"Plank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is alive in my body, whilst memory can remember the dreams of only the preceding moment, whilst a single faculty of heart or intellect remains by which your image can be preserved, I shall cling to that image as the shipwrecked sailor would to the plank that bears him through the midnight storm—as a despairing soul would to the only good act of a wicked life that he could ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was much annoyed, and saw no way out of his morass of contradiction. Then I offered what looked like a plank, a stepping-stone to safety. "Surely," said I, "there is some room for judgment. The later and smaller laws and regulations give many directions for killing. All through ancient Hebraic history it was frequently a special mandate, the people being distinctly commanded to slay ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... lay as close to shore as it had been possible to bring her—so close indeed that the two stepped aboard without use of a plank. The position of the moon in the sky was such that the shadow of the trees was cast several feet beyond the boat, which, as a consequence, was wrapped in obscurity. Peering here and there, the youths began a visual search for the evidence they ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... a Wednesday morning about three weeks later, I was sitting at one end of a plank picnic table with five boys and girls lined up along the sides. This was to be our headquarters and factory for the summer—a roomy unused barn belonging to the parents of one of the ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... plank at hand and, resting one end at the bow, allowed the other to fall ashore, in a few inches of mud and water. Then Josiah Crabtree came up the plank on hands and knees, looking for all the ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... well, Mr. Dickens." "Then," I said, "my good fellow, for God's sake give me your key, and send one of those labourers here, and I'll empty this carriage." We did it quite safely, by means of a plank or two, and when it was done I saw all the rest of the train, except the two baggage vans, down in the stream. I got into the carriage again for my brandy flask, took off my travelling hat for a basin, climbed down the brickwork, and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... that'd mean she was shot square against it from below and straight ahead, but that can't be, fer that brings her comin' direct out of the river, which ain't human, nor possible. There wasn't a boat nor a barge nor even a plank on the river when the searchlight flashed from the gray ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... anything but well told. There was no expression there of the Hoggethan doctrine. In answer to such a letter as that the dean might well say, "Think again of it. Try yet to save yourself. Never mind the two farmers, or Mr Thumble, or the bishop. Stick to the ship while there is a plank above the water." Whereas it had been his desire to use words that should make the dean clearly understand that the thing was decided. He had failed,—as he had failed in everything throughout his life; but nevertheless the letter must go. Were he to begin again he would not do it better. So ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the ship had been securely moored, fore and aft, her gangway was thrown open, a gang-plank was run out from the deck to the wharf, and Mr Richard Marshall, her owner, stepped on board and advanced with outstretched hand toward a short, stout, grey-haired man who had hitherto occupied a conspicuous position on the poop, but who now descended ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... sturdily. "Would ye cut down an' murder the innocent? Would ye drive them upon an unsteady plank an' make them walk into the sea? Could ye raise thy great sword upon the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... black cliffs of Matuga Island on one side of the Gulf, to the steep slope of Cape Catherine on the other, there was nothing to break the horizon line except here and there a field of drifting ice. Returning to the Cossack barrack, we spread our bearskins and blankets down on the rough plank floor and ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... in St. James. The Tabernacle spread itself like a great circular web dark with moisture. Emeline was conscious of running across the gang-plank as a sailor stooped to draw it in. The bell was ringing and the boat was already in motion. It sidled and backed ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... by the way utterly exhausted. There was occasional skirmishing; but one actual battle. To that the troops gave the name of "the battle of Bloody Bridge." Picture a slightly undulating country covered with thick low forest; a narrow road that by an open plank bridge crosses a wide, sluggish stream with marshy banks, and curves beyond abruptly to the right to avoid a low, steep hill facing the bridge; crowning this hill an earth-work, rude to be sure, but steep, sodded, almost impregnable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... retiring bird, the Pewee is known to almost every person, on account of its remarkable note. Like the swallow, he builds his nest under a sheltering roof or rock, and it is often fixed upon a beam or plank under a bridge that crosses a small stream. Near this place he takes his station, on the branch of a tree or the top of a fence, and sits patiently waiting for every moth, chafer, or butterfly that passes along. Fortunately, there are no prejudices existing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... following the herd in sulky dignity. We all got up and crossed the stream on a narrow plank—all but Josselin, who remained sitting ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... what a lot of programmes go through per schedule! Still, you are right. It all depends upon chance. We say a thing is cut and dried, but we can't prove it. But so far as I can see into the future, nothing is going to happen, nobody is going to walk the plank. Piracy on a basis of 2.75 per cent.—the kick gone out of it! But if you can bring about the reconciliation of the Cleighs the old boy will not be so keen for chasing me all over the map when this ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... whether we be Free Traders or Tariff Reformers, we have to reckon with the fact that almost every Indian is a Protectionist at heart, whatever he may be in theory. The Indian National Congress has hitherto fought shy of making Protection a prominent plank of its platform, lest it should offend its political friends in England. Yet as far back as 1902 a politician as careful as Mr. Surendranath Banerjee to avoid in his public utterances anything that might alienate British Radicalism, declared in his inaugural address ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... he tramped in to his work, dinner-pail in hand, his footsteps on the plank bridge seemed hammering out with concentrated will: "To-day I ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... sneakin' little gray varmint of the East here, what's been cleaned out of these parts fifty year ago. If Brace is right,—an' I reckon he be,—then it must sure be one of them big timber wolves we read about, what the Lord's took it into His head to plank down here in our safe old woods to make us set up an' take notice. You better watch out, Brace. If ye don't git the brute ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... and Octavia remarks, "Yes, indeed, this is the grand prix of our tour," as the party step off the train at this region of romance. The gallant conductor, with an air of mystery, leads the way to a storage room in the little box of a station, and there chops pieces from a clay-covered plank and presents us as souvenirs. "Pieces of a coffin of one of the Acadians, exhumed at Grand Pr fourteen months ago, near the site of the old church," we are told; and when he continues: "A woman's bone was found in it", one ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... sort which recalls that soul-harrowing legend of the man hung up in an iron cage above a yawning precipice, from under whose madly shifting feet one plank after another is withdrawn from the cage's bottom, till no spot is left for him to stand on; ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... and another kept us quite busy that morning. The Doctor had no sooner gone below to stow away his note-books than another visitor appeared upon the gang-plank. This was a most extraordinary-looking black man. The only other negroes I had seen had been in circuses, where they wore feathers and bone necklaces and things like that. But this one was dressed in a fashionable ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... joys which fondly I conceiv'd? And is it thus a wedded life begins? What did I part with, when I gave my heart? I knew not that all happiness went with it. Why did I leave my tender father's wing, And venture into love? The maid that loves, Goes out to sea upon a shatter'd plank, And puts her trust in miracles for safety. Where shall I sigh?—where pour out my complaint? He that should hear, should succour, should redress, He is the ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... civilised life. But everything we had was strong and serviceable, and the same may be said of the things we constructed. The deal tables and chairs made for us by Coppet were very strong if not elegant, and the plank walls and ceiling of our rooms were cheerful, though neither papered nor whitewashed. It has often struck me, while sojourning in the great Nor'-west, that civilised man surrounds himself with a great many needless luxuries which do not by any means add ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... feet in height; the exterior of this was then entirely faced with shields, square below, but circular in shape at the top. The entrance to the camp was by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank served as a bridge across the trench, close to which two detachments mounted guard, armed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... on a plank amid the endless surges longs for land, Barbara longed to get away, far away from the noise of the festival. Yet she dreaded the solitude which she was approaching, for she now perceived how foolishly she had acted, and with what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... space to the advocacy of Responsible Government, which for many years constituted the main plank in the Liberal platform. He pointed out the injustice and absurdity of the existing state of things, where the people were beguiled with a mockery of representation in Parliament without having ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... for him. He was a little irritable at the length and shutupness of the drive, though, as his cot had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car—why then it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening. And—which rather surprised himself—he did not lift a supercilious eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... of the ship, and thus carried, and followed by his dismayed attendants, the king disappeared below. He yelled like a dog who has had his paw trodden on, and I fancied I heard the words "Bouet! Bouet!" here and there. That was indeed the name he was invoking. When he had once been laid out on his plank couch, we extracted a complete confession of his misdeeds through the medium of several interpreters, and we learnt also the fact, which a summary investigation confirmed, that Commander Bouet had already ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... thriving town of Portland in Maine. The day after we landed was one of intense heat, the thermometer stood at 93 in the shade. The rays of a summer sun scorched the shingle roof of our hotel, and, penetrating the thin plank walls, made the interior of the house perfectly unbearable. There were neither sunshades nor Venetian blinds, and not a tree to shade the square white wooden house from an almost tropical heat. When I came into the parlour I found Colonel H—— ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double chain for nothing, the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still the chain! Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty-six. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... politician not fully and unequivocally committed to 'Equal Rights for Women,' we should become at once the moral balance of power which could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of its platform . . . . Until that good day comes, I shall continue to invoke the party in power, and each party struggling to get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of our enslaved half of the people . ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... found growing out in triangular form from just above the roots of the tree. In a large one it is twelve or fifteen feet long. It makes a natural plank two inches thick, which may be trimmed into any ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... its hoarse boom thrilled the heart of many a homesick man like myself. We had not much to put aboard, and when I climbed the gang-plank it was with ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... no cellar. But that has not stopped our searching, and has not prevented the examining magistrate and his Registrar from studying the floor plank by plank, as if there had been a ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... front and began its work of seeming devastation, we shrank back from its terrible promise. The world looked to see us dismembered; but the great Republic, like a daring cruiser, emerged from the tempest sound from keel to truck. Not a brace swung loose, not a plank was sprung, no spar was shivered. Within there had to be readjustment. Aloft the Stars and Stripes rose and fell in graceful recognition of the trial. The thunder of her broadsides proclaimed the value ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... that he had come back as soft-headed as he went, and try as we might, we couldn't get anything reasonable out of him. He talked a lot of gibberish about keelhauling and walking the plank and crimson murders—things which a decent sailor should know nothing about, so that it seemed to me that for all his manners captain had been more of a pirate than a gentleman mariner. But to draw sense ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Resting on the plank which had saved the life of Mrs. Jeffreys, Robert Seymour looked about him and listened. Now and again he heard a faint, choking scream uttered by some drowning wretch, and a few hundred yards away caught ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... running, and supplying the men with bows and arrows. In a few minutes, they let fly a shower of arrows amongst the thick of us. Luckily we had not a man wounded; but an arrow fell between the Captain and Third Lieutenant, and went through the boats thwart, and stuck in it. It was an oak-plank inch thick. We immediately discharged a volley of muskets at them, which put them to flight. There were, however, none of them killed. We now abandoned all hopes of refreshment here. This island lies contiguous to ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... in rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs—being flesh in its fulness—ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people—mere people, not men—in black coats? Did he dimly claim the rights ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... goose. Wherever I feel water heaving under a plank, there I feel at home. I'll pick up some craft or other to take me off, never fear. I won't stay twenty-four hours in London, away from you on the one hand, and from somebody ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... faithfully enough, when they know that my father will pay them handsomely. You must go at once, unseen by the servants; they are at supper. Fetch your valise, and bring it to my room. We will put the casket in it, and such of your things as you must take out to make room for it, we can hide under the plank. My father will go with you to Pichon's, and we will communicate with you there as ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... when duty's done with you it generally sticks you below everything else. I've been a fool in my time, David, but I was never a fool of that sort. I've never been the dog to drop a good jawful of solids to snap at its shadow. When I've been that dog I've quietly put my meat down on the plank, and then—There's another break-neck paving-stone—'bowders' you call them. No horse alive could keep ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... of eagles' feathers; on the right hand of the chimney a map of the United States, raised and shaken by the wind through the crannies in the wall; near the map, upon a shelf formed of a roughly hewn plank, a few volumes of books—a Bible, the six first books of Milton, and two of Shakespeare's plays; along the wall, trunks instead of closets; in the centre of the room a rude table, with legs of green wood, and with the bark still upon them, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... were to meet at Tyson's store at five o'clock in the afternoon, and proceed thence to the jail, which was situated down the Lumberton Dirt Road (as the old turnpike antedating the plank-road was called), about half a mile south of the court-house. When the preliminaries of the lynching had been arranged, and a committee appointed to manage the affair, the crowd dispersed, some to go to their dinners, and some to secure recruits ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... end. This trap is a "Yankee" invention and has been used with great success in many instances where the hawk has become a scourge to the poultry yard. The contrivance is clearly shown in an illustration, consisting merely of a piece of plank two feet square, set with stiff perpendicular ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... is necessary to place upon the sub-committee a recalcitrant or two. Then the method is somewhat different. The boss' platform is cut into separate planks and first one and then another of the faithful offers a plank, and after some discussion a majority of the committee adopt it. So when the sub-committee reports back there stands the boss' handiwork just as he has ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... A monk is preaching with fierce gesticulations. He is not in the pulpit, but he stands about twenty paces from it, on a plank hastily flung across trestles. Don't be afraid of his treating a question of temporal ethics after the fashion of our worldly preachers. He is dogmatically and furiously descanting on the Immaculate Conception, on fasting in Lent, on avoiding ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... was coming from England to aid her in final arrangements with the lawyers, and he was to carry her off in a day or two to Melford. At the end of the last sitting she looked round the dismal place—it had discoloured, uneven, bulging whitewashed walls, an unutterably dirty loose plank floor, and a skylight patched with maps of hideous worlds on Mercator's projection, and was furnished with packing cases and grime and the sacking which was Cazalet's bed—and sighed wistfully, as if she had been an unoffending Eve thrust ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... height on which the Arc de Triomphe stands is covered with people; a great many women and children among them. They are mounted on posts, clinging to the projections of the Arch, hanging to the sculpture of the bas-reliefs. One man has put a plank upon the tops of three chairs, and by paying a few sous the gapers can hoist themselves upon it. From this position one can perceive a motionless, attentive crowd reaching down the whole length of the Avenue of the Grande Armee, as far as the Porte Maillot, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... alone, perfectly alone, and so I crouched in a green tree, and hid myself there completely among the thick and somber branches, and I waited, clinging to the stem, like a shipwrecked man does to a plank. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... place their men around the deck and on each side of this plank," he instructed the captain. "Then order a few longshoremen to go aboard and hand the bundles from one to another and slide them down the plank to the men on the pier who will take them over to the sorters. You," he called to the girls, "you stay at that side of the room ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... 250 feet, in length might have been expected to ride out a storm of this magnitude; but, according to the story, she went to pieces, and the whole ship's company, with the single exception of the teller of the tale, were drowned. The survivor managed to cling to a plank of wood, which was driven by the wind towards the shores of an uncharted island, and here at length he was cast up by ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... with blind staggers. My grandfather sprang at him and dealt him blow after blow in the back, which sounded like the blows of a mallet on a dry hide; but the ham wouldn't budge. The old man ran out into the yard and seized a plank about three feet long, and rushed into ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... lay in dripping pan, cover with fresh water and allow to stand an hour. Drain, place on fish plank, brush with melted butter and put under blaze, not too close, and broil for twenty minutes, or until a nice brown. Take out plank, surround the edge with mashed potatoes, decorate with hard boiled ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... upon his shoulder. "Seek, then, to save some plank from the wreck, on which you may swim. You can no longer ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... stone. The force of his fall threw both stone and wheelbarrow into the river. The man behind me, seeing what was happening, flung himself face down over his wheelbarrow, and in the dark, grabbed me as I was going over the plank into the river. He caught me by one of my arms and held me until help came and I was pulled out. I was hanging from his hands about fifty to ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... itself in a furious passion of pleasure. They make plates in the Five Towns. They live by making plates. They understand plates. In the Five Towns a man will carry not seven but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for eight hours a day up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore, the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns audience ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... being composed of grass or bunches of leaves, more often the latter. They are generally built on a platform of rocks, with doors upon two or more sides, according to the size of the hut; and a sloping sort of rough plank with notches on it leads from the ground to each door. In the interior, the sides of the walls are often beautifully lined with the stems of reeds, fashioned very neatly, and in some cases in really artistic patterns, and tied together with thin ropes of coconut fibre, dyed various ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... objections. There was, as a matter of fact, a great deal to be done, and Nasmyth went back to his new quarters over the stable almost too weary to hold himself upright that night. He, however, gathered strength rapidly, and a few days later he was chopping a great tree, standing on a narrow plank notched into the trunk of it several feet from the ground as he swung the axe, when the man who had instructed Miss Waynefleet how to nurse him came up the trail. Gordon sat down on a log close ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... 1826-32, all in response to the stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in 1817. On land, road making made slower progress. The blazed trail gave way to the corduroy road, and the pack horse to the oxcart or the stage. Upper Canada had the honor of inventing, in 1835, the plank road, which for some years thereafter became the fashion through the forested States to the south. But at best neither roads nor vehicles were fitted for carrying large loads from ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... long flight of stairs on the outside of an old wooden building, he found himself before a door on which was written, "Charles Ellis, carpenter and joiner." On opening it, he ushered himself into the presence of an elderly coloured man, who was busily engaged in planing off a plank. As soon as Mr. Winston saw his face fully, he recognized him as his old friend. The hair had grown grey, and the form was also a trifle bent, but he would have known him amongst a thousand. Springing forward, he ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... is generous of you,' said little Hans, and his funny round face glowed all over with pleasure. 'I can easily put it in repair, as I have a plank of wood ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... all their time and labour in making clothes for copper-coloured people as don't want 'em, and taking no notice of flesh-coloured Christians as do. If I'd my vay, Samivel, I'd just stick some o' these here lazy shepherds behind a heavy wheelbarrow, and run 'em up and down a fourteen-inch-wide plank all day. That 'ud shake the nonsense out of 'em, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... plank and rope and nail, without the King his leave, After the custom of Portesmouth, but I will not suffer a thief. Nay, never lift up thy hand at me! There's no clean hands in the trade— Steal in measure,' quo' Brygandyne. 'There's measure in all ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... deep and mellow baritone,—rather a queer voice for a woman, though,—"a parting salute!" She threw back her veil, displaying a pair of piercing black eyes, kissed the paternal cheek, veiled the black eyes a moment with a lace-bordered handkerchief, as her sire descended the gang plank,—his exit being deprived of dignity by the sudden withdrawal of the board,—and then placed her arm within that of the sandy-haired young gentleman, and began walking him up and down ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... compassed with a list about. And, in another manner, table is a playing board, that men play on at the dice and other games; and this manner of table is double, and arrayed with divers colours. In the third manner it is a thin plank and plane, and therein are letters writ with colours, and sometimes small shingles are planed and made somedeal hollow in either side, and filled full of wax, black, green, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... animal, and after many maledictions on "the accursed creed," I succeeded in stilling the tumult of my emotions. A great calm followed this storm, and resuming my seat and leaning my back against the plank-bed, I took a scornful retrospect of my prosecution and trial. How insignificant looked the Tylers, Giffards, Norths and Harcourts! How noble the friends and the party who had stood by me in the dark hour of defeat! A few short weeks, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... her iron on a napkin and not looking up at all, "and don't forget your apple as you go out. Those Northern Spies are just getting to be good about now. When they first come off the tree in October you could shoot them through an oak plank." ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... to know that I have dropped the radicals, with the exception of Thomson, and I fear he too must walk the plank and go by the board. I am becoming quite implacable toward these intelligent people, and the salon will soon be void of my presence. The spirit of it has gone already and cannot be revived. That is why I left my mother's home—because the spirit ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... present I shall carry on till he comes within range: and then, to keep the Company's canvas from being shot to rags, I shall shorten sail; and to save ship and cargo and all our lives, I shall fight while a plank of her swims. Better be killed in hot blood than walk ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... "King" was a commodious, comfortable building in the midst of a garden, in which there were roses in great profusion, as well as fruit-trees and flowering shrubs. Each Keeling family possessed a neat well-furnished plank cottage enclosed in a little garden, besides a boat-house at the water-edge on the inner or lagoon side of the reef, and numerous boats were lying about on the white sand. The islanders, being almost born sailors, were naturally very skilful in everything connected with the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... side-walks—wagon-loads of bread are purchas'd, swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two aged ladies, beautiful, the first in the city for culture and charm, they stand with store of eating and drink at an improvis'd table of rough plank, and give food, and have the store replenished from their house every half-hour all that day; and there in the rain they stand, active, silent, white-hair'd, and give food, though the tears stream down their ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... mill, to grind it himself, under cover of night, when exhausted nature called for rest from the labours of the day; in many cases they received not an atom of animal food, and their usual bedding was a plank, or by particular ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... corpse, "Why did you die?" and the wake and feast. "But a more singular resemblance," he adds, "is that which is to be remarked between a Mahommedan and an Irish opinion relative to the same ceremony. When a dead Mussulman is carried on his plank towards the cemetery, the devout Turk runs from his house as the procession passes his door, for a short distance relieves one of the bearers of the body, and then gives up his place to another, who hastens to perform the same charitable and holy office. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... shall have your way. Get the plank ready, boys," said Swinton, turning to the men. "Now stand aside and let the first ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... hang up the file. In this I file each paper so soon as read, by which means they are never lost or mislaid. When at the end of each three months the papers are taken from off the file, the oldest number is laid face down on a broad piece of plank and the number that follows laid face down on the top of the first, then they are squared evenly and a strong awl pierces three holes in the back edge through which a strong twine string is laced and tied firmly; this finishes the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... would have noticed it, John. If there was anything of that sort it must be outside. However, we will take a good look round the yard to-morrow. The warehouse is strongly built, and I don't believe that any plank could be taken off and put back again, time after time, without making a noise that would be heard in the house. What ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... board of the steamer and ascertain where she is going," continued Sanford, as he led the way across the plank, which had been extended from the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... This immense wealth; this gilded splendor; this profusion of luxury; this exemption from toil; this life of ease; this sea of plenty; aye, what of it all? Are the pearly gates of happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors? far from it! The poor slave, on his hard, pine plank, but scantily covered with his thin blanket, sleeps more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclines upon his feather bed and downy pillow. Food, to the indolent lounger, is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath all their dishes, are invisible spirits of evil, ready to feed the self-deluded ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... won't put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me. Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey [cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed like he was at home nuther, when us ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... be a farm, and they rowed up to a place where the cattle came down to drink, and a plank ran out on to a couple of posts, evidently for convenience in landing from a boat, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... very large, and through it ran the Indre, here merely a pretty stream. During our walk he made himself agreeable in a thousand ways; not a violet did he see but he must pluck it to offer to my cousin. But, when we arrived at the banks of the stream, we found that the plank which usually enabled one to cross at this particular spot had been broken and washed away by the storms of a few days before. Without asking permission, I immediately took Edmee in my arms, and quietly walked through the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... go upon deck in the middle watch of a still night, with naught above him but the silent and solemn skies, and naught around and beneath him but an interminable waste of waters, and with the conviction that there is but a plank between him and eternity, a feeling of loneliness, solitude, and desertion, mingled with a sentiment of reverence for the vast, mysterious and unknown, will come upon him with a power, all unknown before, and he might stand for hours entranced in ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... commanded and navigated her, and was wrecked on my first voyage. It happened this way; my father was a mill-wright, he was, and lived near a small lake, where I used to splutter about a good deal. One day I got hold of a big plank, launched it after half an hour o' the hardest work I ever had, got on it with a bit of broken palm for an oar, an' shoved off into deep water. It was a splendid burst! Away I went with my heart in my mouth and my feet in the water tryin' to steady myself, but as ill luck would ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... time I have gone out to the Mission hunting rabbits. All that part of the city was as wild as it ever was, sand dunes and low grounds. About three years later a company built a plank toll road on Mission street from some point near the water front to the Mission, a distance of about three miles. This made an opening through the sand dunes and that ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane, 470 And burst the curb, and bounded, Rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, Rushed headlong to ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... you. I expect you to remain, as you have shown yourself in the past, a practical man. I expect you to realize that you have more to gain by allying yourself with a victorious leader than in walking the plank at the heels ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... despotism to accomplish such an enterprise. Workmen were marched by thousands from Kesan, from Astrachan, from the Ukraine, to assist in building the city. No difficulties, no obstacles were allowed to impede the work. The tzar had a low hut, built of plank, just sufficient to shelter him from the weather, where he superintended the operations. This hut is still preserved as one of the curiosities of St. Petersburg. In less than a year thirty thousand houses were reared, and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... began to shout: "Saint-Cloud! Saint-Cloud!" and the little boat glided up alongside the floating pier. Speed rose; I followed him across the gang-plank; and, side by ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... let these fellows get the upper hand," he said. "We had the advantage back there in the forest and threw it away. No telling what they will do with us. Make us walk the plank, maybe." ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... sheep kept on board a steamer plying in California. It goes out on the gang-plank, when a flock is to be loaded, to show that the approach is safe, and to act as pilot to the flock, which readily follows it on to the boat. The sheep, when in a flock, are all alike timid, and it is difficult to find a ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... over her knees on a stile close to a river. A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her, clutching the worn top plank. THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together; her eyes see her memories. THE MAN's eyes see THE GIRL; he has a dark, twisted face. The bright sun shines; the quiet river flows; the Cuckoo is calling; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cruelty, could, in justice to its own subjects, have given quarter to enemies who gave none. Retaliation would have been, not merely justifiable, but a sacred duty. It would have been necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every French sailor whom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar reason to dread the introduction of such a system. On the contrary, the operation of Barere's new law of war would have been more unfavourable to his countrymen than to ours; for we believe that, from the beginning to the end of the war, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... joyfully through the pools of water, delighting in the rainbow-coloured sheaves that were spurting from under his feet; he stood on a plank and punted himself along with a stick, pretending that he was sailing ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... precious little that ever bothers him. The fellow is a Puritan preacher—of the same breed as the Huguenots—and possesses a head as hard as an oaken plank." ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... laid in a good supply of clothing, shoes and knick-knacks for himself and Inez, and with as little delay as possible. When they reached the wharf and approached the plank leading to the deck of the schooner, Mr. Storms noticed a small man standing a few feet off, with a blanket drawn up about his shoulders and neck like an Indian. His legs, feet and head were bare, but a huge bandage ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... Committee be directed to send all the Oak Plank which they may have in their Possession, to Mount Washington ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... up the search, and after his first hasty hunt, went over every foot of the plank walk of the bridge, and even ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... for the benefit of a few," and reasserting Cleveland's phrase that "public office is a public trust," the convention selected Cleveland and Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, as the party candidates. Its coinage plank, like that of the Republicans, meant what the voter chose to ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's people would have had the heart to stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... in, for God's sake; Molly, open the door," he cried, as he ran to the threshold, and leant his back against the plank. His pursuer confronted him upon the road; the pipe was no longer in his mouth, but the dusky red glow still lingered round him. He uttered some inarticulate cavernous sounds, which were wolfish and indescribable, while he seemed employed in pouring out a glass ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... elephant with the sharp point of his hook. The act forced Jupiter to place one foot on the gang plank, throwing his weight upon the planking to test its stability. He felt it give ever so little beneath his feet, and quickly withdrew ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... a past love affair often served Owen as a plank of transition to another. He told her the tale. It seemed to him extraordinary because it had happened to him, and it seemed to Evelyn very extraordinary because it was her first experience ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book to the beach, got into her stiff, dry bathing suit, in a small, hot bathhouse furnished only by a plank bench and a few rusty nails, and plunged into the delicious breakers she loved so well. Busy babies, digging on the beach, befriended her, and she grew to love their sudden tears and more sudden laughter, their stammered confidences, and the touch of their warm, sandy little hands. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... two distinct ways. One method is known as "a plank side," the side being cut from a plank as shown at the section D; the other method is called "a pole side," and is constructed by cutting a straight larch pole in half and using half of the pole for each side of the ladder, ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... movement for an instant, and then faced back toward the forge, where the three workmen had stood. The last one was just disappearing through an opening in the wall, and, with a bound the boy was after him. A heavy plank door snapped ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... keenest-eyed aerial observer. "No sick, doctor," called Bob Pottinger from underneath the trench-cover roof of his three-foot hole in the ground. "We're improving the position and have no time to be ill." The doctor and I crossed a sticky water-logged field, and passed over the plank-bridge that spanned the slow vagrant stream. A battery had their mess in one of the low creeper-clad cottages lining the road. Their guns were thrust into the hedge that skirted the neat ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... and cut a hole in the plank underneath. The sugar house stood on a foundation of stone which raised the floor four feet above the ground, and gave us sufficient room to work, and to convey away the dirt that we ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... beyond all question, neither to commit murder nor robbery. What, then, would your just man do, if, in a case of shipwreck, he saw a weaker man than himself get possession of a plank? Would he not thrust him off, get hold of the timber himself, and escape by his exertions, especially as no human witness could be present in the mid-sea? If he acted like a wise man of the world, he would certainly do so, for to act in any other way would cost him his life. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... eleckshun. Tomorrer us free men'll go up to the poles and deposit our ballots inter the box, and thus signify our choice of rulers. Every one present knoes the disgraceful condishun of the New York Demmycrazey. Its platform is rotten in every plank. Its leeder Mr. Gilley is the dubble-extract of rottinness, and the hull rank and file of the party is in a fit state to be condemned by the fresh meet inspector. How is the Republican party? Its swete and pure as ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... alert and resolute, and soon silenced the officer's explanations. He looked at the hatchways, shot-racks, and magazines; and, surveying the hammock-hooks on the berth-deck, said, 'You'll have a large crew for a merchant-steamer.' We had taken on board some heavy oak plank, that lay on the main deck; the officer remarked that they were for anchor-stocks, and was shortly answered, 'Wouldn't make bad gun-platforms, sir,' which, indeed, was just what they were intended for. With ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... stick used for driving cattle, baton gourdin (Dozy). Lane applies the word to a wooden plank used for levelling ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... none too soon, for in a few seconds the boys rushed in, and then began a discussion as to whether it would be safe to take a plank up from the floor to look beneath it for ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... between the "Minnesota" and the shore. Her light draught enabled her to go into waters where less powerful fighting-ships would have grounded. To use the words of one who first saw her as the sun rose next day, she looked like a plank afloat with a can on top of it. She was Ericsson's ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... of Captain Swosser's," said Mrs. Badger, "speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that this maxim is applicable to the medical as well ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... older vessels started a plank in a gale of wind in the Atlantic and went to the bottom without warning. In an open boat for six days with only a little dry bread and no covering of any sort, the crew fought rough seas and heavy breezes. But they handled her with the sea genius of our ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... off a due proportion of the levee for each subdivision of my command, and assigned other parts to such steamboats as lay at the levee. My own headquarters were in Mrs. Grove's house, which had the water all around it, and could only be reached by a plank-walk from the levee, built on posts. General Frederick Steele commanded the first division, and General D. Smart the second; this latter division had been reenforced by General Hugh Ewing's brigade, which had ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... ones did not get up so soon, and some died of that, or something else, and their bodies were sewed up in blankets with a bushel of coal at their feet to sink them, and thrown overboard. The bodies were laid out on a plank at the ship's side, the Captain would read a very brief service, and the sailors would, at the appropriate time, raise the end of the plank so that the body slid off and went down out of ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... gentleman, what a cipher Mr. Pett was in the home and how little his championship would avail in the event of a clash with Mrs. Pett. And to give Ogden that physical treatment which should long since have formed the main plank in the platform of his education would be to invite her wrath as nothing else could. He checked himself, and reached out for the skipping-rope, hoping to ease ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... he had been, and shaken to his centre, had begun to think again, and when he saw that Steinberg's chance in the enemy's hands was less than nothing, that fact formed as it were the last necessary plank for the raft of safety he desired to construct. He got up from his place, animated by this great idea, and staggering to the helpless Steinberg, fell down beside him ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... do so. A good deal of this opposition was kept up by illiterate preachers and incompetent teachers, who had not had any particular training for their profession. In fact, ninety-eight per cent of them had attended no school. We continued, however, to keep the "Industrial Plank" in our platform, and year after year some industry was added until we now have fourteen industries in constant operation. Agriculture is the foremost and basic industry of the institution. We do this because we are in a farming section and ninety-five ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... less. Well, let me see; can any theme Be started? Yes, I had a dream [FOOTNOTE: Fact.] The other night. Both you and I Were standing on a hill so high, And soon there came a mighty stream Which did not leave of hope a gleam. But suddenly a plank we found, That brought us safely to dry ground. Then I awoke devoid of fear, And you the Moral true ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... a plank which promised the support of the party to a national scheme of river control. This has already been brought to the attention of President Wilson. With the horrible scenes of the inundated towns of Ohio and Indiana before them, this pledge ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... calmness made the smile sweeter, and the farewell more sad—other figures, other flowers, an angel face—all these I saw in that group as I was swayed up and down the deck by the eager swarm of people. The hour came, and I went on shore with the rest. The plank was drawn away—the captain raised his hand—the huge steamer slowly moved—a cannon was ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis |
