"Gimlet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without. The counter of the ship was covered with hard oak plank, four inches thick; and through this we undertook to cut an opening sufficiently large for a man to descend; and to do this with no other tools than our jack knives and a single gimlet. All the occupants of the Gun-room assisted in this labor in rotation; some in confidence that the plan was practicable, and the rest for amusement, or for the sake of being employed. Some one of our number was constantly at ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... My dear, there are some men whose heads have to be held while an opening is made with a gimlet before they will take a thing in. You husband is doubtless a good man, but doubtless also dense. How long before your baby was born ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... glasses and sat down to watch me, a task in which he was joined by another man and a boy who had been cleaning the church. There they sat, the three of them, all huddled together, saying nothing, but staring hard at me (as I could feel) with gimlet eyes; while a few feet distant I sat too, peering through the glasses at Giorgione's masterpiece, of which I give a reproduction on the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... with him. He placed it in that absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse—the barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel—here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole in the candle—timed to blow the place up at one o'clock this morning, provided the candle was ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his movements; and for this reason people commonly called him "goodman Fario." But his skin—the color of gingerbread—and his ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... is another man's poison," said the captain, philosophically; "no use fretting, care killed a cat. I am as badly off as you; for, hang me, if there was not a Bow Street runner in the town. I caught his eye fixed on me like a gimlet: so I bolted—went to N——, left my pheaton and groom there for the present, and have doubled back, to bauffle pursuit, and cut across the country. You recollect that voice girl we saw in the coach; 'gad, I served her ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... doubt whether there ever was any age of chivalry. . . . . It certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days. The point of honor is very ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... face pleadingly; he looked greatly puzzled, and very, very much disturbed. Then she looked at the gimlet-eyed man in the chair and saw his eyes rove from one to another of the girls questioningly. He ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... poor animal wanted was a hypodermic injection of morphia to calm his nerves. He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under the horse's skin. But Patrick said that he could do it without the machine. So one day he got the morphia, and began to bore a hole in the horse with a gimlet." ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... develops. He had a long and extremely narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty. His expression was sophisticated and cynical. "Well, sir!" he said with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... you were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head, you couldn't make her believe anybody would ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... tickling me with your brush—one can't remain like a miller, so a touch of rouge is inevitable. And then—see how wicked it is—if, after all that, one does not enlarge the eyes a bit, they look as if they had been bored with a gimlet, don't they? It is like this that one goes on little by little, till ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... jack-knife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after all, only a single and a very undefined item in his general ideal world, and there was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... what you have heard," it said. "He would be humiliated. Or"—the thought was sharp as a gimlet—"what if he saw you, and knew you were listening? What if he talked just for effect? He is so clever! He is subtle enough for that. And wouldn't it be more like the man, than to ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of his feet, and putting his skates on with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, with the assistance of Mr. Weller, the ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... is of the same colour as when taken down. I merely washed it, and with a gimlet bored a number of holes in the back, and into every projecting piece of fruit and leaves on the face, and placing the whole in a long trough, fifteen inches deep, I covered it with a solution prepared in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... friend, carried me in a box the next market-day to the neighboring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet-holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, tho it were but of half an hour; for the horse went about forty feet at ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... of turning the anchor round on its fluke, so that the motion of the stock appears similar to that of the handle of a gimlet when it is employed to bore a hole. To turn anything round on ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Scattergood had amassed considerable more money than even the gimlet eyes and whispering tongues of Coldriver had been able to credit him with. It is doubtful if anybody realized just how strong a foot-hold Scattergood was getting in that valley, but the men who came closest to it were Messrs. Crane and ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... during the entire morning the Indian stirred; he did not seem to awake as other boys do, but more like a rabbit. His eyes opened without drowsiness; he shot to his knees, sweeping the river bank with a glance like the boring of a gimlet. Larry, looking at him, knew that nothing—-nothing, bird, beast or man—could escape that penetrating scrutiny. Then, without comment, the boy curled down among his blankets ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... little gimlet that men call conscience was patiently drilling its way through the wall of obduracy behind which Desmond's wounded pride had taken cover. Rail as he would against his hard treatment at the hands of the Chief, he knew perfectly well that ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... died. Harry Hellinfinger in Beckersville, whose father is Postmaster, is grown up and too lazy to work, but likes to stand around in the street and get up jokes on boys like sending them to a hardware store for a gimlet to bore square holes and other jokes like that. He played one on me. He told me that if I would eat a half a cigar I would be stunted and not grow any more and maybe could be a rider. I did it. When father ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... away abruptly. It was as if some fierce emotion made it impossible for him to remain another second. His heavy brows depressed, and his deep-set eyes narrowed to gimlet holes. Skert pursued him. Once clear of the window, and beyond earshot, Bat flung his reply with all the passionate force of his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... gravestone recording the death of a carpenter, having at the head a shield bearing three compasses to serve as his crest, and under it the usual tools of his trade—square, mallet, compasses, wedge, saw, chisel, hammer, gimlet, plane, and ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... his cabin, chargeth him to conceal for a time, a piece of service, which he must in any case consent to do aboard his own ship: that was, in the middle of the second watch, to go down secretly into the well of the ship, and with a spike-gimlet, to bore three holes, as near the keel as he could, and lay something against it, that the force of the water entering, might make no great noise, nor be discovered by a ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... called the date-shell can, assisted by its liquid acid, pierce the hardest stone with its cylindrical gimlet. The columns of Hellenic temples, submerged in the Gulf of Naples and brought to light by an earthquake, are bored from one end to the other ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... concealed half of his face, he went straight to the horses which stood ready harnessed, slipped his pistols into the holsters, and, profitting by the moment when the other horses were being led into the stable by their postilion, he took a gimlet, which might in case of need serve as a dagger, from his pocket, and screwed the four rings into the woodwork of the coach, one into each door, and the other two into the body of the coach. After which he put the horses to with a rapidity and ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet[obs3], drill, wimble[obs3], awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar[Med], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... me, sir; or will this make you recollect in future?" The rattan was raised, and descended in a shower of blows, until the cooper made his escape into the head. "There, take that, you contaminating, stave-dubbing, gimlet-carrying, quintessence of a bung-hole! I beg your pardon, Mr Simple, for interrupting the conversation, but when ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... had to come from something. Now, while I was scared, I don't believe in such things as ghosts. Well, then, the noise must have come from some human throat. When I got up at five this morning I began to think harder than ever. Then I went and got this gimlet out of the little tool box and bored a tiny hole through the wood in this shutter. When I peeped I saw a light, surely enough, in the shack. There were sparks, too, coming up out of the chimney. Then I saw a shadow, and ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... with baize. His resources with regard to food and water consisted of the following: One bladder of water and a few small biscuits. His mechanical implement to meet the death-struggle for fresh air, all told, was one large gimlet. Satisfied that it would be far better to peril his life for freedom in this way than to remain under the galling yoke of Slavery, he entered his box, which was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops, and was then addressed by his next ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... one awful wallop you handed our gimlet-eyed friend," said Pringle admiringly. "Neatest bit of work I ever saw. Sir, to you! My compliments!" He placed a chair near the front door and sat down. "I feel like a lion in a den of Daniels," ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the trouble? Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?" the slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses. "Love?" he repeated harshly. "Which is it, boy? They're all ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the others take care of the ship she left behind until she returned. She took the little maid in her arms, and bade the men row across the current until they should reach the ship (of Giermund). She took a gimlet out of the boat's locker, and gave it to one of her companions, and bade him go to the cockle-boat belonging to the merchant ship and bore a hole in it so as to disable it if they needed it in a hurry. Then she had herself put ashore with the little maid ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... was very pleading. She did not answer, nor even turn his way. But once safely in the lift, out of the range of Kenna's gimlet eyes, over the shoulders of the stunted brown lift-boy she let her glance rest in his, and so told him that he would have ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat deed he guv you. He ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... to the fence. He was crooked at the waist and his legs were hooked with the curves of age, but he strode along with brisk vigor. His gaze was as sharp as a gimlet, though the puckered lids were cocked over his eyes with the effect of little tents whose flaps were partly closed. He put ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... thick man, red-faced, with white, short whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye, enormous, hairy ears, wore a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat, and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant trumpeting ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... must be always intellectual it must be in words, and hence as well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories he has heard about ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... board mark off with a pencil a center space 2-3/4x3-3/4 inches in size. With a gimlet bore holes at points A, B, C, and D. Connect these holes with a pencil line as a guide for cutting. Along the line make a groove which may be broadened and deepened until the board is cut through. ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... the old black silk—the one with the gimlet curls and the accelerated lap-cat. Doesn't she average about as I set ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... means of which communication is to be established between the electrodes and the binding posts, I shall term the end of the wire that is to be attached to the electrodes the distal, that which is attached to the binding posts the proximal end. A gimlet hole sufficiently large to admit of the passage of one wire should be made half an inch outwards from the centre of the site of each binding post. The best wire to use is about No. 16 copper wire, coated with gutta percha or rubber. The ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... which one would not have suspected in her little hands, withered by age, she inserted the gimlet, and made a hole at the height indicated by the servant. But it was too low; she felt the point, after a time, entering the shelf. A second attempt brought the instrument in direct contact with the iron hook. This time the hole was too near. And she multiplied the holes to right and left, until ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... tart, Erebus did not feel that it would be delicate at that moment to protest. Therefore on leaving the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the stationer's he went to an ironmonger's and bought a saw, a brace, a gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After their visit to the confectioner's they ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... de Bausset, an eye-witness of the ceremony, tells us in his Memoirs: "I was naturally anxious to see the Empress as soon as she should reach the middle room to take a place on the throne, and give her courtiers time to arrange themselves about her, before we were introduced. I had brought a gimlet, and with this I had bored a good many holes in the door of our room. This little indiscretion, which was not mentioned in our report, gave us an opportunity to inspect the appearance of our young sovereign at our ease. I need not say that it was the ladies of our party who were ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... that it was both backache and headache. She was a steely-faced woman of middle age with gimlet eyes and dank black hair in a ragged fringe. As she spoke she eyed the company at the table with a sort ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that vehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse, lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid of that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the peasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes, snorted out a laugh, clapped his reins, and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... — N. perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet^, drill, wimble^, awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar [Med.], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit^, gouge; spear &c (weapon) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear, grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim, broad-shouldered ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... off, from below and above, so quickly that you can see them cue under your eyes, and turn into a spiral by their continued contractions. They fall, spike downward, by the weight of the seed, and the sun finishes the work he began. Closer still the gimlet winds, and as it does so it bores down into the hardest soil: and such is their strange power of penetration, as they are driven in, spite of all their weakness, that they bury themselves up to the very hilt, leaving only the last long curve flat on the surface. Then this ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... man in black was white with fury. His gimlet eyes had narrowed to slits, and his mouth was distorted with rage. It was the face of a killer—a ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... grub. It may be mentioned as an amiable idiosyncracy of the mosquito, that it is fond of babies. If there is a child in the house, it is sure to spot the playful innocent; and by means of an ingenious contrivance combining the principles of the gimlet and the air-pump, it soon relieves the little human bud of its superfluous juices. It is, in fact, a born surgeon, a Sangrado of the Air, and rivals that celebrated Spanish Leech in its fondness for phlebotomy. Some infidels, who do not subscribe to the doctrine that nothing was made in vain, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... see the procession go by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... 1 emery stone. 4 iron dishes. 1 sieve-dish. 1 iron dolly. 1 soldering iron for mending water casks. 2 sticks solder for mending water casks. 1 bottle spirits of salts for mending water casks. 1 case of tools. Screwdriver, small saw, hammer, chisel, file, gimlet, leather-punch, wire nipper, screw wrench, large scissors, &c. 1 case of tools for canvas work (sewing needles, &c.). 2 lbs. of copper rivets. Screws. Bolts. 1 box copper wire. Strong thread. 1 1/2 lbs. ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... use to him to send a blacksmith when he was dead; and that he was at present in the greatest distress: his wooden spades were all broke, and he had not an axe to make any more; his canoes were all broke, and he had not a nail or a gimlet to mend them with; his potato grounds were uncultivated, and he had not a hoe to break them up with, nor a tool to employ his people; and that, for want of cultivation, he and his people would have ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... tusks have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success. Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and fifteen inches in diameter at ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... accomplish his objects. He illustrated this by telling me, in his own humorous style, " When you want to go from London to Greenwich, don't go round by Inverness." Another of his droll sayings was that he "considered no man a thorough mechanic unless he could cut a plank with a gimlet, and bore a ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... to tell this, that all the thicker and larger of these boards have holes bored through them. At about every four inches is a hole, a little larger than an ordinary gimlet hole. These holes have their uses, as I will tell later, but now let me get on to ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... box the next market-day, to the neighboring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion[48] behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it were but of half an hour. For the horse went about forty ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... get at one of the spirit-casks. They bored a hole in it with a gimlet, and sucked the rum out through a straw. There was nothing for it but to send up the steward, and Jim, my cabin-boy, along with the others who were on deck. But poor Jim was but a clumsy hand at it; and as they were lying out on ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... butt-ends under the electric light. I saw what he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the portable tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he opened the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I tucked the small end under my arm, and ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... compensation for the defects in worldly estate. Nothing would make Katy's black eyes flash quicker than any reflections on her husband's want of luck in the material line. "She didn't know whose business it was, if she was satisfied. She hated these sharp, gimlet, gouging sort of men that would put a screw between body and soul for money. George had that in him that nobody understood. She would rather be his wife on bread and water than to take Captain Blatherem's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... name across a room full of people, some of whom may be total strangers, invades his privacy and theirs. Have you noticed how, in our Pullman parlor cars, a party sitting together, generally young women, will shriek their conversation in a voice that bores like a gimlet through the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. In England "it isn't done." We shouldn't stand it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we do stand it. It is a good instance to show that the Englishman's right to privacy is larger than ours, and thus ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... severe boring pain—as if a gimlet were being driven into the bone. It is worst at night, preventing sleep, and has been ascribed to compression of the nerves ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... to this rule are a few common words in which g is hard before e or i. They include—-give, get, gill, gimlet, girl, gibberish, gelding, gerrymander, gewgaw, geyser, giddy, gibbon, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gimp, gingham, gird, girt, girth, eager, and begin. G is soft before a consonant in judgment{,} lodgment, acknowledgment, etc. Also in a few words from foreign languages c is soft before other ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... to do and the carpenter was doing that great deal well, but at his own pace, for "Chips" was not a rapid man. If he had a hole to make with gimlet or augur he did not dash at it and perhaps bore the hole a quarter or half an inch out of place, but took his measurements slowly and methodically, and no matter who or what was waiting he ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... to pierce the unbidden guest with those gimlet-like smiling black eyes of his. His face was expressionless. Gavin returned to the upper hall and walked with needless heaviness toward the room assigned to him. Reaching its door he opened and then shut it loudly, himself remaining in the hallway. Scarce had the door slammed when ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... purple tent, with the fruits and the cocoa-nut. As you know, a cocoa-nut is not handy to get at the inside of, at the best of times, so Quentin set that aside, meaning to ask Blue Mantle later on for a gimlet and a hammer. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... borrowed a dulcimer, and made one by it. With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the character of young ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... enough to see the planets plainly. So he found a strip of board about a foot long and two or three inches wide, which was hollowed out on one side. Into this hollow he fixed the tube by common tacks and small wire. Then through the middle of this strip he bored a large gimlet hole, and put in a long screw, and went to the workshop in the basement to make a standard into which to screw the strip which held the tube. He couldn't find nor make just what he wanted soon enough—the boys said that "Jupiter had just come out clear"—and so he caught ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... of her was a bullet-headed ownsha," replied Mogue, "and herself—well now, that I may never die in sin, if I could say rightly. I was fetehin' some oats to Gimlet Eye, an' didn't take any particular notice. The ownsha had black sooty hair, cut short, an' walked as if his feet were sore—and indeed it strikes me that he had kibes—for these poor people isn't overly clane, an' don't wash their feet goin' to bed at night, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... little, And again I spoke a falsehood, But at length I answer truly. By my art a boat I fashioned, By my songs a boat I builded, 250 And I sang one day, a second, And at length upon the third day, Broke my sledge as I was singing, Broke the shaft as I was singing, So I came for Tuoni's gimlet. Sought in Manala a borer, That my sledge I thus might finish. And with this might form my song-sledge. Therefore bring your boat to this side, Ferry me across the water, 260 And across the straight convey me, Let me come across ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... invited me to taste some of his master's wine, and accordingly to the cellar we went. 'This wine will surprise you,' quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead. And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another, and another, till we tried half a score of them, and all with the same result. Upon this I seized a hammer which was lying by and sounded the casks, but none of them seeming empty, I ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... carried elsewhere. We visited the studio of Schroeter—a man with humor in every line of his face, who had nothing to show us but a sketch, just prepared for the easel, of the scene in Goethe's Faust, where Mephistophiles, in Auerbach's cellar, bores the edge of the table with a gimlet, and a stream of champagne gushes out. Koehler, an eminent artist, allowed us to see a clever painting on his easel, in a state of considerable forwardness, representing the rejoicings of the Hebrew maidens at the victory of David ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... handle of a hammer projected from one pocket, and a pruning-knife from the other. And if there was not a pipe in Bulldog's mouth, stuck in the side of his cheek, "as sure as death!" There was a knife in his hand, with six blades and a corkscrew and a gimlet and the thing for taking the stones out of a horse's hoof—oath again repeated—and Bulldog was trying the edge of the biggest blade upon his finger. Speug, now ascending from height to height, was not surprised ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the bound portion. This making of brooms for domestic use is but an example of one of the many score of useful domestic and farm articles which were furnished by the natural resources of every wood-lot, adapted by the Yankee jack-knife and a few equally simple tools, of which the gimlet might ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead which is thrust close up against it. The former was found securely fastened from within. It resisted the utmost force of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole had been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was found fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the other window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and a vigorous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... business of raising money. No sooner had they set out, but Shepherd remembering one Mr. Martin, a watchmaker near the Castle Tavern in Fleet Street, he prevailed upon his companion to go thither, and screwing a gimlet fast into the post of the door, they then tied the knocker thereto with a spring, and then boldly breaking the windows, they snatched three watches before a boy that was in the shop could open the door, and so marched clear off, Shepherd having ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... went right on to say, "I wanted to tell you the first thing, I hadn't nothin' to do with that slightin' piece about you you probable read in the Jonesville Auger. The Nation knew I had writ for it, and for the Gimlet, and I wuz awful afraid you'd think it wuz me, and be mad at me, but I'm as innocent as a infant babe. Keturah Snyder writ it, and she's been through with trials enough to make her bitter but bein' so mad she sez things ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi. But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time. Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of oil, goes ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Lord Raygan, as Miss Child obeyed. He might have meant the wearer or the dress. Peter Rolls flashed a gimlet glance his way to see which. He felt uncomfortably responsible for the manners of the visitors and the feelings of the visited. But the face of Rags was grave, and no offence could be taken. Peter Rolls withdrew the glance, though not before ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a gimlet. Surely you were brought up at ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exhortation, my two sons and two daughters bent their critical eyes upon the male author of their being. It was a moment of sweet triumph for the old man for which he had made the most careful preparations. It was in vain that their gimlet-like faculties sought to discover flaws in the eminently fashionable costume of white striped serge, the brand-new yellow shoes, the jaunty summer necktie, and the appropriate hat, whereby I was transformed from a plain man to a respectable-looking ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... increased Darrow's interest in Miss Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the heart of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Mr. Dodd, and passed on up the street. But he felt the judge's gimlet eyes boring holes in his back. The judge's position was very fine, no doubt for the judge. All of which tends to show that Levi Dodd had swept his mind, and that it was ready now for the reception ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was a little sawed-off, red-headed Irishman, with twinkling, gimlet eyes, two up-curved lips always in a broad smile, and a ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Glue and screw this to the under sides of the top piece, placing the grain across that of the top wood. Warping is thus prevented. This brace acts as a support to which the upper ends of the legs are firmly screwed and glued. A 3/16 in. gimlet hole should be bored for each screw or the wood will split. The holes should not be deeper than 1-1/2 in. if the screws are to hold firmly. Try drawing the screws across a cake of soap and see if they will not be ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... confess that to all appearance "the cause" has been thereby shorn of no material strength, nor bled of its vitality. And shall it be admitted that this potent argument of little minds is as powerless as the dullards of all ages have steadfastly maintained? Forbid it, Heaven! the gimlet is as proper a gimlet as any in all Christendom, but the timber is too hard to pierce! Grant ye that "the movement" is waxing more wondrous with each springing sun, who shall say what it might not have been but for the ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... scuttling your own ship. Now as I am in a way a practical person, which is, I take it, a diminutive state of hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look as if I were squatted and set on my ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... eye, like a gimlet on a universal joint; he turned it this and that way without any corresponding movement of his head. It penetrated. You felt he could have seen you with it in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... stack of cannonballs, wads, and a "passbox" or powder bucket. Hanging from the cascabel are two pouches: the tube-pouch containing friction "tubes" (primers for the vent) and the lanyard; and the gunner's pouch with the gunner's level, breech-sight, pick, gimlet, vent-punch, chalk, and fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet beyond the stack of cannonballs. ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... one of my boyhood birthdays I received a tool box. It was a peach of a tool box, too; not one of the dime store variety, with a saw the same length as the gimlet, but with a set of tools that no amateur carpenter would despise. I was greatly delighted with that tool box, and immediately began planning the things I would make. Mother wanted a shelf on the back porch and a coop for an old hen just off with her chicks; my dog needed ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... which the gimlet eyes of the professor were busy. Then he seemed suddenly to leap to the heart ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... time a man of sixty-seven or thereabouts, but he carried his years well; he was very tall, and in build reminded you of the canons of the good old times. The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips gave expression ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... altogether his fault. He had risen from the lower class and had a passionate desire not to sink back into it. He was small and weakly-looking; he had a harsh face, and his forehead bulged over his eyes, which were keen and sharp and bored into you like a gimlet: he had a fair mustache, a satirical mouth, a sibilant way of speaking, a husky voice, a scarf round his neck, and he had always something the matter with his throat, in which irritation was set up by his ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... concealed their clothes. The petards were taken out from beneath a heap of stones, where Hugh had hid them, and were fixed on the piece of timber, one end of which was just afloat in the stream. By their side was placed some lengths of fuse, a brace of pistols, a long gimlet, some hooks, and cord. Then just as it was fairly dark the log was silently pushed into the water, and swimming beside it, with one hand upon it, the little party started upon ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... package of the lead to be tested, a sample can most easily be obtained by boring into the side or top of a keg with a gimlet, and with it taking out the required quantity; care should be used to free it entirely from the borings or particles of wood, and it should not be larger than the size mentioned; a larger quantity can be reduced, but of course more time will be required, and ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... world like a yellow, shrivelled parchment himself. Regular gimlet eyes, too, and a very fitch for sharpness, though younger than his appearance might make ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... alone disappears almost entirely. This is the tit-bit, not very substantial, but extremely tasty, it would seem. Here, in fact, in the insect's crop, the syrup is accumulated, the sugary sap which the Cicada's gimlet taps from the tender bark. Is it because of this dainty that the prey's abdomen is preferred to any other morsel? It is ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... not to let his hands be less busy than his throat, he would bring out the wonderful six-bladed knife his uncle had given him, and exploring all its wonders, and opening all its blades at the same time, together with the corkscrew, the gimlet, the pincers, and the button-hook, at different angles, would terrify the lives out of his fellow-passengers by twirling the awful bristling weapon in his fingers within a foot or ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... is provided with the following tools: One coach-maker's vise, one 26-inch No. 6 cross-cut saw, one 12-inch back saw, one set of planes, one set of chisels, one set of auger-bits, one set of gimlet-bits, one ratchet-brace, one coach-maker's drawing-knife, one spoke-shave, one thumb-gauge, one try-square, one bevel, one hammer, and one mallet. Other tools are kept in reserve by the instructor and are used only ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... once upon a time was treated by boring a hole into the horn with a small gimlet and pouring Turpentine into the opening. This treatment is useless and harmful. It produces inflammation of the frontal sinuses of the head and chances are death of the animal will follow as a result of the treatment and not of ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... there's no occasion for you to tear your clothes with me this way. Besides, I sometimes get on the prod myself, and when I do, I don't bar no man, Jew nor Gentile, horse, mare or gelding. You may think different, but I'm not afraid of any man in your outfit, from the gimlet to the big auger. I've tried to treat you white, but I see I've failed. Now I want to give it out to you straight and cold, that I'll pass you to-morrow, or mix two herds trying. Think it over to-night and nominate your choice—be a gentleman ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... better: we examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and, indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing, any unusual gaping in the joints, would have ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that you see in Rembrandt's or Metsu's portraits of alchemists and shrunken old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a gimlet. His voice was so low; he always spoke suavely; he never flew into a passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether he had grown old before his time, or whether by economy of youth he had saved enough ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... men in the uniform of English regiments, and the women and children in clouts of all descriptions, some being nearly naked. At the back of the cellar is revealed, through a burst door, an inner vault, where are discernible some wooden-hooped wine-casks; in one sticks a gimlet, and the broaching-cork of another has been driven in. The wine runs into pitchers, washing-basins, shards, chamber- vessels, and other extemporized receptacles. Most of the inmates are drunk; ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find argument for optimism ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of wily cupidity which is needful ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... he heard this screech, shivered with a cosy, creeping thrill; but now he put his head under the bedclothes, shut his eyes very tight, and tried not to see the Captain with his ugly nose and tiny gimlet eyes. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... thus perished near London?—witness the large elms that once stood in Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the trunks for sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in some cases, and it has been suggested that quicksilver has occasionally been inserted in gimlet holes. The mercury is supposed to work up the channels of the sap, and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... they had kicked the breaker down the hill to the beach. Then they were at a dead stand, as no one would spile the breaker. At last a black carpenter came by, and they offered him a glass if he would bore a hole with his gimlet, for they were determined to be able to swear, every one of them; that they had no hand in it. Well, as soon as the hole was bored, one of them borrowed a couple of little mugs from a black woman, who sold beer, and then they let it run, the black carpenter shoving one mug under as soon as the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in ripe middle age, massive and short of stature, with a square head and a billowy, sable-silvered head of hair; full lips, richly shadowed by his beard; an eye which twinkled like some bland star of humour at one minute and pierced like a gimlet at the next; a manner suavely dogged, jovially wilful, calmly hectoring, winning as the wiles of a child; a voice of husky sweetness, like a fog-bound clarion at times; a learning which, if it embraced ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Ghastly palega. Gherkin kukumeto. Ghost fantomo. Giant grandegulo. Gibbet pendigilo. Gibbous gxiba. Gibe moki. Giddiness kapturno. Giddy, to make kapturnigi. Gift donaco. Gift, to make a donaci. Gifted talenta. Gild orumi. Gill (fish) branko. Gilliflower levkojo. Gimlet borileto. Gin gxino. Ginger zingibro. Gingerbread mielkuko. Gipsy nomadulo. Giraffe gxirafo. Gird zoni. Girdle zono. Girl knabino. Give doni. Give back redoni. Give up forlasi. Give evidence atesti. Give notice sciigi. Glacier glaciejo. Glad ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... hand all over. The littler ones are livelier and more willing to put out their heads. I don't believe we've had this one before, Ernest," added Faith, examining the creature. "We nearly always use the big ones for horses," she explained, "and then there's a gimlet hole ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... account of years alone "unfit" to proceed to the front. For many years he had commanded a field battery in the Canadian militia, went on manoeuvres with his "cannons", and fired round shot. When the time came for using shells he bored the fuse with a gimlet; and if the gimlet were lost in the grass, the gun was out of action until the useful tool could be found. This "cannon ball" would travel over the country according to the obstacles it encountered and, "if it struck a man, it might break ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... He was an odd-looking, active little man of about fifty with keen blue eyes that bored into one like a gimlet. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... see the skeleton of the gibbet and the hollow square of witnesses. He could feel the rope scratching his neck. He could both see and feel, most hideous of all, the piercing triumph in that dread hour of Fitzpatrick's gimlet eyes. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... wagon, there should be carried such carpenter's tools as a hand-saw, auger, gimlet, chisel, shaving-knife, etc., an axe, hammer, and hatchet. This last weapon every man should have in his belt, with ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... impression that all the men had soft voices, large, embracing arms, gimlet eyes and bored, impersonal smiles. She knew they were taking her in. Their pleasant hoots and yells of greeting ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Mr. Paget's celebrated Sin had banished them, and she was inclined to clutch at the sceptre now. She was the only person I ever met with who was not afraid of the displeasure of my Father. She would fix her viper-coloured eyes on his, and say with a kind of gimlet firmness, 'I hardly think that is the true interpretation, Brother G.', or, 'But let us turn to Colossians, and see what the Holy Ghost says there upon this matter.' She fascinated my Father, who was not accustomed to this kind of interruption, and as she was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... song ceased, and the reminiscent smile gave place to an expression of surprise, as the singer became conscious of a deeper shadow falling directly in front of her. She glanced up quickly, and found herself looking into the face of a man whose gimlet-like gaze was ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... acquaint me the heifer was brought to Matavai. I immediately went on shore and found that he had been as good as his word. The purchase money was paid, which consisted of a shirt, a hatchet, a spike nail, a knife, a pair of scissors, a gimlet, and file; to which was added a small quantity of loaf-sugar. Teppahoo appeared well pleased with his bargain; and I sent the heifer to Poeeno's residence near which ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... design that had occurred since Moxon's Exercises. From Nicholson's list of the tools required by the carpenter—"a ripping saw, a hand saw, an axe, an adze, a socket chisel, a firmer chisel, a ripping chisel, an auguer, a gimlet, a hammer, a mallet, a pair of pincers, and sometimes planes"—there would seem at first glance slight advance since the 1600's. The enumeration of the joiner's tools, however, indicates a considerable proliferation, ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... is held plumb against the surface, and the boring commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which progresses by little bites, by alternative erosion, first in one direction, then ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... was delighted at the propinquity of his favourite beverage and decided that he would always remain in the cellar, regaling himself with the vintage. His thirst increased at the prospect, so he produced a gimlet, bored a hole in the vat, and drank and drank till at length he could drink no more; then the fumes of the wine overcame him and he sank down in a drunken stupor. Meanwhile the merry little stream flowed from the vat, covered the floor ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... and gimlet-eyed where their charges were concerned. And certainly, if young people never got away together without qu'il ne vous en deplaise! there would be fewer engagements. And Biddy must know that it was a Heaven-sent ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the present, Miss Kingsnorth. Sure it's in good hands I'm lavin' him. But for you he'd be lyin' in the black jail with old Doctor Costello glarin' down at him with his gimlet eyes, I wouldn't wish a dog that. Faith, I've known Costello to open a wound 'just to see if it was healthy,' sez he, an' the patient screamin' 'Holy murther!' all the while, and old 'Cos' leerin' down at him and sayin': ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... Have we not all cause? Is not the world a big butt of humour, into which all who will may drive a gimlet? See, I am a salaried wit; and is there aught in nature more ridiculous? A poor, dull, heart-broken man, who must needs be merry, or he will be whipped; who must rejoice, lest he starve; who must jest you, jibe you, quip you, crank you, wrack you, riddle you, from hour to hour, from day to ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... that was kind of dignified. He was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... tougher, something flashy and bloated. Jimmy, for his part, had taken an instant liking to the financier. He, too, had been misled by imagination. He had always supposed that these millionaires down Wall Street way were keen, aggressive fellows, with gimlet eyes and sharp tongues. On the boat he had only seen Mr. Pett from afar, and had had no means of estimating his character. He found ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Harris. "It was water the boys came down here in search of; and they've tapped five barrels of sirup in the operation, and finally they've stuck the gimlet into a ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... friend, KISSLEBURGH, city editor of the Troy Times, who, up to the present time, if this coot knows herself, hain't bin into the hiway robbin' bizziness, not by a long shot. But, my friends and feller citizens, old VAN is sharper that a two-edged gimlet. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... grow up," said Dank, "I'll kill Papa for killing Tibby. I'll bore holes in his face with Mark's gimlet. I'll cut pieces out of him. I'll get the matches and set fire to his beard. I'll—I'll ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... chair with a gimlet in his hand, and screwed it tightly into the wainscotting as high as he could reach; then he took a cord from the sacking of his bed, secured it to the gimlet, made a noose, put his head in, kicked the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... prove a stepping-stone to the sheriff's office. The element of surprise he knew was most effective and he was counting upon it to obtain valuable admissions. In the scene, as he visualized it while riding, he was to advance gimlet-eyed, throw open his coat and confront her with the badge which ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Poonahkunjegun, n. anchor Pookedoonze, n. a pear Pahdahkemoojeskahjegun, n. a spur Pewakoodahmahgun, n. shavings Pahketaegun, n. a hammer Pemenegun, n. a gimlet, an auger Penahquahn, n. a comb Pezhekeence, n. a calf Pesahkahmegeboojegun, n. a harrow Pequahegun, n. a hill Pabahbahgahne, n. a pancake Pazhegwahnoong, one place Panggwon, adj. dry Pahquonge, n. a stump Pahgasaun, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... more than another child would have done from these cruel fasts. His robust stomach was in agony. Sometimes he trembled because of it; his head ached. There was a hole in his chest—a hole which turned and widened, as if a gimlet were being twisted in it. But he did not complain. He felt his mother's eyes upon him, and assumed an expression of indifference. Louisa, with a clutching at her heart, understood vaguely that her little boy was denying himself so that the others might have more. She rejected ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... littered with jumbled calculations. Miller had a chance to study him. He was tall, heavily built, with wide, sturdy shoulders despite his sixty years. Oddly, he wore a gray-green smock. His eyes, narrowed and intent, looked gimlet-sharp beneath those toothbrush brows of his, as he stared ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... tell her age; she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin, parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the countenance of an artful dwarf, a living mask of intrigue, an active, envious ambition. With ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... go at a big dead fish if it's lying in the water, take a good mouthful, and then set their long bodies and tails to work, and spin round and round like a gimlet or a ship augur, and bore the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... a goriller and a goose egg. He's a long-armed, short-legged, gimlet-eyed feller with a head like a egg upside down. You could split a board on that feller's head and never muss a hair. I never saw a man that had a chin like Matt Hall. They say a big chin's the sign of strength, and if that works out Matt must ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... game of charity was yet at its height, a limping, gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person—it may be some discharged custom-house officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself miserable for life, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... next winter," she said softly, more softly than he had ever heard her speak. And the quieting melody of her mere tone!—how unlike that other voice which bored joyously into you as a bright gimlet twists its unfeeling head into wood. He turned on her one quick, beautiful ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... talk with Vee. I hadn't had more'n a glimpse of her for weeks now, and while I might not feel like givin' her complete details of all that had happened to me recent, I thought I might drop an illuminatin' hint or so. Was I goin' to let a gimlet-eyed old dame with an acetic acid disposition block me off ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... cyclopaedia, and there is the picture of which this is the original. Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you don't, you 're made a fool of by ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the warm, ardent tint of a piatok [23]. Persons of this kind—persons to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a file or a gimlet and so forth—are not uncommon. Such persons she merely roughhews. One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... long before he noticed that behind a wall of brickwork, that divided his house from Capodoca's, was the hearth of his uncomfortable neighbour, and that through a hole it was possible to see what she was doing over the fire. Having therefore thought of a new trick, he bored a hole with a long gimlet through a cane, and, watching for a moment when the wife of Capodoca was not at the fire, he pushed it more than once through the aforesaid hole in the wall and put as much salt as he wished into his neighbour's ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... of ours at Silverado, small but very active, a destructive fellow. This was a black, ugly fly—a bore, the Hansons called him—who lived by hundreds in the boarding of our house. He entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest—we had no ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson |
