"Barbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... BARBED WIRE, a protective variety of fencing, consisting usually of several strands of wire twisted together with sharp spikes or points clinched or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the privet hedge, but have torn up some dozens of the plants by the roots, by putting their heads over the 4-foot wire fence. I am therefore obliged in self-defence to raise the post a foot higher and put barbed wire along the top of it. Some cows also got in our ground one day and ate off the tops of the newly planted laurels, which I am told they are very fond of, so I have got a chain and padlock for ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and melancholy too; The bridegroom widowed, ere he pleasure knew; His hopes of bliss had soared unduly high, And little dreamt he there was danger nigh; But see! the throes of death his bride arrest, The barbed arrow strikes her beating breast: His hands have touched the cup, but ere he sips, The wine is hurried from ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... headquarters and gave the information. The General telephoned to his cousin, who said that the allegation was absurd and that Pivko was one of his best officers. The orderly was therefore thrown into prison, and Pivko, having turned off the electricity from the barbed wires and arranged matters with a Bosnian regiment, made his way to the Italians. The suggestion is that, owing to the lie of the land and the weak Austrian forces, it was possible for the Italians to reach Trent; ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Sabbath would have seen her "resting," as she would put it, in and round the various outbuildings, feeding-pens, blacksmith shop, harness-room, branding-chute, or what not, issuing orders to attentive henchmen from time to time; diagnosing the gray mule's barbed-wire cut; compounding a tonic for Adolph, the big milk-strain Durham bull, who has been ailing; wishing to be told why in something the water hadn't been turned into that south ditch; and, like a competent general, disposing ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... that was foolish to expect. Perhaps it would be possible to twist a rope from the bed-clothes and throw it up over the chevaux-de-frise; but even then there would be a long hand-over-hand climb to accomplish; and the barbed and pointed spikes had looked very formidable. In any event, she had the whole night before her; she must not act hastily; she must wait and watch; perhaps some other means would present ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... than nonsense, the correct reading being "my heat." In vi. 396, the Scottish "boune" (though it occurs twice in other parts of the poem) has been changed to "bound" in all editions since 1821; and, eight lines below, the old word "barded" has become "barbed." Scores of similar corruptions are recorded in my Notes, and need not ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the barbed wire entanglements, a nightmare of tumbled wires piled high in cruel confusion. Close behind this are the observation trenches. There was no firing from these small trenches; they were simply what the name implied: look-outs. Leaving these, and passing down the zig-zag connecting trench, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... riffraff. Yet when we attempt to provide for the Belgians by finding work for them the Board of Trade has to point out that by doing so we are taking the bread out of the mouths of our own people. Hence we arrive at the remarkable situation of starving Britons and Belgians looking hungrily through barbed wire fences at flourishing communities of jolly and well fed German prisoners of war (whose friendly hat wavings to me and my fellow passengers as I rush through Newbury Racecourse Station in the Great Western Express I hereby acknowledge ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the farther shore, coming from down stream, a small canoe glided. So silently did it move that it was more like an apparition. Three naked blacks dipped with noiseless paddles. Long-hafted, slender, bone-barbed throwing-spears lay along the gunwale of the canoe, while a quiverful of arrows hung on each man's back. The eyes of the man-hunters missed nothing. They had seen Sheldon and Joan first, but they ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... pleasant companion as all persons know who have had any experience with it. Its needles are not only very sharp, but also finely barbed, and they penetrate and cling fast like a burr the moment that they are touched. Cowboys profess to believe that the plant has some kind of sense as they say that it jumps and takes hold of its victim before it is touched. This action, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... he fastened to machines to be then hoisted to their place, enormous blocks of marble. He was a noble animal, and, as it seemed to me, of far more than common size and strength. Yet did not his utmost endeavors appear to satisfy the demands of those who drove him, and who plied without mercy the barbed scourges which they bore. His temper at length gave way. He was chained to a mass of rock, which it was evidently beyond his power to move. It required the united strength of two at least. But this was nothing to his inhuman masters. They ceased not to urge him with cries ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... a second front is impossible; but, at the same time, they are desperately rushing troops in all directions, and stringing barbed wire all the way from the coasts of Finland and Norway to the ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... bold and rapid movement that showed no common degree of skill and bravery, while struggling in the grasp of his powerful adversary, drew forth in his right hand a long dagger with a fine barbed blade. Gabriel smiled scornfully, snatched the weapon from him, and even as he stooped to break it across his knee, gave the prince a furious blow with his head that made him stagger and sent him rolling on the floor, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... out to sea, as if he would call a bark of some sort from the vasty deep; but there was nothing to be seen except an endless expanse of gray water. Nell had torn her dress on a barbed-wire fence which shut us away from the only spot of green on the hideous island; Tibe had unfortunately eaten part of what Mr. Starr said was an Early Christian egg; I had wrenched my ankle badly on a bit of banana peel; Lady MacNairne's smart ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... autumn sun that hung over the park. It seemed to her that she had never passed through them, never felt anything, never suffered anything. It seemed to her that she was curling up within herself, growing smaller and shrinking, like that withered leaf that hung upon the barbed wire of the fence, all ready to drop and be hurled down into the abyss of death by that light breath of wind. Then again it seemed to her that she was ripping to pieces, like that spider web that tangled itself about the grass and floated in glistening filaments through the air; that she was unwinding ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... had been so gradual that she had not noticed it in time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in its wake....She had had enough left, more than many women who had made the same blind plunge into the barbed wire maze of matrimony....And now she had nothing. She would have liked to drive right out on to a liner about to sail through the Golden Gate...but she would no doubt have to live on...and on...in changed, possibly humble, conditions...despising the man she must meet sometime ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... was now in sight. The German cause was doomed. One great victory remained to be gained, the clearing of the Argonne forest, wild, tangled, meshed with thousands of miles of barbed wire, crowded with machine gun nests and swept with a hurricane of shot and shell. But nothing could stop America's boys now that their blood was up, and they did much in helping to win here the final and greatest battle of ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... quickness of wit, dexterity of hand, audacity, aptness of resource, capacity for forming or following intricate associations of ideas, and consequent power to dazzle others. Her jealousy of these qualities was now barbed by the knowledge that they were much nearer akin than her own to those of Trefusis. It mattered little to her how she appeared to herself in comparison with Agatha. But it mattered the whole world (she thought) that she must appear to Trefusis so slow, stiff, cold, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... heart; but her eyes were cast on the earth, seeing there but a shadow from heaven, and her heart was blindly sheltering itself in the bosom to which it was given evermore. She did not perceive the smile of hate that barbed the words of joy. Nora never thought it necessary later to tell Egerton that Levy had been a refused suitor. Indeed, with the exquisite tact of love, she saw that such a confidence, the idea of such a rival, would have wounded the pride of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of course, more than singly baited and barbed. Ariste can at once play the magnanimous man, and be rewarded by the Presidente's ten thousand a year. He will be off with Clarice and on with Mme. de Ponval, whom he visits in his new splendour. She admires it hugely, but is alarmed at seeing him in Clarice's favourite colour. An admirable conversation ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Once again he couched lance, and again he drove down upon his bruised and wounded enemy. This time the lance struck full and fair, and those who watched saw the steel point pierce the iron breast-plate and then snap short, leaving the barbed point within the wound. ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... birds were there also. The other birds were water fowls, and they had gathered at Lake Stymphalus because they had been driven out of their old home by wolves, who alone were hungrier and more destructive than they. These fowls had claws of iron, and every feather of theirs was sharper than a barbed arrow, and so strong and fierce and ravenous they were that they would dart from the air and attack hunters, yea, and pecking them down would tear and strip their flesh till but a bony skeleton remained of that which a few minutes before had been a strong, active, buoyant man seeking in the ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... brave men. I know what you're saying to yourself—I thought that too, I thought it would send me mad, I longed to kill myself to get out of it. But, in an attack, when you've seen your own jolly pals, who have lived in the trenches with you, bleeding and tattered, spatchcocked against barbed wire, and had to leave them sticking to it, their eyes haunt you, your blood gets up, you long for a hundred hands to shoot with, instead of only two. When you've seen the result of Prussian militarism on decent German ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... he could do it, however, and he tried it again, with as much preparation as before, and twice the determination; he missed the sea altogether, and the barbed instrument buried itself into that portion of male wearing apparel that comes in contact with the chair, when one indulges in that agreeable and refreshing posture of sitting down: they ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... distressing is, that Satan, with subtle art, tips them with sentences of Scripture. 'No place for repentance'; 'rejected'; 'hath never forgiveness,' and other passages which, by the malignant ingenuity of the fiend, are formed by his skill as the cutting and barbed points of his shafts. At one time Bunyan concluded that he was possessed of the devil; then he was tempted to speak and sin against the Holy Ghost. He thought himself alone in such a tempest, and that no one had ever felt such misery as he did. When in prayer, his mind was distracted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... twenty-first of July, "I care not; for I have a consolation within, that no earthly efforts can deprive me of; and that is, that neither ambitious nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable point of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages on common ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... forth something very similar—a packet with a skin covering, tied with a bit of string. Returning to them, and removing the wrapper, he exposes to view a half-dozen little rolls, in shape somewhat like regalia cigars, sharp-pointed at one end, and barbed as arrows. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... up rough and head-strong and healthy. Then the Creek war broke out, and Houston enlisted with Andrew Jackson. One incident of that war gives a better insight into Houston's character than volumes of description. At the battle of the Horseshoe, where the Creeks made a desperate stand, a barbed arrow struck Houston in the thigh and sank deep into the flesh. He tried to pull it out ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... form of loops of small diameter fastened to stakes, or wire laid along the ground and attached at the ends, or spirals of barbed wire in racks, is used for entanglements. It is reported that this form is coming into considerable use, but the details have not been published. Such entanglements are much harder to ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... Every house of the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could be seen aglow on the hearths within; the long slant of the red sunset rays fell athwart the gleaming wet roofs and barbed the pointed tops of the palisades with sharp glints of light, and a rainbow showed all the colors of the prism high against the azure mountain beyond, while a second arch below, a dim duplication, spanned the depths of a valley. The frontiersmen ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... needed, but quite a good expression of the spirit of the new Finland. On the Russian side we came to the same grey old wooden station known to all passengers to and from Russia for polyglot profanity and passport difficulties. There were no porters, which was not surprising because there is barbed wire and an extremely hostile sort of neutrality along the frontier and traffic across has practically ceased. In the buffet, which was very cold, no food could be bought. The long tables once laden with caviare and other zakuski were bare. There was, however, a ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... of a bladder fastened to the end of the line, in the same manner as the other Esquimaux. Besides the spears, we purchased an instrument having a rude hook of iron let into a piece of bone, and secured by thongs to a staff, the hook being sharply pointed, but not barbed. While we were on the island (to which I had applied the name of Observation Island), it happened that a small bird flew near us, when one of the Esquimaux made a sign of shooting it with a bow and arrow in a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... clumsily; and when, in Minister Brand Whitlock's car, we drove out the beautiful Avenue Louise, we found soldiers building a breast-high barricade across the head of the roadway where it entered the Bois; also, they were weaving barbed-wire entanglements among the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... more engineers, a lot of hand grenades, trench mortars, periscopes and tools. The barbed wire bothers me! Am specially keen about trench mortars; if it comes to close fighting on the Peninsula with its restricted area trench mortars may make up for our lack of artillery and especially of howitzers. Luckily, they can ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... reconnoitring on one of the kopjes, I suggested to a friend that we should go to the farm in front of us, where none of us had been since Olifantsnek was in possession of the enemy. We had to ford a donga closed in by barbed wire. When we got to the farm, we were told that the enemy had not been there, with the exception of a khaki who had lost his way. He had taken six eggs from a nest in a kraal and swallowed them greedily, and had then passed ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... The earth is rowelled deep with spurs of flame, And on your helmet stones and ashes shower. BUT ON YOU CHARGE. It's odd! You have no fear. Machine-gun bullets whip and lash your path; Red, yellow, black the smoky giants rear; The shrapnel rips, the heavens roar in wrath. BUT ON YOU CHARGE. Barbed wire all trampled down. The ground all gored and rent as by a blast; Grim heaps of grey where once were heaps of brown; A ragged ditch—the Hun first line at last. All smashed to hell. Their second right ahead, SO ON YOU CHARGE. There's nothing ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... had all been well. The sprightliness inherent in her had not abated, but it had assumed a certain warp of bitterness; humour, which is of the heart, had given place in her to wit, which is of the mind, and this wit was barbed, and a little reckless of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... raining upon the ditches. Presently that from the English guns ceased and out of the trenches in front of them thousands of men were vomited, who ran forward through a hail of fire in which scores and hundreds fell, across an open piece of ground that was pitted with shell craters. They came to barbed wire defenses, or what remained of them, cut the wire with nippers and pulled up the posts. Then through the gaps they surged in, shouting and hurling hand grenades. They reached the German trenches, they leapt into them and from those holes arose a hellish din. Pistols ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... into a narrow compass, and falling one on another, they were wounded and died no easy nor yet a speedy death, for tortured with violent convulsions and pain, and writhing with the arrows in them, they broke them in the wounds, and, by trying to pull out by force the barbed points, which had pierced through their veins and nerves, they increased the evil by breaking the arrows, and thus injured themselves. Many thus fell, and the survivors also were unable to fight; for, when Publius encouraged them to attack ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... sanitarium this for the hebephreniac. And like all sanitariums, you go into it with one disease and come out of it with ten. Had Shakib been forewarned of Khalid's mind, had he even seen him at the gate before he entered, he would have given him a few hints about the cross-signs and barbed-cordons therein. But should he not have divined that Khalid soon or late was coming? Did he not call enough to him, and aloud? "Get thee behind me on this dromedary," our Scribe, reading his Al-Mutanabbi, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and a girl about sixteen years old, four little boys and four infants, one of the latter about a week old, and quite naked. They had rude weapons, viz. slings to throw stones, three rude spears, pointed at the end with bone, and notched on one side with barbed teeth. With this they catch their fish, which are in great quantities among the kelp. Two of the natives were induced to come on board, after they had been alongside for upwards of an hour, and received many presents, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... Charley poked the barbed end down into the hole. Down, down it went, fifteen, twenty feet, then struck with a dull thud. He began twisting the sapling over and over, then drew it slowly and gently up, but the end came into view with nothing adhering to it. Again and again was the fruitless operation ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... they could not live here without the plant on their farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no composite is slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing its fringy, yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New England, the Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along barbed-wire barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... it ploughed up where we had fought. The ground was also dyed with blood for several yards round, and where it had fallen the grass was withered up to the roots, as if scorched with fire. We also picked up a cluster of hairs—long, wiry, crooked hairs, barbed at the ends like fish-hooks; also three or four scales like fish-scales, only rougher, and as large as doubloons. The spot where the fight took place is now called La Canada del Diablo, and I have heard that since that day the devil has never appeared corporeally ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... than work honestly and fairly with Labour. There are not only parish boundaries, but park boundaries and class and sect boundaries. You will find the Bocking-Braintree line too at a dozen points on a small scale map of Europe.... These Braintree-Bocking lines are the barbed-wire entanglements between us and the peace of the world. Against these entanglements in every country the new spirit struggles in many thousands of minds. Where will it be strongest? Which country will get clear ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... that thou hast hurt me sore. Dost thou not know, Allan, that it is cruel to prophesy ill to any, since such words feathered from Fate's own wing and barbed with venom, fester in the breast and mayhap bring about their own accomplishment. Most cruel of all is it when with them ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... mounted, wave coloured cloaks or handkerchiefs in the bull's face, and endeavour to divert his fury from the picadores, in case they have been thrown or worsted in the encounter. At the same time, the banderilleros are at pains to implant in either side of the bull's neck a number of barbed darts ornamented with cut paper, and, sometimes, charged with detonating powder. It is de rigeur to plant the barbs exactly on either side. In the third and final act, the protagonist, the matador or espada, is the sole performer. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... hundreds were gathered from his tomb, and the variety of forms is greater than in any other reign. Besides the plain circular points, many of them have reddened tips; there are also examples of quadrangular barbed tips, and others are pentagonal, square, or oval. Only the plain circular tips appear in succeeding reigns down to the reign of Mersekha, except a single example of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... though of course I admit to having a little curiosity about this mysterious Mr. Dennison. I've heard a lot of queer things about his doings. He has a pretty fine place away up here, but keeps it surrounded by a high fence, and they even say it has a strand or two of terrible barbed wire on top of the fence, to discourage ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... countenance, large, with a clear and sparkling eye, an even set of teeth, a face narrow below, broad above. Fair, flaxen, golden hair upon him, and a proper fillet around it. A brooch of silver in his mantle, and in his hand a gold-hilted sword. A shield with five golden circles upon it: a five-barbed javelin in his hand. A visage just, fair, ruddy he hath: he is also beardless. Modest-minded is ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... shot high up into the air and, bursting, flooded the space between the French and German lines with a brilliant light. Remi peered over the top of the parapet and across the 'No Man's Land' of which he had so often heard, over its barbed-wire entanglements and on to the parapets ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... Burdock. These are the Acaenas; they are mostly natives of America and New Zealand, and some of them (especially A. sarmentosa and A. microphylla) form excellent carpet plants, but their points being furnished with double hooks, like a double-barbed arrow, they have ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... sharpened, and the points hardened by roasting to a brown colour. They would have been better with conical points of steel, but none of these were to be had. Second, the ordinary hunting arrows with barbed steel heads, usually bought ready-made, or filed out of a hoop: these were for use in securing such creatures as muskrats, ducks close at hand, or deer. Third, the bird bolts: these were left with ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... you to proceed with your communications, as usual. And why should you not;—since, in her ever-to-be-lamented death, I know every thing shocking and grievous—acquaint me, then, with all thou knowest, which I do not know; how her relations, her cruel relations, take it; and whether now the barbed dart of after-reflection sticks not in their hearts, as in mine, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Muller's, and Botha's, beyond which the range ends with the frontier at Majuba. Three or four of these passes are crossed by waggon roads, but Van Reenen's has the only railway. The frontier, marked by a barbed wire fence across the summit of the pass, must be nearly forty miles from Ladysmith, but from the cliffs above it, the little British camp can be seen like a toy through this clear African air, and Boer sentries watch it all day, ready to signal the least movement ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... shot forth a deadly shaft, And smote Phylodamas, Polites' friend, Beneath the jaw; the arrow pierced his throat. Down fell he like a vulture, from a rock By fowler's barbed arrow shot and slain; So from the high tower swiftly down he fell: His life fled; clanged his armour o'er the corpse. With laughter of triumph stalwart Molus' son A second arrow sped, with strong desire To smite Polites, ill-starred Priam's ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to see these days, he would have cursed the hour he ever drew sword in their cause. But more of this hereafter—I promise thee full surely that thy hour will come, and then the words thou hast now heard will stick in thy bosom like barbed arrows. My ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... The place was a mad riot of thorny undergrowth, laced and bound with vines that were as strong as wire hawsers. The lianas appeared human to us; they lassoed our legs and flung us sprawling upon our faces whenever we tried to quicken our speed. Thorns of a strange fishhook variety drove their barbed points into us, and each yard of the tortuous path that we cut through the devilish vines was marked by a scrap of our clothing, which the tormenting thorns seemed to wave aloft as an ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... ostrich-plume from his hat. A fourth arrow to the left of him, and then Quinton Edge understood. He drew himself up and stood still while a dozen more skilfully directed bolts winged their way to complete the barbed circle that hemmed him in. And each missile bore its individual message to his memory—a tiny tuft of scarlet ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... ditches began to appear, and the first wire fences. Next, they were passing cabins and occasional fields, the outposts of habitation. The free road became wholly imprisoned, running between unbroken stretches of barbed wire. Far off to the eastward a flowing column of dust marked the approaching stage, bringing the bishop, probably, for whose visit here they had timed their wedding. The day still brimmed with heat and sunshine; but the great daily shadow was beginning to ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... temper Milan could afford, together with a trusty war-horse, which he entreated him to use upon the field of battle; for Bertha had not omitted to intimate Count Robert's want of the means of knightly equipment. The horse was brought before the pavilion accordingly, completely barbed or armed in steel, and laden with armour for the knight's body. Godfrey himself put ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the problem of problems. The village was unfortunately out of bounds, so that, except on stated occasions, when they were escorted by a mistress, the girls were unable to do shopping "on their own". There are ways, however, of crawling through even the most barbed-wire fence of rules. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... have related, had twenty or thirty row galleys in readiness, which were out on the river practising every day, watched by approving groups on the shore. Men were at work on the forts five miles below the city, where, also, Dr. Franklin was arranging his three rows of iron-barbed beams in the channel, which were called chevaux de frise. In a letter of that day, written to Captain Richard Varick, of New York, I find these French words spelt thus: "Shiver de freeses." Committees were going about Philadelphia during this ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... my company still had corn and red wine, they refrained them from the kine, for they were fain of life. But when the corn was now all spent from out the ship, and they went wandering with barbed hooks in quest of game, as needs they must, fishes and fowls, whatsoever might come to their hand, for hunger gnawed at their belly, then at last I departed up the isle, that I might pray to the gods, if ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... leaders nor the White House could be put off with gradualism. Anderson's stand was roundly criticized. In an address to the NAACP annual convention, Walter White plainly referred to the secretary's position as a "defiance of President Eisenhower's order."[19-46] If such barbed criticism left the secretary unmoved, Rabb carried a stronger weapon, and in their 11 June meeting the two men discussed the President's order to integrate federally owned or controlled properties, the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... broken reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to go back an' have him oot; but that—pot ash pate—" what else the old man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age. They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... course, in the bow and arrow times, when the sun had to use the same missiles in shooting its barbed rays into the narrow apertures of old castles—or the stone coffins of fear-hunted knights and ladies, as they might be called. What a monument this to the dispositions and habits of the world, outside and inside ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... red-hot pokers down their throats; by hugging red-hot stoves; by stripping themselves naked and allowing themselves to freeze to death on winter snow-drifts out of doors, or on piles of ice in refrigerator-cars; by lacerating their throats on barbed-wire fences; by drowning themselves head downward in barrels; by suffocating themselves head downward in chimneys; by diving into white-hot coke-ovens; by throwing themselves into craters of volcanoes; by shooting themselves with ingenious ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... refuge behind theological barbed wire fences, quite often wish they could have more freedom of thought, but fear the change to the great ocean of scientific truth as they would ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... And I, who in wanton Paris had passed as an innocent child through a hotbed of sensuality and a hailstorm of seduction, on a single twilight eve in London had four or five encounters the particulars of which remained in my memory as barbed arrows remain imbedded in the flesh, smarting and itching and burning like the thorny fibres of cactus or sweetbriar seed with which one has come into too ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... foot to the great shapely piece of polished red yew, with its shining horn tips, which he carried, and bent it with no seeming effort; then he reached out his hand over his shoulder and drew out a long arrow, smooth, white, beautifully balanced, with a barbed iron head at one end, a horn nock and three strong goose feathers at the other. He held it loosely between the finger and thumb of his right hand, and there he stood with a thoughtful look on his face, and in his hands one of the most terrible weapons which ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... he had seen it that he would allow the doctors to examine his wound. They found the head of a barbed spear sunk deep into his breast, and said that it must be pulled out. Still they hesitated to draw it out, for they feared that the rush of blood would ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... too, had changed. It was newly painted and it had new furniture. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the ...
— The First One • Herbert D. Kastle
... Reginald's noble nature shows itself. Instead of telling 'er that she's won an' then disappointing 'er by saying the prize money is in custody, 'e buys 'er ticket for 'alf-price. Then 'e goes to the compound an' bribes the sentry to let 'im talk to Blaney through the barbed wire. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... to fields of BARLEY, Bearded and barbed with many an ARROW, Just where the fertile soil is marly, And in the spring was used ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when she strongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gave a very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed. Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it was barbed by disappointment. Where she expected little, she was not very rigid in her censure ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... fact, the drier the region, the more thorny are its plants. A little shrub called the crucifixion thorn has no leaves at all, nothing but long, sharp spines. Besides the straight thorns there are curved and also barbed ones, for every conceivable form is represented among the plants of ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... and, as you saw, the fence around this field was protected with barbed wire. There's something wrong. I felt it on my trip here all the way, like someone watching me in the dark. And don't laugh! I have stopped laughing at all things that seem unnatural. You don't know what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... was a circle some two hundred yards in diameter. Just inside the jungle wall was the first line of protection, a steel-barbed, twenty-foot-high fence, its strong corded links interwoven with electrified wires. Well within this fence stood five buildings, low, squat and one-storied, four of them forming a broken square around the central fifth. Two buildings were pierced by low rows of lighted windows, ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... in the reign of Richard I, by the supposed tenure of his castle of Tamworth, claimed the office of royal champion, and to do the service appertaining; namely, on the day of coronation, to ride, completely armed, upon a barbed horse, into Westminster Hall, and there to challenge the combat against any who would gainsay the King's title. But this office was adjudged to Sir John Dymoke, to whom the manor of Scrivelby had descended by another of the co-heiresses ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... oak trees predominated. The undergrowth was dense, except near the road; it was chiefly hazel, white thorn, dogwood, young cherry, and second growth hickory and oak. We turned the corner and followed the woods for half a mile to where a barbed wire fence separated our forest from the woodland adjoining it. Coming back to the starting-point we turned north and slowly climbed the hill to the east of our home lot, silently developing plans. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... the railway lines and past unkempt hedges of Duranta in full bloom towards the group of residences reserved for officials of the Railway, each within its own garden and bounded by barbed wire as a ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... masquerade as marriage—women who have no virtues save one tied like millstones to some of earth's noblemen; great-hearted and great-souled women mated with clods. I see people insanely jealous of one another, suspicious, fault-finding, malicious; covertly sending barbed shafts to one another through the medium of general conversation. As if love were ever to be held captive, or be won by cords and chains! As if the freest thing on earth would for a moment enter into bondage, or minister unto selfishness when it ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... began to feel a tinge of rheumatism in my arms through wearing wet clothing continuously. About the new year one of my saddle horses came into the camp with a portion of a spear stuck in his rump. We threw him and cut out the barbed head of the spear, but the wound afterwards remained a running sore. I caught the camp horse, which we always kept hobbled, and started in search of the others. In following the tracks, I found where the blacks had rounded ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... not your leniency, I am indebted for my safety. Your arrows were all skilfully barbed, and even the venom of asps distilled upon them; but you have done your worst, and failed. Parthian tactics ill suit my temper, let me tell you, and just now I should infinitely prefer the Scythian style. Were I only for one brief hour Tomyris, I would carry your head, sir, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... reason for her discontent. Nobody realised the presence of Lady Tamworth, and this unaccustomed neglect shot a barbed question at her breast. "After all why should they?" She was useless, she reflected; she did nothing, exercised no influence. The thought, however, was too painful for lengthened endurance; the very humiliation of it produced the antidote. She remembered that she had at last persuaded ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... But what light is it now leaps forth on the land Enkindling the waters and ways of the air From thy forehead made bare, From the gleam of thy bow-bearing hand? Hast thou set not thy right hand again to the string, With the back-bowed horns bent sharp for a spring 1410 And the barbed shaft drawn, Till the shrill steel sing and the tense nerve ring That pierces the heart of the dark with dawn, O huntsman, O king, When the flame of thy face hath twilight in chase As a hound hath a blood-mottled fawn? He has glanced into ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of Oro, and his priests!' he cried, and hurled at me a barbed spear, with so true an aim, that if I had not stooped as it left his hand, it would have struck my face. Whizzing over my head, it pierced the tough bark of a bread-fruit tree, ten yards behind me, where it stood quivering. Instantly catching a club from the hands of a bystander, he rushed ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... of ranching began. Lew Cawley was sent out with Tresler to instruct him in mending barbed-wire fences. A distant pasture had been broken into by the roving cattle outside. Lew remained with him long enough to show him how to strain the wires up and splice them, then he rode off to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... are taught to regard the affair as serious, but not strange. Now, as a matter of fact, the French General Staff was not fully prepared for the German offensive. Supporting trenches had not been dug, alternative roads had not been built, barbed wire was lacking. But to confess that would have aroused images in the heads of civilians that might well have turned a reverse into a disaster. The High Command could be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... a barbed glance towards Stella as she spoke as Monck guided her to the least crowded corner of the ball-room. Stella's delicate face was flushed, but it was the exquisite flush of a blush-rose. Her eyes were of a starry brightness; she had the radiant look of one who has achieved her ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... something of what trivial and, heaven forgive them both, of what dismal order? Most of all, meanwhile, he felt the dire penetration of two or three of the words she had used; so that after a painful minute the quaver with which he repeated them resembled his-drawing, slowly, carefully, timidly, some barbed dart out of ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... to let fate take charge of that. When a man gets himself so entangled in a coil of barbed wire that he trips whichever way he turns, his only resource is to stand still. That's my case." He poured himself out another glass of cognac, and tasted it before continuing. "Olivia goes over to England, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... trenches captured at Neuve Chapelle, and now occupied by us, are full of legs and arms, which emerge when you dig. Some are still caught on the barbed wire and ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... no improvement could be made. The feathers are coloured as if they were of gold or gilt; but gilt is here beside the mark, for I know these feathers were more brilliant than any gilt. This dart is barbed with the golden tresses that I saw the other day at sea. That is the dart which awakes my love. God! What a treasure to possess! Would he who could gain such a prize crave other riches his whole life long? For my part I could swear that I should desire nothing else; ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... headquarters for the cattle trade, and as near to heaven as the cowboy cared to get. He had seen the end of gold and the end of the buffalo, the beginning of cattle, the beginning of wheat, and the spreading of the barbed-wire fence, that, in the end, will take from him his occupation and his revolver, his chaparejos and his usefulness, his lariat and his reason for being. He had seen the rise of a new period, the successive stages of which, singularly enough, tally exactly with the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... abandoned by the retiring German troops, littered roads and fields. Clothing, helmets, small arms of all description, whole batteries of Howitzers still in position, dense black fumes from burning ammunition dumps, acres of barbed wire fields and hillsides shell-torn, bodies still unburied—all this was the spectacle of war havoc greeting the ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... four cemeteries, and the deserted brick-kilns: by the time one is through these it is generally time to go home: and even beyond it is market gardens and one can only ride on foot-paths: and there are only two foot-paths through the barbed wire defences. ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... one of them. The string is a broad slip of cane fixed to one end of the bow; and fitted with a noose to go over the other end when strung. The arrow is a cane of about four feet long, into which a pointed piece of the hard, heavy, casuarina wood is firmly and neatly fitted; and some of them were barbed. Their clubs are made of casuarina, and are powerful weapons. The hand part is indented, and has a small knob, by which the firmness of the grasp is much assisted; and the heavy end is usually carved with some device. One had ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... think they had no more confidence in his ability to protect them from harm. And as they had all run off, so he could not vent his spite on them, he took it out on me and as I was looking for a place to crawl through the barbed wire fence he came up behind me and kindly butted ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... short a moment and eyes the assembled multitude and the men on horseback with wrathful yet inquiring eye. A moment only. Sniffing the air and lashing his tail, the noble bovine rushes forward and engages the picadores; the little pennants of the national colours, which, attached to a barbed point, have been jabbed into his back by an unseen hand as he passed the barrier, fluttering in the wind created by his rush. Furiously he charges the picadores. If they are clever they goad him to madness with their lances, keeping him at bay; ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... because grass had clothed them, afforded splendid cover for the French batteries. Bomb-proof shelters were dotted about the fields, and for miles away, as far as the Belgian frontier, were lines of trenches and barbed-wire entanglements. To the eye of a man not skilled in military science all these signs of a strong defence were comforting. And yet I think they were known to be valueless if the enemy broke through along the road ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Verey pistol lights burnt during the night than would have sufficed a trench-hardened battalion for a month, and the Germans opposite, having in hand a little job of adding to their barbed-wire defences, were puzzled and rather annoyed by the unwonted display of fireworks. They foolishly vented their annoyance by letting off a few rounds of rapid fire at the opposition, and the 7th Asterisks eagerly accepted the challenge, manned their parapets and proceeded to pour a perfect ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... learned that the Germans considered their position impregnable. It was surrounded by several lines of trenches and barbed wire entanglements. We made long preparations for the attack, concentrating troops and bringing supplies up the Vosges through winding, narrow, and hastily constructed roads, twenty miles in length. New trenches were dug, mines laid, and various ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... lot of other families might have been drawn, whose children went out on the same day, and returned unsmitten by the infectious atmosphere, or the burning sun; and by aggravating the painful peculiarity of her own affliction, she might thus have driven the barbed arrow still deeper in her bosom, and censured, at least by implication, the Supreme Disposer. But we have to admire a conduct which bespeaks the fullest conviction that it was a providence and not a casuality that occasioned the death of her ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... road about five miles south of the ranch. The county road was now the only link the Circle T had to the cattle shipping pens at Carson City. The dirt road arrowed south across the range but fifteen miles from the ranch, a six-strand, new, barbed-wire fence cut the road. A white metal sign with raised letters proclaimed "Road Closed. U.S. Government Military Reservation. Restricted ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... forty thousand acres under fence. According to location, this was The Spider's ranch—the Olla—Pete reined around and rode along the fence for a mile or so, searching for a gateway; but the taut barbed wire ran on and on, toward a sun that was rounding swiftly down to the western horizon. He dismounted and pulled the staples from several lengths of wire until he had enough slack to allow the top ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... escaped him Beereeun threw a barbed spear into the sky, and hooked one spear on to another until he made a ladder up which he climbed after them; and across the sky he ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... was a look of such supreme delight, that the angry farmer ended by laughing heartily; but after that experience he surrounded the beehives with a stout barbed wire fence. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... and applied his brakes. The big car trembled, slowed down, and came to a stop less than a foot away from three ugly bars of barbed wire which had been placed across the road. They were now just beside the buildings, and a triumphant shout greeted them from their ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... medieval seat of the municipal government, once so sacred for the sublime and pathetic scenes enacted there during the famous siege and in the magistracy of Peter van der Werff, was accordingly enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks, strengthened by rows of iron bars with barbed prongs: The entrenchment was called by the populace the Arminian Fort, and the iron spear heads were baptized Barneveld's teeth. Cannon were planted at intervals along the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... accents were so drearily hopeless that Darrell abruptly withdrew his eyes from her face, as if fearful that the sight of her woe might weaken his resolve. She had turned mechanically back. They walked on in gloomy silence side by side, away now from the lake—back under the barbed thorn-tree-back by the moss-grown crag-back by the hollow trunks, and over the fallen leaves of trees, that had defied the storms of centuries, to drop, perhaps, brittle and sapless, some quiet day when every ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and no patch or garden appearing that was not enclosed by a high, barbed-wire fence, he commenced to get discouraged. Feeling hungry and thirsty he was about wishing he had behaved himself at Mr. Biggses so he could go back, when he came to a turn in the road and there before ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... recovered from him five thousand dollars. This, together with an additional three thousand dollars, the cost of the suit, ruined Cobbett, and he removed to Bustleton, August 29, 1799, where he continued for a short time to publish his "Gazette," weekly. The last barbed arrow, quivering with scorn, was fired from Bustleton, January 13, 1800, and the author ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... a straight edge cutter vibrating on arms through barbed or open slotted fingers. His Cutting apparatus lacked an essential element found in Hussey's the scalloped cutter, to say nothing of other material differences. This machine has nothing to impeach the novelty of Hussey's inventions. The Nicholson Model has no vibrating scalloped cutter ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... been no great outburst of despair, no whirlwind of stormy grief, no loud tempest of anguish and tears, Robert took no comforting thought from the unnatural stillness. He knew enough to know that Sir Michael Audley went away with the barbed arrow, which his nephew's hand had sent home to its aim, rankling in his tortured heart; he knew that this strange and icy calm was the first numbness of a heart stricken by grief so unexpected as for a time to be rendered almost incomprehensible by a blank stupor of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... have specified these simply because in some sections of the country there is a fixed idea that there is a specific poison in barbed wire, causing injuries which require treatment differing from that which is applicable to ordinary wounds. Barbed-wire cuts differ from ordinary wounds only in the parts being often lacerated and torn, and the treatment already indicated ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... clove the air between them and stuck in the earth beyond. They went to it. It was a large arrow having a barbed point and flighted with ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... one night in early February, was sitting on the apex of a vast triangle in the northern end of the Orange River Colony. Two sides of the triangle were made up of long lines of blockhouses, strung on a chain of barbed-wire fencing. The blockhouses were of loop-holed stone or iron with iron roofs, and they were separated from each other by only a few hundred yards. The barbed-wire chain which strung together these zigzag lines was five ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... death the crew repair, Dart the long lance, or spread the baited snare. One in redoubling mazes wheels along, And glides unhappy near the triple prong: Rodmond, unerring, o'er his head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends; Unerring aim'd, the missile weapon flew, And, plunging, struck the fated victim through: The upturning points his ponderous bulk sustain, On deck he struggles with convulsive pain. 80 But ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... encounters. He never failed to give a Roland for an Oliver. In the heat of debate, he was often guilty of harsh, bitter invective. His manner betrayed a lack of fineness and good-breeding. But his resentment vanished with the spoken word. He repented the barbed shaft, the moment it quitted his bow. He would invite to his table the very men with whom he had been in acrimonious controversy, and perhaps renew the controversy next day. Greeley testified to this absence of resentment. On a certain occasion, after ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... canoes, amid the rapids, and as they see the fish in some more quiet hollow, they, quick as lightning, slip in their nets and scoop him up. They carry torches in their canoes at night, and when the fish swim near, drawn by the light, they dart down their barbed spears ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Stead calls 'doing to death by slow torture all the women and children whom we have penned behind the barbed wire of our prison camps.' Can a cause be a sound one which is pleaded ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... domains through which they were wandering, there sounded shrieks and wails, and the inmates were thrown into the greatest confusion by the sight of the hideous hippogriffith dashing through, a million sparks emanating from his great eyes, his barbed tail waving high in the air, and holding in his ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... all of seven feet high and made of the heaviest of woven-wire construction. It was topped with barbed wire, and went all the way down both sides of a narrow right of way until ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Galus and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for the word from Du-seen that would launch that barbed avalanche of death upon us, when there broke from the wood beyond the swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon the ears of man—the sharp staccato of at least two score rifles fired rapidly at will. Down went the Galu and Kro-lu warriors like ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Barlow—went to a distant part of the intricate trench system, while the two corporals, Robert Dalton and Ignace Pulinski and Sergeant Franz Schnitzel were together in a ditch near the middle of the barbed wire entanglements. And now, by a strange turn of fate, they were all together again, waiting for the final word that might send then all into eternity, or cause them to live ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... darts we cannot see in position because they lie on the other side of the gouge-like piece. But to the left you will notice a long sword-like blade, drawn separately, with a curiously crooked handle and a sharp barbed point. This is one of the pair of darts. Those who have had the misfortune to be stung may be interested to know that this painful wound was inflicted thus: When the bee alighted on you, he first thrust through the skin this hard, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the principal weapons used by the Indians. In war they use, besides bows and arrows, clubs and a kind of sword made of wood. The arrows are reeds, five or six feet long, and of the thickness of a finger. The point is of very hard wood, and is strongly barbed by notches and with sharp fish teeth about three inches long. To the other extremity of the arrow colored ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... ceased, and from the outside jungle came innumerable calls of birds, and fresh and woodsy odors; but the whole aspect of the place was grim and forbidding. At the back, where there wasn't such an overgrowth, the lane had been closed, barricaded with barbed-wire entanglements, and fairly bristled with thistles and "No ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... history weighs most heavily with me. Changed man as I am, I abhor myself in the recollection. May none who hear this tale ever have felt as I. A horse driven to fury by a rider armed with barbed spurs, was not more a slave than I to the violent tyranny of my temper. A fiend possessed my soul, irritating it to madness. I felt the voice of conscience within me; but if I yielded to it for a brief interval, it was only to be a moment after torn, as by a whirlwind, away—borne ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... breastworks of earth, barbed wire entanglements and a natural protection of trees, the girls could barely discern the aerodrome. In this place were situated the machine shops for building and repairing aeroplanes, and also from here their flights and ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... depth of eighteen feet below the surface the miners uncovered a human skull, with portions of the ribs, vertebral column, and collar-bone. With them were found two flint arrow-heads of the most primitive type, imperfect in shape and barbed. A few pieces of charcoal were also found at the same time and place. Dr. Booth was fully aware of the importance of the discovery, and tried to preserve everything found, but upon touching the skull it crumbled to dust, and some of the other ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... respectable revenue. In the district of Kairouan, for instance, many families draw their entire income from them. A few have been planted at Sidi Mansur and elsewhere near Gafsa, but they are unprotected and liable to be trodden down in their early years, or eaten. Barbed wire, herald of civilization, is almost unknown in ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Paris after the death of Louis XII., as told by Galtimara, Margaret of Austria's envoy, who witnessed the scene from a window, is characteristic. After the solemn procession which was belle et gorgiaise he saw the king, clothed in a glittering suit of armour and mounted on a barbed charger, accoutred in white and cloth of silver, prick his steed, making it prance and rear, faisant rage, that he might display his horsemanship, his fine figure and dazzling costume before the queen and her ladies. It was all bien gorriere ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the 'matter with you, anyhow, Tom? This is great! 'But!' 'But me no buts!' This is, without exception, the greatest thing out since an airship. It will win the war for us and the Allies, too, and don't you forget it! Fritz's barbed wire and dugouts and machine gun emplacements can't stand for a minute against these tanks! Why, Tom, they can crawl on their back as well as any other way, and they don't mind a shower of shrapnel or a burst of machine gun lead, any more than an ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... would come for no legitimate purpose; a place which the hounded bear and deer had avoided even when hard driven, and inviting only to copperhead, skunk, and fox. About it lay "laurel-hells" thick-matted and gnarled, briars that were like entanglements of barbed wire, and woods so black of recess that bats flew through their corridors of pine at midday. But these men had cut, and used familiarly, tortuous and hidden zig-zags of entry and exit, and they came ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... with more euphonic jingle than his cotemporaries. The fisherman is an aristocrat, if he wields his harpoon with more skill, and hurls it with a deadlier energy than his messmates, or has even learned to fix his bait more alluringly on his barbed hook. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the boat up a bit on the strand, then he looked around him. He picked up a broken spear that had been cast away or forgotten; it was made of some hard wood and barbed with iron. On the right-hand side of the beach something lay between the cocoa-nut trees. He approached; it was a mass of offal; the entrails of a dozen sheep seemed cast here in one mound, yet ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... next, he buried himself in the gory sea, carrying down, in his vast wake, a whirlpool of foam and slime. But this respite was short; he rose again, rushing furiously upon his enemies; but a slight prick of a lance drove him back with mingled fury and terror. Whichever way he turned, the barbed irons goaded him to desperation. Now and again intensity of agony would cause him to lash the waters with his huge flukes, till the very ocean appeared to heave and tremble at his power. Tossing, struggling, dashing over and over ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... ammunition was gone and the Klondiker, still somewhat sober, began to babble again of Milly, Kraft whispered into his ear such a polite, barbed insult relating to people who were miserly with their funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver and notes, calling for all the fluids in the world ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... pavement and turned left at the narrow drive that led between barbed-wire fences toward the Hauptman farmhouse, five hundred yards or so from the farm road. The fields on his left belonged to Marie's father, he knew. He was getting close—close to ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller
... townspeople believe that Ypres had been saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary—the word Thuin meaning in Flemish "an enclosed space, such as a garden plot," an allusion to the barrier of thorns which had so well kept the enemy away from the walls—a sort of predecessor of the barbed-wire entanglements used in the present ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... often reproved her husband for his barbed and irritating remarks, her own tongue had, incontestibly, a very beautiful edge on it. Witness her reply to Mrs. X., who declared that when she met Burton she was inexpressibly shocked by his Chaucerian ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... up his trousers, tucked the flute case under his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the town, as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolled under the barbed wire at the farther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up from the river valley to the high prairies, where the ripe wheat stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks were twinkling in the fierce ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... represented that type of men who combine in their composition that which is most practical and imaginative alike; whose energy can subdue a continent, and whose boastfulness would awaken contempt if it were not palliated by the magnitude of their achievements. A humor that is often barbed, but which is most willingly directed against one's self; but, whether directed against the humorist or his neighbor, carries no poison upon its point and leaves ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... tariff. It was at once recognized as a well-considered measure, an honest and a long first step in redeeming platform promises. In the revision of the old tariff beneficent changes were effected, such as abolition of the duties on binder twine, barbed wire, and Indian corn, substantial reductions on flour and sugar, the substitution of ad valorem for specific duties, and a provision for reducing the duty on goods controlled by trusts or combines. The duties on iron and steel were reduced, ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... all night long through my lines. The respective C.O.'s, an Australian and an Irishman, drop in on us from time to time and warn us against each other. I remain strictly neutral, and so far they have respected my neutrality. I have taken steps toward this end by surrounding my horses with barbed wire and spring guns, tying bells on them and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... School to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking into their works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh, brave public! This epithet proved too much for one of the writers in question, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats! What was sport to the town was death to him. Young, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... But it's barbed wire fence, and section line, And kill-horse travel now; Scoot you down the canyon bank, — The old ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... actually face to face with it, looked not so simple. He was in a country where, a few years before, his quest for "real boys"—as he affectionately termed the type nearest his heart—would have been easy enough. But before the marching ranks of fence posts and barbed wire, the real boys had scattered. A more or less beneficent government had not gathered them together, and held them apart from the changing conditions, as it had done with the Indians. The real boys had either left the country, or had sold their riding outfits and gone ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... herself; she had too keen an eye for human foibles; she came towards you with a perfectly natural openness, and she came all the way—there was nothing left for you to explore. And when not actually with her, it was easy to forget her; there was never a look or a smile, never a barbed word, never a sudden spontaneous gesture—the vivid translation of a thought—to stamp ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... kind of craft with one mast. Their arms are arrows, in the place of iron weapons and as they have no iron, some of them point their arrows with tortoise-shell, and others make their arrow-heads of fish spines, which are naturally barbed like coarse saws: these prove dangerous weapons to a naked people like the Indians, and may cause death or severe injury, but to men of our nation, are not very formidable. In their attacks upon the neighboring islands, these people capture as ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my heart; and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of youth could be brought to one's aid? I really put on the man; and the first thing instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which I now regarded as childish in the highest ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... right, he declared he was in the wrong, and forbade him to play any more. Madame Descoings did the same with her grandson, who was beginning to let fly certain witticisms; and although Philippe, so far, had not understood him, there was always a chance that one of the barbed arrows might piece the colonel's thick skull and put ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, And now instead of mounting barbed steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... were easily to be seen: but it was not until the handle snot again into the air by its own reaction, and its master catching it in his hand, threw its tines uppermost, that Elizabeth was acquainted with the success of the blow. A fish of great size was transfixed by the barbed steel, and was very soon shaken from its impaled situation into the bottom of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... too late to get to Brussels, but there was still a train to Antwerp. At Puers soldiers were digging trenches and stringing approaches with barbed wire. The dikes had been opened and part of the country flooded. Farther on we passed the Antwerp forts, then comely suburbs where houses had been torn down and acres of trees and shrubs— precious, as may be imagined, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... On one side of it huge stacks of sleepers stretched away in long rows that were soon lost to sight in the wintry atmosphere. On the other side was a barbed wire fence. Beyond it lay flat fields on which the snow had settled evenly. In one of the fields was the dim form of a farm-building, barely visible through the rush ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt |
