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More "Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and conceited attorney. So miserable was my life rendered by these continued attacks that I was often obliged to lock myself up for days together, never seeing any person save my man Samuel Scrape, who was a very honest blunt fellow, a staunch Cameronian, but withal very little conversant in religious matters. He said he came from a place called Penpunt, which I thought a name so ludicrous that I called him by the name of his native ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... be closed, at the other end it might be open wide enough to allow the cotton to be pulled through by the combing cylinder, and made into waste. In Messrs. Dobson and Barlow's nipper there is neither cloth nor leather on the cushion plate. Its edge is made into a blunt ^, upon which the narrow flat surface of a strip of India rubber or leather fixed in the knife falls to give the nip. By this plan the cushion is applied to the knife instead of to the plate, which of course makes the cushion plate, after it has once been set, a fixture; it also dispenses with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... have the advantage of centering well. The size is indicated on the tang in 32nds of an inch. They are useful in boring holes for short blunt screws as well as deep holes. They cannot be sharpened readily but ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... smoke-smudged coats, Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... has represented it to be. These men do not, like you, get rich upon "wars and rumours of wars;" their high church zeal would not, like yours, treble their business, and bring them into possession of a tolerable fortune in a few years. It is to blunt the assassinating dagger of a marked, and hitherto privileged slanderer, against the character of such men that I admitted the paragraph in question into the Guardian. If you are not the associate of the city Editor in this "crusade ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... mixed the powder—it was empty! "The God of Righteousness hath punished him!" exclaimed Amine; "but O! that this man should have been my father! Yes! it is plain. Frightened at his own wicked, damned intentions, he poured out more wine from the flagon, to blunt his feelings of remorse, and not knowing that the powder was still in the cup, he filled it up and drank himself—the death he meant for another! For another!—and for whom? one wedded to his own daughter!—Philip! my husband! Wert thou ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Government. In the midst of this entanglement, Slidell lost his head, for hope deferred when apparently within reach of its end is a dangerous councilor of state. In his extreme anxiety, Slidell sent to the Emperor a note the blunt rashness of which the writer could not have appreciated. Saying that he feared the Emperor's subordinates might play into the hands of Washington, he threw his fat in the fire by speaking of the ships as "now being constructed at Bordeaux and Nantes for the government ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... in his interesting work, 'Travels in Peru', translated from the German by Thomasina Ross, p. 170, 1847, describes strikingly the effect of an earthquake upon the native and upon the stranger. "No familiarity with the phenomenon can blunt this feeling. The inhabitant of Lima, who from childhood has frequently witnessed these convulsions of nature, is roused from his sleep by the shock, and rushes from his apartment with the cry of 'Misericordia!' The foreigner from the north of Europe, who ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... your unhappy spirit looked out of your eyes at me, and I've spoken to that. I couldn't keep silence. Forgive me, Doctor; I'm a blunt fellow, as you have reason to know. I haven't liked you, and you haven't liked me. We've fought each other all along the line. But your calling me now has touched me very much, and I find myself caring tremendously ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... the cottonwood of the massacre, with blunt white limbs outstretched and dead, as dead as those who were slaughtered at its base and whose very bones have long been dust. The old man walks about it as in a dream. He finds the spot where was the brush-heap beneath which ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... to hold down, and 500 under Fourie, De Wet, and De la Rey around them, the little band made rapid preparation for a desperate resistance: the prisoners were laid upon their faces, the men knocked loopholes in the mud walls of the kraal, and a blunt soldierly answer was returned to ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It was insanity," said the old merchant leaning his head upon his hands. "It seems unkind of the lad to say so when he is so far away, but he was always plain and blunt. 'If the affair did not come off'—he must have some doubts about the matter, else he would not even suppose such a thing. God knows what I should do then. There are other ways—other ways." He passed his hand over his eyes as he spoke, as though to shut out some ugly vision. Such ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... own conscience. Much humor—less wit—has been expended upon the Emperor of Germany's supposed carefulness to reject arbitration because an infringement of his divine rights; a phrase which may well be no more than a blunt expression of the sense that no third party can relieve a man from the obligations of the position to which he is called by God, and that for the duties of that position the man can confidently expect divine guidance and help. Be that as it may, the divine right of conscience will, among Americans, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... Some people claim that Shakespeare wrote the whole of this play. The intellect changes much in life; but never in kind, only in degree. Shakespeare's mind could play with dirt and relish dirt, but it was never base and never blunt. The base mind is betrayed by its conceptions, not by its amusements. Shakespeare's mind could never, at any stage of his career, have sunk to conceive the disgusting scene in which Joan of Arc pleads. Nor could he at any time have planned a play in which ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... from the black veil, against which the rays of the caldron fell blunt, and absorbed into Dark. "Behind us, the light of the circle is extinct; but there, we are guarded from all save the brutal and soulless destroyers. But, before!— but, before!—see, two of the lamps have died out!—see the blank of the gap in the ring! ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of brotherhood such as we know to be deeply felt among our allies in Russia. Of this there must have been germs from the earliest appearance of mankind upon earth. It is one of those most precious things which the development of wealth and class and distinctive culture has tended to blunt in more elaborate civilizations. But when we consider that the full conception of Humanity involves a knowledge of man's evolution, his growth in power, and organization throughout history, as well as the simple but ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... children it must not be made the vehicle of too abstract instruction. In order to make the dictations simple, the child must be perfectly familiar with the terms of direction, up, down, right, left, centre; with the simple names of the planes (squares, half-squares, equal-sided, blunt and sharp-angled triangles, etc.); and he must learn to know the longest edge of each triangle, that he may be able to place ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... every thing about him corresponded with this cheerfulness. The perfect arrangement of his papers, books, and maps produced a favorable impression. His son, Heinrich Sebastian, afterwards known by various writings on art, gave little promise in his youth. Good-natured but dull, not rude but blunt, and without any special liking for instruction, he rather sought to avoid the presence of his father, as he could get all he wanted from his mother. I, on the other hand, grew more and more intimate with the old man, the more I knew of him. As he attended only ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... one, of as good a gentleman's family as any in England: But, continued he, if you can be contented, I'll do what I can to make you happy with him. I believe he loves you, and mutual love must make the marriage-state happy." Mr. Blunt, the owner or proprietor of Paradise, the house inhabited by Lord Mark Kerr, was then at my father's, and knew, if I am not mistaken, from whom the letter came. Be that as it will, no more passed on this subject at that time. The next post I informed Mr. Cranstoun, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... from which all stones as large as a doubled fist are thrown out. For this purpose the miner uses a sluice-fork, which is like a large manure-fork or garden-fork, but has tines which are blunt and of equal width all the way down; the bluntness being intended to prevent the tines from catching in the wood, and the equality of width to prevent the stones from getting ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... suppose—this brief will show it,— Me, Serjeant Woodward,—counsel for the poet. Used to the ground, I know 'tis hard to deal With this dread court, from whence there's no appeal; No tricking here, to blunt the edge of law, Or, damn'd in equity, escape by flaw: But judgment given, your sentence must remain; No writ of error lies—to Drury Lane: Yet when so kind you seem, 'tis past dispute We gain some favour, if not costs of suit. No spleen is here! I see no hoarded fury;— ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... entering the house, was to release White. He was still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his help with a rather blunt pocket-knife, and he rose stiffly and began to chafe the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... papilloma forceps. The broad blunt nose will scalp off the growths without any injury to the normal basal tissues. Voice-destroying and stenosing trauma are ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... Keeper of the Seals in plain terms, that if he continued to treat me as he had done hitherto, he should be obliged in honour to give his testimony to the truth. To which the Keeper of the Seals returned this blunt answer: "The Princes are no longer in sight of Paris; the Coadjutor must not therefore talk ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... stairs with this blunt invitation, and I followed him. So good was his disguise and make-pretence that the others, who were in the narrow hall, drew back, to let him go, not recognising him, and spoke to me, asking what I had done with him. Then I pointed to the new Perfect Fool, and without another word of explanation ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... dolefully, for her ludicrous mistakes and blunt remarks were the bane of her new teacher's methodical life, and many an hour she had been kept after school as a punishment ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... And shame possessed me. Here was the chrysoberyl that all day hides its secret in deeps of lucid green but when the night comes flames with its fiery ecstasy of crimson to the moon, and I—I had been complacently considering whether I might not blunt my own spiritual instinct by companionship with her, while she had been my guide, as infinitely beyond me in insight as she was in all things beautiful. I could have kissed her feet in my deep repentance. True it is that the gateway of the high places is reverence and he who cannot bow his head ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward human nature ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... the blunt declaration. She might have guessed that Echford Flagg would have repulsed a stranger; he had disguised his true sentiments under the excuse ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the cup-bearer's blunt reply. Har-hat shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into silence. Rameses leaned toward Masanath again. The expression on his face during the talk and the tone he chose now showed that he had not heard, nor was even conscious of the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... could feel it way down in my fingers, kind of—the madness. That's why he went to live at Schmitt's after my father got so he couldn't work much. They always had lots to eat at Schmitt's. I didn't ever work there myself," he added with his customary blunt honesty, "because ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... who will curtail their consumption if the price has fallen and it is they who constitute the seller's problem, and help to keep down prices for the rest of us. The rest of us—it is well to be quite blunt about it—simply do not count in this connection. We have no cause then to plume ourselves that we have disproved the truth of economic laws when we declare that we seldom weigh the utility of anything against its price. All that this shows is that our actions are too insignificant to be described ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... attention from us in a work for parents. In the language of Dr. Vogel, 'the effects of this malady are unpleasant, for the psychical development in particular suffers. The repeated punishments which these children undergo blunt their sense of honor considerably; they become cowardly and deceitful, and have no personal spirit. If great and expensive cleanliness is not practised, the bed, and even the whole room, acquires a urinous odor, which contaminates the atmosphere and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... hard buffet in his right side. It wasn't a blow exactly; it was more like a clout from a heavily-shod blunt-ended brogan. His last registered impression as he collapsed on top of the captain was that someone, hurrying up to aid him, had stumbled and driven a booted toe into his ribs. Thereafter for a space events—in so far as Ginsburg's mind ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Malipieri might have doubted the logic of the last statement; but at the present moment he was not very calm, and he turned a pencil nervously in his fingers, standing it alternately on its point and its blunt end, upon the blotting-paper beside him, and looking ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the human heart, to will to practice the understanding too, only on that which concerns our corporal needs, would be to blunt rather than to sharpen it. It absolutely will be exercised on spiritual objects, if it is to attain its perfect illumination, and bring out that purity of heart which makes us capable of loving virtue for its own ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... atonement for my soul?—It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what Jehovah requireth of thee. Nay, it is to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God." Although the blunt statement of the contrast between cultus and religion is peculiarly prophetic, Micah can still take his stand upon this, "It hath been told thee, O man, what Jehovah requires." It is no new matter, but a thing well ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... hard the rock of Sardonix; The steel but grinds, it breaks not, nor grows blunt; Then seeing that he cannot break his sword, Thus to himself he mourns for Durendal: "O good my sword, how bright and pure! Against The sun what flashing light thy blade reflects! When Carle passed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... from the optical distances the one that appeared equal to the cutaneous distance. This process furnished the judgments on open spaces. For the filled spaces, immediately after the two-point distance was given a blunt stylus was drawn from one point to the other, and the subject then again selected the optical distance which seemed equal to this distance filled ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... charms approved, But looking liked, and liking loved. The sight could jealous pangs beguile, And charm Malbecco's cares a while; And he, the wandering squire of dames, Forgot his Columbella's claims, And passion, erst unknown, could gain The breast of blunt Sir Satyrane; Nor durst light Paridel advance, Bold as he was, a looser glance. She charmed at once, and tamed the heart, Incomparable Britomarte! So thou, fair city! disarrayed Of battled wall, and rampart's aid, As stately seem'st, but lovelier ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern policeman into the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... at her escort. "But even if I were, Mr. Pounce, I am in London, not in the dark ages, and as sure of respect here, at the doors of a theatre, as I am in my own drawing-room. I believe, by the way," she added lightly, not liking to hurt him by too blunt a snub, "I believe this is the only big city in Europe of which so much can be said; and English women may thank themselves for it. We demand not protection, but respect. Here is the carriage. Good night!" She stepped in as she spoke, and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... spiritual and moral development of Jim Hartigan. The author assures us that most of the characters are drawn from life, and that some of the main events are historical. All which I can easily believe, for Mr. SETON'S blunt method of describing Jim Hartigan's evolution from an unhallowed stable-boy to a muscular Christian continually suggests reality. It is not a stylish method, but it gets home, and in a tale of this kind that is the main, if not the only, matter of importance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... the matter was, and the men came, too, and pretty soon some one found an arrow in the grass, and then they knew that it was a stray arrow that had hit Jim Leonard on the side of the foot, after missing one of the dimes that was stuck in the ground. It was blunt, and it had not hurt him that anybody could see, except rubbed the skin off a little on the ankle-bone. But Jim Leonard began to limp away towards home, and now, as the Indians had all gone back to their boats, and the fellows had nothing else to do, they ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... joint commission to select the sites for the permanent forts and navyyard of California. This commission was composed of Majors Ogden, Smith, and Leadbetter, of, the army, and Captains Goldsborough, Van Brunt, and Blunt, of the navy. These officers, after a most careful study of the whole subject, selected Mare Island for the navy-yard, and "Benicia" for the storehouses and arsenals of the army. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company also selected Benicia as their depot. Thus was again revived ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... vial, which contained nothing but pure water, and in surprise turned to the emissary for an explanation. But it was too late. The emissary dealt him a blow with a blunt instrument that stunned him and, as he reeled back and grasped at a table, the other thugs rushed from the hall and rained blow after blow on his venerable head and beat him to the floor. A convulsive shudder—a long-drawn-out sigh—and he ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... you and I ought to be," said the big fellow with simple earnestness. "We're out here in a savage land, but we don't want to grow into savages, nor yet to be as blunt and gruff as two bears. I'm not going to forget that the dear old governor at home is a gentleman, even if his sons do rough it ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... Austria-Hungary was notified that Dr. Konstantin Theodor Dumba was no longer acceptable as that country's envoy in Washington. The American note dispatched to Ambassador Penfield at Vienna for transmission to the Austrian Foreign Minister was blunt and direct. After informing Baron Burian that Dr. Dumba had admitted improper conduct in proposing to his Government plans to instigate strikes in American manufacturing plants, the United States thus ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... blunt sincerity, no longer able to be silent, "he has acted like an honest man! I beg your pardon, Mr. Dashwood, but if he had done otherwise, I should have thought him a rascal. I have some little concern in the business, as well as yourself, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Methodists." He was moreover a pure Christian gentleman and a churchman of the straightest sect. There was no cant superstitions or affectation in his make-up, and what he said he meant. It was doubtful if he ever had an evil thought, and while his manners might have been at times blunt, he was always sincere and his language chosen and chaste, with the possible exception during battle. The time of which I speak, the enemy was making a furious assault on the right wing of the Eighth, and as the Major would gently rise to his knees and see the enemy so stubbornly contesting ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... for the mode of reception, when I take mine ease at mine inn, than I do, for old soldiers are not very fastidious, and old travellers still less so; but give me sturdy John Bull, with his blunt plainness and true independence, before the silly insolence of a fellow, who thinks he shows his equality, by lowering the character of a man to that of a brute, in coarse exhibitions of assumed importance, which his vocation of extracting ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... branches are tufts of flat, sword-like, sweet-scented leaves 3 or 4 ft. long and about an inch wide, closely arranged in two rows as in the true Flag (Iris); the tall, flowering stems (scapes), which very much resemble the leaves, bear an apparently lateral, blunt, tapering spike of densely packed, very small flowers. A long leaf (spathe) borne immediately below the spike forms an apparent continuation of the scape, though really a lateral outgrowth from it, the spike of flowers being terminal. The plant has a wide ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was aware of her inquietude, and when they rose at length to leave their secluded corner, he turned and spoke with a certain blunt chivalry ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... glistening with choyas and some other and more numerous white bushes, and here and there towered a green cactus. This region was only a splintered and more devastated part of the volcanic slope, but it was miles in extent. Yaqui peeped over the top of a blunt block of lava and searched the sharp-billowed wilderness. Suddenly he grasped Gale and pointed across a deep ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... have Cap'n Smollett work us back into the trades at least; then we'd have no blessed miscalculations and a spoonful of water a day. But I know the sort you are. I'll finish with 'em at the island, as soon's the blunt's on board, and a pity it is. But you're never happy till you're drunk. Split my sides, I've a sick heart to sail with the likes ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can look only to the people. We count on you, and we shall come to you. If you sustain us we shall take effectual steps to prevent such a deadlock ever occurring again. That is the whole policy of his Majesty's Government—blunt, sober, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... explainable; the exasperating coolness of the man, as much as anything. This morning the boys were teasing Muffin Fan [a small mulatto girl who used to bring muffins into camp three times a week,—at the peril of her life!] and Jemmy Blunt of Company K—you know him—was rather rough on the girl, when Quite So, who had been reading under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked over to where the boys were skylarking, and with the smile of a juvenile angel on his face lifted Jemmy out of that and set him down ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... where the outlaw seems to have balanced his burden, show that he wore leather gloves," Will continued. "You can see the blunt mark where he threw up a hand to steady himself. The fingers of a cloth glove ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... on beating his breast. His forehead was wrinkled in dried- up folds, his brows bristled fantastically into shaggy, dirty tufts. His heavy, blunt nose, powdered with hairs at the tip, stood out obstinately between two deep folds on either side. These folds overhung the corners of his mouth, and were joined below the chin by a network of pallid veins. A noise, light as a beetle's ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... had smiled at Miss Standish's blunt questions; but here, in the depression of spirits caused by overwork and the deadened atmosphere, the words came back to her with overwhelming force. When she rose on the morning after seeing Flint standing in the window at Delmonico's, she found more than one importunate question ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... a man who might have been of peasant origin. An inky black beard hid the lower part of his face, but his nose was blunt and pugnacious, and his eyes were like black shoe-buttons sewn close together. He stuck out his stomach importantly, and the care with which his uniform and decorations were painted strengthened the impression that he had made his career himself ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... that she may get into the saddle before the usual kicking scene commences; once there, he may do what he likes, she is part of her horse, and enjoys his gambols as much as himself. When in female garments, though somewhat brusque in manners and blunt in speech, she is a true woman, and as feminine in heart as the fairest and most delicate among the sex. Madame, the governess, must occupy our attention the next. She was the kindest, best, most loving guardian over her flock, and seemed to have but one unhappiness in the world, and that ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... doubt if you in terms direct had asked Whether beloved the mountains, true it is That with blunt repetition of your words He might have stared at you, and said that they Were frightful to behold, but had you then Discoursed with him . . . . . . . . Of his own business and the goings on Of earth and sky, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... or some semblance of a struggle. Of his many wild doings I recall well the time when—fired by my tales of hunting—he went out to attack the young bull in the paddock with a bow and arrow. It made small difference to the bull that the arrow was too blunt to enter his hide. With a bellow that frightened the idle negroes at the slave quarters, he started for Master Nick. I, who had been taught by my father never to run any unnecessary risk, had taken the precaution to provide as large a stone ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was first called to the subject whilst at work on his figure of Puck, to which he had given pointed ears. He was thus led to examine the ears of various monkeys, and subsequently more carefully those of man. The peculiarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin, or helix. When present, it is developed at birth, and, according to Prof. Ludwig Meyer, more frequently in man than in woman. Mr. Woolner made an exact model of one such case, and sent me the accompanying drawing. (Fig. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... seeing at his elbow a mere lad, Of a high spirit evidently, though At present weighed down by a doom which had O'erthrown even men, he soon began to show A kind of blunt compassion for the sad Lot of so young a partner in the woe, Which for himself he seemed to deem no worse Than any other scrape, a thing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Falconer returned in blunt belief. "Linking your name with that Turk fellow; hinting you were in the palace—he might have started a ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... irretrievably lost before they are aware of it. Let them beware how they take the first step. It is by degrees that men become intemperate. No man ever became so all at once—it is an impossibility in the nature of things. It requires time to harden the heart, to do away shame, to blunt the moral principle, to deaden the intellectual faculties, and temper the body. The intemperance of the day is the natural and legitimate consequence of the customs of society—of genteel and respectable society. It is the common and ordinary ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... with a sudden round-up, on India. I had been trusting to vague outlines of history; I felt when he began to talk that I was dealing with a man who not only knew history, but had lived it. He talked in the fewest but directest words, and waxed eloquent in a blunt and colossal way. But seeing his wife's eyes fixed on him intently, he suddenly pulled up, and no more did I get from him on the subject. He stopped so suddenly that in order to help over the awkwardness, though ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dull to wonder at it. As for me, the boy, I took the changing phenomena of life pretty well for granted, and wasted little of my golden time speculating about such things. But as I look back now on the blunt end of those Urkey days, I seem to see Minister Malden growing smaller as he comes nearer, and Mate Snow growing larger—Mate Snow browbeating the congregation with a more and more menacing righteousness—Minister Malden, in his protecting shadow, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... over-timid at the outset. Be discreet and sparing of your words. Awkwardness is a great misfortune, but it is not an unpardonable fault. To deserve the reputation of moving in good society, something more is requisite than the avoidance of blunt rudeness. Strictly keep to your engagements. Punctuality is the essence ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... which it was sufficiently plain that the purpose of his Majesty was not to bestow peace and tranquillity upon the Netherlands. The names of Fuentes, Clemente, Ybarra, were sufficient in themselves to destroy any such illusion. They spoke in blunt terms of the attempt of Dr. Lopez to poison Queen Elizabeth, at the instigation of Count Fuentes for fifty thousand crowns to be paid by the King of Spain: they charged upon the same Fuentes and upon Ybarra that they had employed the same Andrada to murder ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wrote from Cairo to Paris, telling me that he still had confidence in the moderation of the progressist party represented by Arabi and the Colonels, and that he was managing them through Wilfrid Blunt, who was acting as a go-between; but a little later on the relations between Blunt and Malet became such as to show that each had thought he was using ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... of Livonia, came to Sweden in 1521 to enlist under the banner of Gustavus. He writes like a blunt soldier who revels in the story of a battle. His Beraettelse seems to have been written for the king. It is chiefly a chronicle of Swedish wars, running from 1518 to 1536. The original MS. is in the University Library at Upsala, and seems to have run later than the ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... tug a pause of sickening agony, and then that slow, red-hot suffering again, as if a blunt augur was being made to form a channel beneath the teeth, so that the aching pains, as of hot lead, might run round without let ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... way to the forefront of the younger generation of his profession until, at the age of thirty-five, he had become recognized as one of the most able children's specialists in America. A "man's man," blunt of speech to the point of often offending at first the cultured women with whom his labors brought him into contact, he was worshipped in hundreds of homes as an angel of mercy in strange guise, and was the idol of hundreds ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... change of circumstances, perhaps owing to some improper conduct when in Flanders, the proprietors now took the chief command from Shelvocke, and conferred it upon Clipperton, a man of a blunt, rough, and free-speaking disposition, but of a strict regard to his duty and rigid honesty. Though somewhat passionate, he was soon appeased, and ever ready to repair any injury he had done when heated with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... words seemed to come from a great distance as he said: "Here, you see, he was stabbed. The knife went to the heart. Here he was hit with something heavy and blunt; but it had enough of an edge to cut the scalp and lay the cheek open. The ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... and spare parts should be kept on hand to replace accidental breakage or loss. Other useful syringes are those of 2 c.c., 5 c.c., 10 c.c., and 20 c.c. capacity. A good supply of needles must be kept on hand, both sharp-pointed and with blunt ends. To sterilise the syringe, fill it with water, loosen the packing of the piston and all the screw joints, place it in the steriliser and boil for at least five minutes. Disinfect the syringe after use, in a similar ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the Englishman, touched in his blunt nature by this extraordinary magnanimity. "I will report your consideration to my ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... him When the fray is fierce and grim, And blunt the point of every sword That turns its hate on him. Where round the torn yet dear green flag The brave and lovin' throng— But the lasses of Glenwherry smile At me for ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... leaving to-day and whatever his feelings, he had so far been outwardly the beneficiary of Tollman's hospitality. Nothing was to be gained, except a sort of churlish satisfaction, by assuming at the eleventh hour a blunt and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... met by the wind, Burton anticipated that his own, with its blunt faithfulness to the original and its erotic notes, would be met by whirlwind. Considering the temper of the public [386] at the time he thought it not improbable that an action would be brought against him, and in fancy he perceived himself ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Caleb's blunt expression of resentment again awakened the mirth of the company, which, by the way, he regarded not only as an aggression upon the dignity of the family, but a special contempt of the eloquence with which he himself had summed up the extent of their supposed losses. "A description of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... courts ought to have sessions in the forest; in the forest man's heart remains sound; there one knows what is right and what is wrong without Ifs and Buts. With their secret tricks they have put a string of Ifs and Buts to it; in their dusty, moldy offices it has become sick and blunt and withered, so that they can turn and twist it as they like. And now what is right must be put in writing and have a seal to it, otherwise it is not to be recognized as right. Now they have deprived a man's word of all value ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... a jest,' as Shakespeare tells us, lies less in its own merit than 'in the ear of him that hears it.' If he should happen to be unusually obtuse, the wittiest jest perishes—the most pointed is found blunt. So, with regard to books, should the reader on whom we build prove a sandy and treacherous foundation, the whole edifice, 'temple and tower,' must come to the ground. Should it happen, for instance, that the reader, inflicted upon ourselves for our sins, belongs to that class of people ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... a wooden box, made the size of the canvas bale, which is suspended therein by hooks from the open top; the box has a movable side, which is loosened out to give exit to the bale when pressed. The pressing is done by the feet, assisted by a blunt spade, and the bales are generally very creditably turned out, the sheep-farmer priding himself on a neatly pressed bale. When pressed the end is sewn up and the bale rolled over to a convenient place for branding, when it is ready for loading on ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... occurred deep beneath the surface, and have been brought into view by an enormous superincumbent mass having been denuded. If a large and deep box were filled with layers of damp paper or clay, and a blunt wedge was slowly driven up from beneath, would not the layers above it and on both sides become greatly convoluted, whilst those towards the top would be only slightly arched? When I spoke of the Andes being comparatively recent, I suppose that I referred ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... robbers, who were executed with him. After Eagles had mounted the ladder, and been turned off a short time, he was cut down, before he was at all insensible; a bailiff, named Wm. Swallow, then dragged him to the sledge, and with a common blunt cleaver, hacked off the head: in a manner equally clumsy and cruel, he opened his body and tore out ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a person has to proceed to adopt a baby," was the blunt and surprising remark that came from the one who held the infant. Bansemer ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... was plain and blunt. His was an unattractive front. Yet children loved him; babe and boy Played with the strength he could employ, Without one fear, and they are fleet To sense injustice and deceit. No back door gossip linked his name With any shady tale of shame. ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... indeed a grand fight! The unlucky monster had got thoroughly embayed, and was evidently in a state of consternation, for in its efforts to regain deep water it rushed hither and thither, thrusting its blunt snout continually on some shoal, and wriggling off again with difficulty and enormous splutter. The shouts of men, shrieks of women, and yells of children co-mingled ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... had suffered in rebellion before, a fellow rough and daring, comes boldly to the Prince when the Council rose, and asked him, if he were resolved to engage? He told him, he was. 'Then,' said he, 'give me leave to shoot Philander in the head.' This blunt proposition given, without any manner of reason or circumstance, made the Prince start back a step or two, and ask him his meaning of what he said. 'Sir,' replied the Captain, 'if you will be safe, Philander must ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... modern literature was easy and intimate, and as he perfected himself in his art, he caught the grand manner and high bred ways of the society he frequented. But even to the last he did not quite shake off the blunt rusticity of phrase that was habitual with the generation that preceded him. In the fifth book of the "Faery Queen," where he is describing the passion of Britomart at the supposed infidelity of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... have been remarked that Mr. Yorke varied a little in his phraseology. Now he spoke broad Yorkshire, and anon he expressed himself in very pure English. His manner seemed liable to equal alternations. He could be polite and affable, and he could be blunt and rough. His station then you could not easily determine by his speech and demeanour. Perhaps the appearance of his residence ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is not entirely shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own doings, and a report on the direction of the wind, and so on. Then there are various indents to fill up—scrawled on a wobbly writing-block with a blunt indelible pencil by the light of a guttering candle—for ammunition, and ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... hints and insinuations, that the kingdom had been purposely left unprovided; and that the natives of South Britain had been formerly subdued and expelled by a body of Saxon auxiliaries, whom they had hired for their preservation. In a word, the doubts and suspicions of a people naturally blunt and jealous, were inflamed to such a degree of animosity, that nothing would have restrained them from violent acts of outrage, but the most orderly, modest, and inoffensive behaviour by which both the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... she broke down at last, with a gulp of relief. "It's been an awful evening! Mrs. Cole was detestable. Do you know what she did?" and then came out the whole story pell-mell: all told in Nan's blunt, uncompromising way, and giving Miss Blake a better idea than anything else could have done of just how right she had been in opposing the girl's going under such ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... book. It was Joseph Louden, reasserted Eskew, a little taller, a little paler, incredibly shabby and miraculously thin. If there were any doubt left, his forehead was somewhat disfigured by the scar of an old wound—such as might have been caused by a blunt instrument in the nature of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... already been briefly referred to, and is considered by some critics the greatest of the thirteen. Probably no such sublime ocean has ever been painted. How thoroughly it appeals to those who best know the sea is illustrated by the blunt but expressive compliment bestowed upon it by Admiral Hopkins of the English navy when, in 1892, he saw it in the Union League Club of New York, where it was being privately shown. After silently studying it for some minutes he turned to Mr. Joseph H. Choate, whose guest he was, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... It was a bold, blunt compliment, yet it was uttered with evident sincerity; but she had turned the locket so that she could see the likeness and did not catch the double meaning of his words. So she only answered calmly and earnestly, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the world of men, Among the wielders of the sword and pen I have, as 'twere, detractors by the score,— Reject me not for faults that I deplore And fain would alter,—though, if I were wise, I'd blunt the edge thereof in some disguise Approved of thee! For I've a kind of hope That we'll be ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... flagrant example of the abuse of the rights of conquest. We have been but too familiar, indeed, with similar acts of political injustice, and on a much larger scale, in the present civilized age. But, although the number and splendor of the precedents may blunt our sensibility to the atrocity of the act, they can never constitute a legitimate ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... the hedge of splinter'd teeth, Yet strangers to the tongue, and with blunt stump Pitch-blacken'd sawing the air, said the maim'd churl, "He took them and he drave them to his tower— Some hold he was a table-knight of thine— A hundred ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... strings tones that had either the sweetness or brilliancy of such as are drawn from them by means of the bow or quill. But, notwithstanding it is represented so massive, I should rather suppose it to have been a quill, or piece of ivory in imitation of one, than a stick or blunt ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... her hand over her brow. Tom's blunt words did much to counteract Josiah Crabtree's strange ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... very strong," pursued Mary, who had a blunt downright sort of manner; "I wonder if India will agree with you; I wonder if you ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... girl became inseparable. At night he slept under her bed, reaching his head up in the gray dawn, and licking her face until she covered him up warm beside her. When the trains passed he would stand up on his hind legs, his paws on the sill, his blunt little nose against the pane, whining at the clanging bells, or barking at the great rings of steam and smoke coughed up ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently without its frill; the Pouter with shorter ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... all his final investigations as to Arthur Ferris' secret career in New York City. As the months rolled along he saw the justice of the blunt police officer's judgment, for Miss Alice Worthington seemed to be an administering talent of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set, like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... have prepared a hotchpotch of information of human follies, of contrasts, and of blunt stupidities of which he intended to make a very entertaining series of pages. I have not his talent for bringing such things together, but it may amuse the reader if I merely put in their order one or two of the notes which ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the account of Tacitus. We expect that they will be as brave; but ruder. Still, the details which we get from the life of Agricola are few. They fought from chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt. As the swords of the Bronze period were thin and pointed, this is an argument in favour of iron having become the usual material for warlike weapons as far north as the Grampians. The historical testimony to the inferior civilization of the North ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... been revolting to an English audience: the passion of love, represented on the stage, is certain to be insipid or disgusting, unless it creates smiles or tears: Amelia's love, by Kotzebue, is indelicately blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have endeavoured to attach the attention and sympathy of the audience by whimsical insinuations, rather than coarse abruptness—the same woman, I conceive, ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... learnt with the stick are invaluable to the swordsman. The true way to meet the difficulty would be to supplement stick-play by a course with broad-swords, such as are in use in different London gymnasiums, with blunt edges and ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... When the Synod met the senators demanded that Sigismund should accept the Augsburg Confession as a condition for his election to the throne. To this Sigismund sent the only reply that a good Catholic and an honest man could send, namely, a blunt refusal. His uncle, Duke Karl, the acting regent of Sweden, took steps to seduce the Swedish people from their allegiance to their lawful king, and to prepare the way for his own accession. He proclaimed himself the protector of Lutheranism and endeavoured to win over the bishops ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... house, which is entirely open in front. The roof and sides must be covered. For this purpose the trunks of great spruces are skinned. The woodman rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six feet above, and slashes it perpendicularly; then, with a blunt stick, he crowds off this thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs but a few of these skins to cover the roof; and they make a perfectly water-tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime busy hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingled the ground ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Blunt enough," admitted Mr. Hammond, but without excitement. "Let's see: You have a paper of some kind, I suppose, to ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... The words were blunt; really I think there was no intention to offend, only the simple statement of a fact; but I could see Cummings beginning to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... next in this pigs-in-clover railroad puzzle," was the blunt statement of the need. "Our freight contract with the Transcontinental is about to expire, and I'd like to get it renewed on the same ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the reins. Then, with his broken thigh, that boy mounted the horse (which was not much hurt), rode home, and read a book whilst waiting for the doctor to come and set his limb. Another boy I knew in Australia was bitten by a snake on the finger; with his blunt pocket-knife he cut the finger off and walked home. He suffered no ill ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... grass and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow swordshaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems, there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point—not a perfect point either, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on today, and tomorrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... even the inner jar could blunt Roy's keen anticipation of the whole affair. Miss Arden was his partner in one of the few mixed events. He was to wear her favour for the Tournament—a Marechal Mel rose; and, infatuated as he was, he saw it for a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... revenge was not yet come; it was his deep design to lay the foundation for his own dark actions strong on a rock of apparent confidence and devotion. A long torture and a great over- whelming was his design. He knew himself to be in the scheme of a master-workman, and by-and-by he would blunt the chisel and bend the saw; but not yet. Meanwhile, he hated, admired, schemed, and got a sweet taste on his tongue from aiding David to foil Achmet—Higli and Diaz were of little account; only the injury they felt in seeing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the leader under whom Eustace hoped to serve his king, and learn the art of war. His friend, Monthault, was a transcript of all Lord Goring's faults, to which he added the most cool and determined treachery, under the garb of blunt simplicity and unguarded frankness. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... quite perfect, while many are more or less impaired by modern uses, for which they were not originally intended. In nearly all instances they are grooved, and a few are provided with double splitting or cutting edges; but as a rule these axes were made with one end blunt for pounding or hammering, while the opposite end is provided with an edge. The large pestles and mortars were designed for crushing grain and food, the small ones for grinding and mixing mineral pigments for ceramic ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills,—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare's ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... on that catastrophe which seemed to wreck all Captain Dornton's hopes and blunt his only purpose for declaring himself, hurriedly reassured her, yet was not sorry his agitation had been misunderstood. And what was to be done? There was no train back to London for four hours. He dare not telegraph, and if he did, could he trust to his strange ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... whereas holy men, holding that the subjugation or annihilation of the passions is essential to final beatitude, accomplish this object by bodily austerities, and by avoiding temptation, he proceeded to blunt the edge of the passions with excessive indulgence. And he jeered at the pious, reminding them that their ascetics are safe only in forests, and while keeping a perpetual fast; but that he could subdue his passions in the very presence of what they ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... its remarks and opinions in a sugar-coating, so that the real truth never reaches us. We gradually find, then, that an opinion that soothes our personal vanity and self-esteem is a very pleasant opinion. So long as we cherish that falsehood, so long do we blunt our faculties of progress. Now it seems a very extraordinary thing to me, who have long been accustomed to investigate and direct the psychic side of nature, to find such numbers and numbers of people who don't believe in any psychic ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... to close my fist and then placed one pencil lengthwise so that an end of it was between my first and second finger and the rubber-tipped end lay across my wrist. The other pencil he thrust crosswise so that the pointed end stuck out between the second and third finger and the blunt end between the index ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... every person in the rendezvous had come up, and waited with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then I ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... lost of us twain, Once bound in mirroring thought. She had flung me to dust in her wake; And I, as your convict drags His chain, by the scourge untaught, Bore life for a goad, without aim. I champed the sensations that make Of a ruffled philosophy rags. For them was no meaning too blunt, Nor aspect too cutting of steel. This Earth of the beautiful breasts, Shining up in all colours aflame, To them had visage of hags: A Mother of aches and jests: Soulless, heading a hunt Aimless except for the meal. Hope, with the star on her front; Fear, with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to my work as well by his impure French as the length of his details."—"We are afraid," said some of those visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."—"To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study, intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The amiable MELANCTHON, incapable of a harsh ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... activities in which the best women were cooeperating usefully with men—cooeperating equally as human beings, and no nonsense; not as women at all. There was something mysteriously inviting in this. She had felt a bracing absence of sex in Pond's hectoring catechism and blunt rejection of her. Yes, and in the cool declaration of war from Dr. Vivian, who had grown so hard since May. Busy and serious beings these, who would not be deterred by the flutterings of the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Henry of Bearn, young Conde, and all our leaders, though making use of less blunt speech, were of the same opinion, but the Admiral cared little for his own safety, when there was a ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... will not forego the use of it without an evil greater than to use it, then take it in such a quantity as will be sure to nauseate and prostrate. This will put the next dose farther off; and two or three doses thus administered, will so blunt the appetite, that quitting the practice will appear to be quite a moderate degree of self-denial. Those who never felt the appetite may laugh at such directions as these; but those who know its power, will at least think them worth ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... Amyas, in his blunt simple way, had told him the whole story about Rose Salterne and his brother,—"yes, sweet lad, thou hast chosen the better part, thou and thy brother also, and it shall not be taken from you. Only be strong, lad, and trust in God that He will ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... subject to high-strikes, and don't want Flattery salve," said the boy, in his blunt, simple manner; "all I want is to know whether you, Matty, will go with us to ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the crimes of Timasius was delegated to Saturninus and Procopius; the former of consular rank, the latter still respected as the father-in-law of the emperor Valens. The appearances of a fair and legal proceeding were maintained by the blunt honesty of Procopius; and he yielded with reluctance to the obsequious dexterity of his colleague, who pronounced a sentence of condemnation against the unfortunate Timasius. His immense riches were confiscated in the name of the emperor, and for the benefit of the favorite; and he was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... messengers had been despatched to him, Scudilo the tribune of the Scutarii arrived, a very cunning master of persuasion under the cloak of a rude, blunt disposition. He, by mixing flattering language with his serious conversation, induced him to proceed, when no one else could do so, continually assuring him, with a hypocritical countenance, that his cousin ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the malice of a Jew. Now Mrs. Downe Wright has a real heartfelt satisfaction in saying malicious things, and in thrusting herself into company where she must know she is unwelcome, for the sole purpose of saying them. Yet many people are blessed with such blunt perceptions that they are not at all aware of her real character, and only wonder, when she has left them, what made them feel so uncomfortable when she was present. But she has put me in such a bad ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... affront you, my dear," said Mr. B., "although he'll say to you, and to me, and to my sister too, blunt and rough things. But he'll not stay above a day or two, and we shall not see him again for some years to come; so we'll bear ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... were doing your best, and letting me win all the same, of course; though if I caught you at it I should be furious. But what's the use of trying to teach a blunt creature like you tact? My dear Morris, I assure you I do not believe that your efforts at deception would take in the simplest-minded cow. Why, even Dad sees through you, and the person who can't impose upon my ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... politeness. You know the man who is awkward, shy, clumsy, but who, nevertheless, impresses you with a sense of dignity and force. Why? Because mingled with that awkwardness and so forth *is* dignity. You know the blunt, rough fellow whom you instinctively guess to be affectionate— because there is "something in his tone" or "something in his eyes." In every instance the demeanour, while perhaps seeming to be contrary to the character, is really in accord with it. ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... Coombe-Crombie, twelfth Earl of Dreever ("Spennie" to his relatives and intimates), a light-haired young gentleman of twenty-four, but in reality the possession of his uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Julia Blunt. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... most blunt, pleasant creature, And slander itself must allow him good nature; He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper, Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser; I answer No, no, for he always was wiser; Too courteous, perhaps, or ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... when ordered in debate, With hands uplifted, calm and meek, If honour and reward he seek. Or, when some prudent course he sees Which, spoken, may his king displease He should by hints of dexterous art His counsel to his lord impart. But prudent words are said in vain When the blunt speech brings grief and pain. A high-souled king will scarcely thank The man who shames his royal rank. Five are the shapes that kings assume, Of majesty, of grace, and gloom: Like Indra now, or Agni, now Like the dear Moon, with placid brow: Like mighty Varun now they show, Now ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually overcome—Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so far the most universal language, that any one piece in a particular strain symbolizes all the analogous phenomena spiritual or material—if you can talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony describes ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... August bears come down to an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries. But the creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down if you do not look out. Of a summer evening they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented. The most ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... far from me a meteor—a cloud divided into smaller clouds, some of which were of an azure color, some opaque, and as it were in collision together. They were streaked with translucent irradiations of light, which at one time appeared sharp like the points of swords, at another, blunt like broken swords. The streaks sometimes darted out forwards, at others they drew themselves in again, exactly like combatants; thus those different colored lesser clouds appeared to be at war together; but it was only their manner of sporting with each ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... your work, oncle? You ain' got no chicken wing for arm if you lif' this.—Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with. All same stove-lid." Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny applied the end of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he was not the first ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... began walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked her if ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... drinking water was taken during the month of July at a temperature of 65 deg. F., and into it was dropped a few shreds of fish muscle and brain. It was left uncovered for twelve hours; at the end of that time a small blunt rod was inserted in the now somewhat opalescent water, and a minute drop taken out and properly placed on the microscope, and, with a lens just competent to reveal the minutest objects, examined. The field of view presented is seen in Fig. 1, A. But—with the exception ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... that other eye? Bill," asked the blunt young gentleman, whose head was still running ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... as we can tell, they feed on other living creatures. The ocean floor is a huge dining table for them, where they find very mixed dinners. They eat small fish, sand-worms, shell-fish, Shrimps and young Crabs. The Plaice has strong, blunt teeth in its throat, and is well able to grind up the shells of Cockles and other molluscs, ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... may appear, I have heard an Osage declare, with much seriousness, that "nothing could seem to him less inviting than what the pale face called heaven, and if he was to go there he should not know how to pass his time." With these unsophisticated notions, and the plain, blunt questions with which the Indiana are accustomed to examine all theological matters, it may readily be supposed that a minister of the Gospel would find considerable difficulty in obtaining many ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... that he has not described—namely, his efforts to interest the nobles and prelates of the French court in the upbuilding of Canada. A diary of his life at Paris and Fontainebleau would be among the choicest documents of the early colonial era. But Champlain was too blunt and loyal to set down the story of his relations with the great, and for this portion of his life we must rely upon letters, reports, and memoranda, which are so formal as to lack the atmosphere of that painful but ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... and Alligators belong to that order of reptiles known as Crocodilia. The Alligator's head is broad and blunt; the Crocodile's ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... court it, was alike cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like circumstances?—deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude approaching a Christian ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... farther in their retrenchment, and from cader form'd caer, as the Spaniards now use it, by taking away the letter d according to their ordinary custome, when it is seated in the middle of words. There are another sort of people yet more sturdy and blunt in their formes of speech, who would say Car or Ker by a contraction of the two Vowels into one, as is observable among the Peasants of France, and those of Picardy, who retain very much of Antiquity, which seems to be agreeable with the manner of speech among the ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... live, one cannot think of one's funeral; and so one has to take the world as it is, and still be satisfied; and that was about all the old woman could console herself with. But that the road up which she had to carry the pails from the well should be so heavy; and that the axe should have such a blunt and rusty edge, so that it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could cut the little firewood she had; and that the stuff she was weaving was not sufficient—all this grieved her greatly, and caused her to complain from time ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... rose, freshly cut, were emitting a sweet perfume. He did not hurry unduly with his work; before he applied the knife he asked the girl several times whether she preferred to write with a soft or a hard point, fine or blunt, and whether he should make the quill short or leave it long. He plied her with numerous other questions of this kind, as thoroughly as if he were a writing-master producing a calligraphic work of art. To these detailed questions the girl, in a low voice, made many indefinite replies; now she wanted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... met the commissioner himself, and demanded of him point-blank what he had been doing with the princess. The question was so bluntly put and the man's attitude so impudent that Samson lost his temper and couched his denial in blunt bellicose bad language. The vehemence convinced the questioner that he was lying, as the maharajah was shortly informed. So the fact became established beyond the possibility of refutation that Yasmini had been closeted with Samson ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... presently to trust, and then to believe. She thought often of Venters, but in a dreamy, abstract way. She spent hours teaching and playing with little Fay. And the activity of her mind centered around Lassiter. The direction she had given her will seemed to blunt any branching off of thought from that straight line. The mood came ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... in which Mr. George thus threw the responsibility upon Rollo seemed sometimes to be a little blunt. One would suppose, in some of these cases, from the way in which he spoke and acted, that he did not care at all what became of Rollo, so coolly and with such an air of unconcern did he leave him to his own resources. In fact, Rollo was ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... immersed in thoughts excited by the hints which had been thus wantonly thrown out to inflame his imagination, when all at once, on lifting his eyes, he saw Clement Lindsay coming straight towards him. Gifted was unarmed, except with a pair of blunt scissors, which he carried habitually in his pocket. What should he do? Should he fly? But he was never a good runner, being apt to find himself scant o' breath, like Hamlet, after violent exercise. His demeanor on the occasion, did credit to his sense of his own virtuous conduct and his self-possession. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the committee like that of Diogenes proved a failure. After two attempts and two repulses the committee were not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation by Beriah Green, who was one of the six. "If there is not timber amongst ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get along without one, or go home and stay there until we have grown up to be men." The next day ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... slot, as they say in dear old North Devon. And if you grow up to be a brave healthy man, you may know some day what no slot means, and know too, I hope, what a slot does mean—a broad slot, with blunt claws, which makes a man put out his cigar, and set his teeth, and tighten his girths, when he sees it; and what his rights mean, if he has them, brow, bay, tray, and points; and see something worth seeing between Haddon Wood and Countisbury Cliff, with good Mr. Palk Collyns to ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... there came a brief, blunt note from Amelia Ellen: "Dear Mis Raclift Ef yore a trainurse why don't yo cum an' take car o' my Mis Brownleigh She aint long fer heer an she's wearyin to see yo She as gotta hev one, a trainurse I mean Yors respectfooly ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... side of the west door, is a copy of A Collection of Cases and other Discourses to recover Dissenters to the Church of England, small 8vo., 1718. The Paraphrase of Erasmus may probably be added to the list (see Professor Blunt's Sketch of the History of the Reformation, 10th edit., p. 130.), though I cannot call to mind any church in which a copy of this work may now be found. In the noble minster church at Wimborne, Dorsetshire, is a rather large ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... tell them they make me affected," exclaimed she. "If I like to be quiet and do things prettily, they teaze me for being affected, and I'm forced to be as plain and blunt as their are, and I don't like it! I wish I was grown up. I wish I was ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... friends did not fail to take advantage of his absence. When the Synod met the senators demanded that Sigismund should accept the Augsburg Confession as a condition for his election to the throne. To this Sigismund sent the only reply that a good Catholic and an honest man could send, namely, a blunt refusal. His uncle, Duke Karl, the acting regent of Sweden, took steps to seduce the Swedish people from their allegiance to their lawful king, and to prepare the way for his own accession. He proclaimed himself the protector ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... the roll which he had in his hand. It was a species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin, saying, "The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a match," and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the word "Republic." Then turning over the leaves, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... have made good use of your time at school; you have got your Seneca cleverly by heart. But, my good friend, you will not be able with these fine phrases to cajole nature in the hour of suffering; they will never blunt the biting tooth of remorse. Ponder on it well, my son! (Takes him by the hand.) I advise you as a father. First learn the depth of the abyss before you plunge headlong into it. If in this world you can catch a single ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as for them," said Master Jonson, in his blunt, outspoken way, "I'll think thee a thought offhand to serve the turn. What? Why, this tanner calls us vagabonds. Vagabonds, forsooth! Yet vagabonds are gallows-birds, and gallows-birds are ravens. And ravens, men say, do foster forlorn children. Take my point? Good, then; let us ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... sniffed at the vial, which contained nothing but pure water, and in surprise turned to the emissary for an explanation. But it was too late. The emissary dealt him a blow with a blunt instrument that stunned him and, as he reeled back and grasped at a table, the other thugs rushed from the hall and rained blow after blow on his venerable head and beat him to the floor. A convulsive shudder—a long-drawn-out ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... her, but it soon over, and so up and with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen to St. James's, and there did our business with the Duke, and thence homeward straight, calling at the Coffee-house, and there had very good discourse with Sir——Blunt and Dr. Whistler about Egypt and other things. So home to dinner, my wife having put on to-day her winter new suit of moyre, which is handsome, and so after dinner I did give her L15 to lay out in linen and necessaries for the house and to buy a suit for Pall, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Let a man have one of these blades, with a hand to wield it and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. He need not fear its holding, if he can but tell how to lay on. Its edges will never blunt. It will cut flesh and bones, and soul and spirit, and all (Eph. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... supplied with water by giant windmills which clacked and creaked above the trees in the high-noon breeze. To the left, across the river, back from the long, slow rise of sand from the water's edge, rose five blunt heights like craters long extinct; while above these, arching across the heavens in spotless sheen, curved the turquoise dome of a southwestern midday sky, flooding the dust and dunes below in throbbing heat-rays. It was God's own section of earth, and not the least ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... humor—less wit—has been expended upon the Emperor of Germany's supposed carefulness to reject arbitration because an infringement of his divine rights; a phrase which may well be no more than a blunt expression of the sense that no third party can relieve a man from the obligations of the position to which he is called by God, and that for the duties of that position the man can confidently ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... what he would with them. How true I cannot tell. Here we sat very late and for want of money, which lies heavy upon us, did nothing of business almost. Thence home with my Lord Bruncker to dinner where very merry with him and his doxy. After dinner comes Colonell Blunt in his new chariot made with springs; as that was of wicker, wherein a while since we rode at his house. And he hath rode, he says, now this journey, many miles in it with one horse, and out-drives any ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... nails, an inch and a quarter long and 1/8 in. thick in the middle. These I weighed, and selected such as were nearly of the same weight. I then arranged matters so that by removing a prop I could cause the blunt edge of a steel chisel weighted to 4lb. 2oz., to fall from a given height upon the middle of the nail as it was supported from each end, 1-1/16 in. asunder. In order to secure the absolute fairness of the trials, the nails were taken at random, and an experiment with ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... expected opposition, but was unprepared for anything so blunt and business-like. "I think you and Bob can talk more freely if I ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... seconds. We had left the business of cutting my bonds almost too late. In the darkness of the bush the strips of hide could only be felt for, and my Kaffir had a woefully blunt knife. Reims are always tough to sever, and mine had to be sawn through. Soon my arms were free, and I was plucking at my other bonds. The worst were those on my ankles below the horse's belly. The Kaffir fumbled away in the dark, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... be blunt with you," began Prokofyi. "This business must not happen because, as you know, people will neither forgive you nor us for such a vale of tears. Mother, of course, is too dutiful to say anything unpleasant to you herself, and tell you that your sister must go somewhere else because of ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... green" in our optics, accompanying the query by an elevation of the right eyelid with the forefinger. Now, regarding this merely as a "fast" custom, I marvelled greatly at finding a similar action noted by worthy Master Blunt, as conveying to his mind an analogous meaning. I can scarcely credit its antiquity; but what other meaning can I understand from the episode he {363} relates? He had been trying to pass himself off as a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... BAT, (RHINOLOPHUS AURANTIUS.) t. 1. f. 1.—Ears moderate, naked, rather pointed at the end; nose-leaf large, central process small, scarcely lobed, blunt at the top; fur elongate, soft, bright orange, the hairs of the back with short brown tips, of the under side rather paler, of the face rather darker; female pale yellow, with brown tips to the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... scientific navigator. He knows the color and taste of the water all along shore from Cape Farewell to the Horn, and can tell the latitude and longitude of any place on the chart without consulting it. Bowditch's Epitome, and Blunt's Coast Pilot, seem to him the only books in the world worth consulting, though I should, perhaps, except Marryatt's novels and Tom Cringle's Log. But of matters connected with the shore Mr. Brewster is as ignorant as a child unborn. He holds all landsmen but ship-builders, owners, and riggers, in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... every spot associated with Trennahan,—not once, but many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinct that the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third day she had ordered the earlier associations on duty, and managed to confuse them somewhat with those which had held possession for so brief a time. She was determined to succeed. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... perceptible breath. The blunt tip of his shoe was jammed squarely against her toe. She withdrew her foot, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... with only a word or two of modification, because some truth and clearness of incipient notion will be conveyed by it to young readers, from which I can afterwards lop the errors, and into which I can graft the finer facts, better than if I had a less blunt embryo to begin with. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... had been met by the wind, Burton anticipated that his own, with its blunt faithfulness to the original and its erotic notes, would be met by whirlwind. Considering the temper of the public [386] at the time he thought it not improbable that an action would be brought against him, and in fancy he perceived himself standing ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... had just reached the German Foreign Office at the moment when the American Ambassador arrived to inform the Under Secretary of State, Zimmermann, in his customary blunt and abrupt manner, that Germany must yield to America's demands or war would inevitably follow. Zimmermann thereupon, with the object of causing Mr. Gerard to moderate his tone, showed him Dumba's wire, which pointed to the inference that the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... way, in the tallest posting-chaise ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if he were peeping over a garden wall; while the postilion, concentrated essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his animated conversation, to touch his hat to a blunt-nosed little Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, enshrined in a plaster Punch's show outside ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... structure, combining features of the hog and the ruminants. Primitive deer and oxen begin in the Miocene, and seem to have an earlier representative in certain American animals (Protoceras), of which the male has a pair of blunt outgrowths between the ears. The first true deer are hornless (like the primitive muskdeer of Asia to-day), but by the middle of the Miocene the males have small two-pronged antlers, and as the period proceeds three or four ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... the grotesque—would it not have been agreeable to hear something more than two lines from the lips of a lover so stout-hearted, yet so ardent, in his own rough, blunt way, as he who has thus commenced ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... is the newes? Nor. First to thy Sacred State, wish I all happinesse: The next newes is, I haue to London sent The heads of Salsbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent: The manner of their taking may appeare At large discoursed ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man. If you will turn over your old memories, I think the sensations of this sort you remember will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more than a blunt, general sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of well-being in bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and the true commander of man's soul and body—alas! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... steps over the city pavement is supposed to be a feat no other animal can equal. No doubt the artificial life a horse lives in England, giving so little play to many of his most important faculties, has served to blunt them. He is a splendid creature; but the noble bearing, the dash and reckless courage that distinguish him from the modest horse of the desert, have not been acquired without a corresponding loss in other things. When ridden by night the Indian horse—and sometimes the same habit ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... fancied security have spied upon their adopted Mother, I loathe and spit upon. I have taken the police oath of obedience to my superiors, and I have kept it, but I have never sworn allegiance to His Majesty your King, whom I pray that God may preserve though I am his enemy. To your blunt English mind, untrained in logic, my sentiments and actions may lack consistency. But no. Those agents whom we have run down, you and I, were traitors—traitors to England. Of all traitors for whom ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the summer of 1608 and in the following winter always being well received and refreshed before leaving. There is clear evidence that the first post established by the Colonists for trade with the Indians was here where Indians and whites lived together in some number. When, however, Humphry Blunt out of Fort Algernourne, that is Old Point Comfort, was killed by Indians at Nansemond, Sir Thomas Gates used the opportunity to punish the Indians by driving the Kecoughtans away from their cornfields and ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... audience he was M. Chardon. Lucien's courage sank under their inquisitive eyes. He could read his plebeian name in the mere movements of their lips, and hear the anticipatory criticisms made in the blunt, provincial fashion that too often borders on rudeness. He had not expected this prolonged ordeal of pin-pricks; it put him still more out of humor with himself. He grew impatient to begin the reading, for then he could assume an attitude which should put an end to his mental torments; ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... only, few would have given Villiers credit for being the man of penetrative and almost classic refinement he really was,—he looked far more athletic than aesthetic. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a round, blunt head firmly set on a full, strong throat, he had, on the whole, a somewhat obstinate and pugilistic air which totally belied his nature. His features, open and ruddy, were, without being handsome, decidedly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... [Note 292: /blunt:/ dull, slow. Or there may be a quibble involved in connection with 'mettle' in the next line. Brutus alludes to the 'tardy form' (l. 296) Casca has just 'put on' in winding so long about the matter before ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... philosophers themselves doubted to reckon it among their chiefest good. But what if I show you that I am both the beginning and end of this so great good also? Nor shall I go about to prove it by fallacies, sorites, dilemmas, or other the like subtleties of logicians, but after my blunt way point out the thing as clearly as it were ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... roots of grass with his hard, blunt fingers. Then he took up his pipe again and turned the stem about between his teeth. And the while he cast glances at Jack, side ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and at concealing Bismarck was past master. While usually figured as a blunt, bold, tyrannical man, there was also a side of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... and searched, and after a long time did actually discover the crooked and badly made bow and the blunt arrow. ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... might have doubted the logic of the last statement; but at the present moment he was not very calm, and he turned a pencil nervously in his fingers, standing it alternately on its point and its blunt end, upon the blotting-paper beside him, and looking ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... labour which his horse might still have to undergo, he had time to consider maturely in what manner he should address the Dwarf, in order to extract from him the knowledge which he supposed him to be in possession of concerning the authors of his misfortunes. Hobbie, though blunt, plain of speech, and hot of disposition, like most of his countrymen, was by no means deficient in the shrewdness which is also their characteristic. He reflected, that from what he had observed on the memorable night when the Dwarf was first seen, and ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... in the act of dressing when a knock sounded at the outer door; Hinge marched off to answer it, returning with a large visiting-card edged with a line of mourning. He presented this to me, and I read the words "Count Ruffiano," printed very badly in blunt script type. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... full of bees—bees sallying forth for honey, bees returning with honey, bees trampling on each other's heels, bees pausing in mid-air to pass the time of day with rivals on competing lines of traffic. Blunt-bodied drones whizzed to and fro with a noise like miniature high-powered automobiles, as if anxious to convey the idea of being tremendously busy without going to the length of doing any actual work. One of these blundered ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... birds, is very shy, sleeping during the day, and employing the night in search of food. The fur of the older animals is preferred to the younger. It is taken by snares and traps, and sometimes shot with blunt arrows. Attempts have been made to domesticate it; but it is extremely wild and ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... cannot come every day to woo. You knew my father: he is dead, and has left me heir to all his lands and goods. Then tell me, if I get your daughter's love, what dowry you will give with her." Baptista thought his manner was somewhat blunt for a lover; but being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... absence had passed unnoticed. Nor did my good friend the captain utter a word to them of what he knew. But afterwards he called me to him and set me upon his knee. How big, and kind, and strong he was, and how I loved his bluff soldier's face and blunt ways. And when at last he spoke, his words burnt deep in my memory, so that even now I can ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... As for phrenology! he never believed in a single bump, and cites his own contracted forehead as the very strongest proof against the theory. Indeed, there is nothing remarkable in our host's countenance, if we except its floridness; but a blunt nose protruding over a wide mouth and flat chin gives the contour of his face an expression not the most prepossessing. He has been heard to say, "A man who didn't love himself wasn't worth loving:" and, to show his belief in this principle of nature, he adorns his face with thick red whiskers, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... had found that he would not want it, and it had been all night in the custody of the mistress of the establishment. Nevertheless his clothes were examined minutely, but without affording any evidence against him. That Mr. Bonteen had been killed with some blunt weapon, such as a life-preserver, was assumed by the police, but no such weapon was in the possession of Mr. Emilius, nor had any such weapon yet been found. He was, however, in custody, with no evidence against him except ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... This young man was the foreman of a tailor's establishment, and Roger wasted no more consideration upon him than upon the rest of them. Before the assembled horde he made his proposition with a blunt, business-like brutality which almost startled him at the moment, and which disgusted him with himself for a fortnight ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... them like those of a sullen child who does not want to see. But Miss Edwards appeared to be not easily depressed. She waved her hand in friendly thanks for the cigarette case which Francey tossed across to her, and, having selected her cigarette with blunt, viciously manicured fingers, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... has no more foundation than the myth of the wisdom of the owl. A savage sees but few sights, hears but few sounds, tastes but few flavors, smells but few odors; his whole sensuous life is narrow and blunt, and his facts that are made up of the combination of sensuous impressions are few. In comparison, the civilized man has his vision extended away toward the infinitesimal and away toward the infinite; his perception of sound ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... qualified by the implied condition that such consent must not be unreasonably withheld. In the private law of England equity has long since grafted this implication upon prohibitions against assignment. If, however, the Government had been content with a blunt non possumus, a case could no doubt have been made out for insisting upon their pound of flesh. They chose, however, to do the one thing which was neither dignified nor defensible: they offered to assent to an assignment on condition ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... to answer this question. Early in the struggle to get munitions for our soldiers a meeting of all the principal manufacturers of armaments was held in Whitehall with the object of persuading them to pool their trade secrets. For a long time this meeting was nothing more than a succession of blunt speeches on the part of provincial manufacturers, showing with an unanswerable commercial logic that the suggestion of revealing these secrets on which their fortunes depended was beyond the bounds of reason. All the interjected ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... and rejoined, "The blunt weapon that I carry would surely not cost Caesar his life, even if he were no ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... creature that was once so gay and jumpy-jumpy: father is no such far cry from pater:—but oh what a change in sprightliness of habits is here! Time has worn away his head and limbs to almost unrecognisable blunt excrescences. Bid him move off into the oblique cases, and if he can help it, he will not budge; you must shove him with a verb; you must goad him with a little sharp preposition behind; and then he just ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... a calm evening in the autumn 1756 when Teddy Maroon, smoking a little black pipe, sauntered towards the residence of old John Potter. On reaching the door he extinguished the little pipe by the summary process of thrusting the point of his blunt forefinger into the bowl, and deposited it hot in his vest pocket. His tap was answered by a small servant girl, with a very red and ragged head of hair, who ushered him into the presence of the aged couple. They were ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... verses, and poured them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunel's mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a celebrated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rebellion all over Judea, imagining that the prophesied time of deliverance was come, and that the warlike Messiah of their imagination was at hand. Nero was much enraged at the tidings, and sent an army, under a plain blunt general, named Vespasian, to punish the revolt. This army subdued Galilee and Samaria, and was already surrounding Jerusalem, when Vespasian heard that there had been a great rebellion at home, and that ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... almost to explosion. A crisis impended, out of the very speechlessness of the gathering. Mrs. Potts was aghast in behalf of William Shakspere, and Marcella Eubanks was crimsoning at the blunt query about Byron, well knowing that he could be taken up by a lady only with the wariest caution, and that he would much better be let alone. The others were torn demoralizingly between these two ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Blimbey William Blimbey Joseph Blinde William Bliss Samuel Blissread Juan Blodgett Seth Blodgett John Blond Lewis Blone Louis Blong Peter Bloome (2) Samuel Bloomfield Jomes Blossom James Blowen John Bloxand William Bluard George Blumbarg George Blunt (4) William Blythe Matthew Boar John Bobier John Bobgier Joseph Bobham Jonathan Bocross Lewis Bodin Peter Bodwayne John Boelourne Christopher Boen Purdon Boen Roper Bogat James Boggart Ralph Bogle Nicholas Boiad Pierre Boilon William ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... the fragments of another blunt arrow came to light, broken underfoot and trampled into the dust. The paper scroll, in tatters, held only a few marks legible through dirt and heel-prints: "Listen—work fast—many bags—watch closely." And still nothing happened to explain ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... sonnet-honoured lady should have, including locks of gold. But the fact that the poet has slyly changed the word "amber" to "snary" in sonnet xiv., and "golden" to "sable" in sonnet xxxviii., looks as if he desired to shield her personality from too blunt a guess. However, many hints are given; she lives in the "joyful North," ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... competitor. Now presently Ile giue her father notice Of their disguising and pretended flight: Who (all inrag'd) will banish Valentine: For Thurio he intends shall wed his daughter, But Valentine being gon, Ile quickely crosse By some slie tricke, blunt Thurio's dull proceeding. Loue lend me wings, to make my purpose swift As thou hast lent me ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... The extent of the peril and the carnage which Halkett's brigade had to encounter, may be judged of by the fact that this light company marched into the field three officers and fifty-one men, and that at the end of the battle they stood one officer and ten men. Major Macready's blunt soldierly account of what he actually saw and felt, gives a far better idea of the terrific scene, than can be gained from the polished generalisations which the conventional style of history requires, or even from the glowing stanzas of the poet. During the earlier ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... possessed at least the merit of expressing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians. They never swerved from their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They preferred to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... will give more fruit in the first ten years than three trees carelessly put in. Get the tree so that it will be one to three inches deeper in the soil than when growing in the nursery. Work the soil in firmly about the roots with the fingers or a blunt wooden "tamper"; do not be afraid to use your feet. When the roots are well covered, firm the tree in by putting all your weight upon the soil around it. See that it is planted straight, and if the "whip," or small trunk, is not straight stake ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... Holloway grunted with disgust—it may have been a variety of professional jealousy. Who knows? However, the problem fascinated the mysterious young woman, who blushed, in spite of herself, when Shirley put his blunt question ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Ercole and tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve to ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... if you in terms direct had asked Whether beloved the mountains, true it is That with blunt repetition of your words He might have stared at you, and said that they Were frightful to behold, but had you then Discoursed with him . . . . . . . . Of his own business and the goings on Of earth ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and then. He posed as "a plain, blunt man," but back of the forthright handgrip, the bluff directness of manner, Frank scented a massive and wily self-interest. He respected the man for his power, his ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... his deductions. He fought every day and year of the Civil War for the cause of the South. He had labored every day since Appomattox to better the conditions he had been active in unsettling. The soul of honor, as courtly as a king, as keen as a flint, as blunt as a sledge, as ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... mademoiselle—you are very condescending and polite, and I am very blunt and rude, or whatever you please to think me. But the fact is, that I am not to be flattered by what the French call des petites attentions: they are suited to little minds, but not to me. You will ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... objected Wright soothingly. "I agreed to that only if there'd been something wrong. I'm not satisfied yet." He turned to Susan, said in his gruff, blunt way: ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... stood ajar, opened a little wider, and a dog's head appeared, followed by a tail, which waggled so beseechingly for leave to come farther that Clover, who liked dogs, put out her hand at once. He was not pretty, being of a pepper-and-salt color, with a blunt nose and no particular sort of a tail, but looked good-natured; and Clover fondled him cordially, while Mr. Eels took his cane out of his mouth to ask, "What kind of a dog is that, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. [2] In that still place she, hoarded in herself, Grew, seldom seen: not less among us lived Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not heard Of Rose, the Gardener's daughter? Where was he, So blunt in memory, so old at heart, At such a distance from his youth in grief, That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... conjoined with one of the bitter things which Ecclesiastes is fond of saying about those whom he calls 'fools.' It seems to repeat, under another metaphor, the same idea which has been presented in a previous verse, where we read: 'If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct.' That is to say, skill is better than strength; brain saves muscle; better sharpen your axe than put yourself into a perspiration, hitting fierce blows with a blunt one. The prerogative of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... consequence when connected with a great name, or when they throw any light on a distinguished character. Spence thus relates a story told by Pope: "Dr. Swift had an odd blunt way that is mistaken by strangers for ill nature. It is so odd that there is no describing it but by facts. I'll tell you one that first comes into my head. One evening Gay and I went to see him: you know how intimately we were all acquainted. On our ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things. I suppose that we shall never here bring these wills of ours into perfect correspondence with His, any more than we shall ever, with our shaking hands and blunt pencils, draw a perfectly straight line. But if will and heart are brought even to a rude approach to parallelism with His, if we accept His voice when He takes away, and obey it when He commands, we shall be quiet and peaceful. We shall be strong and unwearied, freed from corroding cares ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... back of her, but there was something in Charles Westmacott's clumsiness of speech which was more moving than the words of the most eloquent of pleaders. He paused, he stammered, he caught his breath between the words, and he blurted out in little blunt phrases all the hopes of his heart. If love had not come to her yet, there was at least pity and sympathy, which are nearly akin to it. Wonder there was also that one so weak and frail as she should shake this strong man so, should have the whole course of his life waiting for her decision. ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... orders to the men, so that they might row toward the spot where the whale was likely to rise, and so give him a chance to hurl his harpoon before the animal had time to dive again. But this was not easy. Whether the curious blunt-nosed, white-skinned, active creature, with its back clear of all fish-like fin, was on the alert for the coming harpoon or for the meal it was seeking it is impossible to say, but certainly it showed a remarkable activity in keeping just out of reach. It would rise just exactly where not expected, ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... fact of her marriage, but the vicar, whose blunt, honest nature never thought of concealment, imparted ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... serial; opening of cells in central rows, oval, sometimes square below; and the cell frequently produced into a shallow arcuate cavity. A short blunt spine on each side of the mouth. Marginal cells shallow, opening oval, margin much thickened, granulated: usually a short conical spine at the summit; a very minute sessile avicularium behind the outer edge, superiorly. Vibracula very ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... already begun making campaign speeches in his neatly polished orations which painfully eschewed all show of ornament or passion; and Caesar himself, efficiency personified, had demonstrated that the leader of a democratic rabble must be a master of blunt phrases. But Calvus did not threaten to become a political force, Calidius was too even-tempered, and Caesar was now in the north, fighting with other weapons. Cicero's prestige still seemed unbroken. It was not till Caesar crossed ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... mind. He could never find such another workman. In the uncertainty of the moment, as often happens, details rose to his remembrance and produced their effect. He recollected the particular way in which Gianbattista used to hold the blunt chisel in first tracing over the drawing on a silver plate. He had never seen any one do ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... and dashed out, but a furious blow fell before he was quite clear of the doorway. With such force was it delivered that the blunt metal cut into the edge of the door like a sword; the jamb was smashed, and even Monckton, who received but one-fourth of the blow, fell upon his hands and knees into the hall and was stunned for a moment, but fearing worse, staggered out of the hall door, which, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the rock became alive! Two ink-black eyes appeared, bulging, oval, implacable; and between them opened a great, hooked beak, like a giant parrot's. There was no separate head behind this gaping beak, but eyes and beak merely marked the blunt end of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... headstones. Captain Pullen, having amassed sufficient of this world's goods, lived in peaceful seclusion, far removed from the worldly strife he wished to avoid. With his two sons, he tilled a few acres of land. He fished a little as a pastime, and visited the mainland but seldom. He was a blunt-spoken, but warm-hearted man, with shaggy white beard and hair, and a voice and handshake as hearty ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... partizanship confused the two, to the disadvantage of the secretary of state; the usual clatter that attends any important personage in a trivial scrape ensued; Mr. Gladstone's explanations, simple and veracious as the sunlight in their substance, were over-skilful in form, and half a dozen blunt, sound sentences would have stood him in far better stead. 'There was on my part in this matter,' he says in a fugitive scrap upon it, 'a singular absence of worldly wisdom.'[214] To colonial policy at this ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... collarless shirt, open at a deep brown throat, leggings of some thin material, boots, and a funny little patched brown coat and pointed hood made all in one, and hanging down with a fulness almost of skirts about the small determined legs. The accompanying dog was a very sympathetic, blunt-nosed, round-headed, curly-coated type, whose whiteness, which positively invited the stroking hand, was broken by two great black blotches set all askew on the back, and by a black patch which ringed the left eye and completely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... seeking an audience of Lincoln. He wrote to Lincoln, begging him to receive them. Lincoln caused Greeley to go to Niagara and see the supposed ambassadors himself. He gave him written authority to bring to him any person with proper credentials, provided, as he made plain in terms that perhaps were blunt, that the basis of any negotiation should include the recognition of the Union and the abolition of slavery. The persons whom Greeley saw had no authority to treat about anything. Greeley in his irritation now urged Lincoln to convey to Jefferson Davis through these mysterious men ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... want!" she repeated. "How do you propose to secure them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing on the stage and in fiction, but they're not suitable ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She could see Charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... press is a wooden box, made the size of the canvas bale, which is suspended therein by hooks from the open top; the box has a movable side, which is loosened out to give exit to the bale when pressed. The pressing is done by the feet, assisted by a blunt spade, and the bales are generally very creditably turned out, the sheep-farmer priding himself on a neatly pressed bale. When pressed the end is sewn up and the bale rolled over to a convenient place for branding, when it is ready for ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... her arrival, and remained with Mrs. Gray till she recovered her strength. She was grateful for the kindness that was shown to her by Mrs. Gray; and so was her husband, the sergeant. He came one evening to the cottage, and in his blunt English fashion said, "Mr. Gray, you know I, or my wife, which is the same thing, have cause to be obliged to you, or your wife, which comes also to the same thing: now one good turn deserves another. Our colonel has ordered me, I being quarter-master, to sell off by auction some of the cast ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude. Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all that, and it was not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... was getting impatient. He sat at his desk in the little office, signing papers as fast as he could shove his pen across the pages. He glanced again at his watch and gave his call button a savage punch with his big, blunt forefinger. A buzzer snarled in the outer office, and a nervous looking secretary jumped for the private office as suddenly as if ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... are you? Sir Walter Blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... with Dick, and did not hesitate to show it. A blunt man, of plain speech, he resented anything in the nature of double- dealing. Royson's remarkable proficiency in most matters bearing on the navigation of a ship had amazed him in the first instance, and this juggling with ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... of sham fight of horsemen," said Rollo, "that they used to have in old times, when they wore steel armor, and fought with spears and lances. They used to ride against each other with blunt spears, and see who could knock the other one off his horse. What are you laughing ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... kept on hand to replace accidental breakage or loss. Other useful syringes are those of 2 c.c., 5 c.c., 10 c.c., and 20 c.c. capacity. A good supply of needles must be kept on hand, both sharp-pointed and with blunt ends. To sterilise the syringe, fill it with water, loosen the packing of the piston and all the screw joints, place it in the steriliser and boil for at least five minutes. Disinfect the syringe after use, in a similar ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... his coat I saw who it was. You couldn't open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing that face—the grey beard cut like a spade, the firm fighting mouth, the blunt square nose, and the keen blue eyes. I recognized the First Sea Lord, the man, they say, that ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... field, and as he now plowed through the laurel and rhododendron, so had he won his way to the forefront of the younger generation of his profession until, at the age of thirty-five, he had become recognized as one of the most able children's specialists in America. A "man's man," blunt of speech to the point of often offending at first the cultured women with whom his labors brought him into contact, he was worshipped in hundreds of homes as an angel of mercy in strange guise, and was the idol of hundreds of little folk to ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... scene of cozey fuss Was changed to prospects queering The blunt ran shy, and Bobby brush'd, [6] To get more rag not fearing; [7] To Islington he quickly hied, A traveller there he dropped on; The traps were fly, his rig they spied [8] And ruffles soon they popped on. [9] When evening came, he sought not home, While she, poor stupid woman, Got ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not bite as do the sheep; she has not upper teeth; she crops. But on the lower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... years,—but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not evinced the slightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not comprehend all the vague and innocent emotions that swelled this sorrow; but she resolved them all, with her plain, blunt understanding, to the one sentiment of love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathise and console. Confidante to Viola's entire and deep heart she never could be,—for that heart never could have words for all its secrets. But such ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... would ruin them. Under these circumstances he looked for no more than tolerance. He now owned frankly to himself that he was in love with Sheila. He had made little progress with his wooing, nor did he expect to make more just then. His blunt assertiveness covered a natural shyness where women were concerned, and he had about as much idea of the fine points of the game as a logger has of cabinet-making. Still, he was drawn to her by a desire which he was ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... following this blunt statement was sickening. Up to that moment, in spite of every fact brought to my knowledge, I had secretly believed this condition of affairs impossible. Surely somewhere, through some legal form, Judge Beaucaire had guarded the future safety of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... be done at once. And there's the pond behind, as deep as a well; and I might say at daybreak that the boy had bolted. He seems quite a stranger here—nobody'll miss him. He must have plenty of blunt to give half a guinea to a guide across a common! I want money, and I won't work—if I can help it, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and generous farmer. But one circumstance occasioned the name to be fixed upon a most respectable individual of this class, now no more. Mr. James Davidson of Hindlee, a tenant of Lord Douglas, besides the points of blunt honesty, personal strength, and hardihood, designed to he expressed in the character of Dandie Dinmont, had the humour of naming a celebrated race of terriers which he, possessed, by the generic names of Mustard and Pepper (according as their colour was yellow, or grayish-black), without any other ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... was more. A jay with skyblue shaft Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead. She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed Her warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch, Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves, Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared Leering about the hole of a young beech; And every time she thought to ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... to guide the King over a field-path while he fetched Mrs. Jane Lane and the horse to meet them beyond, as it was wiser for the King not to shew himself in the village. Again Charles jested on his supposed jealousy of leaving the fair Queen Mab alone in such company, and on his blunt answer, "I only feared the saucy child might ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ardent Braves sought her hand in marriage; but she was deaf to all their entreaties and protestations, and refused all their offers. Yet she did it with so much kindness, and said so many sweet words to blunt the severity of the refusal, that all her lovers became her friends, and each, with affectionate kindness, blended with the bold bearing of one who says what he knows he has courage to perform, promised that his love mellowed into friendship should remain ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... she's good enough," remarked Mrs. Bathurst in her blunt way. "She isn't much to look at. I've done my best to bring her up well, but I never thought of her turning into a fine lady. I question ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... receipt, and to thank you for the box of magnets which I found here. Though I do not know certainly, by, or from whom they come, I presume they came by Colonel Smith, who was here in my absence, and from Messrs. Nairne and Blunt, through your good offices. I think your letter of February the 16th, flatters me with the expectation of another, with observations, on the hygrometers I had proposed. I value what comes from you too much, not to remind you of it. Your favor by Mr. Garnett ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... much unnecessary slaughter? How can it be right, especially for a country of vegetable abundance like ours, to give daily employment to twenty thousand or thirty thousand butchers? How can it be right to train our children to behold such slaughter? How can it be right to blunt the edge of their moral sensibilities, by placing before them, at almost every meal, the mangled corpses of the slain; and not only placing them there, but rejoicing while we feast ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Does not all such sorrow hallow, ennoble, refine, purify the sufferer, and make him liker his God? 'He for our profit, that we should be partakers of His holiness.' Is not that God's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? When a blunt knife is ground upon a wheel, the sparks fly fast from the edge held down upon the swiftly-revolving emery disc, but that is the only way to sharpen the dull blade. Friction, often very severe friction, and heat are indispensable to polish the shaft and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that jackanapes, her brother, on in the army. In either case, to treble my venture, would have helped me out. And besides, I had some idea that the Phoenicians had in former times wrought copper in that very spot. That cunning scoundrel, Dousterswivel, found out my blunt side, and brought strange tales (dn him) of appearances of old shafts, and vestiges of mining operations, conducted in a manner quite different from those of modern times; and Iin short, I was a fool, and there is an end. My loss is not much worth speaking ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... destroyed through the neglect of the person in whose charge it was left. It was a buck, weighing fifty pounds, of a cinnamon colour on the back and a dirty white on the belly; the hair was fine and long; the head of a peculiar shape, resembling a dog's, with a very blunt nose; the forearms were very short; the hind feet cushioned like those inhabiting rocky ground. The does appeared to be much lighter; but all were very wary and scarce. From the number of red sandhills, too, scattered over the island, they were difficult to be seen at a ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... the way: You dissent from some of these remarks? You've cut your eye-teeth, have you? Possibly you forget that trip in the cars, when you 'cutely passed by the swell in flashy waistcoat and galvanized jewelry, and took a seat by a 'plain blunt man' in snuff-color; and after he had left the cars at the first station, and the conductor came to you and demanded, 'Your ticket, sir!' you probably forgot how in fumbling for it in your pocket, you found it, but not your porte-monnaie. You perhaps ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the new soil more firmly packed about the old ball of roots. Hard-wooded plants with very fine roots, like the azaleas, should have the soil rammed down firmly about the old ball; for which purpose it is necessary to use a blunt, flat piece of wood, of convenient size. In repotting such plants, it is well to let the ball of roots soak several minutes in a pail of water before putting into the new pot. If very densely matted, make several holes in it with a spike, working ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... is still dark the air is warned of his presence, and before the window was opened he was already in the room. His sun—for the sun is his—rises in a south-west mood, with a bloom on the blue, the grey, or the gold. When the south-west is cold, the cold is his own cold—round, blunt, full, and gradual in its very strength. It is a fresh cold, that comes with an approach, and does not challenge you in the manner of an unauthorised stranger, but instantly gets your leave, and even a welcome to your house of life. He follows your breath in at your throat, and your ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... frequent cause of strength in Saxon and other primitive words-their imitative character may be similarly resolved into the more general cause. Both those directly imitative, as splash, bang, whiz, roar, &c., and those analogically imitative, as rough, smooth, keen, blunt, thin, hard, crag, &c., have a greater or less likeness to the things symbolized; and by making on the senses impressions allied to the ideas to be called up, they save part of the effort needed to call up such ideas, and leave more attention ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... practical account in play. Nor is the sense of touch so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man. If you will turn over your old memories, I think the sensations of this sort you remember will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more than a blunt, general sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of well-being in bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and the true commander of man's soul and body—alas! pain has its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cooking his rice. When Yue-ts'un perceived that he paid no notice, he went up to him and asked him one or two questions, but as the old priest was dull of hearing and a dotard, and as he had lost his teeth, and his tongue was blunt, he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. Few of these things were the lot of the Southern black woman. Instead, thereof, a gross barbarism, which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding these terrible circumstances, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... and freshly gathered, the skins are easiest removed by taking each one in a coarse cloth and rubbing it; a little coarse salt used in the cloth will be found serviceable for this purpose. If almost ripe, scrape with a blunt knife, wash very clean, and rinse in cold water. Boiling is the best method of cooking; new potatoes are not good steamed. Use only sufficient water to cover, and boil till tender. Drain thoroughly, cover closely with a clean cloth, and dry ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... she said, "I've come to you and your daughter for a little help if you can give it." That seemed the best way to break down their reserve, an appeal rather than simply blunt questions—and what was it if not an appeal? "What I have to say is just among the three of us and I know it will go no farther. You're acquainted with my father; he's respected ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... very naturally, this extravagance rendered snuff a butt for the wits (who all took it, by the way), to shoot at. Steele, whose weakness for dress and show were proverbial, levelled many of his blunt shafts at its use; and Pope, who himself tells us 'of his wig all powder and all snuff his band,' let fly one of his keener arrows at the beaux, whose wit lay in their snuff-boxes and tweezer cases. As the men laid by, in the Georgian era, much of the magnificence of ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the examination would give Gilbert great pleasure, so I gave him every detail about it. M. Delaborde, who has the reputation of being extremely severe and somewhat blunt, was most kind and encouraging. After making Mary play to him for an hour, he said: "That will do; there remains a good deal to be done and acquired, but you may acquire it by hard work and good tuition in three years. I consent to take you as one of my pupils, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... their goods, and that no part of them can be taken but by their own consent in parliament. But that the parliament was instituted to check and control the king, and share the supreme power, would in all former times have been esteemed very blunt and indiscreet, if not illegal language. We need not be surprised that governments should long continue, though the boundaries of authority in their several branches be implicit, confused, and undetermined. This is the case all over the world. Who can draw an exact line between the spiritual and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... little confidence in Moses; that the old Napoleon was once complimentary enough to say that he thought Christ greater than himself or Caesar; that Washington was caught on his knees at Valley Forge; that blunt old Ethan Allen told his child to believe the religion of her mother; that Franklin said, "Don't unchain the tiger;" that Volney got frightened in a storm at sea, and that Oakes Ames was ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Bellew, Dr. Benares, Maharaja of Bentinck, Lord William Bernard, Sir Charles Bertrand, Father Bhartpur, Raja of Bhopal, Begum of Biddulph, Brigadier-General M. Biddulph, Colonel Birbul Birsing, Sepoy Blackwood, Major Blanc, Dr. Blunt, Colonel Bogle, Captain Booth, Lieutenant Bourchier, General Sir George, K.C.B. Bowring, Mr. Lewin Brabazon, Lieutenant Brackenbury, General Bradshaw, Dr. Brasyer, Colonel Bridge, Captain Bright, John, The Right Hon. General Sir Robert, G.C.B. Brind, Brigadier Frederick General Sir ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... very sharp and pointed in their reflexions upon French needles, much more so indeed than the objects to which their sarcasms were directed, which in fact were but blunt and brittle ware, and the consequence was that they not only tried all their own little arts to smuggle over as many as they could when they came from England, but they exacted the same pecadillo from their unfortunate friends; now of all things I most hate ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... conversation died out. They had nothing more to talk about. The boat rode easy. There was nothing to do, and these men blunt to life and sea-hardened so that to them all things came in the hour's work, nodded off, La Touche curled up in the bow, Bompard with his grizzled head on the breast of Mademoiselle ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... characteristic of Zabara's method that makes it open to doubt, whether the additional stories referred to as printed with the Constantinople edition did really emanate from our author's pen. These additions are sharply misogynist; the poet does not even attempt to blunt their point. They include "The Widow's Vow" (the widow, protesting undying constancy to her first love, eagerly weds another) and "Woman's Contentions." In the latter, a wicked woman is denounced with the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... shattering its wings, like Icarus, and plunging into the abyss? Such a prodigy is inconceivable, never beheld." Toward the close of his career he declared: "The majority are mestizos, mulattoes, Indians, and negroes. An ignorant people is a blunt instrument for its own destruction. To it liberty means license, patriotism means disloyalty, and justice means vengeance." "Independence," he exclaimed, "is the only good we have achieved, at ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... beings in my mind! Often I must cast them quite aside in order to grow in my small way, and not sink into despair. Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dulness that they blunt the senses and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do wish that I had read no books at all till later,—that I had lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should not cull the fruits of reflection ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Indian, and is nearly worn out: he is anxious to get his discharge at the end of the year, when he will have served his twenty-one years, and be entitled to a decent pension. He is a very straight-forward, blunt, honest old fellow, and when he first joined was a very powerful man, and the best wrestler in the regiment, thereby proving his South Devon blood. He was ——'s servant when I joined, and I was ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... that hole in the wall was a course of consuming anxiety to Ammonia. While Mahdi had his eye to the wall, the gorilla would cling to the bars of his cage, pushing his blunt nose through, and gibber and spit and protest in a ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... under Galgacus. The extent to which they differed from the Britons is not to be collected from the account of Tacitus. We expect that they will be as brave; but ruder. Still, the details which we get from the life of Agricola are few. They fought from chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt. As the swords of the Bronze period were thin and pointed, this is an argument in favour of iron having become the usual material for warlike weapons as far north as the Grampians. The historical testimony to the inferior civilization of the North Britons, or Caledonians, is to be found in a later ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... tarry rope to shreds With blunt and bleeding nails; We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors, And cleaned the shining rails: And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, And clattered ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... eager glance swept the river's widening reach. Vessels were there in abundance, odd, unwieldy, blunt-bowed craft with huge, rakish, tawny sails; long strings of flat barges, pyramidal mounds of coal on each, lashed to another and convoyed by panting tugs; steam cargo boats, battered, worn, rusted sore through their age-old paint; a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Pandulfo, "I had almost forgot to tell thee, that the crowd would have poured themselves hither, so impatient were they to see thee; but I bade Cecco del Vecchio mount the rostrum, and tell them, in his blunt way, that it would be unseemly at the present time, when thou wert engaged in the Capitol on civil and holy affairs, to rush in so great a body into thy ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... table to mind her (my wife) of cutting for her, but it soon over, and so up and with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen to St. James's, and there did our business with the Duke, and thence homeward straight, calling at the Coffee-house, and there had very good discourse with Sir——Blunt and Dr. Whistler about Egypt and other things. So home to dinner, my wife having put on to-day her winter new suit of moyre, which is handsome, and so after dinner I did give her L15 to lay out in linen and necessaries for the house and to buy a suit for Pall, and I myself ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... solicitus timor of his love—the dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense, to which he had advanced)—denaturalized him. He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and coming ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... at its busiest, for it was Friday afternoon. John Blunt leant back in his comfortable chair and toyed with the key of the safe, while he tried to realize his new position. He, John Blunt, was junior partner in the great London firm of Macnaughton, Macnaughton, Macnaughton, ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle, which took apart for packing, and was put together with the greatest ease. It was, in short, a lawn-mower ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... said Ambrose Jennings in a frail voice, "Enid Blunt, a Turkish refugee from Smyrna who writes quite decent verse, Thapoulos, Penitence Murray, who is just out of prison, and Smith the sculptor, with his mistress, a round-faced little Russian girl. She's the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... whole, by no means deficient in the real duties of hospitality. She readily obtained food, and shelter, and protection at a very moderate rate, which sometimes the generosity of mine host altogether declined, with a blunt apology,—"Thee hast a long way afore thee, lass; and I'se ne'er take penny out o' a single woman's purse; it's the best friend thou can have on ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that, and help me do my duty." And all the coldness melted out of Phebe's manner as she hugged her little mistress close, feeling the comfort of sympathy even through the blunt sincerity ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... her dwelling, she bade her pause and tell what the gods were doing to provoke such great hilarity. The old woman was none other than Loki in disguise, and he answered Frigga that the gods were throwing stones and other missiles, blunt and sharp, at Balder, who stood smiling and unharmed in their midst, challenging them ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... thereof. When sarcastic twitches are needful to pierce the thick skins of men, to correct their lethargic stupidity, to rouse them out of their drowsy negligence, then may they well be applied when plain declarations will not enlighten people to discern the truth and weight of things, and blunt arguments will not penetrate to convince or persuade them to their duty, then doth reason freely resign its place to wit, allowing it to undertake its work ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... compose what we commonly call a taste, vary exceedingly in various people. From a defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are some men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic, that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a faint and obscure impression. There are others so continually in the agitation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... again Chamisso, upon the fixed piece of wood they place another piece of the same kind, about the length of the palm, and press it obliquely at an angle of about 30 degrees. The extremity that touches the fixed piece is blunt, and the other extremity is held with the two hands, the two thumbs downward, in order to allow of a surer pressure. The piece is given an alternating motion, and in such a way that it shall always remain in the same plane inclined at an angle of 30 degrees, and form, through friction, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... rather presuming on the part of the officer to ask for it, and seemed annoyed. However, he made a hasty drawing and gave it to him, saying in his blunt way, "I hope this will please you." The officer thanked him profusely, and we left. Turning to me he said: "I have not profited much by this visit. I have given, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork of the Conference, gave utterance to views which while making no pretense to courtly phraseology are symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought and spoke of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... masterful manner, and at length perceived a man running from the bottom of the avenue. The servant peered through the wicket, and making out in the twilight a very ill-appointed traveller, with a crushed hat, dusty clothes, and no sword, asked him what he wanted, receiving a blunt reply that the stranger wished to see the Count de Saint-Geran without any further loss of time. The servant replied that this was impossible; the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... A scaly fish; a rough, blunt tar. To have other fish to fry; to have other matters to mind, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... to the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech and rough tongue who never hesitated to call a spade a spade, and the ordinary seaman something many degrees worse. These were technicalities of the service which had neither use nor meaning ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... against the torrent to my point, As 'twas to hear my judgment on the Germans, This to another man would be a brag; Or at the court among my enemies, To be, as I am here, quite off my guard, Would make me such another thing as Grillon, A blunt, hot, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the way. He never had liked Camors; he had accepted him as a nephew as he had accepted him for a deputy—with more of resignation than enthusiasm. His antipathy was only too well justified by the event; but it was necessary to keep him in ignorance of it. He was an excellent man; but rough and blunt. The conduct of Camors, if he had but suspected it, would surely have urged him to some irreparable quarrel. Therefore Madame de Tecle and her daughter, in his presence, were compelled to make only half utterances, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... faces marked by parallel rows of minute bluish dots which sometimes give a glaucous effect to the lower surface or even the whole leaf on the new shoots, 4-angled, 1/4-3/4 of an inch long, straight or slightly incurved, blunt at the apex, abruptly tipped or mucronate, sessile ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... to be lively till the very year of his death. That he was jealous of these younger rivals, appears from the fact that he brought an action against Michael Angelo for having called his style stupid and antiquated. In the celebrated phrase cast at him by the blunt and scornful master of a new art-mystery[224], we discern the abrupt line of division between time-honoured tradition and the maniera moderna of the full Renaissance. The old Titans had to yield their place before the new Olympian deities of Italian painting. There is something pathetic ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... widest at region of bridge; margin entire; dorsal surface smooth; anterior margin of carapace lacking tubercles; blunt vertebral ridge evident anteriorly; maximum length, 53.1 mm; greatest width, 46.3 mm; greatest ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... used, and left about anyhow instead of being hung up. How much loss there is in a year in the careless use of knives and plate! Whenever possible both of these get into the hands of the cook. Her own tools from neglect or misuse have become blunt or worse, and she takes the best blade and the plated or silver spoon whenever ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... Instrument to cleanse the Stomach: with divers New Experiments of Tobacco and Cofee: with a Preface of Sir H. Blunt. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... and began walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the gay voice, "I am surely the luckiest creature alive! I leap and flit all day long from bough to bough. I am quick as a flash, so that I can easily escape my enemies. In my free and happy life there is but one thing I fear, and that is a boy's blunt-headed arrow!" ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... contained air ejected forcibly through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the hussowahs, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and even gun-locks, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... stress of mind he sought his uncle, and by him was again led before the Archbishop. His reticence and timidity dispersed by his great sorrow, the distraught boy faced the high ecclesiastic with questions terribly blunt. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... not occur by spontaneous generation on the day that we took office. It began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and continues our historic bipartisan American policy. Franklin Roosevelt said we "are determined to do everything possible to maintain peace on this hemisphere." President Truman was very blunt: "International communism seeks to crush and undermine and destroy the independence of the Americas. We cannot let that happen here." And John F. Kennedy made clear that "Communist domination in this hemisphere can never be negotiated." Some in this Congress may choose to depart ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... With blunt-pointed teeth and blunt claws, quadrupedal, with elephant-like limbs and feet, long neck and small head. Unarmored. Principal dinosaurs of this group in America are Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus (Morosaurus) and Brachiosaurus, all of the Upper Jurassic ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... bloodshed, even though his victim yield to him all without demur. Booty or no booty, blood must flow, if he be the ordinary Tulisan of the type known to the Tagalogs as dugong-aso (blood of a dog). as distinguished from the milder Tulisan pulpul (literally, the blunt brigand), who robs, uses no unnecessary violence, but runs away if he can, and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... belongs furnished the most remarkable examples. This plant possesses a special sensitiveness in certain parts, and when definite points of the flower are touched by an insect the pollen masses are shot forth like an arrow, the point being blunt and adhesive. The insect, disturbed by so sharp a blow, or having eaten its fill, flies sooner or later to a female plant, and whilst standing in the same position as before, the pollen-bearing end of the arrow is inserted into the stigmatic cavity, and a mass of pollen is ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... the joint committee of Congress on the Conduct of the Present War;[70] but at least one piece of evidence was not, at that time, forthcoming, a piece that, in a certain sense, might be taken to exonerate the whites. It came to the knowledge of General Blunt during the summer and was the Indians' own confession. It bore only indirectly upon the actual atrocities but showed that the red men were quite equal to making their own plans in fighting and were not to be relied upon to do things decently and in order. Drew's men, when ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the period of which I write, to be found constituting the population of these new States. From whatever cause arising, there certainly was, in the days of my early memory, more scrupulous truth, open frankness, and pure, blunt honesty pervading the whole land than seem to characterize its present population. It was said by Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, that bad roads and fist-fights made the best militia on earth; ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... had apparently given up the fight, for she had bid on no work of any kind since the morning she had called upon Schwartz and told him, in her blunt, frank way, "Give the work to McGaw at me price. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... small slipper and emptied some sand from the shore; the simple act seemed to him burdened with gracious warmth. Now she was infinitely easier than any girl he had known before. Those about his home met the younger masculine world either with a blunt sarcasm or with an uneasy voiceless propriety. Rosemary, propped on an elbow, was as unconcerned as a boy. This made her infinitely more difficult of approach. Her slight beautiful body, not hidden by clothes—as decency demanded ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stockbroker came panting along, late for his train; so Bernard shouted to him: "Come my way, Mr Blunt; it will save you five hundred yards ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... indicates the speed; if, when travelling slow, hair is found upon the underwood, the animal passed at night, for in daylight a bear is as careful as a lynx to avoid striking things; if the bear is young or middle aged, the claw marks are sharp and clean cut; if it is old, they are blunt and blurred. The tracks of the male, though larger, are not so round as those of the female, and the male's toes are not only longer and spread farther apart, but the underside of his foot is not so hairy as that of his mate. Then, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... for a time a noted place for the publication of standard works, and books of various descriptions. It was here that the well-known Mr. Edmund M. Blunt, who subsequently removed to the city of New York, published his valuable and famous "American Coast Pilot," and, afterwards, the no ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... is the prettiest woman you can dream of; a real beauty; springtime! A flower!' 'You must excuse me, but if your mistress is really like springtime and a flower, you (pray excuse me for being so blunt) are not exactly that, and perhaps I should not exactly be in a mood to humor you, my dear lady, in the same way that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... characteristic of their age and dispositions. It had been arranged between the lovers that Simon should call on that Friday evening, when he would be sure to catch Richard in his easy chair, and should, in presence of Mary, bluntly communicate to Richard the blunt fact. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... journeying passed with his people through a forest in Midernia, and he met therein certain slaves that were hewing wood; and these men were under the yoke of a hard and cruel master, named Tremeus; and they hewed the wood with blunt axes, nor had they whetstones nor had they any other means whereon to sharpen them. Wherefore their strength failed, their arms stiffened, and the flesh fell from their hands, and the naked sinews were seen, and the miserable men wished rather for death than for life. But when ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... for the sale of the coffee drink in England, although the coffee houses were not for both sexes, as in other European countries. The London City Quaeries for 1660 makes mention of "a she-coffee merchant." Mary Stringar ran a coffee house in Little Trinity Lane in 1669; Anne Blunt was mistress of one of the Turk's-Head houses in Cannon Street in 1672. Mary Long was the widow of William Long, and her initials, together with those of her husband, appear on a token issued from the Rose tavern in Bridge Street, Covent ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... rise again in song, And his wide renown shall stalk In this blunt trochaic verse O'er the round ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... and ring through his nose: he greeted us with a strangled whistle as he still lay down. "When you are hard driven good old El Toro will help you," said Jack, as he sat down on the bull's big shoulders and started to scratch his curl with a little piece of wood which had a blunt nail in it. As I stood El Toro chewed the cud and was obviously delighted ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... clearly proved to be so. Nor could he boast of that skill of graceful concession which enables its possessor to recede without discredit from an untenable position. He replied to his Lordship[271] in the following blunt and explicit terms: "After very deliberate consideration, I have determined to take upon myself the serious responsibility of positively refusing to place Mr. Bidwell on the bench, or to restore Mr. George Ridout to the Judgeship ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... hares. To go against nature and inclination is to row against wind and tide. They say you may praise a fool till you make him useful. I don't know so much about that, but I do know that if I get a bad knife I generally cut my finger, and a blunt axe is more trouble than profit. No, let me shave with a razor if I shave at all, and do my work with the best tools I ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... do all he could for me in the matter. At one o'clock he drove to Nymphenburg, and declared positively he would speak to the Electress. On Sunday the Count comes here. Herr Joannes Kronner has been appointed Vice-Concertmeister, which he owes to a blunt speech of his. He has produced two symphonies—Deo mene liberi [God preserve me from such]—of his own composition. The Elector asked him, "Did you really compose these?" "Yes, your Royal Highness!" "From whom did you ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... make of them. The hind-feet are webbed, and with these—together with his tail, which acts as a rudder—he is enabled to swim rapidly through the water. The beaver is a rodent, with a short head and broad blunt snout, and his incisor teeth are remarkably large and hard, enabling him to bite through wood with wonderful ease and rapidity. So great is their hardness, that formerly the Indians were accustomed to use them as knives for cutting bone and fashioning ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... in each jaw—making thirty-two in all. The internal incisors are larger than the external pair, in the upper jaw, smaller than the external pair, in the lower jaw. The crowns of the upper molars exhibit four cusps, or blunt-pointed elevations, and a ridge crosses the crown obliquely, from the inner, anterior cusp to the outer, posterior cusp (Figure 17 m2). The anterior lower molars have five cusps, three external and two internal. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... often indulge in the luxury of a blush, but she changed color now. This big, blunt man sometimes had an uncanny divination. Did he, she asked herself, know what stake she was gambling for ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... you when you shred Herbs, complain your Knife is blunt, and order it to be whetted? Why do you reject a blunt pointed Needle, when that does not deprive you ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... forward to obey, kicking strongly his caulks into the barked surface of the boom log. The spikes, worn blunt by the river work already accomplished, failed to grip. Big Junko slipped, caught himself by an effort, overbalanced in the other direction, and fell into the stream. The current at once swept him away, but fortunately in such a direction ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... absolutely. This was a matter he must settle with himself alone, a battle to be fought out in silence and with himself as sole antagonist. A ring of commenting spectators, applauding while they looked on, could only blunt the point of his attacks which, to be final, must be ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... your part, your wishes might have the better chance of being made known to us during the old gentleman's life. I doubt not that your thoughts, whatever they may be, will be on the way to me before this reaches you; and I can have as little doubt what they are. You know Mr Blunt says, that men are created to rob their sisters,—a somewhat partial view of the objects and achievements of mortal existence, it must be owned, and a statement which I conceive the course of your life, for one, will not go to confirm; but a man must have had a good deal ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... lengthwise so that an end of it was between my first and second finger and the rubber-tipped end lay across my wrist. The other pencil he thrust crosswise so that the pointed end stuck out between the second and third finger and the blunt end between the index ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... no use both going; I will stay here and watch poor Smoker, and take off the skins ready by the time you are back again. Leave me your knife as well as my own, for one will soon be blunt." ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... in the rendezvous had come up, and waited with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... catalog, a little dry but quite accurate, with the series of bony fish I observed: eels belonging to the genus Apteronotus whose snow-white snout is very blunt, the body painted a handsome black and armed with a very long, slender, fleshy whip; long sardines from the genus Odontognathus, like three-decimeter pike, shining with a bright silver glow; Guaranian ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the subject then selected from the optical distances the one that appeared equal to the cutaneous distance. This process furnished the judgments on open spaces. For the filled spaces, immediately after the two-point distance was given a blunt stylus was drawn from one point to the other, and the subject then again selected the optical distance which seemed equal to this distance filled ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... truncate, or retuse, or sometimes 3-toothed, flat at the margin; rachis dilated; fruit-bearing pedicels solitary; capsules 3 to 4-celled; valves cymbeo-semiorbicular, all around broadly winged; the wing rounded-blunt on both extremities; dissepiments persistent with the columella. On the River ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... her brooding fancy was the fact that she had done with it all she had designed. She had put her thought to the proof, and the proof had shown its edge; this was what was before her, that she was no longer playing with blunt and idle tools, with weapons that didn't cut. There passed across her vision ten times a day the gleam of a bare blade, and at this it was that she most shut her eyes, most knew the impulse to cheat herself with motion and sound. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... did her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt, too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan. Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often "took" with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit of homespun ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... full in the face; answering seldom, but listening with her whole soul, more and more astonished and more and more drawn towards him. What a mixture of untamed roughness and caressing childishness he was! His earnest voice, short and blunt towards others, became softer and more and more tender as he spoke to her; and for her alone he knew how to make it trill with extreme sweetness, like the music of a stringed instrument with ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills,—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare's ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... for the trees were now in full blossom. Many carts were lumbering along the road on their uneven wheels. Just beyond the city there was a noisy altercation in the road for the possession apparently of a blunt adze. Carts stopped to see the row, and all the bystanders joined in with their voices, with much earnestness. It is rare for the disputants to be injured in these questions. Their language on these occasions is, I am told, extremely rich in allusions. It would often make a gendarme ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... by the shipment,—not because warming-pans were wanted there, but because the natives mistook and used them for molasses-ladles. It must be owned that a portion of the successful ones are lucky,—that a portion of them use the blunt weapon of an indomitable will, as an efficient substitute for the finer edge of that nice tact and good manners which they lack. Their very rudeness seems to commend them to the rude natures which confound refinement with trickery and assume that brutality ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... glory. He is always, and at all times and places, under the strong influence of hopes and fears, true or false, by which he is carried forward in the changing scenes of war and peace. Kindness never fails to soften and meliorate his feelings, and harshness, injury, and contempt to harden and blunt them. Above all, it is shown that, in the recesses of the forest, he devotes a portion of his time to domestic and social enjoyment, in which the leading feature is the relation of traditionary legends ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Walpole. Just now Walpole and he are friends as well as connections; the time came when Walpole and he were destined to quarrel; and then Townshend conducted himself with remarkable forbearance, self-restraint, and dignity. He was an honest and respectable man, blunt of speech, and of rugged, homespun intelligence, about whom, since his day, the world is little concerned. Such name as he had is almost absorbed in the more brilliant reputation of his grandson—the spoiled child of the House ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... know just exactly how to put it. You may have noticed that I am rather awkward when it comes to saying the right thing at the right time. I have not been much accustomed to society, and I am rather a blunt man." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... misty doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain, And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd for thee. Deign on the passing ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... bluff, prompt, and choleric. He never gave proof of intellectual capacity; and such of his success in life as he did not owe to good luck was due probably to an energetic and adventurous spirit, aided by a blunt frankness of address that pleased the great, and commended him to their favor. Two years after the expedition to Port Royal, the king, under the new charter, made him governor of Massachusetts, a post for which, though totally unfit, he had ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks's profile, thrown back against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of the black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and the faint barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of will-power, combined with all the ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... means stopped there. He could talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a portrait as well as a blunt pencil and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... his flowers, and leads a very quiet life. You may think him rather grave and blunt at first, but you'll soon find him out and get on comfortably, for he is a truly excellent fellow, and my ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the professor was still sound asleep; and Ben Zoof, who was especially anxious that the repose which promised to be so beneficial should not be disturbed, felt considerable annoyance at hearing a loud knocking, evidently of some blunt heavy instrument against a door that had been placed at the entrance of the gallery, more for the purpose of retaining internal warmth than for guarding against intrusion ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... at me, smelled me all round, making my legs seem to curdle as his blunt nose touched them, and then after winding the thong round me twice he stood up on his hind-legs, placing his paws against my chest and his ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... relaxing his face when he was fairly gone, 'is good practice. I HAVE some command of my features, beyond all doubt. He fully confirms what I suspected, though; and blunt tools are sometimes found of use, where sharper instruments would fail. I fear I may be obliged to make great havoc among these worthy people. A troublesome necessity! I quite feel ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... These blunt words, so terrible if taken literally, were received by the other workmen with a roar of laughter. But Parry ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lip Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... mantel-piece the roll which he had in his hand. It was a species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin, saying, "The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a match," and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the word "Republic." Then turning over the leaves, he ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... growling sound, as though he put not the slightest faith in the story Leon was telling. He knew the other to be utterly unprincipled, and a willing tool in the hands of Nick Lang; indeed, there were some things about the sneaky Leon that blunt, honest Thad hated worse than the bullying ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... "James" were Democrats. Swallow, the only lawyer the town possessed, was silent, which was felt as remarkable in a man who usually talked much more than occasion demanded and wore a habit-mask of good-fellowship, which had served to deceive many a blunt old farmer, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... subject whilst at work on his figure of Puck, to which he had given pointed ears. He was thus led to examine the ears of various monkeys, and subsequently more carefully those of man. The peculiarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin, or helix. When present, it is developed at birth, and, according to Prof. Ludwig Meyer, more frequently in man than in woman. Mr. Woolner made an ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... in swinging the bottle of soda, that the ship was quite beyond his reach when he had finished his oration. He was not to be outdone, however, and, with a quick movement he hurled the bottle at the moving ship. It struck the blunt nose squarely, and ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... I admired the blunt independence and practical philosophy of this homeless man. Although he was disagreeable to others, he was on good terms with himself, and seemed quite satisfied with his lot. If, when he had named his price for mending a pair of shoes, anybody tried to beat ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... profession, and had acquired a considerable knowledge of its details; apart from it he had no very decided tastes; he lived a quiet, regular life, and dined out and went to dances in moderation; his manner, though he was nearly twenty-six, was still rather boyishly blunt. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... you are a gentleman.' 'I am of that opinion too.' 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I know a party as has FOUND a young gent as comes werry nigh your advertisement.' 'It will be a very lucky find to that party,' I said, 'if he is on the square.' 'Oh, WE are always on the square, when the blunt is put down.' 'The blunt for the child, when you like, and where you like,' said I. 'You are the right sort,' said he. 'I am,' replied I. 'Will you come and see if it is all right?' said he. 'In a minute,' said I. Stepped into my bedroom, and loaded ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... good-humoured, because all those marks which are supposed to delineate character were in him obliterated by adipose tissue. You had to take him as you found him. But for the rest he was a merchant who owned a lucrative business and a few small blunt-nosed steamers that traded along the coasts adjacent to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... truthfully say they were walking less to gain an appetite than to find the means wherewith to satisfy it." He then described these piscatorial pedestrians as small, dark fish with little bead-like eyes in the top of their heads, and a blunt nose—he called it a nose, I am not guilty. Moreover, their ventral fins were largely developed, and by this means the fish hopped, or rather, hitched along the sand, after ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... I be blunt in discovering my affections, and use little eloquence in levelling out my loves, I appeal for pardon to your own principles, that say, shepherds use few ceremonies, for that they acquaint themselves ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... been Mr Warden's opinion that, if his daughter had a fault, it was a tendency towards a quite unnecessary and highly inconvenient frankness. She had not that tact which he would have liked a daughter of his to possess. She would not evade, ignore, agree not to see. She was at times painfully blunt. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... being chosen to respond to this especial toast, to "The Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. I have noticed that the Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. It is odd, but you will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with her brightest ray, And pour on misty doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain, And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... not perturbed by something that fell under my eye soon afterwards. At a shop door hung certain printed cards, bearing a notice that "wood hay-makers," "wood binders," and "wood mowers" were "sold here." Not in Italian this, but in plain, blunt English; and to each announcement was added the name of an English manufacturing firm, with an agency at Naples. I have often heard the remark that Englishmen of business are at a disadvantage in their export trade because they ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... large as a finch, and is not unfrequently caught in the clap-nets of London bird-catchers, having struck at their decoy-birds;" and Mr. Hewitson says—"Seeing a red-backed shrike busy in a hedge, I found, upon approaching it, a small bird, upon which it had been operating, firmly fixed upon a blunt thorn; its head was torn off, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... not so much on what he sees, but on how it reacts on himself; and his lasting impression of any object depends less on the object itself than on the point of view from which he regards it. Thus by a sparing use of examples, lessons, and pictures, you may blunt the sting of sense and delay nature while following ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward human nature ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... before, a fellow rough and daring, comes boldly to the Prince when the Council rose, and asked him, if he were resolved to engage? He told him, he was. 'Then,' said he, 'give me leave to shoot Philander in the head.' This blunt proposition given, without any manner of reason or circumstance, made the Prince start back a step or two, and ask him his meaning of what he said. 'Sir,' replied the Captain, 'if you will be safe, Philander must die; for however it appear to Your ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... that the first blow had been struck some distance from the place where the body had fallen, and that the stunned man had staggered nearly thirty feet before he fell. The second blow, which was immediately behind the left ear, had been dealt with the blunt end of an axe, and while he was prostrate upon ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... of the spear, one of the collies turned round sharply, and barked; then the other received a prod—from the blunt end in both cases—and the bark uttered was ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... thousand miles, but those who in the foregoing pages have followed me through the strange and varied experiences of the journey will agree with me when I say that it has proved more interesting than arduous after all. I need not here express any blunt opinions of the different people encountered; it is enough that my observations concerning them have been jotted down as I have mingled with them and their characteristics from day to day; almost without exception, they have treated me the best they knew how; it is only natural ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... hand he stretched it out to be cut away—"take this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... calling on her dear child, quite helpless at the moment, while Mary took the moaning child. Captain Carbonel, with his own knife (finding it more effective than the blunt old knife on the table), cut off the remains of the little garments which had become tinder, and then handed his wife the flour in a sort of scoop, and as she sprinkled it over the burnt surface, the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Liquids. They that came after proceeded yet farther in their retrenchment, and from cader form'd caer, as the Spaniards now use it, by taking away the letter d according to their ordinary custome, when it is seated in the middle of words. There are another sort of people yet more sturdy and blunt in their formes of speech, who would say Car or Ker by a contraction of the two Vowels into one, as is observable among the Peasants of France, and those of Picardy, who retain very much of Antiquity, which seems to ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs: By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur'd. I had rather be a country servant-maid Than a great queen with this condition,— To be so baited, scorn'd, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... ached fully, too, for Yann, his tall, handsome Yann, was his first-born, his favourite and his pride; but he did not despair yet. He comforted Gaud in his own blunt, affectionate way; to begin with, those who had last returned from Iceland spoke of the increasing dense fogs that might well have delayed the vessel; and then, too, an idea struck him; they might possibly have stopped at the distant Faroe Islands ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... being in very great straits, he complied with the solicitations of some hackney-coachmen, who advised him to learn their trade. They took some pains to instruct him, employed him often, and in about six months time he became perfect master of his business, and drove for Mr. Blunt, in Piccadilly. His behaviour here was so honest that Mr. Blunt gave him a good character, and he thereby obtained the place of a gentleman's coachmen. In a short time he saved money and began to have some relish for an honest life; and continuing industriously to hoard up what he received either ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... could win new way, lying almost broadside across the stream, the breeze held her motionless, like a tired bird on a windy day when it flies out from the shelter of the wood. It was but for a moment, and then the blunt bows glided forward towards the north bank, and another barge succeeded ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at the straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... of the General Staff's Operations Division, Lt. Gen. John E. Hull, dismissed the Gillem report with several blunt statements: black enlisted men should be assigned to black units capable of operational use within white units at the rate of one black battalion per division; a single standard of professional proficiency should be followed for white and black officers; and "no Negro officer be given ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... console him, and found, upon a further confession, that he had flown to spirits "now and then," to blunt the sharp tooth of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... with a different pencil, or with a blunt pointed pencil. A man writing with a short blunt stump naturally writes a little bigger and blacker. But look at the ts and the rs, and the capital P; in fact, look at all the letters. They are exactly ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... feeling is conscience. Laws, customs, and social conventions he regarded as ineffectual means to good. There is no virtue in one who is restrained from evil by fear. He went further: he regarded external restraints as means to bad, since they come between a man and his conscience and blunt the moral sense. "So long as I keep to the rules," says the smug citizen, "I am of the righteous." Ibsen loathed the State, with its negative virtues, its mean standards, its mediocrity, and its spiritual squalor. He was a ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... would in my situation naturally form. He saw at least one Briton devoted to his cause. I threw out many flattering ideas of future political events, imaged the British and the Corsicans strictly united both in commerce and in war, and described the blunt kindness and admiration with which the hearty, generous common people of England would ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... seated enjoying a good cigar at a table caused his heart to leap up in joy. "Jack Blunt—of all men! By God! this is luck!" he cried. When the happy Alan Hawke tapped the smoker smartly on the shoulder he first laid a finger on his own lip and then hastily said: "Get a private room, Jack, I want you at once. I've a special bit of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the breast of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim, And the first smith was the first murderer's son. His art survived the waters; and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Last Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... manner—this being considered a great honour to a guest; and no sooner had we accepted the offer than an old woman made her appearance armed with the necessary implements, and with the aid of a pair of very blunt needles, and a peculiar species of dye obtained from a tree, succeeded, after a good hour's work, in embellishing us—L. with a ring on each shoulder (the sign manual of the tribe), and myself with a bird, whose genus it would puzzle most naturalists to determine, but which was ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... supported by the vertical thrust of the jet, and while it was moving forward at the lowest possible rate of speed. When that goal was achieved, they flopped solidly flat, slid a few feet on their metal bellies, and lay still. Some hit hard and tried to dig into the earth with their blunt noses. Joe finally saw one touch with no forward speed at all. It seemed to try to settle down vertically, as a rocket takes off. That one fell over backward and wallowed with its belly plates in the air before it rolled over on its ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with William he was blunt and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had a great desire to please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he could remember, to consider as the first of living ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... carelessly. "A man has to defend himself, and even with blunt swords he will get awkward cracks if he cannot protect his head. Besides, in the arena a man's life depends upon his skill, and the conquered is sure to have no mercy shown him unless he has borne himself well. Therefore, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was an affair which ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... common effect of the Famine was to harden the hearts of the people, and blunt their natural feelings. Hundreds, remarks this correspondent, are daily expiring in their cabins in the three parishes of this neighbourhood, and the people are becoming so accustomed to death that they have lost all those ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... printer of Tahiti, had given the site out of his humble savings. By the sign, in his blunt way, he struck at education which does not teach the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... After Eagles had mounted the ladder, and been turned off a short time, he was cut down, before he was at all insensible; a bailiff, named Wm. Swallow, then dragged him to the sledge, and with a common blunt cleaver, hacked off the head: in a manner equally clumsy and cruel, he opened his body ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fair problems does not the habit of frequenting her give rise! To set them forth worthily, the marvellous art which the little printer was to acquire were not too much. One needs the pen of a Michelet; and I have but a rough, blunt pencil. Let us try, nevertheless: even when poorly clad, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... sergeant's wife was brought to bed soon after her arrival, and remained with Mrs. Gray till she recovered her strength. She was grateful for the kindness that was shown to her by Mrs. Gray; and so was her husband, the sergeant. He came one evening to the cottage, and in his blunt English fashion said, "Mr. Gray, you know I, or my wife, which is the same thing, have cause to be obliged to you, or your wife, which comes also to the same thing: now one good turn deserves another. Our colonel has ordered me, I being quarter-master, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... by the name of black-maned lions, though as a whole all look of the yellow tawny color. At the time of the discovery of the lake, Messrs. Oswell and Wilson shot two specimens of another variety. One was an old lion, whose teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were entirely destitute of mane. The lions in the country near the lake give tongue less than those further south. We scarcely ever heard them roar ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunel's mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a celebrated passage ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Boone himself, on strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch, stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered red iron at ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... company was founded. Gorham's good-nature was taxed to its utmost, but he fully realized how deeply his old friend was wounded; and the knowledge that his own interest in Allen was in reality a genuine service to Sanford himself served to blunt the force of ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... travel, one returns to England one can taste, smell, feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral—the curious, damp, blunt, good-humored, happy-go-lucky, old-established, slow-seeming formlessness of everything. You hail a porter, you tell him you have plenty of time; he muddles your things amiably, with an air of "It'll be all right," till you have only just time. But suppose you tell him you have no time; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ears through more channels than one, you would have thought; but he's a taciturn man, asks no questions, and invites no confidences. I like him the better for it. Next week, come what may, I'll speak to him and tell him the truth, like a plain, blunt man." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... distribution of a Christmas charity at Millbrook, Southampton, the Rev. A. C. Blunt stated that one of the recipients had nearly reached her 102nd year. She was born in Hampshire, and down to a very recent period had been ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... aspect of the fable, there is, certainly, a good deal of sound criticism in the piece. It may be brief, it may be inadequate, it may be blunt, but for all that it is truthful, and decidedly just, as far as it goes. Bryant, who was called cold, took umbrage at the portrait drawn of him. But his verse has all the cold glitter of the Greek bards, despite the fact that he is America's greatest poet of nature, and some of his ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... powder—it was empty! "The God of Righteousness hath punished him!" exclaimed Amine; "but O! that this man should have been my father! Yes! it is plain. Frightened at his own wicked, damned intentions, he poured out more wine from the flagon, to blunt his feelings of remorse, and not knowing that the powder was still in the cup, he filled it up and drank himself—the death he meant for another! For another!—and for whom? one wedded to his own daughter!—Philip! my husband! Wert thou not my father," continued Amine, looking at the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... passed away, and empty praise was all that he could, for the most part, earn. After lingering, in the sickness of hope deferred, at several of the German courts, his destination was at last fixed for Paris. His chance of success as a courtier was probably diminished by the blunt though kindly frankness of his opinions, and by his inability to stoop to unworthy means of rising. He had also many rivals to encounter, particularly those of the more slender school of Italian melody; and few of the public ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and great wattles, the Barb with its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently without its frill; the Pouter with shorter legs, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by telling Nance to report for work ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... just uttered, almost made him start, because half waking up towards daybreak that night he had cried out "Laceration, laceration," probably applying it to his dream. He had been dreaming all night of the previous day's scene at Katerina Ivanovna's. Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov's blunt and persistent assertion that Katerina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan, and only deceived herself through some sort of pose, from "self-laceration," and tortured herself by her pretended love for Dmitri from some fancied duty of gratitude. "Yes," ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... when two of the same blood meet; but still, he recognised the genuine kindness underlying the inquiry, and stifled his resentment, which May would not have understood, because she and Walter and Ida were in the habit of asking each other similar blunt questions. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... But the solicitus timor of his love—the dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense, to which he had advanced)—denaturalized him. He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... to the end and they faced five thousand British veterans; wherefore they had done what the navy expected of them. On a day so shameful that no self-respecting American can read of it without blushing they had enacted the one redeeming episode. Commodore Barney described this action in a manner blunt and unadorned: ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... need, a timely Apparition Steps in between, to bear the awful brunt; Making him change his horrible position, To marvel at this comer, brave and blunt, That dares Time's irresistible affront, Whose strokes have scarr'd even the gods of old;— Whereas this seem'd a mortal, at mere hunt For coneys, lighted by the moonshine cold, Or stalker of stray ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... If I am blunt of speech, I beg your forgiveness. I bring to you a letter from the citizen Lamachus, which I shall read, if it be ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Francqui is blunt, silent, aggressive. When Belgium wants something done she instinctively turns to him. In 1920, after the delay in fixing the German reparation embarrassed the country, and liquid cash was imperative, he left Brussels on three ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... analysis. Sometimes a government will propose, in the interests of peace and good government, to crush the enemy's aggressiveness by a purely defensive aggression, an excuse for bloodshed which only the most fanatical pacifist could confuse with Mr. Asquith's blunt watchword of "crushing German militarism." The logical fallacy of such an excuse which is almost invariably pleaded by powerful belligerents,[84] a fallacy of which no one could wish to accuse Mr. Asquith's ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... conducted me to their prince's tent, at the very moment that Missouf was brought before him. Thou wilt doubtless be pleased to hear that the prince thought me beautiful; but thou wilt be sorry to be informed that he designed me for his seraglio. He told me, with a blunt and resolute air, that as soon as he had finished a military expedition, which he was just going to undertake, he would come to me. Judge how great must have been my grief. My ties with Moabdar were already dissolved; I might have been the wife of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... with me, and for your country fell! O'er your cold dust I wept not; hurrying war Forbade all pause.—Yet, oh! whatever star, Sacred to patriot worth, and valour's crown, } Contain you now,—from heaven's bright noon look down, } Visit an exile's dreams, and blunt misfortune's frown! } ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... plates on which she amused herself by tracing the remains of quite half a dozen different meals. She felt sickened by the sight of the dead sheep; Louis seemed unmoved as he ran an anatomical eye over it and hacked off slices with a blunt knife. He became very wise on the subject of flapjacks and felt that Marcella was not quite playing up to him when she preferred to make omelets. The meal was quite a success in spite of the fact that, when it was ready Louis had difficulty in beating up the host and the other guests, and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... open at a deep brown throat, leggings of some thin material, boots, and a funny little patched brown coat and pointed hood made all in one, and hanging down with a fulness almost of skirts about the small determined legs. The accompanying dog was a very sympathetic, blunt-nosed, round-headed, curly-coated type, whose whiteness, which positively invited the stroking hand, was broken by two great black blotches set all askew on the back, and by a black patch which ringed the left eye and completely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... audibly, made a jerky movement towards the screens, then suddenly became aware of three MPs standing beside him, hands nonchalantly cradling blunt-nosed weapons. ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... —and brain sauce—did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the remotest guess what part Owen could play in the business. I never knew him give anything away in my life. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wearily to find that a letter had been thrust beneath his door, and so silently that he had not been aroused from his thoughts. The paper was of palest blue and heavy-laid. His name was written with a blunt pen in an angular, eccentric hand, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... for her ludicrous mistakes and blunt remarks were the bane of her new teacher's methodical life, and many an hour she had been kept after school as a ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... good-natured, whatever else he was, and as Grace said no more, he touched his cap, and passed on. The devoted admirer of Shuffles's nobleness and goodness was greatly disconcerted by the blunt statements of the second master, who had declared that the ship's company were almost in a state of mutiny against the captain. She continued her inquiries among other officers; but, though some of them thought it was quite unnecessary to go to sea, they all spoke very ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... for this unfaithfulness to conviction and to Christ, are put by the Apostle here in a very blunt fashion—'For fear of the Jews.' That is not what we say to ourselves; some of us say, 'Oh! I have got beyond outward organisations. I find it enough to be united to Christ. The Christian communities are very imperfect. There is not any of them that I quite ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... obvious in its simplicity, and not in the least discreditable from my point of view. It was perhaps inevitable that a boy like Bob should imagine I was trying to "cut him out," as my blunt friend Quinby phrased it to my face. I had not, of course, the smallest desire to do any such vulgar thing. All I wanted was to make myself, if possible, as agreeable to Mrs. Lascelles as this youth had done before me, and ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... those organs, on the contrary, which softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly if we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We must not therefore ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... better days; even a landsman could tell that. But from the blunt bows to the weather-scarred stern, on which the name was faintly discernible, the hulk had an air about it, the air of something that has lived; it was eloquent of ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Winchester, brother of King Stephen, went to the King, and offered to pay the whole sum required of Becket; but he was not listened to, and the Bishops of Chichester and London plainly told the Archbishop, that what was aimed at was to force him to resign. The plain, blunt Bishop of Lincoln said, "The man's life is in danger; he will lose it, or his bishopric; and what good his bishopric will do him without his life, I do ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came under the influence of Newman's Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the fear of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with a blunt proposal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later contrived to alleviate the snub. For, as we entered the smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to stream down into the bilge at our feet, foul with fragments of squid and caplin long dead. We were also beginning to listen eagerly for other sounds than the wind hissing in the cordage, the breaking of wave-tops and the hard thumping of the blunt bows ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... before you a second time, you will have a right to see how far I have wronged that trust reposed in me as your representative. Mr. Briggs, I dare say it may seem rude and impolitic to address you in this manner; but I am a plain, blunt man, and I disdain the vulgar arts of electioneering, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much time, so let us be off at once," said Ernest. "Nine shall be the game. Are you all provided with blunt-headed arrows? That is right. Twelve a-piece we should have. Let us take half-an-hour's turn round the wood, and then be back for the races. By that time the servants will have the dinner things cleared away and the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Gold and silver and copper they knew, and also tin, which they used for hardening the copper. But this new metal was altogether strange to them. It enormously exceeded copper in strength and hardness. Its edge did not, like that of their own weapons, blunt with usage, and they could well understand that, if armor could be formed of it, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... came to a small straight stem. "This will do, at all events," he thought, and he set to work with his knife to cut it down. As the knife was blunt, he made but slow progress. Even when it was down, he would have to pare off the lower part, so as to make it of the same size as the upper. At length by cutting round and round, he made a notch of sufficient depth to enable him to break off the stem. Shouldering his ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... Eustacia, looking vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She could see Charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... for her on the ground. The camp site appeared to be just the same as any other part of that monotonous plain-land, but evidently there was a stream or water-hole near by. Allie saw her companions were the only women in the caravan; they were plain persons, blunt, yet kind, used to hard, honest work, and probably wives of defenders of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... thrust, which was taken in such excellent part by Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the Englishman in the bush learns ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives nothing from like. And I thought that he who said this was a charming man, and that he spoke well. What do ...
— Lysis • Plato
... smile, instead of softening the effect of her words, appeared to call attention to the width of the gulf that separated Kesiah's generation from her own. The edge of sweetness to her look tempered but did not blunt the keeness with which it pierced. This quality of independent decision had always attracted him, and as he watched her walking under the hanging garland of the wild grape, he told himself in desperation that she was the only woman he had ever seen whose ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Lavendar's blunt refusal, except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... four hours had not looked up from his interminable chess game with Xavier, paused with a beleaguered knight in one blunt brown hand. ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... Surprised at the blunt straightforwardness of the question, as coming from him, I replied thoughtlessly, "Oh, my ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... owl?" No one spoke in the shop, The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop; The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading The "Daily," the "Herald," the "Post," little heeding The young man who blurted out such a blunt question; Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion; And ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too hard and bare in statement. We are told in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... of ground, which lies between them, and the wild Indians, who are not reduced under their dominion. We read of some barbarous people, whom the Romans placed in their armies, for no other service, than to blunt their enemies' swords, and afterwards to fill up trenches with their dead bodies. And thus our people who transport themselves, are settled in those interjacent tracts, as a screen against the insults ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... sometimes, I am told, to fourteen feet; the horns, of which I saw a great many at Whale-Fish Isles, were from three feet to seven feet in length. The use of this horn is a matter of controversy amongst the fishermen: it is almost too blunt for offence, and its point, for about four inches, is always found well polished, whilst the remainder of it is usually covered with slime and greenish sea-weed. Some maintain that it roots up food from the bottom of the sea with this horn; others, that it probes the clefts and fissures ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... lumps, but some weighing upwards of fifteen pounds. Some were hanging on to the trunk; others had fallen, and were partly buried in the ground near the roots. Ali took some of these lumps, and, putting them on a piece of rock, with the blunt end of his axe reduced them to powder. He then cut some palm-leaves, which he formed into tubes about a yard long, and these tubes he filled with the resin, binding them tightly round with small creepers. He presented one ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... The blunt-faced Etchemin woman, once a prisoner brought from northern Acadia, now the companion of Madockawando's daughter, knew her duty to the strangers, and gave them food as rapidly as the hunter could broil it. The hunter was ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... so as not to break the ball of earth round the roots, and fill in with mould round the sides. In order to supply water readily the pots must not be filled up to the rim. Pot firmly, and in the case of hard-wooded plants ram the earth down with a blunt-pointed stick; soft-wooded ones may be left rather looser. Give shade till the plants have recovered themselves. The soil used for potting should be moist, but not clammy. A rather light, rich loam is most suitable for strong-growing plants; peat for slow-growing, hard-wooded ones, like Ericas, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... Indians are very expert in the use of a long bow, with wooden arrows, rather heavy and blunt at the end. Maquin said he could shoot ducks and small birds with his arrows; but I should think they were not calculated to reach objects at any great distance, as ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... he was an active, stoutly built man (though far too energetic to be fat), with blunt rounded features, eyes a little protruding, and sandy hair and a reddish complexion which made his age an unguessable secret. He might have been in the thirties or he might have been ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... once. "It's this," he said finally, with blunt directness. "Your partner, Philip Rochester, appears to be a bankrupt. Harding and Taylor came in here to attach his private bank account to cover indebtedness ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... His large, blunt head was scarred with the record of old wounds, a series of battlefields all over it. His muzzle was as black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, and a tooth or two, all he had, gleamed out of his jaws of darkness. One eye was out, one ear cropped close. The remaining eye ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Lords. In two facing rows, averted from the landscape, condemned to an uneasy scrutiny of their mutual prosperity, they sit in leather chairs. They curve roundly from neck to groin. They are shaven to the raw, soberly clad, derby hatted, glossily booted. Always they smoke cigars, those strange, blunt cigars that are fatter at one end than at the other. Some (these I think are the very prosperous) ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... field which would have been selected by an ambitious captain upon which to gather laurels. So far as fame is concerned, the prospect—the promise in advance—was, "You may lose, but you cannot win." Yet Taylor, in his blunt, business-like view of things, seems never to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... our lodgings this morning, and therefore I cannot have the pleasure to dine with you to-day," was the civil excuse I was preparing. Never was expectation more beside the mark. My "guess" was altogether wrong. "What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?" was the gentleman's blunt salutation. "What have you to propose, sir?" was my reply. "I am the superintendent," he said, "of a German Sunday-school in the upper part of the city, and I should like you to come and address the children this afternoon." I promised to go, and he to send ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... performed in France by Cousin. He had popularized the philosophers. Without the acute, electric perceptions of the great German or the industry and amiable vanities of that De Sevigne among philosophers, Cousin, he presented, by fierce dashes of his crayon, black, blunt, and bluff, to the hitherto ignorant British public, some phases of the great metaphysical bearings of the age upon Literature and Art, as developed in Teutonic poetry and prose. In a word, he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... recent distribution of a Christmas charity at Millbrook, Southampton, the Rev. A. C. Blunt stated that one of the recipients had nearly reached her 102nd year. She was born in Hampshire, and down to a very recent period had been ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and, indeed, would never happen; so she told herself with a nervous little laugh. Harry gave her no opportunity of saying so to him, for you cannot reprove glances or discourage pressings of your hand in fashion so blunt. ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... often 5 meters long and 2 decimeters wide. The lower part of the older leaves stands up straight, while the upper half droops. The younger leaves are erect with only their tips bent down. The leaf spines are short, blunt, ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... Texan herd. There were no stock whips, no needless worrying of the animals in the excitement of sport. Any dog seizing a bullock by his tail or heels would have been called off and punished, and quietness and gentleness were the rule. The horses were ridden without whips, and with spurs so blunt that they could not hurt even a human skin, and were ruled by the voice and a slight pressure on the light snaffle bridle. This is the usual plan, even where, as in Colorado, the horses are bronchos, and inherit ineradicable vice. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... wish to see account-books. Few of them can read. They want to view the treasure itself. They know—you compel me to be blunt—that the accounts have been falsified. Your books show the spoil of Cartagena to amount to some ten million livres. The men know—and they are very skilled in these computations—that it exceeds the enormous ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... its visible polity, and its universal rule, and its especial prerogatives and powers and lessons, for its disciples. But, with a divine wisdom, and contrary to its human copyist, it has carefully guarded (if I may use the expression) against extending its revelations to any point which would blunt the keenness of human research or the activity of human toil. It has taken those matters for its field in which the human mind, left to itself, could not profitably exercise itself, or progress, if it would; it has confined its revelations ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Scots are long-headed, shrewd, careful, canny, active, persistent, but reserved and blunt, and without demonstrative enthusiasm. They have a physiognomy distinct from the rest of the Scottish people, and have a quick, sharp, rather angry accent. The local Scots dialect is broad, and rich in diminutives, and is noted for the use of e for o or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... different nature, with which Sir Terence must proceed to deal at once; but their gravity was completely outweighed in the adjutant's mind by this deplorable affair of Lieutenant Butler's. Without wishing to convey an impression that the blunt and downright O'Moy was gifted with any undue measure of shrewdness, it must nevertheless be said that he was quick to perceive what fresh thorns the occurrence was likely to throw in a path that was already thorny enough in all conscience, what a semblance ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... This exclamation appeared to disconcert Yoga Rama a good deal. The standing barefooted on a board studded with nails and on broken glass are common tricks which can be seen performed by negroes at country fairs. I felt the points of the nails and found they had been filed down and were blunt. Mr. Marriott sat on the nails to the amusement of the audience while Yoga Rama had gone off the stage to remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half a minute. He then proceeded to break some bottles on ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... although my companion supposed it to be another animal, as he could not see the long quills with which the English porcupine is armed. This creature was fully two feet long. Its back was covered with thick hair of a dusky brown colour; its head was short, and its nose blunt; it had small round ears, very powerful teeth, short limbs, and feet armed with strong crooked claws. These particulars I was afterwards able to exhibit ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the day, it was not unnatural for Dr. Bayard to be in a great hurry to get home to his dinner; and consequently his manners were even more blunt and informal than usual. Without losing a minute, he took a seat in front of the lady whom he supposed to be his patient, looked scrutinizingly into her face ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... saw by his manner that he was being played upon, or perceived the secretary's drift of himself, he came in his blunt way to ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... but very naturally, this extravagance rendered snuff a butt for the wits (who all took it, by the way), to shoot at. Steele, whose weakness for dress and show were proverbial, levelled many of his blunt shafts at its use; and Pope, who himself tells us 'of his wig all powder and all snuff his band,' let fly one of his keener arrows at the beaux, whose wit lay in their snuff-boxes and tweezer cases. As the men laid by, in the Georgian era, much of the magnificence of their ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... forceps. The broad blunt nose will scalp off the growths without any injury to the normal basal tissues. Voice-destroying and stenosing trauma are thus ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... of the higher classes tends to formalism, and has stamped itself on the language in some very odd ways. The tendency common to all tongues, towards a disuse of the second person singular, as too blunt and familiar, is carried so far in Spanish and Portuguese as to disuse the second person plural also, except in the family circle, and to substitute the indirect phrases, vuestra Merced (in Spanish) and vossa Merce (in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... impossible for the Squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say, that "to call on Riccabocca was as ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... "Sergeant O'Malley, 14th Hussars, get ready," and another fastened a red band to the Sergeant's arm as he stepped forward, clad in leather jacket and leg-guards and carrying the heavy iron-and-leather head-guard necessary in sabre combats, and the blunt-edged, blunt-pointed sabre. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... works I find the statement that the pupa cases come to the surface before the moths leave them, but how the operation is performed is not described or explained. Pupa cases from earth consist of two principal parts: the blunt head and thorax covering, and the ringed abdominal sections. With many feeders there is a long, fragile tongue shield. The head is rounded and immovable of its own volition. The abdominal part is in rings that ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... few minutes; take it out of the water, and with a blunt knife scrape off all the hair. Clean it nicely, divide the head and remove the brains. Boil it tender enough to take out the bones, which will be in about 2 hours. When the head is boned, flatten it on the table, sprinkle ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... she removed her gloves very leisurely and laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through it, cutting the pages with a blunt edge of her knife. It was all very agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seemed through the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and gentlemen, who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own. A soft, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... him, she would probably have set him down as undesirable. But she knew him. His good qualities seemed to her to overwhelm the others. His charm, his elegance, his affectionateness, his nice speech, his courtesy, his quick wit, his worldliness—she really considered it extraordinary that a plain, blunt girl, such as she, should have had the luck to please him. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... me, lord," answered Sem. "Look at snails, each one of them has a different shell: one is winding, but blunt; another is winding, but pointed; a third is like a box. In the same way precisely each' people build edifices according to their blood and disposition. Be pleased also to remember that Egyptian edifices ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... and love not GOD." But that will not suffice his exacting demands. A man is not "good" until his interior disposition be all filled and taken up with pure love of GOD. And as he analyses the Christian Character, there is a pleasant blunt directness about this holy man:—"he that says he loves GOD and will not do what is in him to shew love, tell ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... would bear, and tied it hard at the Bottom of the Glass; then they struck the Edge of the Knife on the Mouth of the Glass, (thus covered with the Handkerchief to prevent Noise,) till it became a Saw, with which they cut their Irons till it was Blunt, and then had Recourse to the Mouth of the Glass again to renew the Teeth of the Saw; and so completed their Design by Degrees. This being done in the Dead of Night, and many of them at Work together, the little Noise they made was overheard by the Centinels; who informed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... to this class, she jumps the fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery gods at the back." Puffed up with this delightful chatter. "Come now, confess, won't you," I queried, "is this lady who loves me yourself?" The waiting maid smiled broadly at this blunt speech. "Don't have such a high opinion of yourself," said she, "I've never given in to any servant yet; the gods forbid that I should ever throw my arms around a gallows-bird. Let the married women see to that and kiss the marks of the scourge ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "I shouldn't think he ever got drunk," she said; "he's far too solemn. In appearance, he's rather like a very respectable young milkman, fresh-coloured, you know, and sort of blunt everywhere, but he speaks—if you can imagine a cross between a very superior curate and the pater—that's what he speaks like, except that there's just an echo of an accent—not bad, you know, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... my Lord Brouncker, Sir Robert Murrey, Dean Wilkins, and Mr. Hooke, going by coach to Colonel Blunt's to dinner. [Wricklesmarsh, in the parish of Charlton, which belonged, in 1617, to Edward Blount, Esq., whose family alienated it towards the end of the seventeenth century. The old mansion was pulled down by Sir Gregory Page, Bart., who erected ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury, struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at the straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... detail, precisely as those who had dealings at the bank might have seen Campbell Wood any week-day morning for the past eight months. A man does not sleep with his clothes on. The skull of the man had been broken, as if with a blunt instrument of iron. On the charred lacework of the floor lay the leg of an old andiron with which Boaz Negro and his Angelina had set up housekeeping in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... was split or fractured, not clean cut, as with a sword or bullet, but hacked and hewn with some blunt implement, presumably either a club or a stone tomahawk. The skull of the great chief inside was entire and his skeleton unmutilated: but we could see at a glance that the remains we found huddled ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... bully and a fool," said Mr. North, who was a blunt-spoken man. "He will never get ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... expert in the use of a long bow, with wooden arrows, rather heavy and blunt at the end. Maquin said he could shoot ducks and small birds with his arrows; but I should think they were not calculated to reach objects at any great distance, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... at least the merit of expressing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians. They never swerved from their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They preferred to gain their ends by treaty, and with the consent of the Indians; but if this proved impossible, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a small straight stem. "This will do, at all events," he thought, and he set to work with his knife to cut it down. As the knife was blunt, he made but slow progress. Even when it was down, he would have to pare off the lower part, so as to make it of the same size as the upper. At length by cutting round and round, he made a notch of ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... project of civil and commercial arts, find a natural pause in the termination of its own pursuits? May the business of civil society be accomplished, and may the occasion of farther exertion be removed? Do continued disappointments reduce sanguine hopes, and familiarity with objects blunt the edge of novelty? Does experience itself cool the ardour of the mind? May the society be again compared to the individual? And may it be suspected, although the vigour of a nation, like that of a natural body, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... than a paraphrase of Pope's epistles, or, yet less than a paraphrase, a mere translation of poetry into prose. This is, surely, to attack difficulty with very disproportionate abilities, to cut the Gordian knot with very blunt instruments. When we are told of the insufficiency of former solutions, why is one of the latest, which no man can have forgotten, given us again? I am told, that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger; what can it be, then, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... had broken into the park the night before, and had been routing amongst the fern. The age and size of the animal were known by the print of the feet, the toes being round and thick, the edge of the hoof worn and blunt, the heel large, and the guards, or dew-claws, great and open, from all which appearances it was adjudged by the baronet to be "a great old boar, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Sir Walter Blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... days she kept the letter locked in her desk, not having the courage to take it out again and read it. Then she sent for Captain Holt, the only one, beside Martha, with whom she could discuss the matter. She knew his strong, honest nature, and his blunt, outspoken way of giving vent to his mind, and she hoped that his knowledge of life ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of happiness to her heart, wearied with jealousy, to find one to whom old times were precious, and who took her up where he had last seen her. His blunt ways, and downright attacks, were a refreshment to a spirit chafing against the external smoothness and refinement of her way of life, and the pleasure of yielding to his arguments was something new and unexampled. She liked to gain the bright approving look, and with her universal craving ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eminence on the top of one of Mr. John Price's high stools Patience Welcome glanced up from the ledger over which she was toiling, put the blunt end of her pen into her mouth and looked out into the street drenched in sunshine. A half dozen farmers' horses, moored to the hitching rack in front of the store, threshed restlessly with their tails at enthusiastic banqueting flies, ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... whereby I might both make some trial of myself and as it were teach the little children to go that yet can but creep." Abraham Fleming, translating Virgil's Georgics "grammatically," expresses his original "in plain words applied to blunt capacities, considering the expositor's drift to consist in delivering a direct order of construction for the relief of weak grammatists, not in attempting by curious device and disposition to content courtly ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... moving, though by inches at a time. We get our front wheels on to the bridge. Packed in among the troops, but moving steadily as they move, we cross the Scheldt. On our right the sharp bows and on our left the blunt sterns of the boats. Boat after boat pressed close, gunwale to gunwale, our roadway goes across their breasts. Their breasts are taut as the breasts of gymnasts under the tramping of the regiments. They vibrate like the breasts of living things ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... go put dese greens on. My husband will kill me if he don't find no supper ready. Here come Mrs. Blunt. She oughter feel like a penny's worth of have-mercy wid all dis ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... hours had not looked up from his interminable chess game with Xavier, paused with a beleaguered knight in one blunt brown hand. ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... indignant. He had never held his kinsman in great esteem, and had never been on the best of terms with him in the past. Nevertheless, he was very far from suspecting him of what King implied. To convince him that he did Sir Lewis an injustice, Ralegh put the blunt question to ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... she should give me poison. They first went to Ercole and tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... when either a round beard or a mustache was the invariable custom? Why did he not cut his hair? Above all, why did he prowl about so much at night? As the two passed each other, Dyke, for all his good-nature, was a little blunt in his greeting and looked back at the ex-shepherd ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... took his leave of Thomasin, prayed that she might be supported in her tribulation, and so departing met Amos Bartlett who was standing outside the cottage awaiting him. The man gave a forcible and blunt description of his morning's work which brought many tears to Uncle Chirgwin's eyes; then, together, they walked to Penzance, there to chronicle the sudden death of Joan Tregenza and arrange for those necessary formalities which ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Vall keenly. "That's a pretty blunt question, Lord Virzal," he said. "I wish I knew a little more about you. When you and your Assassins started inquiring about the Lady Dallona, I tried to check up on you. I found out that you had come to Darsh from Ghamma on a ship of the family of Zorda, accompanied ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... expressed only too clearly; and who was no more scrupulous in seeking to gratify them than his father had been before him. I suppose Esmond's mistress, her son, and the Colonel himself, had been all secretly debating this matter in their minds, for when Frank broke out, in his blunt way, with:—"I think Beatrix had best be anywhere but here,"—Lady Castlewood said:—"I thank you, Frank, I have thought so, too;" and Mr. Esmond, though he only remarked that it was not for him to speak, showed plainly, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... which they belong are printed in large characters, it is a beautiful sight to watch a fleet of these stately ships glide by, with their towering sails goose-winged before the breeze, and churning up the waters with their blunt, unyielding prows. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... would follow a similar course, it would be better for themselves, for the men they lead, and for the world at large. The deputy-chairman of the society was Michael O'Neill, the audit accountant of the company, and if ever a plain-spoken man, blunt and direct of speech existed, it was he. Every word he spoke had the ring of honest sincerity. To the men he spoke more plainly even than I, and him they never resented. I think their trust in him exceeded their trust in me. True he was Irish and I was not, and then ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... a slow, bloodless struggle of one species with another—the fleet with the slow, the cunning with the stupid, the sharp-eyed and sharp-eared with the dull of eye and ear, the keen of scent with the blunt of scent—which we call natural competition; but the slow, the stupid, the dull-eyed, dull-eared, and dull-scented find their place and thrive for all that. They are dull and slow because they do not need to be otherwise; ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... mother, take this lock of hair"— and in his right hand he stretched it out to be cut away—"take this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a reproach to ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... answer you, "Oh, it was done to prevent the vulgar trippers who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern policeman into the same picture with a Druid. This really vital ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... stick as though it were a club, swinging it like a baseball bat. That would be as silly as using an overhand stab with a dagger. He used it the way a fencer would use a foil, and the hard, blunt end of it sank into the first thug's solar plexus with all the drive of the Duke's right arm and shoulder behind it. The thug gave a hoarse scream as all the air was driven from his lungs, and he dropped ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... straightest sect. There was no cant superstitions or affectation in his make-up, and what he said he meant. It was doubtful if he ever had an evil thought, and while his manners might have been at times blunt, he was always sincere and his language chosen and chaste, with the possible exception during battle. The time of which I speak, the enemy was making a furious assault on the right wing of the Eighth, and as the Major ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... now she knows it is no gentle chase, But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, 884 Because the cry remaineth in one place, Wilere fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud: Finding their enemy to be so curst, They all strain courtesy ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... under side of the rock became alive! Two ink-black eyes appeared, bulging, oval, implacable; and between them opened a great, hooked beak, like a giant parrot's. There was no separate head behind this gaping beak, but eyes and beak merely marked the blunt end of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... spurious moment he had scaled the valley-rim, and came out upon the huge plain where it was rumored the little three-toed horses roamed. And he had seen them, he had seen them! He pursued, armed only with blunt shaft and a few of the throw-stones such as Otah used; but he was less swift than the tiny horses, and his throw-stones fell wide, and it was rumored that here roamed the long-tusked shaggy ones that were larger than the very caves ... trembling, Gral had retraced ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... the democratic cantons of Switzerland, you must have seen the herdsman with the staff in one hand and the book in the other. In the constituent Assembly of France was found a peasant whose sagacity was as distinguished as his integrity, whose blunt honesty over-awed and baffled the refinements of hypocritical patriots. The people of Paris followed him with acclamations, and the name of Pere Gerard will long be mentioned with admiration and respect through ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... can easily lead you to a church where great varieties of truthful and yet comfortable doctrines are preached, pleasing to the ear, and fascinating to the senses. No blunt fellow stands in its pulpit, but rather a cultured and highly refined gentleman of modern type who delights to keep apace with the customs of the age. If you desire, I will gladly accompany you thither. It would be sad indeed were you to be turned away from religion ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... sink far lower, too. The placid, ordinary youth thinks less, and digests his food better, and has a pleasanter time, on the whole. A sensitive child feels with a keen freshness that only years can blunt. To see some fool of a man crushing a clever child is heart-rending. By curious, misguided instincts, children always look up to their full-grown companions; and the result is, that any adult ass can nip in the bud precious childish fancies, or ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... proceeded to make a fire, and cook our evening meal. A light was procured by rubbing a blunt pointed stick in a groove made in another, as if with intention of deepening it, until by the friction the dust became ignited. A peculiarly white and very light wood (the Hibiscus tiliaceus) is alone used for this purpose: it is the same which serves ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... only as auxiliary. And while the round ship was of deep draft and rode to anchor, the shallow flat-bottomed long ships were drawn up on shore. The Phoenicians took the Egyptian and Cretan models and improved them. They lowered the bows of the fighting ships, added to the blunt ram a beak near the water's edge, and strung the shields of the fighting men along the bulwarks to protect the rowers. To increase the driving force and the speed, they added a second and then a third bank of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... spurs, and we bought some. They are of blue steel inlaid with strips of silver, and the rowel is a sort of cogged wheel, from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. (See page 220.) They look terrific instruments, but really the cogs or points of the rowels are quite blunt, and they keep the horse going less by hurting him than by their incessant jingling, which is increased by bits of steel put on for the purpose. Monstrous as the spurs now used are, they are small in comparison with those of a century or two ago. One ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... help you, when all the powers of nature are in vain, yea, when your heart and your flesh shall fail you, you will be enabled still to rely with peace upon Him who has said "I will be the strength of thy heart and thy portion for ever." —H. BLUNT. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... differentiation from the class to which he belongs. His democratic instincts become less acute when he shoulders the Lee-Metford, and he readily accommodates himself to the will of a benevolent despot of robust appearance, and blunt and somewhat contemptuous address; whom in fact he prefers to the ascetic, dispassionate General Officer of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... catastrophe. They push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. Society shaken to its base, hurls itself into the industrial suicide of the general ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of this ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... strata not reaching to the summit when the mountain was raised up, the second or third stratum or a more inferior one is there exposed to day; this may be well represented by forceably thrusting a blunt instrument through several sheets of paper, a bur will stand up with the lowermost sheet standing highest in the center of it. On this uppermost stratum, which is colder as it is more elevated, the dews are condensed in large quantities; and sliding down pass under the first ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... "So blunt, yet so pointed. A pity it's not original. But I know what you meant by your remedy. You don't see it would be a double crime, and you are too good a man even to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... diversification of their industry the exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James, it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... in the world can give, can equal in intensity, these complex joys I had when asleep; waking joys seem so slight, so vague in comparison—so much escapes the senses through lack of concentration and undivided attention—the waking perceptions are so blunt. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... didn't like it, and meant to show that he didn't. His money at least was his own, and he could do with it as he liked. The answer did not come until the question had been asked twice. Then in words as brief and manner as blunt he said,— ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... kept on beating his breast. His forehead was wrinkled in dried- up folds, his brows bristled fantastically into shaggy, dirty tufts. His heavy, blunt nose, powdered with hairs at the tip, stood out obstinately between two deep folds on either side. These folds overhung the corners of his mouth, and were joined below the chin by a network of pallid veins. A noise, light ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... say!' Geoff almost yelled in his endeavour to drown the terriers' voices. 'Who do you think has come back to the village? Why, Jerry Blunt, with one arm, poor chap, from that North Pole expedition. He has given up the sea; and you'll never guess the land trade he means to take up, not if you sat down for six weeks to think it out. You couldn't, so I may as well tell you. Training young ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... character, and introduced by the poet, no doubt, as a contrast to the turbulent and busy character of the other lady. The boisterous captain is a well-drawn and a well-supported character. He is rugged, honest, blunt, illiterate, and gallant. But it is the character of the hero Taylor which is drawn and sustained with the most art and nature. In the first place he is brave, although some have contradicted this, by saying that he did ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... terms a little blunt, "This scheme that you are advertising Was all along a private stunt Of WILSON'S singular devising; His game we weren't allowed to know; Under a misty smile he masked it; We never gave him leave to go ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... Blunt, came, and he too felt the heat, having spent hours in going his rounds in the closeness and dust. He was a rough man, and his temper did not always hold out; he told Alfred sharply that he would have no whining, and when the boy moaned and winced more than he would have ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the charred match which had lighted it. In front lay a scattering of bright metallic fragments. Sheldon recognized their significance. Tudor was notching his steel-jacketed bullets, or cutting them blunt, so that they would spread on striking—in short, he was making them into the vicious dum-dum prohibited in modern warfare. Sheldon knew now what would happen to him if a bullet struck his body. It would leave a tiny ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... say so, the whole sunny horizon of his countenance. But this was not all; you might read there a spirit of kindly sarcasm that was in complete keeping with a disposition always generous and affectionate, mostly blunt and occasionally caustic. Nothing could exceed the extreme neatness with which he attended to his dress and person. In this point he was scrupulously exact and careful; but this attention to the minor morals was ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cruel to you," she exclaimed, impulsively, "and I didn't mean to hurt you at all, Aunt Jane. You must forgive me. It's just my blunt Irish way, you see; but if I hadn't been drawn to you from the first I wouldn't have said a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... fish, which some call Chaousarou, as big as a large pike. It was only an ordinary sized one, for many larger ones are seen, eight, nine, and ten feet long, as is said. It had a snout about a foot and a half long, of about the same shape as that of the snipe, except that the extremity is blunt and not so pointed, and of a large size in proportion to the body. It has a double row of teeth, which are very sharp and dangerous;... and the form of the body is like that of a pike, but it is armed with very stout and hard scales, of silver gray color, and difficult ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him. It was blunt-fingered and broad and red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... for another reason. Posterity ever has a blunt way of asking the most inquisitive questions. The inquirer for truth will not be content with the simple statement that many of the factory owners and tradesmen bribed representative bodies to give them railroad ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... found the shoulder of a heifer had been smashed by some blunt instrument like a hammer. I myself had a couple ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... entrance passage, but I should rather have said there is another explanation of a line marked on the stone next below the vertical one. I should imagine this line, which is nothing more than a mark such "as might be ruled with a blunt steel instrument, but by a master hand for power, evenness, straightness, and still more for rectangularity to the passage axis," was a mere sign to show where the upright stone was to come. But Professor Smyth, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... becoming conscious it makes itself feeble. If there were any signs that in spite of the universal character of European decadence there was still a modicum of health, still an instinctive premonition of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the German soul, then it would be precisely this blunt resistance to Wagner which I should least like to see underrated. It does us honour, it gives us some reason to hope: France no longer has such an amount of health at her disposal. The Germans, these loiterers par excellence, as history shows, are to-day the ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... them," said Master Jonson, in his blunt, outspoken way, "I'll think thee a thought offhand to serve the turn. What? Why, this tanner calls us vagabonds. Vagabonds, forsooth! Yet vagabonds are gallows-birds, and gallows-birds are ravens. And ravens, men say, do foster forlorn children. Take my point? Good, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... after fame, and that deceitful fame of popularity; and, to help on his catastrophe, I observe likewise two sorts of people that had a hand in his fall: the first was the soldiery, which all flock unto him, as it were foretelling a mortality, and are commonly of blunt and too rough counsels, and many times dissonant from the time of the court and State; the other sort were of his family, his servants and his own creatures, such as were bound by safety, and obligations of fidelity, to have looked better ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and he laughed at the recollection. "Fairbain met us coming out of the dining-room,—you know what a delightful, blunt, blundering old fellow he is! Well, Miss Christie must have made an impression even on his bachelor heart, for he actually requested the privilege of escorting her to the Trocadero, and back to the hotel after the performance to-night—hinted at a lunch, the gay old dog, and pranced about ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... brothers should be set against each other in this manner so early in the competition. The night before the match-play part of the business commenced, I was walking down one of the streets of Portrush when I encountered Andrew himself, and in his own blunt but good-humoured way he remarked, "Young laddie, d'ye think y're gaun to tak the money awa' with ye? Ye've no chance, ye ken." I said nothing in reply, because I felt that he spoke the truth. Next day a heavy ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... twenty Indians were killed by jaguars within a lifetime. If a man has presence of mind enough to shout and make a noise and go towards the brute, the latter withdraws. Otherwise he is lost, for even if he escapes with his life, the wounds inflicted by the jaguar's blunt claws and teeth are terrible and dangerous. There are Indians in South America who are said to hunt the jaguar in the following manner. They wrap a sheepskin round the left arm and in the right hand hold a sharp two-edged knife. Then they beat up the jaguar and set dogs at him. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... very important accessory of the work-table, and two varieties are indispensable; a pair of large ones for cutting-out, with one point blunt and the other sharp, the latter to be always held downwards; and a pair of smaller ones with two sharp points. The handles should be large and round; if at all tight, they tire and disfigure ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... to which Walker led them was plainly but neatly furnished and the windows looked out upon rolling pastures. The Governor abandoned his high-flown talk and asked blunt questions as to recent visitors, apparently referring to criminals who had lodged at the farm. They talked quite openly while Archie unpacked his bag. The restless activity of the folk of the underworld, their methods of communication and points of rendezvous seemed part of a vast system and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... he muttered, as there was a rustle in the moist patch of jungle, and he caught sight of the loathsome blunt muzzle of what looked like a monstrous eft staring hard at him, not ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down for ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Senior Surgeon's blunt, wholesome invitation to ride had been perfectly sweet when he prescribed it for her in the Superintendent's office, the invitation had certainly soured most amazingly in the succeeding ten minutes. Abruptly now, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... deeds and from herself The mind acquires. Severer argument: 10 Not less attractive; nor deserving less A constant ear. For what are all the forms Educed by fancy from corporeal things, Greatness, or pomp, or symmetry of parts? Not tending to the heart, soon feeble grows, As the blunt arrow 'gainst the knotty trunk, Their impulse on the sense: while the pall'd eye Expects in vain its tribute; asks in vain, Where are the ornaments it once admired? Not so the moral species, nor the powers 20 Of Passion and of Thought. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... not believe a moderate use of tobacco for a mature person is necessarily a sin, yet we do believe that it does blunt the moral sense, and soon leads to spiritual weakness and indifference, which are sins. To love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength, and one's neighbor as himself, means not only a denial ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... to us, as you promised, sir; and there was no hanging on longer with nobody to work the ship," was the blunt reply. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher—the highest joys. Genius claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And yet at this time Sheridan ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... head, I think—in a helmet, looking down, with big drooped eyelids. If it isn't Jeanne it ought to be. Anyhow it's you.... That's what's been bothering me. I thought it was just because you had black hair bobbed like a fifteen century page. But it isn't that. It's her forehead and her blunt nose, and her innocent, heroic chin. And the thick, beautiful mouth.... And the look—as if she could see behind her eyelids—dreadful things going to happen to her. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" Alfred Edward Housman "When I was ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... natural temper not unlike the Gauls; impatient, fiery, inconstant, ostentatious, boastful, fond of novelty; and like all barbarians, fierce, treacherous, and cruel. Their arms were short javelins, small shields of a slight texture, and great cutting swords with a blunt point, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... neck, brutal of jaw, low-browed, red of face, blunt of speech, the finest, most unmerciful tackler on the football team, stepped up to Stephen and said a few words in a low tone. Courtland could not hear what they were save that they ended with an oath, the choicest of ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... suit any style of beauty better than steel bars," she said lightly as Mrs. Hastings came fluttering back. Mrs. Hastings fluttered ponderously, as humblebees fly. Indeed, when one considered, there was really a "blunt-faced bee" look ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... from a different motive, is uncertain. There was formerly a story in circulation that he was defeated as a candidate for some political office and retired in disgust from the haunts and ways of men. This however is not likely. Thomas Laighton was a man of a blunt and rugged sincerity, tenacious and determined; such as would not be likely to lose his mental balance at the first unfavorable ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... is a blunt, outspoken man. If things do not go to his liking, he is quick to tell you. Doctor Franklin is humorous and polite, but firm as a God-placed mountain. You may put your shoulder against the mountain and push and think ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... black: the head depressed, with the sides erect, leaving a blunt ridge on the upper part, in which the eyes are placed: the ridge over the eyes covered with larger scales than those over the head; eyes rather small, with a fleshy ridge above them; eye-lids covered with minute, and surrounded by a delicate serrated ridge of small upright scales: ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... hardly liked to oppose his reasons to Reginald's blunt speech, and Reginald, dismissing the subject from his mind, began to talk of something else. He ran on very volubly for a little while, without receiving any interruption from his brother, and, looking at him, he saw very plainly that Louis ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... Punch's blunt inquiry, "Why?" in last week's cartoon different answers would, I suppose, be returned by various Members. The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER would say that the reassembling of Parliament was necessary in order that he might obtain a further Vote of Credit from the representatives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... were published, I received from Dr. Downes a copy of a paper "On the Influence of Light on Protoplasm," written by himself and Mr. T.P. Blunt, M.A., which was communicated to the Royal Society in 1878. It was a continuation of a preceding paper which, referring chiefly ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... are subtler sides to this subject, and it is of these I fain would speak. We are apt to blunt our literary sense by reading far too much, and to lessen our capacity for getting the great delights from books by making reading into a routine and a drudgery. Of course I know that reading books has its utilitarian side, and that we have to consider printed matter ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... absence; the other met the commissioner himself, and demanded of him point-blank what he had been doing with the princess. The question was so bluntly put and the man's attitude so impudent that Samson lost his temper and couched his denial in blunt bellicose bad language. The vehemence convinced the questioner that he was lying, as the maharajah was shortly informed. So the fact became established beyond the possibility of refutation that Yasmini had been closeted with Samson ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
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