"Underpinning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is true that it still stands, and will be standing for an hour or so, and life goes on in it very much as in the days when it was sound. We can choose either to leave it alone, and await the downfall of the city, among whose ruins life will never bloom again, or we can begin the underpinning of the tottering edifice, a process which will last for decades, which will allow no peace to any of us, which will be toilsome and dangerous, and will end almost imperceptibly, when the ancient city has been transformed into ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... at you and led you on, till you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words in it, and she got what she'd wanted, will make you pay a hundred times for the goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you came his way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him in the vitals—hit him between the eyes; and his stock's not worth ten cents in the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he's done, and'll never see his way out of the hole he's in"—he laughed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sword in the politest and most theatrical manner imaginable, although the poignancy of his feelings had apparently turned his scarlet uniform to a pale orange. This magnificent equipage was a trifle rheumaticky about its underpinning, but, drawn by four, six, or eight horses, it still took the road on holidays; and in winter, when the sleighing was unusually fine, with its wheels transformed into sectional runners like a gigantic bob-sled, it swept majestically out upon the road, where it towered above the flock ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... an apple-tree that hangs down near the wall, and disappears amid the foliage. The red squirrel is always actively saucy, aggressively impudent. He peeps in at me through a broken pane in the window and snickers; he strikes up a jig on the stone underpinning twenty feet away and mocks; he darts in and out among the timbers and chatters and giggles; he climbs up over the door, pokes his head in, and lets off a volley; he moves by jerks along the sill a few feet from my head and chirps ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... end of the line, small stones slipped away from his feet and plunged down into the dark. This was ominous, since gravel is awkward stuff to work among when it does not lie at rest. However, with plenty of stakes and some underpinning, he might be able to build up a new bank. By and by his foot struck something sharp and he looked up. He had kicked the edge of a large, ragged stone, and an indistinct, broken mass ran up the hill. The blocks had obviously come down from the bottom of the crags and, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... pleasure putting aside his normal modesty, "I'm six feet two inches tall, and I weigh two hundred pounds in the pink of condition. I have a forty-eight-inch chest, with five and a half inches chest-expansion, and a reach as long as a gorilla's. My underpinning is good, too; I'm not one of these fellows with spidery legs and a barrel-chest. I can do a hundred yards in ten seconds; I'm no slouch of a swimmer; and at Princeton they say I made football history. And in spite of it all, I haven't ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... I've got the hang of things, and I'll make a start to-morrow. Your way of underpinning the track is pretty good, but I don't like that plan. You can't hold up the road long with lumber; the ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... been this. Some foundation underpinning gave way in the molten gulf below, and the vast mountain sank and disappeared within itself. Imagine the spectacle who can! Mount Mazama left a clean-cut rim surrounding the hole through which it slipped and vanished. But there was a surging back. The eruptive ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... of cellars, their floors, ventilation, and various conveniences, belong to the interior equipments. There is, however, one point that even precedes the foundation,—the altitude. As the question commonly runs, "How high shall the top of the underpinning be?" Of course this can only be given on an actual site. It is unfortunate to plant a house so low in the ground that its cellar forms a sort of cesspool for the surrounding basin; most absurd to set it up on a stilted underpinning until it looks ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... like the fort at Number Four, of beams laid one upon another, and interlocked at the angles. This wooden wall seems to have rested, not immediately upon the ground, but upon a foundation of stone, designated by Mr. Norton, the chaplain, as the "underpinning,"—a name usually given in New England to foundations of the kind. At the northwest corner was a blockhouse, crowned with the watch-tower, the sight of which had prematurely kindled the martial fire of the Canadians and Indians. [Footnote: The term "blockhouse" was loosely used, and was even sometimes ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... On that little bit of journalistic "enterprise" the ICONOCLAST put a kibosh also, much to the satisfaction of every decent family in Harris county. Now the fecular sheet has found a new road to infamy—is advertising garters fit only to adorn the crummy underpinning of negro prostitutes. It does seem that the Post will do anything for a dollar— except be decent. Owing to the mental perversity of its management, respectability is for it impossible. It is a social leper, a journalistic pariah. It is devoid of political principle ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... perpetually moving with the times. It doesn't do, Newberry, it doesn't do." Whereupon Mr. Newberry went away troubled and wrote to Fareforth Furlong a confidential letter with a signed cheque in it for the amount of Mr. Fyshe's interest, and with such further offerings of dynamite, of underpinning and blasting as ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock |
