"Shaft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The shaft went home. He had not kissed his woman. His marriage had been one of policy. It had saved the estate in the days when he had been almost beaten in the struggle to disencumber the vast holdings Isaac Travers' wide hands had grasped. The girl was a witch. She had probed an ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... present a tolerably uniform surface. At each end of its axis this screw is supported by pillars of hollow brass tube descending from the hoop. In the lower ends of these tubes are holes in which the pivots of the axis revolve. From the end of the axis which is next the car, proceeds a shaft of steel, connecting the screw with the pinion of a piece of spring machinery fixed in the car. By the operation of this spring, the screw is made to revolve with great rapidity, communicating a progressive motion to the whole. By means of the rudder, the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... prepared instinctively for battle against any foe who might present himself. For a moment he held himself taut; then, nothing of an alarming nature having happened, he drew a swift breath of relief and flashed on his light. He gave vent to a low exclamation. The swiftly darting shaft from the torch had revealed the figure of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may wing her shaft at the towering ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of a plain Doric column, surmounted with a colossal statue of the Duke of York. The pedestal and shaft are of fine granite. The plinth, or base of the pedestal, is 22 feet square, and the pedestal 18 feet; the circumference of the shaft is 11 feet 6 inches, decreasing to 10 feet 2 inches at the top; the abacus is 13 feet 6 inches square. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... a while. Their light was extinguished, but, up near the ceiling, a shaft of light came through the partition from ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... there was a broad bright shaft Of moonlight, slanting through an Eastern pane Full on her tomb and that black Catafalque. And on the tomb there lay—my bunch of keys! I struggled to my feet, Ashamed of my wild fancies, like a man Awakening from a drunken dream. And yet, When I picked up the keys, although that storm Of terror ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... forming fire, why have you lent Your hidden vertues of so ill intent? Even such a face, so fair, so bright of hue Had Amoret; such words so smooth and new, Came flying from her tongue; such was her eye, And such the pointed sparkle that did flye Forth like a bleeding shaft; all is the same, The Robe and Buskins, painted Hook, and frame Of all ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... speaker. In its demand for clearness lies also its difficulty. Is it easy to tell the exact truth, not as a moral exercise, but merely as a matter of exactness? Why do the careless talkers speak so often of "a sort of pink" or "a kind of revolving shaft" or tack on at the end of phrases the meaningless "something" or "everything" except that even in their unthinking minds there is the hazy impression—they really never have a well-defined idea—that they have not said exactly ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the forges and jets of steam, and davits uplifted in the air; and hear the rattle of the iron trucks and the rush of the coal as it runs through the schutes into the rail-cars on the road beneath. We tie our pony beside a cinder-heap, and mount a ladder to the level of the huge platform above the shaft. A constant supply of small hand-cars come up with demoniac groans and shrieks from the bowels of the earth through the shaft. These are instantly seized by the laborers and run over an iron floor to the schute, where they are caught ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... one corner those projecting pieces. They were once part of some projecting wheel. Why, of course, it's a windmill. The other end of that cross-beam goes outside for the fans to be attached to it. This big cross-beam was the shaft. Of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... chaste as moonlight, a wild girl, pure, free, noble; the ideal of youthful womanhood, who can share with man manly exercises and open-air sports, and add to manly strength a womanly grace. So she seems in the statue; in swift motion, the air lifting her tunic from her noble limbs, while she draws a shaft from the quiver to kill a hind. No Greek could look at such a statue, and not learn to reverence the purity and nobleness ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... it would be, I thought, if I could shoot him with my tiny bow and arrows! Stealthily and cautiously I approached, keeping my eyes upon the pretty little animal, and just as I was about to let fly my shaft, I heard a hissing noise at my feet. There lay a horrid snake, coiled and ready to spring! Forgetful that I was a warrior, I gave a loud scream and started backward; but soon recollecting myself, looked down with shame, although no one was near. However, I retreated to the inclined trunk ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... thus saved is the heir of Avenel, and the intricacy and fateful bearing of every incident and word in the scene, knitting into one central moment all the clews to the plot of two romances, as the rich boss of a Gothic vault gathers the shaft moldings of it, can only be felt by an entirely attentive reader; just as (to follow out the likeness on Scott's own ground) the willow-wreaths changed to stone of Melrose tracery can only be caught in their plighting ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the Three Raced for their Lives up the Shaft of the Radium Mine, for Behind Them Poured a Stream of Hideous Monsters—Giants ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... few hundred feet distant from the Mammoth Springs Hotel stands a strange, naturally molded shaft of stone, fifty-two feet in height. From certain points its summit calls to mind the head-dress of the Revolution, and hence its name is Liberty Cap. It is a fitting monument to mark the entrance into Wonderland, for it is the cone of an old ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... beholds not death as forth he flies Into the splendor of the living flame; The hart athirst to crystal water hies, Nor heeds the shaft, nor fears the hunter's aim; The timid bird, returning from above To join his mate, deems not the net is nigh; Unto the light, the fount, and to my love, Seeing the flame, the shaft, the chains, I fly; So high a torch, love-lighted in the skies, Consumes my soul; and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a few days, Juliet in that brief period must assume several distinct characters. We see her first the coy, heart-whole maiden, the cherished heiress of a patrician house: soon the blind bow-boy launches his shaft, and, quick as thought, she is passionately, impulsively, enduringly in love; then we see her but a few hours a bride, with black sorrow creeping already to darken her happiness; her kinsman is slain, Romeo banished, and the coy maiden is changed at once to the devoted wife, capable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Nor fell the tasseled plumes as satin soft Upon the broad-leaved corn. Sweet all the day O'erflowed with music every woodland way; And sweet the jargonings of nested bird, When light the listless wind the forest stirred. Straight as the shaft that 'gainst the morning sun The slender palm uprears, the Fairest one— The first of womankind—sweet Lilith—stood, A gracious shape that glorified the wood. About her rounded shoulders warm and bare, Like netted sunshine fell her lustrous hair; The rosy ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... a great many names for the same passion,—Envy, Jealousy, Spite, Prejudice, Rivalry; but they are so many synonyms for the one old heathen demon. When the death-giving shaft of Apollo sent the plague to some unhappy Achaean, it did not much matter to the victim whether the god were called Helios ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... guard open the palisade that closed the tented field, and as into its ample bounds Marmion passed, the warders' men drew back. The Scottish warriors stared at the strangers, and envy arose at seeing them so well appointed. Such length of shaft, bows so mighty, had never been seen by northern eyes. Little did the Highlanders then think to feel these shafts through links of Scotch mail on ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... of heavy steps in panic flight. I jerked up. Jenny hung on. "Paul.... Paul...." But there was the smell of death in the air, suddenly. I broke free and was out into the corridor. The noise seemed to come from the shaft that led to the engine room, and I jumped for it, while ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... have died at an advanced age, though the precise date of his demise has not been ascertained. He has also left some religious works; and his "Shaft of Death" is well known and much admired both by ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... rose in the air, the sound of deep breathing, the moving of restless bodies between the coarse sheets, the momentary noise of the scratching of blunt finger-tips, a subdued cough, the moan of a sleeping child. All the while the shaft of the screw, seemingly close beneath the floor, pounded and rumbled ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... with a white mist. The huge copper lid of the lye-water kettle was rising mechanically along a notched shaft, and from the gaping copper hollow within its wall of bricks came whirling clouds of vapor. Meanwhile, at one side the drying machines were hard at work; within their cast-iron cylinders bundles of laundry were being wrung dry by the centrifugal force of the steam engine, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... bad as the thief," laughed Cnut, "and if the foresters caught us in the act, I wot they would make but little difference whether it was the shaft of my longbow or the quarrel from thy crossbow which brought down the quarry. But again, lad, why comest thou here? for I see by the sweat on your face and by the heaving of your sides that you have ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... doors, paneless sash stuffed with rags, unsightly litter strewn around, misery stamped on every feature of the homeless tenements. Dreariest of all is a deserted mining village, and there are many such—the shaft having been worked out, or an unquenchable subterranean fire left to smolder in neglect. Here the tipple has fallen into creaking decrepitude; the cabins are without windows or doors—these having been taken to some newer hamlet; ridge-poles ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... said, a remarkably fine young bird. His plumage was of a glossy blackness, with which not even a raven's could vie; his bright eyes looked even brighter as they gleamed from the deep yellow rims which surrounded them, and his bill resembled the polished shaft of an ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... walked away briskly after delivering this Parthian shaft, Miss Whichello stood looking after him with an expression of nervous worry on her rosy face. She had her own reasons to apprehend trouble in connection with the engagement, and although these were unknown to the chaplain, his chance arrow ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the site of this once magnificent city. Near the village is the Pillar of On, a famous obelisk, supposed to be the oldest monument of the kind existing. Its height is 671/2 feet, and its breadth at the base 6 feet. It is one single shaft of reddish granite (Sienite), and hieroglyphical characters ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... going forward in "the Toffs' Shanty," and from both sides of the river the diggers begin to assemble in anticipation of a "spree." Across the scarred, disfigured valley, over the mullock-heaps, from every calico tent, from out of every shaft, from the edge of the dark forest itself, bearded men, toil-stained but smiling, bent on festivity, collect in Canvas ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword." And Isaiah says, in the name of the Servant of the Lord, "He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... machine such as they now had would be impractical. No matter how perfectly it might be insulated, the atmosphere itself would not be an insulator, with power such as this. And if one tried to deliver the energy as a mechanical rotation of a shaft, what shaft could transmit it safely ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... bitter reply Wheeler retired precipitately; the shaft pierced but one bosom; for the devoted wife, with the swift ingenuity of woman's love, had put both her hands right over her husband's ears that he might ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... destroying it is a rock; and they destroy that at last. But it takes a good while. There is a stone now standing in very good order that was as old as a monument of Louis XIV. and Queen Anne's day is now when Joseph went down into Egypt. Think of the shaft on Bunker Hill standing in the sunshine on the morning of January 1st in ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Another shaft was more successful. It pierced the heart of "number four," and brought it down like a lump of lead. "Number five" seemed a little perplexed by this time, and made a motion as though it were about to fly off, but an arrow caught it in the throat, and cut short its intentions ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... and no phantom, he did not hesitate long. He entered and found it lead spirally downwards. Descending with some difficulty, for the passage was narrow, he arrived at a small chamber, into one corner of which the stone shaft, containing the stair, projected half its round. The chamber looked as if it had been hollowed out of the rock. A narrow window, little more than a loop-hole through the thick wall, admitted the roar of the waves and a dim grey light. This light was just sufficient to show him ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... dangerous form of vadding is 'elevator rodeo', a.k.a. 'elevator surfing', a sport played by wrasslin' down a thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of string, and then exploiting this mastery in various stimulating ways (such as elevator hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and the ever-popular drop experiments). Kids, don't try this at home! See also ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... woman?" The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at—a black pillar!—such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the gibus hats beats description. Some were very tall, the shaft crowned with a platform larger than the head, like the shako of an Imperial Lancer; others very low, ending in an inverted cone—the mouth of a blunderbuss ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... received this without the flutter of an eyelid. Fyne's masculine breast, as might have been expected, was pierced by that old, regulation shaft. He grunted most feelingly. I turned to him with false simplicity. "Don't, you agree ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... archers of old, Village wights true and bold, Unerring in hand and in eye, Learned skill in their craft With yew-bow and shaft, Wand to ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... and the wind of his going fanned his spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at the sight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled, then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grom was upon them. The flame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip. With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in the nearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy of terror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. The fire was speedily whipped out ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... seem! How soon arrested in thy early bloom Has fate decreed thee to the joyless tomb! Nor beauty, genius, nor the Muse's care, Nor aught could move the tyrant Death to spare: Ah! could their power revoke the stern decree, The fatal shaft had past, unfelt by thee! But vain thy wit, thy sentiment refined, Thy charms external, and accomplish'd mind; Thy artless smiles, that seized the willing heart, Thy converse, that could pure delight impart; The melting music of thy skilful tongue, While judgement listen'd, ravish'd ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Indians; then in wooden mortars with pestles. Then rude hand-mills were made—"quernes"—with upright shafts fixed immovably at the upper end, and fastened at the lower end near the outside edge of a flat, circular stone, which was made to revolve in a mortar. By turning the shaft with one hand, the corn could be supplied to the grinding-stone with the other. These hand-mills are sometimes still found in use as "samp-mills." Wind-mills and water-mills followed naturally in the train ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the word he uttered, he drew his keen sword out Brazen, on each side shearing, and with a fearful shout Rushed on him; but Odysseus that very while let fly And smote him with the arrow in the breast, the pap hard by, And drove the swift shaft to the liver, and adown to the ground fell the sword From out of his hand, and doubled he hung above the board, And staggered; and whirling he fell, and the meat was scattered around, And the double cup moreover, and his forehead smote ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... inland part of a river which is in so many of the English valleys associated with some important crossing. The jurisdiction of the port of London over the river extended as high as the little island just opposite the mouth of the Colne. On this island can still be seen the square stone shaft which is at least as old as the thirteenth century (though it stands on more modern steps), and which marks this limit, as it does also the shire mark between Middlesex ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the back ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... feathers like those on the wing arise from the outer side of the legs and toes. Even the elemental parts of the same feather may be transposed; for in the Sebastopol goose, barbules are developed on the divided filaments of the shaft. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... keeping an eye on the door to the elevator shaft. Once already it had opened, letting a bright window into the farther wall of the shadowed room, discovering the figure of the maitre d'hotel in silhouette, anxiety in his attitude. He was waiting for somebody, waiting tensely. So were the others waiting, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Evelyn, and Maria quite agreed with her. The conviction of her own goodness, and her forthcoming power to exercise it, filled her soul with a gentle, stimulating warmth after she was in bed. The moonlight shone brightly into her room. She gazed at the bright shaft of silver it made across all her familiar possessions, and, notwithstanding her young girl dreams were gone, she realized that, although she had lost all the usual celestial dreams and rafters of romance which go to make a young girl's air-castle, she had still left ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... come he pondered them closely and was thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always, to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense were the walls of the prison that ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... pale tawny color, and just enough motion to make things frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset of unusual splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and profusion of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear drab of the afternoon light, there steam'd up the river the large, new boat, "the Wenonah," as pretty an object as you could wish to see, lightly and swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, cover'd with flags, transparent red ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... luminous, grateful, so like a shaft of light passing from one to another that it ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... sure as we can be of anything that hasn't happened yet. But I see that your guardian angel here is eyeing her clock somewhat pointedly, so I'd better be doing a flit before they toss me down a shaft. Clear ether, Storm!" ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... paled ever so slightly, though she strove to give no sign that his shaft had hit home. Adrien had received a letter that morning, as she knew, one having been brought up ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... cleaning rice, of which one secured by patent to Mr. M. Wilson, in 1826, and thus described by Dr. Ure, may be regarded as a fair specimen:—It consists of an oblong hollow cylinder, laid in an inclined position, having a great many teeth stuck in its internal surface, and a central shaft, also furnished with teeth. By the rapid revolution of the shaft, its teeth are carried across the intervals of those of the cylinder, with the effect of parting the grains of rice, and detaching whatever husks ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... later, waiting in the stifling darkness, he heard the rattle of metal against metal and the snap of the padlock. There was the tramp of departing feet. Gradually he became able to see about him in some degree. Away up above him was a square of sunlit sky at the top of the shaft. He saw in one corner a large pail with a cover; inside it were several bottles. Also, there was a bundle ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... cabinet de toilette, a narrow slip of a room with a wash-hand stand and a very dirty window covered with yellow paper. I pulled open this window with great difficulty—it cannot have been opened for years—and found it gave on to a very small and deep interior court, just an air shaft round which the house was built. At the bottom was a tiny paved court not more than five foot square, entirely isolated save on one side where there was a basement window with a flight of steps leading down from ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... for Lawrence in his mournful watch. As the day began to wane, Reginald entering, saw that the end was near, and knelt to say the last prayers; as he finished the pale March sun, struggling through the clouds, sent a shaft of soft light into the room and touched Wikkey's closed eyes. They opened with a smile, and raising himself in Lawrence's arms, he leant forward with a look so eager and expectant, that with a thrill of awe, almost amounting to ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... not been secret before the coming of the Twins to the knoll. They were high up on the outer face of it, airy and well lighted by two inaccessible holes under an overhanging ledge. But the entrance to them was by a narrow shaft which rose sharply from a cave in the heart of the knoll. On this shaft the Twins had spent their best pains for two and a half wet days the year before; and they had reduced some seven or eight feet of it to a passage fifteen inches high and eighteen inches broad. ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... beauty of the shieling, Thy graceful air, like arrow-shaft, A fiery flame concealing, Has left me to the marrow chaf'd. So winsome is thy smiling, Thy love-craft so beguiling, It binds me like the wilding, And I yield, in dule ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... little like an engine-room as any place he had ever known. At one side was a horse-power treadmill, such as he had often seen used for the sawing of wood. Half of it was sunk below the level of the deck, and covered with a removable floor. It was geared in the most direct and simple manner to a shaft that disappeared through the rear wall of the room, and presumably connected with the stern wheel he had previously noticed. There was also a belt extending to a shaft pulley overhead, but beyond this there was ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... all who knew him, a sentiment which he returned with vicious interest, and never neglected an opportunity of lodging some sneering shaft where it ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... radiantly in response to the message, dancing lightly down the hall as a hummingbird might flutter along, and the mere sight of her merry face as it popped through the study doorway was like a sudden shaft of sunlight in the great room. The President had determined to meet her gravely, even sternly, and show her that her uncalled-for generosity had displeased them, but in spite of himself, his eyes ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ore, treasure, and thieves may be revealed, according to old superstition. Cornish miners, who live in a land so plentifully stored with tin and copper lodes they can have had little difficulty in locating seams of ore with or without a hazel rod, scarcely ever sink a shaft except by ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... six-foot individual, entirely out of his class and far too small to fight with him, it is murder. An alligator will seize the leg of a rival and by violently whirling around on his axis, like a revolving shaft, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... took a fresh grip upon the hammer-shaft, twirled it lightly above his head, swung it once, twice, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... left I came to an opening in the land, called, I believe, 'The Shaft,' and into this I turned, climbing a very great number of steps, almost covered at one point with dead: the steps I began to count, but left off, then the dead, and left off. Finally, at the top, which must be even higher than the Castle, I came to a great open ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... his water-gun and from its nozzle, the gleaming terror leapt. At first it was only a slim volley of light, compact and solid as a shaft of steel. To pierce it would have splintered to pieces the sharpest sword. It was a core of water, round, glistening and smooth, yet in its mighty power it was a ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the others, although they were good fellows enough, refused to return into the tunnel. At length, however, Orme and Japhet persuaded some of the best of them to do so, and shortly after this the atmosphere improved very much, I suppose because we cut some cranny or shaft which ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... of the great war? Was it possible that the greatest battle of all time was taking place at the very moment not sixty miles away? Yet it was a real "Bon soir" that a passing gendarme gave me as I strolled homeward past the great bronze shaft erected by Napoleon in the Place Vendome and now towering black in the white moonlight, while the river Seine shimmered like molten silver in its way to the sea. It was really true but it was one of those times when a soldier ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... A shaft of sunlight awoke me, and I examined my new prison with care. It was a bit of a natural rock passage, such as I had often seen on Sercq, formed, I have been told, by the decay of some softer material between two masses of rock. It was about eight feet wide, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Minima know my fears—when I saw dimly, through the mist, a high cross standing in the midst of a small grove of yews and cypresses, planted formally about it. There were three tiers of steps at its foot, the lowest partly screened from the gathering rain by the trees. The shaft of the cross, with a serpent twining about its base, rose high above the cypresses; and the image of the Christ hanging upon its crossbeams fronted the east, which was now heavy with clouds. The half-closed eyes seemed to be gazing ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Giovanni e Paolo, even if I cared to discuss them; I only wonder that, in speaking of the bad art which produced the tomb of the Venieri, he failed to mention the successful approach to its depraved feeling, made by the single figure sitting on the case of a slender shaft, at the side of the first altar on the right of the main entrance. I suppose this figure typifies Grief, but it really represents a drunken woman, whose drapery has fallen, as if in some vile debauch, to her waist, and who broods, with a horrible, heavy stupor and chopfallen vacancy, on something ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... forth, with his arm familiarly linked in that of the Archbishop, whose horse had likewise been made ready that he might accompany the King back to Westminster. The jester was close at hand, and as a parting shaft he observed, while the King mounted his horse, "Friend Hal! give my brotherly commendations to our Madge, and tell her that one who weds Anguish cannot choose ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and endeavoured to calculate his horoscope. I reckon him the remarkablest Pontiff that has darkened God's daylight, or painted himself in the human retina, for these several thousand years. Nay, since Chaos first shivered, and 'sneezed,' as the Arabs say, with the first shaft of sunlight shot through it, what stranger product was there of nature and art working together? Here is a supreme priest who believes God to be—what, in the name of God, does he believe God to be?—and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... above all things delighted by pillage; they fight from chariots, having small swift horses; they fight also on foot, are very fleet when running, and most resolute when compelled to stand; their arms consist of a shield and a short spear, having a brazen knob at the extremity of a shaft, that when shaken it may terrify the enemy by its noise; they use daggers also; and are capable of enduring hunger, thirst, and hardships of every description; for when plunged in the marshes they abide there many days, with their heads only out of water; ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... For a moment a shaft of light seemed to dart from those expressive eyes upon the questioner, but the instantaneous gleam of surprise and ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand, Flashing and cast around! Of all the band, The brightest through these parted hills hath forked His lightnings,—as if he did understand, That in such gaps as desolation worked, There, the hot shaft should blast ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hands out once or twice, first to one side and then to the other of the passage way, in order to steady herself as she passed along. Presently they came to a place where they had to go up five or six steps, and then to go immediately down again. It was the place where the main shaft passed out from the engine to the paddle wheel. After getting over this obstruction, they went on a a little farther, and then came into a large dining saloon, where several long tables were spread, and a great many passengers were seated, ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... its first trial. It looked workmanlike in spite of its wide beam and shallow draught, for the great designer who had fashioned the lines of the fastest destroyer afloat had himself drawn up the plans after giving a day's careful thought to the job. The shaft, which rested on nickel-steel sockets, with ball bearings supported by nickel-steel ribs for lightness, was protected by a water-tight casing, and all the other parts made of the very best metal, so as to ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... involuntarily over their shoulders into the dense blackness of the forest. At one point a single broad shaft of light slid down between two pines and cast a golden blotch upon their track. Save for this one vivid spot ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... used the fly-wheels have been attached to a horizontal shaft or axle, and have thus been made to revolve in a vertical plane, since the horizontal shaft is best adapted to the transmission of power. If, however, in this case we should use a heavy rotating mass, corresponding to the power employed and revolving rapidly in a vertical plane, ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... there been a dark night between this window and the sea. Not once has my spark been put out: and I will not think it now. God can kindle fire where He pleases. I have heard tell that people in foreign countries have seen a lightning-shaft dart down into a forest, and make a tree blaze up like a torch. God has ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... he thought—the up and down stroke of the piston in and out of the cylinder, which oscillated from side to side guided by the eccentric; with the steady systematic revolution of the shaft, borne round by the crank attached to the piston-head, all working so smoothly, and yet with such ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... pointing dramatically to the shaft of sunlight filtering through the companionway. "The sun, the blessed old ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... acquiring. He and two of his men threw themselves forward, seized the ladder, if so it may be called, dragged it once more to the ground, and ascended. But Clifford, grasping with both hands the broken shaft of a cart that lay in reach, received the foremost invader with a salute that sent him prostrate and senseless back among his companions. The second shared the same fate; and the stout leader of the enemy, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pie Face standing, with bridle reins dropped, across the street and in the broad shaft of light streaming from the open door of the pool-room, and went into ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... a Norman shaft, along the floor A portraiture on ancient bronze designed In Academic hood and robes of yore, Commemorates some by-gone lord of mind. Mournful the face and dignified the head: A man who pondered much upon ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... of Mr. Walter Ness, a valiant Scotchman, who afterwards became the manager of her Majesty's mines in Warora, Central India. Five or six of us huddled together on the 'skip,' the word was given, and we shot down into the black shaft, which seemed in the light of the lamps we carried as if its wet and shining walls of brick rushed upwards whilst we kept stationary. In a while we stopped, with a black pool of water three or ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... the Prince of Wales had planted his army just where he would tempt John into that trap and had set his archers in good position. These men were clad in green, like Robin Hood's men, and carried bows seven feet long and so thick that few men of modern days could bend them. A cloth-yard shaft from one of these would fly with tremendous force. Edward had placed these archers in ambush, behind green hedges, and crouching in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... three paces. He was a negro, already old, tall and powerfully built, but evidently did not suffer from too much courage, as the calves of his legs quivered so that he had to implant the edge of a spear in the ground and support himself on the shaft in order to ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the lopper had finished his task, he left at the top of the straight slender shaft of the tree the rope collar which he had brought up with him, and afterwards descends again with spurlike prods along the discrowned trunk, which the woodcutters thereupon attacked at the base, striking ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... London, was opened for foot-passengers by a procession of dignitaries and eminent men, including in their ranks the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Inglis, Lord Lincoln, Joseph Hume, Messrs. Babbage and Faraday, &c. &c. The party descended by one staircase, shaft, and archway which carried them to Wapping, and, ascending again, returned by the other archway to Rotherhithe. Some of the Thames watermen hoisted black flags as a sign that they considered their ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... dark figures stood on the pithead, waiting their turn to go below. The cage rattled up from the depths of the shaft, the men stepped in, and almost immediately disappeared down into the blackness. Arrived at the bottom, they walked along towards the different passages, chaffing and jesting with Tam ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... far side of the yard, and this looks like an open shed in which carts are stored. Yes, carts," repeated Henri, having driven his shin rather violently against a shaft, and with difficulty refrained from giving loud expression to his feelings. "Let's have a look at the roof. Stop here a minute, while I prospect and see whether ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... things, which soothed the mind with the illusion that this was a sacred spot appointed for an offering of souls. Near one of those isles of sunlight we lingered; and as she looked up to the source of light, the movement brought her face near the slanting shaft of rays, until there was set round it an aureole of dancing beams. It seemed to me at this part of my dream that there came to both of us some gracious influence, for as her eyes met mine they dropped again, and were fixed for a moment upon the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Before leaving the Spaniards we must look at the most pleasing of all Ribera's works,—the Ladder-Dream of Jacob. The patriarch lies stretched on the open plain in the deep sleep of the weary. To the right in a broad shaft of cloudy gold the angels are ascending and descending. The picture is remarkable for its mingling the merits of Ribera's first and second manner. It is a Caravaggio in its strength and breadth of light and shade, and a Correggio ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... boys ate hungrily as course after course appeared on the middle of the table, via the direct shaft from the kitchen. So absorbed was Manning that he did not notice the approach of a tall dark young man of about his own age, dressed in the red-brown uniform of the Passenger Space Service. But the young man, who wore a captain's high-billed hat, ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... kindle, with dissuasive voice Awhile he labour'd to degrade my choice: Then, in the whirling wave of pleasure, sought From its loved object to divert my thought. With equal hope he might attempt to bind In chains of adamant the lawless wind; For love had aim'd the fatal shaft too sure, Hope fed the wound, and absence knew no cure. With alienated look, each art he saw Still baffled by superior nature's law. 470 His anxious mind on various schemes revolved, At last on cruel exile he resolved; The rigorous doom was fix'd; alas, how vain To him of ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... request permission to descend into the "bowels of the land." This is accorded us without difficulty, and we receive a beautiful specimen of German text, in the shape of a lithographed Fahrschein, or permission to descend into Abraham's Shaft and Himmelfahrt, and to inspect all the works and appliances thereunto belonging. This Fahrschein especially informs us, that no person, unless of the Minerstand (fraternity of miners), can be permitted ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... two shakes we're shootin' down a one hundred and fifty foot shaft with no stops until the ground floor. Not until we gets outside and Mr. Ellins jumps into his cab does ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... orchids pendent from the great fungus-covered roots of a giant challenged her attention. She gathered them. Farther on, in a spot where a shaft of sunlight fell, she plucked an armful of golden California poppies and flaming rhododendron, and with her delicate burden she came at length to the giant-guarded clearing where the halo of sunlight fell upon the grave of Bryce Cardigan's mother. There were red ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... carrying their packs, camping and fishing in that far, tremendous isolation, which in those days few human beings had ever visited at all. Such trips furnished a delicious respite from the fevered struggle around tunnel and shaft. Amid mountain-peaks and giant forests and by tumbling falls the quest for gold hardly seemed worth while. More than once that summer he went alone into the wilderness to find his balance and to get away entirely ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 4th century B.C. have been preserved.[4] It might be remarked that these "machine" gear wheels are characterized by having a "round number" of teeth (examples with 16, 24 and 40 teeth are known) and a shank with a square hole which fits without turning on a squared shaft. Another remarkable feature in these early gears is the use of ratchet-shaped teeth, sometimes even twisted helically so that the gears resemble worms intermeshing on parallel axles.[5] The existence of windmills ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... the hale and how of the mariners as they drew up the anchor and sheeted home; and then the sweeps came out and the ship began to move over the sea. And one of those evil-minded men bent his bow and shot a shaft at us, but it fell far short of where we sat, and the laugh of those runagates came over the sands to us. So we crept up the beach trembling, and then rose to our feet and got to our horses, and rode hither speedily, and our hearts are broken for ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... account practically this most important factor in human and animal life. We toil for bread, but we ignore the supply of oxygen. And why? Simply because oxygen is universally diffused everywhere. It costs nothing. Only in the Black Hole of Calcutta or in a broken tunnel shaft do men ever begin to find themselves practically short of that life-sustaining gas, and then they know the want of it far sooner and far more sharply than they know the want of food on a shipwreck raft, or the want of water in ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... pauses of his hard day's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his partiality for a good joke; and, through the window, from the seat of Mr. Lincoln, I see across the grassy grounds of the capitol, the broken shaft of the Washington Monument, the long bridge and the fort-tipped Heights of Arlington, reaching down to the shining river side. These scenes he looked at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water, and often raised the sash ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... large club with a long shaft; the head is wood. It is used to start and when the ball ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the cataract, exactly at the spot from whence in former days the Table Rock used to project from the land over the boiling caldron below, there is now a shaft, down which you will descend to the level of the river, and pass between the rock and the torrent. This Table Rock broke away from the cliff and fell, as up the whole course of the river the seceding rocks ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... they went, retrieving McKay's pistol on the way. About a yard above the earth a long shaft projected from the bark. Knowlton reached for it, but McKay held him back and drew ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... enormous deposit of wood ashes, in deep pits, which looked as if great fires had burnt there; and the walls in those two corners were all calcined and smoke-stained. We found fifty or sixty urns, all full of bones; and in another corner there was a deep shaft, like a well, dug in the chalk, with handholds down the sides, also full of calcined bones. We found a few coins, and in one place a conglomeration of rust that looked as if it might have been a heap of tools ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to take a lingering last farewell, As down her cheek the pearly teardrops flow, Of some lamented spirit she lov'd well, By Fate's inexorable shaft laid low; And thus half broken-hearted to complain "When shall we look upon thy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... that rests with the spur on his heel, - As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, - As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... never completed his sentence. At that instant the whole of the heavens seemed to split and gape open. A shaft of light, extending from horizon to horizon, paralyzed their vision. It was accompanied by a crash of thunder that set their ear-drums well-nigh bursting. Both lightning and the thunder lasted for what seemed interminable ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... and there are four men who have the rottenest time of anyone—they're the miners who burrow and dig, dig and burrow day and night towards the German lines; poor half-naked fellows who wheel little trucks of earth to the pit shaft or who lie on their stomachs working away with picks. And it's always an awful race to see if they'll blow up the Germans, or if it will be ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... English homily[1] of unknown authorship and uncertain date, which contains these three facts, (though the name of the bishop is not given). Still another remarkable coincidence has been pointed out by Zupitza.[2] In line 1189 of the Andreas, Satan is addressed as d[e]ofles str[ae]l ("shaft of the devil"), and in the homily also the same word (str[ae]l) is found. But in the corresponding passage of the Greek we find [Greek: O Belia echthrotate] ("O most hateful Belial"). From this correspondence between the poem and ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... becoming open and free like everything else that is British;—open to the poor man as well as to the rich. That bugbear Capital is a crumbling old tower, and is pretty nigh brought to its last ruin. Credit is the polished shaft of the temple on which the new world of trade will be content to lean. That, I take it, is the one great doctrine of modern commerce. Credit,—credit,—credit. Get credit, and capital will follow. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... of shaft of metatarsal and the corresponding half of proximal phalanx of great toe for exostosis, with antiseptic precautions. The result was a useful toe with a ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... and the dark houses gave an air of mystery—a speculation—what could be going on behind those closed shutters? Here and there a straight blue-clad figure slunk away round a corner. There was a deep silence and the moonlight made the shadows sharp as a knife. Then a shaft of red light would shoot from some strange low hovel as they passed, and they could see inside a circle of Arab Bedouins crouching over a fire. There seemed no hilarity, their faces were solemn ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... which the pathos of her own voice had called up. She looked at her mother. There were no tears in her eyes: only a dull thwart look of terror and suspicion. The shaft, however bravely and cunningly sped, had ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... looking through the iron bars at the silent empty street. The prospect was not entertaining, and I presently turned away. At this moment I saw, in the distance, the door of the house open and throw a shaft of lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight there stepped the figure of a female, who presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden, and I had seen her but for an instant, but I remained under the impression that ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... baskets were seen, so solidly and strongly made of bejuco as to be well-nigh indestructible under ordinary conditions. Mr. Maimban got me a pair of defensive spears (so-called because never thrown, but used at close quarters) with hollow-ground blades of tempered steel, the head of the shaft being wrapped with bejuco, ornamentally stained and ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... old-world plesaunce were quite familiar to him, Gerald goes straight on, down a grass path ending in what appears to be a high impenetrable wall of yew, and Nancy, surprised, then sees that a narrow, shaft-like way leads straight ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... bent by the oblique thrusts and pulls which it imparts through C R to the crank K. The latter is keyed to a shaft S carrying the fly-wheel, or, in the case of a locomotive, the driving-wheels. The crank shaft revolves in bearings. The internal diameter of a cylinder is called its bore. The travel of the piston is called its stroke. The distance from the centre of the shaft to the centre of the crank pin is called the crank's throw, which is half of the piston's stroke. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... be the Devil's own!" declared the pastor, his eyes flashing with fury. "When one of Satan's imps hath been wounded by a shaft of truth, shot from the bow of God, the angels of darkness, verily, will hover over the suffering devil, and seek to undo what God hath done." He called on those suffering from the familiar spirits to behold one even now willing ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... climbed to reach her cottage door; O sweetly my love sings! Like a shaft of light her voice breaks forth, My soul to meet it springs As the shining water leaped of old, When stirred by angel wings. Aye longing to list anew, Awake and in my dream, But never a song she sang like this, Sewing her long ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... they had waded through all this blood and fire. Never had men more simplicity of purpose, more directness in its execution. They had conquered their India at last; its golden mines lay all before them, and every sword should open a shaft. Riot and rape might be deferred; even murder, though congenial to their taste, was only subsidiary to their business. They had come to take possession of the city's wealth, and they set themselves faithfully to accomplish their task. For gold, infants were dashed out of existence ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... smooth, broad floor led the strange tunnel, for such Carthoris was now convinced was the nature of the shaft he at first had ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
