"Slab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sound of an explosion reached their ears, but more than an hour went by before the smoke and fumes would allow them to enter the place, and then it was to find that the results did not equal their expectations. To begin with, the slab was only cracked—not shattered, since the strength of the powder had been expended upwards, not downwards, as would have happened in the case of dynamite, of which they had none. Moreover, either the heavy ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... line with a round tower buried with ivy, and near the vault of our beautiful countrywoman, Miss Bathurst, who was thrown from her horse and drowned in the Tiber, may be seen a sarcophagus of rough granite, surmounted by a black marble slab. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... about 20 deg. N., 51 deg. E. As soon as I had gratified the first feelings of curiosity, I descended, and each man ascended in his turn; for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze, where never flag waved before. During our morning's ascent, we had met no sign of animal ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... on to my feet, and I saw marks on the stone underneath. I had tracked the Abbot down, my dear Gregory; even now I think of it with a certain pride. It took but a very few more taps to clear the whole of the cement away, and I saw a slab of stone about two feet square, upon which was engraven a cross. Disappointment again, but only for a moment. It was you, Brown, who reassured me by a casual remark. You said, ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... circumstances such as those in which I was at this time placed. One day when on the top of a tall building, part of which we were throwing down to supply us with materials for our work, I raised up a broad slab of red micaceous sandstone, thin as a roofing slate, and exceedingly fragile, and, holding it out at arm's length, dropped it over the wall. I had been worse than usual all that morning, and much depressed; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... injured by the ravages of time, the United States government in 1873, with the co-operation of the marquis de Noailles, then French minister, had it moved into the vestibule of the church, placing a granite slab over the tomb. One of Rochambeau's aides ascribes the admiral's death to chagrin at having let five English ships escape ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... is of white marble, a solid mass large enough to support a coffin; upon that a sarcophagus rests. The remains are not enclosed within. As I stepped aside I found I had been standing upon a slab marked 'Isaac Newton,' beneath which the great ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... bays and a lofty clerestory. The rood-screen is co-extensive with the width of the entire church; the octagonal font is of great antiquity (probably not less than 700 years); there are several brasses, two of which are of the early part of the fifteenth century. Note also (1) the defaced slab, with Lombardic inscription to Reynaud de Argenthem, (2) the piscina-like recess in the N. chapel, (3) the Dec. pillars and arches of nave, (4) the fine old chest near rood-screen (N. chapel). Baldock has been the recipient ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... of, he found there a premature and early grave at the age of only one hundred and fifty-two years. He lies in Westminster Abbey, it is true, but he would probably have preferred the upper side of his own hearth-stone to the under side of the slab which covers him. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the lampglow, and stared. The girl was standing on a flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool. Behind her was a carpet of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a mountain. She was barefooted. Her feet were white against the dark rock. Her arms were bare to the elbows, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... into them through their nostrils; but they wouldn't make an effort, except, perhaps, to rise and poke the selector when he tried to tempt their appetites with slices of immature pumpkin. They died peacefully and persistently, until all were gone save a certain dangerous, barren, slab-sided luny bovine with white eyes and much agility in jumping fences, who was known locally ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... either side of these doors, in deep alcoves, were divans with mattings and head-rests for opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge round ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... these soft, transparent creatures, it would yet be no evidence that they did not exist. Fragile as they are, however, they have left here and there some faint record of themselves, and in the Museum at Carlsruhe, on a slab from Solenhofen, I have seen a very perfect outline of one which remains undescribed to this day. This, however, does not carry them farther back than the Jurassic period, and it is only lately that I have satisfied myself that they not only existed, but were among the most numerous animals ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... to do is to get a true N and S meridian mark. This can be approximately obtained by a good compass, and allowance made for the magnetic declination at your own place. Secure a slab of stone or some other solid flat surface, level this and have it firmly fixed facing due south with a line drawn through the center and put the equatorial on the surface with XII on the south end of the line. Then set the pointer ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... to walk, and only a few months after their arrival at the south end of the lake the young doctor died. He was worn to a skeleton, and suffered terribly. The three who remained buried him by the side of the lake, and put a heap of stones over his grave. On a slab of ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... The first slab lifted brought to light a corner of cardboard. This, on closer examination, proved to be the cover of a book. The rocks rolled right and left, and as the flag-staff, deprived of its support, tottered and fell, the trove was dragged ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... For larger amounts, as, for instance, when candy is being made to sell, some more convenient arrangement must be made. The most satisfactory thing that has been found for cooling purposes is a marble slab such as is found on an old-fashioned table or dresser. If one of these is not available, and the kitchen or pastry table has a vitrolite or other heavy top resembling porcelain, this will make a very ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... settled down to breakfast. Vaughan usually took charge of the tea. Directly a quart-pot came to the boil, he tipped in some sugar and a pinch of tea, and moved the pot away from the fire. Sax superintended the tucker—a slab of damper, or a Johnny-cake, and a chunk of salt meat for each man. These are the bush rations year in and year out: meat, damper, and tea. Breakfast was eaten quickly, and then the pack-bags were weighted evenly and fastened up, horses caught and saddled, a final look given round the camp to see ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... of the chapel wing of the house, struck chill as he entered it. Above the range of pigeon-holes and little drawers, forming the back of the writing-table, two candles burned on either side of a bronze pieta, which Julius had brought back with him from Rome. On the broad slab of the table below were the many quires of foolscap forming the library catalogue, neatly numbered and lettered; while his diary lay open upon the blotting-pad, ready for the chronicle of the past day. Beside it was the packet of chap-books, still tied together with their ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... until he came within sight of the town—a dim huddle of low buildings in the starlight. He swung off the trail, hobbled his horse, fastened his rope to the hobbles, and tied that in turn to a long, heavy slab of rock, and turned in. He would not risk losing his horse in this desert land. At best a posse could not reach Showdown before noon the next day, and rather than blunder into Showdown at night and take unnecessary risks, he decided to rest, and ride in at sunup, when ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... pious pilgrim finds it out and comes hither to pay a tribute to the memory of "Papa Oberlin," as he was artlessly called by the country folk. This is the inscription at the head of the plain stone slab marking his resting-place; and very suggestive it is of the relation between the pastor and his flock. Oberlin's career of sixty years among the primitive people of the Ban de la Roche was rather that of a missionary among an uncivilized race than of a country priest among his ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Parrish, Ned Tomlins, and every whaler and foremast man in Hobart Town and on the Tamar, discussed the evidence both drunk and sober, and the opinion was universal that the cook ought to have sworn an oath strong enough to go through a three-inch slab of hardwood that he had seen Captain Blogg carried up to heaven by angels, instead of swearing away the lives of men who had taken his part when he was triced up to the mast. The cook was in this manner tried by his peers and condemned to die, and he knew it. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the usual way, and then was taken by the demon controlling him into the apartment for soaping and all cleansing and manipulation. Here occurred the tragedy. One leg had become stiffened, and the prize-fighter suddenly jumped upon it and broke it down, and Markham rolled off the marble slab, almost fainting from the pain. Then he recovered and tried to fight, but could do nothing, being a weak cripple, and was literally beaten into limberness. Then, using awful language, but helpless, he was carried to the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... rose-shrub, jasmine and purple mimosa made a multi-tinted jungle about a shadowy pool in which a white heron stood knee-deep. There were long stretches of sunlit sod, and walks of inlaid tile, seats of carved stone, and a single small obelisk, set on a circular slab, marked with measures for time—the Egyptian sun-dial. On every side were evidences of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... stood, a wooden house, half painted, with a dirty piazza (unroofed) in front, and a sign board hung on a slanting pole—bearing the legend, "Hotel. P. Dusenheimer," a sawmill further down the stream, a blacksmith-shop, and a store, and three or four unpainted dwellings of the slab variety. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament. To take the nearest example, there is a horse-trough across the road from my house, a plain stone trough, and no man could pass it with any feelings save vague discontent at its ugliness. But suppose that on its front slab you ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to-day is Yosemite Valley. But to return to the Half Dome. On its northeastern side, by circuitous trails and stiff climbing, one may gain the Saddle. Against the slope of the Dome the Saddle leans like a gigantic slab, and from the top of this slab, one thousand feet in length, curves the great circle to the summit of the Dome. A few degrees too steep for unaided climbing, these one thousand feet defied for years the ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... ram into the water, and Billy straightens out his little curly tail and waves it in the air like a flag. And holler! I wisht you could have heard that pig! Nothing could been more human. "I've got the deady-deady on you, you hook-nosed, slab-sided, second cousin of a government mule!" says he. "Oh! I've got you where I want you and the way I want you, and it's up to you to convert yourself into cash at the earliest opportunity, for you won't be worth much in the market when I'm tired ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... terrific course. A bell rang, and the doctor popped his head out to see if he was wanted. It was only a message for Aunt Plenty, and he was about to pop in again when his eye was caught by a square parcel on the slab. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... bump grab fled ship blot lump drab sled whip spot pump slab sped slip plot jump stab then drip trot hump brag bent spit clog bulk cram best crib frog just clan hemp gift plod drug clad vest king stop shut ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... not proceed from a common spray, he kept quiet till the same dropping became more frequently repeated. Just as he was about to give the alarm, on a sudden a tremendous surf broke close to the house, discharging a quantity of water into it; a second soon followed, and earned away the slab of snow placed as a door before the entrance. The missionaries immediately called aloud to the sleeping Esquimaux to rise and quit the place. They jumped up in an instant. One of them with a large knife cut a passage through the side ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... take a set of fingerprints, a small daub of ink should be placed on the inking glass or slab and thoroughly rolled until a very thin, even film covers the entire surface. The subject should stand in front of and at forearm's length from the inking plate. In taking the rolled impressions, the side of the bulb of the finger is placed upon the inking plate and the finger is rolled to the ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... moment—fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in —-shire.) They left a daughter, which, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... said Mary philosophically. "I say, Beth," she went on, raising herself on her elbow—she was lying prone on a slab of rock in the sun—"what does your mother ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... liquor to the miserable beings, haggard and ragged, crowding to be first served. Behind the bar, or counter, rises a pyramid of dingy shelves, on which are arranged little painted kegs, labelled, and made bright by the glaring gas- light reflected upon them. On the opposite side, on rows of slab benches, sit a group of motley beings,—the young girl and the old man, the negro and the frail white,—half sleeping, half conscious; all ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... in four silver tripods, each of them about six feet in height, and screwed to the floor to prevent their being overturned. All these preparations were not without an object. That object was visible in the middle of the room. It was a large black coffin studded with silver nails, placed on a black slab about four feet in height, and more than half ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... year passed, Absalom and the landlord got along slick as a whistle. Another year, two, three, four; never was there a more attentive, diligent and industrious bar-keeper behind a marble slab, or armed with a toddy stick. He was the ne plus ultra of bar-keepers, a perfect paragon of toddy mixers. But one day, somehow or other, the landlord found himself in custody of the sheriff, bag and baggage. Business had not fallen off, every thing seemed properly managed, but, somehow or ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and Garden. "The camp is a novelty to me. Part tent, part wood, part rock,—part indoors, part outdoors. The fireplace is of stone and out of doors, and the table is a great slab of red sandstone resting on two heavy rock supports. It would hold a ton. There are two good beds. Across the stream a little way down is the Shinumo garden. It seems incredible that there can be a garden here with excellent melons, cantaloupes, radishes, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... steam-boat—a railway. What sort of a man must this have been, that still maintains possession of the stage—that keeps (as I maintain) the British taste in a state of almost mediaeval roughness, and chains the dramatic art itself to the slab over his grave? Perhaps, my dear Smith, the immortal Bunn is right after all. Perhaps, if all managers were to follow his example for forty years—if for forty years mankind were condemned to the wilderness of operas, and divertisements, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the edge of a great slab of rock to watch the baggage over the nek. It was a typical South African nek. An execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... scared. The door, however, is sacred to the memory of a white-haired old lady who, not so long ago, used to march out of the kirk and remain on the pavement until the psalm which had just been given out was sung. Of Thrums's pavement it may here be said that when you come, even to this day, to a level slab you feel reluctant to leave it. The old lady was Mistress (which is Miss) Tibbie McQuhatty, and she nearly split the Auld Licht kirk over "run line." This conspicuous innovation was introduced by Mr. Dishart, the minister, when he was young and audacious. ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... tongue; it is extremely palatable, abundant, inexpensive, and highly nutritious. It is a vegetable meat which, without being bloody and repulsive, is the equivalent of the horrors outspread upon the butcher's slab. To recall its services the more emphatically, the Provencal idiom calls it the gounflo-gus—the filler of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... repeated his order in English. Satisfied, the man turned to the stove back of the counter and dished up a mess of piping hot baked peas, cooked with bacon instead of pork. This is a favorite dish with the French of Canada. A great slab of johnny-cake and a cup of hot coffee seemed to be the only thing on the bill of fare. For dessert there ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... move to a town called Fort Dearborn—now known as Chicago—which had recently been incorporated and had nearly a thousand inhabitants. The house was a well-built cottage—not very large, but big enough for two. It was a slab house, with a mud chimney and a nice floor of pounded blue clay. It had two rooms, a cupboard across the corner, a loft to store things in, and forty wooden pegs to hang ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... startling distinctness. Several priests, clad in long, yellow robes, were seen actively employed, chanting, praying, and performing inexplicable ceremonies. One had a lot of little pine chips by his side, and was busy in alternately feeding a small fire upon a stone slab and beating a tom-tom. This, as our guide informed us, was to propitiate the god of fire, and to avert all possible catastrophes from that much dreaded source. When we passed out of the grounds, some hours later, this priest was still busy with his chips and the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... grave. When you find this hollow dig it out; but it will be hard work, for the earth has been pressed down into it with care. Still, work away till you find solid rock on all sides of you, and soon you will come to a square slab of stone; force it out of the wall, and you will stand at the entrance of the treasure house. Into this opening you must crawl, holding a lamp in your mouth. Keep your hands free lest you knock your nose against a stone, for the way is steep and the stones ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... swiftness. The log rushed down on the circular saw. Instantly the wild, exultant shriek arose. The car went on, burying the saw, all but the very top, from which a stream of sawdust flew up and back. A long, clean slab fell to a succession of revolving rollers which carried it, passing it from one to the other, far into the body of the mill. The car shot back to its original position in front of the saw. The saw hummed an undersong of strong vibration. Again it ploughed ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... of the laugh, the newcomer made a raid on the dutch ovens and pails. Having filled his plate, he squatted on his heels and fell to his belated meal. He was a tall, slab-sided individual, with a lean, leathery face, a sweeping white moustache, and a grave and sardonic eye. His leather chaps were plain and worn, and his hat had been fashioned by time and wear into much individuality. I was not surprised to hear him nicknamed ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... fearful shower, At the sublime and royal house's gate. To their life's peril, crumbling roof and tower Is tost by them that on the summit wait: Nor any fears to ruin hall or bower; But wood and stone endure one common fate, And marbled column, slab, and gilded beam, By sire and grandsire ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... their account, was made as short as possible. But in winter the vast airy space had a peculiar and searching chill. No barn could be colder, except that the numerous footstoves made some little change in the air during service. The minister stood upon a heated slab of soap-stone. I used to watch this in its progress up the broad aisle and the pulpit stairs, under the arm of the boy from the parsonage, and the irreverent way in which he made his descent, in view of the assembly, after depositing his burden, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Emperors (at the very time when we were reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire) with the slime and offal of desperate servility—and we cannot but consider the Essay as one of the poisonous ingredients thrown into the cauldron of Legitimacy "to make it thick and slab." Our author has, indeed, so far done service to the cause of truth, that he has counteracted many capital errors formerly prevailing as to the universal and indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circumstances; but he has countenanced ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... piled one above another in regular order, and cemented with snow— as bricks are with lime. The form of the wall was circular, and the slabs were so shaped that they sloped inwards, thus forming a dome, or large bee-hive, with a key-stone slab in the top to keep all firm. A hole was then cut in the side for a door—just large enough to admit of a man creeping through. In front of this door a porch or passage of snow was built. The only way of getting into the hut is by creeping on hands and knees along the passage. A ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... Society” round the neighbourhood in 1894:—“The figures and pinnacles on the tower are from the old tower; the choir screen was formed from that formerly round the small choir, but only one-third of the original, {151b} which was used as a pew by the tenants of Halstead Hall. Under the stone slab nearest the screen, in the nave, were deposited the remains of a Mr. Boulton, who stabbed his mother to death in the little chapel outside the Priory gate, for which he was hanged at Lincoln. The stone face and ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the trap was against a great slab of rock, and the sides and roofs were made of heavy logs, notched together at the ends, and spiked. While there were chinks and crevices between the logs they were not large enough for even a cat to get through. The girls, as far as they could see, could ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... last Theseus came up with him, where he lay panting on a slab among the snow, and caught him by the horns, and forced his head back, and drove the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... a large building, steam generated in the basement heater will be found better than the parlor stove. In this case, the room will be heated by the coil of steam-pipe mentioned before; the slab covering it being the window-seat, or guard, under which the cool fresh air is conducted to be warmed before ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... anyhow. That's why I trembled with fear when they frowned. But they didn't frown often, For I was sweetly pretty and most pliable. But, oh, the grim joke of asking Ben Bolt if he remembered me! Me! Why, it was Ben Bolt who— Well, never mind. He paid for this granite slab, And it's as stylish as any in the church yard. But I wish I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in a white cap and jacket from a basement in the front of the restaurant, where confectionery was sold, and threw down a mass of malleable candy on a marble slab, and began to work it. Mavering watched him, thinking fuzzily all the time of Alice, and holding long, fatiguing dialogues with the people at the Ty'n-y-Coed, whose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... diabolical young woman hath renounced her baptism, for the water rejecteth her. Non potest mergi, as Pliny saith. She floats like a cork, or as if the clear water of the Calder had suddenly become like the slab, salt waves of the Dead Sea, in which, nothing can sink. You behold the marvel with your own eyes, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... month after this that he returned to the churchyard, and might have been seen sitting on the small stone slab which the Quaker had already caused to be laid over the grave. It was a fine October evening, and the sombre gloom of the hours was already darkening everything around. He had crept into the enclosure silently, almost slily, so as to insure himself that his presence ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... eastward to Greenland. This report gains some credit, from the state in which the abovementioned ruins are found. They consist in remains of walls and graves, with a low stone enclosure round the tomb, covered with a slab of the same material. They have been discovered on islands near Nain, and though sparingly, all along the whole eastern coast, but we saw none in Ungava bay. The rocks on Amitok contain large masses of a crumbly, semi-transparent garnet, ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... their snoring became objectionable to those still at work, the 'calmer' was applied. This machine consisted of a Babbitt's soap box without a cover. Upon it was mounted a broad ratchet-wheel with a crank, while into the teeth of the wheel there played a stout, elastic slab of wood. The box would be placed on the table where the snorer was sleeping and the crank turned rapidly. The racket thus produced was something terrible, and the sleeper would jump up as though a typhoon had struck the laboratory. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it lies, within a little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone, and the graven letters, and the sword and shield, sleep "Piers Cockburn and Marjory his wife." Not a hundred yards off was the castle-door where they hanged him; this is the tomb of the ballad, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... stood for a garner of plenty; they knew that strawberries, though not really insects, were almost as delicious; they knew that the huge danaid butterflies were good, safe game, if they could only catch them, and that a slab of bark dropping from the side of a rotten log was sure to abound in good things of many different kinds; and they had learned, also, the yellow-jackets, mud-wasps, woolly worms, and hundred-leggers ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... seat and was tugging at his hair trunk. He did not know that the long, thin, slab-sided old fellow in a slouch hat, hickory shirt crossed by one suspender, and heavy cowhide boots was his prospective landlord. He supposed him to be the hired man, and that he would find Mr. Pollard waiting for him in the little sitting-room ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... girl who fills half of the rear seat and who, as the cruel phrase goes, will never see thirty again? She seems to be tall and lean, and one divines, somehow, that her back is narrow and of a slab-like flatness. Her forehead is high and full, and its bulging outlines are but slightly softened by a thin and dishevelled bang. Her eyes are of a light and faded blue, and have the peculiar stare which ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... had the simple manner of those who stand in no fear of any one taking a liberty with them. Her position was assured. Her beauty spoke for itself, and as for the old tartan, the slab-sided merino, the retiring pearl-grey wincey, their late owners did not know them again when they appeared in the great square Marnhoul pew in the parish church, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... to the exclamations, sighs, and whispered comments of the bystanders came the murmur of the water trickling from a spigot at the head of each slab; a tiny stream that flowed forth only to fall in fine spray upon the marble. Through the small arched windows a gray light stole in on the exposed bodies, bringing each muscle into bold relief, revealing the ghastly tints of the lifeless flesh, and imparting a sinister aspect to the tattered clothing ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... cross-bar was quickly put into place; but not a moment too soon, for an instant later the old bear gave a furious growl and flung herself against the door, making it fairly crack; it seemed as if the door would be broken in. Sullivan and Jason hurriedly knocked their slab bed to pieces and used the slats and heavy sides to prop and strengthen the door. The bears kept surging and clawing at the door, and while the prospectors were spiking the braces against it and giving their entire attention to it, they suddenly felt the cabin shake and heard the ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Well, hand it chear den. Lawd, me and my chillun is so hongry.... Jake don't fee-eed me. (She re-enters by door of store with the slab of meat in her hand and an outraged look on her face. She gazes all about her for sympathy.) Lawd, me and my poor chillun is so hongry ... and some folks has everything and they's so stingy and gripin'.... Lawd knows, Jake don't fee-eed me! (She exits right on this ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... I could with pleasure have slain Jorian and Boris for open-mouthed, unshaven, slab-sided Wendish pigs, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a granite slab, appeared two mysterious graven letters, half eaten away by time. They were the initials of the bold ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... waiting for him, Yearning to hold him again to her heart; And there he lies with his blue eyes dim, And the smiling, childlike lips apart. Tenderly bury the fair young dead— Pausing to drop on his grave a tear. Carve on the wooden slab o'er his head: ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... tired by this time, flung herself upon an oblong slab that lay close at hand, and was sheltered from the wind by a pillar. Owing to the action of the sun during the preceding day, the stone was warm and dry, in comforting contrast to the rough and chill grass around, which had ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... in a shuddering sigh. For one of the figures glanced upward and saw them dropping. He shouted something to his fellows, and darted for a lever set in the stone next to the pool. He threw it over swiftly. Immediately what seemed to be a smooth slab of transparent glassite shot into position over the pulsating flame, not an instant too soon, either, for it had barely covered the flaming death when the Earthlings' ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... with her flowers, wondering a little that somebody else did not come and speak to her, but he was talking to Mrs. Evelyn and Mr. Stackpole. Fleda did not wish to join them, and nothing better occurred to her than to arrange her flowers over again; so, throwing them all down before her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one by one, and put them together, with, it must be confessed, a very indistinct realization of the difference between myrtle and lemon blossoms; and as she seemed to be laying acacia to rose, and disposing some ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a door-bolt some twenty inches long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise. Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... and talked to a man who was making a sugar-bowl, and he told us how he did it. All the men have on the table in front of them a lump of clay, a wheel, some moulds, a sharp knife, a bucket of water with a sponge in it, and something like the slab of a round, marble-topped table, only it's made of plaster Paris, to ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... was all like a flash—I had rushed to the inner cellar and was dragging the slab over the hole, listening the while to a hollow rustling noise which ended as I got the slab across and sat on it ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... temple-sculpture, we should be able to trace analogies in other lines. The most interesting is found in the design and execution of sepulchral monuments. Milchhoefer[58] is of the opinion that the tomb was not originally marked by an upright slab with sculptured figures. He finds what he thinks the oldest representation of sepulchral ornament in a black-figured vase of the so-called "prothesis" class.[59] Here are two women weeping about a sepulchral mound on ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... stretch out his feet sufficiently to reach it. He put out one hand in the same direction, and caught hold of an iron staple. He could now clutch the wall, and feeling his way, he descended about eight feet to the ground. It was fortunate that he had not jumped, for, instead of sand, there was a slab of hard rock on which he would have fallen. Scarcely had he time to get under the rope, than he saw ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... undisturbed in the land and in the city which she had loved so well, and which had been her home so long. In life and in death she had been made welcome in Florence. The Italians, as her husband said, seemed to have understood her by an instinct; and upon the walls of Casa Guidi is a marble slab, placed there by the municipality of Florence, and bearing an inscription from the pen of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... none, nor even so much as a broom to clean the floor with. But Stern, first-off, had wrenched a marble slab from ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and I felt the same in regard to the authenticity of the verses on Shakespeare's marble slab. It is fortunate that Miss Bacon's purpose of opening the tomb at Stratford was not carried out, but that is no reason why it should not be opened in a properly conducted manner, for scientific purposes—in order to discover all that is possible concerning ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... any remark, but with a decided subsidence of her animosity towards the table, finished her preparations, and took, from her ample basket, a substantial slab of hot pease pudding wrapped in paper, and a basin covered with a saucer, which, on being uncovered, sent forth an odour so agreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the two beds opened wide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. Mr. Tetterby, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... should say the grossly ignorant—have long held over the heads of the pioneers of science these two great charges: No man has ever yet transmuted a metal; no man has ever yet proved the connecting link between organic and inorganic life. I say life, for I take it that this company admits that a slab of granite is as much alive as any man or woman I see before me. But I have manufactured gold, and I could have manufactured protoplasm if I had devoted my life to that object. My studies have been almost wholly on the inorganic plane. Hence the 'philosopher's stone' came ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... time the sun had disappeared, and all over the west the yellow sky came down evenly, like a gold curtain, on the still sea that seemed to have solidified into a slab of dark blue stone,—not a twinkle on its immobile surface. Across its dusky smoothness were two long smears of pale green, like a ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... obvious; he had paid Ezra Lane two thousand dollars for the Banner, that was a matter of record; and he had marched with some grandeur into General Hendricks' bank one Saturday and had clinked out five thousand dollars in gold on the marble slab at the teller's window, and that was a matter attested to by a crowd of witnesses. Watts McHurdie used to say that more people saw that deposit than could be packed into the front room of the bank ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... winding, gravelled walks, with summer-houses at points favorable for them. It was a very shady and pleasant spot, containing about an acre of ground, and all turned to good account by the manner of laying it out; so that it seemed more than it really was. In one place, on a small, smooth slab of slate let into a rock, there is an inscription by Wordsworth, which I think I have read in his works, claiming kindly regards from those who visit the spot, after his departure, because many trees had been spared at his intercession. His own grounds, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... he reached the dining-room. This apartment was like the vestibule, oak-panelled, but the walls were decorated with family and other portraits, including a very curious painting of the Castle itself, as it was before its destruction in the time of Cromwell. This painting was executed on a massive slab of oak, and conceived in a most quaint and formal style, being relieved in the foreground with stags at gaze and woodeny horses, that must, according to any rule of proportion, have been about half ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... model of a master's desk which partnered the desks of the pupil. Maps of as many countries as might be desired showed in frames up and down which they followed one another by the silent turning of a handle. A blackboard on an easel looked across the desks at a wall into which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... family are attached the tradition and ballad given by Dr Percy, under the name of Isabella, but here applied to a Lord Thomas and faire Ellenor, father and daughter, whose figures are supposed to be graven on a slab in the church, which the common people, concluding, I suppose, from its whiteness, that it was meant as an emblem of the innocence it is said to cover, have mutilated by breaking off small fragments, as amulets for the prevention or cure of disorders. Traditions, always erroneous ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... almost in the nature of a rebuke if not an affront. He was too obtrusively good for this world. One could not but feel that if he had been cut off in his youth, and buried under a very white marble slab and an appropriate inscription, both he and the world would have been far more comfortably circumstanced. And John Graeme devoutly wished he had been so favoured, for, in that case, he could neither have been Margaret's uncle, trustee, nor guardian, and it is possible that there ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Harvester. "Simple matter of a few pillars already cut, joists joined, and some slab shingles left from the cabin. Anything ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... duchess's boudoir, all made of polished rosewood, and standing tall and graceful on four curving legs. It had an astounding lid, this Writing-Desk had; that you either locked up or let down; and when you let it down the lid had a shining slab of plate glass all screwed on, thus becoming the loveliest place to write on that you could well imagine. And the inside parts of the Desk were running over with delightful things, note-paper and envelopes, and pads ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... switched on (each of these unlovely cargo tanks carried tame lightning within its slab-sided body), when they switched on their lamps they spangled the night with the cheap, electric, shop-glitter, here, there, and everywhere, as of some High Street, broken up and washed out to sea. Later, Heligoland cut into the overhead darkness with its powerful beam, infinitely ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... was dressed more carefully than usual, in view of a visit to Bellefontaine Road. Whereupon the Judge demanded whether he were contemplating marriage. Without waiting for a reply he pointed to a rope and a slab of limestone on the pavement below, and waved his hand unmistakably ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Robert, prone to throw his food about his plate, if it did not commend itself to him, felt in an extremely good natured mood that same night after dinner, for the Guru had again made a visit to the kitchen with the result that instead of a slab of pale dead codfish being put before him after he had eaten some tepid soup, there appeared a delicious little fish-curry. The Guru had behaved with great tact; he had seen the storm gathering on poor Robert's face, as he sipped the cool effete concoction and put down his ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... all this vicinity. This is the land in which all men flourish; but there are three classes of men who flourish especially,—methodist preachers, slave-drivers, and paper-money manufacturers; and as one of the latter, I have just painted the word BANK on a fine slab of maple, which was green and growing when I arrived, and have discounted for the settlers, in my own currency, sundry bills, which are to be paid when the proceeds of the crop they have just sown shall return from New Orleans; so that my ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock |
