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More "Blade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surprised to see, on landing at the Piraeus, tall chimneys by the side of the railway station, and the vast district of industrial establishments which has been formed, where a few years ago one did not see a single cottage, a tree, or a blade ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... society, though naturally animals of a very different kind, and have hence learned from each other to eat dog's grass (agrostis canina) when they are sick, to promote vomiting. I have seen a cat mistake the blade of barley for this grass, which evinces it is an acquired knowledge. They have also learnt of each other to cover their excrement and urine;—about a spoonful of water was spilt upon my hearth from the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... are hunted on horseback, the chief weapon used being a spear with a stout two-edged blade. A horse must be thoroughly trained to this sport, and must possess great fleetness of foot, as the boar is a very rapid runner. The time chosen for the hunt is at daybreak, as the boar has probably been eating sugar-cane or other food all night, and is sleepy and heavy in the morning, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... grim. So, then, that is where heaven and earth are divided. From behind me, on the left, the headland swept down out of a great, pale-grey, arid height, through a rush of russet and crimson, to the olive smoke and the water of the level earth. And between, like a blade of the sky cleaving the earth asunder, went the pale-blue lake, cleaving mountain from mountain with ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... went, you couldn't fit a knife blade between the trial and the execution of the sentence. Barrent was taken at once to a large, circular stone room in the basement of the Department of Justice. White arc lights glared down at him from ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... a package from Washington. It contained a tin-type of herself; a card with a hole in it (made evidently by having been forced over a button), on which was her name and the old address in town; then there was a ring and a saber, and on the blade of the saber was etched, "Presented to Lieutenant Jas. Dillon, for bravery on the field of battle." At the bottom of the parcel was a note in a strange hand, saying simply, "Found on the body of Lieutenant Dillon after ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... lighting the gas-stove beneath a waterless kettle. After that I sprawled against the dresser and, with my heart in my mouth, watched her cut thin bread-and-butter in a woman's deliciously clumsy way. Once, as the bright blade went perilously near her palm, I ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... of the "Frederick Herald," writing from Little Rock, says, "Anthony's knife was about twenty-eight inches in length. They all carry knives here, or pistols. There are several kinds of knives in use—a narrow blade, and about twelve inches long, is called an ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... When the bonny blade carouses, Pockets full, and spirits high— What are acres? what are houses? Only dirt, or ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... three and a-half inches vertically, and two and a-half in horizontal diameter. Early in February and March the bleeding process commences. Three small lancet-shaped pieces of iron are bound together with cotton, about one-twelfth of an inch of the blade alone protruding, so that no discretion as to the depth of the wound to be inflicted shall be left to the operator; and this is drawn sharply up from the top of the stalk at the base, to the summit ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... with difficulty. Slowly from her girdle she drew a tiny hunting-knife, her one weapon, and toyed with it. She put the hilt to the tree, the point to her bare breast, and breathed a prayer to We-sec-e-gea, god of the Crees. She had only to throw the weight of her beautiful body on the blade, sink without a moan to the moss, and pass, leaving ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... been less pitiful. He could not see a drawn sword without shuddering, even if drawn for his own defence; and when knighting a man, it was necessary for the Lord Chamberlain to come to his Majesty's help, and guide the blade, lest the recipient of the honour should be wounded by the unsteadiness of the King's hand under the strong shuddering which seized him. So afraid was he of possible assassins that he always wore a thickly-padded cotton garment under ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to Glenwood Springs. On the way they sold the sheep right and left. The asking price was a dollar. The selling price was twenty-five cents, a watermelon, a slice of pie, or a jack-knife with a broken blade. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... perceptions; and when the sun set, the little insect felt a sort of pleasing languor creeping over it after all its enjoyments. Its wings would no longer carry it, and very gently it glided down upon the soft blade of grass that was slightly waving in the evening breeze; there it drooped its tiny head, and fell into a calm ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... breath of wild grape vines, hidden somewhere in the wayside thickets. "Under the leaf lies our tiny green blossom," it said; "and its perfume is out on the air. Folded in the grass-blade is a feathery bloom, of seed or grain; and by and by the fields will be all waving with it. Be sure that the blossom is ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Hallbjorn saw Kari, he made a blow at him, and aimed at his leg, but Kari leapt up into the air, and Hallbjorn missed him. Kari turned on Arni Kol's son and cut at him, and smote him on the shoulder, and cut asunder the shoulder blade and collar bone, and the blow went right down into his breast, and Arni fell down dead at once ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; if I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate: then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... gold and been stacked in the stubble or sent through the whirling thresher. The barley and the rye are garnered and gone, the landscape has many bare and open spaces. But separating these everywhere, rise the fields of Indian corn now in blade and tassel; and—more valuable than all else that has been sown and harvested or remains to be—everywhere the impenetrable thickets of ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... ahead of the boat, there rose up out of the black water of the sea a huge fiery blue sword; it rose up, cleaving the darkness of night, its blade glided through the clouds in the sky, and lay, a broad blue streak on the bosom of the sea. It lay there, and in the streak of its light there sprang up out of the darkness ships unseen till then, black and mute, shrouded ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... to the river bank near the bridge to find the canoe. It was long, and, for a dug-out, fairly wide, but ancient and black, and moist at the bottom, owing to an insufficiently caulked crack. Its paddles had seen much service, and presented but little breadth of blade. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... dost Thou e'er forget...The kid amid the shrubs and berries...The fly that sips the sweetest juice...And the lark that pecks the blade of corn."...] ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the eye could reach the ocean seemed a mass of white foam increasing the dreariness of the view, while in the far distance appeared a blue line so faint that many doubted whether or not it was the land. On the rock not a blade of grass nor a drop of water was to be found, so Hemming saw that it would be necessary to use every exertion to provide for his men. Accordingly he sent Jack and Adair with three of them to collect what things they could pick up at the foot of the rock. Fortunately ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... maiden was obedient, and put on the paper frock, and went out with the basket. Far and wide there was nothing but snow, and not a green blade to be seen. When she got into the wood she saw a small house out of which peeped three dwarfs. She wished them good day, and knocked modestly at the door. They cried, "Come in," and she entered the room and seated herself on the bench by the stove, where she began to warm herself and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the canoe answered to it; she came round just in time to ride out the wave with safety, but the paddle snapped. It was already sprung, and the weight he put upon it was more than it could bear. Right in two it broke, some nine inches above that blade which at the moment was buried in the water. He felt it go, and despair took ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... one will have a tenderness for these two first loves even until the end. Afterwards one went afield and sometimes got into queer company, not bad but simply a little common. There was an endless series of Red Indian stories in my school-days, wherein trappers could track the enemy by a broken blade of grass, and the enemy escaped by coming down the river under a log, and the price was sixpence each. We used to pass the tuck-shop at school for three days on end in order that we might possess Leaping Deer, the Shawnee Spy. We toadied shamefully to the owner ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... La Mothe, striking fiercely at the blade as it darted from side to side or sawed back and forth. But when he would have struck a second time La Follette curtly ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... I trow right meagre hath been thy fare Since they roused thee at dawn from thy straw-piled lair, To tread with those echoless unshod feet Yon weltering flats in the noontide heat, Where no palmtree proffers a kindly shade And the eye never rests on a cool grass blade; And lank is thy flank, and thy frequent cough Oh! it goes to ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... bright mornings he looked with entirely new distaste upon the prospect from his window at the back. Beneath lay parallel strips of ground, divided from each other by low walls. These were called the "gardens" of the houses in Kennington Road, but no blade of grass ever showed upon the black, hard-trodden soil. Lank fowls ran about among discarded furniture and indescribable rubbish, or children—few as well-tended as Mrs. Bubb's—played and squabbled under ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... been wounded in the leg, had recovered, was shortly going back, and was animated. His leg was all right, except that in wet weather it ached. In fact he could even tell by it when we were going to have rain. His "blooming barometer" he called it. Here he laughed—a hearty laugh, for he was a genial blade and liked to hear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... all you seek, you shall not need to go far in your quest," returned Ogilvy. "Tarry till this controversy be ended, and if I match not your Spanish blade with a Scottish broad-sword, and approve you as recreant at heart as you are boastful and injurious of speech, may Saint Andrew forever after withhold from me ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... they could, while those outside listened as it grew less, the bodies falling stupefied without further sound of rising. One or two, still active, began striking at the boards with what heavy thing they could find, until suddenly the blade of an ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... that with his dagger he could shove back the lock of the door, but this was firmly held by bolts without. Thinking that on some future occasion the blade might be useful to him, he pushed the dagger well into the lock, and with a sharp jerk snapped it off at the hilt. Then he concealed the steel within his long boot and cast the hilt through ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... tell you all, Your Spanish gennet is the best horse; your Spanish Stoup is the best garb; your Spanish beard Is the best cut; your Spanish ruffs are the best Wear; your Spanish pavin the best dance; Your Spanish titillation in a glove The best perfume: and for your Spanish pike, And Spanish blade, let your poor captain ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... casual conversation of your acquaintances you heard of similar incredible things; a tiny antique Persian rug, which could be folded into an overcoat pocket, for ten thousand dollars; a set of five "art fans," each blade painted by a famous artist and costing forty-three thousand dollars; a crystal cup for eighty thousand; an edition de luxe of the works of Dickens for a hundred thousand; a ruby, the size of a pigeon's egg, for three hundred thousand. In ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... I made an examination, and found a wound under the shoulder-blade. It was not dangerous, but might well have been so. I sent for my bag and dressed it, the boatswain looking on. All the time I made no comment, but when I had finished I turned and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... buckwheat cakes nowadays, like those that Aunt 'Ritta made—glossy brown, all of a size, and porous as a sponge. It was great fun to butter them, and then press them with the flat of a knife-blade, to see spurts and spouts rise from the surface like ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... playing blind man's buff in that party. Never could a man have stepped into the parlor a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... the stream of people, but they were too thick for me, and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. I took to the gutter, the roughness of which I found painful to my feet, and forthwith the shaft of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade, reminding me that I was already bruised severely. I staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... cousin in the white waistcoat. This head had attracted my attention like the stain on the ceiling of which I spoke just now, like the Countess's black tooth, and despite myself I did not take my eyes off the angler as he passed the silver blade of his knife through a slice of that indigestible fruit which I like to see on the plates of others, but can ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... immediately issued his warrant to search my house. I was absent at Derval Court; the house was searched. In the bureau in my favourite study, which was left unlocked, the steel casket was discovered, and a large case-knife, on the blade of which the stains of blood were still perceptible. On this discovery I was apprehended; and on these evidences, and on the deposition of this vagrant stranger, I was not, indeed, committed to take my trial for murder, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... myriads of burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time; and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would stretch out all quivering with life. After a frightful ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... form on the mainland. It is made like a bow, with a tense string of fibre. One end of the bow is placed against the mouth, and the string is then struck by the right hand with a small round stick, while with the left it is scraped with a piece of shell or a knife- blade. This excruciating instrument, I warn any one who may think of living among the Bubis, is very popular. The drums used are both the Dualla form—all wood—and the ordinary skin-covered drum, and I think if I catalogue fifes made ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the victim, evidently inflicted by a weapon lying upon the table, which was believed to be the cause of death, until the arrival of the coroner and Mr. Mahr's own physician, when it was discovered that the victim's heart had been pierced by a very slender blade or stiletto. The wound was so small and the aperture closed by the head of the weapon in such a manner that ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... leather chairs always remained undisturbed in level rows against the wall, and the crimson cloth upon the table was as bare as a billiard-table. A thimble lying upon it, or fallen on the carpet and almost crushed by my careless tread, would have been as welcome a sight to me as a blade of grass or a spring of water in some sandy desert. The sound of a light foot and rustling dress, and low, soft voice, would have been the sweetest music in my ears. If a young fellow of eight-and-twenty, with an excellent appetite ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... whole day getting their horses across Van Deusen's ferry and headed eastward in the rough road. Mr. Binkus wore his hanger—an old Damascus blade inherited from his father—and carried his long musket and an abundant store of ammunition; Jack wore his two pistols, in the use of which he had ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... barrel of his gun at a pigeon, and snapped several caps on the other, which refused to go off. As we approached Henderson, quite a crowd had gathered at the hotel to see the arrest, and just as the stage swung up to the sidewalk, the Frenchman took out of his pocket a small penknife, the largest blade of which could not have been over four inches long. He opened it so quietly that it did not excite my apprehensions in the least, although I had my right hand on my six-shooter, intending to draw and cover him the moment the stage stopped. He made a desperate lunge at ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... stronghold of any force in all the Highlands? Is not the greater part of the Lowlands free? And before this day month, not a rood of land in Scotland is likely to hold a Southron soldier. We conquer, but it is for our own. Why then this unreceding determination to invade us? Not a blade of grass would I disturb on the other side of the Cheviot, if we might have peace. Let Edward yield to that, and though he has pierced us with many wounds, we ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... left," replied the Encyclopedia Australiensis. "They're offering eighty, and I've no doubt they'll spring to a hundred. Extra-hazardous tack; and there's not a blade of grass once you pass the Merowie. Good day, boys." And, nodding ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... is meant in the story related in Genesis of the fall of man, none could make it clearer to German children than the apple. The Keilhau ones were kept in a cellar, and through the opening we thrust a pole to which the blade of a rapier was fastened. This sometimes brought us up four or five apples at once, which hung on the blade like the flock of ducks that Baron Munchausen's musket pierced with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... feathers in their hair, and that he did not see any on Caper's head. The landlord, determined to stand by Caper, swore by all the saints that they were under his hat. The man disbelieved it. Out came the 'hardware' with that jarring cr-r-r-rick the blade makes when the notched knife-back catches in the spring, but Caper jumped between them, and they put off stabbing one another—until the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... motion. He reacted—but his blade just met air. His instant of panic was followed by a small sharp blow high ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... were also encouraged, and they came to the same resolution. The Theatins gave notice of their decision to the governor; but they told him that sometimes it was necessary to make the occasion and whet the blade; and, since now they were drawing the sword, they would strike a sure blow and draw blood. Considering the feelings of the Audiencia, and its embarrassed condition, they sent one of their fathers even to its hall of assembly, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... Gummatous disease may come and go over periods of many years, with the result that the external appearance and architectural arrangement of a long bone come to be profoundly altered. In the tibia, for example, the shaft is bowed forward in a gentle curve, which is compared to the curve of a sabre—"sabre-blade" deformity (Fig. 132). The diffuse thickening all round the bone obscures the sharp margins so that the bone becomes circular in section and the anterior and mesial edges are blunted, and the comparison to a cucumber is deserved. In some cases the tibia is actually increased in length ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... he could not let go of the rock long enough to seize it. While he felt his hold becoming weaker and expected momentarily to drop into the canon, the men went to the boats and obtained three of the largest oars. The blade of one of them was pushed into the crevice of a rock beyond him in such a manner that it bound him across the body to the wall, and another oar was fixed so that he could stand upon it and walk out of the difficulty. He breathed again, but had felt that cold air ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... and found it very good. He ate heartily of it, wondering at the same time why the men had been so disobliging about it at first. When he took up the bread again to cut himself off a second piece, it occurred to him that it was remarkably heavy. He cut into the middle and, finding that the blade of the knife struck on something hard, he broke the loaf in two. The glitter of gold met his eyes. He investigated further and drew out, one after the other, thirty golden coins with the head of the Queen of England upon them. Thirty pounds sterling had ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the blade from his girdle and sprang forward at Birdalone; and she cowered and cringed, but moved not else. But therewithal the wood-wife came leaping through the bushes, and she nocked an arrow on her bended bow, and threatened him therewith, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... uniform shirt and the fine undergarment of Lisle thread showed by burn and powder-stain that the pistol had been close to or even against the breast of the deceased. The bullet was lodged, he believed, under the shoulder-blade, but no post-mortem had yet been permitted, a circumstance the doctor referred to regretfully, and it was merely his opinion, based on purely superficial examination, that death was instantaneous, the result of the gunshot wound referred to. Dr. Brick further gave it as his professional ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... English." Miss Greenfield's turn for singing now came, and there was profound attention. Her voice, with its keen, searching fire, its penetrating vibrant quality, its timbre as the French have it, cut its way like a Damascus blade to the heart. She sang the ballad, "Old Folks at Home," giving one verse in the soprano, and another in the tenor voice. As she stood partially concealed by the piano, Chevalier Bunsen thought that the tenor part was performed ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... was soon given, and the house which had lately been so quiet resounded with the tramp of many footsteps, a surgeon among the rest. The wound was small, but the point of the blade had touched the heart of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead, as if he had scarcely moved after the infliction of the blow. In a quarter of an hour the news that a gentleman who was a temporary ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... mornings in the year which left unstirred the grass which grew long over the graves, but this was one of the few. Each blade stood up still and straight, bearing its string of dewdrops. There were one or two village sounds that came subdued through the sunshine. The winds that usually haunted the high spot had fallen asleep, or were lying somewhere in ambush ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... memories. Despite the years, I still see the stone whence came the resonant notes of the little Toads, the parapet of currant-bushes, the notary's garden of Eden. These trifles make the best part of my life. The Halictus sees in the same way the blade of grass whereon she rested in her first flight, the bit of gravel which her claw touched in her first climb to the top of the shaft. She knows her native abode by heart just as I know my village. The locality has become familiar to her in one ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... people grow bolder, face the water, and hunt her out of her hiding-place? She listened intently, but even if a detachment of cavalry had been on the way, she could have heard nothing save the noisy merriment below her and the splashing water in the cave. Was that a sword-blade flashing in the distance? Yes, thank God! she could see the outer rows of rioters looking anxiously towards where she had seen the glint of steel through the trees. The crowd suddenly dispersed for the most part, men ran hither ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... organism or not, they have acted upon the assumption that they were dealing with such organisms. So they have conceived of their truth as a seed cast into the ground, passing through successive stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom of God as moving out of the stage of the blade into that of the ear and finally into that of the full corn in the ear. This illustration is our warrant for insisting that in the enforcing of truth all manner of factors come into play and that the truth passes through successive epochs, some of which may seem to ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... the fair hair, to visit Tityos, son of Gaia. Even thither they went, and accomplished the journey on the self-same day and won home again, and were not weary. And now shalt thou know for thyself how far my ships are the best, and how my young men excel at tossing the salt water with the oar-blade.' ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... with gladness at the sight of him. With his extravagantly cut waistcoat, his elaborately exquisite white tie, his perfectly fitting evening clothes, with his supple ease of body, his charming manner, the preposterous fellow made as gallant a show as any ruffling blade in powder and red-heeled shoes. He had acquired, too, an extra touch of manhood since I had seen him last. I felt proud of him, conscious that to the making of him I had ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... eye-glance was more bewitching than Harut and Marut[FN229] and the play of his luring looks more misleading than Taghut;[FN230] and his cheeks shone like the dawn rosy-red and his eyelashes stormed the keen-edged blade: the whiteness of his brow resembled the moon shining bright, and the blackness of his locks was as the murky night; and his waist was more slender than the gossamer[FN231] and his back parts than two sand heaps bulkier, making a Babel ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that to use the narrow blade effectively, it must be projected through the air with the long margin forwardly. Its sustaining power per square foot of surface is much less if ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... the cowhide in all jails, workhouses, and places of punishment in South Carolina, as being more effective—that is painful. In some instances it is used on the plantations. It consists of a wooden instrument, shaped like a baker's peel, with a blade from three to five inches wide, and from eight to ten long. There are commonly holes in the blade, which give the application a percussive effect. In Charleston this punishment is generally administered at the guardhouse by the police, who are all Irishmen. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... centuries, so now, the greatest danger to the Catholic community lay not in the unjust measures of the Government but in the indiscreet zeal of the faithful themselves. The world desired nothing better than a handle to its blade. The scabbard was already ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... place first identified by Robinson, who says nothing about the remains, with Ezion-geber, while Dean Stanley ("Sinai," etc., p. 85) opines that we have no means of fixing the position of the "Giant's shoulder-blade."[EN128] Josephus ("Antiq.," viii. 6, 4) places it near lana; and the present distance from the sea, like that of Heroopolis (Shaykh el-Ajrd?) from Suez, may show the rise of the Wady el-'Arabah ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... one." When he heard this, he sprang to his feet and made for them with his sword and battle gear; and Masurah, the Knight, also sprang up and bore down upon him. Sharrkan met him like a lion and delivered a shoulder cut[FN200] which clove him to the middle, and the blade came out gleaming and glittering from his back and bowels. When the lady beheld that swashingblow, Sharrkan's might was magnified in her sight and she knew that when she overthrew him in the wrestle it was not by her strength but by her beauty ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... anvil blows, as he forges and tempers it, the motive of which has already been heard in the "Rhinegold" prelude, when Alberich made his threat. While Mime quietly mixes his potion, Siegfried fastens the hilt to his blade and polishes the sword. Then breaking out in a new song, in which are heard the motives of the fire-god and the sword, he swings it through the air, and bringing it down with force splits the anvil in twain. The music accompanying this great scene, imitating the various sounds of the ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... English, and asked to look at it. "Yes," said my companion, "if you will let me look at yours." He took it from his side without hesitation and presented it to him. The Arab admired the workmanship of the English sword, and then examined the blade. We had inspected his, and found it fine Damascus steel. "Will you exchange," said my messmate. He made a most contemptuous grimace at the question. "I tell you what," said he, "English very good for handle, but Arab better for blade." ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the flagged passage. A blade of light crept across the floor towards us. My brain was growing clearer. The place had a damp, earthen smell. It was slimy—some noisome cellar. A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern. Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... procured sabre, quoit, and mace, Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place, While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade from the scabbard. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... every where entitled to be chairman in assemblies of these several necessary classes of people. Take him for all in all, he may be described as a new Chevalier Bayard, baptized in the spirit of fun, and with a steel pen in lieu of a blade of Damascus. He is a Vermonter—of the state which has sent out Orestes Brownson, Herman Hooker, the Coltons, Hiram Powers, Hannah Gould, and a crowd of other men and women with the sharpest intellects, and for the most part the genialist tempers too, that can be found ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the corpse and sever the confounded string at the same blow. However, he could not make up his mind to proceed with such brutality. At last, after trying for two minutes, and staining his hands with blood, he succeeded in severing the cord with the blade of the hatchet without further disfiguring the dead body. As he had imagined, there was a purse suspended to the old woman's neck. Besides this there was also a small enameled medal and two crosses, one of cypress wood, the other ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... conclusion: I'll yield my breath, But my leal old house and my good blade never! Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death Than despoiled Defeat ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... very freely upon yourself, my boy," said Phillip Stanley, in his friendliest tone. "But let us see if there isn't a different kind of blade that will serve us better. If you were cruelly bound with thongs, and some friend should pass you a keen-edged knife, you would not sit hopelessly looking at your bonds and still continue to bemoan your bondage; you would instantly begin to sever the thongs and so regain your liberty. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... said to have a few drops of genuine aboriginal blood in her veins; and it is certain that her cheek had a little of the russet tinge which a Seckel pear shows on its warmest cheek when it blushes.—Love shuts itself up in sympathy like a knife-blade in its handle, and opens as easily. All the rest followed in due order ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... first dunes, which are steep, broken, corroded mounds deformed by the eternal beating of the waves. Such is the Dutch coast from the mouth of the Meuse to the Helder. There are no mollusks, no star-fish, no shells or crabs; there is not a single bush or blade of grass. Nothing is seen ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... in command at the front. It was thus that the age-long vexed question of a Greater France or a Greater Britain in America was finally decided by the sword. The conquering sword was that of the British Empire as a whole. But the hand that wielded it was Pitt; the hilt was Anson, the blade was Saunders, and ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... you lie!" cried Roderic in jealous fury, snatching the knife from off the shelf. And then, springing forward and raising his right hand above his head, he plunged the blade deep, deep into his brother's heart. The good Earl Hamish ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... or lance, or coat of mail or plate, in the far later centuries, had better reputation than had Mok with his friends and patrons for the making of good weapons, though it may be that his clientele was less numerous by hundreds to one than that of some later manufacturer of a Toledo blade. He might be living partly as a dependent, but he could do almost as he willed. Who should have standing if it were not accorded to the most gifted chipper of flint and carver of mammoth tooth in all the region from where the little waters came down to make a river, to where the blue, broad ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... delightful than the first confident sweep on the outside edge, with the blade biting well into the clear smooth ice, and Buller felt as if he could never have enough of it, and he kept on, trying to make larger and larger segments of a circle, not heeding the falls he got for the next half-hour, when it was time to be getting back, and he had reluctantly to take his skates ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Bob did not know whether or not he had the legal right to arrest him, so he turned, and, while he was standing in the door, Jack winked at his customer, who, with a grin, put the back of his knife-blade between Bob's shoulders and, pushing, closed it. The boy looked over his shoulder without moving a muscle, but the Hon. Samuel Budd, who came in at that moment, pinioned the fellow's arms from behind and Bob took his ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... keeps the hill. There's a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood, There's harness glancing sheen; There's a maiden sits on Tinwald brae, And she sings loud between. O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride? There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Condes, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman.** You, oldest son of Saint Louis, shall perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever." "They shall kill me first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side. "Yes, truly," replies the soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who love her."*** "And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my sister, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... detail, "I found it was my own father, and I didn't claim the badge. That's the kind of luck I got. So I wouldn't try any more. 'Cause if you got bad luck you can't help it. I dropped my knife and the blade stuck in the ground—up at Temple Camp—and that's bad luck. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... medium of social control, let the people hear the Catholic solution of the problems now facing the nations of the world. We have a message to deliver. That message, if it comes to the people shining like a steel blade, sounding like the blare of a trumpet, if it wells up from a fiery heart and drops from burning lips—that message will be heard. In this period of strain and suffering the public mind is keyed to ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... to be that kind of a fight. Bascomb is thirsting for your life. It was with the greatest difficulty I persuaded him not to challenge you to fight a duel with deadly weapons. He said he would take satisfaction in meeting you in an affair of honor where he could run a blade through your body or perforate you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... then reached his hands out to the executioners, and said, "Do as you will; I will drink the cup to the dregs." Leaning upon the arm of his friend, he ascended the steep and slippery steps of the guillotine; then, walking across the platform firmly, he looked for a moment intently upon the sharp blade of the ax, and turning suddenly to the populace, exclaimed, in a voice clear and distinct, which penetrated to the remotest extremities of the square, "People, I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon the authors of my death, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... of black coffee, and gazed out of the open windows to the distant mountains, rising far above the plain sleeping in the summer sun, and hushed to sleep by the unceasing song of the cicalas sharply crying from leaf and blade of grass. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her, too, as mechanically as she gave it—with the hand which held his bare blade. That done, silent as she, with his eyes set hard, he would have gone by her. The sight of her there, guarding the door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his worst passions. But she moved to hinder him, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... sprang at me again, and this time something glittered in his right hand. I fought with him for it, and pulled a slim length of steel up through his closed fingers, so that the sharp dagger-blade must have cut him to the bone. He gave a cry, and relaxed his grasp; but though he was disabled for the instant a dozen men in the crowd, which swirled round us now, caught and held me fast. Monica was wrenched from me; the dagger had fallen to the ground (but not ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... her own white royal hand, She losed his hauberk's metal band, And in her fairest chamber laid His bow of steel and his flashing blade. ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... a crowd of men. Shorty, wiry, thin-faced Venusians, each with skewer-blade strapped to his side and some with ray-guns out, they came scrambling into the open, swearing and wondering. The second guard's insane repetitions directed most of them in his direction; and they piled in a crowd around him. They had no attention for ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... silent, the old sword. A beam of moonlight glides along the old blade, drawing a long, straight line. But what do those dark spots mean which have eaten ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... But soon he manned his noble heart, And in the first career they ran, The Elfin Knight fell horse and man; Yet did a splinter of his lance Through Alexander's visor glance, And razed the skin—a puny wound. The king, light leaping to the ground, With naked blade his phantom foe Compelled the future war to show. Of Largs he saw the glorious plain, Where still gigantic bones remain, Memorial of the Danish war; Himself he saw amid the field, On high his brandished ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... which Fate had mischievously cast Dickie Blue and pretty Peggie Lacey and there abandoned them; and Scalawag Run was inclined to be more scornful than sympathetic. What Dickie Blue should have done in the circumstances was transparent to every young blade in the harbor—an instant, bold behavior, issuing immediately in the festive popping of guns at a wedding and a hearty charivari thereafter; and those soft devices to which pretty Peggy Lacey should have resorted ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... little man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in one dark ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... he could not refrain from unrolling the mildewed cover. The sword was safe! He drew the blade and shot it sharply back into the scabbard, then kissed the ruby handle, thinking again of the purchasing power there was in the relic which was yet more than a relic. The leather of the water-gurglet, stiff as wood, responded to a touch. The jewels were also ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... thy blood. Haste and flee o'er yon pass before thy enemies come in sight!" The young warrior refused to go and begged Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the strong hand of the warrior ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... its place quarter of a saltspoonful of celery seed;) put all these into two and a half quarts of boiling water, season with a teaspoonful of salt, quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper, and as much cayenne as you can take up on the point of a very small pen-knife blade; boil slowly for two hours; then stir in quarter of a pound of oatmeal, mixed to a smooth batter with cold water, see if seasoning be correct, add two or three grates of nutmeg, and boil half an hour. Meantime, cut two slices of bread in half inch dice, fry light brown in hot fat, and lay ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... tell us, that the great Emperor Charlemagne stamped his edicts with the hilt of his sword. The greater Emperor, Death, stamps his with the blade; and they are signed and executed with the same stroke. Flemming received that night a letter from Heidelberg, which told him, that Emma of Ilmenau was dead. The fate of this poor girl affected him deeply; and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to back it up it was fighting desperately against the steadily advancing North-west monsoon, drying up, as it fought, every drop of moisture left from last Wet. There was not a blade of green grass within sight of the homestead, and everywhere dust whirled, and eddied, and danced, hurled all ways at once in the fight, or gathered itself into towering centrifugal columns, to speed hither and thither, obedient to the will of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... again, some of the snow and ice would thaw, but then a hard frost would come, glazing everything in an icy coating. This went on until late in April. By that time, almost every farmer in the district had used up his hay; every one of them was at the end of his store, and nowhere was there a blade of grass to feed the live-stock, for the land still lay frozen under its blanket of hard-packed snow and ice. When things had come to this pass, a general district meeting was called to discuss the situation and decide what should be done. Brandur's son-in-law Jon was made chairman ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... a card, bent up the four edges, and thus made a sort of trough, in which I placed a piece of wax taken from one of the candles. When it was melted, I mixed with it a little lampblack I had obtained by putting the blade of a knife over the candle, and then ran this composition ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... blade, it hath late been blooded; Shines above it its silver hilt; Golden bosses his shield have studded, Round its rim ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... perfectly helpless. He looked around, and deigned no reply. "You must die," continued the conspirator, advancing with his halberd. Wallenstein, in silence, opened his arms to receive the blow. The sharp blade pierced his body, and he fell dead upon the floor. The alarm now spread through the town. The soldiers seized their arms, and flocked to avenge their general. But the leading friends of Wallenstein were slain; and the other ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... alluded to by the correspondents as "Richard, the Lion-hearted," with strong arm and ponderous battle-ax, as he went about winning victories. Stephens, no less effective and influential, seemed to be the great Saladin with well-tempered Damascus blade—so skillful as to sever the finest down. The people were in continued uproar as Toombs moved from ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Florence! at thy day's decline When came the shade from Appennine, And suddenly on blade and bower The fire-flies shed the sparkling shower, As if all heaven to earth had sent Each star that gems the firmament; 'Twas sweet at that enchanting hour, To bathe in fragrance of the Italian clime, By ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... I? You leave that to me; I'll bring you to your moorings; I'm the man that can, and I'm him that will. But only, look here, let's understand each other. You're a bold blade, ain't you? You won't stick at a trifle for a lovely female? You'll back me up? You're a man, ain't you? a man, and you'll see me through and through it, hey? Come; is that so? Are you fair and square and ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... time and labor in its acquisition. Let another person have studied the physiology of plants till he has learned all that has yet been discovered of their curious and beautiful structure,—till he appreciates as far as mortals may the Divine wisdom, that even in the formation of a blade of grass transcends not only all that man with all his pride of science and mechanical skill can perform, but goes far—we cannot even guess how far—beyond all that human intellect can comprehend; and still more if the mind of this student be lifted upward in adoration as he learns, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Sir Pertinax with gleeful shout, Plucked forth his blade and fiercely laid about. "Ha, rogues! Ha, knaves! Most scurvy dogs!" he cried. While point and edge right lustily he plied And smote to earth the foremost of the crew, Then, laughing, pell-mell leapt on other two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... reason why these men talk so much is that all their work must be accompanied by some sound. Up in the diamond fields I watched a native chopping wood. Every time the steel blade buried itself in the log the man said: "Good axe. Cut deep." He talked to the weapon just as he would speak to a human being. It all goes to show that the Congo native is simply a child grown to ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the Prince of the Asturias and the King, knelt, and Valouse knelt behind him. Some moments after, the King made a sign to them; Valouse drew the sword from its sheath which he put under his arm, held the naked weapon by the middle of the blade, kissed the hilt, and presented it to the King, who, without uncovering himself, kissed the pommel, took the sword in both hands by the handle, held it upright some moments; then held it with one hand, but almost immediately with the other ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... hanging beside an oddly shaped war club, the heavier end of which was armed with blades of stone which gleamed and sparkled even in that dim light. And attached to this weapon was another, hardly less curious: a knife formed of copper, with heft and blade all from ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... were in use here, by drilling or by friction with a rope made of fibre or rattan across a block of wood. The Katingan does not know the art of doing inlaid work on the blade of the parang, in which Kenyahs and Kayans excel, and he makes no earthen ware. Hair that has been cut from the head must be placed in a tree. Their sacred number is seven, as is that of the Ot-Danum, Kapuas, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... were ashamed of their heroic style. I have never been able to understand what attraction there can be in coarseness. The coarse work is generally left for the apprentice. Everything coarse, be it a block, a wedge, or a blade, passes as unfinished, as raw, jagged, and just the reverse of cutting. No one is proud of a coarse shirt, but many, even quite distinguished people, proudly strut about the streets in a coarse smock of abusive language, quite unconcernedly, without any ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power,—monuments ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... reply for a long time. He only bent down and took a handful of rushes up from the floor, and began to quietly clean the blade of his axe that he held under ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... manifestation of awe, but only a lively wink. He reserved his defamatory intentions respecting the Common, and endeavored to draw the stranger out, who, in return, shot forth eccentricities as profusely as the emery wheel of the street grinder emits sparks when assailed by a scissors-blade. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... understand at last, dear friend," said the soft, mocking voice of Inez, who stood behind the monk like an evil genius, and again tapped him affectionately on the shoulder, this time with the bare blade of a poniard. "Now be quick with that plan of yours. It grows late, and all ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... especially when you are on piecework and trying to earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your knife is slippery, and you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell. Twice now; within the last three years, Mikolas has been lying ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... mouth of the executioner, who foamed at the lips. A Lama held his sword, while he turned up one sleeve of his coat to have his arm free, and the Lamas turned up the other for him. Then he strode toward me with slow, ponderous steps, swinging the shiny, sharp blade from side to side, ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... that, she went down from the terrace into her own dwelling, and made prayers to her own gods of her Apache people. With a blade of obsidian she made scars until the blood dripped from her braceletted arms. To the divinely created Woman Without Parents, she chanted a song of prayer, and to the Twin Gods who slew enemies, she let her blood drop by drop fall on the sacred meal of the medicine bowl:—all this ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... species reach 120 ft. in height. The slender stem is hollow, and, as generally in grasses, has well-marked joints or nodes, at which the cavity is closed by a strong diaphragm. The branches are numerous and in some species spiny; the narrow, often short, leaf-blade is usually jointed at the base and has a short stalk, by which it is attached to the long sheath. The spikelets are usually many-flowered and variously arranged in racemes or panicles. The flower differs from that of the majority of grasses in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the rock. The idea of cutting the granite was out of the question, but there might be strata of softer stone which he could dig into. It was a forlorn hope, in a forlorn cause, and it proved futile. At his first effort the knife's single blade snapped off short, and he ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... before I caught up with the pocket-axe I was looking for. It was made in Rochester, by a surgical instrument maker named Bushnell. It cost time and money to get it. I worked one rainy Saturday fashioning the pattern in wood. Spoiled a day going to Rochester, waited a day for the blade, paid $3.00 for it and lost a day coming home. Boat fare $1.00 and expenses $2.00, besides three days lost time, with another rainy Sunday for making ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... dialogue—a sort of single combat, without any object but to try each other's powers and temper—ensued between them; in which the one on the offensive came on with a tomahawk, and the other stood on the defensive parrying with a polished blade of Damascus; and sometimes, when the adversary was off his guard, making a sly cut ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Eau-douce, and find nothing very contrary in our gifts, though yours belong to the lakes and mine to the woods. Hark'e, Jasper," continued the scout, laughing in his noiseless manner; "suppose we try the temper of his blade and run ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... MOUZON. That? It's the blade of the knife that brought the pretty Toulouse woman to the guillotine at Bordeaux. Pretty weapon, eh? I had it made into a paper-knife. [He opens the envelope] There—there you are! Four times sentenced for assaulting ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... at a glance would have prescribed water-cresses to him: water-cresses exclusively to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician did. Away went his patient, returning at the end of the fortnight, lean, and with the appetite of a Toledo blade for succulent slices. He vowed he was the man. Our estimable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched his tender parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eaten nothing whatever but unadulterated water-cresses ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... told about; and here, mixed up with successive crops of native-born Americans, had been ministers, captains, matrons, virgins good and evil, tough and tender, turned up and battened down by the sexton's spade, over and over again; until every blade of grass had its relations with the human brotherhood of the old town. A hundred and fifty years was sufficient to do this; and so much time, at least, had elapsed since the first hole was dug among the difficult roots of the forest trees, and the first little hillock of ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rest and when in motion," Pettigrew declared, "may not inaptly be compared to the blade of an ordinary screw propeller as employed in navigation. Thus the general outline of the wing corresponds closely with the outline of the propeller, and the track described by the wing in space IS TWISTED UPON ITSELF propeller fashion." Numerous ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... covering dries as quickly as do our hydraulic cements; and the nest is now almost as hard as a stone. It takes a knife with a strong blade to break open the edifice. And I would add, in conclusion, that, under its final form, the nest in no way recalls the original work, so much so that one would imagine the cells of the start, those elegant turrets ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... is incessantly rolling, every creature, from ignorance and deed and desire, falleth into various states in this world, wandering from one birth to another, and rangeth the entire circle of existences from a Brahma to the point of a blade of grass, now in water, now on land, and now against in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for the open departure of so merry a blade would not have been permitted, and in the hall he found Dick mounting a large top-coat and ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... belle Fifine! Anacreon's lesson all must learn; 'O kairos oxus; Spring is green; But Acer Hyems waits his turn! I hear you whispering from the dust, "Tiens, mon cher, c'est toujours so,— The brightest blade grows dim with rust, The fairest meadow white ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... So desolate as to carry a strange sense of depression to the heart of the horseman. There was not a tree in sight—nor a single blade of grass. There was nothing but the funereal black of basaltic rock, of which the hill seemed to be one solid mass. Such was its desolation that even the horse seemed to be drooping at the sight of it. It was always the same with Buck. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... fire, for want of room. Joe had neglected to awake my companion, and he had done no hunting that night. Tahmunt was making a cross-bar for his canoe with a singularly shaped knife, such as I have since seen other Indians using. The blade was thin, about three quarters of an inch wide, and eight or nine inches long, but curved out of its plane into a hook, which he said made it more convenient to shave with. As the Indians very far north and northwest use ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... also show a thirteenth-century sword, which was dredged up at Thorpe, and believed to have been lost in 1277, when King Edward I made a military progress through Suffolk and Norfolk, and kept his Easter at Norwich. The blade is scimitar-shaped, is one-edged, and has a groove at the back. We may compare this with the sword of the time of Edward IV now in the possession of Mr. Seymour Lucas. The development of riding-boots is an interesting study. We show a drawing of one in the possession of Mr. Ernest Crofts, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... like a vice; and at the same time a knife slipped out of his sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round; and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward to bear ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... gossip about Daniel and Miss Sarah Dean. Gossip would have seemed about as foolish concerning him and a dry blade of field-grass. Sarah Dean looked like that. She wore rusty black gowns, and her gray-blond hair was swept curtainwise over her ears on either side of her very thin, mildly severe wedge of a face. Sarah was ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... brilliant light. Grouped round a table were four men. One of them was Ceneri, the other Macari. The third man was a stranger to me. These three men were looking at a fourth man—a young man who appeared to be falling out of his chair, clutching convulsively the hilt of a dagger, the blade of which had been buried in his heart, clearly by ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and debonair, dressed with deliberate astheticism in the most delicate purples and dove greys, with ornaments of bronze, oxydized silver, and stones of jade and agate. His sword, designed as carefully as a medieval cross, has a blued blade showing through an openwork scabbard of purple leather and filagree. The porters, conducted by Ftatateeta, pass along the quay behind the sentinel to the steps of the palace, where they put down their bales and squat on the ground. Apollodorus ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... Does the term 'Brahman' in this section denote the individual soul or the highest Self?—The individual soul, the Purvapakshin maintains, for that only admits of being exhibited in co-ordination with the word 'all.' For the word 'all' denotes the entire world from Brahma down to a blade of grass; and the existence of Brahma and other individual beings is determined by special forms of karman, the root of which is the beginningless Nescience of the individual soul. The highest Brahman, on the other hand, which is all-knowing, all- ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... bleeds. It was this mark I saw on the body of the Maire of Marseilles, and afterwards on one other in Paris besides poor Brisson. It was the mark found on the man in Greenwich Park; always just below the left shoulder-blade, struck from behind. Felini's comrades claim that there was this nobility in his action, namely, he allowed the traitor to prove himself before he struck the blow. I should be sorry to take away this poor shred of ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... for? Do not mountaineers attack the bear with a dagger in their hand, and is not steel surer than lead? Here is a strong blade; put it in your belt, and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... do, the soul to dare, The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire, Of hasty love or headlong ire. His limbs were cast in manly could For hardy sports or contest bold; And though in peaceful garb arrayed, And weaponless except his blade, His stately mien as well implied A high-born heart, a martial pride, As if a baron's crest he wore, And sheathed in armor bode the shore. Slighting the petty need he showed, He told of his benighted road; His ready speech flowed fair and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... first-class compartment he found himself, unluckily for his present mood, alone. All the way down to Exeter the fit was on him. He stood up in the carriage, swaying his unseen blade, celestial temper fine, and rolling forth in a loud voice Miltonic verses of his old encounters in heaven with the ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... it may be said that the function of all cutting tools is to separate one portion of material from another along a definite path. All such tools act, first, by the keen edge dividing the material into two parts; second, by the wedge or the blade forcing these two portions apart. If a true continuous cut is to be made, both of these actions must occur together. The edge must be sharp enough to enter between the small particles of material, cutting without bruising them, and the blade of the tool must constantly force apart the two ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... the sword from its scabbard and laid it across his knee. He felt its edge; he drew his finger down the long groove that ran along the center of the blade; his gaze rested almost passionately on the floral arabesque that fringed that bed of the river of blood. Not a spot of rust from hilt to point; the scabbard, too, was bright ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... a fungous growth, the best of which for this purpose is obtained from the beech. Gun flints were most generally used. One of these was placed on a bit of dry punk, and held firmly in the left hand, while the back of the closed blade of the knife thus brought into contact with the flint by a quick downward stroke of the right hand produced a shower of sparks, some of which, falling on the punk, would ignite; and thus a fire was produced. In the winter, if the fire went out, there were, as I have already stated, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy, you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids, but love and trust are sweet ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... boars are hunted on horseback, the chief weapon used being a spear with a stout two-edged blade. A horse must be thoroughly trained to this sport, and must possess great fleetness of foot, as the boar is a very rapid runner. The time chosen for the hunt is at daybreak, as the boar has probably been eating sugar-cane or other food all night, and is sleepy and heavy in the morning, and ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by sixteen Navajos, and, with their backs to the wall, fought for an hour or more, finally abandoning their thirteen horses and running for better shelter. Dodge was shot through the knee cap, a wound that incapacitated him from the fight thereafter. The elder Tenney fell and broke his shoulder blade and was stunned, though he was not shot. This left the fight upon the younger Tenney, who managed to climb a twelve-foot rocky escarpment. He reached down with his rifle and dragged up his father and Dodge. The three opportunely found ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... many courts and passages so like one another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year, have had—as I have read—for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... how, like one who uses a trip-hammer, he drew the iron under the rapidly-plied axe, until the round spike was a narrow, thin blade about six inches in length. Then shifting the angle of the iron a little, he directed Regnar how to beat down one side to an edge, and lastly how to curve the flat of the blade a little at the point, or rather end. Then, producing several small pieces of lime and ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the country had been flayed. The red ribs of it lay open to the sky. The whole flank of the ridge had been torn open—it lies there bleeding, gaping open to the callous skies with scarcely so much as a blade of grass or a thistle to clothe its nakedness—covered with the wreckage of men and of their works as the relics of a ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... to be an enemy?" cried Orrick, fiercely; "see here," said he, drawing out a long knife, and holding it up so that the light of the stove glittered on its keen blade, "what if I give you a taste of this, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... to have banditti seize men and hide them away, especially in a country that is engaged in war," replied Mender, slowly. "Now, if, in one of the narrow, dark streets of Old Naples, these young Americans were settled by a few quiet thrusts with the blade, their bodies might then be dropped into a sewer. The bodies might not be found for weeks. On the other hand, captives, no matter how securely hidden, may find means to escape, and all our care in the matter would go ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... the old man, with the preternatural force of rage in his limbs, had sprung forward, and the dagger had flashed out. In the next moment the dagger had snapped in two, and Baldassarre, under the parrying force of Tito's arm, had fallen back on the straw, clutching the hilt with its bit of broken blade. The pointed end ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... like taking him by the nape of the neck and dropping him down the sewer, but I turned to Mr. Thompson and talked cutlery. I told him I had a line of No. 1 goods at low prices, every blade warranted, and put up in ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... fierce battle under every blade, By the etiolation of the shade, By drouth and thirst and things undone half made, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... minutes. I lay down in the bottom of the car and endeavored to collect my faculties. In this I so far succeeded as to determine upon the experiment of losing blood. Having no lancet, I was obliged to open a vein in my arm with the blade of a penknife. The blood had hardly commenced flowing when I experienced a sensible relief, and by the time I had lost about half a basin-full most of the worst symptoms were gone. The difficulty of breathing, however, was diminished in a very slight degree, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... four-pronged Assam fork is the best tool, and that for the light picking over of the whole of the soil after crop a light two-pronged digger is best. This last tool is shaped like a mamoty, but with two prongs rather widely set apart instead of the broad blade of the mamoty. It being very light, it can easily be turned in the hand, so that clods may be broken with the back of the tool, and it can be used by women, which of course is of great advantage ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... being supplied with animal food of their own raising is too remote for a prudent man to calculate. The cattle look in good condition, and I was surprised to hear that neither corn nor fodder is given to them. The enclosures in which they are confined furnish hardly a blade of grass at present. There are people appointed to tend them who have been used to this way of life, and who seem ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... vanes he found a small blade, showing by its connection that it possessed range of action, yet immovable as the vane itself, as though held firmly by inner leverage. Those on the horizontal vanes were tilted upward. Just abaft the T-shaped projection—which, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... on the flashing blade, and fixed his piercing eyes on the princess. "Madame," he said, "when you came to me in Paris, it was the Count de Provence who had sent you. He sent me a letter through you at that time. Tell me, did he send me ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Wang only smiled that innocent bland smile of his, producing his own long knife, that had a blade like an American bowie, being over a foot long ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Master said, 'Never flagging when I set forth anything to him;— ah! that is Hui.' CHAP. XX. The Master said of Yen Yuan, 'Alas! I saw his constant advance. I never saw him stop in his progress.' CHAP. XXI. The Master said, 'There are cases in which the blade springs, but the plant does not go on to flower! There are cases where it flowers, but no fruit is subsequently produced!' CHAP. XXII. The Master said, 'A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do we know that his future ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... sentry, by a happy inspiration, proffers his bayonet for inspection, as it were a new doll. Mucklewame bows solemnly, and fingers the blade. Then he produces his own bayonet, and the two weapons are compared—still in constrained ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... is to reach us at all. All education must begin low, and rise from step to step. The A, B, C of morals must be first learned. The whole analogy of providence shows this to be God's method of procedure. The kingdom of God is like the growing seed; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Gradual, and even slow, progress is the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the sciences at nought. But if such is the wonder of the mere spectator, how strange to be the very vessel of the mystery, to know it moving through its mystic stations within our very bodies, to feel the tender shoots of the young life striking out blade after blade, already living and wonderful, though as yet unsuspected of other eyes; to know the underground inarticulate spring, sweeter far than spring of bird and blossom, while as yet all seems barren winter in the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... messenger was sent by the commanding officer at the fort suggesting that the two caravans camp together, which we did. In the morning, when we started out, I rode ahead on my mule as usual, and when I had got about half-way to the fort I saw the white shoulder-blade of a buffalo setting up on end about fifty yards from the road. I rode out and picked it up; it was standing on end with a little wisp of grass wrapped around it; on the face of it were three men painted red. The broad end of the blade in ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... still echoing with trade, Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade As ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... his fellow-servant was killed, was said to be very trifling. In a moment of rage, his young master, John Piper, plunged the blade of a small knife into Perry's groin, which resulted in his death twenty-six hours afterwards. For one day only the young master kept himself concealed, then he came forward and said he "did it in self-defense," and there the matter ended. The half will never ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... strange man must have known he was horribly ugly—that is, if he ever bent to drink of the clear bright waters of the lovely Meuse, which reflected in those days every lily-bell and every grass-blade which grew upon its banks, and gave a faithful portraiture in its cool waters of every creature that leant over them—though he was certainly the most frightful creature that had ever met the blacksmith's sight, it was evident enough that he did not like being called ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... tolerable animal into a savage, from a savage into a barbarian, and so on; and some thousands of years hence he may be beginning once more those arts which we have now lost, and be carving interlacements like the New Zealanders, or scratching forms of animals on their cleaned blade-bones, like the ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... to the Serpent's palace. You will find the King asleep upon his bed, which is all hung round with bells, and over his bed you will see a sword hanging. With this sword only it is possible to kill the Serpent, because even if its blade breaks a new one will grow again for every head the monster has. Thus you will be able to cut off all his seven heads. And this you must also do in order to deceive the King: you must slip into his bed-chamber ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... of the household, Madame Fontaine was always first in the room when the table was laid for the early German dinner. A knife with a speck on the blade, a plate with a suspicion of dirt on it, never once succeeded in escaping her observation. If Joseph folded a napkin carelessly, Joseph not only heard of it, but suffered the indignity of seeing his work performed for him to perfection by the ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... of the gunwale, and as reward for his chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade. Then he forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... each mortal deems Of that which is from that which seems; But other harvest here Than that which peasant's scythe demands, Was gather'd in by sterner hands, With bayonet, blade, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and picking up the little food thrown to them. Dr. Barrows states that the group contains no pure types characterized by wide, flat noses and kinky hair. In addition to the bow and arrows they carry a knife called "kampilan" having a wide-curving blade. They use this weapon in a dance called "baluk," brandishing it, snapping their fingers, and whirling about with knees close to the ground. This is farther north than Negritos are found in Zambales but is in territory contiguous to that of the Tarlac Negritos. The entire region contains ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... plunge the shining blade into the unresisting bird, and the air will be filled with stuffing and half smothered profanity. The Thanksgiving turkey is a grim humorist, and nothing pleases him so well as to hide his joint in a new place and then flip over and smile when the student misses it and buries the knife ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... a second Turk who, having chanced the morning before to climb to the baggage shelf for his razor and soap preparatory to welcoming a fellow countryman to the Isthmus, had been mildly startled to step on the shoulder-blade of a negro of given length and proportions lying prone behind the stacked-up impedimenta. The latter explained both his presence in a white labor-camp and his unconventional posture by asserting that he was the "mosquito man," ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... head of celery, 1 onion, 3 oz. of Allinson wholemeal bread without crust, 1 oz. of butter, pepper and salt, and 1 blade of mace. Wash, scrape, and cut the carrots into dice. Prepare and cut up the onions and celery. Set the vegetables over the fire with 3 pints of water, adding the mace and seasoning. Let all cook until quite soft, which will probably be in 1-1/2 ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... scalpel very freely upon yourself, my boy," said Phillip Stanley, in his friendliest tone. "But let us see if there isn't a different kind of blade that will serve us better. If you were cruelly bound with thongs, and some friend should pass you a keen-edged knife, you would not sit hopelessly looking at your bonds and still continue to bemoan your bondage; you would instantly begin to sever the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... down here," he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. "Any date, man," he added, as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under the circumstances. "Put down day, month, and year, only don't go too far back; not farther ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... was not quick enough to escape the charge. A trooper pursued him, overtook him before he reached the sidewalk, and knocked him down with a quick stroke given with the flat of his blade. His horse struck the boy with one of his hoofs as the lad stumbled on ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... springing out of reach of his assailant; and with his own blade bared, placing himself on the defensive. "Kape cool, ye frog-atin' son av a gun, or ye'll make mate for us sooner than ye expected, ay, before yez have time to put up a pater for yer ugly sowl, that stans most disperately in ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... seen neater work, either in Petersburg or in London. He then looked at a dagger and its scabbard or sheath. I said the sheath was intended as a further, but more beautiful specimen of the work of the poor Africans in leather; and the blade of their dagger as a specimen of their work in iron. Their works in cotton next came under our notice. There was one piece which attracted his particular notice, and which was undoubtedly very beautiful. It called from him ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... face turned the same way as the horse, he runs the risk of getting a knock in the face from the animal's knee or hoof. When cleaning him he should turn his face in the opposite direction to the horse, and planting himself well out of the way of his leg, at an angle to his shoulder-blade, proceed to rub him down. He will then escape all mischief, and he will be able to clean the frog by folding back the hoof. Let him clean the ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... means, thanks to a tank of water, sunk in one of the corners of the garden, and upon which were stationed a frog and a toad, who, from antipathy, no doubt, always remained on the two opposite sides of the basin. There was not a blade of grass to be seen in the paths, or a weed in the flower-beds; no fine lady ever trained and watered her geraniums, her cacti, and her rhododendrons, with more pains than this hitherto unseen gardener bestowed upon ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with a mind capable of intense application to any task that he took in hand. Upon his firm courage, resourcefulness and strength of purpose, difficulties and dangers acted merely as the whetstone to the finely tempered blade. He undertook hazardous enterprises from the sheer love of doing hard things which were worth doing. "He was one," wrote Flinders, "whose ardour for discovery was not to be repressed by any obstacle nor deterred by danger." He seemed ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... borrowed a large table knife, and as it were, stabbed it into the rice down into the bowl. Little stabs at first, and then deeper and deeper until the whole of the blade of the knife was in the rice, and the handle alone remained to be seen. After an incantation and jadoo-music, he caught hold of the handle and raised the bowl and the rice slowly into space. He then swung it to ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... not reply for a long time. He only bent down and took a handful of rushes up from the floor, and began to quietly clean the blade of his axe that he held under ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... uniform and homogeneous and that in placing this mixture the spading next to the lagging shall be done in such a way as to pull the coarse stones back and flush the mortar to the surface. Spading forks are excellent for this purpose. A better tool is a special spade made with a perforated blade; this special spade ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... wondering; and when he had the line of direction he knelt in the cushioned window-seat and began to probe with the blade of his pen-knife in a small round hole in ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... a fourth time he came within striking distance, and escaped. He half drew his knife, and at the movement Dixon sprang back until his shoulders touched the brush. Smilingly Gravois unsheathed the blade and tossed it behind him in the trail. His eyes were like a serpent's in their steadiness, and the muscles of his body were drawn as tight as steel springs, ready to loose themselves when ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted sword with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the mantel-piece at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give me his old service sword, which used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at once, though I was only a lad of seventeen, as he would give me his right eye, dear old father, which is the only one ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the minute particles of dew which whiten the grass-blade in early morn are moulded into spheres by the identical law which gives to the mighty sun ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the sword back in the sheath (Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain, And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade.... (But Don John of Austria rides home from ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... mouse carefully in her little hand, and tied up the broken leg with a leaf of spearmint and a blade of grass. Then she carried her to the nest under the roots of an old tree, where four baby mice were squeaking sadly for their mother. She made a bed of thistledown for the sick mouse, and put close within reach all the berries and seeds she could find, and brought an ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... House of Usher", she would have fitted it like the paper on the wall. She had the air of one waiting tensely for the approach of some imminent doom. Mortimer, humming gaily to himself as he sand-papered the blade of his twenty-second putter, observed none of this. He was thinking of the ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... way their feet skimmed over the ground—"'most like flyin'." Not a blade of grass bent under their weight, not a grain of sand was dislodged; and—more marvelous than all—there was no tiredness, no aching of joint or muscle. All of which was bound to happen when feet ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... They formed a sort of rustic work, being rough-hewn except towards the edges, which were finely wrought; and, though no cement was used, the several blocks were adjusted with so much exactness and united so closely, that it was impossible to introduce even the blade of knife between them. *22 Many of these stones were of vast size; some of them being full thirty-eight feet long, by eighteen broad, and six ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... and inconceivable way. The harbor, too, a snug little hole between islands, was worthy of Labrador. Its shores were all of gray, unbroken rock, not rising in cliffs, but sloping to the sea, and dipping under it in regular decline, like a shore of sand; while not a tree, not a shrub, not a grass-blade, was to be seen. I never beheld a scene so bleak, bare, and hard. Nor did I ever see a shore that seemed so completely "master of the situation." The mightiest cliff confesses the power which it resists. Grand, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... far off on the horizon, an immense, flaming blue sword sprang up from the black water. It rose, cleaved the darkness; its blade flashed across the clouds and illumined the surface of the sea with a broad blue hand. In this luminous ray stood out the black, silent ships, hitherto invisible. It seemed as though they had been waiting at the bottom of the sea, whither they had ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... sandy soil Bears no glad trace of leaf or tree; No grass-blade sigheth to the heaven Its ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... sceptre like a pedant's wand To lash offence, and with long arms and hands Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass For judgment. Now it chanced that I had been, While life was yet in bud and blade, bethrothed To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf At eight years old; and still from time to time Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, And of her brethren, youths of puissance; ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... on in every growing blade of grass and flower. Is it not wonderful to watch the chemical processes in nature's laboratory, mixing and flinging out to the world the gorgeous colorings and marvelous perfumes of the rose and wild flower! No city ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... not face the Prussian scourge alone—she could not. These two truths had been revealed to her with the first tap of the Prussian drums: that every inch of soil, every grass-blade, every pebble of her land was dearer to her than life; and that her life was nothing to her father. He who alone in all the world could have stood between her and the shameful pageant of invasion, who could have taught her to face it, to front it nobly, who could have bidden ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... lost no time in getting at their labor, and Baree watched and listened without so much as rustling a blade of the grass in which he was concealed. He was trying to understand. He was striving to place these curious and comfortable-looking creatures in his knowledge of things. They did not alarm him; he felt no uneasiness at their number or size. His stillness was not the ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... us to keep in the shadow. For the moon shone very clearly that night, so clearly, I remember, that I could see the grass which grew between the joints of the pavement, and the little shadows thrown by each separate blade upon the worn surface of its stones. Now I wondered how we should pass the gate, for there a guard was stationed, which had of late been doubled by order of the Khania. But this gate we left upon our right, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... to him then, with bloodless lip, What had befallen her on board the ship; But youthful Harrald listen'd undismay'd, And merely gripp'd the handle of his blade. "My son," she murmur'd, when her tale was told, "Fear withers me, but thou look'st blythe and bold." The youth uplifted then his sparkling eye, And said, whilst gazing on ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... sight of Dun and his three followers riding up the street to the castle, he was fain to draw out his sword and make a salutation; but it stuck sae dourly in that he was obligated to gar ane of the town-officers hold the scabbard, while he pulled with such might and main at the hilt, that the blade suddenly broke off, and back he stumbled, and up flew his heels, so that even my grandfather was constrained, notwithstanding the solemnity of the occasion, to join in the shout of laughter that rose thereat from all present. But provosts and bailies, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... personage of rank, finishing by tossing his hat behind his back and proceeding bareheaded to the work of killing the bull. This is a process accompanied by much formality. The espada, armed with the estoque, a sword with a heavy flat blade, brings the bull into the proper position by means of passes with the muleta, a small red silk flag mounted on a short staff, and then essays to kill him with a single thrust, delivered through the back of the neck close to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... large clasp knives which laboring men use to cut their bread and bacon with. Her delicate little fingers did not hide more than two thirds of the handle; I noticed that it was made of buckhorn, clean and shining as the blade was, and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... or two lunges, and then, with a strange movement unlike anything any one present was acquainted with, seemed to wind his blade round Del Ferice's, and, with a violent jerk of the wrist, sent the weapon flying across the open space. It struck a window of the house, and ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... inside fought together as well as they could, while those outside listened as it grew less, the bodies falling stupefied without further sound of rising. One or two, still active, began striking at the boards with what heavy thing they could find, until suddenly the blade of an axe ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... ourselves each side of the little swarthy table. Mame is fumbling in her pocket. Now her lean hand, lumpy and dark, unroots itself. She produces a bit of cheese, scrapes it with a knife which she holds by the blade, and swallows it slowly. By the rays of the lamp, which stands beside us, I see that her face is not dry. A drop of water has lingered on the cheek that each mouthful protrudes, and glitters there. Her great mouth works in all directions, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... water; but they were very few. Scott understood dimly that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule, but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen rice in the blade or the ear, and least of all would have believed that, in time of deadly need, men would die at arm's length of plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed woollen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as he dug farther, three or four loose pieces of gold and silver coin ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... fought In blouddy fielde With bright blade in hand Hath Temir won & forst to yeld Many a Captaine strong and stoute And many a king his Crowne to vayle, Conquering large countreys and land, Yet ne uer wanne I vic to rie I speake it to my greate glorie So deare and ioy full vn to me, As when I did first con quere ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... Tucker had put forth the extra strength to drive the dull old one along the furrows, while even the grindstone had worn away to such unevenness that each revolution had made only half the impression on a blade pressed to its rim and thus caused the sharpening to take twice as long and twice the force as would have been required on a new one. But grindstones, too, cost cents and dollars, and Uncle Tucker had ground on patiently, even hopefully, until this the very ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... good King Arthur (How high is your desire?) His sword within its scabbard lay, The sword with blade of fire. ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... of patience went on. A quarter of an hour, a half hour, and an hour passed, and still Henry did not stir. If a blade of grass or a twig beside him moved it was because the force of the wind did it. While he lay there, he examined the thicket incessantly with his eyes, but he depended most upon his ears. He listened so intently that he could hear a lizard scuttling ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... my comrade, who always spoke of Charles as a puppet in the hands of his mother and brother, "is trusting to a broken reed. For my part I hope the instant our chief is strong enough to travel he will hasten to Rochelle. I have more faith in a keen blade than in a king's promise," and from Yolet's face one would have judged he was of ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... those different dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that travelling through England and France affords a man. But when he wished to point them out to his companion: "Never heed such nonsense," would he reply; "a blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another. Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my subjects of enquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... found a very convenient hole in the cloak, through which it had thrust itself in the most obtrusive manner, and looked like a tail with a vicious sting, for the cap of the leathern scabbard had been lost, and about three inches of steel blade and point were visible. ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... calcanea. One bone of the metacarpus. Another of the metatarsus. A fragment of the frontal or coronal bone, containing half of an orbital cavity. A middle third of the tibia. Two more fragments of tibia. Two astragoli. One upper portion of shoulder-blade. One fragment of the lower jawbone. One half of an os humeri, the whole constituting thirteen small and twenty-eight large fragments, there ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the evening a pot of pombe was brought, when the man in charge, half-drunk, amused us with frantic charges, as if he were fighting with his spear; and after settling the supposed enemy, he delighted in tramping him under foot, spearing him repeatedly through and through, then wiping the blade of the spear in the grass, and finally polishing it on this tufty head, when, with a grunt of satisfaction, he shouldered arms and walked away ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to-night," he said, "and I'll leave you here, Sabina; but be quite happy. I dare say Daniel will be all right. He's a pious blade and all that sort of thing and doesn't understand real life. And as some fool broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was too much for his weak nerves. I shan't take you very far off anyway. We'll have a look round soon. I'll go to a house agent or somebody ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... to the summons! Come in your war-array, gentles and commons. Come from deep glen, and from mountain so rocky; The war-pipe and pennon are at Inverlocky. Come every hill-plaid, and true heart that wears one, Come every steel blade, and strong hand that bears one. Leave untended the herd, the flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterred, the bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, leave nets and barges: Come with your fighting gear, broadswords ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... farthest hill. In desperation, she turned aside and galloped after a mailed horseman who was trotting down a clover-sweet lane with a rattle and clank that frightened the robins from the hedges. He reined in with a guffaw when he saw what mettle of blade it ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... drops of a solution of 1 grain of phosphate of ammonia to 200 oz. of water (i.e. one part to 87,500) is here reproduced: such energetic inflection is never caused by water alone. With leaves in the weak solutions, the blade or lamina often becomes inflected; and this is so rare a circumstance with leaves in water that I have seen only two instances; and in both of these the inflection was very feeble. Again, with leaves in the weak solutions, the ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... sword! What blow has served to break thee? To shreds I shattered thy shining blade; the fire has melted the splinters Ho ho! Ho ho! Ho hei! Ho hei! Ho ho! Bellows ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... used for chopping the domestic fuel. Some of these "dahs" are very finely finished, the handle and sheath of wild plum being bound by delicately plaited bands of bamboo fibre, in which the ends are most skilfully concealed, and the blade, often 2 feet long, is ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... the eldest, is twenty-four feet in height, with a beard the hairs of which are like copper wire. He carries a magnificent jade ring and a spear, and always fights on foot. He has also a magic sword, 'Blue Cloud,' on the blade of which are engraved the characters Ti, Shui, Huo, Feng (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind). When brandished, it causes a black wind, which produces tens of thousands of spears, which pierce the bodies of men and turn them to dust. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... subsequently employed a woman to bake. The people generally were very poor throughout the country, and the cultivated area appeared insufficient for the support of the population. Every yard of land was ploughed, but the entire valley of Gallibornu was fallowed, and did not possess one blade of corn, as the soil required rest after the yield of the previous season. None of these people have an idea respecting a succession of crops in scientific rotation, therefore a loss is sustained ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... others begin to prepare their favourite smoke of hashish. A board is called for and the hashish-powder spread out upon it. The operator chops it into still finer particles by means of a semicircular blade, deftly blowing away the dust—this brings out its strength. He is in no hurry; it is a ceremony rather than a task. Slowly he separates the coarser from the finer grains, his fingers moving with loving deliberation over the smooth board. Then the cutting process is repeated ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... at first carried in two of the dugouts, and then let loose on the banks. We went up-stream for a couple of hours against the swift current, the paddlers making good headway with their pointed paddles—the broad blade of each paddle was tipped with a long point, so that it could be thrust into the mud to keep the low dugout against the bank. The tropical forest came down almost like a wall, the tall trees laced together with vines, and the spaces between their ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the 1879 pattern—a most serviceable and reliable fire-arm, far superior to the modern small-bore rifle in the opinion of soldiers themselves, as a man-stopper and rush-checker. A long, wicked-looking bayonet with a basket hilt, the back of the blade serrated for three-quarters of its length, like the edge of a large saw, swung from the left hip; and the armoury was completed by a long-hilted, long-bladed knife, or short sword, stuck through ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... linen, an Indian from creation issuing her palms. Her golden hair rippled over her shoulders, her eyes glowed, a bright mist clung about her, a ring of gold hovered above her head, she shook the flaming blade of a sword towards ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... his lungs. By the glint of the metal work about the bits Andy made out two bridles hanging on the wall near the bed. Taking them down, he worked swiftly. As soon as the fellow on the bed would have his breath he would scream. Yet the time sufficed Andy; he had his knife out, flicked the blade open, and cut off the long reins of the bridles. Then he went back to the bed and shoved the cold muzzle of his revolver into the throat of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... calabashes and gourds full of water, and collected a quantity of boiled corn. As soon as this was done, we set off again, and entered the desert. We were astonished and terrified when we looked around us, not a single vestige of herbage, not a blade of grass was to be seen—all was one wide waste of barren sand, so light as to rise in clouds at the least wind, and we sank so deep in walking through it that at last we could hardly drag one foot after the other. But we were repaid for ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... river, into which I must fall if my footing fails, I call for help. The men come and pass me a line, but I cannot let go of the rock long enough to take hold of it. Then they bring two or three of the largest oars. All this takes time which seems very precious to me; but at last they arrive. The blade of one of the oars is pushed into a little crevice in the rock beyond me in such a manner that they can hold me pressed against the wall. Then another is fixed in such a way that I can step on it; ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the countess's diamonds, held them in one hand, drew his sabre with the other, and began to strike with the flat of its blade such of the sleepers as he thought the most intrepid. He succeeded in awaking the colossal grenadier, and two other men whose rank it ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... up the four edges, and thus made a sort of trough, in which I placed a piece of wax taken from one of the candles. When it was melted, I mixed with it a little lampblack I had obtained by putting the blade of a knife over the candle, and then ran this composition in the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... probe Thrust in and sound the ugly, gaping wound. Quezox: Most noble sire, if I may caution speak It were to all this filthy, croaking brood Ne'er lend an open ear, for in it they Will honey-coated poison quick distil. Francos: Trust me, good Quezox, I to every thrust, Of treach'rous blade, will offer ample shield. Methinks I'll place them on the waiting rack And while I promises sweet-coated make, Will gently turn the screw until their bones Do crack. And then to happy period make, The ax shall deftly lop some waiting head, With touch most skilful, ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... rather weary of their town sharpness coupled with their indifference and want of imagination, where any nature, save human nature, was concerned. 'I will bring an ear of Hiltonbury wheat home with me—some of the best girls shall see me sow it, and I will take them to watch it growing up—the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear—poor dears, if they only had a Hiltonbury to give them some tastes that are not all for this hot, busy, eager world! If I could only see one with her lap full of bluebells; but though in this land of Cockaigne of ours, one does ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... water rippled on with a pleasant sound, the trees rustled in the light wind that murmured among their leaves, the birds sang upon the boughs, and the lark carolled on high her welcome to the morning. Yes, it was morning; the bright, balmy morning of summer; the minutest leaf, the smallest blade of grass, was instinct with life. The ant crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly fluttered and basked in the warm rays of the sun; myriads of insects spread their transparent wings, and revelled in their brief but happy existence. Man ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... memory to ascertain whether he had left his sword in its scabbard, or had laid the naked blade, as was his custom, by him while he slept. The more he tried to think the more confused his thoughts became. His forehead felt circled with burning iron, his lips were dry and parched, his step faltering as if under the influence of some potent spell. He ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... perceived a few of them coming towards the woods warily, behind me there was another gang closing in. I began to feel like the caterpillar on the blade of grass in front ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty, For want of fighting was grown rusty, And ate into itself, for lack Of somebody to ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... lock, but I hear no sound. I am in a silence like that of the grave. I try to speak. My lips move, but, try as I may, no sound comes out of them. A sharp terror is pricking into me, and I flinch as if it were a knife-blade. Well, sir, that is a thing I cannot understand. You know me—I am not a coward. If I were really in a like scene fear would be the least of my emotions; but in the dream I tremble and am afraid. Slowly, silently, the door opens, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... paused in his steady, plunging climb and looked back over the rock-slides and boulders; and while his mules munched their grain well back out of sight he focussed his new field glasses and watched. From the knife-blade ridge up which he had spurred and scrambled the whole country lay before him like a relief map, and in the particular gash-like canyon where he had located the Stinging Lizard he made out his furtive pursuers. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... were pouring along in unbroken streams from the great centres of Russian military power. The fierce Cossack from the Don and the Dneister, the Tartar from the Ukraine, the beetle-browed and predatory Baschkir, with all their variety of wild uniform, and "helm and blade" glancing in the summer's sun, crowded on the great military thoroughfares, while fresh supplies of well-appointed and formidable artillery were carefully transmitted. The foundries of Russia were blazing in the manufacture of warlike ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mere trifles, and hardly worth a consideration, that this knowledge is arrived at. Thus, it takes but a minimum amount of wisdom to realize that a spear of grass, when trodden upon, is usually crushed to the earth; but, few reflect that the attempt is made by nature to restore the blade to its naturally upright position, and in doing so, requires a certain period of time to accomplish the task. This process, to the trailer, is an index by which he judges the age of the visit made by the Indians, to that section ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... for a cent, with twenty gold-monogramed blades and a guaranty of expert surgical attendance if he cuts himself, would stir his active interest neither more nor less than a safety-razor for a hundred dollars, with one Cannotbedull blade and an iron-clad agreement to pay the makers an indemnity if he found it unsatisfactory. He buys them secretly, lest his wife justly accuse him of extravagance, and practises cunning in getting rid of them ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... of all these?—which are questions, we confess, that we and the public have often asked, with regard to Turner's late pictures—we do not acknowledge a naturalness—the license has been abused—not "sumpta pudenter." It is not because the vividness of "a blade of grass or a scarlet flower" shall be beyond the power of pigment, that a general glare and obtrusion of such colours throughout a picture can be justified. We are astonished that any man with eyes should see the unnaturalness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... towering palm-trees were scattered here and there. Above and behind the village was the dark green forest. The street was the broadest I ever saw in Africa; one part of it was about one hundred yards broad, and not a blade of grass could be seen in it. The Sycobii were building their nests everywhere, and made a deafening noise, for there were thousands and thousands of these ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... thy jewelled girdle A little, that its rubies May tinkle softest music too, And whisper thou art near; Though now, if in the forest Thou should'st bend one blade of Kusha With silken touch of passing foot, His heart would know and hear; Would hear the wood-buds saying, "It is Radha's foot that passes;" Would hear the wind sigh love-sick, "It is Radha's fragrance, this;" Would ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... sir! Will you not share the jest? Aren't you the sparky blade, the daffing callant, Naffing and nickering like a three-year-old? Come, none-so-pretty, cough the old wheeze up, Before it chokes you. Let me clap your back. You're, surely, never laughing at ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... an' fr'm jandice to jealousy, but if a brick bounces on me head I'm crated up th' same as iv yore an' put away. Rockyfellar can make a pianny out iv a bar'l iv crude ile, but no wan has been able to make a blade iv hair grow on Rockyfellar. They was a doctor over in France that discovered a kind iv a thing that if 'twas pumped into ye wud make ye live till people got so tired iv seein' ye around they cud scream. He died th' nex' year iv premachure ol' age. They was another doctor ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... yours," said I, coming to a standstill in the middle of the street, as I saw the young man had his sword drawn and pressed close against his side to allay suspicion. I forgot all about law and order, and had my own blade free of the scabbard on the instant; but the young man spoke smoothly and made no motion of attack, which ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... itself! And she—ah, who shall read a woman's thoughts at such an hour as that! Let me be content to see her as she was; her face grown girlish in that great release, her eyes sparkling in a new joy of being, her step so light that no blade of grass could have been bruised thereby. Let me hear her voice again while she lifts her face to mine and asks me that question which even ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... unbelieving. She moved through my days and through my dreams, as the rose-cloud moved upon the mountain sky. She floated between me and my sick. She hovered above me and my dying. She was a mist between me and my books. Once when I took the knife for a dangerous operation, the steel blade caught a sunbeam and flashed; and I looked at the flash—it seemed to contain a new world—and I thought: "She is my own. I am a happy man!" But I was sorry for my patient. I was not rough with him. And ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... been up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,—and never mind the crown and the sceptre. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man for a few days to help replace a bridge carried fifty yards downstream by ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... after a Mr. Akermann, who introduced it from Mexico in 1829); Fig. 10.—Stem becoming cylindrical at an early age, and clothed with little clusters of spiny hairs; the branches are flattened out, and form broad, rather thin, blade-like growths, with the margins sinuately lobed (waved and notched). The flowers are large—over 6 in. in diameter—the petals, very acutely pointed and undulated along the edges; flower tube 2 in. long, with a few small scales scattered over ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... had, therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out of the tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fastening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole. [384] The tithing men of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be found to the camp. It was impossible, however, even with the help of these contrivances, to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anvil. He wore a wig and false beard; his white and manicured hands had nothing of the workman about them; and his easy air, prominent belly, and flabby muscles readily betrayed the actor. With an absurd hammer he struck—as no one else would ever strike—a fantastic-looking sword-blade. One guessed he was a dwarf, because when he walked he bent his legs at the knees. He cried out a great deal, and opened his mouth in a queer fashion. The orchestra also emitted peculiar noises like several beginnings ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... mistake her silence for an acknowledgment of guilt, for she sprang to her feet, and her dagger-blade flashed in her hand. In another moment, it would have been stained with blood, had ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... "we are out for evergreens. This is not a food-grabbing affair. Let's get back to the car. I don't see a blade of ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... hope. But they and their agents lost heart before the insuperable obstacle of the young prince's loyalty. It was simple, unaffected, and without exaggeration. He never drew his sword and kissed the blade, and swore by the Blessed Virgin to give his last drop of blood for his sovereign and his country. He never made solemn vows to accomplish ends that looked impossible. But when the charge sounded, he pressed his steel ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... away, for the open departure of so merry a blade would not have been permitted, and in the hall he found Dick mounting a ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... sharp attack was made on the intruders, but Rolf put on his helmet and bade his men to retire, which they did in good order. He walked backward through the whole hall, shield on arm and sword in hand, parrying and dealing blows, so that when he left the room, though no blade had touched him, a dozen of the courtiers lay bleeding. But being greatly overmatched, he ordered his men to mount, and they ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... day's proceedings, they would die in the attempt to kill the women. Roughly handled as they were, one of them had time to draw a dagger from his belt and aimed to plunge it into the bosom of Saronia. The glistening blade was falling towards her, but quicker than its descent was Endora, who threw herself between them and received the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... rotated about sixty turns a minute, and the clay, in a plastic state, was put in the cup-shaped top, and the hands used to force the clay up the side wall. When the crock was formed in as even a manner as it could be by hand, the blade described was used to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... straight for a sabre lying on a table to continue his bloody work. In the meantime the priest had risen to his feet and awaited with resignation new torments which certainly were even worse than the first, for he gave him so many and such hard blows with the sabre that the blade was broken close to the hilt. This accident so infuriated Delfin that he again threw himself upon the priest, kicking him furiously and striking him repeatedly until he again threw him to the ground, and not yet satisfied, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Nawakhani [424] or feast of the new rice crop in August or September, and the Am Nawakhani or that of the new mango crop in April or May. At the feasts the new season's crop should be eaten, but if no fresh rice has ripened, they touch some of the old grain with a blade of a growing rice-plant, and consider that it has become the new crop. On these occasions ancestors are worshipped by members of the family only inside the house, and offerings of the new crops ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... more by instinct than by reason plunged in primitive ideas of the possibilities of personal action and freedom of decision. His highly-colored speech had drawn a small crowd of super-revolutionists about him, childish, genuine groundlings, who wanted to be keener than the blade of which they were only the handle. Some ignorant old fellows also belonged to the clique and contributed no little to raise Victor's self-esteem. Once in a while the more experienced soldiers in the army indulgently ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... disgorged a crowd of men. Shorty, wiry, thin-faced Venusians, each with skewer-blade strapped to his side and some with ray-guns out, they came scrambling into the open, swearing and wondering. The second guard's insane repetitions directed most of them in his direction; and they piled in a crowd around him. They had no attention for what was happening ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... this dreadful stranger in the wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced through in a second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped down and whipped it through the railings ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... was poised above Frank's heart, and in another moment the blade would have been buried to the hilt ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... great kingdoms fall on death Before the stabbing blade, Their brazen might was only breath, Their substance but a shade— Be not ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... branch to remain. By reversing the same kind of stick and driving a small nail near the other end or cutting a notch, it may be used to suspend kettles over a fire. A novel candlestick is made by opening the blade of a knife and jabbing it into a tree, and upon the other upturned blade putting a candle. A green stick having a split end which will hold a piece of bread or meat makes an excellent broiler. Don't pierce the bread or meat. Driving a good-sized green stake into the ground ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... her eyes shining under levelled brows. She let the point of the great sword rest on the grass, and she leaned upon its mighty cross-piece, resting her cheek against its handle. Her red hair ran in ripples over her shoulders and over the hilt of the blade, red as ever the blood the blade had ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of yore Beat out the glowing blade, Nor wielded in the front of war The weapons that he made, But in the tower at home still plied ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I had passed upon the way were piled the hides of bullocks, and from the train you might see their skeletons lying, each one bleaching where it died for want of fodder, scattered here and there on the brown and burning earth; for even every river bed was waterless, and not a single blade of green could you descry, for many hundred miles. And hence it came about, that as I gazed upon the two emaciated hacks that were to pull me from the station, a dozen miles out, and as many more back, I could bring myself to sit behind them only by the thought that thereby ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... that came near me was a bee, which hummed merrily by. What did the busy insect seek there? Not a blade of grass grew, and the only vegetable matter on this point was a cluster of withered moss at the very edge of the awful precipice, and it I gathered at considerable risk as a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... out old stumps, etc., although, if a vine is well managed, it will seldom be necessary. Fig. 23 will show a kind which is very convenient for the purpose, and will also serve for orchard pruning; the blade is narrow, connected with the handle, and can be turned ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... stabbed," repeated Uncle Loveday, "stabbed to the heart, and from behind. I found this blade as I examined your poor father's body. It was broken off close to the hilt, and left in the wound, which can hardly have bled at all. Death must have been immediate. It's a strange business, Jasper, and a strange blade by the ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... vaguely, half wishing that he was a flower, a blade of grass, or a tree, so that she might pine ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... features which I have already described, the beast was equipped with a massive tail about six feet in length, quite round where it joined the body, but tapering to a flat, thin blade toward the end, which trailed at right angles to ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... duty of the women to prevent the PADI being choked by weeds. The women of each room will go over each patch completely at least twice, at an interval of about one month, hoeing down the weeds with a short-handled hoe; the hoe consists of a flat blade projecting at right angles from the iron haft (Fig. 13). The latter is bent downwards at a right angle just above the blade, in a plane perpendicular to that of the blade, and its other end is prolonged by a short wooden handle, into the end of which it ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... tumult of revolt, but he sensibly drove his feelings through his muscles to the blade of his oar, and said nothing. Nance and Bernel were not likely to have gone to these lengths without what seemed to them ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... In getting up these bright mornings he looked with entirely new distaste upon the prospect from his window at the back. Beneath lay parallel strips of ground, divided from each other by low walls. These were called the "gardens" of the houses in Kennington Road, but no blade of grass ever showed upon the black, hard-trodden soil. Lank fowls ran about among discarded furniture and indescribable rubbish, or children—few as well-tended as Mrs. Bubb's—played and squabbled under the dropping soot. Beyond rose a huge block of tenements, each story ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... throat, I ducked quickly below his left shoulder as I swung him to left, meaning to chance a fall. He had, I fancy, some notion of his peril, for he put up his hand and bent forward, I saw the flash of a blade, and, my captor's head falling forward, a great spout of blood shot back into my face, as the pair of us tumbled together headlong from his horse. I was dimly conscious of yells, oaths, a horse leaping over me, and for a few seconds knew no more. Then I sat ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... in Holualoa, Kona, in the reign of Keawenuiaumi. He is mischievous and without fear. At 6 he can outdo all his playmates, at 20 he is fully developed, kills sharks with his hands and pulls up a kou tree as if it were a blade of grass. The king hides himself, and Kalaepuni rules Hawaii. The priest Mokupane plots his death. He has a pit dug on Kahoolawe, presided over by two old people who are told to look out for a very large man with long hair like bunches of olona fiber. Once Kalaepuni goes ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... You! The walker in the ways of St. Augustine—in his early ways, I think. You saint in embryo, you postulant for holy orders! You shall be ordained this night—with this!" And he raised his sword so that little yellow runnels of light sped down the livid blade. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... ready to march off too! And few companies of vagabonds in England ever marched off to prison in better spirits; we cheered one another, and laughed at our profound leader, until we came in sight of the black, bleak, and barren moor, without a solitary bush or blade of grass. Some of our prisoners swore that we had marched the whole length of England, and got into Scotland. We all agreed that it was not credible that such a hideous, barren spot could be any where ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the hotter days, it was delicious to sit quietly in the garden and watch the evening pass into night. Nature, in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe. A small frog, of the genus Hyla, sits on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen of this frog. The genus Hyla has its toes terminated by small suckers; and I found ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... The will to do, the soul to dare, The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire, Of hasty love or headlong ire. His limbs were cast in manly could For hardy sports or contest bold; And though in peaceful garb arrayed, And weaponless except his blade, His stately mien as well implied A high-born heart, a martial pride, As if a baron's crest he wore, And sheathed in armor bode the shore. Slighting the petty need he showed, He told of his benighted road; His ready speech flowed fair ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... use the sails much; we depend chiefly on this," said the hermit, as he seated himself in the front hole and laid the long, heavy, double-bladed paddle on the saddle in front of him. Moses uses a single blade, partly because it is handier for steering and partly because he has been accustomed to it in his own land. You are at liberty to ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... it had been tiptoeing down the hillsides and across the lowlands as though it was afraid of disturbing a single blade of grass or a single drooping leaf. And then, at the crucial moment, it huffed and puffed itself up into a little hurricane, charged down upon the Galactic University buildings and whooshed through the Galactic Historian's study like a band of ...
— Collector's Item • Robert F. Young
... nobody hain't forgotten you, you'll find,' said the man, wiping his scythe blade with a wisp of grass; needlessly, for he had just whetted it; but it gave him an opportunity to look at ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... these, a corresponding number should be chosen from the oldest and the most sagacious members of the squadron, to form the rear-rank of the files or decads; since, to use an illustration, iron best severs iron when the forefront of the blade (6) is strong and tempered, and the momentum ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... last his living tomb of rock was rent; Though but a narrow rift He yet had made Enough; it did a horrid monster lift, That clutched him close and held aloft a blade; He felt himself undone, when, lo! ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... and life in the balance, Fear and hope in the glance of your eye. Draw your blade! Forget not we are gallants Who can laugh at ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... a pretty Baby-treat; Nor, I deem, for me unmeet: Here, for neither Babe or me, Other Play-mate can I see. Of the countless living things, That with stir of feet and wings, (In the sun or under shade Upon bough or grassy blade) And with busy revellings, Chirp and song, and murmurings, 50 Made this Orchard's narrow space, And this Vale so blithe a place; Multitudes are swept away Never more to breathe the day: Some are sleeping; some in Bands Travell'd into distant Lands; Others ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... "Pectus sacrato dividunt venabulo." The harpe shown on the taurobolic altars, is perhaps in reality a boar-spear having a kind of hilt (mora; cf. Grattius, Cyneg., 110) to prevent the blade ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... the beginning of April somebody saw him. It was in the dusk between supper and bed time, walking on the viaduct where he had the park below him. There was a wash of blue still in the sky and a thin blade of a moon tinging it with citron; here and there the light glittered on the trickle of sap on the chafed boughs. It was just here that he met her. She was about his own age, and she was walking oddly, as though unconscious of the city ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... his heel down into the sand, then pulled out his knife and began to clean the bowl of his pipe. The blade trembled in ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... prayers, and deuine how wee should prosper in our iourney and whether we should meet with any ill company or no? To which, our whole Carauan did agree. And they tooke certaine sheepe and killed them, and tooke the blade bones of the same, and first sodde them and then burnt them, and tooke of the blood of the said sheepe, and mingled it with the powder of the saide bones, and wrote certaine Characters with the saide blood, vsing many other ceremonies and wordes, and by the same deuined and found, that wee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... without foundation. I found Fanny kneeling beside the old soldier in the parlor where we had seen the two women, and bathing his temples, while Lord Castleton was binding his arm; and the marquis's favorite valet, who, amongst his other gifts, was something of a surgeon, was wiping the blade of the penknife that had served instead of a lancet. Lord Castleton nodded to me. "Don't be uneasy,—a little fainting fit; we have bled him. He is safe now,—see, he is recovering." Roland's eyes, as they opened, turned to me with an anxious, inquiring ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but, since he who sees the tail of a lone wolf imagines the whole pack, he alighted at a distance where the eyes of Heenhadowa saw as one sees in a fog. A space the size a man uses for his lodge he cleared of all bushes and weeds, to the smallest blade of grass he cleared ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... stumbled badly. At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and certainty of a cobra. His weapon pierced Medenham's breast high up on the right side. The stroke was so true and furious that the Englishman, already unbalanced, was driven on to his back on the sand. Marigny wrenched the blade free, and stooped with obvious intent to plunge it again through his opponent's body. A warning shout from each of the three spectators withheld him. He scowled vindictively, but dared not make that second mortal thrust. These French gentlemen whom he had summoned from Paris were bound ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... the "Early Purple," which is abundant in our woods and pastures; the "Meadow Orchis"; and the "Spotted Orchis" of our heaths and commons. Less frequent are the "Bee Orchis," the "Butterfly Orchis," "Lady's Tresses," and the "Tway blade." ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... From being immersed in well-nigh solid media of cloud and hail shot with lightning, I find myself uncovered of the humid investiture and left bare to the mild gaze of the moon, which sparkles now on every wet grass-blade and frond of moss. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... making the obscure obscurer, are thought to be original, because they are so chaotic and clumsy. But we have yet to learn that lead is priceless because it is weighty, or that gold is valueless because it glitters. The Damascus blade is none the less keen because it is polished, nor the Corinthian shaft less strong because it is fluted and its ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... bayonet at a lump of hard bread. He sprawled contentedly in the hot sun, with humped shoulders and legs far apart, and with his cap tipped far over his eyes. Every now and again he would pause, with a piece of cheese balanced on the end of his knife-blade, and look at the twisted figures by him on the grass, or he would dodge involuntarily as a shell swung low above his head, and smile nervously at the still forms on either side of him that had not moved. Then he brushed the crumbs ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... medals, instruments of torture, and some other curiosities. It was the Bishop of Ypres who, at midnight on June 4, 1568, announced to Count Egmont, in his prison at Brussels, that his hour had come; and the cross-hilted sword, with its long straight blade, which hangs on the wall of the Museum is the sword with which the executioner 'severed his head from his shoulders at a single blow' on the following morning. The same weapon, a few minutes later, was used for the despatch of ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... out how the handle was put on, so their aunt went to the knife-box and got out an old knife that had lost its handle. They saw that the blade had a long thin piece of iron at the ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... was partly shaded by a ramada and partly open to the hot sun. There was a chicken-yard in one corner of the inclosed square, and in the centre stood a rickety old pump, which indicated some sort of a well. Not a green leaf or tree or blade of grass in sight. Nothing but white sand, as far as one could see, in ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... / of Saxons a great throng, Each a broadsword bearing / that mickle was and long, With blade that cut full sorely / when swung in strong right hand. 'Gainst strangers were they ready / to guard their castles and ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... I ween It now to investigate is time, Was nothing but the British spleen Transported to our Russian clime. It gradually possessed his mind; Though, God be praised! he ne'er designed To slay himself with blade or ball, Indifferent he became to all, And like Childe Harold gloomily He to the festival repairs, Nor boston nor the world's affairs Nor tender glance nor amorous sigh Impressed him in the least degree,— Callous to all he ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... serious, was over. What some men gained by anger and invective St. George gained by good humor, ranging from the faint smile of toleration to the roar of merriment. One reason why he had so few enemies—none, practically—was that he could invariably disarm an adversary with a laugh. It was a fine old blade that he wielded; only a few times in his life had he been called upon to use any other—when some under-dog was maltreated, or his own good name or that of a friend was traduced, or some wrong had to be righted—then his face would become as hot steel and there would belch out a flame of denunciation ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... out just as the Filipino turned back toward them with fear-leaden feet, and in the moment of discovery of the Mohammedan who leaped in his shadow, they saw the glistening blade rise above the Filipino's head and fall in a terrific sweep that seemed to end at the point where neck and shoulder join. Before their eyes the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... comparatively few officers in their collection; while by the direct-tax system the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing. And, again, by the tariff system the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods, and those chiefly the luxuries, and not the necessaries, of life. By this system the man who contents himself to live upon the products of his own ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a Mysterious Ending.—And so HUGH, carrying a lamp in his right hand, and grasping the blade of his sword in his left, entered the cave of which he had heard so much. Will he ever return? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... a lurking affection for the Bruce have given incentive to love of country? Buchan, of a truth, thou art dull as a sword-blade ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... you to go and shake her," said Meldon, "or pour cold water over her, or anything of that sort. Just take your scythe over close to where she is, and as soon as ever I give the signal, you begin to scrape the blade of it with your stone and whistle a tune at the same time as loud ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... of intense application to any task that he took in hand. Upon his firm courage, resourcefulness and strength of purpose, difficulties and dangers acted merely as the whetstone to the finely tempered blade. He undertook hazardous enterprises from the sheer love of doing hard things which were worth doing. "He was one," wrote Flinders, "whose ardour for discovery was not to be repressed by any obstacle nor deterred by danger." ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... haven't seen such a pretty flower in all my life. Here are forget-me-nots, and—and these I have picked for you," she added, taking from under the tansies a small bunch of cornflowers, tied around with a thin blade of ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev
... has been made in the construction of the nippers. In the ordinary Heilmann's comber, the upper blade has a groove in its nipping edge, and the cushion plate is covered with cloth and leather, the fibers being held by the grip between the leather of the cushion plate and the edges of the groove in the upper blade, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... Turrald had a brother Simon, a roystering blade and lawless adventurer, who disappeared some years before his elder brother's death. Little was known of him except that he was supposed to have closed a brawling career on the field of Bosworth, when Richard the Crookback was killed and the short-lived ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... start the engine again and head for the camp—and dinner—they suddenly spied a powerful speed boat coming out from the Canadian side. It cleaved the water like the blade of a knife, throwing up a silver wave on either side. And as it passed the Lauriette Ruth and her companion could see several ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... imprisoned on Devil's Island for several years. His name is Gen. Paolo Tibaldi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on the island for conspiring against Napoleon III. He says that when he was there the island was a bare rock without a tree or a blade of grass, and the heat of the sun was terrible. The provisions supplied daily by the Government were a pound and a half of the worst kind of bread, for each convict, a piece of old meat or salt fat, beans or rice, a little oil, and also a kind of spirits called tafla. The general claims that ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... dug and cured before frost touches them, and before the leaves fall to any great extent, peanut vines make a very good provender for all stock. Some say it is better than blade fodder for horses and mules, but we are not prepared to advance this extravagant claim for it. It is, however, certainly an excellent article of fodder for cattle, sheep, mules, and horses, and if many sap peanuts are left on the vines, stock that is not worked much, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... Spreading out the paper on the top of a stump, he slowly scribbled his name below mine; and then, holding the leaf before my eyes, pointed to the signature—but without saying a word. This done, he replaced the document on the stump; and drawing his knife, stuck the blade through the paper, and left the weapon quivering in the wood! All these manoeuvres were gone through with as cool composure, as if they were only the prelude to some ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... that obedience to it would work in every man like leaven, which is lost sight of in the lump of dough, and seems to add nothing to it, yet transforms the whole in raising up the loaf; or as the corn of wheat which is buried in the glebe like a dead body, yet brings forth the blade, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... and laid upon the table athwart the chalk lines. The emperor immediately draws his short hunting-knife, and after making several mystic passes with it in the air, strikes the prostrate body of the neophyte a smart blow with the flat of the broad blade. The huntsman toots forth the signal of "dead! dead!" which is used to call the pack off the quarry, and the new-fledged "weide-man" is permitted to struggle off the table and onto ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... each with a splendid new rapier, the blades of which were made of the best Toledo steel, of so fine a temper that it was possible, without injury to the weapon, to bend the point round until it met the hilt, the blade springing back, when released, to its original position and shape. This gift naturally delighted the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... desired. And how much more greatly he desired than ever had this old man by his side, with his wealth and his easy satisfactions! The old Don apparently had never been thwarted, and therefore he did not know how keen and punishing a blade ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... The fire you have lighted shall blaze in a fashion ye think not of. The Word of God is a consuming fire. The sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, pierces the heart and reins of man; and that sword hath been wrested from the scabbard in which it has rusted so long, and the shining of its fiery blade shall soon he seen ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of magic moonlight the only sound was the murmurous splash of the rising waves as they met the first grim rocks of the Point. Presently they would dash in thunder round the granite blade, and the sleeping pool would be turned to a smother ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... eyes looked at him, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... snowstorms or late rains, they happened to escape the autumn fire besom, they were likely to be burned in the spring after the snow melted. But whether burned in the spring or fall, ashes and bits of charred twigs and grass stems made the whole country look dismal. Then, before a single grass-blade had sprouted, a hopeful multitude of large hairy, silky buds about as thick as one's thumb came to light, pushing up through the black and gray ashes and cinders, and before these buds were fairly free from the ground they opened wide and displayed purple blossoms about two inches in diameter, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... the bonze ventured to reply, "is enough to make you laugh! They amount to this: there existed in the west, on the bank of the Ling (spiritual) river, by the side of the San Sheng (thrice-born) stone, a blade of the Chiang Chu (purple pearl) grass. At about the same time it was that the block of stone was, consequent upon its rejection by the goddess of works, also left to ramble and wander to its own gratification, and to roam about at pleasure to every and any place. One day ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... first born of our earth were the grass-blade and the herb. They preceded the brute creation and the human family—the grass for the animal creation, the herb for human service. The cattle came and took possession of their inheritance, the grass-blade; man came and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the buildings and would demand a special type of medical missionary. Or again, we hear it argued that medical missions are the point of the missionary sword; but if it is the point of the sword then it ought to be in front of the blade. That, too, would direct the location of the doctors and hospitals. It would also affect the character of the building unless the missionary sword is to become an immovable object, which having once cleft a rock remains fast in the breach until a God-sent hero, like King Arthur, appears ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... haunted him. He would start up from dreaming of it, his hair moist with perspiration, for, strangely enough, he was always on the point of doing it harm: either his teeth were meeting in it, or he had drawn the blade of a knife down the middle of the blue-veined whiteness, and the blood spurted out along the line, which reddened instantly in ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of the Laighton and Lufkin pattern weighs 5 lbs., without the handle, and is eighteen inches long. It is of iron, except about eight inches of the blade, which is of cast steel, tempered and polished like a chopping axe. It is considerably curved, and the workmen suit their own taste as to the degree of curvature, by putting the tool under a log or rock, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... till the Negroes had filled several calabashes and gourds full of water, and collected a quantity of boiled corn. As soon as this was done, we set off again, and entered the desert. We were astonished and terrified when we looked around us, not a single vestige of herbage, not a blade of grass was to be seen—all was one wide waste of barren sand, so light as to rise in clouds at the least wind, and we sank so deep in walking through it that at last we could hardly drag one foot after the other. But we were ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... the trees, the sunlight fell in bars on the carpet of pine-cones. The scent of the living forest was in his nostrils, and when he threw back his head, it seemed to him that the blue sky was resting upon the tree-tops. Taking off his coat, he felt the edge of his blade, while he leaned against the great pine he had marked out for sacrifice. In the midst of the wood he saw the walls of his house rising—saw the sun on the threshold—the smoke mount from the chimney. The dream in his brain was the dream of the race in its beginning—for he saw the home ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... first time. Fain would I tell you something of all that I felt when first my fingers closed about a sword-hilt, the forefinger passed over the quillons in the new manner, as Falcone showed me. But it defies all power of words. The sweet seduction of its balance, the white gleaming beauty of the blade, were things that thrilled me with something akin to the thrill of the first kiss of passion. It was not quite the same, I know; yet I can think of nothing else in life that is worthy ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... screwed down tightly, so that the king, and all his cabinet councilors too, might pass up and down the staircase without any fear. Every blow of the hammer fell upon a thick pad or cushion, and the saw was not used until the handle had been wrapped in wool, and the blade steeped in oil. The noisiest part of the work, moreover, had taken place during the night and early in the morning, that is to say, when La Valliere and Madame were both absent. When, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the court returned to the Palais ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and change, which changes are generally marked by little iron crosses in the woods, but, once they have settled down, desertion is far rarer than in civilised countries. I have seen a native workman with his shoulder blade in his arm-pit, his face cut to ribbons, and with pieces of casting sticking to his back through the carrying away of a crane, cavil against the idea of being taken into the township where the doctor was, lest his old woman, unused to a ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... of the Baltic Sea is situated the ancestral castle of the noble family Von R——, called R—sitten. It is a wild and desolate neighbourhood, hardly anything more than a single blade of grass shooting up here and there from the bottomless drift-sand; and instead of the garden that generally ornaments a baronial residence, the bare walls are approached on the landward side by a thin forest of firs, that ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... for a considerable time beside the fire, eats tenderly. The back-ribs make an excellent roast; indeed, there is not a sweeter or more varied one in the carcass, having both ribs and shoulder. The shoulder-blade eats best cold, and the ribs warm. The ribs make excellent chops. The Leicester and Southdowns afford the best mutton-chops. The breast is mostly a roasting-piece, consisting of rib and shoulder, and is particularly good when cold. When the piece ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the temper of a blade that must be the proof of a good sword, and not the gilding of the hilt or the richness of the scabbard; so it is not his grandeur and possessions that make a man considerable, but his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... for three or four centuries. Yet genuine old swords, of the true steel, are occasionally to be found. They are readily distinguished from modern imitations by their clear and silvery ring when struck, and by the finely watered appearance of the blade, produced by its having been first made of woven wire, and then worked over and over again until it attained the requisite temper. A droll Turk, who is the shekh ed-dellal, or Chief of the Auctioneers, and is nicknamed Abou-Anteeka (the Father of the Antiques), has a large collection ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... is full of treasures; but Beowulf heeds them not, for near him lies Grendel, dead from the wound received the previous night. Again Beowulf swings the great sword and strikes off his enemy's head; and lo, as the venomous blood touches the sword blade, the steel melts like ice before the fire, and only the hilt is left in Beowulf's hand. Taking the hilt and the head, the hero enters the ocean and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... There he showed unmistakable symptoms of insanity, and his end was lamentable. During the Hundred Days, after a conversation with the Emperor, he threw himself against a carving-knife with such violence that the blade came out two inches behind his back. As it was believed at this time that I had incurred the anger of the Emperor, the rumor went abroad that it was I who had committed suicide, and this tragic death was announced in several ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... by Mr. Vane with a joyous thump on the shoulder-blade. "I say, old man, Miss Harding has turned out to be the most fearful doubting Thomas—thinks the whole scheme quite mad and all that sort of thing. I'm far too great a duffer to convert her, but perhaps you might, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... at sunset to consider this subject, and beheld how the departing orb was scattering his beams over the mountains. Every blade of grass was gathering in some rays of beauty, every tree was glittering in the majesty ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... an' blaws himsel' oot! There was mony a conjectur as to hoo he cam by his deith, an' mony a doobt it wasna by fair play. Some said he dee'd by his ain han', driven on til't by the enemy; an' it was true the blade he cairriet was lyin' upo' the grass aside 'im; but ither some 'at exem't him, said the hole i' the side o' 'im was na made wi' that. But o' a' 'at cam to speir efter 'im, the English lord was nane. He hed vainished the country. The general opinyon sattled ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... interest his dress, slashed in the fashion of Henri IV, and his resemblance to the Bearnese monarch in the latter years of his life, though the King's hair had been prevented by the assassin's blade from acquiring the whiteness which that of the old peasant had peacefully attained. A furious pealing of the bells, however, attracted the general attention to the end of the great street, down which was seen filing a long procession, whose banners and glittering pikes rose above ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... departure shouldst thou at any time feel in fear for my safety, then by this token which I leave thee thou shalt know of my fate and lot, good or evil." Then, drawing from his waist-shawl a little hunting-knife like a whittle, he gave it to Princess Perizadah, saying, "Take now this blade and keep it ever by thee; and shouldst thou at any day or hour be solicitous concerning my condition, draw it from its sheath; and if the steel be clean and bright as 'tis now then know that I am alive and safe and sound; but an thou find stains of blood thereon then shalt thou ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and a weight in my heart, feeling it really wasn't a home that I was driving toward. But it was one of those crystal-clear prairie nights when the stars were like electric-lights shining through cut-glass and the air was like a razor-blade wrapped in panne-velvet. It took you out of yourself. It reminded you that you were only an infinitely small atom in the immensity of a crowded big world, and that even your big world was merely a microscopic little mote lost amid its uncounted millions of sister-motes in the infinitudes ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and fully armed, the best knight King Hugo hath. I will lift my sword and bring it down upon him in such wise it shall cleave helm and hauberk, saddle and steed, and the blade shall delve a ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... right, except that in wet weather it ached. In fact he could even tell by it when we were going to have rain. His "blooming barometer" he called it. Here he laughed—a hearty laugh, for he was a genial blade and liked ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... bowl, a hush fell upon all. At the sight of the pipe von Kalbach ground his heel in the turf, and when the word was given he rushed at Richter like a wild beast. You, my friend, who have never heard the whistle of sharp Schlager cannot know the song which a skilled arm draws from the blade. It was music that morning: You should have seen the noble's mighty strokes—'Prim und Second und Terz und Quart'. You would have marked how Richter met him at every blow. Von Kalbach never once took his eyes from the blue smoke from the bowl. He was terrible in his fury, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "he was always on the same side with Lord Gosford and myself. He and his friend, Sir Peter Howell, who was the admiral that took the French squadron, in the glorious administration of Billy Pitt, and afterwards took an island with this same General Denbigh: aye, the old admiral was a hearty blade; a good deal such a looking man ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... our quarterback. We afterwards learned that all four of the backfield wanted to carry the ball over. Crowther reached down and plucked three blades of grass and the halfbacks and the fullback each drew one with the understanding that the one drawing the shortest blade could carry the ball. Much to their astonishment, they found that all the pieces of grass were of the same length. Crowther, who made the ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Marquis d'Espard, whom he wished to see interdicted, in order that he might be made curator. His face was thin as a knife-blade, and he was frigid and severe. Judge Popinot said he reminded him somewhat of Cain. He was one of the deepest personages to be found in the Marquise d'Espard's drawing-room, and was the political half of that woman. [The Commission in Lunacy. Scenes from ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... was so popular, so beloved by the slum-dwellers, that whenever he showed a disposition to spare an opponent, the whole mass of the populace were quick with the mercy-signal: the moment they saw Palus sheathe his blade their arms went up with his, almost before his, thumbs as flat as his, never a thumb out nor any ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... also reduces the weight of the hook, an advantage for dry flies. Of course flies may be tied on any style or grade of hook, but considering the work involved in making the fly, and realizing that with an old razor blade the fly can be quickly removed from the hook should the first attempts prove unsatisfactory, you will see the advantage in using ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... "neat," whether applied to a fish, a cow, a chariot, a laurel, the steps of a temple, or the art of wrestling. He renders "horridus," "in a rude pickle;" "virgo" is generally translated "the young lady;" "vir" is "a gentleman;" "senex" and "senior" are indifferently "the old blade," "the old fellow," or "the old gentleman;" while "summa arx" is "the very tip-top." "Misera" is "poor soul;" "exsilio" means "to bounce forth;" "pellex" is "a miss;" "lumina" are "the peepers;" "turbatum fugere" is "to scower off ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... dressed, sit in his chair on the veranda, and walk about the house and garden a little, the Senora, at ease in her mind about him, had resumed her old habit of long, lonely walks on the place. It had been well said by her servants, that there was not a blade of grass on the estate that the Senora had not seen. She knew every inch of her land. She had a special purpose in walking over it now. She was carefully examining to see whether she could afford to sell to the Ortegas a piece of pasture-land which they greatly desired to buy, as it joined a ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... dreadful thought! It seems to me that the man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evidences of a Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way the man who knows most of the material world should see the most conclusive evidences of design and a Designer. The humblest blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. What force is it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead earth? Who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances that will make flesh and blood and bone ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... quite certain whether the knife was wanted for the purpose of scalping him, or merely with a view of amputating the unruly member which had been the instrument of offence. "Well, take this one," said Nichols, handing him a five-bladed pocket-knife, with the large blade open, "go out and cut me a ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Ferguson was encamped was the top of an eminence some six hundred yards long and about two hundred and fifty yards from one base across to the other; and its shape was that of an Indian paddle, varying from one hundred and twenty yards at the blade to sixty yards at the handle in width. Outcropping boulders upon the outer edge of the plateau afforded some slight shelter for Ferguson's force; but, unsuspicious of attack, Ferguson had made no abatis to protect his camp from the assault to which it was so vulnerable ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... all simple receivers. The understanding, the affections, the moral sentiments, all, are primarily and characteristically, recipients of influence; and only secondarily agents. Now, how different is the value of ore, dead in its silent waiting-places, from the wrought blade, the all but living engine, and the ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... courage was over-swayed. He yielded and ladled out in the old-fashioned way, on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed to be the right amount. Henry immediately sank into a heavy sleep. He died before morning. His chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his death was not necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... outside of the sad atmosphere of human life and its eternal tragedy! A vain effort and a vain thought, since that from which I sought to escape came from nature itself, from every visible thing; every leaf and flower and blade was eloquent of it, and the very sunshine, that gave life and brilliance to all things, was turned ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... 1304. Knife. The knife blade is made of tempered steel, and when put away for a long period should be covered with a light coating ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... Great-heart to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, Thou hast worthily behaved thyself. Let me see thy sword. So he showed it him. When he had taken it in his hand, and looked thereon a while, he said, Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... stretched her aid, Her sympathetic tow and eddy; The oars of air with azure blade, And silent gravities persuade And waft them onward, slow and steady— On ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... find out then," proposed Hal, whipping out his jack-knife, opening a blade and beginning to dig. The crowd grew in size. Messrs. Farnum and Pollard had great difficulty in ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was scarce possible to keep from it; as first, the goats, and wild creatures which I called hares, which, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day, as soon as it came up, and ate it so close, that it could get no time ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... composed: thick steams, From land, from flood up-drawn, dimming the day, " Like a dark ceiling stand: " slow through the air Gossamer floats, or, stretch'd from blade to blade, The wavy ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... me," he exclaimed, "that my sword sleeps in the scabbard, while the enemies of the house of Home triumph." He drew his sword, and approaching the picture of his father, he pressed the weapon to his lips, and continued, "By the soul of my ancestors, I swear upon this blade, that the proud Albany and his creatures shall feel that one Home still lives!" He dashed the weapon back into its sheath, and approaching the stranger, drew him towards the lamp, and said, "Ye are Trotter, who was my cousin's henchman, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Ginger, then pare off the rines of one or two good Lemmons, and slice them thin into the Mutton, when it is almost well stewed between two dishes, and so let them stew together two or three warmes, when they are enough, put them in a clean dish, and take the shoulder blade being well broyled on a grid-iron, and lay it upon your meat, garnishing your dishes with some slices and rinds of the Lemmons, ...
— A Book of Fruits and Flowers • Anonymous
... the soldier's eye Lit with a sudden flame; And as he grasped the ancient blade, He murmured Warren's name; Then said, "My boy, I leave you gold— But what is richer still, I leave you, mark me, mark me now— The sword ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... had flown off to beg from flower to flower, and the Butterfly had fluttered away to his playfellows, the Dragon-fly still remained, poised on a blade of grass. Her slender and burnished body, more brightly and deeply blue than the deep blue sky, glistened in the sun beam; and her net-like wings laughed at the flowers because THEY could not fly, but must stand still and abide the wind and the rain. The Dragon-fly sipped a little of the Child's ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... ashen spear of Ajax with his great sword, at the socket of the blade behind, and cut it quite off; Telamonian Ajax indeed vainly brandished the mutilated spear in his hand; but the brazen blade rang, falling upon the earth at a distance from him. Then Ajax knew in his blameless soul, and shuddered at the deeds of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... He took it from my fingers, dug with its blade, and suddenly from the inside I saw a tiny hole appear in the frame of the sash beside the lock hasp. "Here we are!" He brought his upper half back into the room and held up a wooden plug, painted—dipped in paint—the exact color ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Arthur Bennett always left Mess after that toast, and being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem on the table, when the Chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade. Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the Chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked him desperately in the stomach. Mr Bennett ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... angrily, and wherein lay the subtle distinction which divided my nature from George Bolingbroke's and even from Sally's? The forces of democracy had made way for me, and yet was there something stronger than democracy—and this something, fine and invincible as a blade, I had felt long ago in the presence of Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca. Over my head, under the spreading boughs of the sycamore, a window was lifted, and between the parted lace curtains, the song of Miss Mitty's canary floated out into the street. As the music ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Sacnoth, for, had he done so, the severed end of the tail had still come hurtling on, as some pine tree that the avalanche has hurled point foremost from the cliff right through the broad breast of some mountaineer. So had Leothric been transfixed; but Sacnoth smote sideways with the flat of his blade, and sent the tail whizzing over Leothric's left shoulder; and it rasped upon his armour as it went, and left a groove upon it. Sideways then at Leothric smote the foiled tail of Wong Bongerok, and Sacnoth parried, and the tail ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... now! I THOUGHT I knew every weed and blade in this garden. But HAVEN'T they done well? You see, that gooseberry-bush just shelters them. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... name Rosalind shivered. The thought that followed it sent a knife-cut to her heart. This man that Sally had spoken of so unconsciously was her brother—at least, he was brother enough to her by blood to make that thought a blade to penetrate the core of her mother's soul. It was a case for her strength to show itself in—a case for nettle-grasping with a vengeance. She would grasp this nettle directly; but oh, for one moment—only one moment—just ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... correspondent of the "Frederick Herald," writing from Little Rock, says, "Anthony's knife was about twenty-eight inches in length. They all carry knives here, or pistols. There are several kinds of knives in use—a narrow blade, and about twelve inches long, is called an ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... brought a considerable quanty of corn in payment for the work which the blacksmith had done for them- they are pecuarly attatched to a battle ax formed in a very inconvenient manner in my opinion. it is fabricated of iron only, the blade is extreemly thin, from 7 to nine inches in length and from 43/4, to 6 Inches on it's edge, from whence the sides proceed nearly in a straight line to the eye where it's width is generally not more than an inch. The eye is round & about one inch in diameter. the handle ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... rapid succession, came the keen blade of the lance, and One-eye bore down and throttled a brute that could have killed four such dogs in anything like ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... "Put up your blade, Sir Rowland," rejoined Jonathan, resuming his former calm demeanour, "King James the Third will need it. I have no intention of arresting you. I have a different game to play; and it'll be your own fault, if you don't come off the winner. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of coffee and the oranges. He placed the things, as he took them out, in a large pocket before him, in the front of the coupe. Mr. George took two newspapers out of his knapsack, one for Rollo and one for himself, to spread in their laps while they were eating. Then, with a sharp blade of his pocket knife, he ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... Brahmin conjured the wild demon of revolt to light the horrid torch and bare the greedy blade, he tore a chapter from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... pine protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its flank, and the hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues to lick the ragged edge of snow. Close by, the meadows, spangled with yellow flowers and red and blue, look even more brilliant than if the sun were shining on them. Every cup and blade of grass is drinking. But the scene changes; the mist has turned into rain-clouds, and the steady rain drips down, incessant, blotting out the view. Then, too, what a joy it is if the clouds break towards ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... blow took him so by surprise, that it curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of the open schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and his stump of a tail shut down as close as his owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his jack-knife. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ran on Tom, "why, we mustn't worry, you and I, if the donkey doesn't. Just think,"—he made a fine diversion by pointing with his knife-blade up to the slender spire of the Matterhorn—"we're going up on a little jaunt to-morrow, to ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... that the deceased might have swallowed the weapon after cutting his own throat. This was too much for the public to swallow. As for the idea that the suicide had been effected with a penknife or its blade, or a bit of steel, which had then got buried in the wound, not even the quotation ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... again - The greatly daring, friend o' mine! The simply gallant blade unbought, The soul compassionate, unsought, With no price but the priceless thought Nor purpose than the brave design Of giving that ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... in vain The arrow-storm fierce pours its rain. The king stands on the blood-stained deck, Trampling on many a stout foe's neck; And high above the dinning stound Of helm and axe, and ringing sound Of blade and shield, and raven's cry, Is heard his ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... was successively moistened with clear water, in small compartments, which disposed it to detach itself: then the artist separated it with the rounded point of a knife-blade." ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... they wheeled about a long while. Presently, Al-Abbas cried out at Hodhayfah a cry which astounded him and struck him a stroke, saying, "Take this from the hand of a brave who feareth not the like of thee." Hodhayfah met the sabre-sway with his shield, thinking to ward it off from him; but the blade shore the target in sunder and descending upon his shoulder, came forth gleaming from the tendons of his throat and severed his arm at the armpit; whereupon he fell down, wallowing in his blood, and Al-Abbas turned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... when should he use this weapon of Benjamin Wright's worry, on the two hard hearts? He had made several attempts to use it, only to feel the blade turn in his hand: He had asked Mr. Wright when he was going to talk things over with Samuel, and the old man had instantly declared that he had changed his mind. He had mentioned to his senior warden that Benjamin was troubled about ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... pick. One axe (duplicate handles). Five lbs. wire nails. Three lbs. oakum. Two large files. Two hammers. One jack blade. One large whip saw. One hand saw. One hundred and fifty feet 5/8" rope. A draw knife. Two chisels. One jack knife. One whetstone. Two buckets. Two miner's gold-pans. One frying-pan. One kettle. One Yukon stove. One enamelled iron pot. Two plates. One cup. One teapot. Three knives. Three forks. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... of it, the houses stand on it, the electric cars run over it. It's paper that business is run on. I lose my paper, or I lose my life, it's all the same; it won't alter one grain of sand in all that land, or twist one blade ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... and though of course I could not stop its descent, I so disturbed its direction that it struck only Tom's shoulder; none the less sending him to the ground with a groan. With a curse, I swung my sword—a cut-and-thrust blade-of-all-work, so to speak—with some wild idea of slicing off a part of the rebel's head; but my weapon was hacked where it met him, and so it merely made him reel and drop his musket. The darkness falling the blacker after the glare of the firing, must have cloaked these doings ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... cram themselves into the dark hold. Daniel, at the end farthest from the door, was almost smothered before he could break down the rotten wooden shutter, that, when opened, displayed the weedy yard of the old inn, the full clear light defining the outline of each blade of grass by the delicate black ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... tooth-brush handle broke when she pitted it in conflict against the heavy, old-fashioned lock. We have all read how prisoners, outwitting their gaolers, have filed bars with their pocket nail-scissors, and cut the locks out of old oak doors with the small blade of a penknife. Betty's door was only of pine, but her knife broke off short; and the file on her little scissors wore itself smooth against the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... inginooty. Th' doctors has found th' mickrobe iv ivrything fr'm lumbago to love an' fr'm jandice to jealousy, but if a brick bounces on me head I'm crated up th' same as iv yore an' put away. Rockyfellar can make a pianny out iv a bar'l iv crude ile, but no wan has been able to make a blade iv hair grow on Rockyfellar. They was a doctor over in France that discovered a kind iv a thing that if 'twas pumped into ye wud make ye live till people got so tired iv seein' ye around they cud scream. He died th' nex' ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... to her was Nature's heart It seemed a very living part Of her own self; and bud and blade, And heat and cold, and sun and shade, And dawn and sunset, Spring and Fall, Held raptures ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... shimmer of crimson and gold, repeating the noble splendor of the clouds; the midgelike boats crept from shore to shore; and, midway between Bellaggio and Cadenabbia, the steam-boat, a white speck, drew a silver furrow. To her right a green hill-side—each blade of grass, each flower, each tuft of heath, enskied, transfigured, by the broad light that poured across it from the hidden west. And on the very hill-top a few scattered olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dash my head against the wall. It is idle to think that you can keep a man of my years alive against his will." It was felt to be impossible to persist in the face of this determination, and a young slave-boy brought back the sword. Cato felt the weapon, and finding that the blade was straight and the edge perfect, said, "Now I am my own master." He then read the Phaedo again from beginning to end, and afterwards fell into so profound a sleep that persons standing outside the chamber heard his breathing. About midnight he sent for his physician ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... thee. (Tenderly.) Foster-brother, wilt thou have a good blade of me? It is a gift ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... and stout, and wore striped shirts, and trousers which were like a knife blade in front; also, he fairly radiated prosperity. His talk was all of financial wizardry by which fortunes were made overnight. The firm of Manning & Isaacson was one of the oldest and most prosperous in the street, so he said; and its junior ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... of wonderful beauty was forging past us. In the golden calm, the scintillant sheet of water seemed to be rushing backward, splitting itself over the prow, like a fabric woven of gold and silver drawn rapidly against a keen stationary blade. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... just grazed me as I knocked down the owner, and disarmed him. My wife picked up the sword, as I had no time to stoop, and she stood well at bay with her newly-acquired weapon that a disarmed Arab wished to wrest from her, but dared not close with the naked blade. I had had the fight all my own way, as, being beneath the tree (the boughs of which were very near the ground), the Arabs, who do not understand the use of the point, were unable to use their swords, as their intended cuts ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... conversation of your acquaintances you heard of similar incredible things; a tiny antique Persian rug, which could be folded into an overcoat pocket, for ten thousand dollars; a set of five "art fans," each blade painted by a famous artist and costing forty-three thousand dollars; a crystal cup for eighty thousand; an edition de luxe of the works of Dickens for a hundred thousand; a ruby, the size of a pigeon's ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... die in the dark: Somebody saw him fall, Part of him mud, part of him blood, The rest of him—not at all. And yet I'll bet he was never afraid, And he went as the best of 'em go, For his hand was clenched on his broken blade, And his face was turned to ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... smiled, said something about time and patience, and observed, "that one experiment was not conclusive against a whole nation." Any thing like a general argument Mr. Hardcastle could not comprehend. He knew every blade of grass within the reach of his tether, but could not reach an inch beyond. Any thing like an appeal to benevolent feelings was lost upon him; for he was so frank in his selfishness, that he did not even pretend to be generous. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... swept the long, colourless grasses, rippling in faint waves like a still lake that reflects the sunshine and swaying lightly beneath myriads of gauzy-winged bees that flashed with a droning noise from blade to blade, to find rest in the yellow hearts of the damask roses. Across the white vaults and the low-lying marble slabs innumerable shadows chased, and from above the gnarled old locust trees swept a fringe of vivid green, the slender blossoms hanging in tassels ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... are formed of an anemone divided into two corollas; they have the purple tinge of wine, and her nose is straighter and more delicate than the finest sword-blade. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... single blade was no match for two long oars. The sail was a handicap now. Bela had staked everything on it, and they could not take it down without capsizing the dugout. The oarsmen came rapidly, with derisive shouts in anticipation of ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... circle, twice as many girls with baskets. The man breaks the pod and the girls extract the beans. The man takes the pod in his left hand and gives it a sharp slash with a small cutlass, just cutting through the tough shell of the pod, but not into the beans inside; and then gives the blade, which he has embedded in the shell, a twisting jerk, so that the pod breaks in two with a crisp crack. The girls take the broken pods and scoop out the snow-like beans with a flat wooden spoon or a piece of rib-bone, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... that," replied the prisoner, grimly. "But with the blade of a sword in my face and a lighted cigarette pressed against my body, I preferred acquiescence in a story, which they told me that Kim Syong had ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... poor dry and wrinkled kernel cast into the ground; and there it lieth, swelleth, breaketh, and, one would think, perisheth. But behold, it receiveth life, it chippeth, it putteth forth a blade, and groweth into a stalk. There also appeareth an ear; it also sweetly blossoms, with a full kernel in the ear. It is the same wheat; yet behold how the fashion doth differ from what was sown. And our BRAN will be left behind, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... hand To listen ere we dared to look, And in the hush we joined to make We heard, we knew we heard the brook. A note as from a single place, A slender tinkling fall that made Now drops that floated on the pool Like pearls, and now a silver blade. ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... observed, that to use the narrow blade effectively, it must be projected through the air with the long margin forwardly. Its sustaining power per square foot of surface is much less if forced through ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... in his nightgown, with a drawn sword.) You talk now like a reasonable hostess, That sometimes has a reckoning with her conscience. Host. He still believes he has an inward bruise. Lamp. I would to heaven he had! or that he'd slipped His shoulder blade, or broke a leg or two, (Not that I bear his person any malice,) Or luxed an arm, or even sprained his ankle! Host. Ay, broken anything except his neck. Lamp. However, for a week I'll manage him, Though he had the constitution of a horse— A farrier should prescribe for him. Balth. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... morning before starting, a Persian dagger belonging to one of the caravan-men. He was one of the Bakhtiari, a wild and lawless tribe inhabiting a tract of country (as yet unexplored by Europeans) on the borders of Persia and Asia Minor. The blade of the dagger is purest Damascene work, the handle of fossilized ivory. On the back of the blade is engraved, in letters of inlaid ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... the company. So they all drank to one another, and especially to the catchpole and his bums. But Oudart cursed and damned the wedding to the pit of hell, complaining that one of the bums had utterly disincornifistibulated his nether shoulder-blade. Nevertheless, he scorned to be thought a flincher, and made shift to tope to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... following from the time he was but fifteen years old. All the unruly youths of the neighborhood, sons of free "holders," who owed some sort of military service to Earl Leofric; Geri, his cousin; Winter, whom he called his brother-in-arms; the Wulfrics, the Wulfards, the Azers, and many another wild blade, had banded themselves round a young nobleman more unruly than themselves. Their names were already a terror to all decent folk, at wakes and fairs, alehouses and village sports. They atoned, be it remembered, for their early sins by making those names in ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... confusing. However, we have located two Bowie knives. Since it is assumed that the two gentlemen opponents are not thoroughly familiar with, ah, Bowie knives, it has been suggested that each be given his blade at this time." ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to shuffle along. He removed his hat and revealed white hair that contrasted with his black face, as he smiled in a friendly way. "Good morning, Missy! How is you?" was his greeting. Despite his advanced age, he keeps his garden in excellent condition. Not a blade of grass was to be seen. Asked how he managed to keep it worked so efficiently he proudly answered: "Well Miss, I jus' wuks in it some evvy day dat comes 'cept Sundays and, when you keeps right up wid it dat way, it ain't so hard. Jus' look 'round you! Don't you see I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... dagger was scratching at his shirt. In another second it would be piercing his side. Mascola knew that the blade was sharp. The Italian released his grip on Gregory's throat. With a convulsive shudder he dropped his knife. He was beaten. At the mercy of his enemy. Better take chances with the courts than sure death at ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the scissors drops there will be visitors; if the small blade sticks in the floor it will be children; if the ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... and the raft, with a stout rope to it, was hove overboard, the rope being secured to the bows. At the same time the steering-oar was peaked and fixed into the after-thwart, with the flat of the blade facing the bows. This served as a sail, and kept the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... exclamation: "What are you doing? Take the solder! You are filing away the file!" But the disposition of the young fellow without fear shows in his method with the sword. With a brave thoroughness he reduces the whole blade to steel filings. Mime follows all his movements. "Now I am as old as this cavern and these woods, but such a thing have I never seen! He will succeed with the sword, that I plainly apprehend. In his ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... fist full in the face of one of the yelling savages, and in a moment got possession of the spear which he had poised, while the whirl of Hassan's blade cleared our path. I heard the whirr of a spear as it narrowly missed my head and pierced the ground before me. Wrenching it out of the hard ground I followed Hassan and Denviers as they darted up the zigzag path. On we went, the savages hotly pursuing us, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... escaped. There are four objections to this: First, why should a gentleman so dressy as our friend Glass leave his hat behind him, if he left of his own free will? Second," he continued, moving towards the window, "this is the only exit, and it is locked on the inside. Third, this blade here has a tiny touch of blood at the point, but there is no wound on Mr Todhunter. Mr Glass took that wound away with him, dead or alive. Add to all this primary probability. It is much more likely that the blackmailed person would try ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... was quickly brought to himself by a sharp pinch under the shoulder blade from Kelpie's long teeth: he had forgotten her, and she had taken ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... icicle in the sun. I painted upon Endymion. My husband blasphemes the fierce winds and extreme cold in a very picturesque manner; but the disapprobation he feels is a moral ope, not a physical discomfort. He cleaves the air like a Damascus blade, so finely attempered that he is unharmed. I never knew any person in such fine health as he is; because he is not obtusely well—he has no brute force; but every part of his frame seems in perfect diapason, like a bird's. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... broadly, usually losing most of their pink. The blade is oblong and rounded at the end, at first cupped and then nearly flat, three-fourths of an inch long, narrowed at the base into a short stem-like part and usually hairy there, the edges perhaps wavy but entire. The expanse of the flower may be one and one-half to two ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... fearless trapper wandered far and near in search of signs. His nerves were in a state of tension, his mind always clear, and his head cool. His trained eye scrutinized every part of the country, and in an instant he could detect anything that was strange. A turned leaf, a blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of wild animals, the actions of the birds, were all to him paragraphs written in Nature's ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... guides' work. Diagram No. 1 represents a light axe or pick, of a kind somewhat similar to that recommended by Mr. Stephen, in a paper published a short time ago in the 'Journal.' It has, in the first place, the great advantage of lightness and handiness, while its single blade, to some extent, combines the step-cutting qualities possessed by the two cutters of the ordinary double-headed axe, though the latter instrument is on the whole decidedly superior. The small hammer-headed axe, though the latter instrument is on the whole decidedly superior. The small ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... protested. "It's too horrible; don't let him drown; take him in." They threw him their life-preservers and the stumps of the broken oars. But the Jew saw nothing, heard nothing, clinging to the oar-blade, panting and stupid, his eyes ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... hatchet should be ground with a bevel on each side, and not on one side only, as is customary with a plasterer's lathing hatchet, because the blade of the hatchet is used for trimming off the edges of boards. 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 ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the fervent smith of yore Beat out the glowing blade, Nor wielded in the front of war The weapons that he made, But in the tower at home still plied ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... mueddin was calling the faithful to prayer, at "fegr," when the sun pushes the first ray of steel-coloured light, like the blade of a distant lance, into the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... said Matteo, "comes into the game. I have played it myself, and know what I am talking about. There was Beppina, that fat Venetian hussy—to see her eat! But she always had her whack. Eh, I have been a blade in my day!" ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... upward. There was the stain where the blood had run down from the furrowed wound that had caused his father's death, long after the war and just before the boy was born. The hilt was tarnished, and when he caught it and pulled, the blade came out a little way and stuck fast. Some one stepped on the porch outside and he turned quickly, as he might have turned had some one caught him unsheathing the weapon when ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... the oar was gone, and in his anxiety to regain the blade the tramp nearly lost the second oar. But his efforts were unavailing, and he started to paddle himself to the bank, meanwhile ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... matter of fact. All the money I had in the world was three-and-six. But by a merciful dispensation of Providence the curate had called that morning and left a money-box for subscriptions to the village organ-fund . . . It's wonderful what you can do with a turn for crime and the small blade of a pocket-knife! I don't think I have ever made money quicker!" He looked at the photograph again. "Not that it seemed quick at the moment. I died at least a dozen agonizing deaths in the few minutes I was operating. Have you ever noticed how slowly time goes when ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... when opened, and the top of a box 6 in. square was seen embedded in a barrel containing 25 lbs. of 'excellent gunpowder,' a bottle full of sulphuric acid, and other explosives, as well as a number of detonators, and the blade of a knife (apparently) with a spring attached by a coil of string to the door, the machine being so arranged as to be liable to explode in two ways. The expert who examined the machine said that had the sulphuric acid been liberated, as meant, all our party, twenty ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... Among us, at the crossing of three ways Was slain by robbers, strangers. And my son— God's mercy!—scarcely the third day was gone When Laius took, and by another's hand Out on the desert mountain, where the land Is rock, cast him to die. Through both his feet A blade of iron they drove. Thus did we cheat Apollo of his will. My child could slay No father, and the King could cast away The fear that dogged him, by his child to die Murdered.—Behold the fruits of prophecy! Which heed ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... between him and Ian Stafford. Ian was handsome, exquisitely refined, lean and graceful of figure, with a mind which saw the end of your sentences from the first word, with a skill of speech like a Damascus blade, with knowledge of a half-dozen languages. Ian had an allusiveness of conversation which made human intercourse a perpetual entertainment, and Jasmine's intercourse with him a delight which lingered after his going until his coming again. The contrast was prodigious—and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all these plottings, Antonio Perez adopted another plan, viz., that we should kill him some evening with pistols, stilettoes, or rapiers, and that without delay. I started, therefore, for my country, to find one of my intimate friends, and a stiletto with a very thin blade, a much better weapon than a pistol for murdering a man. I travelled post, and they gave me some bills of exchange of Lorenzo Spinola at Genoa, to get money at Barcelona, and which, in fact, I ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... love you!" she exclaimed. "Can any one ever tell that, I wonder? I know it by this: that every thing in the whole world, even down to the smallest grass-blade, seems to me different because you are alive." She said these words with a passionate vehemence, and tears in her eyes. Then, changing in a second to a mischievous, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... but traces of beauty behind," observed Harold, as they crossed the lawn. The loveliness of the early morning was indeed a pleasant sequel to the rude tempest of the preceding night. The dewdrops glistened upon grass-blade and foliage, and the bosom of the stream flashed merrily ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... with precision the most pleasing effects. His style appears very agreeable and unaffected; he excelled however, only in rural scenery, in which his skies, distant hills, and the barks of the trees, are truly admirable. His foregrounds are always beautifully diversified, and every blade of grass is true to nature. He is not equal in every respect to Hobbima, yet certainly approximates nearer to that celebrated master than any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... supply of pikes and muskets. Many of his followers had, therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out of the tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fastening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole. [384] The tithing men of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be found to the camp. It was impossible, however, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... water," commanded Charles, who had all through kept very calm. "He's shamming. Of course I only used the blade. Here, carry him ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... mocking chimera that saps men's lives! And now, he is—gone, and I am chasing the chimera." Salt tears stung her eyes and blurred the timbered slopes. "They said he was a—a ne'er-do-well. He became almost a joke—" the words ended in a dry sob, as the bright blade of the ax crashed viciously into the rotting panel. A few moments later she picked up an armful of wood, and retracing her steps, piled it neatly behind the stove. She lighted the fire, fetched a pail of water ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... gaze upon the pirate. Jurissa paused for an instant, staggered by the look, and awed by the commanding aspect, of the Venetian. Soon, however, as though indignant at his own momentary hesitation, he rushed forward with a furious shout and uplifted blade. The knife was descending, the next instant it would have entered the heart of Marcello; when an Uzcoque, recognizing by the light of the conflagration the patrician garb of the Proveditore, uttered a cry of surprise, and seized the arm ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the son of Concobar strike with his enchanted weapons, and all the waves of Erin thundered at the stroke. And a great warrior, hearing the thunder, came riding across the plain, and in his hand he held a magic sword with blade of blue. Coming upon the fighting men, he rushed at the son of Fergus from behind, and thrust the blue blade through his heart. 'I would that mine enemy had fought me fair,' said the ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... been one of the typical characteristics of the Guides. When Godby was cut down by a treacherous blow there happened to be two or three men within hail, and these at once dashed to the rescue; but they were disarmed, while the fanatic brandished a razor-edged Afghan blade, and was prepared to sell his life dearly. Sharp eyes and ready wit, however, came to aid. Close by was a tent pitched, the guy ropes tied to long heavy wooden pegs such as are used in India. As quick as thought the ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... quite a long time passes before one realises how the quality of the light has changed; and so, it was day before I knew it. Then the sun came up above the hills; dew began to sparkle, and colour to stain the sky. That first praise of the sun from every bird and leaf and blade of grass, the tremulous flush and chime of dawn! One has strayed far from the heart of things that it should come as something strange and wonderful! Indeed, I noticed that the beasts and birds gazed at me as if I simply could not be there at this hour which so belonged to ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... Simone frowned again, for he had no personal quarrel with Messer Guido Cavalcanti, yet from the very bullness of his nature he would take a dare from no man. So he showed his teeth and eased his blade ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was unusually quick for a big man. He handled his big sword deftly. After much sparring he was too quick for Almo, and the point of his slender blade scratched Almo's splay vizor, nicked his chin, and tore a long shallow slash in the skin of his ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... occasion to carry a thing like that," mocked Reade. Thrusting the blade into a cleft of rock close by, Tom snapped the blade, rendering ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... drew the sword her father had made. She gave a gasp of delight, for well she knew every device in the gold inlaying of the blade, and she looked at Giles with ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and I was the last to leave the cave. As I turned to go, by merest chance, my eye caught sight of a knife handle protruding from a crevice in the rock. I picked it up. It was the short knife Jean Pahusca always wore at his belt. As I looked closely, I saw cut in script letters across the steel blade the name, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the platform, in private gatherings and public meetings, through every medium of social control, let the people hear the Catholic solution of the problems now facing the nations of the world. We have a message to deliver. That message, if it comes to the people shining like a steel blade, sounding like the blare of a trumpet, if it wells up from a fiery heart and drops from burning lips—that message will be heard. In this period of strain and suffering the public mind is keyed to its highest pitch, ready to snap at any moment. Strong feeling has ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... flame, seemingly as solid as a blade of metal, spurted for the length of a foot from the tool's tip. Arlok began cutting the plate with the flame, the blade shearing through the heavy metal as easily as a hot ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the sword, And clove a Talas-tree six fingers thick; Ardjuna seven; and Nanda cut through nine; But two such stems together grew, and both Siddartha's blade shred at one flashing stroke, Keen, but so smooth that the straight trunks upstood, And Nanda cried, "His edge turned!" and the maid Trembled anew seeing the trees erect, Until the Devas of the air, who watched, Blew light breaths from the south, ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... probably, that, owing to his Lilliputian dimensions, I had failed to observe him, and fancying that I would pass on without detecting him. I rode slowly on, and described a semicircle to obtain a shot at his shoulder, and halting my horse, fired from the saddle; he got it in the shoulder-blade, and, as slowly and silently I continued my course, he still stood gazing at me in utter astonishment. Bill and Flam were now slipped by the natives, and in another moment they were barking around him. I shouted loudly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... which there is a cylindrical furnace, and alongside of it there is a well of oil. The car brings the cannon to the edge of the ditch, and a steam crane performs the operation of tempering with as much ease as we would temper a knife blade. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... spot, where he had then waved his farewell, stood the father now. On the grass which they had then covered, flocked the peasants whose wants her childhood had relieved; by the same priest who had blessed her bridals, bent the bridegroom who had plighted its vow. There was not a tree, not a blade of grass withered. The day itself was bright and glorious; such was it when it smiled upon her nuptials. And size—she-but four little years, and all youth's innocence darkened, and earth's beauty come to dust! Alas! not for her, but the mourner ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the officers returned and told the Protonotary to come, for he should be safe. And again he mounted his horse, and struck with the flat of his blade a man who hindered him, and leaped the barrier raised for defence before the palace and rode away. And again his own men mounted and followed him, and overtook him at the cross of Trevi, near by. And one, a giant, seized his bridle and forced him ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... that!" Almost immediately I heard the clash of swords, and turning my head for a moment, saw our seconds engaged. In that same instant of forgetfulness Giraldi was upon me, lunged furiously and ran his blade through my sword arm. There was an assassination, planned ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... The timbers or ribs, which are five or six inches apart, and the stem and stern, are of whalebone; and they are covered with the skins of the seal or walrus sewed neatly together. When driftwood can be found, they employ it. The paddle is double, and made of fir, the edges of the blade being covered with hard bone to secure them ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... a glorious morning in early June; the dew still hung heavy on each grass blade and leaf, making rainbow tapestries that defy description, as the waking sunbeams stole into the heart of each round drop and nestled there; the fresh, cool air was sweet with the breath of a thousand flowers; a beautiful ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... way," said Winthrop, and drawing one of the oars into the boat, he laid a lighted firecracker on the blade and pushed it out again. The firecracker went off with a bang, and in great glee Patty pulled in the other oar and ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... was a skilful swordsman. His fingers had a firm grasp of the hilt and could make the whistling blade flash, hover, and descend where he pleased, while his adversary encountered him with a wavering cowardly spit. How had it come about? The seconds will say, and the evening papers repeat, and to-morrow ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... investigation which seized me, I presently discovered that the heap concealed, as I had suspected, a half-consumed human body, so dreadfully disfigured that it was only with the utmost difficulty I presently succeeded in identifying it as the remains of a Tottie. The metal blade and shank of a Tembu spear—the wooden shaft of which had been consumed by fire—transfixed the throat, and my father's roer, with its stock deeply charred, was still grasped in what remained of the left hand. It was the only body in ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... and properly went about the business. It was nothing new to any of us. The footing was good, as promised. There was no dew. The moon shone fair, and Fortini's blade and mine were out ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... A soft sedge or rush (Juncus laevis), of which coarse kinds of rope and matting are made. A Gaelic term for the blade of an oar. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the intruders, but Rolf put on his helmet and bade his men to retire, which they did in good order. He walked backward through the whole hall, shield on arm and sword in hand, parrying and dealing blows, so that when he left the room, though no blade had touched him, a dozen of the courtiers lay bleeding. But being greatly overmatched, he ordered his men to mount, and they rode ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... he flung his ax at the Centaurian in front of him. The heavy blade cut deep into the thinly armored body. Mortally ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... T squares; in one the blade is solid, as it is shown in Figure 5 on page 20; in another the back of the square is pivoted, so that the blade can be set to draw lines at an angle as well as across the board, which is often very convenient, although this double back prevents the triangles, when used in some ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... donned thigh pieces of steel, wrought strong and fairly by some cunning smith. His hauberk was stout and richly chased, even such a vesture as became so puissant a king. He girt him with his sword, Excalibur. Mighty was the glaive, and long in the blade. It was forged in the Isle of Avalon, and he who brandished it naked in his hand deemed himself a happy man. His helmet gleamed upon his head. The nasal was of gold; circlets of gold adorned the headpiece, with ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... in the beginning of April somebody saw him. It was in the dusk between supper and bed time, walking on the viaduct where he had the park below him. There was a wash of blue still in the sky and a thin blade of a moon tinging it with citron; here and there the light glittered on the trickle of sap on the chafed boughs. It was just here that he met her. She was about his own age, and she was walking oddly, as though unconscious of the city all about her, with short picked steps, and her ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... sword is exhibited one touches neither the hilt nor the scabbard, and of course still less the blade, with the bare hand, but it is taken hold of either with a gloved hand, or with the hand with a handkerchief or piece of cloth wrapped round it. The blade is only half bared, the steel setting is looked at against the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... forth a short dagger. I start with fright when its blade gleams in front of my eyes. I actually believe that she is about to kill me. She laughs, and cuts the ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... of every day. It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying where ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... break down into long ranges of rocky talus and sandy foothills. The arid character of this district is especially pronounced about the margin of the plateau. In the immediate vicinity of the villages there are large areas that do not support a blade of grass, where barren rocks outcrop through drifts of sand or lie piled in confusion at the bases of the cliffs. The canyons that break through the margins of these mesas often have a remarkable similarity of appearance, and the consequent monotony is extremely embarrassing ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... arrive at the place which he had chosen for our watching-place at about half past four. On that spot a hut had been built of lumps of ice, so as to shelter us somewhat from the trying wind which precedes daybreak, a wind so cold as to tear the flesh like a saw, cut it like the blade of a knife, prick it like a poisoned sting, twist it like a pair of pincers, and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... length, tired out and overcome with heat, he sat down to rest, and feeling very much hurt at the way he had been deceived and led on, he shed one little tear. There was no mistake about that tear; he felt it running like a small spider down his cheek, and finally he saw it fall. It fell on to a blade of yellow grass and ran down the blade, then stopped so as to gather itself into a little round drop before touching the ground. Just then, out of the roots of the grass beneath it, crept a tiny dusty black ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. The second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearly always do on a screw. When it ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to their leader's order, Marcel, the taciturn, and Domingo, from whose lips the Britons had scarce heard a syllable, squatted on the catamaran. Marcel wielded a short paddle, and an almost imperceptible dip of its broad blade sent the strangely-built craft across the pool. Once in the shadow, it disappeared completely. There was no visible outlet. The rocks thrust their stark ridge against the sky in a seemingly impassable barrier. Some of the men stared at the jagged crests as though they half ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... two, and all three pulling simultaneously. Sometimes the men stood up, their combined strength being thus apparently more effective in pulling through the rough sea which surrounded the Island. The oars were very thick at the rowlock, tapering off to an almost straight blade, not more than five inches wide. The men pulled well, and soon landed us amid the curious gaze of the inhabitants of the town, who had crowded down to the beach as soon as ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Dover egg beater. Fasten a small piece of string to one of the blades, so that you can tell how many times it goes around. Turn the handle of the beater around once slowly and count how many times the blade goes around. Which moves faster, the handle or the blade? Where would you expect to find more force, in the cogs or in the blades? Test your conclusion this way: Put your finger between the blades and try to pinch it by turning the handle; then place ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... or else it could only be gotten from Tullahoma out of the forage stored there for army consumption. Consequently, corn was rare at that time at Woodbury; two or three ears per day to each horse was the usual issue. Upon some days none was issued. Every blade of grass in the vicinity of the camp was eaten, and the trees were barked by the poor animals as ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... whereupon the light in her eyes became night and she asked him, "Who art thou, O Shaykh of the sons of Ham and what among men is thy name?" He answered, "O daughter of the base, my name is Mas'd, the lifter of horses, when folk slumber and sleep." She made him no reply, but straightway baring her blade, smote him on the nape and the blade came out gleaming from his throat-tendons, whereupon he fell earthwards, weltering in his blood, and Allah hurried his soul to the Fire and abiding-place dire. Then she took the other horse by the bridle and retraced her steps in search of Nur al-Din, whom she ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... is indicated, in a sort of shamefaced way, with the thumb. It is impolite to bare a weapon in public, and Europeans often show their ignorance of native etiquette by asking a Malay visitor to let them examine the blade of the kris he is wearing. It is not considered polite to enquire after the welfare of the female members of a Brunai gentleman's household. For a Malay to uncover his head in your presence would be an impertinence, but a guttural noise in his throat after ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
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