"Tongs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... James Sherring and Thomas Hillary were there, James Sherring sat down in the chimney to fill a pipe of tobacco. He used the tongs to lift a coal to light his pipe, and by-and-by the tongs were drawn up the stairs and were cast upon the bed. The same night one of the maids left her shoes by the fire, and they were carried up into the chamber, and the old man's brought down and set in their places. As they were going upstairs ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which the Chancellor might come to on a case brought into court on his advice, and which had been argued that afternoon. At last Frankpledge unwittingly fell foul of a favorite crotchet of Mortmain's—and at it they went, hammer and tongs, for nearly twenty minutes, (it had nothing whatever to do with the case they were consulting upon.) In the end, Mortmain of course adhered to his points, and Frankpledge intrenched himself in his books; each slightly yielded to the views of the other ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a brazen altar, whose length was twenty cubits, and its breadth the same, and its height ten, for the burnt-offerings. He also made all its vessels of brass, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons; and besides these, the snuffers and the tongs, and all its other vessels, he made of brass, and such brass as was in splendor and beauty like gold. The king also dedicated a great number of tables, but one that was large and made of gold, upon which they set the loaves of God; and he made ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Some nouns are used only in the singular form; as, hemp, flax, barley, wheat, pitch, gold, sloth, pride, honesty, meekness, compassion, &c.; others only in the plural form; as, bellows, scissors, ashes, riches, snuffers, tongs, thanks, wages, embers, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... gun, seein' as we'd fired ours. There was a price on his head an' he'd made up his mind to fight. Jack grabbed him. He were stout as a lion an' tore 'way from the boy an' started to pullin' a long knife out o' his boot leg. Jack didn't give him time. They had it hammer an' tongs. Red Snout were a reg'lar fightin' man. He jest stuck that 'ere stump in the ground an' braced ag'in' it an' kep' a-slashin' an' jabbin' with his club cane an' yellin' an' cussin' like a fiend o' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... the infusion in the flask rises to its boiling point, which is not sensibly over 212 deg. Fahr. Steam issues from the open neck of the flask, and the boiling is continued for five minutes. With a pair of small brass tongs, an assistant now seizes the neck near its junction with the flask, and partially lifts the latter out of the oil. The steam does not cease to issue, but its violence is abated. With a second pair of tongs held in one hand, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... meeting brands, out of whose wondrous baptism come the consecrate deeds of mankind. Go to China, and to any living soul you obtain no access, or next to none,—such disastrous roods of etiquette are interposed between. It is as if one very cordially shook hands with you by means of a pair of tongs or a ten-foot pole. Indeed, it is hardly a man that you meet; it is a piece of automatic ceremony. Nor is it in China alone that men may be found who can hardly be accredited with proper personality. As one dying may distribute his property in legacies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... time, was John Boazman. He was a good man to his slaves. I was raised in the big-house, and helped as a servant-girl. My mistress smoked a pipe, and sometimes she would have me to get a red coal from de fire and put it in her pipe. I did dat wid tongs. I lived there a long time. I come to Newberry over 40 years ago and worked wid de white ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... this interesting topic at Chittenden's five years earlier (surely rather an advanced subject for little boys of twelve!), and some of the details still stuck in my head. A brilliant idea! Soon we were at it hammer and tongs; discussing Arius, Alexander, and Athanasius; the Council of Nicaea, Hosius of Cordova, homo-ousion and homoi-ousion; Eusebius of Nicomedia, and his ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... got more wrinkles in it than there are in a fake mermaid's tail. Do you know what kind of a game they've gone to work and rigged up on your friend, the human curling-tongs? The widder has got him to doin' chores again. It seems that she was always strong on keepin' him doin' chores. He's peckin' away at that pile of wood that's fitted and lays at the corner of the barn. He's luggin' it into the woodshed, and three ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... stared for a moment into the comfortable glow of the fire, and then discovering to his apparent surprise that his cigar had gone out, lighted it from a coal picked out with the tongs. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... doing that, with a pot in one hand, and the tongs in the other, I am picking slugs out of the flower-beds and giving them a dose of boiling water, or lugging about a watering-pot. I do it energetically, but my heart is not in it, though the garden is grateful all the same, and is as nice a symbol of the French people ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... 1789-1879) now introduces him to a friend as "My most cherished and respectable friend, one who is better acquainted with Gypsy ways than the Chef de Bohemiens a Triana, one who is an expert whisperer and horse-sorcerer, and who, to his honour I say it, can wield hammer and tongs, and handle a horse-shoe, with the best of the smiths amongst the Alpujarras ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the two youngest Kenway girls trooped into the kitchen, Popocatepetl was chasing a stray feather about the floor and in diving behind the big range for it, she knocked down the shovel, tongs and poker, which were standing against ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... to obtain a pony, cart, and certain tools, used by smiths and tinkers, I came to this place, where I amused myself with making horse-shoes, or rather pony-shoes, having acquired the art of wielding the hammer and tongs from a strange kind of smith—not him of Gretna Green—whom I knew in my childhood. And here I lived, doing harm to no one, quite lonely and solitary, till one fine morning the premises were visited by this young gentlewoman ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... later, when Paul opened the dining-room for her to pass out, she touched his shoulder affectionately and laughed. "Hammer and tongs to Sophie Zobraska! Oh, Paul, aren't you a bit ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... scrambled head first down this gentleman's macadamised road this morning, but if you want a tooth out I can use the tongs." ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... tell his honourableness that David Rossi and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Dream spoke to Ivan, and his big hand held the hand of Anna. The railway ran through Bobruisk, and that evening they stood and looked at the shining rails that went out in the moonlight like silver tongs reaching out for a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help him. He would have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... as soon shaken hands with the Pope. He rather thought the rat was alive; and, taking the tongs, he received the beast at a safe distance, while Tom saw a smile of contempt pass over the young ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, river, or sea (258. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... alchemist whom fortune has allowed to get all his coveted materials and set to work at last with fire and melting pot—what he produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get pulvis et cinis—a man at the mercy of the tongs and shovel." In later life, however, Browning spoke of Wordsworth in a different tone. In a letter to Mr. Grosart, written Feb. 24, 1875, he said, "I have been asked the question you now address me with, and as duly answered, I can't ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... step when I heard the loud yelping of a dog followed by a string of oaths, and the office door opened, emitting a tall brawny man in shirt-sleeves with a very red face and close-cropped hair, who appeared holding out at arm's length a pair of tongs which gripped some repulsive-looking fronts and collars. On seeing me, he exclaimed, "Take care," and proceeded to drop the objects on a heap of rubbish below. We were both somewhat surprised at this apparition, but realised without difficulty that the office was still in the possession ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance; There is the mine, there are the miners; The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers; What always served and always serves is ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... refuge from all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... gunpowder ran out of the great Panjandrum's boots when he played "Catch who catch can" on the immortal occasion of the gardener's wife marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop's letter he got up and—ignoring the poker and tongs—kicked the fire with a savagery that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization. And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and grateful—without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing his library floor, hurling his thoughts ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... reached the seat of my trousers. There it pinched, presumably to ascertain whether or no I were malingering, a most agonizing pinch like to that of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. So sharp was it that, although I did not stir, who was aware that the slightest movement meant death, it tore a piece out of the stout cloth of my breeches, to say nothing of a portion of the skin beneath. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's bundle. E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They are good against hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too,' he explained. 'Now I shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only a Saddhu's tongs. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the Grecian lady of the bed-chamber, "that I am not called to a toilet where smiths' hammers and tongs are like to be the instruments most ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... hearth give out a dull glow which leaves the room in semi-darkness, yet lights up several objects by the hearthstone— namely, a heap of pine cones, some dried spice-wood bushes, a rude corn-popper, a snow-shovel, and a neatly-mended tongs. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... you feel as if you'd just like to go at him with 'hammer and tongs'"—doubling up her fists and striking out suggestively right and left—"for being so crusty with you ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... covered market basket, a fish bag with a skewer through the top, and a small japanese basket, with a lid which was kept in place by the poker and tongs ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... existence, as a stone drops to the bottom of a well and is no more seen. Upon his immature shoulders rested all the worry of the goldsmith's business. He was master of Tresco's bench; the gravers and the rat-tail files, the stock-drills and the corn-tongs were under his hand for good or for evil. With blow-pipe and burnisher, with plush-wheel and stake-anvil he wrought patiently; almost bursting with responsibility, yet with anxiety gnawing at his heart. And the lies he told on behalf of his "boss"!—lies to men with unpaid accounts in their hands, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone over again. They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and counter-arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and objections. The result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning seems not yet quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the scheme; thinks ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... immediately reply. She had turned towards the fire, apparently for the purpose of raising a log of wood with the tongs, but in reality to give herself time for further reflection. What good would it do to tell him everything at once? She would some day be forced to tell it him, if she wished to have him entirely on her side; but there was no hurry, and she fancied that it would ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... to him) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the whole of the Spectator's culinary music, will the bagpipes be found within benefit of jury law? War to the knife I say, before we'll submit to that. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession halted, and a champion of morality accused the broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had committed and for ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... side by side the almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or Norwegian house-carle, proud of his name Biorn the Bear, and the ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the Smiter, whose forefather, whether he be now peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old. When I search through (as I delight to do) your New England surnames, I find the same jumble of names—West Saxon, Angle, Danish, Norman, and French-Norman likewise, many of primaeval and heathen antiquity, many ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... those balls. Tobacco was then, as now, adulterated in various ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots; that is, white jars. It was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for lighting pipes, and among the rich, silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to a brazier, and with a pair of small tongs lifted from it a glowing coal. With steady fingers she pushed aside the many sticks of incense in the great brass vessel before the shrine, and making a little grave among the ashes, she laid within the ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... now broke into a boisterous 'hooray,' as keen for the wedding as a moment before they had been eident for the funeral. 'Bring oot the tangs!' they vociferated loudly. A pair of tongs were at once produced, and under the direction of the blacksmith the captive and the woman held hands, and took each other ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... throughout the meal. Not until coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not, for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... affects a more light-hearted style. 'There is a review of your last book in the Scorpion', he says, 'which will amuse you. It is very malicious, and evidently the offspring of personal spite, but it is very clever.' Then you go down to your club, and take the thing up with the tongs, when nobody is looking, and make yourself very miserable; or you buy it, going home in the cab, and, having spoilt your appetite for dinner with it, tear it up very small, throw it out of window, and swear you ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish- spear! Still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... at each of his knees, where they were regaled at regular intervals with choice bits from his plate, the snapping of their solemn jaws expressing their thanks. A second scallop-shell was next lifted from the hearth with the tongs, and deposited sizzling hot on a plate beside the master, the aroma of the oysters filling the room. These having disappeared, as had the former one, together with the waffles and coffee, and the master's appetite being now on the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pulley, one upholding the column upon his hands, alternate with two Disciples, for whom their extended wings create a background. One of these is complemented by hammer and anvil, the other by furnace and tongs. Both share the column's weight on powerful arms. The imaginary figures show potential strength in repose, the human figures potent strength in action. The frieze in low relief is ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... live in a style befitting an officer of the crown. The knocker on the front door was so bright that Pompey could see his own white teeth and rolling eyeballs reflected from the shining brass. When through with the knocker he rubbed the fender, andirons, shovels, tongs, nozzle of the bellows, the hooks by the jams, candlesticks, snuffer, extinguisher, trays, and tinder-box, and wiped the dust from the glazed tiles of the hearth. It was the routine of every morning. Equally bright were the brass pots and pans in Phillis's realm. Pompey and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... they had forced the blood out of them with exquisite pain. After this, he was carried into the strong room, where, besides the other irons which he had on, they fixed on his neck and hands an iron instrument called a collar, like a pair of tongs; and he being a large lusty man, when they screwed the said instrument close, his eyes were ready to start out of his head, the blood gushed out of his ears and nose, he foamed at the mouth, and he made several motions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince. Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved "a week under" and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... have it in welcome. It will be so filthy when he pulls it off, I shall be tempted to take the tongs and put it in the fire. I cannot imagine, Lizabeth, what you want ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... the Moree bastion under as heavy a fire of round shot, grape, and canister, as I have ever in my life been peppered with. Our artillery dashed to the front, unlimbered, and opened upon the enemy, and at it they went, hammer and tongs. We had no infantry with us; all the infantry were fighting in the city. The enemy came out against us with large bodies of infantry and cavalry, and then began the fire of musketry. It was tremendous. ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the mantel-shelf and, when he had found it, lit it with a coal which he picked out of the fire with the tongs. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... been told by the sweet soul herself," responded Nancy. "She wrote me a letter which would have put another girl in such a rage that she would never have touched any one of you again with a pair of tongs. But that's not Nancy King. For when Nancy loves a person, she loves that person through thick and thin, through weal and woe. I came to-day to try to find one of you dear girls. I have found you. What is the matter with you, ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... mind so much," she explained to Honey-Sweet, "I wouldn't mind so much if I could have taken out one teeny piece of chocolate with the darling little silver tongs. I haven't had a box of candy for months and months. And, oh! Honey-Sweet, I read just three chapters in that beautiful book, and now I'll never, never know what became of that ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... countless masses of forgotten and unresisting slaves? "Never!" replied what was bravest and worthiest of respect in the breast of this truly great-hearted man. The burning wrong which he felt against slavery had sunk in his mind below the reach of the grappling tongs of reason. It lay like a charge of giant powder, with its slow match attachment in the unplumbed depths of a soul which knew not fear; of a soul which was as hot with smouldering hate and rage as is a live ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... was ready to resign before this Burgoyne campaign, an' I wouldn't hev blamed him. He doesn't know how to git along without making enemies, for, when he has anything to do, he goes at it hammer and tongs no matter whose toes he treads on, but he gets it done, ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... his instructions, Levin took the tiller, and Jack Wonnell superserviceably got the terrapin tongs, and stood in the bow while the cat-boat skimmed down Monie Creek before a good breeze and a lee tide. The chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over the side, but the boat made too much sail for Wonnell to take more than one or two tardy animals with his tongs, as ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... friends, in that place they trimmed their candles with snuffers of gold, and they cut their fruits with knives of gold, and they washed their faces in basins of gold, and they scooped out the ashes with shovels of gold, and they stirred the altar fires with tongs of gold. Gold reflected in the water! Gold flashing from the apparel! Gold blazing in ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... have John wait, then take us from there to the South Station. Meanwhile we'll make sure that the little blue room is all ready for her. I put in my white enamel work-basket yesterday, and that pretty little blue case for hairpins and curling tongs that I bought at the fair. I want the room to look homey to her, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... mouth had been cleaned, they beheld within the well a very large lizard residing within it. The young men made strong and repeated efforts for rescuing the lizard from that situation. Resembling a very hill in size, the lizard was sought to be freed by means of cords and leathern tongs. Not succeeding in their intention the young men then went to Janardana. Addressing him they said, 'Covering the entire space of a well, there is a very large lizard to be seen. Notwithstanding our best efforts we have not succeeded in rescuing it ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... we were alarmed with strange noises approaching us, and looking out we saw a number of people with frying pans, warming pans, tongs and pokers, beating, ringing, and making all possible din. We soon discovered them to be our neighbours of the next farm in pursuit of a swarm of bees which was hovering in the air over their heads. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... he passed the window on horseback, and with a heavy sigh Mrs. Murray dropped her head on her hand, compressing her lips, and toying abstractedly with the sugar-tongs. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent air, as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the tongs, and piled them upon the brands. But the number of speeches that passed was very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged. Long experience together often enabled them to see the course of thought in each other's minds without ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... leathern bag, shaped much like a lady's work-bag, the strings of which he was obliged to draw in order to get at them. In his hand were his burning match and musket rest, and after discharging his piece he was obliged to defend himself with his sword. The match was fixed to the cock by a kind of tongs. Over the priming-pan was a sliding cover, which had to be drawn back with the hand before pulling the trigger. It was necessary to blow the ashes from the match, and take the greatest care that the sparks did not fall upon the priming. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Knee Buckles Fluke and Tongs, ruff and smooth Files, Bone Buckle Brushes, Freezing Punches, Binding Wire, Steel Top Thimbles, Cypher and Brilliant Button Stones, Cypher and Brilliant Ring Stones, Ring Sparks, Motto Ring Stones, Amethysts, Garnetts, Brilliant and Cypher Earing Stones, Amethysts ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... nothing very remarkable," said Mrs. Read, as the children seated themselves, one on each side of her, Prudy with her crocheting of violet and white worsted, and Dotty with nothing at all to do but play with the tongs. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... and following. Mr. Rule still lay still, till he should see his way further cleared. Then the apparition, who the whole time spoke none, took an effectual way to raise the doctor. He carried back the candles to the table and went to the fire, and with the tongs took down the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal chamber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise and put on his clothes, in the time of which the spectre laid up the coals again in the chimney, and, going to the table, lifted the candles and went to the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... and catching up a stout hazel-stick, he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loth, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... kick-off and the last period had begun, she speedily found that victory was not to be her portion. Mr. Robey sent in nearly a new team during that last ten minutes and the substitutes, fresh and eager, went at it hammer-and-tongs. Thacher enlisted fresh material, too, but it couldn't stop the onslaught that soon took the ball down the field to within close scoring distance of her goal. That Brimfield did not add another touchdown was only because ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... his cell, and, thrusting his head in at the window, disturbed the saint with obscene and blasphemous speeches, and the most frightful contortions of the features of his countenance. Dunstan at length, wearied out with his perseverance, seized the red-hot tongs with which he was engaged in some chemical experiment, and, catching the devil by the nose, held him with the utmost firmness, while Satan filled the whole neighbourhood for many miles round with his bellowings. Extraordinary as ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... are few and simple; and rude as the results of their labor may appear, it is surprising that they do so well with such imperfect appliances, which usually consist of the following articles: A forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles, molds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, awls, cold-chisels, matrix and die for molding buttons, wooden implement used in grinding buttons, wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and materials for soldering (blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease, wire, ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... which it happened to have in the centre, with the help of one of the large nails, they inserted the handle, and a round button at one end of the hook, made the face of the hammer. A large pebble served for an anvil, and a pair of reindeer's horns were the tongs. Such were the tools with which they fashioned the heads for two spears, which they polished and sharpened on stones, and then tied them fast with strips of reindeer-skin to thick sticks, with which they were supplied from the branches of trees which had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... (or, as another version of the legend says, a horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water its ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... acid on the shelf and picked up a pair of tongs. As he raised the cover of the glowing crucible a sudden transformation took place. The upper part of the laboratory blazed out fiercely, and in this light Pierre moved with gesticulating arms, the lower part of his body wholly hidden. He lifted the crucible, shook it for a moment with an oscillatory ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... somebody below to upset the slop-barrel and rain-water hogshead at the same time. Of course, you will attend to the mirror. The further it can be thrown, the more pieces will be made. If anybody objects, smash it over his head. Do not, under any circumstances, drop the tongs down from the second story; the fall might break its legs, and render the poor thing a cripple for life. Set it straddle of your shoulder, and carry it down carefully. Pile the bedclothes carefully on the floor, and throw the crockery out of the window. By the time you will have attended ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... must be screwed into position. Therefore, "can the fitting on the pipe be placed where it is laid out when this is considered?" must be one of the many questions a plumber should ask himself. Allowance must be made for the chain tongs to swing. Whenever possible, a fitting is made up on the pipe while the pipe ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... If it were a Westralian or a Kaffir I would n't touch it with a pair of tongs! It 's not as if I were going to put much in! [He suddenly bends above the papers as though magnetically attracted.] I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... kept away so long as he was there. Another visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan's reality. "Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith's tongs. It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him." Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever. So famous did the affair become ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to 40 or 50 of water, or the same proportion of nitric). This extracts the gelatine from the surface of the ivory. Extreme cleanliness and absence of grease or soiling is most important; the ivory is not to be touched by the fingers, but removed from one vessel to another by wooden tongs, one pair to each colour. After treating with the acid, place the ivory in clean, cold, boiled water for some minutes. Water stains are used, but strained or filtered and warm or only tepid, for fear ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs. Good-morning, Watson." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were about ten workmen, making many-colored bracelets and glass rings, which varied in size from small finger rings to circlets through which you could easily put your arm. The workmen are provided with two metal rods and a pair of small tongs, and they ply these primitive instruments with wonderful dexterity. They work very hard, at least fifteen hours a day, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... of the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor. Shelley snatched ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... tell us how the dwellers in the old city employed themselves, and how skilful they were in craftsmanship. Amongst other things we find axes, chisels, files for setting saws, hammers, a large plane, and other carpenters' tools; an anvil, a pair of tongs, and blacksmiths' implements; shoemakers' anvils, very similar to those used in our day, a large gridiron, a standing lamp, safety-pins, such as ladies use now, and many other useful and ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutual admiration - or rather mutual hero-worship - which is so strong among the members of secluded families who have much ability and little culture. Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as the tongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had no more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least an open-mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed with relish the rise of Clem's fortunes. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indulging a pet weakness. As I said, it is not merely the new and expensive toys that attract me; I think my weakest corner is where the penny boxes lie, the wooden tea-things (with the above-named flower in miniature), the soldiers on their lazy tongs, the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of people in Manchester that you would not touch with a pair of tongs who, if they could be got hold of, would make far more earnest and devoted Christians than you are. The very strength of passion and feeling which has swept them wrong, rightly directed, would make grand saints of them, just as the very same conditions of climate which, at tropics, bring ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... they went at it once more, "hammer-and-tongs." Thus far no one had been injured seriously enough to more than delay the game a few minutes, and, before the fatal seven had expired, the fellow who had been hurt was able to take his place in the line; so no substitutes were called on. Hugh ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... is the savage now!" said Richard. "Hold!" to the servant who was bringing the red-hot irons in a pair of tongs. ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moment the two cadets were at it "hammer and tongs." As they circled around, Codfish put out his foot, trying to trip Fred up. He failed in this, but a moment later Slugger Brown tried the trick with success, and the youngest Rover came down heavily and an instant later Nappy Martell landed ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... take me for—a coleopterist? Ma conscience, laddie, these insects are no interest to me. I wouldn't touch one with a pair o' tongs. It's moths and butterflies for Skipper Mackintosh—the dainty fluttering things that are like bits o' sunshine and beams o' the moonlight. Beetle? Speak not to me the name ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... room, you stepped to the left, let the flock pass on, and you were free. I did so, and found myself in the dark with my friend Mary and the other "devils" she had told me would be there. They were all armed, some with logs, others with tongs. I had nothing, but was bold enough to go to the school-room, get a poker, and return to my accomplices without ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... woman or his old lady, and it was a sight to see her chasing him across the street when she was in liquor, and boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then Shovel sauced his father for interfering, saying she should lick him as long as she blooming well ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... she wrenched her gaze from his, and suddenly his crisp hair caught her eyes. Surely—surely it was curled with tongs! A kind of spasm of amusement was set free in her heart, and, almost inaudibly, the words escaped her lips: "Une technique merveilleuse!" His eyes wavered; he uttered a little gasp; his lips fell apart. Gyp walked across the room and put her hand on the bell. She had lost her fear. Without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... talisman, and flung it on an anvil, and furiously belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs uninjured. With a cry of horror the workmen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed. Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed only profound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... 6 Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... fire. The doctor came round, took the tongs from her and did the work; after which he took a somewhat ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling-tongs. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... And why are you afraid? Because you are one of those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want woman to be a mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl until it pleases you in your high-and-mightiness to take her in the tongs and drop her into the coffee of your existence, to sweeten what would otherwise not please your taste—and like most men you prefer two or three lumps ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... Selkirk for Fort William and its furs. The man was so intoxicated that he could not write, so the afore-time governor, Miles MacDonell, writes out the bargain, which one could wish so great a philanthropist as Selkirk had not touched with tongs. Before midwinter of 1817 has passed, the De Meuron soldiers have crossed Minnesota and gone down Red River to Fort Douglas. One stormy night they scale the wall and bundle the Northwest usurpers out, bag ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... seized with a pair of tongs, thrown violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks as ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... bewildered. Either she had got out of the wrong side of bed, or I had,—or we both had. Here she was, assailing me, hammer and tongs, so far as I ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... never knew what it was, on a raw winter's evening, to sit before a bright wood fire, in a fire-place, with feet on fender and tongs in hand, listening to an animated conversation so mixed up of two languages that it was hard to tell which predominated. Not all the stateliness to be found in Mexican palaces, where, in a lordly tapestried halls, men and women sit ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... serving him with an after-dinner cup of tea, which she had brought into the drawing-room, and in putting the second lump of sugar into his saucer she paused again, thoughtfully, holding the little cube in the tongs. She was rather elaborately dressed for so simple an occasion, and her silken train coiled itself far out over the mossy depth of the moquette carpet; the pale blue satin of the furniture, and the delicate white and gold of the decorations, became ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... devils and brigands is, that devils are less black than they are said to be, and brigands more dirty than people suppose. The eight bullies, who packed themselves in a circle around us, were so filthy in appearance that I should have wished to give them my money with a pair of tongs. You might guess, with a little effort, that their caps had been red; but lye-wash itself could not have restored the original color of their clothes. All the rocks of the kingdom had stained their cotton shirts, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... flitches, The fattest that ever were spent? They're the sides of the old committees Fed up in the Long Parliament. Here's a pair of bellows and tongs, And for a small matter I'll sell ye 'um, They are made of the presbyter's lungs, To blow up the coals of ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered. "He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... have been struck out of the anvil, valuable possessions raised by the tongs, and superb houses, in a two-fold ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... goods and chattels, when Caesar came running up in great exultation, with a new cloak which he had been so lucky as to find lying before the door of a deserted house in the suburb. I took hold of the infected garment with a pair of tongs, and pitched it as far as I was able from the cart, to the great dismay of Caesar, who could not understand why I should throw away a thing which he assured me was well worth twenty dollars. We set off, and soon got out of the town. Not a living creature was to be seen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Great War of the Succession broke out, and the English army, commanded by the Great Duke of Marlborough, being allied with the Imperialists under Prince Eugene, and the forces of their High Mightinesses the Dutchmen, went at it Hammer and Tongs about the Spanish succession with King Lewis of France, I, who had always been fond of the army, resolved to give up pot-walloping and take another turn under canvas. It was, however, too late in the day for me to think of again taking the part of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... always interested when they had a high tea in the sitting-room. The best old blue china was out, the loaf sugar, and the sugar-tongs that the little girl watched breathlessly lest her mother should lose the lump of sugar ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... eyes. Her own eyes quite sparkled with anger, for all the tears that were in them; and the tone in which she pronounced the name of the Herr Strauss suggested pointedly that he was one of the various unpleasant creatures which humanity disposes of with tongs. All this was so emphatic that Andreas suffered his hope to grow yet stronger; for now, certainly, one of these lovers was put safely out of ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... time there was marked indignation in San Francisco caused by the report that the San Franciscans, in their deep-grounded prejudice, had discriminated against the Chinamen in the relief work. This report was groundless. The six Chinese companies, or Tongs, representing enormous wealth, had done such good work that but little had been necessary from the general relief committee, and, besides, the Chinese needed less. No Chinaman was treated as other than a citizen entitled to all rights, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... And now will you come to a poor bachelor's assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry, but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to imagine ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... some hard fighting at the point for a minute or two. Good old-fashioned cut and thrust, hammer and tongs, like cutting out a ship. Tom Strachan found himself, he did not know how, with the hilt of his sword right up against a Soudanese breast-bone, the weapon having passed right through the man's body. But there was no expression ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... of the Latins, and weld it sevenfold, circle on circle. Some fill and empty the windy bellows of their blast, some dip the hissing brass in the trough. They raise their arms mightily in responsive time, and turn the mass of metal about in the grasp of their tongs. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into—Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!—Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Grant marching his army one hundred and fifty miles from its base, to get in rear of Vicksburg and cut off its relief. The very audacity of this plan may blind the careless thinker to its bad generalship; especially in view of the success that at last crowned its projector's hammer-and-tongs style of tactics. His reckless and ill-handled assaults upon the strong works at Vicksburg—so freely criticised on his own side, by army and by press—were but preface of a volume, so bloodily written to the end ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... offer they declined, and as the short rush-light was nearly burned out, and as she had not another ready, she got what is called a cam or grisset, put it on the hearth-stone, with a portion of hog's lard in it; she then placed the lower end of the tongs in the fire, until the broad portion of them, with which the turf is gripped, became red hot; she then placed the lard in the grisset between them, and squeezed it until nothing remained but pure oil; through this she slowly drew the peeled ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... But to the ardent youngsters who fought beneath his banner it was his to give a something priceless and unique—a something glorious to France and never before exampled in her literature. For the distichs of Boileau—'strong, heavy, useful, like pairs of tongs,'—he found them alexandrines with the leap and sparkle of sea waves and the sound of clashing swords and the colours of sunset and the dawn. They were tired of whitewash and cold distemper; and he gave them hangings of brocade ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... think how it would sound in folks' ears when they heard how the brethren of Fountain Abbey scampered away from a strolling friar, like the Ugly One, when the blessed Saint Dunstan loosed his nose from the red-hot tongs where he had held it fast; but when they had crossed the crest of the hill and the inn was lost to sight, quoth the fat Brother to the thin Brother, "Brother Ambrose, had we not better mend ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... came to a house that took only twenty-five pounds Bill would let him carry it in with the tongs—unless it was one where Bill, a knightly person, chanced to sustain more or less social relations with the bondmaid. And you could chip off pieces of ice to hold in your mouth, or cool your bare feet in the cold wet ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... hurried off on their several errands. The heifer was brought in from the plain, and Telemachus's crew came from the ship; the goldsmith brought the anvil, hammer, and tongs, with which he worked his gold, and Minerva herself came to accept the sacrifice. Nestor gave out the gold, and the smith gilded the horns of the heifer that the goddess might have pleasure in their beauty. Then Stratius and Echephron brought her in by the horns; ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... present eyed her in astonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could check an unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium, she bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal back into the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to her assistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her back in bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutes died, keeping her eyes ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Earl of Montaigne and Cornwall: Mayfield, was possessed by the see of Canterbury before the Norman conquest, and at its palace Sir Thomas Gresham lived in sumptuous style, and probably entertained Queen Elizabeth in one of her progresses; among the curiosities here the anvil, hammer, and tongs, which are traditionally said to have belonged to the noted St. Dunstan, "and, who is also said to have used the last instrument most ungallantly, and even brutishly, in twinging the nose of Old Nick, who tempted the immaculate prelate in the form of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... loud, now low, They raise a tempest, or they gently blow; In hissing flames huge silver bars are roll'd, And stubborn brass, and tin, and solid gold; Before, deep fix'd, the eternal anvils stand; The ponderous hammer loads his better hand, His left with tongs turns the vex'd metal round, And thick, strong strokes, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose—a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it—and Benjie took the poker in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... would beat me for no reason. I used to get so tired working hard, and then she would beat me. She beat me with thick sticks of fire-wood. She would lay me on the bench, lift my clothes, and beat me on the back. Another day she would beat me thus with the fire tongs. One day she took a hot flat-iron, removed my clothes, and held it on my naked back until I howled with pain. (There was a large scab on her back from this burn when she came to the Mission.) The scars on my body are proof of my bad ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... bedroom, which was as prosaic a place as all furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory, separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of patchouli, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... can best be inserted in the fire or other situation where an observation is desired, and withdrawn for immersion by means of long, slender tongs, with jaws resembling ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... instruments, such as all furnace workers employ, compels a certain dignity and grace of poise and action, we know not; but certain it is that the grace is there in a marked degree, and as we watched the men take their long-handled iron tongs and place in or lift out the plates of hot metal, we could not fail to be impressed with the charm of the physical action ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... with mutual affection, till they reached the edge of the campus, when the others saw the Twins suddenly loose their hold on each other, and fall to, hammer and tongs, over some quarrel whose beginning the ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, under petticoats, and ragged breeches. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass for the foreground of the picture; gridirons and frying pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, joint stools, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There a closet has disgorged its bowels—riveted plates and dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... uncomfortablest acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set into in these late years." Thoreau's furniture at Walden consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs, a kettle, a frying-pan, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. There were no ornaments. He writes, "I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... the girl had withdrawn, and the old man stood within the door. 'What! You're hammer and tongs, already, you two?' he said, coolly stroking his face. 'I thought you would be. I was pretty ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... any questions, I opened the mouth of my haversack and poured into it the dripping contents of the skillet. I next observed that the ashes on the hearth had a suspiciously fat appearance, and, taking the tongs, began raking among them. My suspicions were verified, for two plump-looking hoe-cakes came to light, which were also deposited in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... door—nothing; that encouraged me. The shutters of the ground floor were closed: I passed my stick between the two, I forced them, I entered through the window into a chamber; there was some fire in the fireplace; this served as a light; I saw a chest from whence the key had been taken; I took the tongs, I forced the drawers, and under a heap of linen I found the treasure, wrapped up in an old woolen stocking; I did not amuse myself by taking anything else; I jumped out of the window and I fell—guess where? ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... In his rage he forgot all the restraints of etiquette. He seized from the fireplace the tongs, and would have broken the head of the minister had not Madame de Maintenon rushed between them. The king ordered a messenger immediately to be dispatched to countermand the order. He declared that if a single house were burned, the head of the minister should be ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... that is so particularly unbecoming. You begin to wonder at what time during the day it commenced to unbend, and if you have had that melancholy, damp appearance many hours. Perhaps it is as well that you did not know before, for it could not have been rectified; you cannot bring a pair of tongs and a spirit-lamp out of your pocket and begin operations in public! Still it is exceedingly aggravating if you think you have been making an impression, and you return home to confront such a dejected-looking spectacle as you find ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren |
