"Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fear, staring into the outer gloom. It was just at the turn of the darkness when things are outlined though still colorless and shadowy, and I could see the delicate frame opposite me suspended by invisible cords from an invisible nail—that cursed thing that had haunted me in my sleep and reduced me ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Rouen as the best, though there is a shorter cut, and about two kilometres beyond the quaint old city, just as it was getting light, I got a puncture on the off back tyre. A horse-nail it proved, and in twenty minutes I was on the road again, running at the highest speed I dared along the Seine valley towards Paris. The wind had dropped with the dawn, and the snow-clouds had dispersed with the daybreak. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... white hats. Hans carried a light fowling-piece, while Hendrik's gun was a stout rifle of the kind known as a "yager"—an excellent gun for large game. In this piece Hendrik had great pride, and had learnt to drive a nail with it at nearly a hundred paces. Hendrik was par excellence the marksman of the party. Each of the boys also carried a large crescent-shaped powder-horn, with a pouch for bullets; and over the saddle of each was strapped the robe or kaross, differing only from their father's in that his was ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... By no means a scaly idea. I rather fancy, Comrade Bannister, that you have whanged the nail on the head. Is he strong on any particular team? I mean, have you ever heard him, in the intervals of business worries, stamping on his desk and yelling, "Buck up Cottagers!" or "Lay 'em out, Pensioners!" or anything like that? One moment.' Psmith held up his hand. 'I will get my ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... League which called itself Anti-State Communist, a name invented by Mr. Joseph Lane of that body. William Morris, who was really a free democrat of the Kropotkin type, backed up Lane, and went for us tooth and nail. Records of our warfare may be found in the volumes of the extinct magazine called 'To-day,' which was then edited by Hubert Bland; and they are by no means bad reading. We soon began to see that at the debates the opposition to us came from members of the Socialist ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... once said to me. Knowing his kindly nature, I was surprised at his words. It is hard to judge between parents and children. 'A great ravine starts from a little rift,' Alexey Sergeitch said to me once in this connection: 'a wound a yard wide may heal; but once cut off even a finger nail, it will ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... speak not of inscriptions cut in stone, and affixed to temples and other public buildings, but such as were either painted, scrawled in charcoal and other substances, or scratched with a sharp point, such as a nail or knife, on the stucco of walls and pillars. Such inscriptions afford us a peep both into the public and the domestic life of the Pompeians. Advertisements of a political character were commonly painted on the exterior walls in large letters in black and red paint; poetical effusions or pasquinades, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... we mean to be a moral country? Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say. And if I hear nothing against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don't say you shan't have my vote. I mean to deliberate. You young nobs capering over our heads—I nail you down to morals. Politics secondary. Adew, as the dying spirit ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were seen. Some chiefs of Vanar mothers came, Some of she-bear and minstrel dame, Skilled in all arms in battle's shock, The brandished tree, the loosened rock; And prompt, should other weapons fail, To fight and slay with tooth and nail. Their strength could shake the hills amain. And rend the rooted trees in twain, Disturb with their impetuous sweep The Rivers' Lord, the Ocean deep, Rend with their feet the seated ground, And pass wide floods with airy bound— Or forcing ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of the Catacombs, the stuff you would scratch off the damp walls with your nail; rotting stone, rotting bone: the very soil of Rome lilackish like cocoa, friable, light, which used somehow to give me the horrors already as a child; the soil in which the gardener of S. Saba grows his pinks and freesias without ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... you I didn't like to say anything," replied Hal, "but I am afraid you have hit the nail ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... huge lobster and a shark, who were drinking lemonade) when Grover entered upon his quest for the vanished water-nymph. He investigated two or three grottoes, with no result except to tear his cloak on an exposed nail and knock a hole in his helmet. He was just about to resort to a classical imprecation, when the necessity for it was suddenly dissipated. There stood the daughter of Rhine, wonderful to behold, in sweet converse with her chaperone, the black domino. The young man lost no time ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... circumspection and care, even in the smallest matters; because sometimes, A little neglect may breed great mischief; adding, For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost; being overtaken, and slain by the enemy. All for want of care about a ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... with striking local peculiarities in the time of Strabo (XVII, 1, Sec. 46), and traces of it seem to have been found in Greece among the Locrians (Vurtheim, De Aiacis origine, Leyden, 1907). Every Algerian traveler knows how the girls of the Ouled-Nail earn their dowry in the ksours and the cities, before they go back to their tribes to marry, and Doutte (Notes sur l'Islam maghrebien, les Marabouts, Extr. Rev. hist. des relig., XL-XLI, Paris, 1900), has connected these usages with the old Semitic prostitution, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... he discover that the nail of the forefinger on his right hand had been torn out by the quick, probably during his endeavors to grasp the unsteady support which contributed so materially to his escape. It still hung by a shred and hindered the free use of his hand. Without any ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... for it as they go; and once the talk is launched, they are assured of honest dealing from an adversary eager like themselves. The aboriginal man within us, the cave-dweller, still lusty as when he fought tooth and nail for roots and berries, scents this kind of equal battle from afar; it is like his old primaeval days upon the crags, a return to the sincerity of savage life from the comfortable fictions of the civilised. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tremble incessantly. In another part was a little patch of mossy meadow, and again there were decaying logs out of which sprang various ferns in wild luxuriance, as one has seen them in deeply-shaded, low-lying woods. The maiden-hair fern was here seen ranging from leaves as large as one's thumb-nail to a species with leaves the size of pin-heads. There was a charming harmony in the whole arrangement; nothing seemed abrupt, each effect blended gracefully with those surrounding it, like well-balanced colors in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... had clothed him All in a suit of mail, Still came they, wild-eyed, looking For space to drive a nail. Whenever Teuton airmen Slay boys and girls at play, Or U-boats, drowning ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... led her up to the side of the room, and bade her put her fingers into some holes in the wall just large enough to admit them. She obeyed but immediately drew them back with a loud shriek. I looked to see what was the matter with her, and lo! every nail was torn from her fingers, which were bleeding profusely. How it was done, I do not know. Certainly, there was no visible cause for such a surprising effect. In all probability the fingers came in contact with the spring of some machine on the other side, or within the wall to which some sharp instrument ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... wall, but nothing else relieved its blank, whitewashed monotony. The one photograph of his father which had once been fastened above the mantelpiece had been taken down months before and the hole made by the nail carefully and methodically filled and painted over. The room typified the man in its painful order, its painful whitewashed cleanliness, its rigid plainness. But the garden was the symbol of the hidden possibility in him, the corner of warm, impulsive feeling which the world had ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; marry &c (wed) 903; bridge over, span. braze; pin, nail, bolt, hasp, clasp, clamp, crimp, screw, rivet; impact, solder, set; weld together, fuse together; wedge, rabbet, mortise, miter, jam, dovetail, enchase^; graft, ingraft^, inosculate^; entwine, intwine^; interlink, interlace, intertwine, intertwist^, interweave; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Poet, or a vicious Player; but this is a Surmise which has no Foundation: his Stroaks are always just, and his Admonitions seasonable; he does not deal about his Blows at Random, but always hits the right Nail upon the Head. [The [3]] inexpressible Force wherewith he lays them on, sufficiently shows the Evidence and Strength of his Conviction. His Zeal for a good Author is indeed outrageous, and breaks down every Fence and Partition, every Board and Plank, that stands ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and the practical inventive power of America. Potugin says that he had just visited the exposition at the Crystal Palace in London, and that he reflected that "our dear mother, Holy Russia, could go and hide herself in the lower regions, without disarranging a single nail in the place." Not a single thing in the whole vast exhibition had been invented by a Russian. Even the Sandwich Islanders had contributed something to the show. At another place in the story he declares that his father bought a Russian threshing machine, which remained five years useless in the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... presenting himself to his own walls and accepting their silent recognition. Then, hearing Charlotte upstairs, he went back into the kitchen, as straight as if he had meant to go there all the time and had merely idled on these delaying quests, and up to the nail by the shed door where the key always hung, the key to Old Crow's hut. He took it off the nail, dropped it in his pocket, got a leather jacket from the hall and went out into the road. As he went, he heard Jerry moving about in the barn and walked the faster, not to be halted or offered friendly ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... in the whole affair? I receive a certain good in lieu of what has long ceased to have any charms for me. The evil consists in the idea alone, and it will be a secret between me and my wife. But, stating the case fairly, can I arrive at so high a distinction at a cheaper rate? Will it not be a nail in the alderman's coffin; and what will the citizens not say when they see that his imperial majesty knows how to value me? Shall I not get every thing into my power, and revenge myself on those who have thwarted and contradicted me? Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; be no fool; seize ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... given you this pleasure, and had not our helpers been so many, we could never have made the place so beautiful. Before the general dancing begins there will be a double quadrille of honor, in which all those will take part who have driven a nail, papered or painted a wall, dug a spadeful of earth, or done any work in ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Brums had a bad name for rioting, and when the list is looked over many may think it not undeserved.—In July, 1715, the Old Meeting House was destroyed in a riot.—In 1737 the nail-makers from Worcestershire marched into this town and forced the ironmongers to sign a paper allowing an advance in prices.—Some bigoted brutes got up an anti-Methodist movement in 1751, which culminated in a general riot on Oct. 19, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... a young girl; who, if she did not throw herself at my head, stopped short, less I think, from human respect, than from one of those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep down the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet, to nail you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this nature, a sort of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful when the relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this was not stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her face seemed ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... for over an hour in the snow where he had dropped a piece of cheese some days before, in the hopes of finding a few crumbs. He was rewarded by coming across a piece as big as his thumb- nail, and considered it ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... in we got into the centre seat. "What is this all round?" "Thick drugget, sir; they nail it round in winter to keep the cold out."—Thank Heaven, it is only nailed at the bottom. Suffocation began; down goes my window. Presently a sixteen-stone kind of overgrown Pickwickian "Fat Boy," sitting opposite me, exclaims aloud, with a polar ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... wearying round of monotonous details, you have mingled the elements out of which a cataclysm sometimes comes. These are the men who, with the very best intentions in the world, fail to appear with the horseshoe nail at the correct moment. To be there, at that time, with the horseshoe nail is their duty. Nothing greater than that is expected of them. Yet, because their minds grasp the great movements of armies ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's one more nail, thank God, in the coffin of our odious delay." He was but too glad without more ado to point the moral. "Now I hope you see ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... thou wishest. They repair thy car, leaving aside all unserviceable pieces: they nail ...
— Egyptian Literature
... nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with your name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know your places, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are looking for your ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... he said. "A reward will be paid right down on the nail when a confession is filed with the prisoner. Now ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... bone of the five metacarpal bones, which support the palm of the hand in ourselves. The "pastern," "coronary," and "coffin" bones of veterinarians answer to the joints of our middle fingers, while the hoof is simply a greatly enlarged and thickened nail. But if what lies below the horse's "knee" thus corresponds to the middle finger in ourselves, what has become of the four other fingers or digits? We find in the places of the second and fourth digits only two slender ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... in the nature of things that you and I could ever agree on paper, touching a certain Chuzzlewitian question whereupon F—— tells me you have remarks to make, I should immediately walk into the same, tooth and nail. But as I don't, I won't. Contenting myself with this prediction, that one of these years and days, you will write or say to me: "My dear Dickens, you were right, though rough, and did a world of good, though you got most thoroughly hated for it." ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... with a fat baby in her arms. Mechanically she unloosened the pail from the bent nail on the end of the pole and put it down, watching the man as he unwound the reins from the hook. Again the long-eared animals stretched their muscles at his hoarse command. He paid no more attention to the woman, who, seated on a pile of planks, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the shadow-filled angle where he stood concealed could examine at his ease the proud and charming face of which he had before obtained only a hurried glimpse; that rounded neck, at once delicate and powerful, whereon Aphrodite had traced with the nail of her little finger those three faint lines which are still at this very day known as the 'necklace of Venus'; that white nape on whose alabaster surface little wild rebellious curls were disporting and entwining themselves; those silver shoulders, half rising ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... right to redeem them at any time before the end of the term, on the payment of costs and fifty-per-cent interest. In Stover's pocket was a new fountain pen, a box of elastics, a pair of Boston garters and a patent nail clipper. Only the limits of his exchequer had prohibited his availing himself of the opportunity to purchase, at a tremendous bargain, a pair of snow-shoes, a tobogganing cap and a pair of corduroy ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... an equal price for their green fish with those who sell them on the nail?-Sometimes, if a heavy fishing comes in, the men will only get a few shillings per cran for them; and it is that uncertainty with regard to the price which they may get that makes a great many of the northern fishermen agree by a stated ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... afterwards; and it is observed by Dr. Plot ("Phil. Trans." for 1691), in his discourse on the most seasonable time for felling timber, written by the advice of Pepys, that after forty-seven years, "all the ancient timber then remaining in her, it was no easy matter to drive a nail into it" ("Quarterly Review," vol. viii., ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ended thus his tale, Then rising took down from its nail The sword that hung there, dim with dust, And cleaving to its sheath with rust, And said, "This sword was in the fight." The Poet seized it, and exclaimed, "It is the sword of a good knight, Though homespun was his coat-of-mail; What ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to bury them in red: a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... you'd neither be happy, unless something was undertaken. But attempt nothing heedlessly—I didn't expect you'd quit the lake, while my matter remained in unsartainty, but remember, Sarpent, that no torments that Mingo ingenuity can invent, no ta'ntings and revilings; no burnings and roastings and nail-tearings, nor any other onhuman contrivances can so soon break down my spirit, as to find that you and Hist have fallen into the power of the inimy in striving to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... two of the more important. The prosimii, or "half apes," including the lemurs, are nearly all arboreal forms. Perhaps they were driven to this life by their more powerful competitors. The arboreal life developed the fingers and toes, and most of these end, not with a claw, but with a nail. The little group has much diversity of structure, and at present finds its home mainly in Madagascar; though in earlier times apparently occurring all over the globe. The brain is more highly developed than in the average mammal, but far inferior to that of the apes. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... another nail," answered Jim. "I suppose that will turn black now and begin to come off. That'll make the third I've lost this year. Lucky it was on ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... morning, then we do a wrong to the whole body of officers and gentlemen in the Army. The officers of our service have always had to stand a lot of abuse from a certain kind of so-called newspapers. It's time to stop it by hitting any nail that shows its head. We owe it ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... below. Roof, floor, walls, and (wooden) windows, all were amply provided with cracks and knot-holes, through which the wind roved at its will. A wretched fire was smoldering on the hearth, and a candle was burning in a tin cup hanging by its handle on a nail in the wall, which, set it where we would, flickered in the wind. And when our supper came, fricassee, boiled chicken, roast hare, omelette, bread, cheese, figs, and wine—for such a bill of fare had Dhemetri made ready for us—we swallowed it hastily, huddled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... five hundred yards away; and here this lad—taking a snap shot, and merely allowing for speed and elevation by instinct, for he did not put up his sights—had knocked the bull over as dead as a door-nail. Well, I made no further remark, as the occasion was too solemn for talking, but merely led the way to where the koodoo had fallen. There he lay, beautiful and quite still; and there, high up, about ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... then a year ago he could still call up the horror of the communal plunge at his earlier lodgings: the listening for other bathers, the dodging of shrouded ladies in "crimping"-pins, the cold wait on the landing, the reluctant descent into a blotchy tin bath, and the effort to identify one's soap and nail-brush among the promiscuous implements of ablution. That memory had faded now, and Betton saw only the dark hours to which his blue and white temple of refreshment formed a kind of glittering antechamber. For after his bath came his breakfast, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the two rooms we fastened a large flat piece of pink coral, a present given me by Captain Reid when we were on the Equator. We have had the carpenter put up shelves in one corner of the room and on two sides of one of the windows. I also had him nail some boards together in the form of a couch, upon which I have laid a mattress covered by a shawl. On the table an old pink cloth is spread, and when we light the lamp and set the little Japanese burner to smoking buhach—for, alas, there are mosquitoes—we feel ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... cobbler's, and his was a stall. I don't quite know what that is; but it isn't a house, and it served him for parlour and kitchen and all. Father says that whilst he is about it, he thinks he shall add on a wing; And brother Bill says he'll nail my Doll's House on the top of an old tea-chest, which will come ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the glad tidings of the Gospel and the blessings that go with it? Because the world is the devil's. Under his direction the world persecutes the Gospel and would if it could nail again Christ, the Son of God, to the Cross although He gave Himself into death for the sins of the world. The world dwells in ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... from his pocket, and crossed to the desk. He sat down, and took up a quill. "You can prove this, of course?" he said, testing the point of his quill upon his thumb-nail. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... women engaged in the occupation of nail-making. They work in glass-houses, glue-works, nursery-gardens, at ordinary farm-work. On some of the canals they manage the boats, open the locks, drive the horses, and sometimes even draw the boats with the line across their shoulders. In short, wherever the lowest and dirtiest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... it!" Marion wound the string of her vanity bag so tightly round and round her index finger that her pink, polished nail turned purple. She next unwound the string and rubbed the nail solicitously. "Just because we're down there at Toll-Gate doesn't mean you aren't safe up here. Why, you're safer, really. Because if any one got track of you, we'd hear of ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... making out the accounts, a matter dreaded by all the family. Ellen and Alfred both used to do the sums; but as they never made them the same, Mrs. King always went by some reckoning of her own by pencil dots on her thumb-nail, which took an enormous time, but never went wrong. So the slate and the books came up after tea, one night, and Ellen set to work with her mother to pick out every one's bill. There might be about eight customers who had Christmas bills; but many an accountant in a London shop would think eight ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resist any encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an attempt is made to raise their rent, even equitably, the land having increased in value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and nail,' and take every advantage the law affords to oppose it. They are very fond of litigation, and are mostly able to afford the expense of a lawsuit. I generally found it answer better to call them together and reason quietly with them, submitting ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... stood, and the drift wood collected to dry in the sun in order that it might serve to form a beacon-fire at night. The first thing to be done was to caulk the boat. Mr Scoones and the carpenter's mate undertook to do this and to nail such planks as had been started, which was no easy matter, as not a stone could be found, and they had only the handles of their knives. But patience and perseverance had overcome greater difficulties ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... the father of his wife's child, but would travel a thousand miles, and consume months, in investigating which son of Noah it was that first landed on the coast of Munster. He would give a hundred guineas from the mint for a piece of old decayed copper no bigger than his nail, provided it had aukward characters upon it, too much defaced to be read. The whole stock of a great bookseller was, in his eyes, a cheap exchange for a shred of parchment, containing half a homily written by St. Patrick. He would have gratefully ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... hits the nail on the head when, in commenting on the existing abuses of kicking and dirty ball playing in the League arena, he says: "If the club owners would take the initiative in enforcing decorum upon their players, upon pain of fine or suspension, instead of shifting the burden and onus upon the ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... inaudible question was answered in the affirmative, and Olga was entering, when the skirt of her dress was held by a projecting nail, and in disengaging it, she caught a glimpse of the astonished countenance beneath the steps. She paused, leaned over the balustrade, threw up both hands with a warning gesture, then laid her finger on her lips, and hurried in, closing the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and I intend to be with you on the seventeenth or eighteenth; but as we are wandering swains, we do not drive one nail into one day of the almanack irremovably. Our first stage is to Bleckley, the parsonage of venerable Cole, the antiquarian of Cambridge. Bleckley lies by Fenny Stratford; now can you direct us how to make Horton(302) in our way from ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... striking example of the way in which such legends grow, that it is only the latest of these authorities, Hsuean Tsang, who says that, though ostensibly approaching the Buddha with a view to reconciliation, Devadatta had concealed poison in his nail with the object ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... you are all right, sir," resumed his little cat-like tormentor, letting him go a little way, to nail him again by-and-bye: "You have cooked the books in time: and Cocker was a fool to you. 'Twill be all down in black and white. Great sacrifices: no reserve: creditors take everything; dividend fourpence in the pound, furniture of house and bank, Mrs. Hardie's portrait, and down to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... lamp and a wooden club, and began to test the prow and light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over the planks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boat from stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or a rivet that he really ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... keep the muscles of his mind in exercise on a cold day, and his rapid intellect may have run away from his hearer, trampling on the conventions and platitudes in its course; but Mr. Hogg does not think he had fixed notions concerning anything. The poet did not nail his colors with a cheer to the mast of any of the great questions of the day, ethical or social, and therefore suffered the disparagements of those intelligent friends of his who have been taught to consider a well-defined rigidity of conviction and maintenance, in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... denunciations of the practice of employing the Indian tribes in our army, arising from the fact that the orator handled the subject with clean hands. Colonel Barre, excited by it, declared that if it were printed and published he would nail it on every church-door by the side of the king's proclamation for a general fast; and Governor Johnson said it was fortunate for Lord North and Germaine that the galleries had been cleared before the speech was uttered, as the indignation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... time to looking at her empty chair than to his food. He never came out on the veranda without glancing first of all at her grass house in the corner of the compound; and one evening, idly knocking the balls about on the billiard table, he came to himself to find himself standing staring at the nail upon which from the first she had hung her ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... I can't do that: they'd have the black spot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn't keep what they got, and want to nail what is another's. Is that seamanly behaviour, now, I want to know? But I'm a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine; nor lost it neither; and I'll trick 'em again. I'm not afraid on 'em. I'll shake out another reef, matey, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supported by a non-conductor, for if not, the electric current would pass into the earth by the first post and never reach its final destination. Glass being an insulator, it was found that, if a glass bottle was filled with water, and then corked up with a cork, through which a nail was passed so that the top of it touched the water, it would receive and retain a charge as long as it was held in the hand; and this observation led to an invention of some account in the subsequent applications of electricity, known, from the place of its ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb. The cut bled profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated digits up. It was late when we left this waterless spot. As there was a hill with a prepossessing gorge, I left Carmichael and Robinson ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... hind toe, of this bird appears to be more closely united to the fore toes, and to be situated more in front than is usual among the Terns: it is also to be observed, that the side of the nail of the middle toe is considerably dilated, although not serrated, similar to what is observed among the Pelecanidae. These characters offer a corroboration of the affinity of the Sternae to the family of the Pelecanidae, and particularly to ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... esteemed. He had the whimsical illusion of having been introduced into the world in the form of a salmon, and caught by some fisherman off Kinsale. He was found one morning hanging by a strip of his blanket to an old mop nail, which he had fixed between the partition boards of his cell, having taken the precaution of laying his mattress under him to prevent noise in ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... be no objection made on the part of his temporary master, Mr. Cruickshanks assured him that Cairnvreckan, a village which they were about to enter, was happy in an excellent blacksmith; 'but as he was a professor, he would drive a nail for no man on the Sabbath or kirk-fast, unless it were in a case of absolute necessity, for which he always charged sixpence each shoe.' The most important part of this communication, in the opinion of the speaker, made a very slight impression on the hearer, who only internally wondered ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... busy Jack Frost was! No one saw him swing a hammer; no one heard him drive a nail: but, by the time morning had come, he had laid right across the ponds and the river a floor of ice smoother than any wooden floor ever put down by ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... narrator, while the four disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the various attitudes of severe inattention which youth assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... reached the palace at last, but there fresh efforts were required of him, for the entrances were defended by bats and owls and ravens. But even the boldest of these was torn to pieces by the dragon, who attacked them tooth and nail. The queen, too, who was a spectator of this savage fight, kicked down chunks of the wall, and armed with these helped her dear husband in the fray. Victory at length rested with them, and as they flew to one another's arms, the enchantment was brought to an ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... punished. When the new laws regarding bribery came to take that shape the hearts of members revolted from the cruelty,—the hearts even of members on the other side of the House. As long as a seat was in question the battle should of course be fought to the nail. Every kind of accusation might then be lavished without restraint, and every evil practice imputed. It had been known to all the world,—known as a thing that was a matter of course,—that at every election Mr. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... generation of a female. A little over three inches from the anus was a rudimentary limb with a movable articulation; it measured five inches in length and tapered to a fine point, being furnished with a distinct nail, and it contracted strongly to irritation. Marie, the left child, was of fair complexion and more strongly developed than Rosa. The sensations of hunger and thirst were not experienced at the same time, and one might be asleep while the other was crying. The pulsations and the respiratory movements ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... your big fellow in his football suit,' said Jim. 'The biggest part of him is hanging up in there on a nail.' ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... however, the old statesman died, and his fiddle was heard no more across the valley in the quiet of the evening, but was left untouched for the dust to gather on it where he himself had hung it on the nail in the kitchen under his hat. Then when life seemed to the forlorn girl a wide blank, a world without a sun in it, Angus Ray went over for the first time as a suitor to the cottage under Castenand, and put his hand in hers ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... of curiosity, not unmingled, let us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces on its wall, inscribed with a rusty nail, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the green room there he found Peddle, who welcomed him with tears of joy and a display of all the finikin luxuries of the toilet and adornment which he had left behind at Denby Hall. There were pots of pomade and face-cream, and nail-polish; bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash; little boxes and brushes for the moustache, half a dozen gleaming razors, an array of brushes and combs and manicure-set in tortoise-shell with his crest in silver, bottles of scent ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... describe every nook of that darling old house, and every thing surrounding it, from its old-fashioned chimneys—wherein the domestic swallows have sung their little ones to sleep each successive summer, time out of mind—to the unseemly nail that projected its Judas-point from one of the crosspieces of that same little gate, and which always contrived to give a triangular tear to my flying robes every time they fluttered through that dear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the new division of the line. Nairobi was to be the headquarters of the Railway Administration, so there was an immense amount of work to be done in converting an absolutely bare plain, three hundred and twenty-seven miles from the nearest place where even a nail could be purchased, into a busy railway centre. Roads and bridges had to be constructed, houses and work-shops built, turntables and station quarters erected, a water supply laid on, and a hundred and one other things done which go to the making of a railway township. Wonderfully ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... there was nothing for it but to get the supper over as quickly as possible; and as they had been walking a great many miles, and had fasted since the middle of the day, they did no great violence to their own inclinations in falling on it tooth and nail. It took rather longer to get through than might have been expected; for, half-a-dozen times, when they thought they had finished, Mrs Lupin exposed the fallacy of that impression triumphantly. But at last, in the course ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... combination with these simple articles of furniture are few and somewhat rudely shaped. A jug with a long neck, an angular handle, and a pointed bottom, is common: it usually hangs from a nail or hook inserted into the tent-pole. Vases and bowls of a simple form occur, but are less frequent. The men are seen with knives in their hands, and appear sometimes to be preparing food for their meals; but the form of the knife is marked very indistinctly. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... a picture by Mignard representing Mary giving some of her milk to St. Bernard. At the commencement of the chancel, near the cupola, is the chapel in which the reliquaries are kept. Among them are the skull and bones of St Siffrein, and the nail that pierced the right hand of J. C. on the Cross. In the chancel is a "Coronation" of Mary painted on wood, 15th cent., and behind the altar another "Coronation" by P. Veronese. In the foreground are Saints Laurence and Siffrein. Adjoining is the Palais de Justice, 1640, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... "that is my thesis, which I shall nail up over the mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed his to the church-door. It is time to rake up the fire now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on the Economy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... neck is not always thin. Catch Atkinson here in a roaring soliloquy, and you shall see his red neck distended as a bladder, with a mighty grumbling and grunting. This by the way. The neck makes nothing of the domino difficulty, or the tenpenny nail difficulty, or the door-knob difficulty, or the broken bottle difficulty—which are not difficulties to the camel-goose. On the contrary, the neck revels in them and keeps the dainties as long as possible. Give Pontius Pilate, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... been accomplished during Jennie's absence, and the broad veranda was like a sylvan bower, the last nail having just been driven, the last wreath and festoon put in place; while the Seabrooks were on the point of going home to dinner as the carriage stopped ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... ago stopped her work and was sitting huddled in the doorway on a nail-keg with weary, folded hands and a strange wistfulness on her apathetic face. A fine silence had settled over the group as the girl, recognizing her power, and the pleasure she was giving, sang ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... stammered, 'Jesus is nailed to the cross. The nails are hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his feet, whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers with pain, fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles.... Jesus is crucified between two thieves. The weight of His body terribly aggravates ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... by Joe Braman's landing, they saw Joe go into the house, and return with a hammer and some nails, with which he proceeded to nail a piece of board over the fracture in the ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... proudly displayed a galaxy of fittings from a dressing-bag, the best, no doubt, that poor bombarded Bar-le-Duc could produce in war time. There were ivory-backed hair and clothes brushes; a comb; bottles filled with white face-wash and perfume; a manicure-set, with pink salve and nail-powder; a tray decked out with every size of hairpin; a cushion bristling with pins of many-coloured heads; boxes of rouge, a hare's-foot to put it on with; face-powder in several tints; swan's-down puffs; black pencils for the eyebrows and blue for the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this situation, sent, as was usual, to his godfathers, John London and Stephen Nail, for their protections. They went, but were refused admittance to him. At length he sent for Mr. Granville Sharp: the latter went, but they still refused access to the prisoner. He insisted, however, upon seeing him, and charged ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... in saying this, had hit the nail fairly on the head, although he had not intelligently probed the truth to the bottom. In fact a great deal of the friendship which drew these young men together was the result of their great dissimilarity of character. They acted on each other somewhat after the fashion of a well-adjusted ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... not content with half. You want everything,—all the new states must abolish slavery. And after a while you will overwhelm us, and ruin us, and make us paupers. Do you wonder that we contend for our rights, tooth and nail? They are our rights." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... would perhaps normally constitute no provocation. Many times the mental activity seems to be remote and incidental, and the mind retains in the morning nothing except, perhaps, a peculiar dress pattern, the shape of a finger-nail, the back of a neck, the toss of a head, the movement of a foot, or the dressing of the hair. In such cases, these images stand out for a time with the distinctness of a cameo, and suggest that the origin of erotic fetichisms is largely to be found in sexual dreams. Very rarely is there ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... end my days, midst boon companions merry, Place at my lips a lusty flask replete with sparkling sherry, That angels, hov'ring round, may cry, when I lie dead as door-nail, 'Rise, genial deacon, rise, and drink of the well of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... me sometimes, when I think I'm getting yellow and peaked. But it's a whole lot of potions and powders just to have you here. All the same, I had another little nail to drive in importing you. I've got an old boy picked out—the baron we call him. He's a worthy soul—upright and straight walking as you please, so it needn't be any obstacle to you that he owns a whole ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... says Angus, working away at his job in the new International Hotel at Wallace. Graining a door in the dining-room he was, with a ham rind and a stocking over one thumb nail, doing little curlicues in the brown wet paint to make it look like what the wood was at first before it was painted at all. 'Well,' he says, 'I suspected from the assays that we might get a bit more, but if he had experts with him you better let him have it for twelve ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... money should go for a life-membership in the society for Miss Jaynes,' says I; 'and I don't like to encourage anybody in goin' round beggin' for money to buy her own promotion to a high seat in the synagogue.'—You ought to seen Miss Jaynes's face then! It was redder'n any beet, for I'd hit the nail square on the head, as it happened, and the ladies could scurcely keep from smilin'.—'Then,' says I, 'I shouldn't be my father's daughter, if I'd give a cent for a preacher that isn't smart enough to get his own livin' and pay for his own clothes and eddication. To ask poor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... skirt, a business woman's white shirt-waist, and stout walking boots, her hair brushed flat and tidily back and fastened as though for riding, her face and hands redolent of soap. No powder, not a nail manicured. Had she been a girl earning her living, she could not have been more suitably dressed, but her millions and her palace background demand that her clothes be ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Richard Steele!" he said, "for three months past me and my men has been a-working in this theatre, and we've never seen the colour of your honour's money: we will be very much obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we won't drive in another nail." Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, but that he ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence. As one drew near it and could make out the remains of the square tower, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and a cracked looking-glass propped against a roll of bedding, and a razor which needed honing. In turning his head to look at Tom he nicked his chin and while he stopped the bleeding with a bit of old newspaper the size of a small finger-nail he congratulated himself in the mistaken belief that Tom had not ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... was a neat, hair-triggered Billinghurst, carrying sixty round balls to the pound, a muzzle-loader, of course, and a nail-driver. I made just three shots in ten days, and each shot stood for a plump young deer in the "short blue." It seemed wicked to murder such a bright, graceful animal, when no more than the loins and a couple of slices from the ham could ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... were silent. He let himself into the house with a latch-key, and groped his way up the creaking unlit staircase. On entering his room, the draught between the open window and the door set all his papers whirling from his writing-table, and, by a strange accident, dislodged his crucifix from its nail. It fell to the ground, and when he picked it up, the small Figure was broken. This accident seemed an ill omen, but he put it from his thoughts, and scrawled a hasty letter to Charles Aumerle, asking him to be his second. This he delivered himself at Aumerle's chambers in St. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... supernaculum, consisted in turning down the cup upon the thumb-nail of the drinker after his pledge, when, if duly quaffed off, no drop of liquor ought ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... leapt forward indignantly and caught one of these ruffians a blow on the back of the neck that sent him down like an ox. Upon this the other three dropped their sport and fell upon him, like angry women, tooth and nail. Nobody interfered. He was driven back against the wall, where he leant, just contriving to keep his adversaries at arm's length with his fists, and feeling, now that the first spurt of wrath had left him, that within three minutes he must ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out. Indeed, a nail filed sharp is not of much avail as an arrowhead; you must have it barbed, and that was a little beyond our skill. Ikey the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... is a thorough Stoic when he says (Phaedo 83) that every pleasure and pain comes with a nail to pin down the soul to the body and make it corporeal. His Stoicism appears in his denunciation of the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... in squeezing through a hole in the floor way over in one corner, a hole that Farmer Brown's boy had intended to nail a board over long before. Unc' Billy knew that Bowser couldn't get through that, even if he did manage to dig his way under the henhouse. Once through that and fairly in the henhouse, Unc' Billy drew a long breath. He felt safe for the time being, anyway, and he didn't propose ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... consequence is death, and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues also. They differ not by the thickness of a nail; they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is dear to me, not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... lord, the mark upon thy brow is yet No broader than my little finger-nail. Thy force is not abated, and thy step Is firm. Wilt thou surrender to the enemy Before thy strength is touched? Why, let me put A drop of courage from my breast in thine! There is a hope for thee. The ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Colonial troops in plain clothes, together with the regular troops led by officers with drawn swords and overdrawn salaries. The regular general, seeing that the battle was lost, excused himself and retired to his tent, owing to an ingrowing nail which had annoyed him all day. Lyman, the Colonial officer now took command, and wrung victory from the reluctant jaws of defeat. For this Johnson, the English general, received twenty-five thousand dollars and a baronetcy, while Lyman received a plated butter-dish ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... with your well-fed look And your coat of dapper fit, Will you recommend me a decent book With nothing of War in it?" Then you smile as you polish a finger-nail, And your eyes serenely roam, And you suavely hand me a thrilling tale By a man who stayed ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... stately aldermanic flounder, that came paddling after a chicken-bone, put to rout by a satanic sculpin, whereat an eel swiftly snaked the prize away, and the frost-fish, collecting at a chance of civil war, mingled in the melee, tooth and nail, or rather fin and tail. Then the vapors would darken round them again, till, with the stray rays caught and refracted in their fleece, it seemed like living in an opal full of cloudy color and fire. Far off they heard the great ground-swell of the surf upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... lilac bush had intruded into the porch. It directly indicated me with a black finger. What did it want? I looked intently, sure that an omen was here. Aha! So that was it! The twig was showing me that it had a green nail. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... the boot-leggers go it on their own hook for a while. We are watching for you. It's only a matter of time till somebody takes you in, because your whisky is making lots of nasty work for us these days, and we've got orders from the big chief to nail you if there's a show. I'm passing up this little affair to-day. That doesn't count. But the next time you cross the river with a four-horse load of it I'll be on you like a wolf. If I don't, some other fellow will. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... I have been ever so foolish. Just now I can hear Daddy and Mr. Barnett saying good night, and I know that they have been fighting tooth and nail over that chess board. And I hear Mr. Barnett thanking Daddy, in a voice that is all choked up with emotion. I am so glad to think the dear little man is happy. Isn't it too bad, Aunt Jennie, that we can't all ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... foot of the tower, he drove a nail into the wall. Then he tied one end of his rope to this spike. In this way he succeeded in making a complete ladder of nails and rope to the top of the tower. He looked for Clotilde, who met him with her ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... one yet!" shrieked one of the coachers. "Nail the game right here, fellows. It's easy! ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... wonder you're cold. That stage fire of yours can't warm all outdoors. I'll send for some window strips and nail you up." ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... for the night. The work was a simple one: she set her knee against the door to shut it more firmly, and worked an old nail into the latch. Then she shook down the scant cotton curtains that were twisted aside from the windows. There were three windows, two in the living-room (which was also kitchen and beer-saloon) ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... o' the house ... [In a voice choked by tears.] I was born here, and here my father sat at his loom for more than forty year. Many was the time he said to mother: Mother, when I'm gone, keep hold o' the house. I've worked hard for it. Every nail means a night's weavin', every plank a year's dry bread. A man would think ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... cities, since each had to house 40,000 men—were built in ninety days from the driving of the first nail, complete in every municipal detail, a feat declared impossible, and which will stand for all time as a ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... will take yours to an extent," replied Howland, pouring the coffee. Suddenly he picked up the revolver. "You never saw me shoot, did you? See that cup over there?" He pointed to a small tin pack-cup hanging to a nail on the wall a dozen paces from them. Three times without missing he drove bullets through it, and smiled ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... under whose blessed cross We are impressed and engaged to fight— Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, To chase these pagans in those holy fields Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross. But this our purpose now is twelvemonth old, And bootless 'tis to tell you we will go: Therefore we meet not now.—Then let me hear Of you, my gentle cousin ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... padlocks; then you will see a tower, and in it the Love of the three Oranges. When you reach that place, take this tallow and anoint well the rusty padlocks; and when you have ascended the tower, you will find the oranges hanging from a nail. There you will also find an old woman who has a son who is an ogre and has eaten all the Christians who have come there; you see, you must be ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... have not commentaries and expositions; pray and read, and read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men. Also, what is from men is uncertain, and is often lost and tumbled over and over by men; but what is from God is fixed as a nail in a sure place. I know there are [peculiar] times of temptation, but I speak now as to the common course of Christianity. There is nothing that so abides with us as what we receive from God; and the reason why Christians at this day ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in strict logical sequence. He must search about for the right nail till he has found it, and then drive ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... overwhelming superior force, but General Korniloff, the commander, with a desperate effort and no little skill, succeeded in hacking his way through the enemy's lines and bringing a large portion of his force safely out of the trap. Inch by inch the Russian rear guards retreated, fighting tooth and nail to hold the pass while their comrades escaped. No less brave were the repeated charges made by the Austrians—clambering over rocks, around narrow pathways hanging high in the air, dizzy precipices ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... sleepy and the carriage very noisy; and take it altogether, what a farce life is sometimes! the intercourse of human beings outsides touching outsides, the heart and soul lying to all intents and purposes as dead as a door-nail. Do you ever feel mentally and spiritually alone in ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... finished his work and dispatched the team, the three partners went into the private office, which was monopolized by Mr. Strout. It contained one desk and two chairs. Hiram brought in an empty nail keg and ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... "See." And she showed them nail-marks on her naked flesh. "Last night my father's ghostly hands ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... with his friend the Lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and searched, without anything being found which could incriminate him. There were, it is true, some blood-stains upon his right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from the same source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that thumb again anywhere. It was flat like the head of a snake, and the nail was no larger than a pea—a thumb that had evidently been cruelly smashed at one time. The owner of the thumb might have been a common burglar, but in the light of recent events David was not inclined to think so. At any rate he felt disposed to give his theory every chance. He saw a long, ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... perfect devil at philosophy already,' observed Shubin, making deep lines in the clay with his nail. 'What does he want ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... circle, or succession of circles, from centre to circumference, with a great variety of brilliant colors imperceptibly shading into each other. This having been made entirely by hand, with no implement but a common cut nail, the process is of course too slow to be valuable; but the result attained may very probably afford useful hints and suggestions to inventors of weaving machinery.—I think the display of Flint Glass by the Brooklyn Company is equal in purity and fineness to any other plain Glass in the Exhibition, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... hastily laid her hat on one chair and her cloak on the other. This action compelled the man to place his clothes on the couch or on one of the chairs by the folding doors. When all was ready, one of the operators scratched lightly on the door with his finger-nail, to warn the woman he was about to enter the room. The next moment the man boldly opened the door wide, removed the chair out of his way, and glided rapidly to the other chair, on which the man's clothes lay. At this moment ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... said, "that you've taken a line of your own, Eustace. I've nothing to say against that; in fact, quite the contrary. But remember this, my dear, however you may change you mustn't wobble. Only one thing counts in that place, hitting the same nail on the head with the same hammer all the time. You aren't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... any natural leaf, forming the creases in wax with the thumb nail or a needle. To put the flowers together, or the leaves on to the stem, hold in the hand until warm enough to stick. If the sheeted wax is to be used in summer, put in a little balsam of fir to make it hard. If for winter, none will ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... found to make a coffin for the body of the dead General. The old servant of the Ursulines, faithful to the last, went hither and thither and collected a few planks and nails, and the midshipmen and Colin assisted her to nail together a rude coffin in which the body was presently laid. It must be buried that same evening, for none knew from hour to hour what was in store for the city. But no pomp or circumstance could attend the funeral; and indeed no ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cried. Then ensued a quarrel, bitter, terrible, between two beings who so short a while before had loved so madly. The quarrel ended by the man giving in, as usual, but the wrangle pierced one more nail in his ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... compensation for the lack of London mud, London fog, and London illustrations of practical Christianity in the Isle of Dogs and the Bermondsey purlieus. I don't know whether I am knocking the last nail into the completed coffin of my own contention, but I believe every right-minded man returns from the Tropics a good deal more of a Communist than when he ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... them the example by taking down his own pipe from a nail in the wall, and proceeding to fill it. Having done so, he took a piece of glowing charcoal from the fire, and, placing it on the bowl, began to smoke, glancing the while, with an amused expression on his grave face, at the trappers, who, while filling ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... extricate myself as speedily as possible. I attempted to lift the door. My first effort was successless. Every inspiration was quicker and more difficult than the former. As my terror, so my strength and my exertions increased. Finally my trembling hand lighted on a nail that was imperfectly driven into the wood, and which, by affording me a firmer hold, enabled me at length to raise it, and to inhale ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... occupied respectively at the time by the first and third assistant engineers; then he screwed the cleats into place at top and bottom, so the scantling could not slip. Not for worlds would he have used a hammer to nail them into place, for that would have spoiled the surprise for the objects of his attentions. Throughout the entire operation he was as silent as a burglar, although by way of additional precaution the captain stood by with ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the shell. Let it be remembered that the foot of the horse, which seems so different from a man's hand, is, nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of the same bones, and that we have at the end of each of our fingers a nail corresponding to the hoof of a horse's foot. Judge, then, whether this hidden resemblance is not more marvellous than any outward differences—whether this constancy to a single plan of structure which we ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... artificial feeding for cattle has been resorted to, and compelled the farmer to grow root crops. Perhaps, in the present condition of the market for beasts and grain the nimble-minded Celt is hitting the right nail on the head, and cattle and dairy farms are the future of the agriculturist, who will compete against American meat with English produce fed upon English grass and roots, and upon maize imported from the New ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... was off the hinges, and Lucy's muslin was torn upon a nail as she passed through, while the long fringe of her fleecy shawl was caught in the tall tufts of thistle growing by the path. In a muddy pool of water a few rods from the house a flock of ducks ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... tumult rose to a riot; Reds and Blues rushed from the upper tiers, down the ranks of the podium and into the dusty race-course; falling on each other tooth and nail like wild beasts; and the bloody fray—no uncommon termination to the day, even in more peaceful times—lasted till the Imperial ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... so much of the ancient road as lay between Mitcheldean and Nail Bridge was discarded for the present one, which ascends the Stenders Hill by a more even slope, and avoids the abrupt rise of Harrow Hill. The old line may yet be traced, and Nail Bridge remains; in allusion to which improvements the following advertisement appeared ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... saw her. His color rose and he began to mark up the table with his thumb nail. I could see he felt his fix. The girl—Indian right through—showed no surprise at seeing him there, but that did not mean she would keep her mouth shut about it next ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... sides are nailed up to the edges to the posts, or the lid or bottom may part by the side splitting. See that all nails—except for the lid—are driven slanting alternately one way and reversed, this prevents sides or bottom drawing off. Nail the lid with many short nails, so that it can be ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... They were to receive the blood of the burnt-offerings in basins and sprinkle it around about the altar, arrange the wood and the fire, and to burn the parts of the sacrifices. If the burnt sacrifices were of doves, the priest was to nip off the head with the finger nail, squeeze out the blood on the edge of the altar, pluck off the feathers, and throw them with the crop into the ash-pit, divide down the wings, and then completely burn it. He was to offer a lamb every morning and evening, and a double number on the Sabbath, the burnt-offerings ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... we shall see," said Dr Budge, reaching up to hang the cage on its old nail in the window. "At any rate I am very much obliged to you, and to David, and to Andrew—a friend in need is ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... discovered that the beauty of the foot was spoilt, in this case, by a singular defect. The two toes were bound together by a flexible web, or membrane, which held them to each other as high as the insertion of the nail ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the poor sailor lads on their guard, was never known. But on a Saturday night, as I was on the eve of stepping into my bed, I shall never forget it—Mrs Pawkie was already in, and as sound as a door-nail—and I was just crooking my mouth to blow out the candle, when I heard a rap. As our bed-room window was over the door, I looked out. It was a dark night; but I could see by a glaik of light from a neighbour's window, ...
— The Provost • John Galt |
