"Close-grained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the left forefinger of the seamstress, long since vulcanized into a little file, furnishes the infallible sign which indicates the class. To the practised eye, the varieties are known by many a token: by the smart little close-grained cereal bonnet which little Straw-Goods put away before she came into the dance; by the spicy creation of silk and ribbons which roosts demurely, like a cedar-bird, on the back hair of the pale girl, who is a milliner; by the superior ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... where is the skin of the whale? Already you know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... stiff and cold, and had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion. By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar instrument,—a brown, close-grained stick, with a stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet of note-paper with some words scrawled upon it. Holmes glanced at it, and then handed it ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... purpose for which it is sent; but all depends on how we take it. It sometimes makes us hard, bitter, obstinate in clinging to evil. A heart that has been disciplined by it, and still is undisciplined, is like iron hammered on an anvil, and made the more close-grained thereby. But this king took his chastisement wisely. An accepted sorrow is an angel in disguise, and nothing which drives us to God is a calamity. Manasseh praying was freer in his chains than ever he had been in his prosperity. Manasseh humbling himself ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wish to collect materials for tracing the origin of nations. I shall only premise, that the tall strait forest trees, which Mr Anderson describes in the following account, are of a different sort from those which are found in the more northern parts of this coast. The wood is very long and close-grained, extremely tough, fit for spars, oars, and many other uses; and would, on occasion, make good masts, (perhaps none better,) if a method could be found ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... they started late owing to various re-arrangements having to be made, and then steered for Mt. Darwin to get specimens. As Wilson was still unable to use his ski, Bowers went on and got several specimens of much the same type—a close-grained granite rock which weathers red; and as soon as Bowers had rejoined the party they skidded downhill fairly fast, Scott and Bowers (the leaders) being on ski, Wilson and Oates on foot alongside the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... respects, I am a very qualified admirer of the talents of Ohmacht. His head of Oberlin is good; but it is only a profile. I visited his Studio, and saw him busy upon a colossal head of Luther—in a close-grained, but coarse-tinted, stone. I liked it as little as I have always liked heads of that celebrated man. I want to see a resemblance of him in which vulgarity shall be lost in energy of expression. Never was ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... seat of government and its needs drive another wedge of loose construction into close-grained theory. To have exclusive control over a district not exceeding ten miles square meant not only police control, but it meant to make a home fit for the national seat of government, and to provide for the necessities of its representatives. Nevertheless conscientious scruples and niggardly appropriations ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... within a quarter of a mile of the cove. I began my investigation by hacking off a good stout branch, stripping off its bark, and testing its working qualities. I found that the wood gave off the characteristic odour of cedar; that it was close-grained; that it was easily workable; and that it was, in short, everything I could possibly desire. I therefore started work in earnest by felling the tree that I had already attacked and trimming off its branches. This brought my day's ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... close-grained hardwood having a shiny surface are usually carefully roughened with a fine toothing plane blade previous ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it is fancied that book-worms dislike the aromatic scents of cedar, sandal wood, and Russia leather. There was once a bibliophile who said that a man could only love one book at a time, and the darling of the moment he used to carry about ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... ski was made of close-grained wood, 1 inch thick, 3-1/2 inches wide and 6 feet long. About 18 inches from the forward end the wood was planed down to a thickness of 1/4 of an inch. This end was placed in the dish-pan of boiling ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... liable to fracture by heavy stones being thrown upon them by the waves, but this is a contingency which does not frequently occur in practice. According to Trautwine, the cast iron for pipes to resist sea water should be close-grained, hard, white metal. In such metal the small quantity of contained carbon is chemically combined with the iron, but in the darker or mottled metals it is mechanically combined, and such iron soon becomes soft, like plumbago, under the influence of sea water. Hard white iron has been proved to ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... her eyes shone lustrous, pools of tawny flame; her hair showed itself of a rich and luminous coppery hue, spun to immeasurable fineness; a faint color burned in her cheeks, but in contrast her forehead was as snow—the pure, white, close-grained skin that is the heritage of red-headed women the world over, and their chiefest charm as ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... beef is of a bright red color, intersected with closely laid veins of yellowish fat; the kidney fat, or suet, is abundant, and there is a thick layer upon the back. The second quality has rather whitish fat, laid moderately thick upon the back, and about the kidneys; the flesh is close-grained, having but few streaks of fat running through it, and is of a pale red color, and covered with a rough, yellowish skin. Poor beef is dark red, gristly, and tough to the touch, with a scanty layer of soft, oily fat. Buy ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... corresponded with that of the Chinese in the days of Fo-hi. [Footnote: Abel Remusat tells us that of the two hundred primitive Chinese 'hieroglyphs' none showed a knowledge of metal.] The chief weapons were small triangles of close-grained basalt and iztli (obsidian flakes) for tabonas, or knives, both being without handles. They carried rude clubs and banot, or barbed spears of pine-wood with fire-charred points. The garrotes (pikes) had ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton |
