"Block" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the flag's toggle jam chock-a-block against the truck of the staff, and gave a tug, shaking out the flag to the still morning breeze. A second later something thudded on the turf close ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... laugh to scorn the suggestion that "Standard Oil" is engaged in a campaign for the distribution of its Standard Oil stock to the public. Yet pin your great financier down to the facts, and he'll admit that he himself has quite a block of the stock, and that institutions of which he is a director include among their assets in one form or another good-sized parcels of the inestimable security. But so completely are these very wise men held by the spells woven over them when for this or ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... "The diamond block", O'Hara said, "is the same which he rolled across the bridge this morning; to that ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... generally used in the South than in the North. The interior piers were sometimes cylindrical, but more often clustered, and where square bays of four-part or six-part vaulting were employed, the piers were alternately lighter and heavier. Each shaft had its independent capital either of the block type or of a form resembling somewhat that of the Corinthian order. During the eleventh century it became customary to carry up to the main vaulting one or more shafts of the compound pier to support the vaulting ribs. Thus the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... necessarily consumed in reaching Corse, would be so great that all occupying the intrenchments might be dead. Corse was a man who would never surrender. From a high position some of Sherman's signal corps discovered a signal flag waving from a hole in the block house at Allatoona. It was from Corse. He had been shot through the face, but he signalled to his chief a message which left no doubt of his determination to hold his post at all hazards. It was at this point probably, that Sherman first realized that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... now, and were coming up the avenue, the crowds still streaming after them, and the church tower bellowing rough music overhead. Isabel leaned out over the battlements, and saw beneath her the two old ladies waiting just outside the gate by the horse-block; and then she drew back, her eyes full of tears, for she saw Sir Nicholas' face as he caught sight ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... than the poor, but a very great deal less so. A man does not hear, as in the smart novels, these gems of verbal felicity dropped between diplomatists at dinner. Where he really does hear them is between two omnibus conductors in a block in Holborn. The witty peer whose impromptus fill the books of Mrs. Craigie or Miss Fowler, would, as a matter of fact, be torn to shreds in the art of conversation by the first boot-black he had the misfortune to fall foul of. The poor are merely sentimental, and very excusably sentimental, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item in every ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... he wanted them to lose. There were victims who looked promising for a fat sacrifice who had to be tolled and primed and led on gently up to the block. At the right time the one-eyed man trimmed them, and he trimmed them down ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... compass this desire, frankly puzzled him. It were cowardly to contemplate knockin' the block off'n P. Sybarite; the disparity of their statures forebade; moreover, George entertained a vexatious suspicion that P. Sybarite's explanation on his recent downfall had not been altogether disingenuous; he didn't quite believe it had been due solely to his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Blackwood, writes, "The first [the Loves, etc.] is all glitter and point like a piece of Derbyshire spar, and the other is dark and massy like a block of marble.... Moore writes with a crow-quill, ... Byron writes with an eagle's plume;" while Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh, likens Moore to "an aurora borealis" and Byron to "an ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of his, without any perceptible 'mittens'; it is the heart of that political evil that his time groans with, and begins to find insufferable, that he is going to probe to the quick with that so delicate weapon. It is a tilt against the block and the rack, and all the instruments of torture, that he is going to manage, as handsomely, and with as many sacrifices to the graces, as the circumstances will admit of. But the political situation which he describes so boldly (and we ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Office that there aren't twenty-two deaths, instead of two. Why, only six months ago, I warned 'em that the place was "unfit for human habitation," and a regular death-trap in case of fire, with only one narrow wooden staircase to the whole block. I wrote that, "if a fire occurred at night, there must be many deaths." Yet ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... mood this morning, such as sometimes came upon her and made Peter say she was a chip of the old block, meaning the Colonel, who he never for a moment doubted was her father. Sarah's suggestion that white satin slippers would be out of place made no difference. They must go. She was more stubborn than usual, and Sarah accounted for it by saying in a low tone to Howard, "Certain ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... it was characteristic of him that even in his absorption he winced at the sight of a caged robin, sitting, moping on its perch, in front of a tobacconist's. He had passed the poor wild thing and walked a block, before he turned impulsively on his heel, and came back to interview the shopkeeper. "How much will you sell him for?" he said, with that charming manner that always made people eager to oblige him. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... fact is, Johnson, I am tired Of all this posing for a faint, Because you think the stump required Another coat of paint. As greatly would you vex my soul, And drag decorum from the Game, If in the block your head you'd roll, Or stand ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... so," he cried, walking excitedly back and forth, and waving an extinct cigar. "I've got to see it, touch it! Why, I know it all in advance. That must be where the Jenny Lind Theatre stood— before the fire—just opposite? I thought so! And the bay used to come up to Montgomery Street, only a block down! You see, I know it all! And when we came in, and I saw all those idle ships lying at anchor, just as they have lain since their crews deserted them in '49 to go to the mines—and I know why they haven't been used since, why ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... nature of things must have grown in length and detail as events became more startling and numerous, were edited in eighty books by the pontifex maximus P. Mucius Scaevola in 123 B.C.—the year of the first tribunate of C. Gracchus. The large number of these books has long been a stumbling-block to the learned, for we are expressly told that the annales maximi, as the records were called, were (in spite of their name) of a very meagre character; and many conjectures have quite recently been made to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... singers and orchestra, and at once took his proper place among the great musicians of the world. Special attention must be directed to Verdi's use of local colour in 'Aida.' This is often a dangerous stumbling-block to musicians, but Verdi triumphed most where all the world had failed. In the scene of the consecration of Radames, he employs two genuine Oriental tunes with such consummate art that this scene is not only one of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the camel came alongside the Zouave at the same time. "I don't know what I should do about this dromadary." Said the captain, "I think I'll take it on board and present it to the zoo at Marseille, I can't just leave it here." So by means of block and tackle the wet camel was hoisted onto the deck of the Zouave, which ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... wise enough to pass them all by, and to make his way as quickly as possible to the cheap lodging-house. The street was jammed with persons of every description. He was surprised particularly at the number of Chinamen he met, for he didn't know that a block or two away was the centre of the Chinese population of New York, where the Celestials have their theatre, their hotels, their great stores, and their joss-house. There were many Italians in the street, too, and Polish Jews, to say nothing of Frenchmen and Germans. Then there ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... is away—ordered all the works and dockyard to be open to us, and the Government boat to attend upon us; saw the Nelson—just finished; and went over the Phaeton, and your brother showed us his midshipman's berth and his lieutenant's cabin. And now for the Block machinery, you will say, but it is impossible to describe this in a letter of moderate or immoderate size. I will only say that the ingenuity and successful performance far surpassed my expectations. Machinery so perfect appears to act with ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Shawnawdithit arrives in St John's, I would recommend that a correct likeness of her be taken, and be preserved in the records of the institution. One of the specimens of mineralogy which we found in our excursion, was a block of what is called Labrador Felspar, nearly four one-half feet in length, by about three feet in breadth and thickness. This is the largest piece of that beautiful rock yet discovered any where. Our subsistence in the ...
— Report of Mr. W. E. Cormack's journey in search of the Red Indians - in Newfoundland • W. E. Cormack
... the Bradfords in Plymouth was at Town Square where now stands the Bradford block. About 1627-8 they moved, for a part of the year, to the banks of the Jones River, now Kingston, a place which had strongly appealed to Bradford as a good site for the original settlement when the men were making their explorations in December, 1620. William, Joseph and ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something very fine. Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company's store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... down o' some kind. Somethin' th' matter with th' hind wheel. And jest as Wash an' me drove up, th' boss of th' outfit was a tellin' 'em t' cut a big pole for a pry t' lift th' hind ex, so's they could block it up, an' ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... ship safely though with much toil and danger, and there found the master almost crazed with fear and doubt of the issue, and the man with him injured by a falling block. Indeed, this poor captain clung to the rail, watching the cable as it dragged the anchor and fearing every moment ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... like her who rose from the waves of old to prophesy to her son?—and if she was silver-footed, it makes no difference, for so are some of the autoperiper—nay, that word finishes me, and I go no further. Such a block of Greek would bring even a German sentence down with a crash to a verbless conclusion. What I would have said was, that it may be that these dolls are heralds of greater dolls yet to come, which shall be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a normal interest would have been a giveaway. He let himself be hurried past, with no more than a glance down the block, with the other pedestrians. Cars and men were clustered around a doorway that Neel felt sure was number 265, his destination. ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... the gear, and climbing aloft and out the gaff, fastened the block directly over the lazarette-hatch, just forward of the binnacle. Then he overhauled the rope until it ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... wouldst wish, 'tis done Lad, The grove will witness with me, that this night I lay not like a block: ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... piece of 1/4-in. gas-barrel, closed up at one end and a taper thread (1/4-in. gas) cut on the other; in fact, gas-barrel may be used for making these tubes at home—and measure about 7 or 8 in. over all It is screwed into a firing block, which in turn is screwed into the combustion chamber end, so that when right home it is in such position that the tube stands quite vertical. The section of the tube, fig. 13, shows the condition it ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... Mr. Grunt. Then he turns and moves away sideways. Into his little piggy eyes has come a fear that the lady is going to ask him to subscribe to something, or wants a block of his common stock, or his name on a board of directors. So he leaves her. Yet if he had known it she is probably as rich as he is, or richer, and hasn't the faintest interest in his factories, and never intends to go near one. Only she is fit to ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... leaning forward. "Blasted coyotes! What right have they got to block a drive trail that's as old as cattle-raising in these parts! That trail was here before I was born, it's allus been open, an' it's going to stay open! You ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... I have said, small, but extremely well proportioned, every detail of it being in the most excellent taste though unornamented by sculpture or painting. I have to add that in front of the sanctuary door stood a large block of lava, which I concluded was an altar, and in front of this a stone seat and a basin, also of stone, supported upon a very low tripod. Further, behind the sanctuary was a square house ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... of fact, Wilson could not go ahead. The situation with Carlotta had become tense, irritating. He felt that she stood ready to block any move he made. He would not go back, and he dared ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... chilly raw November night Beneath a dull electric light, At half-past ten o'clock, The Good Knight, wan and hungry, stood, And in a half-expectant mood Peered up and down the block. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... I had noticed from afar. It was an open square, about a city block in area, in the center of which was a royal looking building covered with blazing fragments of crystal and so brilliantly resplendent with light that it seemed to glow at the heart of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... great ship high by the stern. The propeller began to revolve in air—for the third officer had corrected his signal to "full speed ahead" again—and the cumbrous Chinese vessel struck the Sirdar a terrible blow in the counter, smashing off the screw close to the thrust-block and wrenching ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... plough-cattle which were given to them invariably developed diseases in spite of all precautions, as a result of which they found their way sooner or later to the Baiga's cooking-pot. But they are gradually adopting settled habits, and in Mandla, where a considerable block of forest was allotted to them in which they might continue their destructive practice of shifting sowings, it is reported that the majority have now become regular cultivators. One explanation of their refusal to till ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... block which may be forfeited or surrendered, or which is not taken up by any member of the Settlement Association, within three months, shall be open ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... may indeed startle some pious minds, as seeming to encroach too far on what they think ought to be the unassisted work of the Spirit upon the human character; but you are too intelligent to allow such assertions, unfounded as they are on Scripture, to prove much longer a stumbling-block in your way. I would first of all recommend to you a very strict inquiry into the nature of the things that affect your temper, so that you may be for the future on your guard to avoid them, as far as lies in ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... of the young prince banished by Ochihatou readers of a right turn of mind were intended to perceive a cautious allusion to the Pretender. [Transcriber's note: Quotes in paragraph in original, not block quote.] ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... of those numerous narrow ravines of the Rocky Mountains which open out into the rolling prairies of the Saskatchewan there stood some years ago a log hut, or block-house, such as the roving hunters of the Far West sometimes erected as temporary homes during the inclement ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... whatever to do with it. Anyway, nit duck. I think if I'd had three barrels on that gun I would have nailed a duck, a duck and a half, or two ducks, as I was just getting good. I loaded up, and I must have been flustered a bit, as I blew one of the decoys clear into the next block. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... the big block on which she had been sitting, entered the cabin, and closed the door behind her. She left him standing there hopeless, miserable, almost distraught by all the entanglements of this tragedy that had come ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... stone and painted a light yellow, with white trimmings. Everything about the place was in perfect repair and exquisite order, and as they drove in around the gravel circle that surrounded a carefully kept bit of green lawn, Bertha stopped the cart at an old-fashioned carriage-block, and the girls got out. Running up the steps, Bertha clanged the old brass knocker at what seemed to Patty to be the kitchen door. It was opened by a tall, gaunt woman, with sharp ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... enjoyed marvellous prosperity, hindered only by speculation in land. Much of the marble in the mountains of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia was finer than any elsewhere to be found in this country. The block of it which was forwarded from Alabama for the Washington monument, experts condemned for the purpose as certainly Italian, nor was it permitted a place in that structure till the Governor of the State and the Members ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... said. John and Murphy left the room, each with two $10 bills. The red-faced man with the greasy derby winked at John as they passed him. They hurried through the afternoon crowd in Spring street until they were a block ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... but he reflected it would be of little use to argue with one who took such widely different views as Conrad. Moreover, they were already within a block or ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Wolverhampton, is formed wholly of stone. It consists of one entire piece, with the pedestal which supports it, the flight of steps leading to it, with the balustrade, &c., without any division, the whole having been cut out of a solid block of stone. The church was erected in the year 996, at which time it is said this remarkable pulpit was put up; and notwithstanding its great age, which appears to be 832 years, it is still in good condition. At the foot of the steps is a large figure, intended to represent a lion couchant, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... replied that she would prefer a granite obelisk, with sculptures at the base, to an institution. But the committee hesitated: an obelisk, to be worthy of the name, must clearly be a monolith; and where was the quarry in England capable of furnishing a granite block of the required size? It was true that there was granite in Russian Finland; but the committee were advised that it was not adapted to resist exposure to the open air. On the whole, therefore, they suggested that a Memorial Hall should be erected, together with a statue of the Prince. Her ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... in the temple; they shall slay the burnt-offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before them and minister to them. Since they were wont to minister to them before their idols and were a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel; therefore I have taken a solemn oath against them,' is the oracle of the Lord Jehovah, 'and they shall bear their guilt. And they shall not approach me to act as priests to me, so as to come near any of my sacred things, or to those ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Eugene replied quickly. "There's no hope of it, and already the boarding-house is marching up National Avenue. There are two in the next block below here, and there are a dozen in the half-mile below that. My relatives, the Sharons, have sold their house and are building in the country—at least, they call it 'the country.' It will be city in two ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... scrap of MS. sifted, Classified by dates and ages, Pages multiplied on pages, Till the man is—for their pains— Buried 'neath his own Remains. Every day the craze grows stronger, Art is long, but "lives" are longer. Those who were the most in view Block the stage post mortem too. Hark the tongues of either sex— Reminiscences of X! Of his juvenile affections Hundreds write their Recollections, (None will recollect their writings) Telling of his love for whitings ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... teach each others tears to flow, Like fasting bards, in fellowship of woe, When the coy muse puts on coquettish airs, Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers; Thy spirit, groaning like th'encumber'd block Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock, Doom'd by these undiscriminating times To endless sleep, with Della Cruscan rhymes; Yes, Critics, whisper thee, litigious wretches! Oblivion's hand shall finish all my Sketches. But see, my soul such bug-bears has repell'd ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him. "Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomine Buffon," and laid his head upon the block. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... wisely if I had jumped down on the trottoir, and run round the block of carriages in front of the barouche. But, unfortunately, I was more of a Murat than a Moltke, and preferred a direct charge upon my object to relying on tactique. I dashed across the back seat of a carriage which was next mine, I don't know how; tumbled ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the last yeeres brand Light the new block, and For good successe in his spending, On your psaltries play, That sweet luck may Come while the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... thoroughfare—Atlantic Avenue—with its shops and trolley-cars; passed picturesque hotels and cottages; crossed Pacific Avenue where carriages and dog-carts were being driven rapidly between the rows of pretty summer edifices, and traversed the famously long block that ends at ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... men struck down with all the forms of law, whom the age honoured as its noblest ornaments. They had seen the flames of martyr or heretic, heads which had worn a crown laid one after another on the block, controversies, not merely between rivals for power, but between the deepest principles and the most rooted creeds, settled on the scaffold. Such a time of surprise,—of hope and anxiety, of horror and anguish ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... that it looked squat for all its height, like a candle-stump in a puddle of its own grease, the other buildings under their carapace of terraces and landing stages seeming to have flowed away from it. And there was the yellow block of the distilleries, and High Garden Terrace, and ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... virtuous self-denial, extract tears from him which refused to flow at a tale of mere distress. But then Brown urges that he is personally hostile to him. And the obscurity of his birth, that would be indeed a stumbling-block. O, Matilda, I hope none of your ancestors ever fought at Poictiers or Agincourt! If it were not for the veneration which my father attaches to the memory of old Sir Miles Mannering, I should make out my explanation with half the tremor which must ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... reigned outside the ship, but on board there was quite a small Babel of sound storming about us; the creaking of yard-parrels and trusses aloft, mingled with the loud flap of the canvas to the roll of the ship, the "cheep" of block-sheaves, the sharp "slatting" of suddenly tautened gear, and the pattering of reef-points; while on deck there was the monotonous swish of water washing athwart the planks from side to side, with the choking gurgle of the water spouting up through the scuppers, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... dilapidated one, in what is called Old Alameda. It is quite attractive, from the trees and vines about it, and the spacious garden in which it stands. It is owned by an old German woman, who lives next to us. She is rich now, and owns the whole block, but still holds to her old peasant customs, and wears wooden shoes. Opposite is a French family, who go off every year to a vineyard, to make wine; and, next to them, a poor Spanish family, who ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... haven't much sympathy with such affairs. If a man can't marry a girl he ought to leave her alone; that's my idea of the game. But men play it in a variety of ways. Personally, I'd as soon plug a loaded shot-gun with mud and then fire it, as block a man who ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... The love of war and the indifference to human suffering so long nourished by feudalism could only be thoroughly extinguished by centuries of gradual progress. The heads of queens and ministers of state falling from the block attest the strength of these feelings in Henry the Eighth's time. They were, however, fast losing ground before the new growth of learning. Their decline is illustrated by the fiction of the sixteenth century, as their ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... hey? An' 'oo may you be, to learn me manners, you bloomin' (h)ignorant Scotch (h)ass. You give me (h)any of your (h)imperance an' I'll knock y're bloomin' block (h)off, I will." And Mr. Wigglesworth, throwing himself into the approved pugilistic attitude, began dancing ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... this relation they are defined by Aristotle. "Now energeia is the existence of a thing not in the sense of its potentially existing. The term potentially we use, for instance, of the statue in the block, and of the half in the whole (since it may be subtracted), and of a person knowing a thing, even when he is not thinking of it, but might be so; whereas energeia is the opposite. By applying the various instances our meaning will be plain, and one must not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... stem was manufactured into cloth, sails for ships, ropes, strings, shoes, baskets, wicks for lamps, and, especially, into paper. For this purpose the fibrous coats of the plant were peeled off, the whole length of the stem. One layer of fibres was then laid across another upon a block, and being moistened, the glutinous juice of the plant formed a cement, sufficiently strong to give coherence to the fibres; when greater solidity was required, a size made from bread or glue was employed. The two films being thus connected, were pressed, dried in the sun, beaten with a broad ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... overpowering; all nature was an uproar, a hullabalooing. I tried to conquer the night by shouting at it, lest mysteriously it should rob me of my strength and leave me without a will. These mountains, I thought, are sheer incantations against my journey, great planted curses that block my path. Or perhaps I have only strayed into a mountains' trade union? But I nod my head repeatedly. That means I am brave and happy. Perhaps after all they ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... observation we may imagine that there was not a little truth. Poet and novelist as Hawthorne was, sceptic and dreamer and little of a man of action, late-coming fruit of a tree which might seem to have lost the power to bloom, he was morally, in an appreciative degree, a chip of the old block. His forefathers had crossed the Atlantic for conscience' sake, and it was the idea of the urgent conscience that haunted the imagination of their so-called degenerate successor. The Puritan strain in his blood ran clear—there are passages in his Diaries, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the doll, as Biddy said he would. But she could not make him come within a block of the house; and when he saw Biddy so fresh and clean in her pretty new garments, he had blushed and run away almost without speaking. She did not see much of him. She met him sometimes when she was out on an errand. The last time ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... copper-vessels, and the leaden glaze of the porcelain ones. Hence, where silver cannot be had, iron vessels are preferable to tinned copper ones; or those made of tinned iron-plates in the common tin-shops, which are said to be covered with pure or block tin. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... his Majesty discover this new opinion of his political security, in having the chair of the scorner, that is, the discipline of atheism, and the block of regicide, set up by his side, elevated on the same platform, and shouldering, with the vile image of their grim and bloody idol, the inviolable majesty of his throne? The sentiments of these declarations are the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes die. We look. Instead of slaves we see men and women and children. The wand of progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-post, and we see homes and firesides and schoolhouses and books, and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we see ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... fact, Jack, if this storm keeps on for several days, and the snow happens to block all the paths out of the woods. Let's hope they gave it up, and went back home again. We haven't seen a thing of them since then, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... built in imitation of the roof of a house sloping on either side from a high central ridge, not the best form of bridge I have seen, but variety is charming) to the entrance of the Scind river, where a chenar stands in the middle of the stream, protected by a square block of masonry. Tradition says this tree never grows. Near it is a small island over grown with trees. Here we left the Jhelum and pursued the course of the Scind which soon contracted into a narrow and rapidly flowing river, its water derived from the snows, ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... grounds, and return this to the pot. Let it stand a few minutes to settle, and serve with boiled milk, and cream if it is to be had. Never for appearance's sake decant coffee. Much of the flavor is lost by turning from one pot into another, and the shapes are now sufficiently pretty to make the block tin ones not at all ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... four hundred and fifty pagodas in one, all but one of them little edifices, each with a small sitting statue of Buddha within it. An even more remarkable thing is that each of these diminutive pagodas has also within it a portion of the Buddhist scriptures, engraved upon a solid block of stone, and all of these together make up the Tripitaka, upon which the Buddhist pins his faith. In the center of the grand enclosure stands a beautiful white pagoda, with wreaths of gold about its graceful spire. The long rows ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... block-book. This is a cropt, but clean and uncoloured copy. I suspect, however, that it has been washed in some parts. It is in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... audience weep. Vaudeville, like any other really human thing, would rather laugh than cry, yet if you make vaudeville cry finely, it will still love you. But a serious playlet must be mighty well done to get over—therein lies a stumbling block sometimes. A few great artists can make vaudeville sob finely—but only a few. Comedy, good comedy, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... passage was more easily desired than made. In the few moments since he had entered the supper-room the press of people had considerably thickened—until a block had formed about the door-way. Drawing Eve with him, he moved forward for a dozen paces, then paused, ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... guillotined on the 21st January; he protested his innocence on the scaffold, but his voice was drowned by the beating of drums; he was accompanied by the Abbe Edgeworth, his confessor, who, as he laid his head on the block, exclaimed, "Son of St. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rifles helped them to keep alive; timber was free; they existed. Then suddenly forest, game, vlaie, and lake were taken from them—fenced off, closed to these people whose fathers' fathers had established free thoroughfare where posted warnings and shot-gun patrols now block every trodden trail! What is the sure result?—and Grier was brutal! What could be expected? Why, Mr. Burleson, these people are Americans!—dwarfed mentally, stunted morally, year by year reverting to primal type—yet the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... seated in the centre of the group on a squared block of stone from the quarry, is a tall strong man, with a striking cockatoo nose, glossy black hair, pointed beard, upturned moustache, and a Mephistophelean affectation which is fairly imposing, perhaps because the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... inquiry into the matter, however, throughout the wine-producing countries of Europe, he became quite converted, and believed in closer planting. Mr. Francois de Castella also records the fact that in a block of vines at St. Hubert's (Lilydale, Victoria), every second vine was rooted out on one-half of the block. After ten years it was found that on the whole the closer wines had done better than those from which every ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... middle-weight champion of India last year," rejoined Dam, and moistened his block of pipe-clay again in the most obvious, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Organization's scared. Just as Dalla predicted, they don't want us finding out how people with potentially criminal characteristics missed being spotted by psychotesting. Salgath Trod is being sacrificed to block or ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... great block of stone weighed over two tons, its base was small and rounded, and the mass behind it gave him leverage for his bar. Every inch that he pried it forward, the stones slipped farther down into the widening crack and held the vantage he had gained. Already the bowlder ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... was! How could she bear it! Her thoughtlessness had cost a human life, robbed parents of their son! Through her fault her sister's betrothed husband, whom she also loved, was in danger of being placed under ban, perhaps even of being led to the executioner's block! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... father of Miss Josephine, "I think of taking a rather solid little block of stock. I believe I can spare twenty-five thousand dollars to invest in almost any company Sam Turner wants ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... when the ice froze and thawed every week and finally jammed itself clean to the river bottom in the throat of the bend up at Onondaga, and the next day the thermometer fell to eleven degrees below zero, freezing it into a solid block that bridged the river for traffic, and saved ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the boy, and ran off to get a block of wood. Then he procured a stout pole and with this raised the heavy ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... strong chances in his favor, it appeared to Buonaparte that no stumbling-block of technicality should be thrown in the path of his promotion. Accordingly, in the record of his life sent up to Paris, he puts his entrance into the service over a year earlier than it actually occurred, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... laughter. 'Around the block?' he ejaculated. 'I have done the Continent of Europe, taken a run through China, haunted the Emperor of Japan, and sailed around the Horn since I left ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... opposed the Irish members, and Biggar reciprocated the sentiment. They opposed everything he did, and it came about that he made it his particular business to block ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... wonders whether he ought to step into the next room, but since it's just I he walks out into the kitchen instead. There he seats himself in the fireplace, while I sit down on the chopping block. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... in the course of his address turns from the lady to the gentleman, from the gentleman to the lady, with appropriate gesture and appealing look).—"But he became a wreck, a block of a man; lost an eye and his voice too. How ever, to serve him, I took his grandchild and him too. He left me—shamefully, and ran off with his grandchild, sir. Now, ma'am, to be plain with you, that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ornaments in any very coarse dark marble. Greenstone is an excellent rock, and has a fine surface, but it is unmanageable. The grayer granites may often be used with good effect, as well as the coarse porphyries, when the gray is to be particularly warm. An outward surface of a loose block may be often turned to good account in turning an angle; as the colors which it has contracted by its natural exposure will remain on it without inducing damp. It is always to be remembered, that he who prefers neatness to beauty, and who would have sharp angles and clean surfaces, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... one of the Norwegian ports at which the yacht had touched, his bicycle getting beyond his control, and precipitating itself with its rider over a low stone parapet into a fierce torrent hundreds of feet below. The emperor happened at the time to have a bruise on the face, caused by a block and tackle swinging against him during a squall, while on deck, and on the strength of this temporary disfigurement, a story most painful to the emperor was circulated to the effect that his black eye was due to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder: his blood is attainted through six generations, and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road?—to interrupt the great respirations, ebb or flood, of the national intercourse—to endanger the safety of tidings, running day and night ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... their orders from British and French officers, who wasted no breath on pacifism and sentiment, who had no fool ideas about wars for democracy. Was one obscure little runt of a Socialist machinist to be allowed to block their world-plans? Setting himself up as an authority, presuming to accept literally the passages of his President, in defiance of their authority in Archangel! Allying himself with traitorous and criminal scoundrels, trying to poison the minds of American soldiers and light the flame of mutiny ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair |
