"Wedge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the roots. But it is of great moment that the night temperature should be kept near 60 deg. and not go below it. If the thermometer shows that the night temperature has been above the proper point owing to the heat of the bed, wedge up the lights about half an inch in the evening, and as the season advances increase this supply of night air, for it keeps the plants in health, provided there is no chill accompanying it. As regards watering, the important point is ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the First the width was increased, and a contrivance was introduced for doubling the area of the top when required, by two flaps which drew out from either end, and, by means of a wedge-shaped arrangement, the centre or main table top was lowered, and the whole table, thus increased, became level. Illustrations taken from Mr. G.T. Robinson's article on furniture in the "Art Journal" of 1881, represent a ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... ratified in 1870, provided that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Here was the entering wedge of federal interference. The amendments did not purport to deal with woman suffrage, but the pioneers of the suffrage movement thought they discovered in them a means of advancing their cause and lost ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... Feu-Follet was so easy, as to partake of the character of instinct. Her light sails were fully distended, though the breeze was far from fresh; and as she rose and fell on the long ground-swells, her wedge-like bows caused the water to ripple before them like a swift current meeting a sharp obstacle in the stream. It was only as she sank into the water, in stemming a swell, that anything like foam could be seen under her forefoot. A long line of swift-receding bubbles, however, marked her track, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is at its lower end, but is too shallow to be of any service to commerce. Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets admit sea-going vessels. It is thirty-eight miles from Whalebone Inlet to Cape Lookout, which projects like a wedge into the sea nearly three miles from the mainland, and there is not another passage through the narrow beach in all that distance that is of any use to the mariner. Following the trend of the coast ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... in a boiling rapid between gigantic walls of rock, the mountains here yielding to its sweep in a broadening valley only to press on it beyond and thrust it back on its way northward. It was all splendid and simple; if you please, nothing but a stream filling the intersecting slopes of a wedge-shaped valley and turning off because it had to. But the serenity of the whole composition: gray rocks, shining waters, green slopes; white mists, enveloping the crests, smiling in the afternoon ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... creeping on me, inch by inch, and I could not tell from where. And then—he caught me. He held his hand over my mouth, and I bit him. I was helpless, strangling,—and some one was trying to break in the mantel from outside. It began to yield somewhere, for a thin wedge of yellowish light was reflected on the opposite wall. When he saw that, my assailant dropped me with a curse; then—the opposite wall swung open noiselessly, closed again without a sound, and I was alone. The intruder ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... classification was not sufficiently careful, and that the remedies were ill chosen; but it is a hard thing to initiate any reform, and it was necessary to familiarise the public mind with the principle, by inserting the thin end of the wedge first: it is not therefore to be wondered at that among so practical a people there should still be some room for improvement. The mass of the nation are well pleased with existing arrangements, and ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... that, and an old man in the bargain," added Tom as he quickened his steps involuntarily; "I can see that bully Tony Pollock leading the lot; yes, and the other fellows must be his cronies, Wedge McGuffey ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. "Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... wedge of Kragan bayonets around him and the picked-up broadsword in his hand, he fought his way to the throne, where Firkked waited, a sword in one of his upper hands, his Spear of State in the other, ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... morning they both breakfasted in bed, the ingenuity of Ottillie having somewhat mitigated the tray difficulty by a clever adjustment of the wedge-shaped piece of mattress with which Europe elevates its head at night. Molly was just "winding up" a liberal supply of honey, and Rosina was salting her egg, when there came a tap at the door of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... the entering wedge for the educator. In answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands of submerged mothers, it is possible to use their interest as the foundation for education in prophylaxis, hygiene and infant welfare. The potential mother can then be shown that maternity need not be slavery ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... its current against another rock. It was useless to try to take a boat around the end of the rock. The boat's sides, three-eighths of an inch thick, would be crushed like a cardboard box. If lifted into the V-shaped groove, the weight of the boats would wedge them and crush their sides. Fortunately an upright log was found tightly wedged between these boulders. A strong limb, with one end resting on a rock opposite, was nailed to this log; a triangle of stout sticks, with the point down, was ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... are!" exclaimed Mr. Dennis Farraday, as he burst into the outer office, ushering as a wedge before him Miss Patricia Adair and Miss Mildred Lindsey. "Got that hat-check, Pops? Money, I mean, for Miss Lindsey, not a pasteboard for your own ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and disaster to the Gallic race, the huge German masses, animated by a sense of victory and the consciousness of a superiority in arms as well as in numbers, were sweeping forward like a whirlwind of destruction. The Crown Prince, who had routed Mcmahon at Woerth and driven the wedge in that separated him from Bazaine, continued his onward march on the left of the German line through the passes of the Vosges into the fertile plains of Champagne. At the same time, Prince Frederick Charles, with the main portion of the second army, had crossed the Moselle at Pont-a-Mousson; ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... one great difference between Austria and Prussia which developed more and more as the energy of the young Napoleon was driven like a wedge between them. The difference can be most shortly stated by saying that Austria did, in some blundering and barbaric way, care for Europe; but Prussia cared for nothing but Prussia. Austria is not a nation; you cannot ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... with a caulking hammer in one hand, a wedge in the other, driving tar-soaked oakum between the planks so as to make a water-tight seam, and as the young men came up he wiped his steamy brow with his arm, and looked at ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... be used not to split the timber where it is nailed. With most wood this may be avoided by driving the spikes or nails several inches back of the ends of the sticks. To erect a flagpole or a wireless pole, cut the bottom of the pole wedge-shaped, fit in the space between the cross poles, as in Fig. 90 A, then lash it fast to the B and A pole, and, to further secure it, two other sticks may be nailed to the F poles, one on each side, between which the bottom of the flagpole is thrust, as shown ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... her lips, and looked at the rising tide. The next wave broke at their feet, and both involuntarily stepped back. Behind them was the mass of earth that had fallen from the cliff. It had descended in a solid wedge without scattering. Alfred climbed on to it, and helped Beth up. "We shall be a little higher here, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the verandah, the mission-boat was shooting for the mouth of the river. She was a long whale-boat painted white; a bit of an awning astern; a native pastor crouched on the wedge of the poop, steering; some four-and-twenty paddles flashing and dipping, true to the boat-song; and the missionary under the awning, in his white clothes, reading in a book, and set him up! It was pretty to see and hear; there's no smarter sight in the islands ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the California market, a few blocks distant, and bought some crackers and a wedge of new cheese. On the way back to Chinatown Travis stopped at a music store on Kearney Street to get her banjo, which she had left to have its head tightened; and thus burdened they regained the "town," Condy grieving audibly at having to carry ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... began the left, pausing a few moments to hear Mr. Lincoln tell me about a scar on the thumb. 'You have heard that they call me a rail-splitter, and you saw them carrying rails in the procession Saturday evening; well, it is true that I did split rails, and one day, while I was sharpening a wedge on a log, the axe glanced and nearly took my thumb off, and there is the scar, you see.' The right hand appeared swollen as compared with the left, on account of excessive hand-shaking the evening before; this difference is distinctly shown in the cast. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... acts of the retiring Congress has not been noted so far, but, though not a large item in itself, it is the entering wedge of subsequent legislation which will be of the highest importance to the country. It is the item in the legislative appropriation bill which allows of the expenditure of $10,000 by the bureau of labor "for the collection ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... said at this point in the convention's proceedings. Interruptions, of applause or derision, were to be reckoned with; but the speaker did not once drop his voice or pause long enough for any one to drive in a wedge of protest. He might have been swamped by an uprising of the whole convention, but strange to say the convention was intent upon hearing him. Once the horde of candidates and distinguished visitors ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... hand I discerned a group of taa-taas, arranged in wedge formation, the enclosing sides being formed by swimmers carrying a web of woven haro, in the center of which reposed a visiting chief with three or four of ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... evening passed; and to the accompaniment of distant, muttering thunder, we two guests retired to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to give me my instructions in a whisper, and five minutes after entering my own room, I had snuffed the candles, slipped a wedge, which he had given me, under the door, crept out through the window onto the guttered ledge, and joined Smith in his room. He, too, had extinguished his candles, and the place was in darkness. As I climbed in, he grasped my ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... their swaying tops. Woodchucks, so fat from their summer feeding that it seemed as if their coats must split, were locating their winter homes where they might sleep comfortably during the cold months. Often during the night a wedge of flying geese went honking over the forest, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... the history of Henry the fourth, by Father Daniel, we are surprised at not finding him the great man."—Murray's Gram., p. 172; Ingersoll's, 187; Fisk's, 99. "Do not those same poor peasants use the Lever and the Wedge, and many other instruments?"—Murray, 288; from Harris, 293. "Arithmetic is excellent for the gauging of Liquors; Geometry, for the measuring of Estates; Astronomy, for the making of Almanacks; and Grammar, perhaps, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... they amount to little more than that—some six miles north of Iloilo, just at the head of Guimaras Strait. On the east the long, narrow island of Guimaras, hilly and beautifully wooded, lies like a wedge between Panay and Negros. Beyond it the seven-thousand-foot volcano, Canlaon, on Negros, lifts a purple head. On the west lies the swampy foreshore of Panay with a mountain range inland, daring the sunlight with scarpy flanks, on which every ravine and every cleft are sunk ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... to the west of the city of Verdun itself and the civil population of the town had fled. The town had been swept by the great German guns until hardly one stone remained upon another. North of the city, the French had been bent back as the Germans thrust a wedge into the defending lines almost to the foot of ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... 66) exhibits the mode called stock-grafting; a being the limb of a large tree, which is sawed off and split, and is to be held open by a small wedge till the grafts are put in. A graft inserted in the limb is shown at b, and at c is one not inserted, but designed to be put in at d, as two grafts can be put into a large stock. In inserting the graft, be careful to make the edge of the inner bark of the graft meet exactly the edge ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... upper stairway are carved rows of figures, which seem to be ascending by your side. They represent warriors, courtiers, captives, men of every nation, among whom may be easily distinguished the negro from the centre of Africa. Inscriptions abound, in that strange arrow-headed or wedge-shaped character,—one of the most ancient and difficult of all,—which, after long baffling the learning of Europe, has at last begun yielded to the science and acuteness of the present century. One ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... matter, but I should be sorry to leave unrequited the interest he appears to take in my welfare. If he will send his address to 'Poste Restante,' Cannes, Monte Carlo, or Hyeres, I shall be proud to send him a delicate wedge of our wedding cake. I trust, however, he knows my name; for here I shall only sign ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... he cald to his last aid, Wherewith he fiercely did his foe assaile, And double blowes about him stoutly laid, That glauncing fire out of the yron plaid; As sparckles from the Andvile use to fly, 375 When heavy hammers on the wedge are swaid; Therewith at last he forst him to unty One of his grasping ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... that purpose. They are of two kinds, viz. double and single. The single ones are from twenty to thirty feet long, and about twenty or twenty-two inches broad in the middle; the stern terminates in a point, and the head something like the point of a wedge. At each end is a kind of deck, for about one-third part of the whole length, and open in the middle. In some the middle of the deck is decorated with a row of white shells, stuck on little pegs wrought out of the same piece ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... applied to the wedge-shaped characters in which the Assyrian and other ancient monumental ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... lance-like mountain peaks; the water a broad band of blue, the sky above a canopy of blue, and there at the end of the inlet, closing it, like some colossal monster crouched awaiting us, lay the Muir, the huge glacier, a solid wedge of ice, white also, but a transparent white full of ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... trees was cut down some years ago by a party of men, who, I think, should have been sent to prison for the deed. It took five men twenty-five days to cut it through with augers and saws, and then they were obliged to use a great wedge and a ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the iron as the most valuable of his inventions. A competent authority has spoken of Cort's grooved rollers as of "high philosophical interest, being scarcely less than the discovery of a new mechanical Power, in reversing the action of the wedge, by the application of force to four surfaces, so as to elongate a mass, instead of applying force to a mass to divide the four surfaces." One of the best authorities in the iron trade of last century, Mr. Alexander Raby of Llanelly, like many others, was at first entirely ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Thusa was very sudden. She had risen in the morning in usual health, and pursued until noon her customary occupation—when, all at once, as she told the young doctor, "it seemed as if a knife went through her heart, and a wedge into her brain—and she was sure it was a death-stroke." For the first time, in the course of her long life, she was obliged to take her bed, and there she lay in helplessness and loneliness, unable to summon relief. The young doctor called in the afternoon ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Street, which he had no sooner reached than he guessed that must be the house, mid-way down. For a stream of light expanded wedge-wise from the door, which was flung open as a carriage drew up to the kerbstone. Everett calculated he should arrive precisely as the occupants were getting out. Better ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... water for the other shanties, swept out all three, split wood and carried it in to the cook and to the living-camps, filled and trimmed the lamps, perhaps helped the cook. About half the remainder of the day he wielded an ax, saw and wedge in the hardwood, collecting painfully—for his strength was not great—material for the constant fires it was his duty to maintain. Often he would stand motionless in the vast frozen, creaking forest, listening with awe ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... regular ducking and make them gasp," Matthias Pardon cried. "If you want an opportunity to act on Harvard College, now's your chance. These gentlemen will carry the news; it will be the narrow end of the wedge." ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... with Derrick ran to one of these cars, calling on him to follow them. It was already so crowded that they could not wedge themselves into it, so they clung on behind, and were ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... same thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to drive their way through life like a wedge. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... with the Roman Emperor, "Leges etiam in ipsa arma imperium habere volumus." Warned the President that in all matters relating to this country Louis Napoleon has abandoned the initiative to England; and to throw a small wedge in this alliance, I finally respectfully suggested to the President what is said above about putting the American interests in the Mediterranean under ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... this time we had gotten our jury—fore—topmast up, and the Rayo, having kept astern in the night, was now under topsails, and top—gallant sails, with the wet canvass at the head of the sails, showing that the reefs had been freshly shaken out—rolling wedge like on the swell, and rapidly shooting a—head, to resume her station. As she passed us, and let fall her foresail, she made the signal to make more sail, her object being to get through the Caicos Passage, into which ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a wedge of wildfowl, to and fro we swept the field; and when to either hedge we came, sickles wanted whetting, and throats required moistening, and backs were in need of easing, and every man had much to say, and women wanted praising. Then all returned to the other end, with reaping-hooks ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... South, the Negroes will suffer in the contraction. There is no reason to encourage this pessimistic view, since it is so disturbing in its nature, and since it is in the province of the individuals composing the race to create a future to more or less extent. The wedge has entered; it remains for the race to live up to its opportunities. The South already is making concessions. While concessions are apt to be looked upon as too patronizing, and not included in the classification of rights in common, yet in time they amount ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers—these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... standing in the snow, he shot a snowshoe rabbit. Another time he got a lean, white weasel. This much of meat they encountered, and no more, though, once, half-mile high and veering toward the west and the Yukon, they saw a wild-duck wedge drive by. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... be sent for, as she was just the kind of woman they wanted. After this other matters were talked about, the marquis changing the conversation; he had gained his point in quietly introducing the thin end of the wedge of his design. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... thieves,—veritable birds of prey,—whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wager of battle with sword and shield, and the fighting in ranks and the wedge-column at close quarters, show that the close infantry combat was the main event of the battle. The preliminary hurling of stones, and shooting of arrows, and slinging of pebbles, were harassing and annoying, but seldom sufficiently important to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... moment ago, and I told her what I was doing. Then I showed her the diagram of the Wedge; the great black disc for heathendom, and the narrow white slit for the converts won. She looked at it amazed. Then she slowly traced her finger round the disc, and she pointed to the narrow slit, and her tears came dropping down on it. "Oh, what must ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... sweet. But she's that sensible as it don't worry any. Say, you ain't goin' to marry that gal; ye never meant to. You're a skunk, an' I'd as lief choke the life out o' ye as not. But I'm goin' to pay ye sorer than that. Savvee? Ye'll bide here till Davi' comes. I'll jest fix this wedge in your mouth till I've cleared them drivers out o' the store. I don't fancy to hear your lungs ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... will be no regular breakfast today. You must get the steward to cut you a chunk of cold meat, put it between two slices of bread, and make a sandwich of it. As to tea, ask him to give you a bottle and to pour your tea into that; then, if you wedge yourself into a corner, you will find that you are able to manage your breakfast comfortably, and can amuse yourself watching people trying to balance a cup of tea in ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... who had secret bowels of mercy for him, and hid doughnuts in her ample bosom to be secretly administered to him in mitigation of the sentence that sent him supperless to bed; and many a triangle of pie, many a wedge of cake, had conveyed to him surreptitious consolations which his more conscientious mother longed, but dared not, to impart. In fact, these ministrations, if suspected, were winked at by Mrs. Marvyn, for two reasons: first, that mothers are generally glad of any loving-kindness to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... a pretty strong lock," said Chet, getting to his feet and rumpling up his hair thoughtfully. "I'll have to get a hammer and a wedge of some sort." ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... understand, now that I am a man grown, why our people were so careless regarding the future, for everywhere around us was food in plenty. Huge flocks of wild swans circled above our heads, trumpeting the warning that winter would come before gold could be found. Wild geese, cleaving the air in wedge shaped line, honked harshly that the season for gathering stores of food was passing, while at times, on a dull morning, it was as if the waters of the bay were covered completely ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... this connection, expressed the opinion that the agitation of the negro-franchise question in the District of Columbia, at this time was the mere entering-wedge to the agitation of the question throughout the States, and was ill-timed, uncalled for, and calculated to do great harm. He believed that it would engender enmity, contention, and strife between the two races, and lead to a war between"them ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... boys, and therefore lawful game, but day-pupils. That was a grievance at Brincliffe—a great grievance. It was only last term that the first day-boy was admitted into Mr. West's establishment. More than one young wiseacre had gloomily prophesied that Jim Bacon was the thin end of the wedge. And now they gloated, "Didn't ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... the husbandman make ready to plough. It follows the plough, in Theocritus, as persistently as the wolf the kid and the peasant-lad his sweetheart. The discipline of the migrating cranes, the serried wedge of their ranks in flight, the good order of the resting flock, are often, and often fancifully, described. Aristotle records how they have an appointed leader, who keeps watch by night and in flight keeps calling to the laggards; ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... writers were ashamed of their heroic style. I have never been able to understand what attraction there can be in coarseness. The coarse work is generally left for the apprentice. Everything coarse, be it a block, a wedge, or a blade, passes as unfinished, as raw, jagged, and just the reverse of cutting. No one is proud of a coarse shirt, but many, even quite distinguished people, proudly strut about the streets in a coarse smock of abusive language, quite unconcernedly, ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... with Indians beating dried skins to frighten and stampede our stock, and all yelling like fiends, while a perfect rain of arrows swept our camp. With the river below us full of holes and quicksands, our enemies had only to hold the natural defense on either side while they drove us in a harrowing wedge back to the water. If our ponies and mules should break from the corral they would rush for the river or be lost in the widening space back from the deeper draw, where a well-trained corps of thieves knew how to capture ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... But not without analogous precedent. In the later Middle Ages small craft were assigned the function in battle of trying to wedge up the rudders of great ships or bore holes between wind and water. See Fighting Instructions (Navy Record Society), ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... white circle of the moon drove a flying wedge of wild geese. The wail of the wolf died out. A faint honking was blown to them by the wind, now a distant, jangling chorus, now a solitary sound ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... choose—the chair or the table, for, oddly enough, I never thought of the bed, when my host settled the question by leading me forcibly forward and flinging me down on the mattress. He then took a wooden wedge out of his pocket, and, going to the door, thrust it in the crack, giving the handle a violent tug to see whether the door stood the test. 'There now, mate,' he said with a grin—a grin that seemed to suggest something my tipsy brain could not ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... friend?" answered Sam heartily: "let us come together by all means, and if we are to go to the ranges, we had better take a blanket a-piece, and a wedge of damper. So if you will get them from the house, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... drifted recurrently through Van Brunt's thought, and somehow the face of Emily Southwaithe seemed to rise up and take form before him. Five years ... A wedge of wild-fowl honked low overhead and at sight of the encampment veered swiftly to the north into the smouldering sun. Van Brunt could not follow them. He pulled out his watch. It was an hour past midnight. The northward clouds flushed bloodily, and rays of sombre-red shot ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... of it," said Ernest. "I regard this as the thin end of the wedge—no more than that. If Estelle can win his confidence, then she may do great things; but she won't win it at one picnic. I know him too well. He's a mass of contradictions. Some days most communicative, other days not a syllable. Some days he seems to trust you with his secrets, other ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... cemented together with wet clay and ashes against the logs, and a hole cut in the roof, formed the chimney and hearth in this primitive dwelling. The chinks were filled with wedge-shaped pieces of wood, and plastered with clay: the trees, being chiefly oaks and pines, afforded no moss. This deficiency rather surprised the boys, for in the thick forest and close cedar swamps, moss grows in abundance on the north side of the trees, especially on the ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... thereabouts the Nile pours in deep, strong flood through a narrow valley, which in places contracts to a gorge or canyon. The channel is studded with islets and rocks, and at one point the river races through a wedge-shaped cleft, apparently little more than 100 yards ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... worse for it? Nobody. Who was the better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good predominated. It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them; and he had no doubt ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... being an "exceptional crime," no regard need be had to the ordinary forms of justice. All manner of tortures were freely applied to force confessions. In Scotland "the boot" was used, being an iron case in which the legs are locked up to the knees, and an iron wedge then driven in until sometimes the bones were crushed and the marrow spouted out. Pin sticking, drowning, starving, the rack, were too common to need details. Sometimes the prisoner was hung up by the thumbs, and whipped by one person, while another held lighted candles to the feet ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Great Lake's sunny smiles Dimple round its hundred isles, And the mountain's granite ledge Cleaves the water like a wedge, Ringed about with smooth, gray stones, Rest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... without successively increasing tension, however, to form a gun. The breech-end of the second tube from the bore is forged solid so that its grain will run parallel with the bore and give the gun longitudinal strength. Both the wedge and the screw breech-loading apparatus are employed on guns of 7 inches bore (110-pounders) and under. It will thus be seen that the defects of large solid forgings are avoided; that the iron may be well worked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the South American republics. It is just a little larger than the state of Oklahoma. It is a little wedge between Brazil and Argentina and is, all in all, the most advanced country in South America. At the time of the visit of the writer it was the only country in South America whose dollar was worth a hundred ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... the crest is more or less perpendicular and varies greatly, as does the curvature of the posterior end, and the flatness of the lower surface. The outline of the manubrial process also varies, being wedge-shaped in the Bankiva, and rounded in the Spanish breed. The FURCULUM differs in being more or less arched, and greatly, as may be seen in the accompanying outlines, in the shape of the terminal plate; but the shape of this part differed a little in two skeletons ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... coming down the side of the mountain like a woolly avalanche. In the shape of a wedge with a leader at the point of it, they were running with a definite purpose and as though all the dogs in sheepdom were heeling them. The very thing against which he had come to warn the herders was about to happen—the band was making straight for Dibert's sheep, which were still feeding ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... up bonnet and horn and chose a seat close to the river. Before her was a gap in the knotted grapevine heaps that clung along the brink of the bank; through it, veiled only by some tendrils that swung wishfully across, lay a wedge-like vista of muddy water, bottom-land, bluff, and sky. The mid-morning sun glinted upon the treacherous current, upon the wet grass of the bottom-land, upon the green-brown bluff and the Gatling at its top, upon the far, curving azure of the sky. Against the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... spite of the overwhelming force of the Allied fleets, supported by the fortresses of Copenhagen and Elsinore. The attack was so sudden and so completely unexpected, that it must be confessed the defenders were to a certain extent taken unawares. The Russians came on in the form of an elongated wedge, their most powerful vessels being at ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! 5 Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, 10 It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer 15 I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Grenville and Oswald could not work in unison. Franklin and de Vergennes became puzzled and suspicious, having only an imperfect inkling by report and gossip concerning the true state of affairs. They suspected, with good show of evidence, that the real object of English diplomacy was to drive in a wedge between the allies. Amid these perplexities, on April 22, Franklin wrote to Jay, begging him to come to Paris: "Here you are greatly wanted, for messengers begin to come and go, ... and I can neither ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... passage of the Reform Bill (S582) changed the policy of both these great political parties. It made Liberals and Conservatives bid against each other for the support of the large number of new voters (S582 (4)), and it acted as an entering wedge to prepare the way for the further extension of suffrage in 1867 and 1884 (S534), representing the Commons, had gained a most significant victory; and further reforms were accordingly carried against the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... between them and the outer winds, But I am a crumbling wall. They told me they could bear the blast alone, They told me: that was all. But I must wedge myself between ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... silently, but no one looked up at them. Underfoot, lay the thick, black veil of mud, which the Lane never lifted, but none looked down on it. It was impossible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, in the cram and crush, in the wedge and the jam, in the squeezing and shouting, in the hubbub and medley. Such a jolly, rampant, screaming, fighting, maddening, jostling, polyglot, quarrelling, laughing broth of a Vanity Fair! Mendicants, vendors, buyers, gossips, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... jewel in the world! and yet how little liked and loved by the world! All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. The best, the noblest, the most lasting, yet not minded: our own things, poor, low, uncertain, unsatisfactory, yet pursued. The heart runneth after the wedge of gold, and the mind seeks for greatness. Give me honour, or else I die: a crown here is more desired than heaven hereafter. Divine love hath great danger accompanying it, but the recompense is answerable: 'Be ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... merging into knee-boots, the whole crowned with a portentous peaked cap, with absurd brass ventilators, and powdered with many thicknesses and shades of dust. His hair was dusty. The very eyelashes of the honest, ugly light eyes, set wide apart in the thin wedge-shaped, tanned face that the absurd cap shaded, were dusty as a miller's; dust lay thick in all the chinks and creases of his leading features, and a large black smudge of oily grime was upon his wide upper lip, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... stood in his moccasins, yet seemed not tall, so broad he was and ponderously thick. He had an elephantine leg, with a foot like a black-oak wedge; a chimpanzean arm, with a fist like a black-oak maul; eyes as large and placid as those of an ox; teeth as large and even as those of a horse; skin that was not skin, but ebony; a nose that was not a nose, but gristle; hair that was not hair, but wool; and a grin that was not a grin, but ivory ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... accord at the moment when the priest is about to lift the Host. All was unfamiliar and splendid, and we came away, feeling as if our own little wedding-group would have been lost in so magnificent a tabernacle. The Grande Place, on which lay the wedge-like shadow of the high-towered Hotel de Ville, was perhaps as thronged a honeycomb of buzzing populace as when Alva looked out upon it to see the execution of Egmont and Horn. Among all the good-natured Netherlandish countenances that paved the square there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... soon lost. The strait of Salamis was now the scene of a vast melee, hundreds of ships crowding together in the narrow pass between the island and the mainland. Themistocles in the centre with the picked ships of Athens was forcing his way, wedge-like, between the Phoenician and Ionian squadrons into the dense mass of the Persian centre. The bronze beaks ground their way into hostile timbers, oars were swept away, rowers thrown in confusion from their ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... safe at this supreme moment from his dirty little expedient of dieting the slave. As similar bullies, when they collect the slum rents, put a foot in the open door, these are always ready to push in a muddy wedge wherever there is a slit in a sundered household or a crack in a broken heart. To a man of any manhood nothing can be conceived more loathsome and sacrilegious than even so much as asking whether a woman who has given up all she loved to death and the fatherland has or has not shown some ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... left the verdant valleys, with their sheltered farms and chalets, behind. The pine-woods thinned, and now and again a wedge of frozen snow, lodged under the projecting corner of a rock, appeared beside the track. The wind grew keener, chill from the eternal snows over which it had swept, and sheer, rocky peaks, bare of tree or herbage, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... beckoned to the door, I rose, and to do my hair had to wedge myself in between the breakfast-table and the filmy mirror that hung among the half-tone pictures of the rebels of 1916. On the iron mantel, gray with coal dust, ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... Gebel et-Tih, and cut off from it almost completely by a moat of wadys, a triangular group of mountains known as Sinai thrusts a wedge-shaped spur into the Red Sea, forcing back its waters to the right and left into two narrow gulfs, that of Akabah and that of Suez. Gebel Katherin stands up from the centre and overlooks the whole peninsula. A sinuous chain detaches ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... than Edith's, but Lilian had occasionally been spoken of as a young woman who might be thankful to marry at all—she was so much plainer than her sisters. She was, however, very happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory little boys and the mistress of a wedge of brown stone violently driven into Fifty-third Street, seemed to exult in her condition as in a bold escape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was questioned, but she was conceded presence, though not majesty; she had moreover, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... confidence in the natives, who, however, were gallantly doing their utmost to assist them, headed by their brave chief, Tuscarora. Tecumah and his faithful band had but one object in view, to rescue Constance and her father. Like a wedge, with their most stalwart warriors in the van, they fought their way through the mass of foes entering the fort towards the outlet which had allowed the latter ingress. Several of their number fell; scarcely one ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... and honest sobrietie, shewing by his modest grauitie that he deserueth the name which be beareth, besides that he is gentle and tractable. After we had soiourned a certaine space with them, the Paracoussy prayed one of his sonnes to present vnto me a wedge of siluer, which hee did and that with a good wil: in recompence whereof I gave him a cutting hooke and some other better present: wherewith he seemed to be very well pleased. Afterward we tooke our leaue of them, because the night approched, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... wants to bust you? Principally because your settling here and draining and developing that piece of drowned land would be the opening wedge in the settlement of the district. You've shown what can be done with this land. People would come flocking in, farmers, real settlers, not the fugitives nor the crooked real-estate men who so far have had a monopoly down here. The ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... bound to the forest with them; and then they put a string around his head, and put a board under his head and shoulders, and made a knot on the string, and bound his head fast to the board. Then the elder brother, Einar, took a wedge, and put it on the priest's eye, and the servant who stood beside him struck upon it with an axe, so that the eye flew out, and fell upon the board. Then he set the pin upon the other eye, and said to the servant, "Strike now ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... on, the neighbors still played their cribbage. Still was the day bright, but the shrinking wedge of sun had gone entirely from the window-sill. Half-past Full had drawn from his pocket a mouthorgan, breathing half-tunes upon it; in the middle of "Suwanee River" the man who sat in the corner laid the letter he was ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... minute. The entire weight of each car being used for its own traction, it can ascend very steep grades, and can attain high speed or stop very quickly. "Another form is the magnetic railway, on which the cars are wedge-shaped at both ends, and moved by huge magnets weighing four thousand tons each, placed fifty miles apart. On passing a magnet, the nature of the electricity charging a car is automatically changed from ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Eilif was, Alike they acted, Those chieftains twain In wedge-like phalanx. Chased were the East Wends Into a corner narrow, Not easy for the LaesirsSec. Was ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... her own room, Edith relieved her overwrought feelings by a burst of tears, brief, indeed, but bitter. Like her husband, she felt that this incident, although not assuming the guise of a quarrel, was an opening wedge in the unity of their affection. Unlike Arthur, however, she thought of it with self-reproach and misgiving. She did not for an instant consider the possibility of having taken a different position in regard to Dr. Ashton, ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... our faithful regiments. Their ardor may no longer be curb'd in. They entreat permission to commence the attack; And if thou wouldst but give the word of onset, They could now charge the enemy in rear, Into the city wedge them, and with ease O'erpower them in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the fire. As Thor came toward him he lifted up the tongs and flung from it a blazing wedge of iron. It whizzed straight toward Thor's forehead. Thor put up his hands and caught the blazing wedge of iron between the mittens that old Grid had given him. Quickly he hurled it back at Gerrioed. It struck the Giant on the forehead and ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... picture is certainly the Ball at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneath whom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, Beau Brummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchess is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the Beau tres degage, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... be healthy, it would be better without it at all," said the mayor, wiping his wedge-shaped beard with a red handkerchief. "It would be a good riddance! To my thinking, your Excellency, the Lord sends it us as a punishment—the frost, I mean. We sin in the summer and are punished in the winter. . ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and the excessively smart Alexander of Russia sat on dead-head hill and watched the game with interest, but in spite of my repeated efforts to get them to do so, were utterly unwilling to cover my bets on the final result. The second half opened brilliantly. Murat made a flying wedge with our centre-rush, threw himself impetuously upon Kutusoff, the Russian half-back, pushed the enemy back beyond the goal posts, and the game was practically over. The emperors on dead-head hill ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... I think possibly that can be done. The Wedge Nursery of Albert Lea, Minnesota, have a method of packing roses in sphagnum moss. They soak this material very thoroughly, embed the roots in it, and outside this material they apply ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of this land. We scarcely realize how much these gospel songs mean to those Southern people, and how they listen with eagerness at once to the sweetness of the tune and to the gospel that is within it. It is an entering wedge to a new life there. A dear girl of my acquaintance taught from thirty to fifty of these women; they listened eagerly, and the tears rolled down their cheeks, and they said to her, "Oh, come and tell us more about Jesus, for we ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... bewildered the learned faculty by her diploma, all in due form, authorizing her to dose and bleed and amputate with the best of them. Some of them think Miss Blackwell must be a socialist of the most rabid class, and that her undertaking is the entering wedge to a systematic attack on society by the whole sex. Others, who have seen her, say that there is nothing very alarming in her manner; that, on the contrary, she is modest and unassuming, and talks reasonably on other subjects. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the course of an operation, for example in osteotomy for knock-knee, or wedge-shaped resection for bow-leg, are repaired by ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... warning, and then in a fury Rockville tried to form a flying wedge—such a move being permissible that year. The shock was terrific, and in spite of all their efforts to stand firm, Oak Hall broke, and the pigskin was carried over the line. Then the goal was kicked—and the whistle blew, and the first half ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... the two lines of railway between the same places. With our footing secure on the Aubers Ridge the gates of Lille and La Bassee would be at our mercy. Then with a mobile field army there would be nothing to stop us till we got to Ghent or Brussels. This was the place to drive the wedge that would cut the German line in two, and once we had Lille we would endanger the whole German lines of communication north and south. It used to be a favourite amusement among the officers of our staff in the evenings ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph announced the slaughter ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... March 21 was checked by his co-ordination of Allied forces. But checking the enemy just before he reached the key of the Channel ports was not defeating him; preventing him from driving a wedge between the British and French armies was only diverting him to another point of attack. He was desperate—that enemy! He knew that he must win a decisive victory soon, or see his own maladies ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... and before either boy had collected his startled wits sufficiently to even offer a protest or to demand what this rough laying on of hands meant, a big man drove, like a sharpened wedge, through the crowd, and halted, with a hand tightly gripping the coat collar of each ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... bed, which was moved backward and forward under a revolving cylinder. It was seen, then, that if type could be secured to the surface of a cylinder, great speed could be attained. In Sir Rowland Hill's device the type was cast wedge-shape; that is, narrower at the bottom. A broad "nick" was cut into its side, into which a "lead" fitted. The ends of the "lead" in turn fitted into a slot in the column rules, and these latter were bolted into the cylinder. The inventor, Sir Rowland Hill, the father ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... when I at length rose, that I was best out of it altogether. I knew my wish to oblige them and show them that I had no ill-feeling about it might land me into further difficulties. It would be the thin end of the wedge. And though I dreaded the scoffing remarks of Miss Willoughby, and knew she would be really put out by my refusal, my mind was quite made up, and meeting her on the stairs going down to dinner two hours later, I told her I ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... to justify our friendship. For the first time we were compelled to openly oppose Germany in the deep and dangerous game of world politics. They wished to see if our understanding was a reality or a sham. Could they drive a wedge between us by showing that we were a fair-weather friend whom any stress would alienate? Twice they tried it, once in 1906 when they bullied France into a conference at Algeciras but found that Britain was firm at her side, and again in 1911 when in a time of profound peace ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance, would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, etc.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a single material of thought, volition, or action. But, mechanic-like, it works by plumb and rule on all the materials found in the warehouse of memory; and manufactures, out of the same plank of pine, or bar of iron, or wedge of gold, or precious stone, some new utensil, ornament, or adornment never found in Nature. In its present form it is the offspring of the art and contrivance of man. Hence our invulnerable position against Atheism or Deism. No one could have created the idea ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Sleaford in Lincolnshire. Thistle Island, after the Master of the Investigator. Neptune Isles, "for they seemed inaccessible to men." Thorny Passage, from the dangerous rocks. Cape Catastrophe, where the accident occurred. Taylor's Island, after a midshipman drowned in the accident. Wedge Island, "from its shape." Gambier Isles, after Admiral Lord Gambier. Memory Cove, in memory of the accident. Cape Donington, after Flinders' birthplace. Port Lincoln, after the chief town in Flinders' native county. Boston Island, Bay and Point, Bicker Island, Surfleet Point, Stamford Hill, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... is an astonishment. All those feet are small, symmetrical—light as the feet of figures painted on Greek vases—and the step is always taken toes first; indeed, with geta it could be taken no other way, for the heel touches neither the geta nor the ground, and the foot is tilted forward by the wedge-shaped wooden sole. Merely to stand upon a pair of geta is difficult for one unaccustomed to their use, yet you see Japanese children running at full speed in geta with soles at least three inches high, held to the foot only by a forestrap fastened between ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... saw that, Sigurd, who was a man of many fights, said that we had better send the marshmen round to fall on the wings of the foe, while we went straight for the centre of the line in the wedge formation that the Viking loves. For so we should have no trouble in crossing the stream, and should cut the force ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... When wedge and mallet are at work, preparing my provision of firewood under the grey sky that heralds winter, a favourite relaxation creates a welcome break in my daily output of prose. By my express orders, the woodman has selected the oldest and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... them for the dust, Henry knew now by the crashing and crackling of boughs that they were among the bushes, but they did not trouble him, as the herd, like a huge wedge, first clearing the way trampled everything under foot. How long the race lasted and how long they ran he never knew, but after a lapse of time that was surcharged with an enormous elation and an unexampled display of physical power the herd began to recover in some ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that will, though enfeebled, exceeds all that man knew before you, through the will you live on, gnawed with famine; and nature no longer obeys you in that death-spreading region; the sky is a sky of iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice-rocks wedge in the ship. Hark how it cracks and groans. Ice will imbed it as amber imbeds a straw. And a man has gone forth, living yet, from the ship and its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of an iceberg, and the two moons ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... pay the slightest attention to her complaints, and she relapsed into silence. Finally, her eye was caught by the luncheon temptingly laid out. There lay a mould of delicious apricot jelly in a dish of cut crystal, shining like a great oval-shaped wedge of amber; the cold chicken was arranged in the daintiest of slices, and there was ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... superstition inclines me to this view. When a Zuni woman has completed the me' he ton nearly to the apex, by the coiling-process, and before she has inserted the nozzle (Fig. 549.b), she prepares a little wedge of clay, and, as she closes the apex with it, she turns her eyes away. If you ask her why she does this, she will tell you that it is a'k ta ni (fearful) to look at the vessel while closing it at this point; that, if she look at it during this operation, she will be liable to ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... terminus at Laruns, we are fairly among the highlands. Rising wedge-shaped beyond the town, dividing all progress, is a mountain,—not a hill. To the left and right of it pass the roads we are in turn to follow. On the left, two miles beyond the fork or three from the railway's end, will be found Eaux Bonnes; on the right, at the same distance, is its lesser equal, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... it high time to wedge in a word about my own far less satisfactory affairs. But it was not necessary for me to recount half my troubles. Raffles could be as full of himself as many a worse man, and I did not like his society the less for these human outpourings. They had ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... things pretty tight, as is only natural," said Moon, glancing round the rather dwarfish room, with its wedge of slanted ceiling, like the conical hood ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black— An ebon mass. Methinks thou piercest it. As with a wedge!" ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... to 3 feet per year in height. At present some are nearly 40 feet tall. Bearing starts at about 12 years of age. The nuts, three in a bur are somewhat wedge shaped and average 5/8 of an inch in diameter. One tree has nuts almost an inch in diameter. This is definitely worth propagating and I will gladly furnish scions in the spring free to anyone who is interested. These are probably incompatible with Chinese understocks, but may ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... way as to create abroad an impression favourable to Germany. The scheme finally hit upon was simple. Russia was to be confronted with a dilemma which would force her into an attitude that would stir misgivings even in her friends and drive a wedge between her and her ally or else would involve her complete withdrawal from the Balkans. The latter alternative would have contented Germany for the moment, who would then have dispensed with a breach of the peace. For it would ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... museum is a curious wedge-shaped boxwood fiddle, decorated with allegorical scenes, and dated 1578. Dr. Burney states that it has no more tone than a violin with a sordine. It is said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... mere affair of time. The sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instrument of the practical, political, social life of Wales, the better; the better for England, the better for Wales itself. Traders and tourists do excellent service by pushing the English wedge farther and farther into the heart of the principality; Ministers of Education, by hammering it harder and harder into the elementary schools. Nor, perhaps, can one have much sympathy with the literary cultivation of Welsh as an instrument of living literature; ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out." ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... it is harboured; for the fibrous roots, which are at first extremely fine, penetrate common cements, and, overcoming as their size enlarges the most powerful resistance, split, with the force of the mechanic wedge, the most substantial brickwork. When the consistence is such as not to admit the insinuation of the fibres the root extends itself along the outside, and to an extraordinary length, bearing not unfrequently to the stem the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... is then put into a linen bag, and pressed very hard, by which the greatest part of the mercury is strained off, and the remainder is evaporated off by the force of fire, leaving the gold in a little wedge or mass, shaped like a pine-apple, whence it is called a pinna. This is afterwards melted and cast in a mould, to know its exact weight, and to ascertain the proportion of silver that is mixed with the gold, no farther process of refining being done here. The weightiness of the gold, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... fissure being continued in zigzag form for thirty miles, so that the stream had to change its course from right to left and left to right, and went through the hills boiling and roaring, sending up columns of steam, formed by the compression of the water falling into its narrow wedge-shaped receptacle. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... at their own stupidity and carelessness. Night was approaching, and sitting down would not remedy matters. It was low tide, and the waters had receded, so that the wrecked boat was now fully twenty-five feet from the water. It was held within a wedge in the rocks, tilted up, and it was too heavy for them to lift. If they could possibly dislodge it, so as to push it over the edge, it would probably be crushed to pieces in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... medica, write another medical prescription, or deal out ineffectual drugs. Neither did he, as yet, feel that he was prepared to announce himself a Christian Science practitioner. So, when called to his former patients, he had felt it his duty to state his position and, as an "entering wedge," suggest that they give the Science a trial for their infirmities. Some had openly scoffed at him; others had acted upon his advice, and were greatly benefited; while, in a few instances, he had offered to ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Solomon's Mines seems to be behind those great mountains and this I may add is a bit of advance work for mother, an entering wedge to my disappearing from sight for years and years in the Congo. Which, seriously, I will not do; only it is disappointing to find the earth so small and so easily encompassed that you want to go on where it is older, and new. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... scat, he untied the string, and unwrapped the brown paper. Then great was his surprise to find a dainty lunch lying within. There were several slices of choice home-made bread, two pieces of cake, a large wedge of pumpkin-pie, and a fine ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... Rensselaers, for at that time the 'troubles' were confined to their property, who were the aggrieved parties. This false step has done an incalculable amount of mischief, if it do not prove the entering wedge to rive asunder the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... shopman, at the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless, while he played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter. Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be perhaps what he should most substantially have to show at Woollett as the fruit of his mission? It was a possibility that held him a minute—held him till ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... are protected by a coat of a glutinous substance, which is impervious to water; in spring this melts, and the bud-scales are then cast off. The leaves are composed of seven radiating leaflets (long-wedge-shaped); when young they are downy and drooping. From the early date of its leafing year by year, a horse-chestnut in the Tuileries is known as the "Marronnier du 20 mars." The flowers of the horse-chestnut, which are white dashed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... and stow them round the saloon skylight. Appearances are of no consequence whatever, and the great thing is to get her in her best sailing trim. If bad weather comes on, we must put half in the bow and half in the stern, where we can wedge them in tightly together. It would not do to risk having them rolling about ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... wedge their way, ... and set forth Their airy caravan high over seas Flying, and over lands with mutual wing Easing ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft of the pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they held ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Gethings's. Already the murmur of uneasiness made itself heard. Was this not the thin edge of the wedge? How the publication of Genslinger's story would drive it home! How the spark of suspicion would flare into the blaze of open accusation! There would be investigations. Investigation! There was terror in the word. He could not stand investigation. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris |
