"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother to send some one to help him. Immediately there rose from the sea a pygmy, armed in copper, whom Wainamoinen deemed incapable of coping with so large a tree, until the dwarf suddenly transformed himself into a giant of such proportions that four blows from his copper axe felled the oak, scattering its trunk to the east, its top to the west, its leaves to the south, and its branches to the north. The chips from the fallen oak were collected by a Northland maiden to make enchanted arrows for a magician, and the soil ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... The Amond or Avon is a simple modification of the present word of the Cymric "Afon," for "river," and we have all from our schooldays known it under its Latin form of "Amnis." The Esk, in its various modifications of Exe, Axe, Uisk, etc., is the present Welsh word, "Uisk," for "water," and possibly the earliest form "asqua," of the Latin noun "aqua." Again, the noun "Dour"—Douro—so common an appellative for rivers in many parts of Europe, is, according to some of our best etymologists, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... you more about it," added Fil. "The boat itself is half of a solid log, hollowed out by fire and axe and knife. It is chipped and scraped smooth on the outside, and the ends are pointed. If the wind dies down, the sailor has to paddle the heavy boat home. Then he sits over on the side opposite the out-rigger, so as to balance it. But when ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... the sick-man's woes, Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat. Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore The weary labourer's morning work is o'er: The woodman now rests from his measur'd stroke Flings down his axe and sits beneath the oak, Savour'd with hunger there he eats his food, There drinks the cooling streamlet of the wood. To us no cooling streamlet winds its way, No joys domestic crown for us the day, The felon's name, the outcast's garb ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... all I could An' pass'd away my time, sir, If you think fit an' good, I'll e'en give up my rhyme, sir. An', sud my ditty please, The poppies in this garden To me would be heart's-ease; If not, I axe your pardon. Fal ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... eating-house conveyed no subtle invitation to eat, drink, and be merry. On the contrary, its mission seemed to be that of confounding appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike room it was, with walls of unpainted pine, still sweating from the axe. Festoons of scalloped paper, in conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace to the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some one, either prompted by a latent spirit of aestheticism or with an idea of abetting the town towards merrymaking—an encouragement ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Condorcet are the principles of those to whom kings are to intrust their successors and the interests of their succession. This man would be ready to plunge the poniard in the heart of his pupil, or to whet the axe for his neck. Of all men, the most dangerous is a warm, hot-headed, zealous atheist. This sort of man aims at dominion, and his means are the words he always has in his mouth,—"L'egalite naturelle des hommes, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... do you think I wouldn't wring his neck? I've done as good before now, Strong—I told you how I did for the overseer before I took leave—but in fair fight, I mean—in fair fight; or, rayther, he had the best of it. He had his gun and bay'net, and I had only an axe. Fifty of 'em saw it—ay, and cheered me when I did it—and I'd do it again,—him, wouldn't I? I ain't afraid of anybody; and I'd have the life of the man who split upon me. That's my maxim, and pass me the liquor.—You wouldn't turn on a man. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... encouragement, the willingness with which he put his shoulder to the wheel everywhere that aid was needed, his boldness in defying those leagued against him, completely changed the aspect of Jamestown. The gentlemen who had refused to wield axe or spade or bricklayer's trowel because of their gentility were shamed by ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... soale: but on thy soule harsh Iew Thou mak'st thy knife keene: but no mettall can, No, not the hangmans Axe beare halfe the keennesse Of thy sharpe enuy. Can no prayers pierce thee? Iew. No, none that thou hast ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... struck Tom. He could do but little good; he must run for help, and bring men with shovels, a rope, levers, and an axe, for they would perhaps have to cut the unhappy ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out for the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, and more, without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting down saplings for the tent-poles was a delight to see, and his eye in judging the level ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... piece of wood, and her husband could not find her. He looked about as hard as ever he could, but could see nothing beyond a piece of wood anywhere. And he stabbed at that once or twice with his knife, but she felt no more than a little stinging pain. Then he went back home to fetch his axe, and then, as soon as he was out of sight, she changed back into a woman again and fled away to ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... the wind and current both against them, and after beating up for six weeks they fell short of provision. Captain Woodward and five seamen were sent to purchase some from a vessel about four leagues distant. They were without water, provisions, or compass,—having on board only an axe, a boat hook, two penknives, a useless gun and forty ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... sick one at the foot of the holy tree, hoping for health soon to come. But, should the patient die under the tree, then the sorrowful friends were made glad, if the leaves of the tree fell upon the corpse. It was death to any person who touched the sacred tree with an axe, or made kindling wood, even of ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... table at which they were sitting, "I wish to be entirely frank with you. You know me well enough to understand that I have not offered you my support in any philanthropic spirit. I could not have deceived you as to this had I tried. I am a practical man, and have an axe to grind. I am urging your election as Governor because I believe you to possess intelligent capacity to discriminate between what is harmful to the community and what is due to healthy, individual enterprise—the energy which is the sap of American citizenship. We capitalists ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... comprehend what had provoked this furious storm, with its shower of money and warning flashes of wrath and rumblings of violence. Then it became clear that he was being made the political tool of the reactionary combination then laying the axe at the root of the republican tree. The Orleanists, Bonapartists, Anti-Semites, and their allies were quick to see the value of a popular leader in the most turbulent and unmanageable quarter of Paris. The Quartier Latin was second only to Montmartre as a propagating bed for revolution; ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the back of a cow; his sole companion was his wife; his sole defence his rifle. To the dusky citizens of the valley he seemed a harmless person, and they sold him some thousands of acres for a few pounds of powder and beads. They must have smiled when he attacked the wilderness with an axe, as we should smile at the old woman who tried to ladle up the sea. With what chagrin must they look down now from the Happy Hunting Ground to see McLaurinville the busy metropolis of McLaurin township, and McLaurins rich and poor, McLaurins in brick mansions ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... "do I then vex you a little, amigo mio? So is it very well. Ha, scowl, fool Martino, scowl and grind your teeth; 'tis joy to me and shall never bring back your little axe." ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Strong's aid, had partly dragged into the well of the cutter, now crawled out from his retreat; and keeping over well to leeward on the other side of the boom, proceeded to the locker in the stern-sheets, from whence he took out a small axe and handed it to ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was, that their laws should not be written; another is particularly leveled against luxury and expensiveness, for by it it was ordained that the ceilings of their houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates and doors smoothed only by the saw. Epaminondas's famous dictum about his own table, that "Treason and a dinner like this do not keep company together," may be said to have been anticipated by Lycurgus. Luxury and a house of this kind ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... features had now become regularly established: as often as the troops halted, no matter for how short a time, of their own accord they instantly set about protecting their front with the spade and the axe; and, secondly, the depots of the army were fixed behind the strong lines of Halltown with a sufficient force to guard them, and thence, as needed, supplies were sent forward to the troops in the field by strongly guarded trains, and these, as soon as unloaded, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... food and drink of the dead man, possess other selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other contemporary savages, when questioned, expressly declare that this is their belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the service of the gods." The Algonquins told Charlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less than men and women, it ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the fatal curse of modesty I would tell how eagerly I grasped the axe and with what ease I hit, not twice, but half a dozen times in the same place—until the stump yielded. This victory was all the sweeter to me because it came right after our sports day when I had entered every available contest, from the nail-driving ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... when the Indian held the Dark and Bloody Grounds a pioneer, felling oak and poplar logs for the home he meant to establish on the banks of a purling water-course, let his axe slip, and the cutting edge gashed his ankle. Since to the discoverer belongs the christening, that water-course became Cripple-shin, and so it is to-day set down on atlas pages. A few miles away, as the crow flies, but many weary ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... him to surrender. "Never to rebels!" was the undaunted reply, accompanied with a lunge, which the Highlander received on his target, but instead of using his sword in cutting down his now defenceless antagonist, he employed it in parrying the blow of a Lochaber axe aimed at the officer by the Miller, one of his own followers, a grim-looking old Highlander, whom I remember to have seen. Thus overpowered, Lieutenant-Colonel Allan Whitefoord, a gentleman of rank and consequence, as well as a brave officer, gave up his sword, and with it his purse ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... main street a little crowd was waiting for us. It was a funny procession:—Jonathan first, with the guns and the water-jug, then a boy with a wheelbarrow, on which were piled the two dunnage bags, the metal box, the lantern, the axe, the chart tube, and a few other things. An old man and some boys followed curiously, then I came, with two big baking-powder cans, very gorgeous because the red paper was not yet off them, full of provisions pressed on us by our friendly hostess. Tagging behind me, came ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... wuz members in good standin'. Lots of Jonesvillians went to the funeral; there hadn't been such a excitement in Zoar and Jonesville sence Seth Widrik murdered his wife's mother with a broad axe (and that wuz done through whiskey, so they say; it wuz done ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... kneeling: yet both are expressive and helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated "Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,—shadows on the shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;—on the whole, a monstrous nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw beef, but never from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew, That all obscured remained the warrior's sprite; Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew, Or wondrous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight; But neither this, nor bill, nor axe to hew, Was needed by Orlando's peerless might. He of his prowess gave high proofs and full, Who a tall pine uprooted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for a second, slopping water on his boots and gazing about excitedly. "Hey, boys!" he shouted. "Get an axe and chop open the back! The long gent is roastin' to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... us, unless we are drawn by Him Who is before us there on the road, and see the shining of His garments as He sets His face forward, and draws us after Him. It is easy to climb a glacier when the guide has cut with his ice-axe the steps in which he sets his feet, and we may set ours. The sternness of duty, and the rigidity of law, and the coldness of 'I ought,' are all changed when duty consists in following Christ, and He is before us on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... too much wood, my man," said my father, smiling, "and we shall have to ply the axe ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... rushed On the three fleeing murderers; they seized The hiding miscreants and led them up To the child's corpse yet warm; when lo! A marvel— The dead child all at once began to tremble! "Confess!" the people thundered; and in terror Beneath the axe the villains ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... land you find a tree like that, one that by some chance the axe of the woodman has spared as one generation of wood cutters followed another, that still stands where the seed fell, no man knows how many centuries ago. We have trees in eastern Massachusetts to whom a thousand ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... fish-way around the falls. So that's how I come there——" He clicked his teeth and darted a furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps. ... I wasn't going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added defiantly, "— and law or ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... something delightful to me in this idea. We are apt to think that this earth is made for man, but, after many ages, there are still some parts of his domain unconquered, some fair lands where the axe, the fire, and the plough ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... show of muskets, or a big gun or two showing its muzzle: makes 'em more civil. Cases have been where they've boarded a scantily-manned vessel; to get the plunder, you see. Hungry for anything of the axe ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... axe of the woodcutter may betimes be heard. With (snow) covered contours, a thousand peaks their heads jut in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... overhead; and there was a light crisp, crackling sound running through the dry fallen leaves, as though they had become tired of their position, and were striving to turn over. So quiet was the air that even this faint sound was distinctly audible. Hark! whang! whang! there rings the woodman's axe—crack! crash! b-o-o-m!—Hurrah! what thunder that little keen instrument has waked up there, and what power it has! Say, ye wild, deep forests, that have shrunk into rocky ravines, and retreated to steep mountains, what caused ye to flee away from the valleys ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... company of faithful servants filled the background of the room, and listened with suspended breath to the axe-strokes with which the savage crowd broke down the doors, and heard the approaching ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... forest less able to recuperate, less able to resist next year's inroad. Mr. Meyer describes the ceaseless progress of the destruction even now, when there is so little left to destroy. Every morning men and boys go out armed with mattox or axe, scale the steepest mountain sides, and cut down and grub out, root and branch, the small trees and shrubs still to be found. The big trees disappeared centuries ago, so that now one of these is never seen save in the neighborhood of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... very well (where it can be afforded) in the way of prevention; but in the way of cure the operation must be more drastic. (Taking down a battle-axe.) I would fain have a good blunderbuss charged ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... prepared. And a stately procession moved to the church, of the bride in white, and the bridegroom in his most gallant apparel, but as he went along, he heard a sound of a file from the executioner's room, who was sharpening his axe. And he stood before the altar with his bride, and the priest joined their hands,—but all the while the executioner was sharpening his axe. Then the bells of the city pealed, and the heralds blew their trumpets, and the people shouted, and girls strewed flowers in the path, and their ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... He had a pistol in his hand, which he rested on the side of the boat, while, with a fearful scowl, he looked pryingly around. Black Jim, one of the servants, who stood in the bow of the boat, seized an axe that lay near, and signed to him that if he shot, he would cleave his skull; telling him that the boat contained only the family of Shaw-nee-aw-kee. Upon this, the Indian retired. It afterwards appeared that the object of his search was Mr. Burnett, a trader ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... east side of Seaton is the flat wide Valley of the Axe. The river is broad and rather important-looking, but it makes a most inglorious exit into the sea, for a huge pebble ridge rises as an impassable barrier, and the river has to twist away farther east and run out obliquely through ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... filled the exterior space. By special favor more than a hundred fishermen were grouped within the armed men, witnesses that their class had revenge. Between the lofty pedestals of St. Theodore and the winged lion lay the block and the axe, the basket and the saw-dust; the usual accompaniments of justice in that day. By their ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... yards I came to the house I was seeking, a small, log structure, overshadowed by a gigantic oak, and standing isolated and alone. It appeared dark and silent, although evidently inhabited, as an axe stood leaning against the jamb of the door, while a variety of utensils were scattered about. Believing the place to be occupied by a slave, or possibly some white squatter, I advanced directly to the door, and called loudly to whoever ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... fell, and the branches soon By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn; The sap shrank to the root through every pore As blood to a heart that will ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... yourselves; Your wives and children suffer pollution, And you are pointed at with the finger. Thus heedlessly you injure eternal principles, Embracing filth and treasuring corruption, To your endless shame And to your everlasting misfortune. Finally, if in life your heads escape the axe, There will await you the excessive injury of the shroud.[$] Judging by the crimes of your lives, Your corpses will be cast to scorpions and snakes. The devils introduce this doctrine, Which grows like plants from seeds; ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... tide rising, and setting in to the shore; thirdly, what little wind there was blew me towards the land. And thus, having found two or three broken oars, belonging to the boat, and besides the tools which were in the chest, two saws, an axe, and a hammer, with this cargo I put to sea. For a mile, or thereabouts, my raft went very well, only that I found it drive a little distant from the place where I had landed before: by which I perceived that there was some indraught ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... nothingness, passivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages. We shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men talk," repeats the old jargon for pages together. German Mysticism really rested on another basis, and ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... this thing to Mary Jane," directed the devious woman. "You needn't be telling you picked it up and that 'tis no more than a come-by-chance, because then she'd set no store upon it. But just say 'tis a gift for her, and she'll be pleased and axe no questions." ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... princes. The ritual bears little resemblance to the Vedic sacrifices and the essence of the ceremony is the presentation to the goddess of the victim's severed head in a vessel of gold, silver, copper, brass or wood but not of iron. The axe with which the decapitation is to be performed is solemnly consecrated to Kali and the victim is worshipped before immolation. The sacrificer first thinks of Brahma and the other gods as being present in the victim's body, and then prays to him directly as being all the gods in one. "When this has ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... adjoining the street, was opened wide; and on both sides were raised sheds for the musicians, and two companies of players, dressed in blue, discoursed music at the proper times; while one pair after another of the paraphernalia was drawn out so straight as if cut by a knife or slit by an axe. There were also two large carmine boards, carved with gilt inscriptions, erected outside the gate; the designations in bold characters on the upper sides being: Guard of the Imperial Antechamber, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Max. "I knowed a man vonce dot goes his mind owid. He took an axe, and—veil neffer mind, Dom ton't do nuddings like dot anyvay," added the German-American student hastily, after a warning look ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... in the shrug of Jean's shoulders which Philip did not question. He picked up an axe, and while Jean arranged the tepee poles began to chop down a dry birch. As the chips flew his mind flew faster. In his optimism he had half believed that the cloud of mystery in which Josephine had buried him would, in time, be voluntarily lifted ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... out in that meeting—McGregor on his native heath—"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs—the grandest of them all—whose sleeping dust is an ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... more active efforts in her husband's behalf. She was a pillar of the church herself, and was woefully disturbed about the condition of Jim's soul. Indeed, it was said that half of the time it was Mandy's prayers and exhortations that drove Jim into the woods with his dog and his axe, or an old gun that he had come into possession of from ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... two Kanakas were sent below, another stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... into a chair. But I jumped up with a bound, for I had sat down on something cold, and as I was no more dressed than my accomplice was, the contact made me start, and I looked round. I had sat down on a small axe, used for cutting wood, and as sharp as a knife. How had it got there? ... I had certainly not seen it when I went in; but Marroca seeing me jump up, nearly choked with laughter, and coughed with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... roadside we see the ungainly form and coarse flower of the prickly pear. Passing the rifle pits and picket station, we soon turn off from the Shell road, and pass through what was formerly a handsome forest of pines, but which now has been cleared by the soldier's axe, and rejoices in the title of 'pickpocket tract.' Few of the plantations lie on the main road, and many of them, like the one we are now seeking, are approached only by going over several cross roads and by lanes. Our last turn takes us into a handsome avenue of live oaks, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword. There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building materials which came ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the command of Father Imar, taking with him about ten brethren, he came to the place and began to build. And there, one day, when he himself was cutting with an axe, by chance one of the workmen, while he was brandishing the axe in the air, carelessly got into the place at which the blow was aimed, and it fell on his spine with as much force as Malachy could strike. He fell, and all ran to him supposing ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... the same impress she originally bore! Here I behold God's design when He formed this tropical land, and left its culture and improvement to the agency of man. The Creator's gift as yet neglected by the creature; and yet the time may be confidently looked for when the axe shall level the forest, and the plow turn ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... exception of the lamps, a venerable clock in front of the Gallery opposite, the pulpit, the books and cushions, a part of the windows, the Stoves, a large proportion of the pipes of a Splendid Organ which was split open with an axe for that purpose, and some of the plank broken from the pews—all was destroyed; and but for the real and practical sympathy of many of our esteemed citizens in braving dangers of no common magnitude, a like destruction had been ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... overtake the swiftest runner. I was looking hopelessly about for some place of concealment, when like a demon from the earth a horseman, scarlet in war-paint appeared not a hundred yards away. Brandishing his battle-axe, he came towards me at furious speed. With weapons in hand I crouched as his horse approached; and the fool mistook my action for fear. White teeth glistened and he shrieked with derisive laughter. I knew that sound. Back came memory of Le Grand Diable standing among the shadows of ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come! 8. Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance; and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our Father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 9. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 10. And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? 11. He answereth and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a-building, we are told that the stone was made ready at the quarry, "and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house." The structures of intellectual beliefs which Christians have reared in the various centuries to house their religious faith have been built, for the most part, out of materials they found already prepared by other movements ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... many to throng about him as in this hour, when he is powerless to do any one a service. For once in history, office-seekers were disinterested, and contractors and hangers-on human. These came, for this time only, to the capital of the republic without an axe to grind or a curiosity to subserve; respect and grief were all their motive. This day was shown that the great public heart beats unselfish and reverent, even after a ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... easily understand," resumed the speaker, "that when the King of Gee-Whiz had chopped into the rubber tree with his little gold axe, drinking awfterwards a cupful of pure caoutchouc, it did not take him long to repent of his inadvertence. The results were what I may call most extraordinary. I should judge the rubber juice to have been of very high ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... it and began chopping. The stone wall across the hollow blazed more fiercely; the sharpshooters diverted their attention from the men and horses higher upon the hill. Agnor swung the axe with steadiness; the chips flew far. The post was cut almost through before his bullet came. In falling he clutched the weakened obstruction, and the two came down together. The gun was free to pass, and it passed, each cannoneer and driver looking once at John ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Her bad faith as a good mother seeks shelter behind her child, your son is her accomplice. Both are leagued against you like Robert Macaire and Bertrand against the subscribers to their joint stock company. The boy is an axe with which foraging excursions are performed in your domains. He goes either boldly or slyly to maraud in your wardrobe: he reappears caparisoned in the drawers you laid aside that morning, and brings to the light of day many articles condemned ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... galloped up, the French knights around the barrier, seeing that he was under vow, made no attack upon him, and called out to him that he had carried himself well. As he returned, however, there stood an unmannerly butcher with a pole-axe upon the side-walk, who struck him as he passed, and killed him. Here ends the chronicler; but I have not the least doubt that the butcher had a very evil time at the hands of the French knights, who would not stand by and see one of their own order, even if he were an enemy, meet so ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... often been confined and pestered with wearisome tasks and studies, the passages they had played in, the walls which had always been kept so carefully clean, all falling before the mason's hatchet and the carpenter's axe,—and that from the bottom upwards; to float as it were in the air, propped up by beams, being, at the same time, constantly confined to a certain lesson or definite task,—all this produced a commotion in our young heads that was not easily settled. But the young people felt the inconvenience ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... whose English castles all Meath, from the Shannon to the sea, was full, after having finished the castle of Der Magh, set out accompanied by three Englishmen to visit it . . . . One of the men of Tebtha, a youth named O'Miadhaigh, approached him, and with an axe severed his head from ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Bulbo was led to the scaffold, where an executioner with a block and a tremendous axe was always ready in case ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... figure of the Vaudois guide sliding down and down, with madly increasing speed—feet foremost, skilful to the last. Again he felt the thrill which men cannot but experience at the sight of a man, or even of a dumb beast, fighting bravely for life. Again he saw the dull gleam of the uplifted ice-axe as the man dealt scientific blow after blow on the frozen snow, attempting to arrest his terrible career. And again in his mind's eye the pure expanse of spotless white lay before him, scarred by one straight streak, marking where the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... their home, in point of fact? An underground passage, with a cell at the end of it; a gallery, an excavation, a shapeless cave. It is miner's work, navvy's work: vigorous sometimes, artistic never. They use the pick-axe for loosening, the crowbar for shifting, the rake for extracting the materials, but never the trowel for laying. Now in the Eumenes we see real masons, who build their houses bit by bit with stone and mortar and run them up in the open, either on ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... in the sunlight, with the box that Billy Bones left at the "Admiral Benbow," with the knife that Wicks drove through his own hand and the table. There is always in his work a certain clean-cut angularity which makes us remember that he was fond of cutting wood with an axe. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... was a virgin forest, untouched by the axe of the pioneer. Enormous stumps without bark, trunks of gigantic trees, covered the declivity of the hill, and barricaded, here and there, in a picturesque manner, the current of the brook which ran into the valley. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... you knock away some of the boards from the partition down-stairs?" asked Will. "It wouldn't take a moment. Where's the axe, Luke?" ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... was performed with an axe; but in France, it was carried out usually by means of a two-handed sword or glave of justice, which was furnished to the executioner for that purpose (Fig. 346). We find it recorded that in 1476, sixty sous ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... ship for so many weeks that he was glad to stretch himself on the earth or on improvised beds. Smith, to give an example to some of the gentlemen who stood with folded arms looking on while the mechanics worked, swung axe and wielded hammer lustily. Yet he was very unhappy at the manner in which he was still treated and he eagerly seized an ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... North Pole there is another world peopled by giants; ten thousand millions at the very least; every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... and grief. Imploring Argoll to do Pocahontas no harm, he promised to yield to all his demands and to become the lasting friend of the white men.[103] He liberated seven captives and sent with them "three pieces, one broad Axe, and a long whip-saw, and one canow of Corne".[104] Knowing that these did not constitute all the tools in the hands of the king, the English refused to relinquish Pocahontas, but kept ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... One pick. One axe (duplicate handles). Five lbs. wire nails. Three lbs. oakum. Two large files. Two hammers. One jack blade. One large whip saw. One hand saw. One hundred and fifty feet 5/8" rope. A draw knife. Two chisels. One jack knife. One whetstone. Two buckets. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... past, curious of the future, and ready for argument upon the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents, for a time, to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... aisles and paupers at the door, Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore. Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw Their slender shadows on the paths below; Scarce steal the winds, that sweep his woodland tracks, The larch's perfume from the settler's axe, Ere, like a vision of the morning air, His slight—framed steeple marks the house of prayer; Its planks all reeking and its paint undried, Its rafters sprouting on the shady side, It sheds the raindrops from its shingled eaves ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that paper, in which you have analyzed the capacities of the men in office, will lead to," she replied, paying no attention to what her husband said. "Good heavens! you have sharpened the axe to cut off your own head. Holy Virgin! why didn't you consult me? I could have at least prevented you from committing anything to writing, or, at any rate, if you insisted on putting it to paper, I would ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the fullest trappings of feudal war. The arblast, the mangonel, the demiculverin, and the cuissart of the period, glittered upon the neck and chest of the war-steed; while the rider, with chamfron and catapult, with ban and arriere-ban, morion and tumbrel, battle-axe and rifflard, and the other appurtenances of ancient chivalry, rode stately on his steel-clad charger, himself a tower of steel. This mighty horseman was carried by his steed as lightly as the young springald by ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cleverly manoeuvred to our assistance by the steward, who swam off to her pluckily. Our next endeavour was to release the captain, who was entangled under the boat. As it was impossible to right her, we set-to to split her side open with the boat hook, because by awful bad luck the head of the axe we had flew off at the first blow and was lost. The rescue took thirty minutes, and the extricated captain was in a pitiable condition, being badly bruised and having swallowed a lot of salt water. He was unconscious. While at that work the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... produced on many Personages by that Event VII The Renowned Combat between Sir Anthony Woodville and the Bastard of Burgundy VIII How the Bastard of Burgundy prospered more in his Policy than With the Pole-axe—and how King Edward holds his Summer Chase in the Fair Groves of Shene IX The Great Actor returns to fill the Stage X How the Great Lords come to the King-maker, and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quill. Instantly taking a spade fastened to the back of the ox, he began eagerly digging away; and after he had got down to the depth of a foot, he displayed to us a tuber, the size of an enormous turnip. On removing the rind, he cut it open with his axe, and showed us a mass of cellular tissue filled up with a juicy substance which he handed to us, and applying a piece to his own mouth ate eagerly away at it. We imitated his example, and were almost immediately much refreshed. We ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... period, and it sounded harshly in the ears of the British soldier. It was France that had prostituted liberty to lust. It was France that had dragged public opinion to the scaffold and the guillotine. It was France that held the axe uplifted over all that was good and holy. It was France that was making all Europe a charnel-house. It was General Buonaparte of France, who only sought to subdue England, the more easily to conquer the world. Many an English hearth ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... deliverers had arrived, numbers of the burghers rose and armed themselves, and issued forth into the streets to aid their countrymen. Wallace soon arrived at the governor's house, and with a few blows with his axe broke in the door; then he and his followers rushed into the house, cutting down the frightened men as they started up with sudden alarm, until he met Sir John Hazelrig, who had snatched up his arms and hurried ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... the place of the torn top-sail, and the Plantagenet led off to the southward again, as if nothing unusual had occurred. Daly had a quarter of an hour of extreme exertion on board the prize, before he could get her fairly in motion as he desired; but, by dint of using the axe freely, he cut the wreck adrift, and soon had la Victoire liberated from that incumbrance. The fore-sail and fore and mizzen stay-sails were on the ship, and the main-sail, close-reefed also, was ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cabin to-day," announced the Captain, as they walked along in a group. "Mr. Remington and two of the boys will be there to give us a lesson in the use of an axe." ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... her: she hears the sentence of pardon or of doom; she knows whether she is in the state of grace or of mortal sin; she sees whether she is to be plunged forever into hell, or if God sends her for a time to purgatory. This sentence, madame, you will learn at the very instant when the executioner's axe strikes you; unless, indeed, the fire of charity has so purified you in this life that you may pass, without any purgatory at all, straight to the home of the blessed who surround the throne of the Lord, there to receive a recompense for ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of winds and waters, was added the wild war-cry of the Germans, and a storm of arrows, javelins, and stones hurtled through the disordered ranks, while the barbarians, breaking from the woods, and rushing downward from the heights, fell upon the legions with sword and battle-axe, dealing ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... to be two or three feet of snow on the ground, would present only the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a little closer, and could make out a mark or two here and there. The larger trees had been avoided, and the axe used only on the small saplings and underbrush, which had been lopped off a couple of feet from the ground. By being constantly on the alert, we followed it till near the top of the mountain; but, when looking ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... like the ships of the old world than any they had seen before, manned by twenty-five Indians who had come from the continent on a trading voyage among the islands. Their cargo consisted of cotton fabrics, iron-wood swords, flint knives, copper axe-heads, and a fruit called by the natives cacao, to which the Spaniards were now introduced for the first time, but the merits of which, as a beverage, they were not slow to appreciate. The admiral treated these people with ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... obligations to his wife, who saved his life and delivered him from prison. Some person was repeating things to her disadvantage, but he interrupted them by saying, "She saved my head from the axe, and this prevents my having any right to reprove too strictly whatever she may choose to do; for this reason I shall not thank any person who speaks to me upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... under such circumstances that the Singhalese have a terror of his attack greater than that created by any other beast of the forest. If not armed with a gun, a native, in the places where bears abound, usually carries a light axe, called "kodelly," with which to strike them on the head. The bear, on the other hand, always aims, at the face, and, if successful in prostrating his victim, usually commences by assailing the eyes. I have met numerous individuals on our journeys who exhibited ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... soon be over. Then back to the dear old dusky chambers, with the pick and the axe in the mine of law, till I strike a gold vein, and follow it to the woolsack. I want peace. I begin to hate pleading. I hope to meet Death full-wigged. By my troth, I will look as grimly at him as he at me. Meantime, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this rat," he answered cunningly. "It might not do, my girl. Oh, I know what is to do," he continued, fingering the edge of the axe. "I have been down to the village, and seen the mayor, and he is coming up to fetch him." He nodded towards the partition, and she knew ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... been on board for half an hour, during which time he had been greatly caressed, in order to induce him to give a favourable account of us to his companions, he was taken half way towards the shore in our boat, and then launched upon his log, to which was lashed an axe, and around his neck a bag was suspended containing biscuits, and a little of everything that he appeared to fancy or be amused ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... He who held it last slew twenty before he was slain himself, for this fortune goes with the club—that he who owns it shall die holding it, but in a noble fashion. There is but one other weapon to match with it in Zululand, and that is the great axe of Jikiza, the chief of the People of the Axe, who dwells in the kraal yonder; the ancient horn-hafted Imbubuzi, the Groan-Maker, that brings victory. Were axe, Groan-Maker, and club, Watcher of the Fords, side by side, there are no thirty men ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... with benevolence, nay, almost with respect. We scarcely know whether to smile at its wit or to sigh at its wisdom. Mark this truth, all ye gentlemen of England who would make law as the Romans made fasces,—a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle,—mark it, and remember! long may it live, allied with hope in ourselves, but with gratitude in our children,—long after the book which it now "adorns" and "points" has gone to its dusty slumber,—long, long after the feverish ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man who had used it. He was an honest man, for he mourned over the fact that it was borrowed. "It has sunk to rise no more;" and yet it swam! Why lose hope of the fallen and degraded? They are no lower down than the axe head was when at the bottom of the Jordan. "The ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... direct lineal stock to retrieve the estates and reprieve the name. And what is still more conducive to the longevity of families, no member had appeared as yet of a power too large and an aim too lofty, whose eminence must be cut short with axe, outlawry, and attainder. Therefore there ever had been a Yordas, good or bad (and by his own showing more often of the latter kind), to stand before heaven, and hold the land, and harass them that dwelt thereon. But now at last the world seemed to be threatened with the extinction of a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... had not been so exasperated, he might have been terrified, but anger re-enforced his courage, and, moreover, he had a great deal of confidence that the axe which he held in his hand would make him more than a match for ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... sides by the village and highway, crossed at various points by carriage-roads, and threaded in all directions by paths and byways, along which soldiers, laborers, and truant school-boys are passing at all hours of the day. It is so far escaping from the axe and the bush-hook as to have opened communication with the forest and mountain beyond by straggling lines of cedar, laurel, and blackberry. The ground is mainly occupied with cedar and chestnut, with an undergrowth, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... deeply-scored reddish and ragged bark. Who would have supposed that from that vast trunk would issue a milky liquid scarcely distinguishable at first from that of the cow? Yet such is the sap coming from the opening made by the axe from the massaranduba or cow-tree. When fresh it serves every purpose of real milk when mixed with coffee; but drunk pure has a somewhat coarse taste—and it is considered dangerous to drink much of it, however refreshing ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... had gone to speak with Mrs. Drane, Mike repaired to the woodshed, where, picking up an axe, he stood for some moments regarding a short, knotty log on end in front of ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... country? Why? Leesen now, my friend, I also have a sadness, but consider if you was a bull, or I was a bull. Would you prefair to go to your death in a bull-ring or to be led to a man who demolished you on the temple with an axe, or cut your throat with a long knife—a man in ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... take secular melodies as the themes for masses and motetts. These were often called by their profane titles. So the name of a love-sonnet or a drinking-song would sometimes be attached to a miserere. The council of Trent, in 1562, cut at these evils with sweeping axe, and the solemn anathemas of the church fathers roused the creative powei's of the subject of this sketch, who raised his art to an independent national existence, and made it rank with sculpture and painting, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... to 80 degrees F., that of soil rich in humus from 68 degrees to 88 degrees. The question of the influence of the woods on temperature does not, in the present state of our knowledge, admit of precise solution, and, unhappily, the primitive forests are disappearing so rapidly before the axe of the woodman, that we shall never be able to estimate with accuracy the climatological action of the natural wood, though all the physical functions of artificial plantations will, doubtless, one ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... our homes, and our altars. Gentlemen of the Jury, it might be thought that such madmen might well be left to themselves, that no one would listen to their ravings, and that the glorious machinery of Justice need no more be used against them than a crusader's glittering battle-axe need be brought forward to exterminate the nocturnal pest of our couches. This indeed has been, I must say unfortunately, the view taken by our rulers till quite recently. But times have changed, gentlemen; for need I tell you, who in ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... or a thousand dollars for a minister is only a slow way of killing him, and is the worst style of homicide. Why do not the trustees and elders take a mallet or an axe, and with one blow put him out of his misery? The damage begins in the college boarding house. The theological student has generally small means, and he must go to a cheap boarding house. A frail piece of sausage trying to swim across a river of gravy on the breakfast plate, but drowned ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... palace Lutherans waited all night to welcome their Queen. They lit small fires on the turf and, standing round them, sang triumphal hymns. A Princess was coming from Cleves, a Lutheran; the day-spring from on high was visiting them; soon, soon now, the axe and the flail should be given ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... rough tars called them—were tossed overboard from captured vessels or set up as a mark for tobacco-juice, while sweet eyes in London wept for want of them. And even Mr. Cheeseman had failed to bring any type genuinely French from the wholesale house in St. Mary's Axe, which was famed for canonical issue. But blessed are the patient, if their patience lasts long enough. The ladies of England were now in full enjoyment of all the new French discoveries, which proved to be the right name, inasmuch as ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... to the cambium layer, resulting in surface wounds, may be due to the improper cutting of a branch, to the bite of a horse, to the cut of a knife or the careless wielding of an axe, to the boring of an insect, or to the decay of a fungous disease. (See Fig. 117.) Whatever the cause, the remedy lies in cleaning out all decayed wood, removing the loose bark and covering the exposed ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... "I will make no speeches. I come to die." "My lord, ten words will be enough," said the persevering divine; to which the duke made no answer, but turning to the executioner, expressed a hope that he would do his work better now than in the case of Lord Russell. He then felt the axe, which he apprehended was not sharp enough, but being assured that it was of proper sharpness and weight, he laid down his head. In the meantime many fervent ejaculations were used by the reverend assistants, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox |
