears stooped to pick up his nail-pointed arrow, lying beside a stunned pullet, he heard the sharp nasal "sping" of a rock whirring near his head. Chicken and bow and arrow in hand, he began to run, not ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes like the body, and believes that to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body and having the same delights she ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... a finger-nail by an injudicious use of the hammer. Bud sat down in the paint pot, and had to go to bed while his clothes were cleaned. In fact Lily Rose was the only one of the whole family circle to suffer no injury, but the Boarder guided her so ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... McBride's portion will be five hundred pounds on the nail—that would be no bad hit, and she a good, clever, likely girl. I'll pop the question ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... ready to throw a fit," said Ballard, "because he had been all through the Picket Post range and had never found any gold there. I'll bet a farm you can nail this thing ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... young blacksmith had an aspect as poor as the sewing-girl's. For its sole ornament, over the deal table upon which Agricola wrote his poetical inspirations, there hung suspended from a nail in the wall a portrait of Beranger—that immortal poet whom the people revere and cherish, because his rare and transcendent genius has delighted to enlighten the people, and to sing ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... tribe of us, to begin with; then our family has been here for ages, and we have plenty of 'spondulics,' so we can rather lord it over the other fellows, and do as we like. There, ma'am, you can hang your smashed glass on that nail and do up your back hair as fine as you please. You can have a blue blanket or a red one, and a straw pillow or an air cushion for your head, whichever you like. You can trim up to any extent, and ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... the other chap I'm after now—perhaps you'll be so obliging as to tell me where I can put my paws on him. I hung the duck from this nail—the cord was good and strong, and it couldn't have broken loose. You see it ain't there now. So the question is did the blamed bird come to life again and skedaddle off, or was one of your friends the foxes aboard while we snoozed, to make ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... near the drift mouth of the mine belched coal and coal dust day after day. When Phoebe—you'd never have known her for the pretty girl she used to be far back in the Blue Ridge—rubbed out a washing on the washboard, hung it to dry on the wire line stretched from the back door to a nail on the side of the out-building, she knew that every rag she rubbed and boiled and blued would be grimy with coal dust before it dried. What was she to do about it? Where else could the wash be hung? Once Phoebe thought she had ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... was lost in the noise of percussion. A common habit of the distinguished statesman was to reach out his right hand at full arm's length, and then to bend it back at the elbow and lightly scratch the top of his head with his thumb-nail. ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... to the wish of her friends, even in her misery, Sibyl Andres held her hand. At the door of the studio, she turned again, to look long and lingeringly about the room. Then she went out, closing and locking the door, and leaving the key on a hidden nail, as her ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... returned him two or three books he had lent me. In the volume of Shelley I underlined with my nail the last two lines of a certain verse and put a mark in ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... he won't do you much harm. You hit the nail on the head when you mention Norburn. Norburn would be very pleased to run your factory as a State work-shop ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... neither may they cover with tiles, nor whiten their walls with lime, but there is a Clay which is as white, and that they use sometimes. They employ no Carpenters, or house-builders, unless some few noble-men, but each one buildeth his own dwelling. In building whereof there is not so much as a nail used; but instead of them every thing which might be nailed, is tyed with rattans and other strings, which grow in the woods in abundance; whence the builder hath his Timber for cutting. The Country being warm, many of them will not take pains to clay their walls, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... of the world to try their luck. One said that it belonged to an ape, another to a lynx, a third to a crocodile, and in short some gave it to one animal and some to another; but they were all a hundred miles from the truth, and not one hit the nail on the head. At last there came to this trial an ogre who was the most ugly being in the world, the very sight of whom would make the boldest man tremble and quake with fear. But no sooner had he come and turned the skin round and smelt it than ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... finger on it," said Moss. "Hit the nail on the head. It's just like my father said: 'Trees go dead on the top.' Colihan—" The boss leaned forward confidentially. "I've got an assignment ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... call that every one should square the circle. Our manner of teaching," said he, "cramps and warps many a mind, which if left more at liberty would have been respectable in some way, though perhaps not in that. We lop our trees, and prune them, and pinch them about," he would say, "and nail them tight up to the wall, while a good standard is at last the only thing for bearing healthy fruit, though it commonly begins later. Let the people learn necessary knowledge; let them learn to count their fingers, and to ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... as Gibault was once more about to try his piece, after rubbing the edge of his flint with his thumb-nail; ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... right arm imitated the movement of the bow; his left hand and his fingers seemed to be feeling along the handle. If he makes a false note, he stops, tightens or slackens his string, and strikes it with his nail, to make sure of its being in tune, and then takes up the piece where he left off. He beats time with his foot, moves his head, his feet, his hands, his arms, his body, as you may have seen Ferrari or Chiabran, or some other virtuoso ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb. The cut bled profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated digits up. It was late when we left this waterless spot. As there was a hill with a prepossessing gorge, I left ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... few pieces of the find in his bag. And the man what he showed 'em to was so terrible interested that nothing would do but he must come up to Dunnabridge and see the lot. He offered two hundred and fifty pound for the things on the nail; so Jonathan saw very clear that they must be worth a good bit more. They haggled for a week, and finally the owner went up to Exeter and got another chap to name a price. In the long run, the dealers halved the things, and ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... bedding, and pieces of cloth served as coverlids. The pillow was a curious affair, being a thick piece of bamboo, about four feet long, on little legs. We were shown into one of these rooms, and a sign made to us to go to sleep. Even the largest houses have not a nail in them, but are fastened together with sennit, which is a line made from the root of a tree. I may say that everything is fastened with sennit—canoes, as well as houses—so that large quantities ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... how—she's quite peculiar, you know," said Charlotte, finding her way less clear with each word. "Never mind, Polly; only just fight her if she begins on what is your duty; if she does, then fight her tooth and nail." ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... spot whence the shout proceeded, we were astonished to find the thirteen-year-old son of Orson Clark standing, with an old blunderbuss in his hands, in a triumphant attitude by the panther, which lay as dead as a door-nail on the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... in that Waring hombre. I'll sure nail him like you said; but if he goes for his gun I don't want you plantin' no cucumber seed on my restin'-place. Guess I'll ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... all the spaces between the jars with the packing material. If the box is deep and a second layer of fruit is to go in, put thick pasteboard or thin boards over the first layer and set the wrapped jars on this. Fill all the spaces and cover the top with the packing material. Nail on the cover and mark clearly: GLASS. THIS ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... the ladies' committee a general idea of it. Just see, Maggie, if I know the peroration. 'In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, these are the reasonable demands of every intelligent Englishwoman'— I had better say British woman—'and I am proud to nail them to ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... about, as you take care not to step on a nail, or to sprain your foot, so take care not to damage your own ruling faculty; and if we observe this rule in every act, we shall undertake this ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... who was now the proper master. "It is said in a very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a learned man, certainty know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot bear to touch grey paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every limb if one rub a pane of glass with a nail: I have just such a feeling on hearing you say thou to me; I feel myself as if pressed to the earth in my first situation with you. You see that it is a feeling; that it is not pride: I cannot allow you to say thou to me, but I will willingly ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... which He might have used, (For us resolved to perish) He refused; While they stood ready to prevent His loss, Love took Him up, and nail'd Him to the ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... started to run ag'in. Like Lot's wife, I couldn't help lookin' back, and there wuz the b'ar flat on his back. I went up to him kinder cautious, for I didn't know but he might be shammin', them black b'ars are mighty cute; but, no, he wuz deader'n a door nail. I took the partridges back to town, and then a party on us came back and toted ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... I quit shinglin'," replied the road-master, cautiously. Dingman waited; Byram fitted a shingle, fished out a nail from his apron-pocket, and drove it ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the scandal. Seems Stanton's been playing the fool. They say he's half mad, anyhow, about a lot of things—always was, but it is a bit worse since a touch o' the sun he had a year or two ago. He's off his head about an Ouled Nail—don't know whether she came here because of him, or whether he picked her up at Touggourt, but the story is, he could o' got away before now, with his bloomin' caravan, on that d——d fool expedition of his you read of in the papers, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... circumstance. circunstantes bystanders. cirio wax candle. cisura incision, cut. cita citation, appointment. ciudad f. city. civilizar to civilize. claridad f. clearness. claro clear. clase f. class, rank. clavar to nail, fix. clemente clement, merciful. cobarde coward, timid. cobardia cowardliness. cobijar to cover. cobrar to recover, collect money. cobre m. copper. cocina kitchen. cocinero cook. codicioso covetous. cofradia ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... raised his eyebrows over the card I found for him; then he drummed upon it with his finger-nail, and his embarrassment expressed itself in a ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... moon hung again over the apex of the Great Pyramid, like a silver cutting from the rosy nail of a houri. The Sphinx—mighty guesser of riddles, reader of rebuses and universal solver of missing words—looked over the unfathomable desert and these few pages, with the worried, hopeless expression of one who is obliged at last to give it up. And then ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... desperate conflict. Tooth and nail Tommy attacks, the foe, fists and legs doing very gallant service. There would indeed have been a serious case of assault and battery for the next Court day, had not Providence sent Mrs. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... been nettled at hearing what he terms a wild-goose chase put on a par with a fox-hunt; and the gamekeeper having always been accustomed to look upon hawks as arrant poachers, which it was his duty to shoot down, and nail, in ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... he wrote to me: 'I hope that others have remembered and made note of A. T.'s sayings—which hit the nail on the head. Had I continued to be with him, I would have risked being called another Bozzy by the thankless World; and have often looked in vain for a Note Book I had ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... next you drink, Do me the gentleness to think That every drop of drink accursed Makes Christ within you die of thirst; That every dirty word you say Is one more flint upon His way, Another thorn about His head, Another mock by where He tread; Another nail another cross; All that you are ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... watchful, still and bare, With a thousand spears in air, Guarding yet its treasured leaf From storm and hail and winter's grief? Unregarded on the ground Leaves of yester-year abound, For what is autumn's gold to one That hoards a life scarce yet begun? Let me so renew my youth, I defend it, nail and tooth, Rooting deep and lifting high. For this my dead leaves hiss and sigh And glow as on the downward road To the dog-snake's dread abode. Noxious things of earth and air, Get you hence, for I prepare To flaunt my beauty in the sun When ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... I'll make us a couple of suits of fairly heavy steel armor, so that we'll have real protection if we should need it. You see, we don't know what we are apt to run up against out here. Then, with that much done, it'll be up to you to provide, since I'll have to work tooth and nail at the forges. You'll have to bring home the bacon, do the cooking and so on, and see what you can find along the line of edible roots, grains, fruits, and what-not. Sort of reverse the Indian idea—you be the hunter and I'll keep the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... skeptical, however, and was not satisfied until the board member agreed that in case the flood failed to abate next day, as predicted, the board should do the extra capping. This settled, a nail was driven into the upper plank to mark ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of a protracted existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... especially the finger nails, of the surgeon, assistants, and nurses should be well scrubbed with hot water and soap, by means of a nail brush, immediately before the operation. The patient's body about the site of the proposed operation should be similarly scrubbed with a brush and cleanly shaved. Subsequently the hands of the operator, assistants, and nurses, and the field of operation should be immersed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... just over the window. That would do; but it must be firm to bear his weight. He got up on a chair to feel the nail; it was not quite firm, and he stepped down again and took a hammer from a drawer. He knocked in the nail, and was about to pull a sheet off his bed, when he suddenly remembered that he had not said his prayers. Of course, one must pray before dying; every Christian does that. There ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the question. It's the advisability of publishing it. I say to you that if you insist on this story's publication, you'll kill the Times deader than a door-nail. I'll call the business manager in." Walford whistled through a tube, and shortly after the business manager appeared. "Read this," said Walford briefly, "and give Mr. McQuade your honest opinion regarding its publication. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... thumbs having two nail joints, as in figure 385, are classified as if the joint toward the outside of the hand were not present. In other words the inner joint is used, and no consideration whatever is given ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... FALLON: Yes, we'll nail him. And, if he puts his gun in my face today, he won't catch me empty-handed the second time. (Draws automatic from his pocket.) I'm ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... and he seemed to have a long life of work before him. But a trivial incident revealed to me the fact that things were not as they seemed, and that this great sturdy Englishman was by no means in the state of health that men supposed. When walking in Switzerland, he had accidentally injured the nail of his great toe, and it was necessary to remove it. Forster regarded the operation as a slight one, and was anxious that cocaine should be used as an anaesthetic, so that he might, as he said to me, "have the fun" of witnessing the actual operation. When the time came, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... their arms are taking The raven's wings with greed are shaking; When they come back to drink in hall Brave spoil they bring to deck the wall— Shield, helms, and panzers (1), all in row, Stripped in the field from lifeless fow. In truth no royal nail comes near Thy splendid hall ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... are lies frae end to end, And some great lies were never penn'd: Ev'n ministers, they hae been kenn'd, [known] In holy rapture, A rousing whid at times to vend, [fib] And nail't wi' Scripture. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... and striding over to a nail in the wall, took off his coat and hung it up. Somehow, he looked larger than ever in his gray sweater. A sense of comfort and unaccustomed well-being restored him to good humor. Throwing himself into the rocker, he stretched ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... image[FN33] which shall resemble me in all points, and that you fashion it according to my form and figure, and you adorn it aright and render it to represent my very self in all proportions, and then bring it to me." They obeyed her order and brought her a statue which was herself to a nail, so she looked upon it and was pleased therewith. Then she ordered them set the image over the Hammam-door, so they placed it there, and after she issued a firman and caused it to be cried through the city that whoso should enter that Bath to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... not go away without making one more effort for his friend the King, who was really in great danger as long as he lived in a cage. Indeed, already he had met with several alarming accidents. Once the nail on which his cage was hung had given way, and his feathered Majesty had suffered much from the fall, while Madam Puss, who happened to be in the room at the time, had given him a scratch in the eye which came very near blinding him. Another time they had forgotten to give him any water to drink, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... the ears of the Princess, and she promised secretly to the butcher to give him a piece of gold if he would show her a kindness, which was, that he would nail the head of Falada over a certain large and gloomy arch, through which she had to pass daily with the geese, so that then she might still see her old steed as she had been accustomed. The butcher promised, ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's one more nail, thank God, in the coffin of our odious delay." He was but too glad without more ado to point the moral. "Now I hope you see we can't ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... venting my wrath upon Karl Ivanitch, he had passed to his own bedstead, looked at his watch (which hung suspended in a little shoe sewn with bugles), and deposited the fly-flap on a nail, then, evidently in the most cheerful mood possible, he turned ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... though a few of them are just little thumb-nail icon-sized images placed at the ends of chapters. The rest are quite nice images, though shown here at only 30% of each linear dimension of those we found in ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... no longer fashionable. They want payment on the nail there, confound them! Besides, this is nearer the walls and we can hear the Burgundians shouting. It is as good as a relish ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that "a patent for moving wheel-carriages by steam has been taken out by one Moore," adding "this comes of thy delays; do come to England with all possible speed." Watt replied "If linen-draper Moore does not use my engine to drive his chaises he can't drive them by steam." Here Watt hit the nail on the head; as with the steamship, so with the locomotive, his steam-engine was the indispensable power. In 1786 he states that he has a carriage model of some size in hand "and am resolved to try if God will work a ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... article his eye fell upon, he tore and crushed it; he swept the table clean of its queer Spanish bric-a-brac, and trampled the litter under his heels. Spying a painting of a saint upon the wall, he ran to it, ripped it from its nail, and, raising it over his head, smashed frame and glass, cursing all saints, all priests, and churchly people. Havoc followed him as he raged about the place wreaking his fury upon inanimate objects. When he had well-nigh wrecked the contents of the room, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... asserted," he says, "that if the fish called a sea-star is smeared with the fox's blood and then nailed to the upper lintel of the door, or to the door itself, with a copper nail, no noxious spell will be able to obtain admittance, or, at all events, be productive of any ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... kill the old Marchese as dead as a door-nail, for one thing," said another of the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... dreams. There is one of this kind whom I have in my eye, and whose case is perhaps unusual enough to be described. He was from a child an ardent and uncomfortable dreamer. When he had a touch of fever at night, and the room swelled and shrank, and his clothes, hanging on a nail, now loomed up instant to the bigness of a church, and now drew away into a horror of infinite distance and infinite littleness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must follow, and struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. But his struggles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or detailist of the Ruskin type has for years been insisting that a spade was a spade and should be painted to look like a spade; that a spade was not a spade until every nail in the handle and every crack in the ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... thirteen inches from the top of the upright stick; and the same proportion should be observed for kites of other dimensions. At the point of crossing, the sticks should be slightly notched, and strongly bound together with twine tied in flat knots. Driving a nail or screw through the sticks, to bind them, weakens the frame at the ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... destroyed many thousands of Pheasants, Partridges and Wood-cocks. His Stable Doors are patched with Noses that belonged to Foxes of the Knight's own hunting down. Sir ROGER shewed me one of them that for Distinction sake has a Brass Nail struck through it, which cost him about fifteen Hours riding, carried him through half a dozen Counties, killed him a Brace of Geldings, and lost above half his Dogs. This the Knight looks upon as one ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... later he was laughing softly as a boy in the midst of a prank, and busily throwing off the robe of serge. Fumbling through the night he located the shirt and trousers he had seen hanging from a nail on the wall. Into these he slipped, and then went out under ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... Something confused. She had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does? Would I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat. Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's that? ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to pay union wages, yet they were fighting tooth and nail, and I certainly could not afford ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... stem consists of a tough pithy substance, round which the leaves are formed. These, long and tapering like the rush, are four-sided, and extremely brittle; the base from which they shoot is broad and flat, about the size of a thumb-nail, and very resinous in substance. As the leaves decay annually, others are put forth above the bases of the old ones, which are thus pressed down by the new shoots, and a fresh circle is added every year to the growing plant. Thousands ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... aristocratic West Point pro-slavery friends, introduced democratic politics into the army at a time when the army was yet in an embryo state, already in September and October, 1861. O, impudent liars! history will nail your names to the gallows, together with the name of your fetish ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Aboulmahasen (apud De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 95) is more correct in his account of the holy lance than the Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the Greek princess confounds it with the nail of the cross, (l. xi. p. 326;) the Jacobite primate, with St. Peter's staff, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... little. Another piece is secured to it, not neatly, as with proper tools, but clumsily, with many nails of different sizes, driven unevenly and with their heads battered awry. Wedged clumsily in between these pieces, and secured by a supplementary nail, is a bit of broken rope. Let us touch that rope tenderly; for who knows what despairing hands may last have clutched it when this rude raft was made? It may, indeed, have been the handiwork of children, on the Penobscot or the St. Mary's River. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... wouldn't let these rough-and-tumble doctors touch it. They'd amputate at the shoulder for a hang-nail. I don't trust 'em." ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... great head on you, old chap," he said, affectionately. "It certainly seems as though you have hit the nail on the head this time. I understand, now, why their leader was so anxious to have us move away. They expect to encounter the Indians somewhere in this neighborhood and they do not want any witnesses. What shall we ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... buckets, in a way to crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had been the whole thing, that, on turning the wheel, his lifeless body was still inclining on its periphery, retained erect, I believe, in consequence of some part of his coat getting attached, to the head of a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life. I had always regarded my father as one of the fixtures of the world; as a part of the great system of the universe; and had never contemplated his death as a possible ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... he enjoyed himself; and the hawk soon came wheeling down to the ground, which he no sooner touched, than away ran the weasel, having got an excellent dinner at the expense of the hawk. He was not a bit the worse for the ride; while Mr. Hawk lay there as dead as a nail. The biter was bitten that time, wasn't he? It was a pretty good lesson to the hawk family not to be so greedy, though whether they ever profited by it is more than I can say. From the account that a little girl gave me of the incursions recently made upon her chickens, I judge that they did not ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... glanced at his watch hanging on a nail at the side of his bunk; but, finding that he could not abuse him on the ground of being late, he contented himself with scowling. But, a few moments later, he pretended that he had a real cause ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... allow to monopolise the name. Cunning is the only resource of the feeble; and why may we not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of Iago and Othello. To our northern thought, the free and noble nature of the Moor is wrecked through ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... received no damage; but on raising the hatch leading to the fore-peak he saw that the place was nearly full of water. His exploration of the forecastle ended here; and he was about to proceed on deck when he caught sight of a fishing-line suspended on a nail inside one of the bunks. This fishing-line he at once secured and took on deck with him laying it down on top of the carpenter's tool-chest so that it might not be forgotten when ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... rabbeet, he run for those automobile, but those automobile she have one leak in the wheel. Senor, thees is the judgment of God. Myself, I theenk the speerit of Don Miguel's father have put the nail where thees fellow can peeck heem up. Well, when hee's nothing for do, hee's got for do sometheeng, eh? Mira! If Don Miguel catch thees coyote on the Rancho Palomar, hee's cut off hees tail like that"—and Pablo snapped his tobacco-stained fingers. "Queeck! Hee's got for do something ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the first note. The handwriting was utterly new to him; but his intuition, applied instantly to the envelope, told him of the source. The nail, driven, was now to be clinched. She had the right to ask him to come; and she did ask him ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Ah, the heart Doth open when one looketh on her face. She's like a princess of the Mount Lidang. Her features are like those of Nilagendi, Her heels are like the eggs of hens, and make Her seem a princess of Siam. Her fingers More tapering are than quills of porcupine. And solid is the nail of her left hand. No noble's girl is Bidasari's peer." Now when the princess heard them sing her praise Her soul was wounded as if by a thorn. Her dark eyes flashed. "Ah, speak no more of her," She said, "nor speak ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... above in this article. But if we speak of necessity of constraint, as repugnant to the bodily nature, thus again was Christ's body in its own natural condition subject to necessity in regard to the nail that pierced and the scourge that struck. Yet inasmuch as such necessity is repugnant to the will, it is clear that in Christ these defects were not of necessity as regards either the Divine will, or the human will of Christ considered absolutely, as following the deliberation of reason; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... idea!" I exclaimed. "I have got a file in my knife; and we may be able to find a nail, to which I can put a barb, and bend it ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... The Mahometan Aboulmahasen (apud De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 95) is more correct in his account of the holy lance than the Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the Greek princess confounds it with the nail of the cross, (l. xi. p. 326;) the Jacobite primate, with St. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... tool-house at the bottom of the garden, and there, tied to a nail in the wall, was a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... province. The capitalists of Nova Scotia treat it like a hired house, they won't keep it in repair; they neither paint it to preserve the boards, nor stop a leak to keep the frame from rottin'; but let it go to wrack sooner than drive a nail or put in a pane of glass. 'It will sarve our turn ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the carpenter's son, they take out and crucify all over again. As a young poet has phrased it, they nail him to a jeweled cross with cruel nails of gold. Come with me to the New Golgotha and witness this crucifixion; take the nails of gold in your hands, try the weight of the jeweled sledges! Here is a sledge, in the form of a dignified and scholarly volume, published ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... eyes and looking, espied on Pao-yue's cheek on the left side of his face, a spot of blood about the size of a button, and speedily bending her body, she drew near to him, and rubbing it with her hand, she scrutinised it closely. "Whose nail," she went on to inquire, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... But love, whose speechless ecstasy Had overborne the finite, now Throbs through thy being, pure and free, And burns upon thy radiant brow. For thou those hands' dear clasp hast felt, Where still the nail-prints are displayed; And thou before that face hast knelt, Which wears the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... whole lot," was his opening remark. "A good one can come mighty nigh holding a outfit together. Money ain't to be sneezed at, neither. Good wages paid on the nail run the cook a close second. How would you boys like ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... hit the right nail, as the saying is; and she brought forward so many arguments to prove that she thought it was a hoax to frighten them, and that the gentleman above was a man of consequence, that her aunt began to listen to reason, and ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... in this town or its vicinity recently. There have been some few cases of erysipelas." It deserves notice that the partner of Dr. C, who attended the autopsy of the man above mentioned and took an active part in it, who also suffered very slightly from a prick under the thumb-nail received during the examination, had twelve cases of midwifery between March 26th and April 12th, all of which did well, and presented no peculiar symptoms. It should also be stated that during these seventeen days he was in attendance on all the cases of erysipelas ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... friend. After six months, with great labour, and by the help of a nail, I filed my wrist chain and freed my hands. Then when my warder came one evening later than usual, I flew on him and felled him. He was but stunned, and lay still scarce long enough for me to strip him and put him in my clothes. Then I left him and walked out, jingling the keys. In ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... only a chance shot on Mr. Wintermuth's part, but it went straight to the mark, and it rankled. O'Connor knew—or felt reasonably sure—that Smith had not mentioned the matter to any one but himself, yet the chief had struck unerringly the nail's head. And all this endeared Smith but little to the man who had ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... his master's order to harness, he went as usual cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasselled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was to harness was ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... you later. But as matters now stand between us, I forbid your striking up such friendships. If you want to do something for the fellow, present him with a comb and a nail brush and a tooth-brush. Besides, his name isn't Rigo but Max, and he's a seedy sort of chap, absolutely ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... hurt so before. Made all the bad come up in my throat, and I can't swallow it down yet. It would be good enough for him if I was dead; for then every time he went out to the barn there'd be that horsewhip hanging up on the nail; and he'd think to himself—'Where's that little boy I used to whip?' And then the tears will come into his eyes, I pretty much know they will. I saw the tears in his eyes once when I was sick. He felt real bad; but when I got well, first thing ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... "One nail drives out another, at least! The face of the portrait there," I cried, "Is our friend's, the Raphael-faced young priest, Who confessed her when ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... gather. O for the collyrium of Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin—unless a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the plains, believe that all these trees, though so low, are many centuries old. Their growth is almost imperceptible, being scarcely to be noticed in the lapse of twenty or thirty years. The wood of the palma de cobija is excellent for building. It is so hard, that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. The leaves, folded like a fan, are employed to cover the roofs of the huts scattered through the Llanos; and these roofs last more than twenty years. The leaves are fixed by bending the extremity of the footstalks, which have been ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... tavern end my days, midst boon companions merry, Place at my lips a lusty flask replete with sparkling sherry, That angels, hov'ring round, may cry, when I lie dead as door-nail, 'Rise, genial deacon, rise, and drink of the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... must have once adorned it. In fact it would not have been recognizable as a portion of a gate at all, had it not still possessed an enormous hinge which partly clung to it by means of one huge thickly rusted nail, dose beside it, grew a tree of weird and melancholy appearance—its trunk was split asunder and one half of it was withered. The other half leaning mournfully on one side bent down its branches to the ground, trailing a wealth of long, glossy green leaves in the dust of the ruined city. This was ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in his discourse on the most seasonable time for felling timber, written by the advice of Pepys, that after forty-seven years, "all the ancient timber then remaining in her, it was no easy matter to drive a nail into it" ("Quarterly Review," ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is nailed to the cross. The nails are hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his feet, whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers with pain, fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles.... Jesus is crucified between two thieves. The weight of His body terribly aggravates His wounds. From His brow, from His limbs, does a bloody sweat stream ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... room with its stiff, leather-covered furniture, the brass-headed tacks whereof sparkled like so many stars—a cleanliness that bade you farewell in the spotless stretch of sand-sprinkled hallway, the wooden floor of which was worn into knobs around the nail heads by the countless scourings and scrubbings to which it had been subjected and which left behind them an all-pervading faint, fragrant odor of ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... "hog-yoke"—under the bed-bag in his bunk. When he took the sun, and with the help of "The Old Farmer's" almanac found the latitude, Harvey would jump down into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe. Now, the chief engineer of the liner could have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years' service could have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with which Harvey, first careful to spit over the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... car on a little fall in the temperature or the appearance of an inch or two of snow, packing up to overflowing, dangling to the straps, treading on each other's toes, breathing each other's breaths, crushing the women and children, hanging by tooth and nail to a square inch of the platform, imperiling their limbs and killing the horses,—I think the commonest tramp in the street has good reason to felicitate himself on his rare privilege of going afoot. Indeed, a race that neglects or despises this primitive ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... energetically, but in a patois utterly unintelligible. He led the way across the courtyard towards the castle, however, and Paul followed close behind. They did not enter by the front, but by a low, nail-studded door at the extreme corner of the tower, which the man immediately ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... well of Shoubrah where he exclaims, "O such-and-such-a-one, thy sister so-and-so salutes thee, and asks thee to send her the spindle which she forgot when she was with thee yesterday, for we want to furnish a room with it." The fisherman drives a nail into the floor at one end of the room, fixes the thread on the spindle to it, and draws out a wonderful carpet. Then the wazir demands a little boy eight days old, who shall tell a story of which the beginning shall be a lie and the end a lie. The fisherman is sent to the well with the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... immediately buttonholed by the vicar. Lawrence had a fixed idea that all priests were hypocrites: they must be, since as educated men they could not well believe the fables they were paid to teach! But it was hard to associate hypocrisy with Mr. Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Class. "Oh, nothing religious," he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as Lawrence edged away. "Only half an hour's story-telling ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... stone sustained the narrator, while the four disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the various attitudes of severe inattention which youth assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and stick a ticket into the chinks of a silk skull cap is embarrassing for a conductor of refined feelings. It would be simpler if the conductor should carry a small hammer and a packet of shingle nails and nail the paid-up passenger to the back of the seat. Or better still, let the conductor carry a small pot of paint and a brush, and mark the passengers in such a way that he cannot easily mistake them. In the case of bald-headed passengers, the ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... failed to find the vanished wanderer, and the weeks and months grew to be years while we waited in vain. It was on the twenty-second day of March in the second twelve month after Herdegen's departing that the treasures of the realm, and among them a nail from the Cross and the point of the spear wherewith they pierced the Lord's side, were to be brought into the town in a solemn procession, and I, with many others, rode forth to meet it. They were brought hither from Blindenberg on the Danube, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have very poor eyes, but there seems to be no defect in the vision with which he sees nature, while he often hits the nail on the head in a way that would indicate the surest sight. True, he makes the swallow hunt the bee, which, for aught I know, the swallow may do in England. Our purple martin has been accused of catching the honey-bee, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... The first sharp nail went through, and piteous wails Burst from the youth, but no compassion woke; An eager eye the look ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... sir!" was his criticism, "dead as a door nail! All the medicine in the shop wouldn't kindle one spark of life ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... was now the proper master. "It is said in a very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a learned man, certainty know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot bear to touch grey paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every limb if one rub a pane of glass with a nail: I have just such a feeling on hearing you say thou to me; I feel myself as if pressed to the earth in my first situation with you. You see that it is a feeling; that it is not pride: I cannot allow you to say thou to me, but I ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... yer, Miss Amy, there's no think like breakin' off short, there's nothink like turnin' the corner sharp, and fightin' the devil tooth and nail. It's an awful tussle at first, an' I thought I was goin' to knuckle under more'n once. So I would ef it hadn't 'a ben fer you, but you give me this little ban', Miss Amy, an' looked at me as if I wa'n't a beast, an' it's ben a liftin' ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... fact that the nails are in reality appendages of the skin, they are naturally entitled to some brief consideration. Beneath the nail is the matrix, that part of the true skin from which the nail is formed. The matrix has not a perfectly smooth surface, but is arranged in 8 scries of parallel ridges with alternating grooves. The nail is of a rosy pink colour, because it is transparent enough to let ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... making one large payment outright and giving his note for the balance. The lot once his, the banks loaned him the desired amount. With this money and with money of his own he would make the final payment on the lot and would begin the building itself, paying his labour on the nail, but getting his material, lumber, brick and fittings on time. When the building was half-way up he would negotiate a second loan from the banks in order to complete it and in order to meet the notes he had given to his ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... help of the LORD, To the help of the LORD against the mighty. Blessed above women Shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, Blessed shall she be above women in the tent! He asked water, and she gave him milk; She brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, And her right hand to the workmen's hammer; And with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, When she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: At her feet he bowed, he fell: ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... boneless as the hands wrought in pigment by a fashionable portrait painter. The tapering fingers bend backward. Between them burns a scented cigarette. You poise it with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the eyes of her lover. The long line of your curved nail is ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... some of the engines with which some of his servants had done wonderful things. They showed him Moses' rod; the hammer and nail with which Jael slew Sisera; the pitchers, trumpets, and lamps too, with which Gibeon put to flight the armies of Midian. Then they showed him the ox's goad wherewith Shamgar slew 600 men. They showed him, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... As for the shop, said we, we would mind it ourselves, for 'twas but play to do it; and thus, indeed, it turned out: so hearty was the sport it provided that my sister and I would hilariously race for the big key (which hung on a high nail in the dining-room) whenever a customer came. I would not have you think us unfeeling. God knows, we were not that! 'Twas this way with us: each hid the pain, and thus thought to deceive the other into a happier mood. We did ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... was Oppenheimer's criticism. "My mother believed in spirits. When I was a kid she was always seeing them and talking with them and getting advice from them. But she never come across with any goods from them. The spirits couldn't tell her where the old man could nail a job or find a gold-mine or mark an eight-spot in Chinese lottery. Not on your life. The bunk they told her was that the old man's uncle had had a goitre, or that the old man's grandfather had died of galloping consumption, or ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... should have been made welcome,' said Mr. Grewgious, 'and I think he would have been pleased to be hung upon a nail outside and pit himself against our Staple sparrows; whose execution must be admitted to be not quite equal to their intention. Which is the case with so many of us! You didn't say what meal, my dear. Have a nice jumble of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... petrel; it had a nail planted in the heel, but no thumb; the bill was hooked at the end, the extremity of which seemed to consist of a distinct piece, articulated with the remainder; the nostrils were united, and formed a tube laid on the back of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... laborer and a land-holder. Put him down there without any capital—simply a naked, featherless, two-legged and two-handed, animal, without clothes, without a gun or a fish-hook, without hoe, or hatchet, or knife, or rusty nail, without a particle of food to keep him from fainting, and what will become of him? He gathers perhaps some wild fruits from the bushes; he picks up perhaps some shell-fish from the water's edge; he surprises a fawn or a kid, and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... McTeague knelt. The dentist's knees thudded on the floor and he presented to view the soles of his shoes, painfully new and unworn, the leather still yellow, the brass nail heads still glittering. Trina sank at his side very gracefully, setting her dress and train with a little gesture of her free hand. The company bowed their heads, Mr. Sieppe shutting his eyes tight. But Mrs. Sieppe took advantage of the moment to stop crying and ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... work in a nervous, clumsy, hasty sort of way. They made all sorts of mistakes and messes. Payne, the foreman carpenter, was putting some new boards on a part of the drawing-room floor: he was in such a state of panic that, while driving a nail, he accidentally struck the thumb of his left hand a severe blow with his hammer. Bundy was also working in the drawing-room putting some white-glazed tiles in the fireplace. Whilst cutting one of these in half in order to fit it into its place, he inflicted ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Englishman I had struck my hand against a nail, and the fourth finger of my left hand was bleeding as if a vein had been opened. Betty helped me to tie a handkerchief around the wound, while Sir B—— M—— read the letter with great attention. I was much pleased with Betty's action, it shewed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... we got together. He was the only acquaintance I had in that region, and I was his only acquaintance. We rushed together like a couple of dissatisfied hermits, and together we spent the day, threw our feet for dinner, and late in the afternoon tried to "nail" the same freight. But he was ditched, and I rode her out alone, to be ditched myself in the desert ...
— The Road • Jack London
... one feels that they do enjoy seeing, as in one of their prints, the bowels of St. Erasmus being taken out with a windlass, or Jael, as Altdorfer has shown her in his romantic print, neatly hammering the nail into the head of the sprawling, snoring Sisera. There is a good deal of grossness, too (of which, among the Italians, even Robetta and similar, there is so little), in the details of village fairs and adventures ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... tilted up by inserting the right little finger under it, and the upper packet quickly slid beneath it, leaving the cards in precisely the position they occupied before cutting; For this purpose, the book continued, the nail of the right little finger is worn very long, so as to facilitate its being thrust beneath a packet of cards. Here, I said to myself, is a possible explanation of one of the peculiarities of my plaster cast. The long nail on the left little finger may have served its function at the gaming table. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... sickened. Item, three beds; item, one kitchen chair; item, one unpainted board washstand, supporting a tin basin, a cake of soap, a tin ewer, with a dingy towel hanging from a nail under a cracked mirror and over a tin slop-bucket; item, three spittoons, one beside each bed; item, a row of nails in a wooden strip, plainly for wardrobe purposes; item, one ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... besmeared with gore. Then Nila with his fist he slew, And Sarabh with his knee o'erthrew, Nor could Gavaksha's strength withstand The force of his terrific hand. At Gandhamadan's eager call Rushed thousands to avenge their fall, Nor ceased those Vanars to assail With knee and fist and tooth and nail. Around his foes the giant threw His mighty arms, and nearer drew The captives subject to his will: Then snatched them up and ate his fill. There was no respite then, no pause: Fast gaped and closed his hell-like jaws: Yet, prisoned in that gloomy cave, Some Vanars still ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... these islands were excellent carpenters and ship-builders. "They make many very light vessels, which they take through the vicinity for sale in a very curious manner. They build a large vessel, undecked, without iron nail or any fastening. Then, according to the measure of its hull, they make another vessel that fits into it. Within that they put a second and a third. Thus a large biroco contains ten or twelve vessels, called biroco, virey, barangay, and binitan." ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... the news at half-past five, he broke into a cold sweat. Then he bit savagely at the nail of his favourite thumb. Considering that, so recently as that morning, he had reluctantly decided that that toothsome entremet must be allowed to go unmolested for at least a week, his action was indicative of an emotion which knew no rules. That he made no mention of the matter to ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... lost confidence in the precautions he had taken and in the mystery with which the deed was surrounded, is apparent from the fact that he revisited the Van Burnam office on the following morning, and hung again on its accustomed nail the keys of the Gramercy ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... classics, but of modern languages, translated the New Testament expression "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" into, "The ghost indeed is willing, but the meat is bad." If he had said, in the light of some modern achievements, "the meat is embalmed," he might have hit the nail on the head. ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... idle on its nail; the recorder is covered with dust; no one bothers about either Europe or Asia. What chiefly concerns the few white men who are able to live in Central Australia are the price of stock, the best place to find a little dried grass or bush, and water. ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... was just what was best for them both. Dea without eyes, Gwynplaine without a face. On high the Almighty will restore sight to Dea and beauty to Gwynplaine. Death puts things to rights. All will be well. Fibi, Vinos, hang up your tambourines on the nail. Your talents for noise will go to rust, my beauties; no more playing, no more trumpeting 'Chaos Vanquished' is vanquished. 'The Laughing Man' is done for. 'Taratantara' is dead. Dea sleeps on. She does well. If I were she I would never awake. Oh! ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... economy, and, ignoring everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. Madame du Deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. She never strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. Such is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the Romantics even on their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the dottings of their i's. The following passage from a letter to ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... it," the Governor assented. "Well, if you see a tall chap and a short thick-set fellow anywhere nail 'em for us. Old criminals with long records. They've been enjoying themselves up our way. The tall one doesn't say much, but the little chap is a smooth talker—can talk himself right out of jail if you give him ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... finger along the upper rim of his left ear, sprang up, stooped to take her hand, glared into her eyes till she shrank—and then a nail-cleaner, a common, ten-cent file, fell out of his inner pocket and ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... and such unlooked-for convenience for our purposes, can only be estimated by those who have experienced them; and it is only to strangers to such feelings that it will appear ridiculous to say that even the nail to which our thermometer had been suspended was ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... submission, Yuan Shih-kai's task had become so vastly simplified that he held the moment to have arrived when he could openly turn his hand to the problem of making himself absolutely supreme, de jure as well as de facto. But there was one remaining thing to be done. To drive the last nail into the coffin of the Republic it was necessary to discredit and virtually imprison ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... when he sat in The Enormous Room quietly writing at a tiny three-legged table, a very big pen walking away with his weak bony hand. His too big cap had a little button on top which looked like the head of a nail; and suggested that this old doll had once lost its poor grey head and had been repaired by means of tacking its head upon its neck, where it should be and properly belonged. Of what hideous crime was this being suspected? By some mistake ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... flat fish, not much larger than your thumb-nail, crowd in the shallow, sandy parts of the sea near the coast. There they often end their lives in the shrimp-trawl, ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... the floor to form the bedding, and pieces of cloth served as coverlids. The pillow was a curious affair, being a thick piece of bamboo, about four feet long, on little legs. We were shown into one of these rooms, and a sign made to us to go to sleep. Even the largest houses have not a nail in them, but are fastened together with sennit, which is a line made from the root of a tree. I may say that everything is fastened with sennit—canoes, as well as houses—so that large quantities ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... close to the dominie's house that from one window he could see through a telescope whether the farmer was going to church, owing to Little Tilly's habit of never shaving except with that intention, and of always doing it at a looking-glass which he hung on a nail in his door. The farmer was Established Church, and when the dominie saw him in his shirt-sleeves with a razor in his hand, he called for his black clothes. If he did not see him it is undeniable that the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... shrine is visited even to this day by childless wives, who tie shreds of their clothing to the lattice-work of a marble window as an earnest of their maternal worthiness. It is visited also by the devout for various purposes, among others by those whose horses are sick and who nail votive horseshoes to the great gate. According to tradition the mother of Jahangir was a Christian named Miriam, and her house and garden may be seen, the house having the traces of a fresco which by those who greatly wish it can be believed to represent the Annunciation. Tradition, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... God-fearing prince, was devoted to the Virgin Mary, rigid in his fasts, lavish in charity. He was determined to avoid death and to hold on to his own, tooth and nail, and was his father's peer in valour. Like his father, he dressed richly; unlike him, he cared more for silver than for jewels. He lived more chastely than is usual to princes and was always master of himself. He drank little wine, though he liked it, because ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and bending a little, began to scratch with her nail the patterns of ice that covered the window-pane. I went hastily into the next room, and sending my servant away, came back at once and lighted another candle. I had no clear idea why I was doing all this.... I was greatly overcome. Susanna was ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of this century, and employed by him to designate three great powers which go to fashion human destiny, viz., Force, wearing, as it were, (clava) the club of Hercules; Fortitude, wearing, as it were, (clavis) the key of Ulysses; and Fortune, wearing, as it were, (clavus) the nail of Lycurgus; that is to say, Faculty waiting on the right moment, and then striking in. See Shakespeare's "Time and tide in the affairs of men," &c., the "flood" in which is the "Third Fors." The letters are represented as written at the dictation of the Third Fors, or, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Clarence in a softly alluring voice, he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range of his vision around ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... mainstream slang originated early in the 20th century by President Theodore Roosevelt. There is a legend that, weary of inconclusive talks with Colombia over the right to dig a canal through its then-province Panama, he remarked, "Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail currant jelly to the wall." Roosevelt's government subsequently encouraged the anti-Colombian insurgency that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... thousands!" replied Huckaback, "I will explain to your highness. I once jammed my nail at the bottom, and I expected to lose it. It did not however come off but grew up as before, and I had the curiosity to know how often people changed their nails in the course of a year. It was exactly two months, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... crudity it will never be dull. But conciseness is not the quality I most often detect in reviewing. It is luxurious to be concise when one is writing at space rates; and it is always harder to say a thing briefly than at length, just as it is easier for a woman to hit a nail at the third stroke than ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and about three feet long, should be placed on a firm support, upon which it would rest solidly without any tendency to joggle. At its middle was bored a small circular depression, about the size of a man's thumb-nail and shallow. Into this was thrust the tapered end of a round rod of maple wood about as thick as a large man's thumb. The upper end of the rod fitted freely into a socket in a ball of maple wood of suitable ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... his square document came, Cousin Dempster said at once that he would accept, and I, who had done honors with Mrs. President, made up my mind there, right on the nail, to do just as much for ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... when the monitress went to bed, her sponge, nail-brush, tooth-brush, and cake of soap were missing, and it was only after a long search that she found them at the bottom of her emptied water-jug. On the next evening it was impossible for her to strike a light, owing to the fact that both her candle and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence. As one drew near it and could make out the remains of the square tower, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and his wife who had come from Montreal to St. Paul in an ox-cart. The whole plains was covered with sneakin' red cusses on the war-path. But that darned Britisher was stubborn-set on pullin' out that night for Fort Garry, with his wife and kid, and what did the cuss do but nail a blame little Union Jack on his cart, poke the goad in his ox, and hit the trail! My God, I kin still see the old ox with that bit of the British Empire, wiggling out of St. Paul at sundown. And the cuss got there all right, too, though we was all ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,' said the Nilghai, returning Torpenhow's large and workmanlike bellows to their nail on the wall. 'We believe in cobblers' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... that the handles are never allowed to touch the water. Ivory discolors and cracks if wet. Bristol-brick finely powdered is the best polisher, and, mixed with a little water, can be applied with a large cork. A regular knife-board, or a small board on which you can nail three strips of wood in box form, will give you the best mode of keeping brick and cork in place. After rubbing, wash clean, and ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... preach at Bedford in a way that shook my soul. He described the crucifixion in a way that put the scene before his people—no fine words, and metaphors: but first one nail struck into one hand, and then into another, and one through both feet—the cross lifted up with God in man's image distended upon it. And the sneers of the priests below—'Look at that fellow there—look at him—he talked of saving others, etc.' And then the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... one "tick fever." It is not a deadly fever, but it is recurrent and weakening. There are all kinds of ticks, from little red ones no bigger than a grain of pepper to big fat ones the size of a finger-nail, that are exactly the color of the ground. They seem to have immortal life, for they can exist for a long time without food. Doctor Ward told us of some that he had put in a box, where they lived four years without food or water. He also told us of one that was sent to the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... got turned out to be too old and decrepit, and so strong it would have taken a Paul Bunyan to stand up under it. When we complained to our expert about the shock to our palates, he only laughed, pointing to the nail on ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... with practiced ease, even while masked and submerged, to set the probe in place, aiming it landward at the check point of the Finger's protruding nail of rock. After Ashe made the final adjustments, tested each and every part of the assembly, he gestured ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... of his reasons, if such they should be termed, for urging tooth and nail the non-according of reform to the Crown-governed Colonies, our author puts forth this dogmatic ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... We cannot nail the dial's hand; We cannot bind the sun By Gibeon to stay and stand, Or the moon ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... him and passed into the house without haste. But once inside she fairly flew to Phil's room. On a nail near the head of his bed hung a key. She took this, descended to the kitchen, and from there noiselessly down the stairway to the cellar. She groped her way without a light along the adobe wall till she came to a door ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... he was laughing softly as a boy in the midst of a prank, and busily throwing off the robe of serge. Fumbling through the night he located the shirt and trousers he had seen hanging from a nail on the wall. Into these he slipped, and then went out ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... become decidedly the best shot in the settlement, could "bark" squirrels (that is, hit the bark of the branch on which a squirrel happened to be standing, and so kill it by the concussion alone), and could "drive the nail" every shot. The silver rifle, as we have said, became "great medicine" to the Red-men when they saw it kill at a distance which the few wretched guns they had obtained from the fur-traders could not even send a spent ball to. The double shot, too, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... second cup when his glance fell from her face to her hands. They were delicately made, artistic, with wilful little thumbs, yet they impressed him with a certain resourcefulness, a strength in reserve. Suddenly the light from the lantern which he had hung on a nail in the wall above the table, struck an exceedingly large ruby she wore on her left hand. It glowed blood-red, scintillated, flamed. He saw the stone was mounted with diamonds in a unique setting of some foreign workmanship, and he told himself it was probably ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Martin, during which Mr. Jollyboy struck Mrs. Grumbit nearly dumb with horror by stating positively what he would do for the boy,—he would send him to sea! Then, seeing that he had hit the wrongest possible nail on the head, he said that he would make the lad a clerk in his office, where he would be sure to rise to a place of trust; whereat Mrs. Grumbit danced, if we may so speak, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and his was a stall. I don't quite know what that is; but it isn't a house, and it served him for parlour and kitchen and all. Father says that whilst he is about it, he thinks he shall add on a wing; And brother Bill says he'll nail my Doll's House on the top of an old tea-chest, which will come to the ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to bear upon him by the press, by many of his friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to change or omit certain passages from his poems, seems only to have served as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The fierce and scornful opposition to his sex poems, and to his methods and aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... machinery which makes them move is made of iron. The buckets which we have to carry water in have iron hoops. The doors have iron locks. The ink with which we write has iron in it. Last, but not least, we have iron in our blood, enough to make a ten-penny nail. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... interpretations which tend to cloud, rather than to elucidate gospel truths. Bunyan very properly warns his readers against giving the reins to their imaginations and indulging in speculations like those fathers, who in every nail, pin, stone, stair, knife, pot, and in almost every feather of a sacrificed bird could discern strange, distinct, and peculiar mysteries.[3] The same remark applies to the Jewish rabbis, who in their Talmud are full ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... transplanter at the same time, the tree is taken from the ground with its roots undisturbed. Should the end of the tap root project below the end of the cylinder, the thready end should be pinched off with the thumb nail. By placing the lower end of the cylinder on the bottom of a box and inserting a wedge-shaped piece of wood in the slot, the cylinder is sprung open and can be withdrawn, leaving the young tree, with a cylinder of earth around its roots, standing on the bottom of the box. This ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... an air of final defeat, "there's nothing for it but to follow my instructions and pay you now on the nail!" ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Carlyle's, Tennyson's and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ... (there is the nail, under Wordsworth—) and then pulled down Tennyson's in a fit of justice,—because I would not have his hung up and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the drawers and the boxes, and whatever ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
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