"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all partial parents, even thinks he feels toward his offspring; but observe his acts narrowly from first to last. He has a manufacturer's heart, with all his genius. He loves machinery—the sound of the mill, the anvil, the spinning-jenny, the sight of the ship upon the high-seas, or steamboat on the river, the roar of commerce, far more than the work of the husbandman. We are an agricultural people, we of the South and West—and especially we Southerners, with our poverty of invention, our one staple, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist; Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers,—which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,— Told of a many thousand warlike French ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... that the snipers were busy on both sides, and once I stood in a deep pool, with the water up to my knees, listening to what sounded like the tap-tap-tap of invisible blacksmiths playing a tattoo on an anvil. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... make it seven shillings a week to begin wi'," quoth the Tinker, and whipping the glowing bill from the fire, he clapped it on the anvil and at sign from him I whirled up the sledge and brought it down with resounding clank, which he followed with two blows from his lighter hammer, and we fell to it merrily, thus: Clang—chink, chink! Clang—chink, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... went to his task. And for seven days and seven nights the sparks never stopped flying from his forge; and the ringing of his anvil, and the hissing of the hot metal as he tempered it, were heard continuously. On the eighth day the sword was fashioned, and Siegfried ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Judge, was just such an incurable as you." (Laughter.) "And Sam'l, when he wanted to, could get out as many cusses in a second as his anvil shot sparks. And the old man used to wrastle with him nights and speak about punishment, and pray for him in meeting. But it didn't do any good. When anything went wrong, Sam'l had an appropriate word for the occasion. One day the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... asked the red-hot iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 'Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand?'— 'I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant greenwood.' Kindness ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Edinburgh, a thing which the best and bravest of the Scottish monarchs had never before dared to do without the consent of the States then assembled, the thud and murmur of warlike preparation was renewed both on anvil and in hall. And when it was known that the King, fey and distempered with his own weak conceits and the instigations of cruel counsellors, had, as soon as he heard that the Covenanters were disbanded, renewed his purposes of punishment and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Stoyte, to stagger. Strae death, death in bed. (i. e., on straw). Staik, to stroke. Strak, struck. Strang, strong. Straught, straight. Straught, to stretch. Streekit, stretched. Striddle, to straddle. Stron't, lanted. Strunt, liquor. Strunt, to swagger. Studdie, an anvil. Stumpie, dim. of stump; a worn quill. Sturt, worry, trouble. Sturt, to fret; to vex. Sturtin, frighted, staggered. Styme, the faintest trace. Sucker, sugar. Sud, should. Sugh, sough, sigh, moan, wail, swish. Sumph, churl. Sune, soon. Suthron, southern. Swaird, sward. Swall'd, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... poems which mark the variety of moods which (p. 114) swept over him during the summer and autumn of 1789, there was also a continual succession of songs on the anvil in preparation for Johnson's Museum. This work of song-making, begun during his second winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all kinds of subjects, and of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... in his kingdom, and therefore are unquestionably heirs of the evil one in hell. He who is unmoved by the threats of hell fire must truly be a stick or a stone; indeed, he must have a heart like an anvil, as ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... brains must have been dashed out. According to the tradition, it was safer for him to strike on his head than on his shins. Certainly he was not badly injured, and if reduced to extremity he might have let out his head for use as a blacksmith's anvil. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... to take heed lest they despoil. It is to be remembered, however, in the way of reassurance that the alterations most likely to find favor with the reviewers are such as will enrich by restoring lost excellencies, rather than by introducing forms fashioned on a modern anvil. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... those old days,—"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only bleached, stamped and sold, by the Dutch," says Busching. A Country, in our days, which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... fertile districts, and systematically replacing the Mongolian culture. But the ignorance of this lower class of Russians is almost as noticeable as that of the natives themselves. As soon as we entered a village, the blacksmith left his anvil, the carpenter his bench, the storekeeper his counter, and the milkmaid her task. After our parade of the principal street, the crowd would gather round us at the station-house. All sorts of queries and ejaculations would pass among them. One would ask: "Are these gentlemen baptized? Are ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... the fire threw its strongest light on his massive and sturdy frame, reddening his rough visage so that it looked like the head of an iron statue, all aglow, from his own forge, and with its features rudely fashioned on his own anvil. At John Inglefield's right hand was an empty chair. The other places round the hearth were filled by the members of the family, who all sat quietly, while, with a semblance of fantastic merriment, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... 58/845; p.121. 'The Icelandic fare is not more inviting than the houses. Stockfish and butter eaten in alternate mouthfuls form the ordinary materials of a meal. The former, however, has to be pummelled on a stone anvil with a sledge hammer before even the natives can bite it; and, after it has undergone this preparation, seems, according to Mr Shepherd, to require teeth to the manner born. The latter is made from sheep's milk, and as it is kept through the winter in skins, becomes ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... through the bottom of the boat. There was only one way, and that was to make some bolts eight inches long, and this I did from some pieces of three-eight iron rod I found. Nine bolts took me a whole day to make—from six in the morning till six in the evening. My anvil was a granite rock, which I had to carry on my shoulders from the beach; but it served ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... analyticomaniac, or some such horror. Myriad bits of ordnance are continually pouring in and pouring out, and the object is to track them, and balance them, and pursue every elusive atom from start to finish. It may be expendible, like paint, or non-expendible, like an anvil. You feel despairingly that a pound of paint, born at Kimberley, and now at Mafeking, is disappearing somewhere and somehow; but you have to endow it with a fictitious immortality. An anvil you feel ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... glory in the shuttle's song; There's triumph in the anvil's stroke; There's merit in the brave and strong Who dig the mine or ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... right hand of these two drawers named, running down to floor if need be, there can be a series of drawers for tools and materials. Now with these equipments, and some others, not herein named, such as vise, file block, bench stake or anvil, and a large variety of such tools as will accumulate, I am ready to give you my ideas regarding the cleaning and repairing of watches. First and foremost, do not undertake any job that you have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... the story's known. the ringing of those plates on plates Still ringeth round the world— The clangor of that blacksmith's fray. The anvil-din Resounds this message from ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... to manhood, for that a man must needs live, Beltane builded him a hut beside the brook, and set up an anvil thereby whereon he beat out bill-hooks and axe-heads and such implements as the charcoal-burners and they that lived within the green ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... that to thee are so conclusive, Why dost thou take them for the word divine?" And I: "The proof, which shows the truth to me, Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature Ne'er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat." 'Twas answered me: "Say, who assureth thee That those works ever were? the thing itself We wish to prove, nought else to thee affirms it." "Were the world to Christianity converted," I said, "withouten miracles, this one Is such, the rest are not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... smith, in the dark, sullen smithy, striketh quick on the anvil below, Thus Fate on the heart of the old man struck rapidly blow after blow: Wife, children, and hope passed away from the heart once so burning and bold, As the bright shining sparks disappear when the red glowing metal grows cold. He missed not the sound of his bells while those ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... together upon the hard stones. Again Sebastian smote, with his massive hands wrapped in the chain and his wrists encased in steel, and this time it was as if Don Pablo's head had been caught between a hammer and an anvil. The negro's strength, exceptional at all times, was multiplied tenfold; he had run amuck. When he arose the machete was in his grasp and Don Pablo's brains ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... these could not get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid little and late and died early. The other writer could get published, but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger apprentices. They were at present ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... front collar. I know these things, but am debarred from telling them by reason of a solemn oath. But I have not yet been able to discover why every dentist keeps a canary in his office. Nor do I know why it is, just as you settle your neck back on a head rest that's every bit as comfortable as an anvil, and just as a dentist climbs into you as far as the arm pits and begins probing at the bottom of a tooth which has roots extending back behind your ears, like an old-fashioned pair of spectacles, that the canary bird should wipe his nose ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... near this lay a hand flour-mill and several baskets of cotton. In another part of the court was a granary erected on posts about six feet above the ground, having billets of fire-wood piled below it. At another place, under a tree in the village, he saw a blacksmith's anvil fixed in a block; the forge was of masonry, having an air hole, but the ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... when his conscience is fallen asleep and grown hard, will lie like the smith's dog at the foot of the anvil, though the fire-sparks fly ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... iron-work I saw round bars formed by a knotched hammer and anvil. There I saw a bar of about half an inch, or more, square cut with shears worked by water, and then beaten hot into a thinner bar. The hammers all worked, as they were, by water, acting upon small bodies, moved very quick, as quick ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... them came to hear old Shives talk, for Jack was a philosopher and no subject was out of his field. Hartigan liked Shives, enjoyed the shop with its smoke and flying sparks, and took a keen relish in the unfettered debate that filled in the intervals between Shives's ringing blows on the anvil. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for four hours. The clay coating of the kiln is then broken down and the ball of molten slag and charcoal is taken out and hammered, and about 3 lbs. of good iron are obtained. With this they make ploughshares, mattocks, axes and sickles. They also move about from village to village with an anvil, a hammer and tongs, and building a small furnace under a tree, make and repair iron implements ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... roughly exceeded Types B, D and E by a 2:1 ratio. Type C exceeded Types B, D and E with a ratio of about 7:5 in frequency of occurrence. Types B and D were the two most easily cracked nut forms when using a hammer and anvil for a cracking device. It should be noted at this time that all of the abnormal fruit types were found in conjunction with normal fruit types. Thus, one individual tree used as a collection might produce both a normal nut type (A, B, C, D or E) and an ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... which people attempt to put into it. Instead of being an open, roomy vessel for holding things, it may be awkwardly shaped, and sometimes difficult to open at all. Nor do things pour out of it in a stream, as water does from a pitcher; they rather flash out of it, like sparks from the anvil. Instead of possessing its own knowledge, it is possessed by it; it burns as it emits it, and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... but as you see, I am hale and well—better, methinks than you are, for you look pale and ill; and I doubt not that the wound which I received was a mere scratch to that which bore you down. It sounded indeed like the blow of a smith's hammer upon an anvil." ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... broad-faced, sandy-haired, undersized boy, who was two or three years younger than Ike, and not strong enough for work at the anvil, was a great tactician. It was his habit, in doing a favor, rigorously to exact a set-off, and that night when the blacksmith had left the shop, Jube ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... these occasions must have been a weird sight; though one did not mark that at the time. The poacher crept from the darkness. into the glaring smithy light; for in country parts the anvil might sometimes be heard clanging at all hours of the night. As a rule, every face was blackened; and it was this, I suppose, rather than the fact that dark nights were chosen that gave the gangs the name of black-fishers. Other disguises were resorted to; one of the commonest being to change clothes ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... while the rest of the company found such places of vantage as they could; their number, indeed, amounting, with my household, to two hundred persons. In the center of the open space a small forge fire had been kindled, the red glow of which added much to the strangeness of the scene; and on the anvil beside it were ranged a number of horses' and donkeys' shoes, with a full complement of the tools used by smiths. All being ready I gave the word to bring in the prisoners, and escorted by La Trape and six of my guards, they were marched ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... is an Oriental Translation Fund. A man of means, Arbuthnot was sometime later to apply his money to the cause he had at heart; and year in, year out, we shall find him and Burton striking at the self-same anvil. Though there was a considerable difference in their ages, and though thousands of miles often separated them, their minds were ever united, and they went down the stream of life ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... some music from this "Forge in the Forest." Sir Tom made a permanent station of the workshop, where he spent hours in a comfortable chair, drawing nourishment from the head of his cane and pleasure from watching the girl at the anvil. I suspect that he planted himself in the corner of the forge to safeguard Jane; for he had an abiding fear that she would take fire, and he wished to be near at hand to put her out. He procured a small Babcock extinguisher and a half-dozen hand-grenades, and with these instruments he constituted ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... couple of minutes neither spoke, and his head was throbbing with anvil-beats. Twice she started to speak, but stopped each time as though distrustful of her ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... particularly high ridge that felt solid to the feet; and as I did so the wind came, hard and biting, against my face. There, just below me, not fifty feet away, were rolling the great waves, white-capped and roaring, pounding like vast sledges upon the anvil of the sand. My entire being thrilled at the majestic sight, and for the moment I forgot everything as I gazed away across those restless, heaving waters, seemingly without limit, stretching forth into the dim northward as far as the eye could reach, until water and sky imperceptibly ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... actually forfeited for him the first turn, which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little anvil and charcoal furnace, with a few tools, rivets, nails, and horse-shoes, Tibble coolly returned that he needed no such gay birds; but if Giles chose to be ready in his leathern coat when Stephen Birkenholt came home at mid-day, mayhap he might change ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up with them the precious stones which attached themselves, have everywhere ranked among the luxuries of a refined cultivation. It is the most brilliant of stones, and the hardest known body. Pliny says it is so hard a substance, that, if one should be laid on an anvil and struck with a hammer, look out for the hammer! [Mem. If the reader have a particularly fine diamond, never mind Pliny's story: the risk is something, and Pliny cannot be reached for an explanation, should his experiment fail.] By its own dust only can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... important business, I forthwith set about my work. Selecting a piece of iron which I thought would serve my purpose, I placed it in the fire, and plying the bellows in a furious manner, soon made it hot; then seizing it with the tongs, I laid it on my anvil, and began to beat it with my hammer, according to the rules of my art. The dingle resounded with my strokes. Belle sat still, and occasionally smiled, but suddenly started up, and retreated towards her encampment, on a spark which I purposely ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... are 198:30 strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise has produced this result or that a less used arm must be weak. If matter were the cause 199:1 of action, and if muscles, without volition of mortal mind, could lift the hammer and strike the anvil, it 199:3 might be thought true that hammering would enlarge the muscles. The trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as 199:6 wood and iron? Because nobody believes that mind is producing such ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... sad experiment with the "Wonderful Specialist," I did not want to go home and listen to the Anvil Chorus of "It Can't Be Done!" and "I Told You So!" I had no desire to be the object of laughter as well as pity. So I tried to get a job in that same city. I went from office to office—but nobody had a job for a man ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... favour on the inferior clergy's side, who with a profound duty to her Majesty, are perfectly pleased with the present turn of affairs. Besides, curious people will be apt to enquire into the dates of some promotions, to call to mind what designs were then upon the anvil, and from thence make malicious deductions. Perhaps they will observe the manner of voting on the bishops' bench, and compare it with what shall pass in the upper house of convocation. There is, however, one comfort, that under the present dispositions of the kingdom, a dislike to the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... of benevolence, Mr. Spratt retraced his steps, an eager look in his eyes. He found the old man standing in the broad, open door of Bill Kepsal's blacksmith shop. The blacksmith's assistant was banging away with might and main at his anvil, and Uncle Dad wore a pleased, satisfied smile on his thin old lips. He always said he loved to stand there and listen to the faint, faraway music of the hammer on the anvil, so different from the hammers and anvils they used to have when he was a boy,—when they were so ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... tree-tops, the garish street light would have kept it dim. The trees were silent and stirless, as quiet as the graves beneath them—more quiet; in fact; for there issued from a grated hole among the tombs the sound of an anvil, deep down and muffled, but unmistakably ringing, as if Governor Winthrop were forging chains in his vault. Then came a rush, a deadened roar, and an emanation of dank gaseous breath, such as the ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... because he was always singing that particular tune. Somehow the name got transferred from the singer to the song, and in 1835 the story of Handel's having been inspired to compose the tune after hearing a blacksmith at Edgware produce musical notes from his anvil was first put into print in a letter to The Times. Not long afterwards an imaginary blacksmith of Edgware was invented, and his alleged anvil sold ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... metropolis, if it were worth the trouble, would not be possible. A list of them, which he gave to Boswell, amounting to seventeen, but without the correspondent dates, is preserved by that writer. For the sake of being near his printer, while the Dictionary was on the anvil, he took a convenient house in Gough Square, near Fleet-street, and fitted up one room in it as an office, where six amanuenses were employed in transcribing for him, of whom Boswell recounts in triumph that five were Scotchmen. In ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... wedding at Gretna Green." Then Basil gave his hand to me, to help me down from the car. I felt very weak, and almost sick. How different from the day when my knight and I had dashed up to this door in the old-fashioned chaise, and played the game of being married at the anvil! How my heart beat as he held me for an instant in his arms! I ought to have known then that I was in love with him. Now, it was as if my heart were dying, for it felt cold and heavy as lead, as I told myself that after this it ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... quite exciting, I assure you, to see the flames being fanned by the bellows, and myriads of sparks flying upwards and outwards on all sides, while the blacksmith hammers the red-hot metal on the anvil and shapes it into horseshoes and other useful things ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... demands a sword. Two, that arc given him by Regin, prove worthless, and he forges a new one from the pieces of his father's sword, which his mother had preserved. With this he easily splits the anvil and cuts in two a flake of wool, floating down the Rhine. He first avenges the death of his father, and then sets off with Regin to attack the dragon Fafnir. At the advice of the former Sigurd digs a ditch across the dragon's peth and pierces him from below with his sword, as the latter comes ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... you where you'd been, Complained of loneliness and hunger, spoke of children Who lived in order, sat down thrice a day To cream and porridge, bread and meat. We think to corner you—alas for us! Your anger flashes swords! Reasons pour out Like anvil sparks to justify your way: "Your father's always gone—you selfish children, You'd have me in the house from morn till night." You put us in the wrong—our cause is routed. We turn to bed unsatisfied in mind, You've overwhelmed us, not convinced us. Our ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... out, "Father, Billy killed." The man put down his hammer, walked leisurely to where the boy lay, in a pool of his own blood, took up the body, and returned with it under his arm to his house. In a short time, the hammer rang upon the anvil as before. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... moment, uneasy, and impatient to get out of the ship. In carrying his purpose into effect, however, he did not lose his propensity to thieving, for he seized hold of, and endeavoured to carry off, the smith's anvil: but, finding it infinitely too heavy for his strength, he laid hold of the large hammer, threw it on the ice; and, following it himself, deliberately laid it on his sledge, and drove off. As this was ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... carry points of terrible consequence to this kingdom, by their power with those who were in office, and by their arts in managing or deluding others with oaths, affability, and even with dinners. If Wood's brass had in those times been upon the anvil, it is obvious enough to conceive what methods would have been taken. Depending persons would have been told in plain terms, that it was a "service expected from them, under pain of the public business being put into more complying hands." Others would be allured by promises. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... the playing children, the belated smith ringing the evening chimes on his anvil in the smithy, the tits chirping among the firs, the crackle of the rough scales on the red boughs of the Scotch fir above him as they cooled—all fed his soul as though Peter's sheet had been let down, and there was nothing common or ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep that visited him, and held him for the best ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... have got it without selfish tyranny of the ruling persons and classes. Of course, it admits of no personal liberty, and the consequences of introducing occidental notions of liberty into it have yet to be seen. "The blacksmith squats at his anvil wielding a hammer such as no western smith could use without long practice. The carpenter pulls instead of pushing his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... florins on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events, and easy ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... observes, "were found to a great extent of the missing ships: tin canisters in hundreds, pieces of cloth, rope, wood—in large fragments and in chips; iron in numerous fragments, where the anvil had stood, and the block which supported it; paper, both written and printed, with the dates 1844 and 1845; sledge marks in abundance; depressions in the gravel, resembling wells which they had been digging; and the graves of three men who had died ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the hardwood seemed to reverberate through the whole building. He walked a few steps on tiptoe, and then decided that in case anyone should see him, the tiptoeing would look furtive. So he walked to the foot of the stairway, his footsteps sounding in his ears like the ring of a hammer on an anvil. As he ascended the stairs he called out, "Hey, isn't there any one here? I am locked in, and can't get out! Hello! Someone show ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... Mart* *through the misfortune The carter overridden with his cart; of war* Under the wheel full low he lay adown. There were also of Mars' division, The armourer, the bowyer*, and the smith, *maker of bows That forgeth sharp swordes on his stith*. *anvil And all above depainted in a tower Saw I Conquest, sitting in great honour, With thilke* sharpe sword over his head *that Hanging by a subtle y-twined thread. Painted the slaughter was of Julius, Of cruel Nero, and Antonius: ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... band, When he was aware of a princely pair That rode at his right hand. So like they were, no mortal Might one from other know: White as snow their armor was: Their steeds were white as snow. Never on earthly anvil Did such rare armor gleam; And never did such gallant steeds Drink of an ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had to deal with metal of a harder grain than the majority of us. Claude de Chauxville was for the moment forced to assume the humble role of anvil because he had no choice. Maggie Delafield was passive for the time being, because that which would make her active was no more than a tiny seedling in her heart. The girl bid fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... came to the thoroughfare to the left, leading down to the Admiralty. There he paused for a moment, and, turning around, listened intently. He was possessed of particularly keen hearing and it seemed to him as though from afar off he could hear the sound of a thousand muffled hammers beating upon an anvil; of a strange, methodical disturbance in the air. He grasped the railing with one hand and gazed upward with straining eyes. Just at that moment he saw distinctly what appeared to be a flash of lightning in the sky, followed by a report which sounded like a sharp clap of thunder. ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fabrics; the manufacture of many farm implements, brooms, baskets, harrows, sleds and carts; tailoring, making all kinds of underwear, hosiery, gloves and mittens; linen furnishings, for table and bed, together with many other articles of household use. Often, the forge and the anvil, with tools for rough iron working, were added to the equipment of the farm. In those days, farming required a knowledge of the use of tools; the square, the level, the plumb-bob; the hammer, the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... not only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the Musick of a Kettle-Drum, the Project ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the centre of the town clanged the hour of ten—hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a lusty blacksmith strikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil. Another clock in a dignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greater solemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not to be measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intoned savingly and warningly as the chief commodity ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... snows and frosts of winter A richer fruitage bring; From battling with the anvil ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... carver encouraged the smith, He that smoothed with the hammer Him that smote on the anvil; Saying of the solder, It is good; And fixing the idol with nails, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Yspaddaden Penkawr grievously with it through the knee. Then he said, "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. I shall ever walk the worse for his rudeness, and shall ever be without a cure. This poisoned iron pains me like the bite of a gadfly. Cursed be the smith who forged it, and the anvil whereon it was wrought! So sharp ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... predecessors. Worse still, the Emperor Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties if he nullified the marriage. The pope complained truthfully that he was between the anvil and the hammer. There was little for him to do except to temporize and to delay decision ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... tomahawk from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had planted himself square in front of his antagonist just as a second tomahawk was on the tip of leaping at him, which he sent ringing ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... The "Ghent Pacification" was dressed in cramoisy satin, and wore a city on her head for a turban; while; tied to her apron-strings were Catholicism and Protestantism, bound in a loving embrace by a chain of seventeen links, which she was forging upon an anvil. Under the anvil was an individual in complete harness, engaged in eating his heart; this was Discord. In front of the scene stood History and Rhetoric, attired as "triumphant maidens, in white garments," each with a laurel crown and a burning torch. These personages, after holding a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... strong wardens would pound my poor carcass just as if I was an anvil: that is how I should be entertained on coming home from abroad—a public reception. (disgustedly) It's master's impatience forced me into this, routing me out from the harbour at this time of night, against my will. Might have sent ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... a chemist named Goldschmidt, of Essen, Germany. It is a compound of iron oxide, such as comes off a blacksmith's anvil or the rolls of a rolling-mill, and powdered metallic aluminum. You could thrust a red-hot bar into it without setting it off, but when you light a little magnesium powder and drop it on thermit, a combustion ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... despair should teach the sufferers that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms; and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he should cease to become an anvil only that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... boasts its blacksmith, Whose anvil's even din Stands symbol for the finer forge That ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... Burthen! Ye will be after breaking my heart, ye will; and me waiting for you these long years, and now at last come all the way over from old Ireland to find ye as hard and obdurate as the blacksmith's anvil in the corner of Saint Patrick's street, in Ballybruree," were the first words that caught my ear. "Shure you will be afther relenting and not laving me a disconsolate widower, to go back to ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... had some heart, some frankness and honesty, but he was a bluff, rough sailor, and when excited, oaths of the hottest sort flew from his lips, like sparks from an anvil. Because of his roughness and profanity, and because, perhaps, of the fact of his surrounding himself with a lot of natural children, the Duchess was determined to persevere in her retirement from the Court circle, and in keeping her innocent ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... intermediary between ourselves and this dreadful deity; to have a priest to intercede for us with the god of life and death; to send an ambassador to the fire. That priest is the poker. Made of a material more merciless and warlike than the other instruments of domesticity, hammered on the anvil and born itself in the flame, the poker is strong enough to enter the burning fiery furnace, and, like the holy children, not be consumed. In this heroic service it is often battered and twisted, but is the more ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... day comes round. This is a matter which you must see to personally. Contrast with this the case of the Nalbund, the clink of whose hammer in the early morning tells that the 15th of the month has dawned. His portable anvil is already in the ground, and he is hammering the shoes into shape after a fashion; but he is not very particular about this, for if the shoe does not fit the hoof he can always cut the hoof to fit the shoe. This is an advantage which the maker ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... not to be wondered at. A man who spends his life climbing into people's mouths and playing "The Anvil Chorus" on their molars with a monkey-wrench, who says, "Now this won't hurt you in the least," and then deals one a smart rap on a nerve with a pickaxe—such a man cannot expect to be popular. He must console himself with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... carried a horse on his shoulders. According to Guyot-Daubes there was, in the last century, a Major Barsaba who could seize the limb of a horse and fracture its bone. There was a tale of his lifting an iron anvil, in a blacksmith's forge, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... city. The people of Rouen who have spread out into the enormous suburb of St. Sever, on the left bank of the Seine,[42] are busy by thousands in the manufactories,—the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... case they will not go far," returned Gallito and rubbed his hands. His reply had been quick and sharp as the beat of a hammer on an anvil; but now he spoke more softly: "But will she go at all, my friend? You, like myself, have ever played for high stakes. Then you know and I know that this is a world where a man may never look ahead ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... it very much." The concert lasted an hour and was followed by gymnastic drills given by the boarding pupils. Their wielding of the heavy dumbbells elicited hearty applause. With no breaks they went through with marching, stepping movements, wand-drills and the anvil chorus, the exercises closing with a full chorus, "The Song of the Sea," by Veazie. Our only regret was that so many must be turned away. Between the concert and the gymnastic drills, Miss Dickerman's tiny ones entertained the company with motion songs, recitations and solos, showing the careful ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... three had fallen, for whom there was no escape. They strove to rise and fight, but the linen masks flapped about their eyes, so that their blows went wide, while the long swords of the brothers smote and smote again upon their helms and harness as the hammers of smiths smite upon an anvil, until they rolled ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... case is the behaviour of the song-thrush when it takes a wood-snail in its beak and hammers it against a stone, its so-called anvil. To a young thrush, which she had brought up by hand, Miss Frances Pitt offered some wood-snails, but it took no interest in them until one put out its head and began to move about. The bird then pecked at the snail's horns, but was evidently puzzled when the creature retreated within the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... proud of his work. The introduction of wing-made sounds in the middle of a vocal performance was of itself a stroke of something like genius. It put me in mind of the firing of cannons as an accompaniment to the Anvil Chorus. Why should a creature of such gifts be named for his bodily dimensions, or the shape of his tail? Why not ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... what a blow was that you gave me; why, one would think that your muscles were made of steel. I thought that I could hit a good downright blow, seeing that I have been hammering at the anvil for the last seven years; but strike as I would I could not beat down your guard, while mine went down, as if it had been a feather, before yours. I knew, directly that I had struck the first blow, and felt how firm was your defence, that it was all up with me, knowing that in point of ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... wheelbarrows; not a man standing still; not a man with empty hands; every man picking up something, and running to put it down somewhere else, as in a play; and, all the while, "Clink! clink! clink!" ringing above the other sounds,—the strokes of hundreds of hammers, like the "Anvil Chorus." ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lay them on the belly of the child or grown person, at the same time administering a dose of some good physic. 3. Take garden parsley, make it into a tea and let the patient drink freely of it. 4. Take the scales that will fall around the blacksmith's anvil, powder them fine, and put them in sweetened rum. Shake when you take them, and give a teaspoonful ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... of the Middle Ages. Time was when the place boasted but a single forge; and though bucklers were heaped beside the anvil, and swords and spears lay waiting for repair, the blacksmith leant against his door-post, gazing idly up the hill-side. Gradually he was aware of a figure, which seemed to have grown into shape from a furze-bush, or to have risen from behind a stone; and as ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... from the outside, this angle of the forge would always seem weird and even mysterious even when the furnace was blazing and the sparks flying from the anvil, beneath the smith's powerful blows, or when—as at present—the fires were extinguished and this part of the shed, innocent of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... engage a carriage. Off we drove, the wheels rattling over the stones, past the Forum, past the Coliseum, in view of St. Peter's. Soon we entered a dusty road. The houses were small now, broken and old. At last we drew up into an open space surrounded by little buildings: a blacksmith's shop where the anvil was ringing, little bakeries, markets where vegetables and bologna were vended. Ragged Italian children, gay and soiled with healthy dirt, were playing in the dust, turning somersaults, chasing each other, laughing. Beyond us was the Campagna, the Alban hills. We climbed ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the sound of hammering, tiny, bell-like hammering, the chiming of a fairy anvil. I looked up and saw a ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... however, sided with Caesar, and refused confirmation of the Senatorial decrees. Caesar then no longer hesitated, but with his army crossed the Rubicon, which was an insignificant stream, but was the Rome-ward boundary of his province. This was the declaration of civil war. It was now "'either anvil or hammer." The admirers of Caesar claim that his act was a necessity, at least a public benefit, on the ground of the misrule of the aristocracy. But it does not appear that there was anarchy at Rome, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... gentleman would have stayed on in his parish, happy in his hopeless incompetence, until his parishioners might have sent in a third request for his retirement, had not the irony of circumstance broken him upon its unyielding anvil. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston |
