"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... village is composed of leaning shacks blown out of plumb by heavy winds. Along the beach on bamboo racks the nets are hanging out to dry. At night the little fleet puts out for Punta Gorda, where a ruined watch-tower—a protection against Moro pirates—stands half hidden among creeping vines. The nets are floated upon husks ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... which had seen better days. The big lumber-mill that 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 ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... of gravity would give it, if uncontrolled. It is governed by the action of the spinnerets, which contract or expand their pores, or close them entirely, at the faller's pleasure. And so, with gentle moderation, she pays out this living plumb-line, of which my lantern clearly shows me the plumb, but not always the line. The great squab seems at such times to be sprawling in space, without the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... 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 myself ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... flecked with the smoke of 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 ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... "Plumb nervousness," said Buck. "Same as if I was pulling up to the start with fifty thousand on the nag. I want to ask your advice, A. A. Just a little private matter. Oh, nothing serious. Nothing like that, you ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... of holly in their bosoms and button holes, walked from the church to the Grove; and there partook, as they had been invited to do, of beef and pudding, and good home-brewed beer. The young Mortimers waited upon them at dinner, and before they left the Lodge, presented them each with a plumb cake; and Mrs. Mortimer gave them each an amusing little book to read to themselves and their parents, who had not like themselves possessed the advantages ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... from her 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 ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... diatribe against Jesuitism in the Latter-Day Pamphlets,[20] one of the most unfeignedly coarse and virulent bits of invective in the language, points plumb in the same direction. It is grossly unjust, because it takes for granted that Loyola and all Jesuits were deliberately conscious of imposture and falsehood, knowingly embraced the cause of Beelzebub, and resolutely propagated it. It is one thing ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... heaved up the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... an honest employ from London, aboard of the Princess, Captain Plumb, commander, of which ship he was second mate. He left England November, 1719, and arrived at Guinea about February following and being at Anamaboe, taking in slaves for the West Indies, was taken in the said ship by Captain Howel Davis. In the beginning he was very averse to this sort ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... job hadn't been finished 'fore night, dey kept right on at it by moonlight. One man wuked so hard tryin' to beat de others dat when he went to de spring for some water, he tuk one drink, raised his haid quick lak, and died right dar. He was plumb daid when dey picked ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... the 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
... monkey and the man, and the transition seemed to have been easy and natural. In a word, he looked like a monkey in the face, while no one could possibly have suspected that he was one. Above his mouth his face abruptly receded, so that the end of his nose was not far from plumb with his lips. In the middle of his forehead the hair seemed to grow down to the bridge of his nose. A stranger, who was not of a melancholy turn of mind, could hardly have refrained from laughing when looking at him for the first time. But Bobtail did not laugh, for Monkey was a friend, and a ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... more, but only lay there mute and motionless; and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their marriage had been a ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... carried aloft, in your teeth, if you please, and dragged far out on the giddiest of yards, and after being wormed and twisted about through all sorts of intricacies—turning abrupt corners at the abruptest of angles—is to be dropped, clear of all obstructions, in a straight plumb-line right down to the deck. In the course of this business, there is a multitude of sheeve-holes and blocks, through which you must pass it; often the rope is a very tight fit, so as to make it like threading a fine cambric needle with rather coarse thread. Indeed, it ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... earthquakes do to buildings is in most cases due to the fact that they sway their walls out of plumb, so that they are no longer in position to support the weight which they have to bear. The amount of this swaying is naturally very much greater than that which the earth itself experiences in the movement. A building of any height with its walls unsupported by neighbouring structures may find its ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the Mason-bee is building, the antennae are constantly feeling, fumbling and exploring, superintending, as it were, the finishing touches given to the work. They are her instruments of precision; they represent the builder's compasses, square, level and plumb-line. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... to himself, with a slight duck of the head of careless acknowledgment. Then he glanced with slumbering anger at the stove. "Smoke, we'll have to dig up a new stove. That fire-box is burned plumb into the oven so it ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... wall the ladder that led to one of these houses was 60 feet long, but it was not quite upright, and the tree was growing at some little distance from the bottom of the rock, and the distance by a plumb line from the floor of the verandah to the ground on the lower side of the tree was 94 feet. The floor of the house, which is made first, was 23 feet long and about 11 broad; a narrow verandah is left at each end, and the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... necessarily appear very benign, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather; for in such cases there will be frequent conjunctions of sirloins and ribs of beef; aspects of legs and shoulders of mutton, with refrenations of loins of veal, shining near the watery triplicity of plumb-porridge—together with trine and sextile of minced pies; collared brawn from the Ursus major, and sturgeon from Pisces—all for the honour of Christmas: and I think it is a much pleasanter sight than a Covent-Garden comedy, to see a dozen ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works with a pair of spring ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... astrolabe be suspended so that it shall hang plumb. Direct the index or diopter to the sun at noon, so that the same ray of light may shine through both holes in the two tablets or pinules on the diopter, and the diopter will point to the degree of the sun's meridian altitude indicated on the outer ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... it's the same way, with Slim, an' Flint Kreeger an' the rest. I tell yuh, I'm dead sick of being spied on, an' plotted against, an' never knowin' when yuh may get a knife in the back, or stop a bullet. I hate to leave Bud, but he's so plumb ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... useful broom; Yet should not ceaseless hunt about the room To catch each straggling pin to make a plumb: Too oft Economy's an iron vice, That squeezes even the little guts of mice, That peep with fearful eyes, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... "I am the way." As such, he is so narrow that, as the prophet represents, it is as if a fire of destruction were on the one hand and a flood of wrath on the other. Ah, Brethren, the truth can never be made to bend. It is as the builder's line to the foundation; and as the plumb line to the column. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... though, If he dare venture; hang him, plumb porredge, He wrastle? he rost eggs! Come, lets ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... loved her, she declares; his affection for her had been interested, though even in her wrath she admits that he really loved her husband; he cared less for her conversation, which she had fancied necessary to his existence, than for her "roast beef and plumb pudden," which he now devours too "dirtily for endurance." She was fully resolved to go, and yet she could not bear that her going should fail to torture the friend whom for eighteen years she had ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... the sacred name of Time are you meanin' to do with that dummy? For the good land's sake! Have you gone plumb crazy, or what? Put ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 spot which it ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... he went on, after a pause. "I ain't got it right. The fall knocked you plumb out. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... eagerly, "Just you take us all 'round the Flats, mister, so's folks can see. An'—an', mind yer, toot that old horn good an' loud, so as everybody'll know we're a-comin'." As the automobile moved away he beamed with proud satisfaction. "Some swells we are—heh? Skinny an' Chuck an' the gang'll be plumb crazy when they see us. Some class, I'll tell ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... man with the wagon. "I thought I knew these here woods pretty well, but I'm blamed if I know where we are now. Everything looks turned around; I'd swear now, that that was the west over there, yet there is the sun a-risin' as big as life. I'm plumb addled!" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... said the young inventor as he re-entered the library a few minutes later, "when you warp the wing tips in making a spiral ascent it throws your tail wings out of plumb, and so—" ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... had really some apprehension of treachery from thee; which made me so miserably evade; for else, I could as safely have sworn to the truth of this, as to that of the former: but she pressing me still for a categorical answer, I ventured plumb; and swore to it, [lover's oaths, Jack!] that they were really and truly Lady Betty Lawrance and my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... last privilege of danger that shams should vanish. Yet we plumb the depths of absurdity when we contest the right of any woman, even a young and unmarried one, to appreciate all that a brave man has done and is doing ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... greatest of all modern draughtsmen used. Ingres, then, with all his freedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed to draw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on his paper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to the plumb-line. It enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in the other lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stability of a figure. Rules of art are, like this straight line, dead and powerless in themselves: they help both creator and lover to ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey. 'Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.' 'Shake hands, Peachey,' says he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, 'Cut you beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and by an unknown ford Stands, and for a moment yearns and shrinks, Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is, So softly murmurous, So silvered ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... know half he's give. But it's a heap, Lord knows! And then he's foolish—plumb foolish." He rested his arms on his legs, leaning forward. "How much d'you s'pose he give me for that land—from here to my house?" He pointed ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... allus was. She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... schoolboy, wretched, allegoric 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 known desolation, but it had seldom been desolation of spirit. It had never been desolation like this. He tried to plumb it, to its deepest meaning, but consciousness seemed to have no line long enough. He only knew that his world had ended. He saw himself as the thing that life had at last left him—a solitary and unsatisfied man, a man without an aim, ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... them. Plumb dissatisfied with me, ain't you? Makes me feel awful bad." Jim was sailing into the full tide of his sarcasm when Keller touched him ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 edifying to behold. He took her advice always, and was often heard naively to remark ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Ecole des Beaux Arts can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blows over its windy plains, has managed to survive, after a fashion, six or seven ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the lever-bar, and with all his strength jerked it toward him. A square in the floor opened as the trap was flapped back upon its hinges, and through the opening the haltered form shot straight downward to bring up with a great jerk, and after that to dangle like a plumb-bob on a string. Under the quick strain the gallows-arm creaked and whined; in the silence which followed the hangman was heard to exhale his breath in a vast puff of relief. His hand went up to his forehead to wipe beads of sweat which for all that the morning was ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico. But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... looking at the teamsters as of no particular account when they walked out, but when they wouldn't work, they became the most important part of the show, and after the show was over the managers who had told the striking teamsters to go plumb, found that they had gone plumb, and they had to rush all over Pittsburg and find them, and grant their demands, and get them ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... ever have in England 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 ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... be blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air. There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin life by setting out two little evergreen-trees within a foot of each of their ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Angela; here some hidden knowledge, there an unsuspected grace, and everywhere an all-embracing charity and love. Day by day he gazed deeper into the depths of her mind, and still there were more to plumb. For it was a storehouse of noble thoughts and high ambitions—ambitions, many of which could only find fulfilment in another world than this. And, the more he saw of her, the prouder he was to think that such a perfect creature should so dearly love himself; and with the greater ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... durned if she cares, and you're durned if you care. And all the time you feel so bad about it that you must go and do something wicked right away. And taking off your hat to me was your idea of just about the razzlingest, dazzlingest, plumb wickedest thing you ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... moment, he had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of all feeling and thought. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... you desire that your Senators, INGALLS and PLUMB, and your seven Congressmen shall vote for the sixteenth amendment ...
— 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.
... "The Escurial!" says Brantome, "what of that? See how long it was of building? Good workmen like to be quick finished. With our king it was otherwise. Take Fontainebleau and Chambord. When they were projected, when once the plumb-line, and the compass, and the square, and the hammer were on the spot, then in a few years we saw the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... were removed, and a heavy trap door, upon which the foot of the flagstaff rested, was its only support. A massive bolt alone held the trap in place. Will and the Professor were by the ice shaft, watching the plumb-line. At a signal, the Doctor struck the bolt a heavy blow with a sledge, the trap fell, and the beautiful mast shot like a flash of lightning down through the frosty atmosphere, entered the ice hole precisely in the center, and sank ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... force to fly, his will to see, His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, Had come of many a grip in mastery, Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, And of his bosom made him lord, to keep The starry roof of his unruffled frame Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep Below, above, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... must count the number of heads, and explained to her the advantage of the plumb-line in determining the action of the figure. Mildred was much interested; she wondered if she would be able to put the instruction she was receiving into practice, and was disappointed when the model got down from the table and put on ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... oil!" Chow said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under water ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... 'Would you eat your 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, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... 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
... so simple as that. 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
... earth, only not a circle, but seemingly almost square with rounded corners. Round its path on the veldt there is a broad wash of dusty gold. A lot of us came out of the tents, and were spell-bound by the sight. Every evening the sun goes down plumb into the veldt out of a cloudless sky, and comes up just so in the morning. While he is gone it is bitterly cold now, always with hard frost, but in the middle of the day often very hot. I have never known such extremes ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... brick walls, however, no deduction is made provided that they are still standing plumb, but they are always valued at what they cost to build. Hence in some states we may see public buildings and private houses, as well as those of kings, built of brick: in Athens, for example, the part of the wall which faces Mt. Hymettus and Pentelicus; at Patras, the cellae ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... long enough for any general good unless the licking is based on principle and the principle is thereby established as right! Now let me tell you, Governor North. You can't fool those Legion boys outside. They have come home with new conceptions of what is a square deal. They're plumb on to the old-fashioned tricks in cheap politics. They're not letting officeholders play checkers ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... time you learned. I'll talk to you plumb an' plain, Henry. I'll not let you seduce a girl on my land, do you hear? They can do that sort of thing in England, if they like ... it's nothin' to me what the English do ... but by God I'll not have a girl on my land ruined by you or ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... said Shoop as he mounted. "Now, if I was to tell that dog he was gettin' too old to ramble with me, he'd feel plumb sick and no account. But when I tell him he's got to do somethin'—like watchin' the house—he thinks it's a reg'lar job. He's gettin' old, but, just like folks, he wants to think he's some use. You can't tell me dogs don't know. Why, I've seen young folks ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Lochleven trout in these streams,—at 6,000 feet you can do 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 ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... play something," a man they called Day interpreted. "Hen's loco on music. If you can sing and play both, Hen'll set and listen till plumb daylight and never ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... said the Doctor, leaning over to knock the ashes from his pipe. "I'm plumb certain she cares for you, and just as certain that you're making a mistake by running away." He stood up and scowled fiercely at the moon. "Well, I must be off. I'll see you to-morrow. You're not going until afternoon, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Her brother and uncles were but my pioneers: her father stormed as I directed him to storm: Mrs. Howe was acted by the springs I set at work; her daughter was moving for me, yet imagined herself plumb against me: and the dear creature herself had already run her stubborn neck into my gin, and knew not that she was caught, for I had not drawn my sprindges close about her—And just as all this was completed, wouldst thou believe, that I should be my own enemy, and her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... picks on a kid that's yeller. You've 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
... 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 ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... can compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking back to that great epoch in American history, we have no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho' to speak the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,—'twas no bad conjecture;—and my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the centre of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle Toby, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a Walloon officer at the battle of Landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,—and another part ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... than the wild bergamot's (q.v.), 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 hummingbird - 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 ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... main walls were built in brick, the columns were 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 applied and could ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... and ask 'what brig's that?' But none of these tricks will answer with t'other, who misses the whipping off the end of a gasket, as soon as any first luff of us all. And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as the back of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... secretarie knowe, Lett him attend the markes that I shall showe: He is a youth almost two handfulls highe, Streight, round, and plumb, yett ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... was thinkin'—well, I tell you. Might's well out with it first as last. I d' know's I ort to say so, but this here district No. 34 is a poot' tol'able hard school to teach. Ya-uss. A poot-ty tol'able hard school to teach. Now, that's jist the plumb facts in the matter. We've had four try it this winter a'ready. One of 'em stuck it out four weeks—I jimminy! he had grit, that feller had. The balance of 'em didn't take so long to make up their minds. Well, now, if you're a mind to try it—I was goin' ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his own language he "just ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... And so, while she held Legree's dog, whom the sound inflamed to frenzy, I popped off the crackers and dropped my cigar into Vesuvius. I tell you he was worth four and eightpence, and the man was right when he said there wasn't his match in London. I doubt if there was his match anywhere for being plumb- full of red balls and green balls and blue balls and crimson stars and fizzlegigs and whole torrents of tiny crackers and chase-me- quicks, and when you about thought he was never going to stop he shot up ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... tendencies; he must acquaint himself with the heretical leanings of a certain era, and the shadow cast upon the page by apocryphal tradition. In philosophy he is still worse off, because he must plumb the depths of metaphysical jargon and master the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dat one ever did see. At dat time Claude, he 'bout two year old and Clarence, he 'bout four er mebbe little less. Ella, she worked in da house cooking for Miss Fannie an' nussin' de chillun and she plumb crazy 'bout de chillun an' dey just as satisfied wid her as dey was wid dere mama and Ella thought more dem chillun dan she did anybody. She just crazy 'bout dem boys. Mars Luch, he gibe me job right 'way sort flunkying for him and hostling at de lot an' barn and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... 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
... yet," was Aleck Pop's comment. "I was finkin' dat rascal was plumb dead, suah. And Dan, too! Suah yo' didn't see ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... the deflection of plumb lines from the vertical, by the action of mountains. The attraction of a projecting mass of known bulk and density, with one whose bulk alone is known, is thus determined, and hence the density of the latter ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... "They plumb e't all the bacon and prunes and sugar and dog-food," Elijah reported, "and gosh darn my buttons, if they didn't gnaw open the sacks and scatter the flour and beans and rice from Dan to Beersheba. I found empty sacks where they'd dragged them a ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but pore white trash; ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... lays it down; an' he never hedges the bluff for so much as a single chip. He insists that you can't put a bet on women; that you can bet on hosses or kyards or 'lections, but not on women—women bein' too plumb oncertain. As I reads along, I can't he'p feelin' that somehow this philosophic party must have knowed ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... door shut abruptly. Lena's too thin boots, out of plumb, suddenly slipped on a half-formed piece of ice. She made a desperate grab at the smooth surface of the window and then came ignominiously down—not wholly ignominiously, however, since her accident brought to her aid the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... 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 up ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the plumb line figure of her neighbour appeared, ushered in by her husband, and received her with a somewhat embarrassed empressement, arising from the consciousness of goodwill disturbed by the fear of imputed meddlesomeness. She knew the inward justice of Miss Horn, however, and relied ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Buck, whose mildness 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
... resolution to submit to the State Legislatures an amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding the disfranchisement of United States citizens on account of sex, which resulted in 16 yeas, 34 nays, 26 absent.[61] Of the absentees Senators Chace, Dawes, Plumb and Stanford announced that they would have voted "yea;" Jones of Arkansas and Butler that they would ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... my poor beautiful cousin was falling day by day deeper into an abyss of love from which she could in no way extricate herself. In short, level-headed Frances had got far out of plumb, and, though she struggled desperately, she could not right herself, nor could any one help her. I fully realized that the small amount of self-restraint and passivity she still retained would give way to disastrous activity when the time should come for ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... his hams beside an emergency 'chute opening on the deck of the Penguin's weather observatory. He was letting down a spliced beryllium plumb line, his gaze riveted on the slowly turning horizontal drum of a windlass which contained more than two hundred feet of gleaming ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... he jibed when he could speak. "You must figger I'm plumb loco. Any fool ought to know anybody would hold off till you located the mine. Even supposing I was going to plant you, I'd wait, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... lecture on the law pertaining to the recovery of lost property, and closed the deal. Whereupon the wood-hauler unharnessed Pat, bestowed him smilingly upon Helen, and took himself off, evidently in quest of another horse, for he headed straight as a plumb-line for the city pound. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... 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 ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... not have dwell'd, But in one have been expell'd. Hapless mariners are they, Who beguil'd (as seamen say), Deeming him some rock or island, Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, Anchor in his scaly rind; Soon the difference they find; Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; Does to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... turn to the right from his house, going west. It's an unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ... you'll be alone, God knows—excepting ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... come up on the stoop and keep me company," continued Mrs. Clover; "I'm plumb tired of sitting round all alone. Moon'll be up before long; it's a purty sight, ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... out of here, Allen. If you think you can marry Morton Bassett's daughter with that kind of a scandal in your pocket, I tell you you're mad—you've plumb gone insane! Great God, boy, you don't know the meaning of the words you use. You handle that thing like a child with a loaded pistol. Don't you see what that would mean—to Marian, to Blackford, to Mrs. Bassett—to ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... that man's doin's he might ha' lit fire-crackers on my saddle. Then we went out jest's if a kiss was nothin', an' I wasn't three strides into my gait 'fore I felt the boss knoo his business, an' was trustin' me. So I studied to please him, an' he never took the whip from the dash—a whip drives me plumb distracted—an' the upshot was that—waal, I've come up the Back Pasture to-day, an' the coupe's tipped clear over twice, an' I've waited till 'twuz fixed each time. You kin judge for yourselves. I don't set up to be no better ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... howl. After you got under way they began to drift before the wind. We fought them all night, and if we'd let them go they'd been plumb into Colorado by this time. I don't want any more ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... man. He seemed to have a sense of humour. I felt sure that he, at least, was plumb straight. 'Sure, doc,' I said, 'I'm sorry about the tree, and I guess the new bulbs will be on me. But perhaps you'd like to know what I was doing in your garden?' 'I think the facts do call for an ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... tears from starting again—"'cause he ain't got much appetite. But when he's eatin' good his legs is jest great. Why, there ain't no other dog in Golconda that's got as strong legs as Baldy when he's—when he's eatin' good," he repeated hastily. "An' Golconda's plumb full o' fine dogs." ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... place N. 80 W. 3 ms to a pt. on S. S. passed a Isd. Called Sheeco Islan wind from the N W Camped in a Prarie on the L. S., Capt Lewis & my Self Walked out 3 ms. found the Country roleing open & rich, with plenty of water, great qts of Deer I discovered a Plumb which grows on bushes the hight of Hasle, those plumbs are in great numbers, the bushes beare Verry full, about double the Sise of the wild plumb Called the Osage Plumb & am ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... very well for a man to make a plumb fool of himself and waste his life if he's a-mind to, but he ain't got any business to drag other folks along with him. If I hadn't a-been a fool among fools I might a-been sittin' beside my little girl this minute, and not ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to school when I got her; she was plumb ignorant. But she's got all the airs of a fine lady now. Sometimes I go without sugar, but Bessie ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Just hidin' out in the woods, and mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess." ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... sometimes bucked but never went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen Ben Butler. To my discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked, "Why, there's nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, "That's all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me out! he's lying on me!" Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged Sylvane ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 scorned the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... It seemed to plumb the depths of irony and mockery. She could not make a move as Gypsy Nan. It would only result in their turning upon her, of the discovery that she was not Gypsy Nan at all, of the almost certainty that it would cost her her own life without saving the Sparrow's. That way was closed to her from ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... is a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... of the identity between the dead man and his heirs was certainly much older than any form of Testament or phase of Testamentary jurisprudence. This indeed is the proper moment for suggesting a doubt which will press on us with greater force the further we plumb the depths of this subject,—whether wills would ever have come into being at all if it had not been for these remarkable ideas connected with universal succession. Testamentary law is the application of a principle ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... I'se plumb forget, wuz pore white trash an' he wuz meaner dan de meanest nigger. Anyhow I wuz too little ter do much wuck so I played a heap an' I had a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... Jed said happily. "Most plumb forgot fer a couple o' weeks now, what with us bein' so consarned busy. It wuz purely fine ...
— Sonny • Rick Raphael
... hear thet name? I got a plumb good memory fer names an' faces. 'Pears I heerd thet name in Cheyenne, last summer.... I got it. Cowpuncher named Panhandle rode down street draggin' a bolt of red calico thet unwound an' stampeded all the hosses. Might thet lad have happened ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... of his guns, en' heard his shots jest the very littlest instant before I heard the shots of the riders. An' when I turned, Wright an' Carter was down, en' Jengessen, who's tough like a steer, was pullin' the trigger of a wabblin' gun. But it was plain he was shot through, plumb center. An' sudden he fell with a crash, an' his gun clattered ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... this up at the house." Johnny the unpoetical hesitated, perplexed. Philosophy was not in his line. "'Tisn't too bad," he said, suddenly aware of the beauty of the scene, and then the tradesman came to the surface. "I reckon MY job'll be a bit more on the plumb, though," he chuckled, and, delighted with his little joke, shouldered his axe and walked towards one of the marked trees, while Dan speculated aloud on the chances a man had of "getting off alive" if a tree ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn |
