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Brakes   Listen
noun
brakes  n.  The combination of interacting parts that work to slow a moving vehicle.
Synonyms: brake system.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Brakes" Quotes from Famous Books



... touch of danger, which birds and angels, and others accustomed to fly, can never experience. And then at length the glorious mad descent down three plunging cataracts of rocky road, the exciting rattling of the harness, the grinding of the strong brakes, the driver's soothing calls to his horses, and the long burnished horn trailing wild music behind us, like invisible banners of aerial brass,—oh, it stirred the dullest blood amongst us thus as it were to tear down the sky towards the white roofs of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... Field was about to give the order to cut the cable, the current returned as quickly and mysteriously as it had disappeared. The following night, when the ship was moving but four miles an hour and the cable running out at the rate of six miles, the brakes were applied too suddenly just as the steamer gave a heavy ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... along the street, but moved steadily along. He had come out of Vorse's saloon and was going towards his office. Just then the sound of an automobile caused Madden to turn his head in time to see Weir speed along but stop with a sudden application of brakes as he caught ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... Flitting through the dusk of evening, With the twinkle of its candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children, Sang the song Nokomis taught him: "Wah-wah-taysee, little firefly, Little, flitting, white-fire insect, Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... ignorant of intruding man or strangely little incommoded by his neighbourhood. And yet there is nothing forbidding or austere in these wide solitudes. The patches of graceful birch-wood; the miniature lakes nestling among them; the brakes of ling—pink, faintly scented, a feast for every sense; the stretches of purple heather, glowing into scarlet under the touch of the sun; the scattered farm-houses, so mellow in colour, so pleasant in outline; the general ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... somewhat derisive compassion. It was apparent that the ease with which the Sportsman had been tempted into parting with his money had excited at once their pity and their contempt. For a time he endured this regard in uneasy silence. Then, as the preliminary jar of the brakes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... hands!" he commanded. There was a sharp creaking as the brakes locked, and from the driver's seat an amazed oath. The stage stopped with a violent jerk, and Mrs. Truesdall pitched gently ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... slim and all articulate; her most characteristic trees are those that are distinct and distinguished, with lines that suggest the etching-point rather than a brush loaded with paint. Cypresses shaped like flames, tall pines with the abrupt flatness of their tops, thin canes in the brakes, sharp aloes by the road-side, and olives with the delicate acuteness of the leaf—these make keen lines of slender vegetation. And they own the seasons by a gentle confession. Rather than be overpowered by the clamorous proclamation of summer in the English woods, we would follow June ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... still and frosty evening. As the motor drew up in the walled enclosure before the Tower, the noise of its brakes echoed through the profound silence in which the Tower was wrapped. No sign of life in the dark front; no ray of light anywhere from its ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... unwisely,—I said. Unless the will maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium; they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain is locked up and we cannot touch its movement directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice, by which they may reach the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... Rockies, you from the Coast, You from the burning frontier-post And you from the Klondyke's frozen flanks, You from the cedar-swamps, you from the pine, You from the cotton and you from the vine, You from the rice and the sugar-brakes, You from the Rivers and you from the Lakes, You from the Creeks and you from the Licks And you from the brown bayou— You and you and you— You from the pulpit, you from the mine, You from the factories, you from the banks, ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... the brakes, and ignorance of the real locality on the part of those near enough to have heard him, prevented any correction of the boy's ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various

... disasters ahead, and the material apparatus of control entirely within their power. "Suppose, after all," they will say, "we ignore these very eloquent and showy governing persons above, and this very confused and ineffectual multitude below. Suppose now we put on the brakes and try something a little more stable and orderly. These people in possession have, of course, all sorts of established rights and prescriptions; they have squared the law to their purpose, and the constitution does not know us; they can get at the judges, they can get at the newspapers, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... probably in the first week of November, Frank gave the friction drive its final test, this time substituting a leather belt for the rubber one first used.[32] Mr. Markham, though intensely interested in the experiments, apparently was dubious concerning the safety of the carriage. It had no brakes, and fearing failure of the transmission on a downgrade, he was reluctant to ride in the machine. On November 9 he asked Will Bemis to try it for him. The following day the Springfield Morning Union gave a ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile

... in spite of the pain it cost him he increased his pace, driven by keen suspense. He did not know if there were men yonder, and he could see no smoke. The doubt grew tormenting; leaving the stream farther on, he struck into unburned bush that hid the camp from him. There were thorny brakes and thickets of withered ferns, but though progress was excruciatingly painful he smashed through them furiously. He was hot and breathless; it was insufferable that he should be delayed among the timber in anxiety. Breaking out into the open, he sent up a hoarse cry, for a thin trail of vapor ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... established between Europe and America. He plunged into the undertaking with all the force of his being. It was an incredibly hard contest: the forests of Newfoundland, the lobby in Congress, the unskilled handling of brakes on his Agamemnon cable, a second and a third breaking of the cable at sea, the cessation of the current in a well-laid cable, the snapping of a superior cable on the Great Eastern—all these availed not to foil the iron will of Field, whose final triumph ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... the polls, before the door Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: "Who was your mother, hog—eyed?" In a trice As when a wild boar turns upon the hound That through the brakes upon an August day Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog—one Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men Forth rushing ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... lightning flashing in de cane-brakes? Don't you think we'se gwine to have a storm? No you is mistaken—dem's de darkies' bayonets, And de buttons ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... a dim concept of the powers of nature; they had not yet advanced far enough in psychical development to evolve any consistent form of natural theogony. They had only a shadowy concept of evil beings, powers of the air that inhabited the dense brakes of the forest, whom it would be dangerous to molest. Father Junipero Serra declares that when he first established the Mission Dolores, the Ahwashtees, Ohlones, Romanos, Altahmos, Tuolomos, and other Californian tribes had no word in their language ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... "Emergency brakes," declared the conductor, catching up his cash box and thrusting his papers and tickets into it. "Nothing much; probably a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... cars sang on in a hollow, monotonous tune, the windows rattled systematically and outraged brakes screeched at every recurrent jolt. Finally we saw a dim row of lights and a long, thin whistle from our engine told us that the journey was done. Again was that noticeable lack of excitement: everyone calmly ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... loved her marketing. In the tiny market-place on the top of the hill, where four roads, from Nottingham and Derby, Ilkeston and Mansfield, meet, many stalls were erected. Brakes ran in from surrounding villages. The market-place was full of women, the streets packed with men. It was amazing to see so many men everywhere in the streets. Mrs. Morel usually quarrelled with her lace woman, sympathised with her fruit man—who was a gabey, but his wife ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... the wheels, the brakes had to be changed the same amount, that is, each one set in 11/2 in. This it was thought would either require new hangers or a change in the head or shoe in some way. We found that the hangers could ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... Histories, was crowded into the region, these mountain steps may have been gardens and vineyards, such as we see now thriving along the hills of the Rhine. Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride. The sparrows are all at Jerusalem, among the housetops, where their ceaseless chirping and twittering forms the most cheerful sound ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... few minutes they were past the shops and once again in darkness, grinding along, pitching from end to end, the driver's bell clanging every minute to warn carts and people off the tramlines. Once, with an awful thunderous grating of the brakes, the car was pulled up, and everybody tried to see what had provoked the sense of accident. There was a little shouting, and Jenny, staring hard into the roadway, thought she could see as its cause a small girl pushing a perambulator loaded with bundles of washing. Her first impulse ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... "he's gaun' to fecht us!" and he dropped the cord, grabbed the levers, and threw the steam off and the brakes on hard. The heavy train slid groaning and jarring along the track. The moose never stirred. The fire smoldered in his small narrow eyes. His black crest was bristling. As the engine bore down upon him, not a rod away, he reared high in the air, his antlers ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... followed their bloody trails into the heart of the mountains, all his cavalry and much of his foot force being needed for the work in hand. Not until November, therefore, when the ice bridge spanned the still reaches of the Platte, and the snow lay deep in the brakes and coulees, did the foremost of the homeward-bound commands come in view of old Fort Frayne, and meantime very remarkable things had occurred, and it was to a very different, if only temporary, post commander that Sandy Ray reported them as "sighted." Even brave old Dade had been summoned ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... bad place, that barranca is. The road goes sharp down into it, and then sharp up out of it—and both banks so steep you want all the brakes you've got to get to the bottom of it, and more mules than you're likely to have to get to the top on ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier

... yet, in my mind, on his knees, holding the wagon from rolling into the canyon till the wheel could be blocked and the brakes set. Then, when bidden to start the load, he did not flinch. He was the best ox I ever saw, without exception, and his loss nearly broke up the expedition. His like I could not find again. He had a decent ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... valley of the Posu, a mountain torrent which rushes and roars through a narrow defile. Snorting angrily, the engines climb up this steep gradient, cross the river by an iron bridge and then groaning under the brakes, slide down into another valley. The main direction however, is upwards, and as the country opens out below, one gets a first impression of the enormity and grandeur of Central Africa. As far as the eye reaches, are ranges of hills, the Palabala Mountains crowned by a great cone which appears first ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... more words they started forward, peering about them as they went. Soon the forest thickened, and the track they followed wound its way round great trunks of primeval oaks, or the edges of bog-holes, or through brakes of thorns. Hard enough it was to find it at times, since the snow made it one with the bordering ground, and the gloom of the oaks was great. But Jeffrey was a woodman born, and from his childhood had known the shape of every tree in ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... spirit was frequently harrowed with alarm at the riotous conduct of her invalid father. In his glee the man might have been compared to a locomotive with a bad driver, who was constantly shutting off the steam and clapping on the brakes too soon or too late, thus either falling short of or overshooting his mark. What between the door and the dresser, the fire, the crib, the window, and the furniture, John showed himself a dreadfully bad pilot and was constantly running into or backing out of difficulties. ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... that gushed from the pumps told a tale that there was no mistaking. I noticed that five men were now working at the pumps—the cook and steward being two of them—and all hands were growling together, and cursing both loud and deep as they toiled at the brakes. ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... a run,' said Mr. Noland to himself, and he put on full speed and we mounted to within a few feet of the top, when his engine stopped short and before he could put on his brakes we were running backwards down that hill at a terrific speed. When he did put on the brakes we were going so fast they did no good. Instead of him paying attention to his steering and keeping us in the middle of the road, he turned his head to see ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... to capacity, reaching its momentary Mecca, drew up at the curb; and the guide's voice rose over the screech of the brakes: ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... patch of jungle. A sudden shadow flitted from the brush, leaped the ditch, and sprinted along beside the rails. Another followed it, and another. The low-flying shadows slowly overtook the engine. The leader sprang, clung for a moment by its forepaws, and pulled itself aboard. Brakes howled on the rails as Oren stopped the train. Two man-figures leaped from the cab—and into the ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis

... are not fooling with any judges now. I know who I am talking to and how long I have been doing it. Sometimes you can fool a judge into letting you have more time than the rule allows; but with lawyers, enough is enough. We know exactly when to put on the brakes with each other. We are not now earning fees by the yard or charging by the minute, and when a man is through with what he has to say, it is time to sit down, and all I have to say in conclusion is, that the more I watch the legal profession and observe it, the more I am convinced ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... sing. And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke, Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes, The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power, Thy native forest and Lycean lawns, Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... arm and jerked her out of the path of the on-coming machine, whose driver was sending it along at a mad rate, regardless of ruts and stones and curves. The car careened as it swung into the pike, skidded alarmingly, and then the brakes were jammed down. Attended by a vast grinding of gears and wheels, the rattling old car came to a stop fifty ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... with double death doth die, To have the meat might save him in his eye, And may not have it: so am I tormented, To starve for joy I see, yet am prevented. Well, Frank, although thou wooedst and quickly won, Yet shall my love to thee be never done; I'll run through hedge and ditch, through brakes and briars, To come to thee, sole lord of my desires: Short wooing is the best, an hour, not years, For long-debating love is full of fears. But, hark! I hear one tread. O, were't my brother, Or Frank, or any man, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... encloses the peninsula of old Melrose, the Tweed pouring its dark and powerful current between them. The galloping of the riders and hallooing of the huntsmen, the cry of the hounds and the sight of sly Reynard stealing away through the brakes, waked something of the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... fashion from a ridge pole make good temporary shelters and are first rate as wind brakes at night. ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... sensation to know that we could loll about in the glorious weather, secure a small string of stark, varnished trout with chapped backs, hanging aimlessly by one gill to a gory willow stringer, and then beat our train home by two hours by letting off the brakes and riding twenty miles in ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... company parking lot, jerked the wheel savagely to the left, jammed on the brakes. "Shut up!" she said. "Shut up, both of you!" She started into the building, then hesitated. She was already late, but there was something.... (Get out of the way, the way.... For no reason at all, at all....) She yielded ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... wooded country. They crossed several creeks, flowing down from the higher mountains, and along the beds of these they found cottonwood, ash, box elder, elm, and birch. On the steeper slops were numerous cedar brakes and also groves of yellow pine. There was very little undergrowth, but the grass grew in abundance. Although it was now somewhat dry, the horses and mules ate it eagerly. The buffaloes did not appear here, but they saw many signs of bear, mule ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... the father. "Better put on the brakes a bit. Your mom and I think about the same, I guess, that the girl's a likely enough lady and she surely is easy to look at, but she ain't what we'd pick out for you if we had the say. It's like some of these here fancy ridin' horses people buy. They're all right for ridin' but no good for hitchin' ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... themselves back, sir," replied Wilson with a smile. "It's a pleasure to command such a nervy crowd as that. You don't need to use the spur. I'm mostly busy putting on the brakes. It would have done your heart good if you could have seen the way they waded into the Huns. That fellow Sheldon particularly is a crackerjack when it comes to a scrap. He's as strong as an ox and as quick as ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... leave the room when the sound of an automobile is heard without, the brakes going on, etc. MINNIE, who has got as far as the doorway, upper ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... for two weeks I floated down the Ohio. The river was as yet in all its wild beauty. Its loftiest trees had not been thinned out. The forest overhung the water's edge and was occasionally skirted by immense cane-brakes. Wild animals of all kinds abounded. We heard them rushing through the thickets and plashing in the water. Deer and bears would frequently swim across the river; others would come down to the bank and gaze at the boat as it passed. I was incessantly on the alert with ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... pressure exists throughout its length—that is to say, the main reservoir on the engine, the pipe from end to end of train, the triple valves and supplementary reservoirs on each vehicle, are all charged ready for work, the brake cylinders being empty and the brakes off. The essential principle of the system is, that maintaining the pressure keeps the brakes off, but letting the air escape from the brake pipe, purposely or accidentally, instantly applies them. It follows, therefore, that the brake ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... melancholy wood, a remnant of that famous forest which in the ancient times the Romans dreaded as the borders of hell. The Tiber rolls close by, yellow and muddy with the black buffaloes descending to its brink to drink, and the snakes and the toads in its brakes counting by millions—sad, always sad, whether swollen by flood in autumn and vomiting torrents of mud, or whether with naked sands and barren bed in summer, with the fever-vapors rising from its shallow shoals. The villa is dull and mournful like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... what she was saying, close behind me there sounded even above the roaring of the waterfall a raucous noise like the hooting of a taxi horn. It was followed by a shrieking of brakes, and a hoarse voice near by shouted something angry and profane. A rush of air swept by me, and I heard faintly the sound of a motor moving away, with a grinding of ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker

... all, the brakes having been taken from the field, some night—dear sport for the lads!—takes place the burning of the "hempherds," thus returning their elements to the soil. To kindle a handful of tow and fling it as a firebrand into one of those masses of tinder; to see the flames spread ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... know, my dear. Nothing serious, I guess. The engineer must have put the brakes on too quickly. I'll look ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... desires them al to try if the could make it stand on the end of it: they, not knowing his designe, try it all: it goes round about al the table, not one of them can make it stand so. Then he takes the egge, brakes the bottome of it, and so it standes upright, they being al most ashamed, else further he addes, As now after I have let you sie whow to do it, ye think nothing to make a egge stand upright: tho none of you could do it before: sikelike after I have found you the gate ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... sight for the tender-foot. My passengers declared it excelled any fiction they had ever read. The boys and girls pulling and pushing the coaches went so fast that I had difficulty in keeping the little fellows from being run over. I applied the brakes several times. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... than an hour's run the cars go sliding down with smoking brakes to Cheyenne, a fall of two thousand feet. But the wagon-road from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie twists and winds among the ravines and over the divides of this lofty prairie; so that Ralph and his soldier friends, while riding jauntily over the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... from his evening dissipation at the end-of-steel village, found him. Even at a distance the absence of life about the shack struck the contractor, and the last half mile he covered with everything open. With the brakes still screeching, he tumbled off and ran to the door, calling to Tressa. The Indian slipped through ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... of these nervous habits is somewhat like the management of the slipping of the wheels of a locomotive when the track is wet and slippery. The little folks ofttimes endeavor to apply the brakes, but they are minus the sand which keeps the wheels from slipping. The parent, with his well-planned discipline, is able to supply this essential element, and thus the child is enabled to gain a sufficient ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... huge, silent man from whom long years on the desert had almost taken the desire for speech. He came jangling up the road, his wagons grinding and banging, his horses straining wearily in their collars; and as Denver ran to meet him he threw on the brakes and sat blinking solemnly ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of it. It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed from a train, against one of the pillars that support the overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then disappear, but, Winthrop's shout of warning, and the wrench as the brakes locked, told her what had happened. ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... instant, with an appalling burst of sound, the gale was upon them. Contrary to their expectations, there was scarcely any perceptible shock, but the ship's speed was rapidly checked much as is the speed of an express train when the brakes are suddenly and powerfully applied, and in some six seconds, though the engines were still going ahead at their utmost speed, the progress of the Flying Fish over the ground was as effectually checked as though she ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... down the hill, the brakes grinding against the wheels, the little rough-coated horses holding back in the shafts. Sometimes, where there should have been two horses, there was only one. The others evidently had been sold or else died on the way. Only one small ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... in the dry salt-grass with which the whole of our little peninsula is bedded. The willows and brakes are our curtains, through which the rising moon looks in at us, and the setting sun; the sun rises long before we see him, above the dark-blue ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... it appeared as if the son and heir of the Stebbins family had decided to take his mother's advice. The car suddenly slowed up—so suddenly as to slide us out of our seats. There was a grinding of brakes, and a bump of something under the wheels; then a wild stream from the sidewalk, and a half-stifled cry from the chauffeur. Mrs. Stebbins gasped, "Oh, my God!" and put her hands over her face; and Lucinda exclaimed, in outraged irritation, "Mamma!" Carpenter looked at me, puzzled, and ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... settle and Frank, guiding his aerial steed with one hand, grasped his revolver with the other, for it was evident that the rush would come as they struck the ground. And come it did. As the wheels of the aeroplane struck the earth and Frank threw in the brakes sharply crashing into a rocky wall, with a howl of defiance the whole horde of man-like brutes rushed down on the air-craft with wicked rage in their ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... had just received warning that German cavalry were in front of them in the valley over which we looked. We stopped to talk for a few minutes with the commanding officer, and then, releasing our brakes, slid quietly out in front of ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... o'er the vale and lawn, The well-breath'd beagle drives the flying fawn, In vain he tries the covert of the brakes, Or deep beneath the trembling thicket shakes; Sure of the vapour in the tainted dews, The certain hound his various maze pursues. Thus step by step, where'er the Trojan wheel'd, There swift Achilles compass'd round the field. Oft as to reach the Dardan ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... mother did as best she could. She fluttered through brakes and bushes seeking food for her young, but her children did not thrive very well. She worked so hard for them—human mothers and bird mothers are very much alike in this way—that she became thin and weak, and with each day that passed she brought less food to the little ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... spot was a little girl. She had on an old- fashioned poke-bonnet of deep pink, her red dress was of old- fashioned homespun, her stockings were of yarn, and her rough shoes should have been on the feet of a boy. Had the vanished forests and cane-brakes of the eighteenth century covered the land, had the wild beasts and wild men come back to roam them, had the little girl's home been a stockade on the edge of the wilderness, she would have fitted perfectly to the time and the scene, as ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... the brakes, worked till we could work no longer, then went below, ate some food from the pantry, and lying down in the two larboard berths in the cabin, were fast ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... Government that moves the great political engine, and that keeps us alive as a Nation on the face of the earth, is God's own doctrine of personal liberty and personal responsibility. That is all we have to go upon. It is, in fact, fuel and steam. Liberty is the steam, responsibility puts on the brakes, and then what is the safety-valve, I ask you? Is it not our election day? Look at it in this way. Every honest lawyer will tell you that the next best thing to settling a quarrel between two belligerents is to bring ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... The putting-on of brakes took her unawares. The train was in Brighton, sliding over the outskirts of the town. Miss Gailey opened her apprehensive eyes. Hilda saw steep streets of houses that sprawled on the hilly mounds of the great town like ladders: reminiscent of certain ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... our chances on finding our way somehow. Over windfalls, up and down and around rocky promontories, we came to West Meadow Creek Wash, its rude bowlder-strewn course striking directly across our path. Here we struck beds of brakes nestling in the shade of giant trees. On the left side of the creek where we were, we ran into dense clumps of wild-cherry which prevented further progress. Scouting found us an outlet on the other side of Barker Creek. The divide on the left towered up with rugged majesty, reddish in color, and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... high river swamp, and large, of itself affording much provision and live stock, as did all the Pedee river swamp at that day. In places, there were open cultivated lands on the island; but it was much covered by thick woods and cane brakes; it was also near to Ganey's party of tories; and by crossing the river, and marching two or three hours, Marion could forage in an enemy's country. All these advantages were well suited to the views ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... with a loud creaking of brakes and groaning of wheels, Bob jumped from the caboose and accompanied the burly conductor to the ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... of Pagan adoration. Excluded by his infirmities from cordial fellowship with his kind, he made the inanimate things of the earth his friends, and entered, by the heart's own adoption, into brotherhood with the luminaries of heaven! Wherever there was land or water, barren rocks or tangled brakes of wild, waving cane, there was Deaf Smith's home, and there he was happy; but in the streets of great cities, in all the great thoroughfares of men, wherever there was flattery or fawning, base cunning or craven fear, there was Deaf Smith an ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... the wedge-shaped, low-browed head of a stoat racing up along one side of him, with murder plainly written in the gleam of its beady eyes; there was the hot breath of another beating on his opposite flank; there was one with feet out and all brakes on, trying its best to pull out one of the feathers of his long and beautiful tail; and—there was ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... the world. There were sunlit upland patches and cool dells of shade carpeted with golden buttercups, where cattle fed lazily. Once a herd of fallow deer browsing by the wayside scuttled away at the noisy approach of the brakes. Only afterward did Paul learn their name and nature: to him then they were mythical beasts of fairyland. Once also the long pile-of the Tudor house came into view, flashing-white in the sunshine. The ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... and it is "down-brakes," for here we are at Ginkville, and every little one knoweth that pleasant waking-place, where mother with her gentle hands holdeth the gracious cup to her ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... stiffing a yawn when the coaches bumped sharply together and, with wheels screeching protest as the brakes clutched them, the train, grinding protest in every joint, came, with a final heavy jar, to a dead stop. Thurston thought it was a wreck, until out ahead came the sharp crackling of rifles. A passenger behind him leaned out of the window and a bullet shattered ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... grass was bounded by the steep spur of a rise. To the left a little river would burst, all at once, in all its windings into a bluish sulphurous glow; and between the crashes of thunder there was heard the long-drawn, whistling swish of the rushes and cane-brakes springing on the boggy ground. We skirted the rise. The rain beat against it; the lightning showed its streaming and furrowed surface. We stumbled in the gusts. We felt under our feet, mud, sand, rocky inequalities of the ground, and ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... and sitting on her horse survey the prospect before her—the sea of rounded hills, hills beyond hills, stretching away to the dim horizon, and over it all the vast blue dome of heaven. Sky and earth, with thorny brakes and grass and flowers and wild creatures, with birds that flew low and others soaring up into heaven—what was the secret meaning it had for her? She was like one groping for a key in a dark place. Not a human figure ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... chanced one evening, ('twas the lover's day) Conceal'd in brakes the jealous kindred lay; When Hesiod, wandering, mused along the plain, And fix'd his seat where Love had fix'd the scene: A strong suspicion straight possess'd their mind, (For poets ever were a gentle kind.) But when Evanthe near the passage stood, Flung back a doubtful ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... food-hunt since the arrival of Warruk, the cub, Suma essayed to visit the margin of the swollen, raging river where the fat capybaras lived in the dense cane brakes. The great creatures, like hundred-pound guinea pigs, were rancid eating, it is true, but this was in a measure counterbalanced by the fact that to capture them required no excessive effort. Both by day and by night they were very much in evidence gnawing tirelessly at the tough canes and when ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... and instead of drinking with eager delight the beauties of Virgil have been culling and drying his phrases for future use."—"I fear my good genius, who was wont to visit me with nightly visions in woods and brakes and by the river's marge, is now dying of a fen ague, and I shall thus probably emerge from my retreat not a hair-brained son of imagination, but a sedate black-lettered book worm, with a head like an ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... girdle of brakes for herself, and a dandelion wreath for her hair. She wove a dear little cap of star flowers for Ivra, and a chain of them for her neck. Eric crowned himself with bloodroot and contrived grass sandals for his feet. But the sandals, ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot

... incline in the road shot the car and swept around a wide curve, and then the jumping, dancing light, running far ahead, revealed a sight that made Tom thrust out his foot and jam on the brakes. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... a cat in the street, picking its dainty way among the little puddles of water. With a muttered curse he dashed after the cat without discovering, until within a few feet of it, that it was the cat who belonged to him. He tried to stop himself in his impetuous career, he put on all his brakes, literally skimming along the street railway-track as if he were out simply for a slide, passing the cat, who gave him a half-contemptuous, half-pitying look; and then, after inspecting the sky to see if the rain was really over ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... the majority and development of the race.—Considering which—the apparently cruel paradox and irony of it—Honoria swung down past the scattered hawthorns, thick with ruddy fruit, across the fragrant herbs and short, sweet turf, through the straggling fern-brakes, which impeded her progress, plucking at her skirts, careless of the rich colour and ample beauty outspread ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... bad thing about this affair, was not that "Dodd" had been to the play-house seven times, but that he had been there clandestinely. When a person begins to sneak about anything, he is on the down grade to perdition, and the brakes are all off. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... is naturally an unusually steep one, and should, one would think, necessitate the utmost caution during the descent, but we rattled down the mountain at a pace which in any country but happy-go-lucky Alaska would certainly have seemed like tempting Providence, especially as only brakes are used to check the speed of the train. However, the fact that two passenger trains are run daily (also a goods train), and that not a single accident has occurred during the four years the line has been in operation, are sufficient proof that the officials ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... To-day she did so; and when the children were happily sailing boats, tearing to and fro like wild colts, or discovering the rustic treasures Nurse Nature lays ready to gladden little hearts and hands, Christie sat idly making a garland of green brakes, and ruddy sumach leaves ripened before ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... feature of this motor boat, however, is the engine, which is a very complicated and beautiful thing, with coils and plugs and brakes strewed about over it here and there, and a big flywheel superimposed right in front. It is the theory that, by opening several cocks and closing several others, and adjusting about fifteen or ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... or two with Buckner Gowdy back there in the saloon, and this had taken the brakes off his tongue—if there were any provided in his temperament. So, aside from Buck Gowdy, I was the first of his fellow-citizens of Monterey County to become acquainted with N.V. Creede. He reminded me at first of Lawyer Jackway of Madison, the guardian ad litem who had ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... ditches on either hand. Here was the place he sought. He set his brakes, shut off his power, and swung his car diagonally across the way, so that it would be impossible for Dulac to pass. Then he alighted, and stood waiting, holding on to his machine ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, The bitter little that of life remains: No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains To thee shall home, or food, or ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... begun to be explored, it is said not to have been claimed in individual property by any nation of Indians. Its extensive forests, grassy plains and thick cane brakes, abounding with every variety of game common to such latitudes, were used as common hunting grounds, and considered by them, as open for all who chose to resort to them. The Cherokees, the Chickasaws, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... are we easier, to have read, O Obermann! the sad, stern page, Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head From the fierce tempest of thine age In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau, Or chalets near the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... apparently quite calm as he examined the car. He would have chosen, perhaps, a less perilous place to attempt its mysteries, but needs must. He climbed in, and released the brakes. Then, with great caution, and considerable noise, he worked it away from the brink of the chasm, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of the fairy throng, She led the dancing group along Through tangled brakes and fretted bowers, Where grew the richest, rarest flowers, That wooed the bee to banquet there, Or yielded sweets to Summer air. But she who moved with elfin pace, And taught the infant throng to play, Raised to heaven her cherub face, While ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... prejudice, and drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway thought; nay, you will see that most men's minds are indeed little better than rough heath wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil surmise; that the first thing you have to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire to THIS; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash-heaps, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... for twenty-five dollars down and ten dollars a month for a year." Climbing higher, the roads become steeper and narrower and, because of the heavy rains, very highly crowned, with frequent right-angle and hair-pin turns. Here a skid or a side-slip or the failure of your brakes is quite likely to bring your career to an abrupt and unpleasant termination. To motor along one of these military mountain highways when it is slippery from rain is as nerve-trying as walking on a shingled roof with smooth-soled shoes. At one point on the Upper Isonzo ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... Through the dust of the lists and the din, So, remembering these holiest places In the days when I lose or I win, I will yearn to them, all being over, Triumphant or trampled beneath, To this beautiful isle like a lover, To her evergreen brakes for a wreath, For a tear ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... new road to York on the Rocky Hills, and here I often ride, or even take perilous rough drives through the cart-paths, the wood roads which are busy thoroughfares in the winter, and are silent and shady, narrowed by green branches and carpeted with slender brakes, and seldom traveled over, except by me, all ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... this moment that a sound like a pistol-shot occurred. The car commenced to bump. The girl-driver applied the brakes, guided the car to the side of ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... Eradicate Sampson!" exclaimed Tom, quickly shutting off the power and applying the brakes. "What's the matter, Rad? Why shouldn't I go down ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... support, with abated breath and prickling skin, gazed in fascinated suspense over the rim of the gorge. Sometimes the wheels on that side of the vehicle passed within a few inches of the edge. The brakes squeaked, the wheels slid; and she could hear the scrape of the iron-shod hoofs of the horses as they held back stiff legged, obedient to the wary ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... and half the beef-fed tenant-farmers of the country-side would come horsing and hoofing it about the glades to catch us. For weeks together in each year we dared not keep our rendezvous at the Stag, but were fain to hide in Brakes and Hollow Trees, listening to the pursuit as it grew hot and heavy around us; and often with no better Victuals than Pig's-meat and Ditch-water. But then the search would begin to lag; and two or three of the great Squires round ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... soldiers were mostly of two classes, both opposed to the war, but doing home-guard duty in lieu of sterner service in the field. Numbers were of the outlier class, who, wearied of continual hiding in the laurel brakes, had embraced this service as a compromise. Many were deserters, some of whom had coolly set at defiance the terms of their furloughs, while others had abandoned the camps in Virginia, and, versed in mountain craft, had made their way along ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... against the strong current. There was also the English fort at Natchez to pass, which might be very dangerous when going slowly up-stream. So he concluded to let the boat go and travel by land through the forest. This also was a hard task in a land of dense cane-brakes and matted woodland, and the small party had a toilsome time of it in pushing through the woods. At length, however, the Spanish fort on the Ozark was reached, and the men of the expedition were reunited. Bidding farewell to Captain Devilie, they ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... machinery, winding itself over the drum, and then stretching out to full length and disappearing down the covered wooden cable troughs on the main and quarter decks, and so into the sea at the stern of the ship; the hose meanwhile playing a stream of water over the drum, brakes, and jockey pulley, where the friction is always greatest. This water ran off in a dirty yellow stream, flooding the forward deck, while the tar from the cable decorated the ship from stem to stern, thus transforming our Burnside from a pretty, trig looking yacht into ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... down grade of 160 feet to the mile. The throttle was wide open. I knew we would soon reach some sharp curves and if the speed was not checked, the engine would jump the track. I called to Manuel to shut off the steam, and apply the brakes. At this time I was struggling with Don Rodrigo for life or death. We had clinched one another. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... he lasted that long, he might fill his nostrils once more with the smell of Africa, see the little fires of the safari flickering against the green cane brakes, hear the songs of the march and the crooning of the camp and the voices of the jungle under the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... saved his own and Spitfire's neck by a clear jump that had been the talk of the neighborhood for days. On the crest of this hill—the one he was then ascending—his father always tightened up the brakes on his four-in-hand, and on the slope beyond invariably braced himself in his seat, swung his whip, and the flattened team swept on and down, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake that blurred the road for ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... quality rather than the concrete persons who embody it—which is spoken of. May we recall the old distinction that God loves the sinner while He hates the sin? The picture is vivid. The wicked—and all the enemies of this King are wicked, in the prophet's view—are like some of these thorn-brakes, that cannot be laid hold of, even to root them out, but need to be attacked with sharp pruning-hooks on long shafts, or burned where they grow. There is a destructive side to the coming of the King, shadowed in every prophecy of him, and brought emphatically to prominence in his own descriptions ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren



Words linked to "Brakes" :   brake band, brake, brake system, brake light, stoplight



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