"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any othah time o' yeah. De bacon smell ez callin'-like, de kittle rock an' sing, De same way in de wintah dat dey do it in de spring; Dey ain't no use in mopin' 'round an' lookin' mad an' glum Erbout de wintah season, fu' hit's des plumb ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... got to have one good fight to save a lot of others an' this is the day you're goin' to have it. After school you've got to smash Jimmy Marquess a wallop on his front teeth an' if you don't shake 'em plumb loose I'm goin' to take you back in the woods an' give you a revelation in lickin's that'll linger with you for years." Ham paused and then added ominously, "Now you can do just exactly as you like. I don't want to try to influence ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... to a rock, where we c'n sit an' study natur' a bit, before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o' Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I looks up, he's plumb absent. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... salt of the earth), are simply diseases that should be treated with pills and powders instead of with penitentiaries and whipping-posts. Now if a man will steal a saw-mill and go back after the site simply because his pericardium is out of plumb or his liver has gone into politics; will nurse a juicy old jag until it develops into a combined museum and menagerie, because his circulation has slipped an eccentric or his stomach got out of its natural orbit, I submit, in all seriousness that he ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... whole of its substructure is cased with the finer material to a height of nearly twenty-four feet, which is quite enough to account for Xenophon's statement. As for his dimensions, they should not be taken too literally. In their rapid and anxious march the Greek commanders had no time to wield the plumb-line or the measuring-chain; they must have trusted mainly to their eyes in arriving at a notion of the true size of the buildings by which their attention was attracted. The tower at Nimroud must have been about 150 feet square, measured along its plinth; the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... still hitched to the fence, an' t'other was gone. We stood around a minute or two examinin' the hoss an' then pa says let's go up the road aways an' see if we c'n see anything. An' by gosh, we hadn't gone more'n fifty feet afore we come plumb on a man layin' in the middle of the road. Pa shook him an' he didn't let out a sound. He was warm but deader'n a tombstone. I wuz fer leavin' him there till we c'd git the coroner, but pa says no. We'd carry him down to our porch, an' lay him there, so's he'd be out o' danger. Ma ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the vulgar mass Called "work" must sentence pass Things done, that took the eye and had the price.... But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... dinner that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Johnny promptly. "Let's be plumb vulgar about it." And he thrust a big roll of bills into ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... ejaculated, mournfully; "bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity. Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd git away ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... lef for me to do but to come out here in this ol' woodshed where nobody wouldn't see me ac' like a plumb baby. ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... he had been before the quarrel and its reconciliation, did not seem to feel for Lionel the active interest which Lionel felt for him. He did not, as most clever men are apt to do in their intercourse with youth, attempt to draw him out, plumb his intellect, or guide his tastes. If he was at times instructive, it was because talk fell on subjects on which it pleased himself to touch, and in which he could not speak without involuntarily instructing. Nor did he ever allure the boy to talk of his school-days, of his friends, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... straight while you're about it," she continued. "It comes plumb from the roots, and I don't want to have to look at a wild-growing vine right here under my window for all my eighty-second and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult at present to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things, that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb. Monsieur Rostand, in his description of the Battle of Wagram, does not shrink from bringing about the Duke's ears the frightful voices of actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when the Duke, terrified at these dreadful ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... answered," he said. "For the miracle to happen, in fact, the sieve must be held as level as the top rail of a mason's T-shaped plumb-line frame, and as steady as if clamped in a vise. For a woman to carry water in a sieve the weather must be dry, for in damp weather the water would run through the meshes, even if the threads or wires were just oily enough and not too oily, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... to follow the same army to certain other strongholds, his evil fortune would have it that he should be killed while attempting to measure certain heights at a difficult point; for when he had put his head out beyond the wall in order to let a plumb-line down, a priest who was with the enemy (who feared the genius of Cecca more than the might of the whole camp) discharged a catapult at him and fixed a great dart in his head, insomuch that the poor fellow died on the spot. The fate and the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... drew back, leaving the old man absorbed in ecstasy, and tried to see if the light, falling plumb upon the canvas at which he pointed, had neutralized all effects. They examined the picture, moving from right to left, standing directly before it, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... me. You see, you picked me up when I was down and out. You passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and I want you to ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... He was an Italian colored man, black bearded, and shaped like Caruso, only more so, if that is possible; and he sang, because he was a singing machine, but he couldn't have talked. I'll bet on that. He was too plumb afraid. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Originally among us, besides Hips and Haws, Acorns and Pig-Nutts, with other Delicates of the like Nature; That our Climate of itself, and without the Assistances of Art, can make no further Advances towards a Plumb than to a Sloe, and carries an Apple to no greater a Perfection than a Crab: That [our [2]] Melons, our Peaches, our Figs, our Apricots, and Cherries, are Strangers among us, imported in different Ages, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... plumb the depth of the bitterness in this old man's heart, as he lay among his pillows, his head moving feebly from side to side, his attenuated fingers plucking at the coverlet, his tongue stealing slowly along his cracked and burning lips. Fragments of his life passed in ragged ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Are you converted? That life is yours to control. Take the tiller, then, and for an hour be a god! For indeed you shall be a god, and of the very earliest. The centuries shall run out with the chain as you slip moorings—run out and drop from you, plumb, and leave you free, winged! Or if you cannot forget in a moment the times to which you were born, each wave shall turn back a page as it rolls past to break on the shore towards which you revert no ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... homestead of the family. It was unspeakably decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates—to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof hollowed about the chimney, with great stains here and there ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel—I prudently avoid names nearer home!—I am sure that to many of you, my hearers, these names are little more than reminders ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... in weary protest, as he smiled apologetically at the court. "Darned if I didn't plumb forget one thing," he said. "We got to swear in these witnesses before they can chatter. Is there anybody got a Bible around 'em? Nope? Montana, I wished you'd lope over to that house and see what they got in ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... it from the far town. He held his breath as he threw open the lid. There they lay, the half-forgotten symbols of his old life. Worn mallets, chisels, the head of a broken hod with the plaster still caked into it, a short broad shovel for mixing mortar, a trowel, a spirit level, a plumb, all wrapped loosely in a worn leather apron. He took the mallets in his hand and turned them about with the quick little jerks that came so naturally to him. Strength for the work had come into his arms. All the old ambitions which he ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... confess I was walking, and thinking as I walked, with shoulders bent and head forward. At once I straightened up and looked about to see who was speaking. It was the voice of a pine tree, growing hard by the path, tall and straight as a plumb line. "Thank you," I said to ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the "Age of Reason,"—a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down of the pauses, and the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... had once kept it busy was burned down, and the business had slipped away to the prosperous neighbouring town of Machias. There were nice old houses with tall pillars in front of them, now falling into decay and slipping out of plumb. There were shops that had evidently been closed for years, with not even a sign "To Let" in the windows. Our dinner was cooked for us in a boarding-house, by a brisk young lady of about fifteen years, whose mother had gone to Machias for a day in ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... I see a difference; there's red blood in you. But don't take me wrong. Peter's a white man, straight as a plumb-line, one of the best; he's a year the younger of us, but when the old man died he brought me up. There are two kinds of Askews and I belong to the other lot. I don't know why they called you ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... or the principle by which all bodies mutually tend towards each other; the great agent in nature's wonderful operations.—Attraction of mountains, the deviating influence exercised on the plumb-line by the vicinity of high land. But exerting also a marvellous effect on all floating bodies, for every seaman knows that a ship stands inshore faster than she stands out, the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... you desire that your Senators, INGALLS and PLUMB, and your seven Congressmen shall vote for the sixteenth amendment to ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... well-situated—on the side of the promenade nearest to the bath. Diphilus had placed the columns out of the perpendicular, and not opposite each other. These, of course, he shall take down; he will learn some day to use the plumb-line and measure. On the whole, I hope Diphilus's work will be completed in a few months: for Caesius, who was with me at the time, keeps a ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... inserted as required, the vaults were thrown, and the whole building was left to settle down. Owing to the enormous amount of mortar used this settling must have been very considerable, and explains why hardly a plumb wall exists in Constantinople, and why so many vaults show a pronounced sinking in at the crown or have fallen in and have been rebuilt. After the walls had set the marble facings, mosaic, and colour were ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... eyes, which were puzzled, but diverted from pain. "I didn't savvy what you meant when you talked about what a woman's work rightly was. An' I'm so awful ignorant, you know so awful much. It scares me, plumb scares me, to think how much you know, more than Mr. Holliwell! Such books an' books an' books! An' writin' too. You see I'd be no help nor company fer you. I'd like to listen to you. I'd listen all day long, but I'd not be understandin'. No more than I ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... we were wise—which God knows we are not— (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours—these delicate spinal clusters— Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, which ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... if I don't talk so good, 'cause I's been feelin' poorly for a spell and I ain't so young no more. Law me, when I think back what I used to do, and now it's all I can do to hobble 'round a little. Why, Miss Olivia, my mistress, used to put a glass plumb full of water on my head and then have me waltz 'round the room, and I'd dance so smoothlike, I don't ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... was that Herrick, with all his sympathy, all his intuition, failed to plumb the shallows of Toni's mind. He gave her Rossetti when he should have given her Ella Wheeler Wilcox; and George Eliot when he should have introduced her to Jane Austen and her gentle sister, Miss Burney. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... thicknesse of halfe the earth is (as shall be shewed) about 4000 miles, now the plumb height of the highest mountaines is not accounted aboue a mile and a halfe, or two miles at the most. Now betweene two miles and foure thousand, there is no sensible proportion, and a line that is foure thousand and two miles long, will not seeme sensibly longer then that which is foure thousand; ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... contented. She would never love him the way she used to. Her fantastics [Transcriber's note: fantasies?] had taken the beauty plumb out of their lives. But something remained. A loving husband, an unloving, but naturally kind, good-natured and affectionate wife, trying to do her duty by the two children that were and the ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... mode, as taken from Steele's "Shipmaster's Assistant," was this: Drop plumb-line over stem of ship and measure distance between such line and the after part of the stern port at the load water-mark; then measure from top of said plumb-line in parallel direction with the water to perpendicular point immediately over the load water-mark of the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... laughed the cow-boy. "You just light down and we'll trail over to Chola Charley's and prospect a tub of frijoles. The dinner-bell when you are broke is plumb correct. Got any more of that po'try broke ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the notion of speeding you up a bit," he said, "because I felt plumb sure that there wasn't a live man in the place, nothing but a crowd ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... declamatory kind of Lady Macbeth who had stepped into the role flatly on a No. 7 last, rather than from a Juliette who had fattened into the part; that congenial stateliness now thrown completely out of plumb by a violent limp, which, resulting from a railway accident, threw out her entire ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... bursting shell, but the little visitor came slowly and inexorably onward. Then came three resounding crashes as the bombs dropped. One got the corner of a hangar and demolished it. Another burst into the open and did no damage, but the third fell plumb between two machines waiting to go up and left them tangled ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... I should have sent her away the very first night. I'm getting to depend on her. I'm plumb foolish about her now—can't let her out of my sight; and yet I'm off my feed worryin' over her. Gregg is getting dangerous—you can't fool me when it comes to men. Curse 'em, they're all alike—beasts, ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... pinched," says he, "and someone should be lynched. The cost of living is so high that it's economy to die; and death is so expensive, then, that corpses want to live again. The trusts have robbed us left and right, and there's no remedy in sight; the government is out of plumb and should be knocked to ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... not for you was dark the time to slumber, But to hold Freedom's columns all star-plumb! Yours was a watery grave, but Martyrdom And, hence, your resurrection with the number, Whose greatness greatens, as the Ages come To know why their pathway, no ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... have him, but barrin' her, he hangs to Marg so as ter be nigh Nella-Rose in any case. And right here Burke Lawson figgers. Burke's got two naturs, same as old Satan. Marg can play on one and get him plumb riled up to anythin'; Nella-Rose can twist him around her finger and make him act like ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... "Plumb chuck full of malaria," soliloquized the owner of the weapon, playfully running its business end over the Chicago man's anatomy. "Shakes worse'n a pair of dice. Here, Fatty. Load up with quinine and whisky. It's sure ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... violent comrade. Fact! expecting any day that the workers will take things over and he'll come into money—money the interests have kept him out of. He kind of licks his chops when he talks about it. Never heard him talk about his wife's share, though. Say, that brother of yours is making a plumb ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... dryly, "the gent went by here maybe two hours gone headin' south. He was goin' steady but he don't seem worried none as I noticed. If you want him right bad I reckon you can run him down. As for me I'm plumb neutral in this combat. I ain't lost ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Dr. Wangbanger once had an audience with Mr. William Whiffletree in regard to one of Mr. Whiffletree's molars which Bill thought had a "speck" on it, he soon convinced the victim that the said molar not only was specked, but out of the dead plumb of its nearest neighbor at least the 84th part ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... God! how far that day She fell—from hope and promise plumb, To deeps where lips forget ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... smooth as a yearling baby. Having thus reached the lower end of the table, there are a quantity of hooks fitted to strong wooden arms, which revolve round a stout pillar, and which, in describing the circle, plumb the lower end of the table. On these piggy is hooked, and the operation of cutting open and cleansing is performed—at the rate of three a minute—by operators steeped in blood, and standing in an ocean of the same, despite the eternal buckets of water with which a host of boys ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... announced, half-aloud. "I'm shore a plumb fool." Then she turned and disappeared in the deep cleft between the gigantic bowlder upon which she had been sitting and another—small only by comparison. There, ten feet down, in a narrow alley littered with ragged stones, lay the crumpled body ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... And the Captain is no better! And just look at the accommodations—three stewards and a woman! What's that to look after thirty-five passengers? Half the time I have to wait an hour to get something to eat—such as it is. And my bunk wasn't made up yesterday until plumb night. That bunch in the steerage must ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which conferred upon him no power for being or doing what it required. It is like a looking-glass placed before a child to show him that his face is soiled, but having no power to cleanse that face. It was like a plumb- line applied to a leaning wall, which shows how far it deviates from the perpendicular, but which has no power to make it upright. Nay, it even comes to pass that in consequence of inbred sin, the law multiplies offences. It causes sin to abound. We find even in most children a disposition that ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... world to preclude all kindness It is the need of it,—it is this sad, self-defeating dependence. Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you. But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose. All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something. Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks, Is not I WILL, but I MUST. I ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... hanged, With voice so piercing shrill he twanged The word of luckless sound, His beast sprang forward at the cry, And plumb the priest dropped down from high ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... is no chance of hit or miss ... it is inevitable as life ... it is as exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... no chance of hit or miss—it is inevitable as life—it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections, not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Wass. "She's a-going to tramp him plumb underfoot—unless she's going to get up a little more speed and jump over him!" he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... purchased judge distils out of an honest or a doubtful deed, in the alembic he has made out of the law broken up and recast by him for that purpose, twisted, drawn out, and coiled up in serpentine and labyrinthine folds. For as the sweet juices of the grape, the peach, the apple, pear, or plumb may be fermented, and then distilled into the most deadly intoxicating draught to madden man and infuriate woman, so by the sophistry of a State's Attorney and a Court Judge, well trained for this work, out of innocent actions, and honest, manly ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... am," she insists. "I'm plumb scared at the thought of mixin' with folks like that—just plumb scared. And, as you know, Mr. Leavitt, it's the first time in my life I've ever been ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... . Nicky-Nan at any rate let the thought of it slip into the sea of his private trouble. It was as though he had hauled up some other man's "sinker" and, discovering his mistake, let it drop back plumb. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... ledge up and down the gulch and to estimate the probable extent of that pay streak. Then he gave it up in self-defense. "I've got to watch my dodgers," he admonished himself, "or I'll go plumb loco and imagine I'm a millionaire. I'll pan what I can get at and let it go at that. And I've got to count what gold shows up in the sack—and no more. Good Lord! I can't afford to make a fool of myself at this stage of the game! I've got to sit right down on ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... measuring. First he located the line across the floorjoists overhead, where rested the partition separating the dining-room from the parlour. Finding the middle of this line, he dropped an improvised plumb-line to the ground; and from this spot as centre, using a string about ten feet long, he described a circle on the earth. Then, referring to his calculations, he proceeded to locate several points with small stakes pressed into the soil. Then he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... sharp looking after Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth Notion of private property in truth Only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas Opinions Out of plumb when they sit side by side Overestimate of our special individuality Pathological piety Perpetual insult to mediocrity Plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world Presumption in favor of any particular belief Pseudo-science Question everything Saying ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... hitherward I come, Before this same old Time shall strike me numb, To carry it out."—"Strange, this is!" said the other; "What mind shall plumb ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... first part and the cricket match in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... was always your great fault—trying to plumb shallows and to take high dives into ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... die, Half-rotten and without an eye, Lies hereabout; and for to pave The excellency of this cave, Squirrels' and children's teeth, late shed, Are neatly here inchequered With brownest toadstones, and the gum That shines upon the bluer plumb. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... any picnic, boys," he said. "We've got to take our time and keep our eyes open. Dakota ain't no spring chicken, and if he don't want to come with us peaceable, he'll make things plumb lively." ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... commence active operations at once, or obtain a new charter. After a blessed season of prayer and counseling together in the board meeting held January 29, there being present only the members of the board at that time, Mrs. Plumb offered to advance $3,500, if necessary, toward the expenses for the first year. We accepted it with great thankfulness, rented a building the 15th of March, 1886, and formally opened the National Temperance Hospital on ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon. "They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat—had had it from a kitten. Brought it ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't have ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... up!" cries a little old man with lively and intelligent features, who has for a cane a copper-bound rule around which is wound the cord of a plumb-bob. This is the foreman of the work, Nor Juan, architect, mason, carpenter, painter, locksmith, stonecutter, and, on occasions, sculptor. "It must be finished right now! Tomorrow there'll be no work and the day after ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... ladder. The man in front of Nat ducked his head; Nat ducked too; but the body slid sideways before it reached them and dropped plumb—the inert lump which had been Dave McInnes. His shako, spinning straight down the ladder, struck Nat on the shoulder and leaped off it down ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... plumb humiliatin' to all of us thet we wasn't on hand to meet you," Stillwell said. "Me an' Al stepped into the P. O. an' said a few mild an' cheerful things. Them messages ought to hev been sent out to the ranch. I'm sure afraid it was ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... answered the Arizonian in disgust. "I missed him a mile, but he was so plumb discouraged with the heat and with running his laigs off that he up and laid down and handed in his checks. He's the only Spaniard I've got to my credit and Mr. Blythe here always claimed half of him ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... carried on beds, mothers luggin' babies and leadin' children. My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel! They're lyin' out over there in the slough now, as many as ain't gone to glory. It made me jest plumb murderous!" ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... as he could find suitable anchorage, the captain hastened to avail himself of the resources for feeding his crew, which the country furnished in fowls, fish, and vegetables, whilst he himself, generally with the plumb-line in his hand, traversed the environs of the bay. He met only a few natives, with whom he had little intercourse. But one family becoming somewhat familiarized, established itself a hundred yards from the landing-place. Cook gave a concert ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... beneficial for the cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... troops, I learned that Lieut. K. Oscar Broady, a recent graduate of Madison University, who had seen some military service in Sweden, his native country, was raising a Company for the War, in which many Hamilton and Sherburne men were enrolled. Isaac Plumb, one of my most-thought-of friends, was in the number; there were others—Edgar Willey, Israel O. Foote, Fred Ames, and more whose names I do not now recall. I decided to wait no longer, but seek the enemy with the men of ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... clearly conscious of his love for Katiousha; especially if it were sought to persuade him that he could and must not link his fate to that of the girl, he would very likely have decided in his plumb-line mind that there was no reason why he should not marry her, no matter who she was, provided he loved her. But the aunts did not speak of their fears, and he departed without knowing that he was enamored ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... inscribed on it the name of the founder, date, &c. Being furnished with a trowel and mortar by the master mason, Mr. John Holme, he spread it; another massy stone was then let down upon the first, and adjusted to its position, Mr. Wordsworth handling the rule, plumb-line, and mallet, and patting the stone he retired. The Rev. R.P. Graves next offered up the following prayer for the welfare and success of the undertaking: "The foundation-stone of the new parochial school-house of Bowness being now laid, it remains ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... had my reasons, George. But I don't mean to go into 'em. All that's dead and gone. There was a pack of fellows then on my shoulders—I was plumb tired of 'em. I had to get rid of—I did get rid of 'em—and you, too. I knew you were inquiring after me, and I didn't want inquiries. They didn't suit me. You may conclude what you like. I tell you those times are dead and gone. But it seemed to me that Robert Anderson was best ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seen objections, you never would have caught Mrs. Van Astrachan going; for she was one of your full-blooded women, who never in her life engaged to do a thing she didn't mean to do: and having promised in the marriage service to obey her husband, she obeyed him plumb, with the air of a person who is fulfilling the prophecies; though her chances in this way were very small, as Mr. Van Astrachan generally called her "ma," and obeyed all her orders with a stolid precision quite ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... nigh wo'n out w'en he come to his house. He opens the doh quick an' slams it shut; den he heahs de cat a-scratchin' on de doh an kinda' sniffin' 'bout, an' Lijah, he lays down on de bed plumb wo'n out. ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... eyes. Close 'em, and I know I'll go to sleep an' have good dreams. And down in the middle of Morgantown is the buryin'-ground. I've ridden past it a thousand times an' watched a corner plot, where the grass grows quicker than it does anywheres else in the cemetery. Pierre, I'd die plumb easy if I knew I was goin' to sleep the rest of time ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... foots it up with wonderful speed and certainty, and comes down again in the same manner, bringing his gourd full of liquor on his arm. Among their fruits are many kinds of plumbs; one like a wheaten plumb is wholesome and savoury; likewise a black one, as large as a horse plumb, which is much esteemed, and has an aromatic flavour. A kind called mansamilbas, resembling a wheaten plumb, is very dangerous, as is likewise the sap of the boughs, which is perilous for the sight, if it should chance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... no such power, but when he wishes to drive a tunnel in any given direction he is obliged to avail himself of levels, compasses, plumb-lines, and all the paraphernalia of the engineer. Yet, with nothing to direct it except instinct, the water-vole can, though working in darkness, drive its burrow in any direction and emerge from the ground exactly at the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... and practices prevalent in different ages of the Church; but he calls attention to the fact that the dominant note of one age is not always the same as that in another. And in using the words criterion and test, descriptive of the Church, he would convey their full meaning: not merely a plumb-line for the rising wall but divine accuracy itself made external. His outer criterion is to the inner life what articulate speech ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. You'll do this job, and you'll do it my way. Maybe you got another ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... which the coating was thin, they grounded the Callisto, and stepped out for the first time in several days. The air was so still that a small piece of paper released at a height of six feet sank slowly and went as straight as the string of a plumb-line. The sun was bisected by the line of the horizon, and appeared to be moving about them in a circle, with only its upper half visible. As Jupiter's northern hemisphere was passing through its autumnal equinox, they concluded they ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... his most mysterious air of business, told Edwin to follow him into the shop. Several hours of miscellaneous consultative pottering had passed between Darius and his compositors round and about the new printing machine, which was once more plumb and ready for action. For considerably over a week Edwin had been on his father's general staff without any definite task or occupation having been assigned to him. His father had been too excitedly preoccupied with the arrival ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... chuckled the shock-headed young man, "he's gone plumb crazy over it. You can't make him listen ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Conscience, the primary moral element. If I were asked to specify in what quarter lie the grounds of darkest dread, respecting the America of our hopes, I should have to point to this particular. I should demand the invariable application to individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-true plumb-rule of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modern civilizee, with his all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still show himself but an amputation while this deficiency remains. Beyond, (assuming a more hopeful tone,) the vertebration ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... do you?" my new friend reproached me. "Well, I don't; and neither did the folks who had cabins taken and who threw them up last week when they heard how the San Pietro went down on this same route. We're five plumb idiots—that's what we are—five crazy lunatics! I'd never have come a step, not with wild horses dragging me if it hadn't been for Jim Furman being pretty near popeyed, looking for a chance to cut me out and sail. We've got fifteen hundred reservists ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... symbolize life to us than the rigidly geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency, for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, have felt the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... are unspeakable things that writhe. His plumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head from the clouds to do it. Is it ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... he sat among the pillars of the hall, upon his throne of beaten gold, and around him stood the speaking statues which Daidalos had made by his skill. For Daidalos was the most cunning of all Athenians, and he first invented the plumb-line, and the auger, and glue, and many a tool with which wood is wrought. And he first set up masts in ships, and yards, and his son made sails for them: but Perdix his nephew excelled him; for he first ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... equipments of these warrior men were like those of the white hunters. They have long since discarded the bow; and in the management of the rifle most of them can "draw a bead" and hit "plumb centre" with any of their mountain associates. In addition to the firelock and knife, I noticed that they still carried the ancient weapon of their ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Larkin's: "Yes, rustlers were never so bad as they are now. It's got so in this State that the thieves have got more cows among 'em than the regular cowmen. An' that ain't all. They've got an organization that we can't touch. We're plumb locoed with their devilment. That's the second bunch cut out of ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Fisbee," he said, morosely, after a series of efforts that littered the floor in every direction. "I'm a born compositor, and I can't shift my trade. I stood the pace fairly for a week, but I'll have to give up; I'm run plumb dry. I only hope they won't show him our Saturday with your three columns of 'A Word of the Lotus Motive,' reprinted from February. I begin to sympathize with the boss, because I know what he felt when I ballyragged him for copy. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... facts as matters of knowledge, and then to study the art and science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All we can do is to define clearly the true idea of the Teachers' School, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... is. He goes that way all the time. An' he's a right good shot, the boys say. If there's some real sour blood stirred up between him an' you there's no use bein' a plumb fool, is there? The store's apt to be open yet; there's a firs'-class double-barrel shot-gun, secon'-hand but as good as new, in the window. Only seven ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... arbitrary King: a florid-complexioned stout-built man; of serious, sincere, authoritative face; his attitudes and equipments very Spartan in type. Man of short firm stature; stands (in Pesne's best Portraits of him) at his ease, and yet like a tower. Most solid; "plumb and rather more;" eyes steadfastly awake; cheeks slightly compressed, too, which fling the mouth rather forward; as if asking silently, "Anything astir, then? All right here?" Face, figure and bearing, all in him is expressive of robust insight, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... because we have travelled so fast," answered the raven. "In your world you cannot pull up the plumb-line you call gravitation, and let the world spin round under your feet! But here is my wife's house! She is very good to let me live with her, and call it the ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Average Jones place the ladder against the outside of the pole, mount, nail up the sign, drop a plumb-line, improvised from a key and a length of string, to the ground, set a careful knot in the string and return ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Tenderfoot, I'm fed up with her. But I'm like that: I just can't tell her so. I'm not brave enough to tell her to go plumb to hell. That's the way I am, see? When I like a woman, I get plain silly; and if she doesn't start something, I've not got the courage to do anything myself." He sighed. "There's Camilla at the ranch for instance.... Now, she's not much on looks, I know, but there's ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... of the world,' she said. 'I had no time. I knew it was right out there, anywhere, all around the cabin, but there was always the bread to set, the scrubbin' and the washin' and the work that was never done. I used to be plumb sick at times, jes' to get out into it all, especially in the spring when the songs of the birds drove me most clean crazy. I wanted to run out through the long pasture grass, wetting my legs with the dew of it, and ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... at Fort McMurray, Jiarobia said to me: "Dat man is the biggest awful liar on de river. You should hear him talk. 'One day,' he said, 'dere was a big stone floating up de muddy river and on it was tree men, and one was blind and one was plumb naked and one had no arms nor legs, and de blind man he looks down on bottom of river an see a gold watch, an de cripple he reach out and get it, and de naked man he put it in his pocket.' Now any man talk dat way ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Weighed and Its Density and Mass Computed.—The density, mass, or weight of the earth was found by the observed force of attraction of a known mass of lead or iron for another mass; or of a mountain by the deflection of a torsion thread or plumb line. In this manner the mean density of the earth has been found to be from 4.71 to 6.56 times the weight of water, 5.66 being accredited as the most reliable. The weight of a cubic foot of water being known, and the contents of the earth being computed in cubic feet, we ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... threw the rope over an oak limb, and directed The Lifter to stand 'plumb under.' Murfrey now tightened the rope but he could not raise The Lifter from ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... done it, but I was plumb mad. I pulled a San Augustine paper out of my hip-pocket, and showed him an item. It was a half a column about the marriage of ...
— Options • O. Henry
... about that time. The skipper yelled to me to ease off the larboard stay. Now, I might know something about mince pie, but a larboard stay is not my long and hasty. Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through the dock. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... where a person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN! Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after; and, it being his first ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... whah Mahs Hudson libs? Dey's a turkey dah dat gibs Me a heap o' trouble. Some day Hudson g'ine to miss Dat owdashus fowl o' his; I's g'ine ober dah an' twis' 'At gobbler's nake plumb double. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a foundation of stones or a series of stone piles, but if you use stones and expect your house to remain plumb where the winters are severe you must dig holes for them at least three feet deep in order to go below the frost-line. Fill these holes with broken stone, on top of which you can make your pile of stones to act as support for the sills; but the simplest method is ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... you think so?" She looked at him wistfully. "I'd try awful hard not to make breaks," she went on, "and make 'em feel like cachin' me in the cellar when they saw company comin'. It's just plumb awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for something or somebody—for other kind of folks besides Injuns and grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer kind of bug, and laugh at you with ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... corresponding to the old conception of patron saints. If they did there would be a Patron Saint of Plumbers, and this would alone be a revolution, for it would force the individual craftsman to believe that there was once a perfect being who did actually plumb. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... all parts, and when in normal condition the mind and wisdom of God is satisfied that the machine will go on and build and run according to the plan and specification. If this be true as nature proves at every point and principle, what can man do farther than plumb, line up, and trust to nature to get results desired, "life and health?" Can we add or suggest any improvement? If not, what is left for us to do is to keep bells, batteries and wires in normal place and trust to normal law as given ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... "It's a plumb sight worse," the other answered. "I ain't never been no further north 'n Thunder Cape, jest by Nipigon. An' what's more, I ain't goin'! But even up there, the ice freezes solid 'n' you kin do somethin' with it. Mush-ice never gits solid, but like some ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... English figures not only of fiction but of letters. But in the most recent years, again a change has come: the pendulum has swung back, as it always does when an excessive movement carries it too far beyond the plumb line. Dickens has found valiant, critical defenders; he has risen fast in thoughtful so well as popular estimation (although with the public he has scarcely fluctuated in favor) until he now enjoys a sort of resurrection of popularity. What is the cause of this to-and-fro ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... gravel creaked beneath his feet), and the baobab giant in its mignonette pot, the comfort of that cabbage-rabbit burrow wrapped him like a security after all his dangers and adversities... But the bells, those cursed bells, tolled louder than ever; their black heavy notes fell plumb upon his heart and crushed it again. In funereal fashion they were saying to him: "Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother? Tartarin, where is Bompard?" Then, without courage to take one step, he sat down upon the hot coping of the little basin ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... me why I call it a coup d'etat?" Arobin had put on his coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She told him it was, looking no higher than the tip of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... heaped in frightful disorder. When, closing my eyes, I contemplate these results of the convulsion of the soil in my mind's eye, when I hear the screaming of the eagles, which go wheeling through the bottomless abysses, whose inky shadows the eye dares hardly plumb, vertigo seizes me, and I open my eyes to reassure ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... it had been done with a knife, doesn't it? Alpine crags seem vertical but are nearly always inclined; their primary rock, you know, cannot flake off abruptly like this tufa. This is a genuine precipice. Plumb!" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... he asked himself in wonderment. "Am mah eardrum done gone busted? Moke, yo' am plumb ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... there employed whose touch is like the stroke of an artist. He handled each brick as if it were porcelain, balanced it carefully in his hand, measured with his eye just the amount of mortar which it needed, and dropped the block into its bed, without staining its edge, without varying from the plumb line, by a stroke of hand-craft as true as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... anything. We'll have a pack of hounds, too, and we can drive pig in the woods, and if we want big game there are the Mangwe flats at our feet. I tell you I'll make such a country-house as nobody ever dreamed of. A man will come plumb out of stark savagery into lawns and rose-gardens." Lawson flung himself into his chair again and smiled dreamily ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... flower tubes than the Wild Bergamot's the Bee Balm belies its name, for, however frequently bees may come about for nectar when it rises high, only long-tongued bumblebees could get enough to compensate for their trouble. Butterflies, which suck with their wings in motion, plumb the depths. The ruby-throated humming bird—to which the Brazilian salvia of our gardens has adapted itself—flashes about these whorls of Indian plumes just as frequently—of course transferring pollen on his needle-like bill as he darts from flower to flower. Even the protruding stamens ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... at that moment the avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the Assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* Then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seer's words—a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the Lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits—till at last the whole people of Israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the Eternal. "There shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and when I looked in on him hopefully he ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... able to state my position definitely." Lanyard got up and grinned provokingly down at the group. "You can—all four of you—go plumb to hell!" ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... at de sawmill had des got de big log on de kerridge, en wuz start-in' up de saw, w'en dey seed a 'oman runnin' up de hill, all out er bref, cryin' en gwine on des lack she wuz plumb 'stracted. It wuz Tenie; she come right inter de mill, en th'owed herse'f on de log, right in front er de saw, a-hollerin' en cryin' ter her Sandy ter fergib her, en not ter think hard er her, fer it wa'n't no fault er hern. Den Tenie ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... matter, the sight is heart sickening! There Sambo and his woman, dressed to death, strut along with heads erect, looking as important as though they owned the city, or, astride their bicycles, they'll ride plumb over you. But we have put a stop to Nigger high-stepping for a while at least, thanks to our true and patriotic men, blue-blooded Southern gentlemen." "And our boys, who did so nobly!" chimed in Mrs. Engel. "Yes! yes!" exclaimed ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... to his knees in grass. The captain of the Burtington team was the local publican, a hearty man who told us in the same breath that he was very glad to see us, and that he had played cricket for thirty years, boy and man. His name was Plumb, and I liked him very much; he played in both braces and a belt, because he told us belts were ticklish things and braces sometimes burst. I answered that it was always well to be on the safe side, and we had quite a confidential talk, until Lambert and Dennison came ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o' ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... the next couple of hours. 'Cordin' to my reckonin' they was years and we'd ought to have sailed plumb through the broadside of the Cape, and be makin' a quick run for Africy. But at last we got into smoother water, and then, right acrost our bows, showed up a white strip. The fog had pretty well blowed clear and I could ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... another man. He didn't even look the same. Sich eyes! Al'ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They'd give anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after that—said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with him—he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away from that grave—you don't want to look odder than ye are by nature. And when ye git married, ye'll have to give up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "Plumb in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... much as them cattlemen," declaimed one grizzled veteran waving his pipe. "I come to these mountains first in sixty-six, and the sheep was bad enough then, but you always had some horse meadows. Now they're just plumb overrunning the country. There's thousands and thousands of folks that come in camping, and about a dozen of these yere cattlemen. They got no right to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?— Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord,—quite an irregular thing; not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... thoughts aren't actually our own. They SEEM different, but that may be because they arise in some part of our deep subconscious thought processes. I've been trying to extend my sense of awareness in order to reach into my subconscious mind and actually plumb it to its depths. One thing I've found is that most of my REAL thinking goes on there, and only rises to the surface of consciousness when it is completed! That lends probability to the theory that ALL such voices of inspiration ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... his pinions vain, plumb down he drops, Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud. Instinct with fire and niter, hurried him As many miles aloft; that fury stayed, Quenched in a boggy ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss |
