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More "Grindstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flung down a lot of dull bluish blades, warm from the forge, upon a condemned grindstone that was lying in the yard; and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... visibly preparing for an assault. He saw it all now. He had been, in some vague way, deluded. He had given confidential audience to the niece of one of the Great Claimants before Congress. The inevitable axe had come to the grindstone. What might not this woman dare ask of him? He was the more implacable that he felt he had already been prepossessed—and honestly prepossessed—in her favor. He was angry with her for having pleased him. Under the icy polish ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... included granite, gneisses, syenites and norite. This series only inadequately represented the New York granites. Among the most striking examples shown were the coarse grained red granite from Grindstone island in the St. Lawrence river, the Mohican granite from Peekskill, Westchester county, which is being extensively used in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York city, and the dark green labradorite rock ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... people who live in it that I object to. If one could pick his own company, and could do as he pleased, he might manage to live here for a few years very comfortably; but we have to associate with some rough characters there in the barracks, and the officers hold us with our noses close to the grindstone all the time. They look upon a private as little better than a dog, and they'll slap him into the guard-house on the slightest provocation. Now, this is one of the stables; it will accommodate seventy horses. Those you see in here are blooded animals, ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... oiling a grindstone?" answered his uncle, throwing some water on the bearings, which caused a lot of rust to work out ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... I would not let my nose be kept to the grindstone, as yours is, for any one living. I've too much spirit, for my part to be made a fool of as some people are; and all for the sake of being called a vastly good daughter, or a vastly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... there ain't a bit of evidence to show the 'oss was doctored, and the way he went stood quite as well for having been knocked off his feed and off his legs by the woyage and sich like. And now you go and put that swell to the grindstone for Act 2 ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... school in winter he shovels paths; in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots of wintergreens and sweet flags, but instead of going for them, he is to stay indoors and pare apples, and stone raisins, and pound something in a mortar. And yet, with his mind full of schemes of what he would like to do, and his hands ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Nancy Ellen, "when I see you, and the way you act! You have chance after chance, but you seem to think that life requires of you a steady job of holding your nose to the grindstone. It was rather stubby to begin with, go on and grind it clear off ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... right. Will I lose all the good we have gained for the sake o' bad temper? The end's in sight,—the blessed end o' the secrecy, an' the weary struggle o' keepin' me gineral's nose to the grindstone, and now to leave go? Not while Cleena Keegan draws a free breath, an' can handle a silly gossoon, like ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Lord, man, you're not the first nor the ten-thousandth man who has broken down from overwork. Because my axe becomes dull I'm not going to refuse to use it when it comes back from the grindstone with a brighter edge than ever on it, am I? Wait till you see your reception. Some of those fellows have been making a lot of mistakes in your absence—have been trying to do things too big for them. They'll be only too glad to turn some of their stunts over to you. And the big ones, who are ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... no way but to keep the automobile and buy another plough, not for my children's sake any more than for my own. There was an old man living in this house when I bought it who moved back into the city and took with him, among other things, a big grindstone and two long-handled hayforks—for crutches, did he think? and to keep a cutting edge on the scythe of his spirit as he mowed the cobblestones? When I am old and my children compel me to move back near the asylums and hospitals, I shall carry into the city with me a ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... attached to the home premises of Stoke Revel, and presently emerged, furnished with the object he had made diligent and particular search for; this he proceeded to carry in an inconspicuous way to a distant cottage where he knew there was a grindstone. He spent a happy hour with the object, the grindstone, and a pail of water. Whirr, whirr, whirr, sang the grindstone, now softly, now loudly—"this is an axe, an axe, an axe, and a ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... among other elements of difficulty, that Cecil's maid Grindstone was a thorough Dunstonite, who 'kept herself to herself,' was perfectly irreproachable, lived on terms of distant civility with the rest of the household, never complained, but constantly led her young mistress to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exclaimed Don Quixote, "for I would rather they had deprived me of my arm, as long as it were not my sword arm. Know, Sancho, that a mouth without teeth is like a mill without a grindstone, and a tooth is more to be prized than a millstone. But all this must we suffer who profess the stern rule of knights-errant. Mount, friend, and lead the way, for I will follow thee what ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a grindstone—steady undertune to the "click-nick" of knives in the pen; the wrench and shloop of torn heads, dropped liver, and flying offal; the "caraaah" of Uncle Salters's knife scooping away backbones; and the flap of wet, open bodies ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... saw the corporal coming across the road, with a hatchet in his hand. He had been to grind it at the mill, where there was a grindstone, ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... out of sight; Lima Street became as empty and uninteresting as the nursery. Mark wished that a knife-grinder would come along and that he would stop under the dining-room window so that he could watch the sparks flying from the grindstone. Or that a gipsy would sit down on the steps and begin to mend the seat of a chair. Whenever he had seen those gipsy chair-menders at work, he had been out of doors and afraid to linger watching them in case he should be stolen and his face stained with walnut ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Summer, Summer, how wouldst do but for rain? What's a fair house without water coming to it! Let me see how a smith can work, if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife? the grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps, sets a point upon it, and scours it as bright as the firmament. So I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle; it grinds out all gaps, it makes him forget all scars ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... remember, sir, that its edge was ever over-keen," replied Lambourne. "When I was a youth, I had some few whimsies; but I rubbed them partly out of my recollection on the rough grindstone of the wars, and what remained I washed out in the broad waves ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... pictured in my dreams and projected in my hopes came to me at last. It arrived with my marriage. Then children to bless it. But it was not made complete and final—a veritable Kentucky home—until the all-round, all-night work which had kept my nose to the grindstone had been shifted to younger shoulders I was able to buy a few acres of arable land far out in the county—the County of Jefferson!—and some ancient brick walls, which the feminine genius to which I owe so much could convert to itself and tear apart and make over again. Here ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... too large for my purpose, so I cut it in two, using the one half as a bundle-cover. The other half would make a sort of cape or cloak, I thought, and to that end I folded it and slung it over my shoulder. I gave my knife a few turns upon the grindstone, pocketed some twine from one of the lockers, lashed my bundle in its tarpaulin as tightly as I could, and then went aft to the provision lockers to get some stores for the road. I took out a few ship's biscuits, a large hunk of ham, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... grinder; "now if you could find money in your pocket whenever you put your hand into it, your fortune would be made." "Very true: but how is that to be managed?" "You must turn grinder like me," said the other: "you only want a grindstone; the rest will come of itself. Here is one that is a little the worse for wear: I would not ask more than the value of your goose for it;—will you buy?" "How can you ask such a question?" replied Hans; "I should be the happiest man in the world if I could ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... or, that high breeding then was of more difficult attainment than that which is now so called; and, consequently, entitled the successful professor to a proportionable degree of plenary indulgences and privileges. No beau of this day could have borne out so ugly a story as that of Pretty Peggy Grindstone, the miller's daughter at Sillermills—it had well-nigh made work for the Lord Advocate. But it hurt Sir Philip Forester no more than the hail hurts the hearth-stone. He was as well received in society as ever, and dined with the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... deck until far into the night while the sparks flew from cutlass blades pressed to the whirling grindstone. Tubs were filled with hand-grenades and fire-pots, the deck strewn with sand, the magazine opened and powder passed up. Stede Bonnet was careful to see for himself that all things were in order. At such times he was a martinet ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... this in one direction, it is turning machinery in another that cleans and weighs the grain off into sacks ready for the market. Open the doors right and left and you find it at work like reason, breaking oil-cake, grinding corn for the fat stock, turning the grindstone, pitching, pounding, paring, rubbing, grabbing, and twisting, threshing, wrestling, chopping, flopping, and hopping, after the manner ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... in earnest. You can't speak—you can't move. Your nose is held close to the grindstone all the time. He watches you every moment. If you drink a drop he says you are tipsy and makes ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... that my parents allowed my constitutional inertness to have full play, has hitherto prevented me from forming any regular habit of labor. I am now thirty-eight. Would you suppose that if I kept my nose to the grindstone for one, two or three years, I might yet hope to work with some ease and regularity? That is, if I compelled myself to write a certain number of hours every day as a discipline, regardless of the quality of matter I produce, is there any ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... Section of the cliffs of the South Joggins, near Minudie, Nova Scotia (from north to south through coal with upright trees and sandstone and shale). c. Grindstone. d, g. Alternations of sandstone, shale, and coal containing upright trees. e, f. Portion of cliff, given on a larger scale in Figure 440. f. Four-foot coal, main seam. h, i. Shale ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... through the long and picturesque gorges of Bugey, and crossed the Rhone at the foot of the rock of Pierre-Chatel. The narrowed river eternally rushes past the base of this rock, with a current wearing as the grindstone and cutting as the knife, as if to undermine and overthrow the state-prison, whose gloomy shadow saddens its waters. I slowly ascended the Mont du Chat by the paths of the chamois-hunters; arrived at its summit, I perceived stretched out before me in the distance ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... found the case in the library, and had restored it to him five minutes before, his ejaculation was not in the best of taste. His lordship, however, must whet his point upon the grindstone ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... thus upon my favour, You know his temper, tye him to the grindstone, The next rebellion I'le be rid of him, I'le have no needy Rascals I tye to me, Dispute my life: come in and ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log, and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite side of the river. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the door which opens into the kitchen is a large dresser, with long rows of brass and copper cooking-utensils and bright-colored dishes, the little grindstone for sharpening knives, half-buried in its varnished case, and the egg-dish, old enough ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... his work. But he got tired of the old knife—it was not tool enough, and had to fashion on the grindstone a screw-driver to a special implement. With ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... were sharp from the grindstone, Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us. * * * * * Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf Fell on the war-field, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... What an abominable hand do I scribble! but I have been chopping wood, and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and such occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to be done in the world; but, thank God, I am able ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... papers on electricity frequently speak of rubbing the tubes as a fatiguing exercise. Our spheres are fixed on iron axes which pass through them. At one end of the axes there is a small handle with which you turn the sphere like a common grindstone. This we find very commodious, as the machine takes up but little room, is portable, and may be enclosed in a tight box when not in use. It is true the sphere does not turn so swift as when the great wheel is used; but swiftness we think of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the perfecting of that beneficent labor, on which the life of so many weak stomachs depends. Have you ever amused yourself by watching a large ox lying down in a meadow? Long after he has finished grazing, his jaw continues to work, turning round and round like the grindstone of a painter when he is rubbing down his colors. Look, and you will see that he will remain there for hours together, motionless and contemplative, absorbed in this incomprehensible mastication, rolling about in his throat from time to time some ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... be none, sir. Shall I call at the factory and explain your wishes about the grindstone? I will tell them I was mistaken, and that they had better have one of ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... before they were driven quite to the last extremity, by the tide of public sentiment in England, they should escape from all philanthropic interference and surveillance, and be able to bring the faces of their unyoked peasantry to the grindstone of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... you join forces, for instance, and find a grindstone—or make one of the other man's axe. But the last way is too slow, and, as I said, takes too much brain-work—besides, it doesn't pay. It might satisfy your vanity or pride, but I've got none. I had once, ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... groping crusts in the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too—things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why I raked up you. Come, out with your iron, and prise the lid ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like joy; I found there the worst thing in the world, ennui trying to live, and an Englishman who said: "I do this or that, therefore I amuse myself. I have spent so many pieces of gold, therefore I experience so much pleasure." And they wear out their life on that grindstone. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... and dishonorable manner, and accused himself of having a low, servile nature. One day, when he ran up and down in the snow, he worked himself into such a fury that he resolved to rid himself of these two wicked brothers were it at the risk of his own life. He ran to the stables where the grindstone stood, thawed the frozen water in the tub, and sharpened his pocket-knife till it cut a piece of the thinnest tissue-paper. But when, on the following Monday, he was again thrashed, he had not the courage to draw it from his pocket, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... which the men had dressed down had been lifted from their supports, the cod livers dumped into the gurry-butt, and the tables removed from the rails. The two men on the first watch were sharpening the splitting knives on a tiny grindstone and walking forward occasionally to see that the anchor and trawl buoy lights ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... old lady, "don't bubble and boil. I have a great regard for you, and care a great deal more for you than I do for her, and it is only people that I care a great deal for that I stir up. Go back to your grindstone, or whatever you were at work at, and do not worry your mind about your little Cicely. It may be that I shall like her enough to wish that I ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... one of the large thick beams which had not yet been worked at "Marry, master," he cried, "marry, this is good sound oak; I wager it will snap like glass." And thereupon he struck the stave against the grindstone so that it broke clean in half with a loud crack. "Pray be so kind," said Master Martin, "pray have the kindness, my good fellow, to kick that two-tun cask about or to pull down the whole shop. There, you can take that balk for a mallet, and that you may have an adze ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... laboratory hours and study, but, as I told you before I left, I intend to put my shoulder to the wheel and aim so high that you will have just cause to be proud of me when I become a Doctor of Medicine. I see that I shall have to cut out all idea of amusements and pleasure and put my nose to the grindstone. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... Diameter of a Circle. Area of a Circle. Area of a Triangle. Surface of a Ball. Solidity of a Sphere. Contents of a Cone. Capacity of a Pipe. Capacity of Tanks. To Toughen Aluminum. Amalgams. Prevent Boiler Scaling. Diamond Test. Making Glue Insoluble in Water. Taking Glaze Out of Grindstone. To Find Speeds of Pulleys. To Find the Diameters Required. To Prevent Belts from Slipping. Removing Boiler Scale. Gold Bronze. Cleaning Rusted Utensils. To Prevent Plaster of Paris from Setting Quickly. The Measurement ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... balsam, and pine are used. There are two methods of manufacturing wood pulp; the mechanical, by grinding up the wood, and the chemical, by treating it chemically. By the mechanical method the wood is pressed against a large grindstone which revolves at a high speed. As fast as the wood is ground off, it is washed away by a current of water, and strained through a shaking sieve and a revolving screen which drives out part of the water by centrifugal force. ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... concerts, the world would be a much more agreeable place. If people would only learn what they can and what they can’t do, and leave the latter feats alone, a vast amount of unnecessary annoyance would be avoided and the tiresome old grindstone turn to ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... It is practically the same. I have a good knife with two parallel blades that can be taken off, and put on the grindstone, and got as sharp as a razor. For some things I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... only consolation was the large liberty I enjoyed in the woods and fields with my father on Saturdays, or with my brothers Charles and Jacob on their long botanizing excursions, or in the moments of leisure when I was not wanted to turn the grindstone or blow the bellows in the workshop. Those long walks, in which I was indefatigable, and the days or nights when I went fishing with my brother Jacob, who was ten years older than myself, and who inherited the wandering and adventurous longings ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... The little hare jumped out through the mouth with a single spring, and fled away like lightning, all the hyaenas in full pursuit uttering great cries. As he turned a corner the little hare cut off both his ears, so that they should not know him, and pretended to be working at a grindstone which lay there. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... vibratory movements are opposed by the same property. A grindstone, a tuning-fork, and an atom of hydrogen require, to move them in their appropriate ways, an amount of energy proportionate to their mass or inertia, which energy is again transformed through friction ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... him a great man sometime. I does it to all the boy babies. There's luck in it." In those days there were great hopes, and prophecies had not ceased. Many a sweet sleep did I have under the elm tree's shade later on; and many a tiresome hour turning the grindstone for the long bladed sythes. In the trunk of the tree were stuck many worn out blades, their points imbedded by the tree's growth from year to year. Thus they became tallies marking the past seasons of haying. Under the tree was the afternoon parlor of the family throughout the summer; there ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... sorry for the dog. Poor fellow! He couldn't go fishing. He had to stay home always. I felt sorry for the house and the dooryard and the cows and the grindstone and Aunt Deel. The glow of the candles and the odor of ham and eggs drew me into the house. Wistfully I watched the great man as he ate his supper. I was always hungry those days. Mr. Wright asked me to have an egg, but I shook my head and said "No, thank you" with sublime self-denial. At the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... recent date, if we may credit a well-known story: A rustic shopkeeper in a remote district, being unable to read or write, contrived to keep his accounts by picture-writing, and charged his customer, the miller, with a cheese instead of a grindstone, from having omitted to mark a hole in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the praises accorded to the latter have been no whit exaggerated." A Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy, by Andre L. Simon. II. Single. By way of comparison, the spring and summer Single Gloucester ripens in two months and is not as big as its "large grindstone" brother. And neither is it "glorified Cheshire." It is mild and "as different in qualify of flavour as a young and crisp wine is from ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... cycle of tales discussed by Bolte-Polivka (2 : 201-202) in connection with "Hans in Luck" (Grimm, No. 83). It will be recalled that in the Grimm story the foolish Hans exchanges successively gold for horse, horse for cow, cow for pig, pig for goose, goose for grindstone, which he is finally glad to get rid of by throwing it into the water. "A counterpart of this story," say Bolte and Polivka, "is the Maerchen of the 'profitable exchange,' in which a poor man acquires from another a hen because it has eaten up a pea or millet-seed that belonged to him; for ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... country any more. So Ting-a-ling thought that as the King was putting on his war boots, something very great was surely about to happen. Hearing a fizzing noise behind him, he turned around, and there was the Prince in the court-yard, grinding his sword on a grindstone, which was turned by two slaves, who were working away so hard and fast that they were nearly ready to drop. Then he knew that wonderful things were surely coming to pass, for in ordinary times the Prince never lifted his finger to ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... haven't his ear for music, the things are no use to me; and I tell him so. I could better handle a grindstone ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... coffee,—Turkey or Bourbon,—should be roasted only till it is of a cinnamon colour, and closely covered up during the process of roasting. In France this is done in closed iron cylinders, turned over a fire by a handle, like a grindstone. The coffee should be coarsely ground soon after it is roasted, but not until quite cool: some think its aroma is better preserved by beating in a mortar, but this is tedious. The proportions for making coffee are usually one pint of boiling water to two and a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... life with the same ease which it showed in possessing itself of that bygone English life whence sprung the Canterbury Tales, or As You Like It. So that his tutor, who was much attached to him, and who made it one of his main objects in life to keep the boy's aspiring nose to the grindstone of grammatical minutiae, began about the time of Sir Mowbray's letter to prophesy very smooth things indeed to his mother as to his future success at college, the possibility of his getting the famous St. Anselm's scholarship, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all same Melican," he told Martin, as he industriously turned the grindstone beneath the cleaver's edge. "Me like all same lepublic—me fight like devil all same time when China war. Now Jap he come take China. No good. Me kill um Jap. Velly good. All same chop um head, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... to a grindstone,' said Steerforth, and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... came to that conclusion, in regard to myself, long and long ago. Sick wife, hungry children, and four or five backs to cover; no wonder a poor man's nose is ever on the grindstone. For my part, I am sick of it. When I was a single man, I could go where I pleased, and do what I pleased; and I always had money in my pocket. Now I am tied down to one place, and grumbled at eternally; and if ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... large grindstones are being driven at a high speed. The velocity of rotation becomes too great for the tenacity of the stone to withstand the stress; a rupture takes place, the stone flies in pieces, and huge fragments are hurled around. For each particular grindstone there is a certain special velocity depending upon its actual materials and character, at which it would inevitably fly in pieces. I have once before likened our earth to a wheel; now let me liken it to a grindstone. There is therefore a certain ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... with pride. Why that man—the selfishest, laziest creature by nature—worked himself to skin and bone so that she should have the best lessons and everything she needed. We both held our noses to the grindstone just as tight as ever we could, and Mercedes was brought up pretty well, I ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the way was as familiar to Rebecca as to uncle Jerry; every watering-trough, grindstone, red barn, weather-vane, duck-pond, and sandy brook. And all the time she was looking backward to the day, seemingly so long ago, when she sat on the box seat for the first time, her legs dangling in the air, too short to reach the footboard. She could smell the big ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Brahman starves the king's larder will be empty; cakes must be given to him while the children of the house may lick the grindstone for a meal; his stomach is a bottomless pit; he eats so immoderately that he dies from wind. He will beg with a lakh of rupees in his pocket, and a silver begging-bowl in his hand. In his greed for funeral fees he spies out corpses like a vulture, and rejoices in the misfortunes ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... this man discovered that all the knives in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as The Outline ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... purchases was an axe. In the workshop on the farm was a fairly good grindstone; only the treadle was broken and Hiram had to repair this before he could make much headway in grinding the axe. Henry Pollock lived too far away to be called upon in ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time has method ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... force is weak, and opportunity is afforded to observe this action, and see its character exhibited. A common example of weak centripetal force is the adhesion of water to the face of a revolving grindstone. Here we see the deflecting force to become insufficient to compel the drops of water longer to leave their direct paths, and so these do not longer leave their direct paths, but move on in those paths, with the velocity they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... is a chapel of misfortune—evil betide it! It is the most cursed kirk that ever I came in." With his helmet on his head, and spear in his hand, he roams up to the rock, and then he hears from that high hill beyond the brook a wondrous wild noise. Lo! it clattered in the cliff as if one upon a grindstone were grinding a scythe. It whirred like the water at a mill, and rushed and re-echoed, terrible to hear. "Though my life I forgo," says Gawayne, "no noise shall cause ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... shifts, that's what awaits you at Sevres, if you are in the mind to come and realize things which are not vague plans but definite arrangements, and the relative result of which will depend on the brilliant wit that you have had the fatal imprudence to cast to the winds. I am at the grindstone, and forswear any one that will not tackle it. I have put my neck in the big collar because the other one was irksome. Your devoted Mar tyr " ine " ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... last and final and most precious reward All beggars, each in his own way Always an incompleteness somewhere, and the shadow Assent to what must be Ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone Beating the dirge of yesterday or the tattoo of to-morrow Begum, of Bengal, days out from Canton—homeward bound! Best friend I have ever had, but is the best man I have known Brown's Hotel Byron Casanova & Pepys & Saint Simon Cats really owned Stormfield ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... said Mrs. Bates, plumply, "He has been with his father for the last four years, and he's come to be a real help to him. Gets to the office at eight o'clock, rain or shine, and loves nothing better than to sit and grub there all day long. Steady as a rock. Splendid future. Holds his own nose to the grindstone like a real little lamb. I hope he asked ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... turning-lathe. The bend or knee pinned on the shafts, by which they are moved round with a circular motion. Also, iron handles for working pumps, windlasses, &c. Also, erect iron forks on the quarter-deck for the capstan-bars, or other things, to be stowed thereon. Also, the axis and handle of a grindstone. Also, an old term for the sudden or frequent involutions of the planets ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the 30th of March, 1847. The 'six hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each minute' nearly ceased to flow, and dwindled away into the appearance of a mere milldam. The rapids above the falls disappeared, leaving scarcely enough on the American side to turn a grindstone. Ladies and gentlemen rode in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore, over solid rock as smooth as a kitchen floor. The Iris says: 'Table Rock, with some two hundred yards more, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... had so many natural privileges as this. Why, there are twice as many harbours and water-powers here, as we have all the way from Eastport to New OrLEENS. They have all they can ax, and more than they desarve. They have iron, coal, slate, grindstone, lime, firestone, gypsum, free-stone, and a list as long as an auctioneer's catalogue. But they are either asleep, or stone blind to them. Their shores are crowded with fish, and their lands covered with wood. A government ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... heartily, as he patted the child's head. "You keep 'em at it. Nothin' like havin' their noses held to the grindstone when they're young. You didn't see anybody pass this ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... gently, "it'll be all the same in a thousand years!" The axe was blunt. He took it to the grindstone—a new patent, with a bicycle seat on it, and there he sat puffing and grinding until a neighbour's cow broke into our corn. He dropped the axe and ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... I awoke, and yet on going to the window it was evident that the inhabitants of Darrow had been long up and about, for the farm-yard was in order for the day, the carts gone a-field, and the cattle-sheds empty. George and Philip Burton were busily engaged near the barn door, the one in turning a grindstone, the other in sharpening an axe; and from the barn itself came the melodious voices of Lillie and her brother Jack. Presently they came out, she leading a long-legged horse which I immediately recognized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... were brought on shore before dinner. After they had taken a hearty dinner, the cabin tables and chairs, all their clothes, some boxes of candles, two bags of coffee, two of rice, two more of biscuits, several pieces of beef and pork and bags of flour, some more water, the grindstone, and Mrs Seagrave's medicine-chest were landed. When Ready came off again, he said, "Our poor boat is getting very leaky, and will not take much more on shore without being repaired; and Juno has not been able to get half the things up—they are too heavy for one person. I think we shall do pretty ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as much as you have, but I don't believe it will pay to rub your nose on a grindstone. Your nose will get the worst ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... chance, I stole five cans of the milk, and that night, when it was Louis's watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge's vegetable knife. It was rusty and dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge. I slept more soundly ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... glee, 'Glorious Apollo,' or, 'The Red-cross Knight'—very well received; recitative and aria, from Lucia di Lammermoor—very lachrymose; violin solo, by Signor Rosinini, who throws the audience into a paroxysm of delight by imitating a saw and a grindstone; 'The Bay of Biscay,' by the 'veteran' Braham, being positively his last appearance (the 'veteran' is announced for four concerts in the ensuing week!); ballad, again, by the native tenor, 'When Vows are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... had the sensation would have for him been enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it does not content them to have a conception; they must wrestle with it until it takes a form in which others can see it. They doom the artistic impulse to toil with its nose to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed in a book or a statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor. With the ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... ought to keep a small home free at least, and instead of putting more on this eighty we ought to sell enough of the stuff to pay off on this part. Every farmer in this country has his nose on the interest grindstone, and my life has been spoiled with it ever since I can remember. Please, dear, let's not put a second mortgage on ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... burning desire to see ME. Neither do I believe that he was inspired by any wild and frenzied passion for Miss Cornelia. Take off your tragic airs, my dear friend, and fold them up and put them away in lavender. You'll never need them again. There are some people who can see through a grindstone when there is a hole in it, even if you cannot. I am not a prophetess, but I shall venture on a prediction. The bitterness of life is over for you. After this you are going to have the joys and hopes—and I daresay the sorrows, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... huts and one store of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a few other articles, but there was nothing eatable to be seen in it. If there was any flour, tea, or sugar left, it was carefully concealed from any of the famishing settlers who might by chance peep in at the door. Outside ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... to the Menominee and Winnebago tribes occasionally visited us at our cabin to get a piece of bread or some matches, or to sharpen their knives on our grindstone, and we boys watched them closely to see that they didn't steal Jack. We wondered at their knowledge of animals when we saw them go direct to trees on our farm, chop holes in them with their tomahawks ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... one's self, and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many acquaintances. In short, I held my nose to the grindstone. The upshot of it all is that I have got rid of a superstition. We have so many, that one the less— perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real difference in one's comfort. The superstition in question—of course you have it—is ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... wipe the gathering tears from his eyes. It wasn't long before he melted and gave his hand to his neighbor, and they had a regular love-feast. After a parting that would have softened the heart of a grindstone, Brown had about reached the room door, when the sick man rose up on his elbow and said, 'But, see here, Brown, if I should happen to get well, mind that old grudge stands!' So I thought if this nation should happen to get well, we might want that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... When properly adjusted, the machine works on a variation of from, one to two pounds between the extremes of motion. When the dampers are very large, say 3 feet or over, they should be set on rollers, like common grindstone rollers; the regulator should be attached directly to the damper, the length of the pipe connecting the regulator with the boiler being of ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... minutes we were descending a lane so narrow that the gipsy van only cleared the walls of the houses on either side by three or four inches. This lane had been paved centuries ago with stones of all sizes, from a moderate grindstone to that of a football. When people had wished to build a new house, they had taken up a few stones to make a foundation; the street was a series of pitfalls filled with mud and filth, including miniature ponds of manure-coloured water. The surface appeared impassable; the projecting water-spouts ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... overwhelming zeal, And social impulse, a terrible throng! Leaving shuttle, and needle, and wheel, Furnace, and grindstone, spindle, and reel, Thread, and yarn, and iron, and steel— Yea, rest and the yet untasted meal— Gushing, rushing, crushing along, A very torrent of Man! Urged by the sighs of sorrow and wrong, Grown at last to a hurricane strong, Stop its course who ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... double-ender of a State political jobbery was at fault, because it had no headquarters. It could not get together a ring; it could not raise a corps of lobbyists. Such few axe-grinders as there were had to dodge back and forth between the Fastburg grindstone and the Slowburg grindstone, without ever fairly getting their tools sharpened. Legislature here and legislature there; it was like guessing at a pea between two thimbles; you could hardly ever put your finger on the right one. Then what one capital favored ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Otto von Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone—a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... it doan't work, an' dat's how I've been swindled, Mistah Swift. Yo' see, I done traded mah ole grindstone off for dis yeah ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... Tom, wagging her head in sorrowful confession, "and that's just what I see no chance of getting again for a precious long time to come. I haven't much time to grieve, however, for my poor little nose is fairly worn away, it's kept so near to the grindstone." ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I, advancing toward a broad circular stairway that wound downward far into the regions below, where I expected to find Fourney and Company holding the General down upon the grindstone, while Uncles Caleb and Jeff turned, and Marcy stood by to say when enough of the rough was got off. 'There! in my soul he's going down into the kitchen!' The fellow bawled out as I passed down, and soon disappeared, saying it was just the winding way I sought; and, though ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... an instrument maker in London, in a book published in 1750. He supposed the stars of our sidereal system to be distributed in a vast stratum of inconsiderable thickness compared with its length and breadth. If we had a big grindstone made of glass, in which had become uniformly imbedded a vast quantity of grains of sand or similar minute particles, and if we were able to place our eye somewhere near the centre of this grindstone, it is easy to see that we should see very few particles near the direction ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... their cells; but these being driven by the same force against the already-hardened crust, would become, the nearer they were to this part, smaller and smaller or less expanded, until they became packed into a solid, concentric shell. As we know that chips from a grindstone (Nichol "Architecture of the Heavens.") can be flirted off, when made to revolve with sufficient velocity, we need not doubt that the centrifugal force would have power to modify the structure of a softened bomb, in the manner here supposed. ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... and Latin had not been 'given' in that convenient manner, Dr. Arnold, who had spent his life in acquiring those languages, might have discovered that he had acquired them in vain. As it was, he could set the noses of his pupils to the grindstone of syntax and prosody with a clear conscience. Latin verses and Greek prepositions divided between them the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... change in her demeanour. On questioning Victoria, I found that Krak's softness did not extend beyond the limits of my sickroom; she had indeed ceased the knuckle-rapping, but in its place she curtailed Victoria's liberty and kept her nose to the grindstone pitilessly. Why should caresses be confined to the sick, and kindness be bought only at the price of threatened death? I was inclined to refuse to kiss Krak, but my mother made such a point of compliance that I yielded reluctantly. In days of health Krak ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... we know the consequences of it—the sweet little see-saw of hope and fear, productive of unlimited discussion and anxiety. No weak letting one stand at ease about that telegram! It keeps one's nose hard down on the grindstone." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... mill and workshop. Their home. "Baby" learning civilized ways. The noise in the night. The return of the yaks. The need for keeping correct time. Shoe leather necessary. Threshing out barley. The flail. The grindstone. Making flour. Baking bread. How the bread was raised. What yeast does in bread. Temperature required. The "Baby" and the honey pot. The bread with large holes in it. George's trip to the cliffs. A ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... are working with bellows, pincers, and hammer, to prove the temper of some metal, which is so molten that a stream of it is pouring out of the furnace. Another example of this literal interpretation, is in the Psalter of Edwin, where two men are engaged in sharpening a sword upon a grindstone, in illustration of the text about the wicked, "who whet ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... on board the "Startler" there was no little excitement. The grindstone was in full use to sharpen cutlasses, and in addition there was a great demand made on the armourer for files to give to the lethal weapons a keener edge, one which was tried over and over again, as various messmates ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Gaunt. Who's he to be wallowing in gold, when a better man is groping crusts in the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too—things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why I raked up you. Come, out with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tribe, and set to using those same brains in the making of hatchets and ornaments. A few days passed and he was yet further enlarged. Powhatan longed for two of the great guns possessed by the white men and for a grindstone. He would send Smith back to Jamestown if in return he was sure of getting those treasures. It is to be supposed that Smith promised him guns and grindstones as many as ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... where her father was with his tales of gods and heroes, and his ancient songs and his great sword. It was her task, self-chosen and rich in pride, to tend the great sword, to keep it stainless, to sharpen its edge on the grindstone while she sang the Song of the Sword, and the sparks flew and the great sword seemed to gleam with an answering fervor. But never in all the days of her young life had blood to be washed from the sword. For Sicily smiled under the sway of King Robert the Good, who had ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the homely garb of proverbial truisms. On the subject of frugality we cannot do better than take the worthy Mentor for our text, and from it address our remarks. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, "keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... this street that the old knife-grinder was slowly propelling his apparatus, which was fitted to two large light wheels. A very neat and comprehensive apparatus it was. There was the well-poised grindstone, with its fly-wheel attached; a very bright oil-can, and pipe for dropping water on to the stone; various little nooks and compartments for holding tools, rivets, wire, etcetera. Everything was in beautiful order; while a brass plate, on which was engraved ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... on the Aroostook River, the three boats, as well as the party, having been transported from Grindstone by rail, and launched at the junction of the Masardis with the first ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to his ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held— The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled, The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands, The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... weak, and opportunity is afforded to observe this action, and see its character exhibited. A common example of weak centripetal force is the adhesion of water to the face of a revolving grindstone. Here we see the deflecting force to become insufficient to compel the drops of water longer to leave their direct paths, and so these do not longer leave their direct paths, but move on in those paths, with the velocity they have at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... ennui trying to live, and an Englishman who said: "I do this or that, therefore I amuse myself. I have spent so many pieces of gold, therefore I experience so much pleasure." And they wear out their life on that grindstone. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... spring in my blood, and a bit of free activity like this under the blue sky suited my humour. A boy likes almost any work that affords him an escape from routine and humdrum and has an element of play in it. Turning the grindstone or the fanning mill or carrying together sheaves or picking up potatoes or carrying in wood were duties that were a drag ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... they did not know what we do, that this outer husk is a layer of pure silica, one of the hardest of known minerals. Boil it six weeks, and it comes out unchanged. Boil it six years, or six centuries, and the result would be the same. You can not stew a grindstone or bring granite to porridge, and the wheat-husk is equally obstinate. So long as enthusiasts ate husk and kernel ground together, little harm was done. But when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... girl she ever had in her house, and the best scholar in her class. Of course she is; I'd swear to that. She may not be rooted and grounded in the fundamentals your queer old uncle thinks necessary, and I doubt if she knows about the grindstone, and the rest of it. I'd laugh to see a great hulking fellow like you questioning her on such subjects. I've a great mind to write out the lingo, and send it to her anonymously, so she will be prepared to satisfy ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... many fantastic devices: among them we find the very common forms of evil spirits and lost souls driven away from the sacred building. A legend is connected with a corbel stone near the west end of the north aisle. It is fashioned into the likeness of a grindstone and it is handed down by tradition that once upon a time towards the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth a nobleman ran away with a blacksmith's wife, but afterwards repented of his sin and had imposed on him as penance the completion of the west end ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... knight, "the great pilferer Time hath since then taken away a little from my hair, and added somewhat (saving your presence) to my belly; and my face hath not been improved by being the grindstone for some hundred swords. But I ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... is just the man," he exclaims. "He is honest and firm to a thread, and keen enough to see through a grindstone if you turn fast ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... solid and greasy, and should be suitable for many purposes; earth for bricks and for tiles, mountain-chrystal, glass like that of Muscovy,(1) green serpentine stone in great abundance, blue limestone, slate, red grindstone, flint, paving stone, large quantities of all varieties of quarry stone suitable for hewing mill-stones and for building all kinds of walls, asbestos and very many other kinds applicable to the use of man. There are different paints, but the Christians are not skilled in them. They are seen ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... is a failure. I have never had a chance. My father was poor and couldn't give me the advantages that other young men had. So I've had my nose on the grindstone all my ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... came around the corner of the house, and settled down under the window. A group of lilacs, with feathery purple blossoms, made a deep, cool shade, where the children sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac stars ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... that that's why he's so fond of wearing it. (Practically.) Well, I must take these down to the grindstone and put an ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... Instead of seeing it, as he expected, against the cold grey sky of the autumn morning, he saw nothing at all. He rubbed his eyes again and again. At last he cast them towards the ground, and there lay scattered about and broken into small pieces, all that remained of his mill. The wheels and grindstone lay near the base; the roof and sides had been carried almost a hundred yards away, and ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... beyond give the impression that he could do a great deal if he chose; "and," thought Allan Meredith, "carry home a sheaf of bills, I expect. He ought to have been the moneyed man, and I the one obliged to keep to the grindstone, perhaps. I don't know; the very necessity for doing something may have given him the kind of impetus he needed—to say nothing of having to keep up the prestige of an ancient name, which must be some spur ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone—a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart electricity to other bodies, and that bodies so electrified ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... back the crying child, and had watched the little girl, who now darned away as skilfully as ever, the Ogress took down a huge knife from the wall, and began to sharpen it on a grindstone in a corner of the kitchen. As she sharpened the knife, she glanced from time to time at the little maid, and soon perceived that she had ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... like me. All you want is a grindstone: the rest comes of itself. I have one which is a little damaged indeed, but for which I would ask nothing more than your ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... inhabitants of Darrow had been long up and about, for the farm-yard was in order for the day, the carts gone a-field, and the cattle-sheds empty. George and Philip Burton were busily engaged near the barn door, the one in turning a grindstone, the other in sharpening an axe; and from the barn itself came the melodious voices of Lillie and her brother Jack. Presently they came out, she leading a long-legged horse which I immediately recognized as answering to the description of the colt. He was of a dull gray color, and at the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... scythe, one axe, and then to help in breaking the land, one plough and two harrows for every ten families; and to help you to put up houses we give to each Chief for his band, one chest of carpenter's tools, one cross-cut saw, five hand saws, one pit saw and files, five augers and one grindstone. Then if a band settles on its reserves the people will require something to aid them in breaking the soil. They could not draw the ploughs themselves, therefore we will give to each Chief for the use of his band one or two ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... looked for his name in the book. It was written in a fair, clerkly hand. He lived at Streatham. Suddenly I hated him. The dogged fool, to keep his nose on the grindstone like that. What was all his courage but the very tip-top of cowardice? What a vile nature—almost Sadish, proud, like the infamous Red Indians, of being able to ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... work, ignoble and degrading, but he drew two crumbs of comfort from the bread of affliction. He was developing his arm-muscles and he was literally watering the said bread of affliction with the sweat of labour. As the heavy drops trickled from chin and nose into the meal around the grindstone, it pleased Moussa Isa to reflect that his enemy should eat of it. Since the shadow of Moussa was pollution to these travesties of men and warriors, let them have a little concrete pollution also. But in the cook-house, while arm and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... difficult attainment than that which is now so called; and, consequently, entitled the successful professor to a proportionable degree of plenary indulgences and privileges. No beau of this day could have borne out so ugly a story as that of Pretty Peggy Grindstone, the miller's daughter at Sillermills—it had well-nigh made work for the Lord Advocate. But it hurt Sir Philip Forester no more than the hail hurts the hearth-stone. He was as well received in society as ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... swords that were sharp from the grindstone, Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us. * * * * * Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf Fell on the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... be home again," he breathed. "Now that I don't have to keep my nose to the grindstone I'm going to come home oftener. Things change so. We may never all be home ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... yet another week the King's nose was kept to the grindstone, and it would have irritated most men to find their good work repeatedly condemned; but William was, as you may have observed, singularly sweet-tempered, besides which he desired nothing so much as to remain ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... was ready, IT should be gently rolled down a gigantic groove provided for it, till it lighted on the edge of both wheels at the same instant. Of course it would not rest there, not the ten-thousandth part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore, till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of course, feel the world's attraction all the time, which would bend ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... in the canoe, for bags of flour occupied the bottom and a grindstone and small forge were awkward things to stow. Jim, however, found a spot where he could lie down and the Indian huddled in the stern. He was a dark-skinned man, dressed like the white settlers, except ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... cliffs of the South Joggins, near Minudie, Nova Scotia (from north to south through coal with upright trees and sandstone and shale). c. Grindstone. d, g. Alternations of sandstone, shale, and coal containing upright trees. e, f. Portion of cliff, given on a larger scale in Figure 440. f. Four-foot coal, main seam. h, i. Shale with fresh-water ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... whose features were evidently European, though he was nearly as black as a negro who, strange to say, was discoursing with him in very tolerable French. The impulse of curiosity led me to accost the man at the grindstone, when his companion immediately made off. The itinerant artisan was from Aix in Provence; think of wandering thence to Darien in Georgia! I asked him about the negro who was talking to him; he said he knew nothing of him, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... to the poor like ony whunstane, [any whinstone] And haud their noses to the grunstane; [hold, grindstone] Ply ev'ry art o' legal thieving; No matter—stick ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... work, one receives the impression that the author has done his task very well. It borders somewhat on hero worship, however, as is evident from the use of the following language: "If one could see a mystical presentation of the epoch, one would see Garrison as a Titan, turning a giant grindstone or electrical power-wheel, from which radiated vibrations in larger and in ever larger, more communicative circles and spheres of agitation, till there was not a man, woman, or child in America who was not a tremble." He says further: "We know, of course, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... steels of a lower grade. For forging it should be heated slowly and uniformly to a bright red and only light blows used as the heat dies out. Do not hammer at all at a black heat. Reheat slowly to a dark red for hardening and quench in warm water. Grind on a wet grindstone. ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... hardly afford to set up one," he confided. "And anyway, I haven't much leisure. Of course, when a good fellow like you comes along I can take a day off, once in a way. But generally my nose is down to the grindstone." ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... hour. Now the water on its surface, covering about three-fourths of it, and being more mobile than the solid earth, is, by centrifugal force, made to roll around the earth, the same as the water is made to move around the grindstone when in motion, a thing familiar to every body that uses that instrument. In the Southern Ocean this motion of the water is so well known to mariners who double Cape Horn in sailing from San Francisco to New York, that they now run considerably lower down in order to ride ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... workshops and tool-sheds attached to the home premises of Stoke Revel, and presently emerged, furnished with the object he had made diligent and particular search for; this he proceeded to carry in an inconspicuous way to a distant cottage where he knew there was a grindstone. He spent a happy hour with the object, the grindstone, and a pail of water. Whirr, whirr, whirr, sang the grindstone, now softly, now loudly—"this is an axe, an axe, an axe, and a strong arm that ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... part making the star-shaped cut is formed from a separate piece of steel, so attached to the handle as to make a close joint with the blade. The latter is beveled from the outside all round, so that by removing the part making the star-shaped cut, the edge may be ground on a grindstone. It is important that the angles in the blade be made perfect, and that its outline represents an exact half hexagon. To use the tool, place the tarred paper on the end of a section of a log or piece of timber and first cut the lower edge into notches, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... shook his head. "I observed Lent this year scrupulously, and I haven't changed my tactics since Easter. I've been keeping my nose to the grindstone. Began to see things a little differently, Eloise. I decided it was mother's innings—decided to drop the butterfly ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... of the wood, was a cluster of low red farm buildings. The two hastened forward. Flush with the wood was the apple orchard, where blossom was falling on the grindstone. The pond was deep under a hedge and overhanging oak trees. Some cows stood in the shade. The farm and buildings, three sides of a quadrangle, embraced the sunshine towards the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Norris, "the trouble with you is that you never want to do anything; you always want to do something else. I begin to think that there are compensations to a man in having fate hold his nose to the grindstone. He learns persistence, willy-nilly." ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Catwhisker was several miles beyond Grindstone Island and was winding its way through a labyrinthine group to the north of Grandview. The scenery here was so enchanting that Cub and his father speedily agreed that the first convenient, unclaimed natural ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... chatter so much," said Sir George Staunton, "you will have the boat on the Grindstone—bring that white rock in a line ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... forgotten Laveuve, the miserable wretch who lay at death's door; and all of them were hastening away to their business or their passions, caught in the toils, sinking under the grindstone and whisked away by that rush of all Paris, whose fever bore them along, throwing one against another in an ardent scramble, in which the sole question was who should pass over ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... stirring up with a pole. He should practice turning a series of summer-sets rapidly, or jump up and see how many times he can strike his feet together before coming down. Let him make the earth turn round now the other way, and whet his wits on it as on a grindstone; in short, see how many ideas ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... elderly man, whose nose had been too close to the grindstone to permit of dalliance, and who now, monied and retired, found himself terribly alone in the pale sun of St. Martin's Summer, and to the little charming woman of forty, led back to life by an ardent ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... in the centre of a grindstone to protect the hole in the centre from the action of the axis; it is a charge frequently borne on escutcheons ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... brought down a reply from the oracular lips of the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... the few days of the following week for a round-up of the forces before the Wednesday election, the men all became absorbed to the point of oblivion to everything save the speculation as to how the race would go. But it was not in the nature of David Kildare to be held against the grindstone of serious endeavor too long at a time, and in the midst of the turmoil he proceeded to plot for a brief and exciting relaxation for himself and his strenuous friends, and he chose Saturday for ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the piano and when he realized she was a genius he most went off his head with pride. Why that man—the selfishest, laziest creature by nature—worked himself to skin and bone so that she should have the best lessons and everything she needed. We both held our noses to the grindstone just as tight as ever we could, and Mercedes was brought up pretty well, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used in programmed combination with other tools (see {filter}, {plumbing}). 3. [MIT: general to students there] /vi./ To work; to study (connotes tedium). The TMRC Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to the grindstone". See {hack}. 4. /n./ [MIT] A student who studies too much and hacks too little. (MIT's student humor magazine rejoices in ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... do be right. Will I lose all the good we have gained for the sake o' bad temper? The end's in sight,—the blessed end o' the secrecy, an' the weary struggle o' keepin' me gineral's nose to the grindstone, and now to leave go? Not while Cleena Keegan draws a free breath, an' can handle a silly gossoon, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... thistles, so that it could never be used as a country any more. So Ting-a-ling thought that as the King was putting on his war boots, something very great was surely about to happen. Hearing a fizzing noise behind him, he turned around, and there was the Prince in the court-yard, grinding his sword on a grindstone, which was turned by two slaves, who were working away so hard and fast that they were nearly ready to drop. Then he knew that wonderful things were surely coming to pass, for in ordinary times the Prince never lifted his finger to ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been listening to some mischievous stranger or other - they're always about - and the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;' here his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; 'I can see as far into a grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I do!' cried Mr. Bounderby, shaking his head ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Sally and get a good cigar, Or even pot a milky coconut: And, all this while, life's had the upper hand: I slipt, the day I came; and lost my grip: Life got me by the scruff of the neck, and held My proud nose to the grindstone. My turn, now— I'll be upsides with life, and teach it manners, Before death gets the stranglehold: I'll have The last laugh, though it choke me. And what's death, To set us twittering? I'll be no frightened squirrel: Scarting and scolding never yet scared death: When ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... here, among other elements of difficulty, that Cecil's maid Grindstone was a thorough Dunstonite, who 'kept herself to herself,' was perfectly irreproachable, lived on terms of distant civility with the rest of the household, never complained, but constantly led her young mistress to understand that she was enduring ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its scabbard in front of Fort Fisher, has fallen from the grasp of the "bottled" chieftain, whether from an invincible repugnance to warlike deeds, like that which pervaded the valiant soul of the renowned Falstaff, or because an axe on the public grindstone is a more congenial weapon in the itching palm of a Knight of Spoons, has not yet ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin
... running to waste. It required Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... London, in a book published in 1750. He supposed the stars of our sidereal system to be distributed in a vast stratum of inconsiderable thickness compared with its length and breadth. If we had a big grindstone made of glass, in which had become uniformly imbedded a vast quantity of grains of sand or similar minute particles, and if we were able to place our eye somewhere near the centre of this grindstone, it is easy to see that we should see very few particles near the direction of the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... lieutenant forgot his little accidents next day, and went straight to the carpenter, bullied him again, and after bearing it for awhile Chips's adze would become so blunt that he was obliged to go off to the grindstone, where he would stop for a couple of hours, a good deal of which time was spent in oiling ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... sometime. I does it to all the boy babies. There's luck in it." In those days there were great hopes, and prophecies had not ceased. Many a sweet sleep did I have under the elm tree's shade later on; and many a tiresome hour turning the grindstone for the long bladed sythes. In the trunk of the tree were stuck many worn out blades, their points imbedded by the tree's growth from year to year. Thus they became tallies marking the past seasons of haying. Under ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... before about one thousand times the coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one another; for we are all beggars, each in his own way. One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction into society; another does not care for society, but he wants a postmastership; ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... does Mr. Lee proceed, weaving a new economics and a new bosom for advertisiarchs in the mere act of brushing his teeth. But alas, the recurring explosions of the loathsome and intellectual disease keep my nose on the grindstone—or handkerchief. Do I begin to soar on upward pinion, nose tweaks me back ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... out at him with all the sorrowful wisdom that is comprised in a life sharpened on the grindstone of a remorseless civilization. It was a girl such as one might find anywhere in that neighborhood, she had the hardy prettiness, the alertness, the predatory quality which belong to wild creatures civilized by force. It was set on the canvas with a skill that made Rufin smile with frank pleasure; ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... consequence of more rapid rotation, the bulging out at its equator and the flattening at its poles were carried to an extreme limit. This form has been correctly though satirically compared to that of a grindstone. It rests to a certain extent, but not entirely, on the idea that the stars are scattered through space with equal thickness in every direction, and that the appearance of the Milky Way is due to the fact that we, situated ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the axe. Bacon says: "Some books are to be tasted, others ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... out the local paper from its heading to the last advertisement, the everlasting game of dominoes no sooner finished than renewed, the same walk at the self-same hour and ever along the same roads—all that brutifies the mind, like a grindstone crushing the brain, filled them with indignation, called forth their protestations. They preferred to scale the neighbouring hills in search of some unknown solitary spot, where they declaimed verses even amidst drenching showers, without dreaming of shelter in their very hatred of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... idea and much opposed by everybody, but when it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow, grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... occurrence as took place at the Falls on the 30th of March, 1847. The 'six hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each minute' nearly ceased to flow, and dwindled away into the appearance of a mere milldam. The rapids above the falls disappeared, leaving scarcely enough on the American side to turn a grindstone. Ladies and gentlemen rode in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore, over solid rock as smooth as a kitchen floor. The Iris says: 'Table Rock, with some two hundred yards more, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Menominee and Winnebago tribes occasionally visited us at our cabin to get a piece of bread or some matches, or to sharpen their knives on our grindstone, and we boys watched them closely to see that they didn't steal Jack. We wondered at their knowledge of animals when we saw them go direct to trees on our farm, chop holes in them with their tomahawks and take out coons, of the existence of which we had never ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... pastor. Nor must it be supposed, because these towered above their fellow-actors, that the latter were puny men. Plenty of ability found its way to the Colony, and under the stress of its early troubles wits were sharpened and faculties brightened. There is nothing like the colonial grindstone for putting an edge on good steel. Grey, Selwyn, and Wakefield, as unlike morally as they were in manner, had this in common, that they were leaders of men, and that they had men to lead. That for thirty years the representatives ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... night, in a distant village, were suddenly called to a case of extensive laceration of the leg, with profuse hemorrhage. The case was urgent, and the patient was sinking. No instruments were at hand. He called for a carving-knife, which he sharpened on a grindstone and finished on a razor-strap, filed a hand-saw, amputated the limb, dressed the stump, left the patient in safety, and drove home with his father to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... of a square room with a broad fireplace at one end and a small window. It appeared to be used as a storehouse of some kind, for it was half filled with bags, apparently containing potatoes. In one corner stood a grindstone operated by a treadle. Then the door was shut with a bang, and he was left to his own, none-too-pleasant reflections. Outside he could hear the buzz of voices. But he couldn't catch much of what was being said. Once ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... would n't make no difference to her. She'd talk to a pump or a grindstone; she'd talk to ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... THE STARS AND STRIPES reports for active service with the A. E. F. It is your paper, and has but one axe to grind—the axe which our Uncle Samuel is whetting on the grindstone for use upon the august necks of ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... can," cried Nancy Ellen, "when I see you, and the way you act! You have chance after chance, but you seem to think that life requires of you a steady job of holding your nose to the grindstone. It was rather stubby to begin with, go on and grind it clear off your face, if ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... money she's been flamming about with, and that grand house, better than new, with all the latest improvements. Wa'n't we some jays to be took in like we was by a little, white-faced chit like her? Couldn't see through a grindstone with a hole in it! Bolton House.... And an automobile to fetch the old jailbird home in. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... same Melican," he told Martin, as he industriously turned the grindstone beneath the cleaver's edge. "Me like all same lepublic—me fight like devil all same time when China war. Now Jap he come take China. No good. Me kill um Jap. Velly good. All same ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... and the difficulty he had to make both ends meet. The Senator is a tall, lank, ungainly looking man; thin lipped, with mean, cunning eyes, strained ever for the main chance. A few tufts of reddish hair are flattened on either side of his cranium, and his nose and chin were sharpened on the grindstone of necessity and early hardship into twin beaks. Verily a vulture, battening now on the Trusts, and feared and hated by other birds of smaller body and weaker wing. With him, Selfishness is indeed the main-spring of Ambition! His features are well-known ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... Miss," he said, "and see if we can't pick up some odd fragment of zirconia when it's smashed in the grindstone there. Then we'll ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... set trash of phrase Ineffably—legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile,— Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of endless torments ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... martinet for training, hereafter," Purcell declared earnestly. "I'm going to be a worse stickler than old coach himself. And I'm going to exercise my right as a senior to watch the other fellows and hold their noses to the training grindstone." ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... who cannot, for long, quit work—those who "have their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his solid month of play, repose, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the same ease which it showed in possessing itself of that bygone English life whence sprung the Canterbury Tales, or As You Like It. So that his tutor, who was much attached to him, and who made it one of his main objects in life to keep the boy's aspiring nose to the grindstone of grammatical minutiae, began about the time of Sir Mowbray's letter to prophesy very smooth things indeed to his mother as to his future success at college, the possibility of his getting the famous St. Anselm's scholarship, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... . . . What an abominable hand do I scribble! but I have been chopping wood, and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and such occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to be done in the world; but, thank God, I am able to do my share of it,—and my ability increases ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... several ways. Either you join forces, for instance, and find a grindstone—or make one of the other man's axe. But the last way is too slow, and, as I said, takes too much brain-work—besides, it doesn't pay. It might satisfy your vanity or pride, but I've got none. ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o' Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
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