"Hammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night, work day and night; redouble one's efforts; do double duty; work double hours, work double tides; sit up, burn the candle at both ends; stick to &c (persevere) 604.1; work one's way, fight one's way, lay about one, hammer at. take pains; do one's best, do one's level best, do one's utmost; give one hundred percent, do the best one can, do all one can, do all in one's power, do as much as in one lies, do what lies in one's power; use one's best endeavor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the temple of Solomon, when it was in building, that it was built of stone made ready in the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... heard on the roof of the house. The doctor instantly left the house and went out into the street, hearing the sounds while in the open air. He returned to the house more nonplussed than ever, and told the family that from the street it seemed as if some person was on the roof with a heavy sledge hammer pounding away to try and break through the shingles. Being a moonlight night he could see distinctly that there was not any one out on the roof. He remained until twelve. Everything becoming quiet again, ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... sooner communicated this intention than Ned suddenly whipped out a second pistol from his coat pocket, in which his hand had been busy for some time, and aimed at him. Thanks to a spoiled priming, the hammer fell without effect. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the solemn, fascinating eyes of Munin the owl, staring at her from the low mantel. She caught her breath, and the deep silence was broken by the metallic tongue that dirged out "twelve." The last stroke of the bronze hammer echoed drearily; the old year lay stark and cold on its bier; Munin flapped his dusky wings with a long, sepulchral, blood-curdling hoot, and the dying man opened his dim, failing eyes, and fixed them for the last time ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... little more fitted to be a king than was his wife to be a queen. Dull of perception and indifferent to affairs of state, he had only two interests that absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and the other was his desire to shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he could hammer away at the anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small trifles of mechanical inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge, sooty and greasy, an object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with her foamy laces ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... among your books in that secluded yet beautiful retreat. Make this at once the business and the leisure of your life, your occupation and your rest; let your waking hours be spent among your books, and your hours of sleep as well. Mould something, hammer out something that shall be known as yours for all time. Your other property will find a succession of heirs when you are gone; what I speak of will continue yours for ever—if once it begins to be. I know the capacity and ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... And the rock was almost more terrible to grapple with than they. Jagged and pointed, it was like needles and razors to walk on; and it was brittle as it was hard. While it could sometimes resist a hammer, it would at others smash under our feet like a tea-cup. It looked like some metallic dross long since vomited up from the ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... general Mode of Slaughtering Oxen in this country is by striking them a smart blow with a hammer or poleaxe on the head, a little above the eyes. By this means, when the blow is skilfully given, the beast is brought down at one blow, and, to prevent recovery, a cane is generally inserted, by which the spinal cord is perforated, which instantly deprives the ox of all sensation ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... lady's horse was the first finished. Hopkins looked at all the other three shoes, tapped them with his hammer, and found them secure, received the money from the lady, but gave very slight salutations as the ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... because one is drowned? It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... at boxing never: and the whole demeanour of Bugs Butler showed that he had laid this truth to heart. It would be too little to say that his bearing was confident: he comported himself with the care-free jauntiness of an infant about to demolish a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer. Cyclone Mullinses might withstand him for fifteen rounds where they yielded to a K-leg Binns in the fifth, but, when it came to beating up a sparring-partner and an amateur at that, Bugs Butler knew his potentialities. He was there forty ways and he did not attempt ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... East Indian article had been consigned to an appropriate space, it looked as much at home as if it had lived there half a century. Then the parlor was shut up again, the mat in the hall shaken out, the front door bolted. Miss Winn had asked for a hammer and chisel that she might ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... cautiousness. There was none of the characteristic slowness of the Scottish nation in his manner or language as he yelled down the fore-hatch: "Tumble up, there! Some damned Eye-talians are goin' to hammer the boss. Bring along a monkey-wrench or the first thing to hand. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... modesty, gentlemen, greatly endears him to his fellow-members, and we love him the better for it, but all the same—" and he raised his hand with the same gesture he would have used had it held an auctioneer's hammer— "All in favor of his singing again say 'Aye!' Going! Going! Gone! The ayes have it." In the midst of the cheering Cranch jumped from the chair and taking Oliver by the hand as if he had been a young prima donna at her first appearance, led him to the piano with all the airs and graces ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... bone in your body, you insignificant little snipe," roared Elliston. Instead, however, of making the attempt, the man drew a small derringer from his pocket, and lifting the hammer, leveled it at the head of ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... which describes the ignominy and sufferings of the Redeemer. It was surrounded by a wreathed border of thorn-branches interwoven with the blossoms and tendrils of the passion-flower, and the initial letters of the first two words were formed by a curious combination of the hammer, the nails, the spear, the crown of thorns, the cross, and other instruments of the Passion; and clear, in red letter, gleamed out those wonderful, mysterious words, consecrated by the remembrance of a more than mortal anguish,—"My God, my God, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to win open spaces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, having room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had left only ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... princely allowance I had received from him, but was above half my whole fortune in debt. However, I had horses and equipages, jewels and plate, and I did not long wrestle with my pride before I obtained the victory, and sent all my valuables to the hammer. They sold pretty well, all things considered, for I had a certain reputation in the world for taste and munificence; and when I had received the product and paid my debts, I found that the whole balance in my favour, including, of course, my uncle's legacy, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scene has struck a savage of the mountains of America. Not advantageously, I assure you. I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil. It is a true picture of that country to which they say we shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his angels in splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled under their feet. While the great mass of the people are thus suffering under physical and moral oppression, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Slowly, like the hammer-strokes of a deep-toned bell, came Rufus's voice in answer. "It wasn't to show you anything I brought you here. It was just ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... place, I took a large sail-needle and some heavy-thread and I sewed two pairs of his trousers and two of his coats up the middle of the legs and arms, so he couldn't put them on, at least right away. I picked up hammer and nails and nailed his shoes and sea-boots securely to the middle of his cabin floor. Under his pillow I found a full flask of brandy. I emptied half ... when I replaced it, it was full again. But I had not resorted to the brandy cask to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... heard one solitary thump on the roof over my head, as distinct as the thump of a hammer, I failed to understand what was worrying my hired man. Then, after a momentary pause in the rain, the thumps were repeated. They were repeated in a rattle which became a clatter and soon grew into one continuous ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... beauty, I can't say," he replied at last. "Why, my friend I couldn't help improving it a lot if I hit it with a hammer." ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... the matter?" said Saltash, sweeping aside all ceremony. "What are you hammering that unfortunate boy for? Can't you find a man your own size to hammer?" ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... understand The fust idee that's big an' grand." So he kept his secret from all the rest, Safely buttoned within his vest; And in the loft above the shed Himself he locks, with thimble and thread And wax and hammer and buckles and screws And all such things as geniuses use;— Two bats for patterns, curious fellows! A charcoal-pot ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... important seriousness as though she were conscious of the indecency of her earlier excitement. She spoke very little, but no one could be in her presence without feeling the force of her vitality like some hammer, silent but of immense power, beating relentlessly upon the atmosphere. Its effect was the stronger in that one realised how utterly at present she was unable to deal with it. Her very helplessness was half of her power—half of her danger too. She was most certainly not ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... I was lying stark naked upon the floor of my cell. My head was racking and throbbing like a hammer. Raising my hand to my forehead I sharply withdrew it. It was quite wet, and as I looked more closely, I saw that it was blood. I felt again and found my face clotted and my hair reeking wet from a ragged wound on the head. Evidently ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... ground in my post of observation. He stood, as it seemed to me irresolutely for a moment, and then drew from his pocket an instrument which I distinctly saw against the faint moonlight. Imagine a hammer, one end of which had been beaten out into a longish tapering spike, with a handle something longer than usual. He drew stealthily to the window, and seemed to examine this hurriedly, and tested its strength with a twist or two of his hand. And then he adjusted it very carefully ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... buildings by force, and trust to the same method to get into the safes. Their favorite instrument is a "jimmy," or short iron bar with a sharp end. With this they pry open the safe, and then knock it to pieces with a hammer. In order to deaden the sound of the blows, the hammer is wrapped with cloth. They are not as successful as the others in their operations, and are most frequently arrested. Indeed the arrests for burglary reported by the Police Commissioners occur almost exclusively in this ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... My sledge and hammer lie reclined; My bellows too have lost their wind; My fire's extinct; my forge decay'd, And in the dust my vice is laid; My coal is spent, my iron gone; The nails are driven—my ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... open it and see where we are." Val fumbled at the rusty latch, but he had to use an iron poker from a discarded fire stand in the corner before he could hammer it back. Again the door resisted their efforts to push it open until Val flung his full weight against it. With a snapping report it swung open and he sprawled forward into the short hall which had once led into the garden wing, an ell of ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... into Mr. Jelnik's grounds through the hedge behind the spring-house, and ran like a hare through his garden. I had to hammer upon his door before I could make Achmet hear me, so loud and surf-like was the noise of the wind in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... future punishments, as to lay the soul as on a burning rack. Now also the judgment, as with a mighty maul, driveth down the soul in the sense and pangs of everlasting misery into that pit that has no bottom; yea, it turneth again, and, as with a hammer, it riveteth every fearful thought and apprehension of the soul so fast that it can never be loosed again for ever and ever. Alas! now the conscience can sleep, be dull, be misled, or batter, no longer; no, it must now cry out; understanding will make it, memory will make it, fancy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to be accidentally infinite when its existence as such is not necessary, but accidental. This can be shown, for example, in the work of a carpenter requiring a certain absolute multitude; namely, art in the soul, the movement of the hand, and a hammer; and supposing that such things were infinitely multiplied, the carpentering work would never be finished, forasmuch as it would depend on an infinite number of causes. But the multitude of hammers, inasmuch as one may be broken and another used, is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... when Sir DAVID BURNETT put up Drury Lane Theatre for sale under the hammer the other day one gentleman offered to buy it on condition that the vendor papered the principal room and put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... poisonous to plants. When it exists in the soil it is necessary to use such means of cultivation as shall expose it to the atmosphere and allow it to take up more oxygen and become the peroxide. The black scales which fly from hot iron when struck by the blacksmith's hammer ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... the buoyancy which should have carried her over the seas, and she dropped heavily into them, the water washing over the decks; and every now and then, when an unusually large sea met her fairly upon the bows, she struck it with a sound as dead and heavy as that with which a sledge-hammer falls upon the pile, and took the whole of it in upon the forecastle, and, rising, carried it aft in the scuppers, washing the rigging off the pins, and carrying along with it everything which was loose on deck. She had been acting in this way all of our forenoon ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... contain the words and allow itself to be sunk firmly in the ground; to me it could have no other good quality whatever; and I should not care if the stone on three sides of it were squared with the hammer merely, and only polished on its front or fourth side where ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... saw how you took hold of the bamboo to write on it, and let it go again, so that it quivered. I saw that you were here, even though at present I cannot see you. You—are—with me?" I could speak no more; my heart beat slowly and hard, like a rubber hammer that I could feel even up to my throat and ears; a mute, voluptuous rapture filled my soul, a pride, a sense of triumph, such as peradventure the chosen one feels when in the midst of the multitude he realizes his good fortune and reveals it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with a low brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth. He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern scientists, but they would have honoured him as their master. For he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our first tools, and he did more than any human being who came after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other animals with whom he ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of morning amusements—that I find very entertaining;—particularly the street orators and mountebanks in Piazza St. Marco;—the shops and stalls where chickens, ducks, &c. are sold by auction, comically enough, to the highest bidder;—a flourishing fellow, with a hammer in his hand, shining away in character of auctioneer;—the crowds which fill the courts of judicature, when any cause of consequence is to be tried;—the clamorous voices, keen observations, poignant sarcasms, and acute contentions ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Ursula must look in. But the whole interior was filled with scaffolding, fallen stone and rubbish were heaped on the floor, bits of plaster crunched underfoot, and the place re-echoed to the calling of secular voices and to blows of the hammer. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... concern was fairly started in its long career of prosperity. The wooden workshops had been erected upon the grass. But the sward soon disappeared. The hum of the driving belts, the whirl of the machinery, the sound of the hammer upon the anvil, gave the place an air of busy activity. As work increased, workmen increased. The workshops were enlarged. Wood gave place to brick. Cottages for the accommodation of the work-people sprang up in the neighbourhood; ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... prairie, where he had dropped from exhaustion and hunger and loss of blood, the Storm Centre awoke to find a Pin Indian stooping over him for his scalp. On that occasion, the deft turning of the wrist from the waist outward, with the stripping of the pistol's hammer simultaneously, had enabled him later to restore to relatives certain other scalps already ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... got a hammer and sledge out of the engine tool-box, and after hooking up the safety-chain couplings between the private car and the 1010, he crippled the points of the hooks with the hammer so that they could not be disengaged without the use of ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... herd of bakers, brewers, and butchers, were congregated by express order of Parma. In the little church itself the main workshop was established, and all day long, week after week, month after month, the sound of saw and hammer, adze and plane, the rattle of machinery, the cry of sentinels, the cheers of mariners, resounded, where but lately had been heard nothing save the drowsy homily and the devout ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... stood up and made the sign of the Hammer over the meat, the token of his craft and of his God. Then they fell to with good hearts, for there was enough and to spare of meat and drink. There was bread and flesh (though not Gold-mane's venison), and leeks and roasted chestnuts of the grove, and red-cheeked apples ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... odd fact in the report before her. "One of the most difficult things to buy at the present time in the West End of London," it ran, "is a hammer...." ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a particularly leaden touch," agreed Dorothy Arkwright. "The way you hammer out Mendelssohn is enough to try my nerves, so I'm sure it must be ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of knowledge is barred and double barred; not until all your common schools are closed, your free presses manacled, your free Bible suppressed, your right of free speech and free inquiry smothered to death; not until your ships have gone down in the waters, and the hammer rests in your shipyards, and your railroads cease to open a way in the wilderness made straight for the entrance of the most advanced civilization; not until the race of Yankee capitalists is extinct, and enterprise, thrift, industry, nerve, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... work upon the woman's fears of Francisca, to induce her to make confession, and to implicate her companions. Iron can be fashioned into any shape upon the anvil, but a will like hers no fire is hot enough to melt, no hammer hard enough to break or subdue. They promised her pardon, if she would open her lips; but her scornful smile showed that she would remain true to her own code of honor, be the consequences what they might. Abundant evidence proved the guilt of all ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... hammers—in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man, a helpless and defenseless creature, finds himself placed, not secure for a moment, that on an imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to a powder. This sense of abandonment is at first SOMETHING AWFUL." (Capitals mine.) Reader, the religion of Jesus Christ will save you from the terrible mental condition which is legitimate from a denial of God and his Christ. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... broom, axe, crowbar, kerosene lantern, short rubber hose for siphoning, coil of half-inch rope at least 25 feet long, coil of wire, hammer, pliers, screwdriver, wrench, ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense
... pleasure of the acquaintance of two specimens of that class," said he, "one was in the Catskill Mountains; she had a geological fad, and went out every morning with a little hammer, to hammer among the rocks all day; the other was a botanist, and returned every evening about covered with plants which she had pulled up, root and branch; I wonder which of them this one ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... on the doctor's claim was several hundred feet above the river, from which he hauled the water which he drank and used for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... chatties, and athwart their hips The black-eyed babes; the fly-swarmed sweetmeat shops, The weaver at his loom, the cotton-bow Twangling, the millstones grinding meal, the dogs Prowling for orts, the skilful armourer With tong and hammer linking shirts of mail, The blacksmith with a mattock and a spear Reddening together in his coals, the school Where round their Guru, in a grave half-moon, The Sakya children sang the mantra through, And learned the greater and the lesser gods; The dyers ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... "you can give me a check for the whole amount in the morning, but if you go to take the bullet out of this pistol you'll have to get an auger. I made the bullet myself and it was too big, and I had to pound it into the gun with a hammer and screw-driver. It's ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... in its first sense, signifies "to strike violently"; whence the term "sledge-hammer". This consideration will remove the supposed pleonasm in the Saxon phrase, which ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... time," said Savonarola. "As for me, I am in His hands only as an instrument. He is master of the forge and handles the hammer, and when He has done using it He casts it from Him. Thus He did with Jeremiah, whom He permitted to be stoned to death when his preaching mission was accomplished; and thus He may do with this hammer when He has done ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... "I wasn't crying but I'm on very particular business and I hadn't time to wash." I went at it, hammer and tongs, then—"It's about Harry. He wants to know if ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... examine it. The leech gazed intently from me to Toby, and then proceeded to business. After diligently observing the ailing member, he commenced manipulating it; and on the supposition probably that the complaint had deprived the leg of all sensation, began to pinch and hammer it in such a manner that I absolutely roared with pain. Thinking that I was as capable of making an application of thumps and pinches to the part as any one else, I endeavoured to resist this species of medical treatment. But it was not so easy a ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... had six cows, two hundred chickens, a cream separator, a Ford truck. In the spring he had built a two-room addition to his shack. That illustrious building was to Hugh a carnival. Uncle Miles did the most spectacular, unexpected things: ran up the ladder; stood on the ridge-pole, waving a hammer and singing something about "To arms, my citizens"; nailed shingles faster than Aunt Bessie could iron handkerchiefs; and lifted a two-by-six with Hugh riding on one end and Olaf on the other. Uncle Miles's ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in his attractive character with the softness and simplicity of a child,' an opinion which he might have modified if he had lived to read the foregoing note. When Canning's books, for the most part of an exceedingly commonplace and uninteresting character, came under the hammer at Christie's in 1828, the competition was extremely keen for all volumes which bore the great statesman's autograph, and as most of the books contained more or less elaborate indications of Canning's ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... a bit soft, except roses, which have thorns; but when you meet Jasper and Sapphire and Garnet and Opal and Emerald, I can tell you you 'll have to mind your p's and q's. They won't stand any nonsense; they won't endure any silly speeches, but they 'll just go for you hammer and tongs. They 're boys, every one of them—and—and—we ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... pick the peaches," offered Bunny, and he put down some sticks, a hammer and nails. He was trying to make a house for Splash, the big dog, but it was harder work than Bunny had thought. He ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... the soft earth, where his brother was to rest in peace, with all the suffering at an end. There were big, mossy pieces of granite there, which would cover and protect the poor fellow's resting-place, and a smooth, perpendicular face of rock above, on which he saw himself, chipping out with hammer and cold chisel the one ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... distribution. My collection of fossil bones, which had been sent to Henslow, also excited considerable attention amongst palaeontologists. After reading this letter, I clambered over the mountains of Ascension with a bounding step, and made the volcanic rocks resound under my geological hammer. All this shows how ambitious I was; but I think that I can say with truth that in after years, though I cared in the highest degree for the approbation of such men as Lyell and Hooker, who were my friends, I did not care much ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... The stream ran nearly shoulder deep, and the other bank was still a good forty yards away. Jack pushed on as fast as he could, urging the pony forward. His breath came fast, and his heart thumped like a trip-hammer. The situation was inconceivably desperate. Somewhere through the hidden depths of the rushing stream, three monstrous and frightful reptiles, fearfully dangerous and terrible creatures in their own element, were darting swiftly towards them, and behind them the dacoits now lined the shore ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... his kitchen wench squeak a defiance from an upper window, from which she bolted with great rapidity as soon as she had thus represented the valor of the establishment, and when next seen it was in the cellar, wedged in between two barrels of beer. The men went at it hammer and tongs, and in twenty-four hours a good many cannon-balls traversed the building, a great many stuck in the walls like plums in a Christmas pudding, the doors were blown in with petards, and the principal defenders, with a few wounded Roundheads, were ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and fetched some kind of private grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as The Outline of History was put on to it (I should like to know whether Canon BARNES can explain that), I was obliged to ask him to stop, in case the tramping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... your shipyard. I can't stand this typewriter-tapping any longer. I'm going mad. I want to swing a hammer or something. You told me that women could build a whole ship if they wanted to, and I want to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... only by making the hammer-end of the key move that you can make a sound. (b) The swifter the movement the louder the sound. (c) The more gradual this swiftness is obtained the more beautiful the quality of sound. (d) For brilliant tone you may hit the string by means of the key, but do not, by mistake, hit the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... needles opened their well drilled eyes, The pen-knives felt "shut up," no doubt, The scissors declared themselves "cut out." The kettles they boiled with rage, 'tis said, While every nail went off its head, And hither and thither began to roam, Till a hammer came up—and drove it home, While this magnetic Peripatetic Lover he lived to learn, By no endeavor, Can Magnet ever ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... radical changes in the Constitution. He inaugurated the geological survey that led to making "Potsdam outcrop" classic, and "Medina sandstone" a product that is so known wherever a man goes forth in the fields of earth carrying a geologist's hammer. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Territory, and enters Maaseyk, evening of "Wednesday, 14th,"—that very day Voltaire and his Majesty had parted, going different ways from Moyland; and probably about the same hour while Rambonet was "taking act at the Gate of Liege," by nail-hammer or otherwise. All goes punctual, swift, cog hitting pinion far and near, in this small Herstal Business; and there is no mistake made, and a minimum of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... don't know where the Injins came from, but it seemed as if the hammer had hardly clicked before three or four of them bad piled on me. I put up the best fight I could, for I wasn't figuring to be caught alive, and this miss-fire deal had fooled me all along the line. They surely had a lively time. I expected every minute ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... friend, will recall what queer people he mistook for him. The shape of a hat, a slightly characteristic gait, evoked the vivid picture in his mind's eye. In sleep a tinkle may sound like the pealing of a great bell; the distant stroke of a hammer like a thunderclap. For our constellations of imagery will vibrate to a stimulus that is perhaps but vaguely similar to some aspect of them. They may, in hallucination, flood the whole consciousness. They may enter very little into ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... habitations[604].") O no! It was because she beheld in the slumbering captain at once the enemy of her own afflicted race,—and of GOD'S oppressed people,—and above all of GOD Himself. That was why "she put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer!" ... The fight, you are requested to remember, had been a tremendous fight; and the battle, as she thought, was yet raging. Reuben, and Dan, and Asher had kept aloof from the encounter;—the first, in his rich pasture-land east of the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... few tools along with them, Frank resting under the belief that a hand-saw, a hammer, and some nails would not come in amiss when they meant to start housekeeping in an old cabin that might need considerable ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... you haven't the luxury of a hill on your landscape, you can at least make an imitation one. Whinnie even planed the board-joints in the center of the runway and counter-sunk every nail-head—and cussed volubly when he pounded his heavily mittened thumb with the hammer. The finished structure could hardly be called a thing of beauty. We have only one of the stable-ladders to mount it from the rear, and instead of toboggans we have only Poppsy's home-made hand-sleigh and Dinkie's somewhat ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... bakemeats for the tea, the presents gave lively satisfaction, but the feature of the day was the box that arrived from Pamela and her brother. It was waiting when the family came back from the Jowetts', standing in the middle of the little hall with a hammer and a screw-driver laid on the top by thoughtful Mrs. M'Cosh—a large white wooden box which thrilled one with its air of containing treasures. Mhor sank down beside it, hardly able to wait until David had taken off his coat and was ready to tackle it. Off came ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... from that instead of running to it," remarked the blacksmith, "no one there learns how to use the hammer and anvil ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... the animals named, birds are most destructive, while the peanuts are in shock. Such birds as the blue-jay, crow, partridge, yellow hammer, wild turkey, and blackbird, coming, as some of them do, not singly, but in companies and flocks of hundreds and thousands at a time, carry off vast quantities, unless the planter is always on the alert, gun in hand, ready to meet ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... steam jets puffed up above the green tree-tops; and the sickening whine of the saw-mill, and the rumble of traction engines over rough new roads of shell, and the far racket of chisel and hammer on wood and stone continued from daylight ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... some covers of paper over a little parcel. It contained chlorate of potash and sulphur mixed. A friend had told him of the composition. The more thicknesses of paper you put round it the louder it would go off. You must pound it with a hammer. Solomon John felt it must be perfectly safe, as his mother had ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... Osterman yonder, slaving away at that book of his!" said one of the men. "Much good that'll do him! As if one could saw a plank or hammer a rivet any better ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... carrying a load of boxes. This crane was hurrying back empty for another load, its chain and tackle swinging low, when Martha started across the room to look at one of the boys who had caught his thumb between a hammer and a nail and was trying to bind it with his handkerchief. The next moment the swinging tackle of the crane struck poor Martha in the back, caught in her dress and dragged her for a few horrible yards along ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... he had acquired. Therefore, when he has become a player with his brassy, he should devote a short space of time to getting back on to his drive. It will not take him long, and then he should take out both the clubs he has been practising with and hammer away at the two of them together, until after a large amount of extra practice he finds that he is fairly reliable in driving a ball from the tee to begin with, and putting in a creditable second shot with his brassy from the lie upon which he found ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... other countries, and directly strengthened the military resources of Germany. On broad lines, the pre-war and war activities of the I.G. produced the same result as an attempt to strangle the economic life of possible opponents, enfeebling their resistance to the subsequent delivery of a hammer blow designed to take maximum advantage of the situation thus created. Twenty years or more under the regime of a forceful economic policy, not without its sinister aspects, prepared the ground by weakening us in the concentrated chemical ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... groat on that other flat stone, walk out of the circle, sit down on the west side of that little thicket of bushes, and take heed you look neither to right nor to left for ten minutes, or so long as you shall hear the hammer clink, and whenever it ceases, say your prayers for the space you could tell a hundred—or count over a hundred, which will do as well—and then come into the circle; you will find your money gone ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... cliff by Hephaestus. His appeal to Nature, when his tormentors depart and he is left alone, is peculiarly pathetic. The daughters of Oceanus, constituting the Chorus, who have heard the sound of the hammer in their ocean cave, are now borne in aloft on a winged car, and bewail the fate of the outraged god. Oceanus appears upon a winged steed, and offers his mediation; but this is scornfully rejected. The resolution of Prometheus to resist Zeus to the last is strengthened by the coming of Io. She too, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... father. But we Chillinglys are not a demonstrative race. I don't remember that you, by words, ever expressed to me the truth that you loved your son infinitely more than he deserves. Yet, do I not know that you would send all your beloved old books to the hammer rather than I should pine in vain for some untried, if sinless, delight on which I had set my heart? And do you not know equally well, that I would part with all my heritage, and turn day-labourer, rather than you should ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but here it is of no consequence. The doctors don't know that and don't understand it, how should they, the idle drones, the wretched Germans? It's the blacksmiths who go in for it. And aren't they skilful! They get a chisel, give it a tap with a hammer and it's done! ... Well, while I was thinking it over, it got quite dark, it was time for bed. I went to bed and Tresor, of course, was close by me. But whether it was from the fight, from the stuffiness, from the fleas or from my thoughts, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to the Daleswood men? Why, nothing. There come one of them counter-attacks, a regular bastard for Jerry. The French made it and did the Boche in proper. I got the story from a man with a hell of a great big hammer, long afterwards when that trench was well behind our line. He was smashing up a huge great chunk of chalk because he said they all felt it was so ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... sir, exactly," said the man, standing on the high steps; "but," continued he, tapping with his hammer, "I can't find wood." ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... the malcontents give place. Yet after a little while the singing died. Breath was too precious to waste. It was mockery to troll of "AEolus's winds" whilst the sea was one motionless mirror of gray. The monotonous "beat," "beat" of the keleustes's hammer, and the creaking of the oars in their leathered holes alone broke the stillness that reigned through the length of the trireme. The penteconter and her prize had long since faded below the horizon. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... to do, and it becomes our duty to ward off this danger by occupying their hands with something which is not mischief. This we do faithfully, and the Chupprassee always reminds me of those tools we see advertised, which combine hammer, pincers, turnscrew, chisel, foot-rule, hatchet, file, toothpick, and life preserver. Mrs. Smart bewailed the bygone day when every servant in her house was a Government Chupprassee except the khansamah and a Portuguese ayah. I did not live in that day, but in my own I have seen the Chupprassee ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... sentimental mistake of thinking that all prostitution comes from sweated labour. A great deal does, of course, but a great deal because it seems to some women an easy and attractive way of earning a living.... Oh, hammer away at sweated labour for all you're worth, of course, for that reason and every other; but you won't stop prostitution till you stop the demand for it. That's the poisonous root of the thing. So long ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... morning the train slowed down, and finally came to a thrashing halt, waking the sleepers uncomfortably and making them conscious of crunching feet in the cinders outside, and consulting voices of trainmen busy with a hammer underneath the car somewhere. Then they drowsed off to sleep again and the voices and hammering blended comfortably into ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... it's strange to be feeling there, In the little green orchard; Whether you paint or draw, Dig, hammer, chop or saw; When you are most alone, All but the silence gone... Some one is watching and waiting there, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... they call him, was a sturdy fellow till he got a fell against the mouth of a furnace, and lay ten months in St. Bartholomew's Spital, scarce moving hand or foot. He cannot wield a hammer, but he has a cunning hand for gilding, and coloured devices, and is as good as Garter-king-at-arms himself for all ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... other with a laugh, and presently were at it, hammer and tongs. I may say that we were all fairly intimate friends, and thus had the advantage of entire liberty of speech. I looked daggers at the husband; he looked daggers at me, and occasionally looking ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... load the pistol," said the professor, "and put the ring in with the rest of the charge. It appears to be rather too large. I shall have to hammer ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... other senses, seem not mov'd so much, which yet shine. Thus Water and quick-silver, and most other liquors heated, shine not; and several hard bodies, as Iron, Silver, Brass, Copper, Wood, &c. though very often struck with a hammer, shine not presently, though they will all of them grow exceeding hot; whereas rotten Wood, rotten Fish, Sea water, Gloworms, &c. have nothing of tangible heat in them, and yet (where there is no stronger light to affect the Sensory) they shine some of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... was in the air. Drawn by the bright lights, Jeff entered a saloon and sat down in an alcove with his arms on the table. Why did they hammer him so because he told the truth as he saw it? Why must he toady to the ideas of Bland as everybody else at the University seemed to do? He was not respectable enough for them. That was the trouble. They were pushing him back into the gutter whence he had emerged. Wild fragmentary thoughts chased ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... I went back for my gloves," said Quarles. "I left them on purpose. I ran up to the library; no one was about. I had a chisel and hammer with me. By this time some one may have discovered that the group has been chipped. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... up the Brandy Hill I met my father wi' gude will; He had jewels, he had rings, He had many braw things, He'd a cat-and-nine-tails, He'd a hammer wantin' nails. Up Jock, down Tam, Blaw the bellows, auld man, Through the needle-e'e, boys! Brother Jock, if ye were mine, I would give you claret wine; Claret wine's gude and fine, Through ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... retorted Chauvelin calmly; "then be not so quick, friend Heron, in slashing out with senseless denunciations right and left. You'll gain nothing by denouncing any one just now. This is too intricate a matter to be dealt with a sledge-hammer. Is any one up in the Tower at this moment?" he asked in quiet, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... give. So if you know how to read, find someone who can't. If you've got a hammer, find a nail. If you're not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble—seek out ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... removed from the inside of every sheet. The sheets being all separated, the book is next pressed, to render all the leaves smooth, and the book solid for binding. Formerly, books were beaten by a powerful hammer, to accomplish this, but it is much more quickly and effectively done in most binderies by the ordinary screw press. Every pressing of books should leave them under ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... was not so popular, because he maintained a certain dignity and reserve; even Westby seemed to stand somewhat in awe of Scarborough. He was, as Irving understood, the best oarsman in the school, captain of the school crew, besides being the crack shot-putter and hammer-thrower; if he and Collingwood had together chosen to throw their influence against a new master, life would indeed have been hard. But Scarborough's attitude had been one of entire indifference; he would stand by and smile ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... wrongs of the religious sects to which they respectively belonged. Richard Lloyd, on the one hand, and the old blacksmith, on the other, would stir the discussion now and again with a sagacious word. It is easy to imagine the ripple of musical Welsh which sometimes drowned the tap-tap of the cobbler's hammer, or was submerged beneath the clang of the anvil. The bright eyes and excited faces of these Celts partly illumined by the oil-lamp or by the sudden glow of the blacksmith's furnace must have provided pictures worth record for themselves, quite ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Md. William Elliott claimed the right to flog and used it too. William, however, gave him the character of being among the moderate slave-holders of that part of the country. This was certainly a charitable view. William was of a chestnut color, well made, and would have commanded, under the "hammer," a high price, if his apparent intelligence had not damaged him. He left his father, grand-mother, four sisters and two brothers, all living ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... heavy Colt's revolver, removed the cartridges, tested the hammer, and refilled the chambers. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Wilson to see that he was equally careful. The latter could not help but smile a little. He felt more as though he were on the stage than in real life. To be preparing for as much trouble as though in some uncivilized country, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... want you to fasten up one of the branches of the red rose. It catches in my skirt every time I pass. You will need a hammer ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford |
