"Wedge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said. "Understand that in itself I care very little for dress, but it is only by holding fast to every traditional nicety we can prevent ourselves sinking into Western barbarism, and I am horribly afraid of the thin end of the wedge." ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... not pull for the narrow strand where he had landed with Decoud, and afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure. He made for the beach at the other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope of the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he saw from afar, sitting on a bench under the front wall of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly to his loud hail. He walked up. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... had the pleasure of hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret of the organ tone lost like ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... assured by the 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 ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... which concealed them from the road, she gave him a breakfast out of her little package. The boy wondered and grieved that she could not eat; and when, putting his arms round her neck, he tried to wedge some of his cake into her mouth, it seemed to her that the rising in her throat would ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... admitted to personal conferences with the cabinet, he found no difficulty in winning over the Russian councils to a concurrence with some of his political views, and thus covertly introducing the point of that wedge which was finally to accomplish his purposes. In particular, he persuaded the Russian Government to make a very important alteration in the constitution of the Kalmuck State Council which in effect ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... 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
... lay a large tortoise-shell paper knife. That, thrust under the door as a wedge, would be almost as good as a lock. At least she might count on it to protect her for those so necessary five minutes. But if she pushed it through to the other side Jim Logan would see the flat, brown blade stick out like a defiant tongue over the door sill, if he were in the hall keeping ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... humane frenzy, to show some humanity to the whites as well as to the negroes",—illustrating this remark by a picture of the sufferings of an English trader who had risked thirty thousand pounds on the slave-trade that year. When an entering wedge was attempted for the improvement of the bloody code of criminal law, Thurlow opposed it with passion. The particular clause selected by the reformers was one which demanded that women who had been connected with any treasonable movements should be burnt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... WEDGE. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., the man whose name is the last on the list of honors in the voluntary classical examination, which follows the last examination required by statute, is called the wedge. "The last man is called the wedge" says Bristed, "corresponding to the Spoon in Mathematics. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of the boot. This was having each leg fastened between two planks and drawn together in an iron ring, after which wedges were driven in between the middle planks; the ordinary question was with four wedges, the extraordinary with eight. At the third wedge Lachaussee said he was ready to speak; so the question was stopped, and he was carried into the choir of the chapel stretched on a mattress, where, in a weak voice—for he could hardly speak—he begged for half an hour to recover himself. We give a verbatim extract from the report of the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... surrounded, were at the other end of the long table; and a very fair wedge of thirsty, perspiring manhood filled the intervening space. Roy did not feel like stirring. He felt more like drinking half a dozen 'pegs' in succession. But soon he was aware of a move going on. The ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... to move about, and have some comfort. On an enclosed platform back of the cabin there was more space. That was like an open deck, and those on it would be protected from the fierce rushing of the air, by means of the cabin. This cabin, I might add, was built wedge-shaped, with the small part pointing ahead, to cut down the air resistance as ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... deep-counselling son of right-minded Law. Yet the command of Zeus his master is urgent, overriding the claims of kindred blood. Force and Violence, full of hatred, hold down the god who has stolen fire, Hephaestus' right, and given it to men. They bid the Fire-God make the chains fast and drive the wedge through Prometheus' body. When the work is done they leave ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... book inserted. Above and below this book were placed smooth strips of wood, well greased, called "ways,'' to facilitate the sliding in of the book. Two long, heavy spars, called steeves, made of the strongest wood, and sharpened off like a wedge at one end, were placed with their wedge ends into the inside of the hide which was the centre of the book, and to the other end of each straps were fitted, into which large tackles[1] were hooked, composed each of two huge purchase blocks, one hooked to the strap on the end of the steeve, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... clang despised the ground, under a cloud In prospect; there the eagle and the stork On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build: Part loosely wing the region, part more wise In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way, Intelligent of seasons, and set forth Their aery caravan, high over seas Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... greeting from 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Burman then went in together and, lying on their backs again, tried the effect of the heavy axe; but still without success. Then Stanley told the man to get down and take out the wedge, at the top of the axe; and to cut away the wood below the head, so that the latter would slip down, four or five inches; then to take off the head of the other heavy axe and put it on above it, and replace the wedge. In a few minutes, the man ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... diplomacy, politics; Machiavelism; jobbery, backstairs influence. art, artifice; device, machination; plot &c. (plan) 626; maneuver, stratagem, dodge, sidestep, artful dodge, wile; trick, trickery &c. (deception) 545; ruse, ruse de guerre[Fr]; finesse, side blow, thin end of the wedge, shift, go by, subterfuge, evasion; white lie &c (untruth) 546; juggle, tour de force; tricks of the trade, tricks upon travelers; espieglerie[Fr]; net, trap &c. 545. Ulysses, Machiavel, sly boots, fox, reynard; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... crank two feet long, one may turn a wheel twice as easily as with one one foot long, but the hand will move twice as far. If a wedge is two inches thick at the large end and ten inches long, a man may lift 1000 pounds by striking the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... you can't 'magine what a hard time Ah had. Ah split rails lak a man. How did Ah do it? Ah used a huge glut, and a iron wedge drove into the wood with a maul, and this would split ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the object of it. Therefore, she missed. The pot went crashing through the leg of a table and shivered to atoms against the log wall, contributing its full share to the discouraging mess on the floor. But, as it whirled past, a great wedge of the boiling water leaped out over the rim, flew off at a tangent, and caught the floundering calf full in the side, in a long flare down from the tip of the left shoulder. The scalding fluid seemed to cling in the short, fine hair almost like an oil. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... they begged and button-holed members with a pertinacity very rarely witnessed in any legislative body. They turned the business of log-rolling to such account that the amendment was defeated by a strong majority, while it proved the entering wedge to other and greater outrages upon the rights of settlers which the country has since witnessed, and was followed by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, fully affirming the principle laid down in the opinion of the Attorney General. This ruling, which ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... 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 make nor agree to conditions of peace without ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... to make herself agreeable; she looks quite like a screen picture behind her piled-up cakes, ornamented with little posies. We will take shelter under her roof while we wait; and, to avoid the drops that fall heavily from the waterspouts, wedge ourselves tightly against her display of white and pink sweetmeats, so artistically spread out on fresh ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... that Bourdon had omitted some important details, which had led to a few mishaps, especially with respect to the frequent breaking of the piston-rod at its junction with the hammer block. He had effected this, in the usual way, by means of a cutter wedge through the rod; but he told me that it often broke through the severe jar during the action of the hammer. I sketched for him, then and there, in full size on a board,the elastic packing under the end of the piston-rod, which acted, as I told him, like the cartilage between the bones of the vertebrae, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... it back a little farther," he returned. "Maybe it will balance there. If not we'll have to get loose stones and wedge under it." ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... composed of black slaty shingle, we found the skeleton of a whale from which the baleen was absent; also a quantity of driftwood, some of it twelve inches in diameter; a wooden wedge; a barrel-stave; a piece of a boat's spar and a fragment of a biscuit-box. The river, which we named Clark river, was about one hundred yards wide, two fathoms deep near the mouth, and rapid. From the top of a neighboring ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... my playmates had been Mexican children, so that I not only spoke Spanish fluently but could also readily read and write it. So it was no surprise to me that, before taking our departure, my employer should command my services as an interpreter in driving an entering wedge. He was particular to have me assure our host and hostess of his high regard for them, and his hope that in the future even more friendly relations might exist between the two ranches. Had Santa Maria no young ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... the weekly parish dance. My religious acquaintances were apt to class all such simple amusements in a sort of general category as "works of the Devil," and turn deaf ears to every invitation to point out any evil results, being satisfied with their own statement that it was the "thin edge of the wedge." This good man, however, was very obviously driving a wedge into the hearts of many of his poor neighbours who in those days found no opportunity for relief in innocent pleasures from the sordid round of life in the drab purlieus of Bethnal Green. This clergyman was a forerunner ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... mentioned that we saw five columns of vapor ascending from this strange abyss. They are evidently formed by the compression suffered by the force of the water's own fall into an unyielding wedge-shaped space. Of the five columns, two on the right and one on the left of the island were the largest, and the streams which formed them seemed each to exceed in size the falls of the Clyde at Stonebyres when that river is in flood. This was the period of low water in ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... to the natives is the calabash, or gourd tree. It provides him with many household utensils. In height and size it resembles an apple tree. Its leaves are wedge-shaped and its flowers are large, ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... ground, but on poles forty or fifty feet high. This is the manner in which it is gathered. The farmer, attended by his wife, goes out, and slipping a loose loop of rope over his feet to keep them together, so that when he gets the trunk of a tree between them it may fit like a wedge, he clasps one of the trees with his hands and goes up at a surprising rate. He carries with him a long rope, and when he reaches the top, he fastens one end of it to the tree, and throws the other to his wife, who goes to ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... got inside the doorway of the hotel, where they stood fast like a wedge, two kneeling down shoulder to shoulder with their bayonets fixed, three others firing over their heads, and others behind handing up loaded guns as fast as they fired. There was a lane speedily made amongst us in front of the doorway; but we had won the fight for ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... familiar facts of which great use has been made as an entering wedge for the Homoeopathic doctrine. They have been suffered to pass current so long that it is time they should be nailed to the counter, a little operation which I undertake, with perfect cheerfulness, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... doubtful. The line thundered steadily down on them; then it swayed violently, as two or three of the brutes immediately in front fell beneath the bullets, while their neighbors made violent efforts to press off sideways. Then a narrow wedge-shaped rift appeared in the line, and widened as it came closer, and the buffaloes, shrinking from their foes in front, strove desperately to edge away from the dangerous neighborhood; the shouts and shots were redoubled; the hunters were almost ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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, impinging upon his nose. Nor ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... scatteringly, riding the foaming waves end-on, and sometimes colliding with the stone piers of the bridge with sufficient force to split the unhewn timbers from end to end, some being laid open as neatly as though done with axe and wedge. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... 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
... Englishman would be; because the Irish are so much stronger in self-criticism. Compared with the constant self-flattery of the English, nearly every Irishman is an anti-Irish Irishman. But here again popular phraseology hits the right word. This fairly educated and fairly wealthy Protestant wedge which is driven into the country at Dublin and elsewhere is a thing not easy superficially to summarise in any term. It cannot be described merely as a minority; for a minority means the part of a nation which is conquered. But ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... willows budded 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
... in which enthusiasm manifested itself most fiercely was as we have seen not favourable to literature. Puritanism drove itself like a wedge into the art of the time, broadening as it went. Had there been no more in it than the moral earnestness and religiousness of Sidney and Spenser, Cavalier would not have differed from Roundhead, and there might ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... in three troops, each drawn up in the form of a wedge, the archers forming the point; and the reserve of horse was committed to Bishop Odo, who rode up and down among the men, a hawberk over his rochet and a club ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... neighbors. Forty miles of snowcapped peaks were at my dooryard, and beyond, toward the rising sun, hazy plains stretched away to the illimitable horizon. Between its craggy shoulder and the main body of the mountain, lay an unsuspected, wedge-shaped valley, down which a little brook went gurgling. There ancient spruce and yellow pine and quaking aspens ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... [8] swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it, indeed, as other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw; yet there is a pushing motion where we should expect a pulling motion in the stroke .... These and other forms of unfamiliar action are strange enough to suggest the notion of a humanity even ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... two cast iron sides bolted together, and of a bottom and ends formed of flat iron—the end pieces being bent so as to form cramp irons. Each of the sides is provided internally with a projecting piece, and an inclined plane as a wedge. In case the catch becomes filled with dirt, it can be easily cleaned out with a scraper. The iron upright terminates in a malleable cast iron shoe, which is screwed on to it, and which is provided beneath with a projection in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... it is sudden! It's got to be sudden. Dashed sudden and deuced secret! If the mater were to hear of it, there's no doubt whatever she would form a flying wedge and bust up the proceedings with no uncertain voice. You see, laddie, it's Miss Faraday I'm marrying, and the mater—dear old soul—has other ideas for Reginald. Life's a rummy thing, isn't it! What I mean to say is, it's rummy, don't you know, and ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... courage to refuse a battle when: offered. Upon this occasion it would be difficult to retreat without disaster and disgrace, but it was equally difficult to achieve a victory. Thrust, as he was, like a wedge into the very heart of a hostile country, he was obliged to force his way through, or to remain in his enemy's power. Moreover, and worst of all, his troops were in a state of mutiny for their wages. While he talked to them of honor, they howled to him for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... disavauntage, ran awaie. I trust I have thus confusedly, as I saied, satisfied in good part your demaunde: in dede about the facions of the armies, there resteth me to tell you, how some tyme, by some Capitaines, it hath been used to make theim with the fronte, like unto a wedge, judgyng to bee able by soche meane, more easely to open the enemies armie. Against this facion, thei have used to make a facion like unto a paire of sheres, to be able betwene thesame voide place, to receive that wedge, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... not up the valley, but across the wedge of foothills which divided the South Y.D. from the parent stream. The assent was therefore much more rapid than the trails which followed the general course of the stream. Huge hills, shouldering together, ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the land (?) of the Akkad, to build a temple to her." In the same locality where it occurs, bricks are also found bearing evidently the same inscription, but written in a different manner. Instead of the wedge and arrow-head being the elements of the writing, the whole is formed by straight lines of almost uniform thickness, and the impression seems to have been made by a single stamp. [PLATE VII., ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... eating and drinking,—of brooding about in a high-shouldered reluctant style,—of taking out his great horn-handled jackknife and wiping it on his legs and cutting his food,—of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy pannikins,—of chopping a wedge off his bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of gravy round and round his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then drying his finger-ends on it, and then swallowing it,—in these ways and a thousand ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! 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, 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 ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... clumsy before I dared believe we were clear of the reefs; but when I put the helm down at last there was neither launch in sight nor any other boat that might contain an enemy. The southern spur of Ukerewe stuck out like a wedge into boiling water not many miles ahead, and once around that we should be sheltered. The only fly in the ointment then was the probability that the launch would be waiting for us just around the spur, or else under the lee of another smaller island in the offing to our ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... thrown out, while Dillon roared and tried to get at him through the flying wedge of waiters. He felt an enormous relaxation on the way back to his office in another cab. He was a trifle battered, but it was ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... alteration, calls it an improvement, the expense is but a trifle more; it is sufficient to be sanctioned by a patent. From front to rear, the bottom is about three inches narrower than the top, somewhat wedge-shape; it has the merit to prevent the combs from slipping down, when they happen to be made, to have the edges supported. The objections are, that filth from the bees will not fall as readily to ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... under the heavy purple crag from which the waters of a ghyll fall into a deep basin that reaches to their walls. The last of the group is a cottage with its end to the road, and its open porch facing a garden shaped like a wedge. As the children passed this house an old man, gray and thin and much bent, stood by the gate, leaning on a staff. A colly, with the sheep-dog's wooden bar suspended from its shaggy neck, lay at his feet. The hum of voices brought a young woman into the porch. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... wafer to come down seemingly of its own 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 was none that responded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... this sector—a salient, or wedge, driven into the American line, or, rather, one that had existed since the Americans had taken over this particular ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... window. There was a bit, of wire loose at the lower end of the screen, and, in the one second Marguerite's back was turned—just one second, but just long enough—Missy saw a velvety nose fumble with the loose wire, saw a sleek neck wedge itself through the crevice, and a long red tongue lap approvingly ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... take her out, and he declined: and, being a man hard to beat, took to writing on medical subjects, in hopes of getting some money from the various medical and scientific publications; but he found it as hard to get the wedge in ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Lactance having exorcised the instruments, drove in the first wedge, but could not draw a murmur from Grandier, who was reciting a prayer in a low voice; a second was driven home, and this time the victim, despite his resolution, could not avoid interrupting his devotions by two groans, at each of which Pere Lactance struck harder, crying, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... hand; and every working part of that machine bears a relation in its function to a corresponding part in the mechanism of the hand. In fact, physics teaches us that the hand is a combination of the six mechanical powers—the lever, the wedge, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the screw, and the inclined plane. But the mechanical effect is always depreciated. In manufacture hand-made goods excel those made by machine. In art the exquisite hand-painting surpasses the lithograph. ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... with a sigh of patience, "Take my cloak, O Hiawatha!" With his knife the tree he girdled; Just beneath its lowest branches, Just above the roots, he cut it, Till the sap came oozing outward; Down the trunk, from top to bottom, Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, With a wooden wedge he raised it, Stripped it from the trunk unbroken. "Give me of your boughs, O Cedar! Of your strong and pliant branches, My canoe to make more steady, Make more strong and firm beneath me!" Through the summit of the Cedar Went a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... tules, a vast spread of marsh covered with bulrushes, flat as a floor, and extending from a distant arm of the bay back into the land. It was like a wedge of green thrust through the yellow, splitting it apart, at one end meeting the sky in a level line, at the other narrowing to a point which penetrated the bases of the hills. From these streams wound down ravine and rift till their currents slipped into the brackish waters of the marsh. Such ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... their highest point and from its summit took a leisurely view of his surroundings. He saw at once that they were on an island, and that it was but one of many which lay spread out over the sea towards the north and the west. It was a wedge-shaped island this, and the cliffs on which he stood and the beach beneath formed the widest side of it; from thence its lines drew away to a point in the distance which he judged to be two miles off. Between him and that point lay a sloping ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... a sharp chisel soon cut away sufficient of the frame to allow the door to be forced open. On this occasion, there being no wedge in the center, it was not necessary to attack the hinges, and, once the lock was freed, the door swung back ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... 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
... in this device is shown in Fig. 208; mica is cemented to the line carbon and is large enough to provide a projecting margin all around. The spark gap is not uniform over the entire surface of the block but is made wedge-shaped by grinding away the line carbon as shown. It is claimed that a continuous arcing fills the wedge-shaped chamber with heated air or gas, converting the whole of the space into a field of low resistance to ground, and that this gas in expanding drives ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... values, the other seemingly showed ore forty feet in width assaying $80 per ton. Neither was right. On the other hand, the predetermination of the location of the ore-body justified expenditure. A recent experiment at Johannesburg of placing a copper wedge in the hole at a point above the ore-body and deflecting the drill on reintroducing it, was successful in giving a second section of the ore ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 445 This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... when Cortes with one hundred men succeeded in crossing the breach in the dike upon the mass of corpses which filled it up. He drew up his soldiers in order as they arrived, and putting himself at the head of those least severely wounded, plunged wedge-fashion into the melee, and succeeded in disengaging from it a portion of his men. Before day dawned all those who had succeeded in escaping from the massacre of the noche triste, as this terrible night was called, found themselves reunited at Tacuba. It was with eyes ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... bows went her men with a shout. Before the Irish knew that anything had happened, the last of the Danes were halfway up the little beach, and were forming up into a close-locked wedge, which moved swiftly toward the village even as it ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... they prayed to God that her downfall might be soon. He was further alleged to have said that it was doubtful how Europe would be divided after the war, but that in any case the Czecho-Slovak countries would be made independent as a wedge between Germany and Austria, and that if Germany won the Czechs would be germanised, like the Poles in Germany. The accused admitted that he did speak about the reorganisation of Europe, but not in the words used by the prosecution. But, as the Arbeiter Zeitung said, even if he did say ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... sharply at the plunge, your fly would come back to you, or tangle itself up in unseen snags; and far out, where the verge of the firelight rippled away into the darkness, you would see a sharp wave-wedge shooting away, which told you that your trout was only a musquash. Swimming quietly by, he had seen you and your fire, and slapped his tail down hard on the water to make you jump. That is a way Musquash has in the night, so that he can make up his mind what queer thing you ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Padma is a circular array with angular projections. It is the same with what is now called the starry with angular projections. It is the same what is now called the starry array, many modern forts being constructed on this plan. The Vajra is a wedge-like array. It penetrates into the enemy's divisions like a wedge and goes out, routing the foe. It is otherwise ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... weakening. It then became a question as to whether and for how long they could continue to withstand the terrible strain to which they were being subjected, and, forthwith, I and my co-assistants proceeded to wedge stools and bars against them, which most providentially had the desired effect. Had they given way, the place would have been clean swept from end to end and completely wrecked. In the course of the morning ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... and tightening the thumb-screw constituted by the anvil and its bolt. The device by which the extent of the hammer-fall is controlled consists of cam-shaped sheets of thin wood mounted within parallel grooves on opposite sides of the loose collars and clamped to the anvils by the resistance of two wedge-shaped flanges of metal carried on the anvil bolt and acting against the sides of slots cut into the sheets of wood at opposite sides. The periphery of these sheets of wood—as exhibited by that one lying beside ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... marrow, pare thinly and remove a small wedge-shaped piece from the side. Scoop out the seeds and water, fill in with good forcemeat, replace the wedge, brush all over with beaten egg. Coat with crumbs, put some butter over, and bake till a nice brown, basting ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... graft with the stock top cut off. You cut in at an angle far enough and you put your scion in here and there is your modified cleft graft. You get contact on all four lines. It takes experience and judgment. You cut your scion wedge and then make your understock cut and you will seldom make a mistake after you get experience. That is a side graft and a modified cleft graft. That makes a flexible portion here and you get a fit on both sides. But with the ordinary cleft graft, if you go to the end of your stock you still have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... It became an ax of stone, sharpened at each end, with eyes, nose, and mouth in a narrow line of cold defiance. To Grace, the acute wedge of white forehead, gleaming its way to the roots of the black hair, and the sharp chin cutting its way down from the tightly drawn mouth, spoke only of cunning. She regarded Fran as a ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... both parts being unencumbered with superfluous flesh. The same general form extends backward, the fore quarters being, light the shoulders thin, and the carcass swelling out toward the hind quarters, so that when standing in front of her it has the form of a blunted wedge. Such a structure indicates very fully developed digestive organs, which exert a powerful influence on all the functions of the body, and especially on the secretion of the milky glands, accompanied with milk-veins ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... March, in the following manner: Dig away the ground around the vine you wish to graft, until you come to a smooth place to insert your scion; then cut off the vine with a sharp knife, and insert one or two scions, as in common cleft-grafting, taking care to cut the wedge on the scion very thin, with shoulders on both sides, as shown in Figure 4, cutting your scion to two eyes, to better insure success. Great care must be taken to insert the scion properly, as the inner ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... being either almost equilateral or much elongated. The front margin of 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 of the wild Bankiva. The CORACOID ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... regarded the wooden wedge under the door that jammed it fast. Racey drew a finger across the top of the wedge. He held up the finger-tip for the sheriff's inspection. The tip was black with ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... "Honest, I didn't take you for one of them rah-rah boys. Well, if it's that ails you, you're up against it. I don't wonder you had to be jammed into a job with a flyin' wedge. Chee!" ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... an important letter because of the dot, which is made mechanically. After noting whether the shank is spurred as an initial, special attention must be devoted to the dot. Dots are of various forms. They may be a wedge-shaped stroke sloping in any direction, a horizontal dash, a tiny circle or semicircle, a small v, or a perfect dot. Examine them all through the glass, and compare them with the comma, which often partakes of the same character as the dot. Note also its relative position to the shank, ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... forest, that on the more secluded lake shores an occasional deer may yet be seen coming down to drink, and that in the shadier pools the wary and sagacious prince of fishes still disports himself and cleaves the crystal water with his jewelled wedge. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... acutely pointed characters which are known as wedges, and the larger, more obtuse characters, somewhat like our government broad arrows, and called arrow-heads. The names are rather unfortunate, as both forms are wedge-like and both resemble arrow-heads. The script reads from left to right, like our own writing, and unlike that of the Semitic peoples and the primitive Greeks; and the rule for the placing of the characters is that all the 'wedges' point to the right or downwards ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... as many another wise man has found in "furrin parts," that your greatest safety lies in bringing tobacco to the men and leaving the women alone. For, in those distant lands, a man may sell you his nuptial bed, but he will pin the price of it to your back one day with the point of a lance or the wedge ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... press is given in Fig. 19. The gun-cotton in a container is placed on a cradle fixed at an angle to the press. The mould is swivelled round, and the charge pushed into it with a rammer, and it is then swivelled back into position. The mould is made up of a number of wedge pieces which close circumferentially on the enclosed mass, which is also subjected to end pressure. Holes are provided ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... through the night, while the scream of wind grew louder outside the rattling cars. I was nearly asleep when there came a sudden shock, and the conductor's voice rang out warning us to leave the train. At slackened speed we had run into a snow block, and the wedge-headed plow was going, so he said, to plug the drifts under a full pressure, and butt her ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... is necessary to join the bark above and below the girdle by means of cions, which are whittled to a wedge-shape on either end, and inserted underneath the two edges of the bark (Fig. 159). The ends of the cions and the edges of the wound are held by a bandage of cloth, and the whole work is protected by melted ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form, 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, 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 thoughts: entranced in prayer, I ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... come over in time for supper." Burke's simple, good face glowed with enjoyment of the fun. He smilingly went back to beating his plough-share with hammer and wedge as Rivers drove away with Blanche. The clink of his steel rang through the golden light that flooded the prairie, keeping ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... 1831, he was suddenly confronted by three Gorgons at once,—a coming Surplus, a President that vetoed internal improvements, and an ambitious Calhoun, resolved on using the surplus either as a stepping-stone to the Presidency or a wedge with which to split the Union. The time to have put down the brakes was in 1828, when the national debt was within seven years of being paid off; but precisely then it was that both divisions of the Democratic party—-one ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... edition, Oxford, 1672): "Grafting is an Art of so placing the Cyon upon a stock, that the Sap may pass from the stock to the Cyon without Impediment." Batty Langley, in 1729, gave this direction in the "Pomona": "The Stocks being cleft, you must therefore cut the Cion in the Form of a Wedge, which must always be cut from a Bud, for the Reasons aforesaid; and then with a Grafting-Chizel open the Slit, and place the Cion therein, so that their Barks may ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... wise physician, cured An abject passion, long with pain endured: To Vashti for an easy boon he sued; She scorn'd his suit, and rage his love subdued: Soon to its aid a softer passion came, And from his breast expell'd the former flame: Like wedge by wedge displaced, the nuptial ties He breaks, and soon another bride supplies.— But if you wish to see the bosom (war Of Jealousy and Love) in deadly jar, Behold that royal Jew! the dire control Of Love and Hate by turns besiege his soul. Now Vengeance wins the day—the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... large plump apple-pie slyly on the table—an apple-pie with ample allowance of lard in the crust thereof; and she felt not the slightest exultation, only honest pleasure, when she saw, without seeming to, Cephas cut off a goodly wedge, after disposing of his ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... supporters and the doubtful members. Bassett would undoubtedly make a strong showing in a caucus, but whether he would be able to command a majority remained to be seen. There were men among the doubtful who would be disposed to favor Thatcher because he had driven a wedge into the old Bassett stone wall. No one else had ever succeeded in imperiling the security of that impregnable stronghold. The thought of this made Harwood uncomfortable. It was unfortunate from every standpoint that the legislature should be called upon to choose a Senator ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Minos was desirous of hiding this monster from the observation of mankind, and for this purpose applied to Daedalus, an Athenian, the most skilful artist of his time, who is said to have invented the axe, the wedge, and the plummet, and to have found out the use of glue. He first contrived masts and sails for ships, and carved statues so admirably, that they not only looked as if they were alive, but had actually the power of self-motion, and would have escaped from the custody of their ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... time partly for the purpose of influencing such voters as might be won over by emphasizing the unquestioned economic distress of most Southern farmers. If the new party could substantiate the charges that both old parties were the tools of monopoly and Wall Street, it might insert the wedge which would eventually split the "solid South." Even before the Pensacola Address, the state elections in Alabama and Arkansas demonstrated that cooperation of Republicans with Populists was not an idle dream. But, although fusion was effected on state tickets in several States in the November ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... afterwards heard the stroke of the hatchet, hewing down the trees of the forest. As we came nearer, traces of destruction marked the presence of civilized man; the road was strewn with shattered boughs; trunks of trees, half consumed by fire, or cleft by the wedge, were still standing in the track we were following. We continued to proceed till we reached a wood in which all the trees seemed to have been suddenly struck dead; in the height of summer their boughs were as leafless as in winter; and upon closer examination we found that a deep circle ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of joy: the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began to see and hear more and more, and toward night they penetrated like a wedge into the open door—nay, two youths ventured even in the middle of the parsonage-court to mount a plank over a beam and commence seesawing. Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the departed sun was encircling the earth, the evening-star was glittering ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... matter, - the so-called elementary substance. One afternoon I put the belt on my circular saw to cut blocks of firewood and also to split a small stick of frame timber. In doing this the stick closed and pinched the saw. I picked up a small wooden wedge and tried to drive it into the saw kerf, but a bit of ice let the stick on to the back of the saw and instantly it flew, with heavy force, into my face, and bouncing off my left cheek fell about twenty feet off on the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... enough, in Nevada City and vicinity it would appear that at one time in the earth's making, a great fissure opened in forming California and a wedge of Nevada mining country was pushed into it. North of there the California stratas ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... 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 ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... front, and were in no fear of being surrounded. Early on the following morning Henry arose and heard mass; but the two armies stood facing each other for some hours, each waiting for the other to begin. The English archers were drawn up in front in form of a wedge, and each man was provided with a stake shod with iron at both ends, which being fixed into the ground before him, the whole line formed a kind of hedge bristling with sharp points, to defend them from being ridden down ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... this educational organization. Mrs. Willard, however, declined the nomination, refusing to be drawn into Susan's rebellion.[41] Susan, nevertheless, left the convention satisfied that she had driven an entering wedge into Professor Davies' male stronghold, and she continued battering at this stronghold whenever she had an opportunity. She meant to put women in office and to win approval ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... tap-room was still wide open, a narrow wedge-shaped light filtrated through on to the beams and floor of the verandah, making the surrounding blackness ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the axe while the big bushman swept his blade aloft, and Deringham watched them curiously. Alton swayed with a steely suppleness from the waist, and the broad wedge of steel flashed about his head before it came down ringing. The man had a few inches of springy wood which bent and heaved beneath him to stand upon, but the great blade descended exactly where the last chip had ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... he will go to you. Establish this habit, and if ever the day comes when he returns from work and there is no greeting, no kiss, stop the whole domestic ship, regard it as a tragedy. Don't let the first entering wedge of discord come into your life. If there is no first quarrel, there will never be a second. If you are at fault you had better right matters at once or take the consequences. Take our advice. Don't experiment with a man. Deep down, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... them and was daily usurping his place in his wife's thoughts. At first he had been fool enough to imagine that it was going to be the link that would bind them closer together, instead of which it was the wedge that was surely driving them asunder. For its sake she was ready to put the seas and continents between them, and treat him as if he were of secondary importance in her life—the being who had to provide the wherewithal on which the human idol might ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi |
