"Chopping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every limb, and then applying the fire, by degrees, from the feet and hands, burning them gradually up to the head, whereby their pains are extravagant. For crimes of a less nature, gelding or chopping off half the foot with an axe.—For negligence, they are usually whipped by the overseers with lance-wood switches.—After they are whipped till they are raw, some put on their skins pepper and salt, to make them smart; at other times, their masters will drop melted wax on their skins, and use ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... matters than this. I recall Ibsen's remark when told that the reviewers declared Peer Gynt wasn't poetry. "Very well," said he, "it will be." Since it now indubitably is, one is cautious about questioning the work of the present, such work as Miss Lowell's, for instance. Of course the mere chopping up of unrhythmic prose into capitalized lines without glow, without emotion, is not poetry, any more than the blank verse of the second-rate nineteenth-century "poetic drama," which old Joe Crowell, comedian, described as "good, honest ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Paul resolutely attacked this ridge, hoping to get over it and reach the French current in time. It proved to be a terrible struggle. The sea here was foaming and tumbling about in a fearful way for the voyager. It was not a regular roll or swell, but short, quick, chopping waves, tumbling about in all directions, that whirled him round and round, rolled him over and over, rendered his puny sail utterly useless and blinded him with foam and spray. It was a strangely fascinating spectacle to watch him in his hand to hand struggle with the ocean. The waves seemed ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Nelly sobbed and worked; gradually, the sobbing decreased, and the work was carried on with vigour, so that she soon became quite expert at skinning rabbits, boiling meat, embroidering mocassins, smoking deerskins, chopping firewood into small pieces, and many other details of Indian household economy; while Roy went out with the hunters, and became a very Nimrod, insomuch that he soon excelled all the lads of his own age, and many of those who were older, ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... half of Mr. Williamson was visible behind his chopping-table. He saw me and touched his hat—a bowler; nothing very extraordinary about the bowler. The brim was certainly a great deal flatter than I like personally, but quite in keeping with the general tastes of those who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... chopping through her mood of terrified rapture, made her heart jump like a startled cat, yet by some miracle of feminine self-control her body did not show ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... wherein there was much of youth and much of his sister. "And I saw Indians with the sweat running into their eyes and their knees shaking with weariness—I say, I saw Indians groaning under the logs for the store which the Trader Macklewrath is to build. And with my eyes I saw them chopping wood to keep the Shaman Brown's Big House warm through the frost of the long nights. This be squaw work. Never shall the Tana-naw do the like. We shall be blood brothers to men, not squaws; and the Thlunget ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... plain that the majority were still in favor of chopping, as affording a better outlet for surplus energy, but they waited while Mr. Rogers, still protesting, produced the key and unlocked the door. In another minute the greater portion of the ironwork in the establishment was on ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... he softly, "they say on the river that men who die swiftly say no more than 'wait' with their last breath; now I tell you that all my young men who plot secretly with me, are for chopping you—but because I am like a god to them, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... me for the chopping!" cried Spud cheerfully, and soon the cream was being passed around to the assembled students, and the cake ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... done such work in the surrounding neighborhood as could be obtained. My Saturdays and afternoons were spent in splitting rails, chopping wood, driving garden palings, and doing any other work that would enable me to exist. Although I had stinted myself and had often gone without food, at the end of the year I was $12 in debt. But this was not sufficient ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... wasting of Union funds. You know what I mean. It isn't enough to tie up a mill, and then hang around on street-corners for two months, waiting for the other side to give in. The only place to hit a man like Rathbawne is in his pocket, and by that I don't mean simply cutting off his income, but chopping into his capital as well. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... were already in the advance, blazing and chopping away with that indomitable good humor which seems to be the normal condition of the Hibernian when fairly launched into his darling fight. In this general advance Duryea's blue, red and baggy Zouaves led the way, as they had done in many a fight before, and always ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... crash behind me and a great burst of light. There were other lights in the passage and a noise of feet and shouting. My hand-grips were torn from the thing they held; I shut my eyes stupidly and heard a loud yell above me and then a heavy blow, like a butcher chopping meat and then something fell ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... through a room and a passage to the kitchen. They shared a pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she paused and spoke to an old woman chopping up vegetables. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... morning, Ned—see that you don't get to man-chopping in the afternoon. You shall have the pistols, but do not use them rashly. I have kept them simply for defence against invasion; not for the purpose ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... alternately straining his neck to get a view of the Stage, and then towards the noisy inhabitants of the upper regions. "We dined at the Hummums," said a finicking little Gentleman just below him—"Bill, and I, and Harry—drank claret like fishes—Harry was half-sprung—fell out with a Parson about chopping logic; you know Harry's father was a butcher, and used to chopping, so it was all prime—the Parson would'n't be convinced, though Harry knock'd down his argument with his knuckles on the table, almost hard enough to split ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... through the palms, we came upon two negroes chopping away with their machetes, trimming up the debris of broken and decaying palm fans. They were both sturdy, ferocious-looking fellows, but one of them was ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... bell button that called the janitor, and the latter, who was still chopping away at the frozen steps, came ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... Doctor Williams, with Mammy Juliet's Pete chopping the way for him up the hazardous path, reached the end of his journey of mercy, there was a bright fire crackling on the hearth, and Miss Dabney was sitting before it, holding little Tom, who was still sleeping. Aunt Eliza, a deft middle-aged negress who had ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... frequent, the force of vegetation sometimes produces unexpected obstacles. An Indian, furnished with a machete (a great knife, the blade of which is fourteen inches long), stood at the head of our boat, employed continually in chopping off the branches that crossed each other from the two sides of the channel. In the thickest part of the forest we were astonished by an extraordinary noise. On beating the bushes, a shoal of toninas (fresh-water dolphins) four feet long, surrounded our boat. These animals had concealed themselves ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and he says he cannot imagine why. Besides, he is in love with the cook, and is going to marry her after Christmas, and refuses to enter into any of my plans with the enthusiasm they deserve, but sits with vacant eye dreamily chopping wood from morning till night to keep the beloved one's kitchen fire well supplied. I cannot understand any one preferring cooks to marigolds; those future marigolds, shadowy as they are, and whose seeds are still sleeping ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... house, too, might be heard the notes of busy preparation. Alice, sitting in a low chair, was busily engaged in chopping meat for mince pies. Maggie sat near her paring pumpkins, for a genuine New England Thanksgiving cannot be properly celebrated without pumpkin pies. Even little Charlie found work to do ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... houses in it, and they were unoccupied. Mafeking, it was said, had driven back the besiegers, and, it was added, had "possibly" been relieved from the north ("possibly" was thought distinctly good). It may have been so; but we did not believe it. There had all along been a great deal of chopping and changing anent the position of the Mafeking garrison. We were at one time told that Mafeking "fell" before our Siege began. We could, and always did, take a more dispassionate view of Baden-Powell's plight than we could or would take ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Greek border, and over the woodshed opening behind he had spanned a keystone arch. Peering into this shed, under the collapsing roof, you see what is left of an axe embedded in a pile of reddish vegetable mould, which was once the chopping block. Peering through the windows of the house, you see a few bits of simple furniture still inhabiting the ruined rooms. Just outside, in the door-yard, the day lilies, run wild in the grass, speak to you of a housewife's hand ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the fish. The materials used for the enticing of the flies and the nourishment of the maggots have been various. Stale meat from the markets has been perhaps the leading article, but we have also used such parts of the butcher's offal and of the horse carcasses as were not well adapted to chopping; fish, fresh dried or pickled; fish pomace from herring-oil works, and any animal ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... thousand of them—and he quite foamed at the mouth (that's another fault of these Frenchmen, they don't take things coolly, but puts themselves in a passion about nothing); so thinks I to myself it won't do for you to go on chopping at that rate, for when I fended off he made my whole hand tingle with the force of his blow; so I darts at him and drives the hilt of my cutlass right into his mouth, and he fell, and his own men trod ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... a very decent fellow, who gave a grim report of the trail beyond. He said: "Nobody knows anything about that trail. Jim Deacon, the head-man of our party when we left Hazleton, was only about seventy miles out, and cutting fallen timber like a man chopping cord wood, and sending back for more help. We are now going back to bridge and corduroy the places we had no time to fix as ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... they went into the soul of the matter in such a dangerous way. What if Joel should hear? No doubt he would report that his master was an infidel,—that would be the next thing they would hear. He was in the kitchen now: he finished his wood-chopping an hour ago. Asleep, doubtless; that was one comfort. Well, if he were awake, he could not understand. That class of people——And Mrs. Howth (into whose kindly brain just enough of her husband's creed had glimmered to make her say, "that class of people," in the tone with which Abraham would NOT ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... twelve frescoes, each about three and a half feet square, representing the twelve months—from a purely secular point of view. January is a man making and hanging up sausages; February, a man chopping wood; March, a youth proclaiming spring with two horns to his mouth, and his hair flying all abroad; April is a young man on horseback carrying a flower in his hand; May, a knight, not in armour, going out hawking with his hawk on one finger, his bride on a pillion behind him, and a dog beside ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... sacking that covered the window-holes was burst outwards, beef-bones lay on the road before the door, and, within, the widow, black, begrimed and very drunk, lay inverted on the clay of the floor, her head beneath the three legs of the chopping block, so that she was as if in a pillory, but too fuddled to do more than wave her legs. A prentice who crouched, with a broken head, in a corner of the filthy room, said that a man from Lincolnshire, all in Lincoln green, with a red beard, ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... stopped under a group of tall elms. In a few moments the girls were scattered about searching for flowers. Black Jason and his friend unloaded the lunch wagon, and then Mrs. Hastings called the girls to decide on the best place to erect the May-pole, a fine birch tree that Black Jason was now chopping down. ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... the narrow-gauge tracks upon which the sand and grit trucks ran, avoiding one or two localities where steam shot upward from the ground in a witch-like and erratic manner, with short angry hisses and chopping sounds that suggested danger, and finally stood before the door designated "OFFICE" in plain lettering. Joyce looked around at her companion with a ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... left the hall, Diggory returned to his former employment of chopping wood, and began to consider very ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that eunuchs were common in those times as palace employes, but that castration still was the usual punishment inflicted throughout China for grave offences not calling for the penalty of death, or for the more serious forms of maiming, such as foot- chopping or knee-slicing; and that all the prisoners of that degree were told off to do productive work: although humiliatingly deformed, they were still available for the common purposes of native life, and their defenceless and forlorn plight would probably make it an easier matter to handle them in ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... was any dullness on the Delancy yacht, means were taken to dispel it. While still in the Sound a society was formed for the suppression of total abstinence, and so successful was this that Point Judith was passed, in a rain and a high and chopping sea, with a kind of hilarious enjoyment of the commotion, which is one of the things desired at sea. When the party came round to Newport it declared that it had had a lovely voyage, and inquiry brought out the great general principle, applicable to most coast ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are," Joe Kivelson contradicted. "Maybe you came aboard as guests, but you're both part of the crew now. I never saw a prettier shot on a monster than Walt made—took that thing's head off like a chicken on a chopping block—and he did a swell job of covering for the cutting-up. And he couldn't have done that if Murell hadn't handled the boat the way he did, and that was no ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... lay shivering all night in the forest, not daring to make fires. In the morning, a heavy fall of snow began. They moved forward, and soon heard the sound of an axe. It was an English boy chopping wood. They caught him, extorted such information as they needed, then tomahawked him, and moved on, till, hidden by the forest and the thick snow, they reached the outskirts of the village. Here they divided into two parties, and each took its station. A gun was fired as ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... were handling their knives, and one or two sharpening them on stones. These knives of theirs are not so sacred as some say they are, although I was once warned sharply not to touch one I was to pick up beside its owner. I have often seen them chopping wood and meat with these, hence the necessity for their requiring sharpening this morning. Poor Gurkhas! later in the day some of our men mistook them for Turks and mowed down seventy of them with their machine-guns. In every battle we have ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... fallen considerably, however, from the high estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce principles, but in the chopping and changing times that France lives in, it is not unusual to find the same men with different principles, interest, or gain, being the object of each change. This result of revolution might have been expected; and though it would be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... reason, and while they are talking, Harlequin is performing his Lazzi. This consists of eating an imaginary hatful of cherries, and throwing the stones at Scapin; or catching imaginary flies, and chopping off their wings. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... another. A few more yards were won, but the shore loomed black and forbidding, and many yards away. Despite the utmost efforts of the women and the two canoemen, the water gained rapidly. Lapierre redoubled his exertion, chopping and stabbing at the ever thickening shore-ice. And then suddenly his paddle crashed through, and with a short cry of relief he rose to his feet, and leaped into the black water, where he sank only to his middle. The canoemen followed. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so important a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... him was not on its way to New York. All was well with the skipper and the world! He remained there for an hour, smoking, listening, congratulating himself. By the thumping of the axes and the slow crashings of falling trees he knew that Bill Brennen had put a big crew at the chopping. This knowledge stilled his anxiety for the girl's safety. He knocked out his pipe and stowed it away and moved farther westward until he found a suitable camping-place behind a wooded hill. Here he made a fire, built a little shelter of poles and spruce branches, and rested at his ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... relation to the Countess of Fleetwood. A duty was easily done by Gower when he had surmounted the task of conceiving his resolution to do it; and this task, involving an offence to the Lady Livia and intrusion of his name on a nobleman's recollection, ranked next in severity to the chopping off of his fingers by a man suspecting them of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conscience, literary-artistic and simply human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... or mince vegetables and various other food rapidly by placing the little device, as shown, on a chopping board. Ii is an ordinary staple, driven in just far enough to allow a space for the end of an ordinary pointed kitchen knife to fit in it. The staple is driven in the edge of the chopping board. The knife can be raised and lowered with one ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the wheat is all in, and most all the oats. The corn is splendid in the old elm lot, and then the Major has been chopping down your old sugar camp, where we worked when you came home from ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... exulted. "I'd lie abed in the mornings on purpose, only everything is too good not to be up. And now you just play at chopping some firewood and catching a nice big perch, Man Friday, if you expect to ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... hickory from a great pile in the yard. It was a relief to his pent-up feelings, and he drove the axe home with powerful blows. He was a strong, handsome youth, with face and arms healthily bronzed with work in the open air. He laid a big junk of the oak across the chopping-block, swung the axe, and cleft the stick with a single blow that sent the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... these. The necessary mutilation of the bodies of those who had been my friends, rendered the ghastliness of my situation more frightful. When I could crawl about and my lame foot was partially recovered, I was chopping some wood one day and the ax glanced and cut off my heel. The piece of flesh grew back in time, but not in its former position, and my foot is ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... hour and a half—taking their turns at chopping—almost without speaking. At length the top of the tree began to waver, and a loud crack announced that it was about to fall. Frank and Archie were chopping, and the blows of their axes resounded with redoubled force, and the other boys caught up the guns, and ran off in the direction in which ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... and all the morning, on the 22d, it rained almost continually. The wind was at S.E., S.S.E., and S., which brought in a short, chopping sea; and as there were breakers little more than two cables length from the stern of our ship, her situation was none of the safest. The surf broke so high against the shore, that we could not land in our boats; but the day was not wholly lost, for the natives ventured in their canoes, to bring ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... vulgar allusions? Forgive me, I speak as I feel, I've pondered and made my conclusions— As the mill grinds the corn to the meal; So man striving boldly but blindly, Ground piecemeal in Destiny's mill, At his best, taking punishment kindly, Is only a chopping-block still. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... his wanderings brought him to the edge of the wilderness where, inclosed by a zigzag fence of rails, he caught his first glimpse of human habitation. Concealed in a clump of young poplars, he gazed curiously at the Hermit who was chopping wood at the rear of his cabin, and at Pal who ran about, sniffing eagerly here and there, but never far ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... carpenters' benches, saws, hammers, wood—in short, all the appliances with which they carry on the various trades at their "Home" in the East End. In a few seconds, as if by magic, the platform was a workshop in full swing—hammering, sawing, chiselling, wood-chopping, clattering, and indescribable din, which was enhanced, but not drowned, by the applause of the astonished audience. The little fellows worked as though life depended on their activity, for the space, it seemed to me, of half a minute. Then the shrill whistle ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... too pleased to say a good word for the thousands upon thousands of comrades in khaki whom he represented. "You see, most of us camp out a good deal, and all sorts of accidents happen. I've known a boy to cut himself so badly with an ax when he was chopping wood that he would have bled to death long before they could get him to a doctor, but it was easy for his mates to stop the flow of blood, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Mr. O'Flaherty, the process was simplicity itself. Having secured by the Monday's mail copies of the London papers of two months before, he spent Tuesday in cutting extracts from them with the greatest impartiality, chopping away everything which might be of value to him. The Wednesday was occupied in cursing at three black boys who helped to put up the type, and on the Thursday a fresh number of the Vaal River Advertiser and Diamond Field Gazette was given to the world. The remaining three days were devoted by ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit, others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is in the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing would induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it before ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... at his watch.) With a knife. I came down—old Van Loo did, that's to say—and fell on my leg, so I couldn't run. And then this man came up and began chopping at me ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... tract, and Parker set his little crew at work chopping birch saplings and fashioning from them huge sleds, strongly bolted. As for himself, he entered into a contract with the local blacksmith, threw his coat off and went to work on some contrivances, round which the settlement's loungers congregated from dawn till dark the next day, watching ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... cut it into slices, and mince it very finely with a chopping-knife. Season it to your taste with pepper, salt, sweet marjoram rubbed fine, grated lemon-peel and nutmeg. Put the bones and trimmings into a sauce-pan with a little water, and simmer them over hot coals to extract the gravy from them. Then put the minced veal ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... alongside, afforded us a supply of ice; and we were thus cheaply provided with a portion of the requisite supplies for our voyage. The 'Dacia' had an iceberg half as big as herself lying alongside her, and all hands were at work until late at night, aided by the light of lanterns and torches, chopping the ice up and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... balustrade to upstair kitchen and bed-chambers, on either side of the ground floor were spacious salon and dining room, fronting town and river, water-mills and quays. In the vast kitchen was an enormous chopping block, suggestive of large ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Presently the chopping ceased. Before long the two men appeared on the top of the bank, dragging a spruce trunk about twenty feet long. On seeing the Barracouta they halted in surprise, then dropped the tree and hurried down ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... activity reigns, where it is converted into a tumult, is there on a little plot of raised ground, a few steps from Ibarra's house. Pulleys screech and yells are heard amid the metallic sound of iron striking upon stone, hammers upon nails, of axes chopping out posts. A crowd of laborers is digging in the earth to open a wide, deep trench, while others place in line the stones taken from the town quarries. Carts are unloaded, piles of sand are heaped up, windlasses and derricks are ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... avenue cut his foot badly last week while chopping wood for a party on Willow street. He has been warned time and again not to chop wood when the sign was not right, but he would not listen to his friends. He not only cut off enough of his foot to weigh ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... fought there, and two notorious spies were hung. One regiment of the brigade was left at that place, and the rest strung along the road further down. The Eighty-sixth was stationed at West Harpeth, where it began getting out timber with which to repair a bridge. Details were at work every day chopping and hewing, but it was not long till it received orders to discontinue the work and prepare for a march. West Harpeth is situated some eight miles south from Franklin in a fine portion of the country. The regiment was there in the fruit season of the year, enjoying soldier life in the ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... a good oarsman, and Hemstead pulled fairly. Both were very strong, and they drove the boat through the short, chopping waves, rather than over them, caring not how ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Zyobite and an almost equally stalwart woman were both caught by one gigantic Quabo which had a tentacle around the throat of each. The man and woman were chopping at the viscous, gruesome head. One of the Thing's eyes was gashed across, giving it a fearsome, blind appearance. It heaved convulsively, and the three struggling figures toppled into the water and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... tide, with a continuous roar under an irresistible impulse. When they got to the top of the stairs, they were scattered, and their chant died away. Nothing could any longer be heard but the tramp of all the shoes intermingled with the chopping sound of many voices. The crowd not being in a mischievous mood, contented themselves with looking about them. But, from time to time, an elbow, by pressing too hard, broke through a pane of glass, or else a vase or a statue rolled from a bracket down on the floor. The wainscotings ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... now advanced as far as Query IV. Now, what is to be done? Let us consider this calmly. In the first place, have I any option in the matter, or is love a hurricane that carries one hither and thither as a bottle is tossed in a chopping sea? I reply that it all depends on myself. Rosalind would say no; that we are without control over love. But Rosalind was a woman. It is probably true that a woman cannot conquer love. Man, being her ideal ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... affair. She is not my daughter, and I don't feel called upon to interfere. Casaubon is as good as most of us. He is a scholarly clergyman, and creditable to the cloth. Some Radical fellow speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the learned straw-chopping incumbent, and Freke was the brick-and-mortar incumbent, and I was the angling incumbent. And upon my word, I don't see that one is worse or better than the other." The Rector ended with his silent laugh. He always saw the joke of any satire against himself. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... been nearly perfect, there was very much that was grand about the old Greek,—very much that makes us strangely love the man, who, when his soldiers lay benumbed under the snows on the heights of Armenia, threw off his general's coat, or blanket, or what not, and set himself resolutely to wood-chopping and to cheering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... and there stood still. Patience is one of the red man's characteristics. He did not move hand or foot for half an hour, during which time, despite the distance of the neighbouring clump, he could easily make out the sound of an axe chopping wood, and even heard human voices in conversation. Then a gleam of light flickered among the trees, and the kindling camp-fire of our ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... understood, but he will always be afraid that some of them did. That fear will be torture to him, for he has been a harsh master to them. In his dreams he will imagine them chopping his tree down. That will make his days uncomfortable—I have already arranged ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed in shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself had been heard, again and again, to threaten Ramean, who, in his brutal fashion, had made a butt of him. ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... passed Brussels; have passed Calais and Dover; have passed London; we are drawing near home. How refreshing sounds the broad voice of the porters at Dover! Squeamish as I am, after an hour and three-quarters of a nice, short, chopping sea, the sight of the dear green-fustian jackets, instead of the slovenly blue blouses across-Channel, goes nigh to revive me. Adieu, O neatly aquiline, broad-shaved French faces! Welcome, O bearded ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... strength. With one hand he plunged his spear into the compact ranks of his enemies, and with the other mowed large spaces in them with his battle-axe. Suddenly he flung away his war-club, red with blood, rushed upon a wounded warrior, and, chopping off his arm at a single stroke, carried the dissevered member to his mouth, and ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... do with a chopping ax, and what cannot a Yankee do with it? Who ever saw a Scotchman or an Irishman who could not cut a straight ditch with a spade, and who ever saw a Yankee who could or would cut a ditch straight with any tool? One man works best with a long-handled ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... will order it. Ile cut him peece-meale; first his head and legs Will be one burthen; then the mangled rest, Will be another, which I will transport, Beyond the water in a Ferryboate, And throw it into Paris-garden ditch,[16] Fetch me the chopping knife, and in the meane Ile move the fagots that do cover him. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... rang out the time of day. The chaffering Red Man bartering blankets and furs for powder and whisky had passed farther on. The population was made up of plain farmers and their families engaged in severe and unbroken labor, chopping down trees, draining fever-breeding swamps, breaking new ground, and planting from year to year the same rotation of crops. Nearly all the settlers were of native American stock into whose frugal and industrious ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... several times that afternoon. The Arleigh woods she knew were to be kept till later in the month. She took her block and paint-box, and picking her way along the choked gravel walk and down the side drive to the stables, sat down on the bench for chopping wood which had been left in the place to which she had previously dragged it, and set to work. She was sitting under one of the arches out of the wind, and an obsequious yellow cat came out of the door of one ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... needs uh cleanin' in more ways than one. Now if this town was run right, when folks misbehaves, they oughter be locked up in jail and if they can't pay no fine, they oughter be made to work it out on de streets—chopping weeds. ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... saving in chopping hay unless the horses are worked very hard and for very long hours, as is often the case with express horses in the cities, or unless the power for cutting is very cheap and feed high. The idea is that, except in unusual cases as above mentioned, the horses can do their own grinding cheaper than ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... bridge some seven or eight miles up the river, near Gaylesville, and procured new guides and pushed on as rapidly as possible in order to reach the bridge before the enemy should take possession of it. We had to pass over an old coal-chopping for several miles, where the timber had been cut and hauled off for charcoal, leaving innumerable wagon-roads running in every direction, and the command was so worn out and exhausted that many were asleep, ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... that he must then leave me, and go along some half a mile further, where some men were at work, chopping down ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... goes. One reason why these men talk so much is that all their work must be accompanied by some sound. Up in the diamond fields I watched a native chopping wood. Every time the steel blade buried itself in the log the man said: "Good axe. Cut deep." He talked to the weapon just as he would speak to a human being. It all goes to show that the Congo native is simply a child grown ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... finished chopping her up, he began to wash the pieces. And each piece, as he washed it, called out, "The King scours and scrubs like a washerwoman, but ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... opened when Waitstill and Patience had left their beds at dawn, built the fire, fed the hens and turkeys, and prepared the breakfast, while the Deacon was graining the horse and milking the cows. Such minor "chores" as carrying water from the well, splitting kindling, chopping pine, or bringing wood into the kitchen, were left to Waitstill, who had a strong back, or, if she had not, had never been unwise enough to mention the fact in her father's presence. The almanac day, however, which opened with sunrise, had nothing to do with the real ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thrown over his bare shoulders, and found, without much surprise, that his father had also slept late. Verner Hughes was just beginning to shave. Inside the kitchen, his mother and the girls were clattering pots and skillets; his younger brother, Hector, was noisily chopping wood. Going through the door, he filled another of the light-metal basins with hot water, found his razor, and went outside again, setting ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... the bush. I coo-ied as loud as I could, and listened; but there was no response. I rode on again, and at length I thought I heard a sort of hammering noise in the distance. I proceeded towards it, and found the noise occasioned by a man chopping wood. Glad to find I was not yet lost, I went up to him to ask my way. To my surprise, he could not speak a word of English. I tried him in German, I tried him in French. No! What was he, then? I found, by his patois, a few ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... to reach the upper floors, which are constructed to bear almost unlimited weight, divided into rows of stalls with aisle space between. Harness rooms, cleaning rooms, harness repair shop, hospital for sick horses, paint room, etc., together with the most modern machinery for grinding and chopping feed. ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... like the Elsinore there are not enough weapons to go around. The only firearms now aft are Captain West's .38 Colt revolver, and my .22 automatic Winchester. The old steward, with a penchant for hacking and chopping, has his long knife and a butcher's cleaver. Henry, in addition to his sheath-knife, has a short bar of iron. Louis, despite a most sanguinary array of butcher-knives and a big poker, pins his cook's faith on hot water and sees to it that two kettles are always piping on top the cabin stove. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... furnish every needy man with easy, unskilled work, such as chopping wood, or cutting faggots used for lighting stoves in Paris households. This is a kind of prison-work before the crime, done without loss of character. It is meant to prevent men from taking to crime out of want, by providing them with work and testing ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... bring out, so he took the safer course of charging the Twelve with disobedience to the Sanhedrin's prohibition. How characteristic of all his kind that is! Never mind whether what the martyr says is true or not. He has broken our law, and defied our authority; that is enough. Are we to be chopping logic, and arguing with every ignorant upstart who chooses to vent his heresies? Gag him,—that is easier ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the plantation, and started toward the quarters, in quest of the negro who had given him the information, whom he found chopping wood in front of one of ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... softly, I took up a cunning little thing and hugged it in delight. But a terrible flapping of wings sounded close to my ears—I could scarcely distinguish any thing—and dropping the chicken, I fell across the chopping-log. The old hen rushed furiously at me, and kept beating me with her wings; while I, afraid that my eyes would be pecked out, could do nothing but scream. Some one, at length, picked me up; and when I ventured to look around, I beheld Sylvia, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... outright? All these specious arguments: how was one to turn and twist, evading some, meeting others; and all the time taking it for granted that the happiness of two people's lives was to be dependent on such logic-chopping as could be put down on a sheet ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... as the lighthouse. There lay her old home, with its solid stone walls, and the lantern with its red-painted cover. She turned away: the sight was more than she could bear. Her ear now caught the sound of Per chopping the wood in the peat-shed, and almost without knowing what she did, she found herself in the shed, standing by his side. He ceased for a moment from his work, raised himself up, and looked beyond her over the sea. Per wore a stiff sailor's ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... hole; meat baked or boiled in pye-crust. He or she sits like a toad on a chopping-block; a saying of any who sits ill on horseback. As much need of it as a toad of a side-pocket; said of a person who desires any thing for which he has no real occasion. As full of money as ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... common sense by which he had conquered his nervousness about the noise on the previous night. But that had been a very different sort of noise. It might have been made by half a hundred things, from the chopping of wood to the breaking of bottles. There was only one thing in nature from which could come the sound that echoed through the dark house at daybreak. It was the awful articulate voice of man; and it was something worse, for ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... the upper part of the round of beef. Cut off all the fat, and so trim as to give the piece a regular shape. Put the trimmings in the chopping tray, with a quarter of a pound of boiled salt pork and one pound of lean cooked ham. Chop very fine; then add a speck of cayenne, one teaspoonful of mixed mustard, one of onion juice, one table-spoonful of lemon juice and three eggs. Season the beef with salt and pepper. Spread the mixture over ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... strength of chopping our wood. Just gathered the small, dry pieces we found near our camp. We also put up our camp in an easy way we thought. Three little poles were required to keep up our tent. They were quite handy; but it took me some time before I could ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... the jaw is peculiar; it allows of no lateral motion, as in the ruminants; the condyle, or hinge-bolt of a tiger's jaw (taken from the largest in my collection), measures two inches, and as this fits accurately into its corresponding (glenoid) cavity, there can be no side motion, but a vertical chopping one only. The skeleton of a typical carnivore is the perfection of strength and suppleness. The tissue of the bones is dense and white; the head small and beautifully articulated; the spine flexible yet strong. In those which show the greatest activity, such as the cats, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... his brother, too, I know—looked as though he was going wood-chopping somewhere,' said another. But Taylor slipped his arm in Len's and drew him aside. 'Look here, what are we going to do about it—what ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... furnace. I see Paul's prowess best when I find him on the foundering ship under the glare of the lightning in the breakers of Melita. God crowns His children amid the howling of wild beasts and the chopping of blood-splashed guillotine and the crackling fires of martyrdom. It took the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius to develop Polycarp and Justin Martyr. It took the pope's bull and the cardinal's curse and the world's anathema to develop Martin Luther. It took all ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of the Committee of Secrecy! he, that brought forth in the utmost detail, in several vast, printed folios, the most recondite parts of the politics, the military, the revenues of the British empire in India! With six great chopping bastards,[67] each as lusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit, as well as a more poetic comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Cook was chopping up cabbage to-day and she cut her finger," he said, drawing a little house and moving his eyebrows. "She gave such a scream that we were all frightened and ran into the kitchen. Stupid thing! Natalya Semyonovna ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... kept up the cross-examination. At the end of the session she was still unsatisfied, but she was on the scent and her brother knew it. He fled to the woodshed and there punctuated his morning task of kindling chopping with groans and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the room and threw himself on the bench with such violence that he upset the block for wood-chopping. Jendrek laughed, but his father unbuckled his belt and did not stop beating him till the boy crept, bleeding, under the bench. With the belt in his hand Slimak waited for his wife to make a remark. But she remained silent, only holding on ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... not have known his clothing, so stained, torn and bedraggled did his garments appear. The boys had made him do his share of the camp work. Chopping wood had made his palms blister, sparks had snapped out of the fires he had made and burned holes in his clothes, and hot fat snapping from the skillet had left red marks on ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... while chopping wood, severely sprained my right wrist. My mother had bound it up and put my arm a sling, so that I could not use it, and I therefore remained at home while my father and Dan were out. The only persons in the house besides my mother, Kathleen, and myself, being Biddy and Dio. Rose had gone to ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... all cruelties, save me from your small pedant,—your closet philosopher, who has just courage enough to bestride his theory, without wit to see whither it will carry him. In experience, a child: in obstinacy, a woman: in nothing a man, but in logic-chopping: instead of God's grace, a few schoolboy saws about benevolence, and industry, and independence—there is his metal. If the world will be mended on his principles, well. If not, poor world!—but principles must ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... talk like that," cried Murray. "Nothing is more aggravating than beginning to say something and then chopping it off in that way. Speak out and say what ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the north of the harbour, and behind it the Rughamat Makna, the greenish-yellow, flat-backed "horse" of Madyan, which, shimmering in the sunset with a pearly lustre, forms the best of landmarks. Finish to the south of the Wady with the quaint chopping outlines of the Jebel el-Fahisat, resembling from afar a huge alligator lying on the water; with the similar but lower forms to the north of the valley, both reflected in the Jibal el-Hamra (the Red Hills), whose curtains of green-black trap are broken by sheets of dull dead-white ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Thread Man was too much for him, and a second later he was thrusting an ax into the hands accustomed to handling a thread case. Then he led the way to the tree, and began chopping at the green hickory. It was slow work, and soon the perspiration streamed. Jimmy pulled off his coat and threw it aside. He assisted the Thread Man out of his and tossed it behind him. The coat alighted in the fire, and was badly scorched before it was rescued. ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and are set out in the furrows, two of the spruce for each dwarf pine till the nurse has done her work. Then she is turned into charcoal, into tar, and a score of other things of use. The men who do the planting in summer find chopping to do in winter in the older plantations, at good wages. Money is flowing into the moor in the wake of the water and the marl. Roads are being made, and every day the mail-carrier comes. In the olden time a stranger straying into the heath often brought the ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... bloodied his whole face, and a rope and a whip—symbols of his success with horses—dangled in his right hand, while behind him followed the smart war-pony, covered with vermilion hand-prints as thickly as the spots on a brook-trout. The squaws ran from their fleshing, their chopping or their other work to look at the warrior who made all the camp talk. Wisdom mellowed by age, in the forms of certain old men, sat back and thought disturbedly of the future, as is the wont of those who have little ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... him. They had two dwelling-houses, cultivated meadows, orchards, &c. Isaac Burton says, that, one day, when near John Nichols's house, he heard a tree fall in the woods; and that he went to see who was chopping there. It seems that Jacob Towne and John How, Topsfield men, had come in defiance of John Putnam, and cut down a tree before his face. As they were two to one, Putnam had to swallow the insult; but he was not the man to let it rest so. He went out shortly ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... he tossed Unc' Billy on the chopping-block while he gathered an armful of kindlings to take to the house. When he turned to pick up Unc' Billy again, Unc' ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... so good as not to make a scene. Your welfare, your life, is at stake. So—quickly. [Snatches bird from her and goes to chopping block and takes up meat chopper]. You should have learned how to chop off a chicken's head instead of shooting with a revolver. [He chops off the bird's head]. Then you wouldn't swoon ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... on the Corn-Laws, in this place; the Corn-Laws are too mad to have a Chapter. There is a certain immorality, when there is not a necessity, in speaking about things finished; in chopping into small pieces the already slashed and slain. When the brains are out, why does not a Solecism die? It is at its own peril if it refuse to die; it ought to make all conceivable haste to die, and get itself buried! The ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you'd never believe it—the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer, he'll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the justice ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... laid up cob-house fashion. The same kind of chimney may now be seen in the rural districts of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. In many places the fireplace and chimney stand outside of the house, and the fireplace is wide enough to burn wood ten feet long. The wood requires but little chopping or splitting. For andirons they used large stones. When the children wanted to warm themselves they stood at the corner at the ends ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... exposed to any contagious disease. She didn't know what a contagious disease was, but on the hypothesis that he had reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, but only two evenings, because John had only just got back from the woods where he had been chopping, and she had to sit up ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... the lid as he spoke, he broke it in with a crash, finishing his work when the hatchet came, by quickly chopping and splitting the coffin up ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... reader will understand that all this pantomime of the threatened onslaught and its suppression passed so quickly that it was all over by the time the other end of the table found out there was a disturbance; just as a man chopping wood half a mile off may be seen resting on his axe at the instant you hear the last blow he struck. So you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not, interrupted during the time implied by these ex-post-facto ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) |
