"Whetstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or scientific man will sometimes select for his life companion a woman of only ordinary intelligence, who will, nevertheless, adorn her husband's home by her simple domestic virtues. A wife does not need to be a moral whetstone to sharpen her husband's wits by the fireside, neither would it enhance his happiness to find her filling reams of foolscap paper with choice specimens of prose and poetry; intelligent sympathy with his work is all he demands, and a loving, restful ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... are great educators—they fill one with discontent and drive a person onward and upward to the ideal. A whetstone is dull, but it serves to sharpen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... glory round his furrowed brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now, In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[418][10.H.] And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj] No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth—Monotony ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... He must know the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by a crowd ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... His address was equal to a course in "Paradise Lost," nor was it without its effect upon the audience. Every boy in the room felt in his pocket to make sure that it contained his knife, and every one began to wonder just where he would find the whetstone when he went home. We were all eager for school to close for the day that we might set about the important matter of whetting our knives. Henceforth wood-carving was a part of the regular order in our school, but it was done without special ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the future part of their lives in plenty, just as they had formerly quarrelled in poverty; for wrangling curs will fight over a banquet as fiercely as over a bare bone. Raoul died first, and Gillian having lost her whetstone, found that as her youthful looks decayed her wit turned somewhat blunt. She therefore prudently commenced devotee, and spent hours in long panegyrics on her ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... his son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... he, I have ever preserved a reverence for religion, and for religious men. I always called another cause, when any of my libertine companions, in pursuance of Lord Shaftesbury's test (which is a part of the rake's creed, and what I may call the whetstone of infidelity,) endeavoured to turn the sacred subject into ridicule. On this very account I have been called by good men of the clergy, who nevertheless would have it that I was a practical rake, the decent ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... full of Borrow's peculiar conversational gift as any of its predecessors. Its thumbnail sketches, if somewhat more subdued and less elaborate, are not less full of character. John Jones, the Dissenting weaver, who served Borrow at once as a guide and a whetstone of Welsh in the neighbourhood of Llangollen; the "kenfigenous" Welshwoman who first, but by no means last, exhibited the curious local jealousy of a Welsh-speaking Englishman; the doctor and the Italian barometer-seller at Cerrig-y-Druidion; ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the field. There is more rime on the posts and rails around the rickyard, and the thatch on the haystack is white with it in places. He draws out the broad hay-knife—a vast blade, wide at the handle, the edge gradually curving to a point—and then searches for the rubber or whetstone, stuck somewhere in the side of the rick. At the first sound of the stone upon the steel the cattle in the adjoining yard and sheds utter a few low 'moos,' and there is a stir among them. Mounting the ladder he forces the knife with both hands into ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... knowledge. "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers like these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer'n a whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to run arter him. I put the case last Thursday. Mebbe he'll ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... "it has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that is the ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... rod, and my line, my flote and my lead, My hook, & my plummet, my whetstone & knife, My Basket, my baits, both living and dead, My net, and my meat for that is the chief; Then I must have thred & hairs great & smal, With mine Angling purse, and so you ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... wallowing in the slough of despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as a whetstone." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... pass away the night withal, and returned for answer, that she knew of no other books in the house than her young mistress's (as she always denominated Mistress Martha Trapbois) Bible, which the owner would not lend; and her master's Whetstone of Witte, being the second part of Arithmetic, by Robert Record, with the Cossike Practice and Rule of Equation; which promising volume Nigel declined to borrow. She offered, however, to bring him some books from Duke Hildebrod—"who sometimes, good gentleman, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Justice Dyer, who died March 24, 1582, Whetstone gives proof that in Elizabethan England purity was the exception rather than the rule ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... representative for Norwich, took the mail; and after a nap, talked very unrestrainedly with me on the present state of France, on Buonaparte, the criminal law, and the wisdom of the Justices at sessions. I was determined—like Horace's whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put an edge on him—to say something deep and decisive on some of the subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk. Perhaps (like the character with the Greek name in the Rambler, who tells his guest, showing him ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... me that the very contradiction and opposition we meet with from our fellow-men, ought to rouse our spirit to love them more, for they serve as a whetstone to sharpen our virtue. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... woman who always keeps a small piece of whetstone in her machine drawer for sharpening needles when they become blunted. It is a great scheme, and saves a lot of needles, as I have ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... cutters, nail clipper, paper cutter; sword &c (arms) 727; bodkin &c (perforator) 262; belduque^, bowie knife^, paring knife; bushwhacker [U.S.]; drawing knife, drawing shave; microtome [Micro.]; chisel, screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite^; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate^, set, strop, grind; chip (flint). cut &c (sunder) 44. Adj. sharp, keen; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rendezvous of the rakes and bullies of the time; "For when they expected the most polished hero in Nemours, I gave them a ruffian reeking from Whetstone's Park." Dedication to Lee's "Princess of Cleves." In his translation of Ovid's "Love Elegies," Lib. II, Eleg. XIX. Dryden ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... witnesses. While waiting for an answer, I busied myself writing, and as I had no stationery I wrote on the walls. Beginning as high as I could reach, I wrote in columns, each about three feet wide. Soon the pencil became dull. But dull pencils are easily sharpened on the whetstone of wit. Stifling acquired traits, I permitted myself to revert momentarily to a primitive expedient. I gnawed the wood quite from the pencil, leaving only the graphite core. With a bit of graphite a hand guided by the unerring insolence of elation may artistically ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... 'and if I have spoken over sharply you will hold me excused. But I regret to have evil tidings to announce to you. I have not told the commonalty lest it cast them down, but I know that adversity will be but the whetstone to give your ardour a finer edge. Argyle's rising has failed, and he and his companions are prisoners in the hands of the man who never ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... AElfgifu or AEthelgifu and Goodliffe from Godleof (cf. Ger. Gottlieb). The older form of Stone appears in Staines, Stanhope, Stanton, etc. Wheatstone is either for "white stone" or for the local Whetstone (Middlesex). In Balderstone, Johnston, Edmondstone, Livingstone, the suffix is -ton, though the frequence of Johnston points to corruption from Johnson, just as in Nottingham we have the converse case of Beeson from the local Beeston. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... mentioned or refrained from mentioning his sources at his own discretion. Painter, in inaugurating the vogue of the novella, is exceptionally careful in attributing each story to its author,[309] but Whetstone's Rock of Regard contains no hint that it is translated, and The Petit Palace of Pettie his Pleasure conveys the impression of original work. "I dare not compare," runs the prefatory Letter to Gentlewomen Readers by R. B., "this work with the former Palaces of Pleasure, because ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... to visit the house of an old woman, who, when he was coming, very prudently hid whatever she had to eat. One day coming with some friends, he asked her if she had not some meat. And she said, 'Nay.' 'Well,' quoth the friar, 'have you not a whetstone?' 'Yea,' quoth the woman, 'what will you do with it?' 'Marry,' quoth he, 'I would make meat thereof.' Then she brought a whetstone. He asked her likewise if she had not a frying-pan. 'Yea,' said she, 'but what the divil will ye do therewith?' 'Marry,' said the fryer, 'you shall see by and by what ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... that "City's Lord" essayed, To make the whetstone of his rebel sword; On me, with mischief rife, rebellious Cade Sat whilst he thought and dubbed himself a Lord; And bade my conduit pipe for one whole year At city's cost, run naught ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... compare Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... studies, in all callings is not to be disliked, 'tis ingeniorum cos, as one calls it, the whetstone of wit, the nurse of wit and valour, and those noble Romans out of this spirit did brave exploits. There is a modest ambition, as Themistocles was roused up with the glory of Miltiades; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... tell a tale of varied life, That gave Time's annals their recording name? No notes of Cade, marching with mischief rife, By Britain's misery to raise his fame? Wert thou the hone that "City's Lord" essay'd[5] To make the whetstone ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... was the name of a man who had only come to Iceland a short time before, Grima was the name of his wife. Their sons were Hallbjorn Whetstone-eye, and Stigandi. These people were natives of Sodor. They were all wizards and the greatest of enchanters. Hallstein Godi took them in and settled them down at Urdir in Skalm-firth, and their dwelling there ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... didn't intrewde myself when they was a settling of the himportant bizziness as they was cum about, so I strolled off to a little willage as I seed in the distance, and which is acshally called Egipt, tho it ain't much bigger than Whetstone Park, Hobern, the ome of my herly birth! From a rayther hurryed conwersashun with a real Native, I gathered the himportant fack that the one reason why all the great big Beach Trees of the Forest had had their tops ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth—monotony ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... their course northwards. When they came to the mouth of the Throndhjem fjord Thorberg's two brothers, Fin and Arne, were there already, with two ships each of twenty benches. Thorberg met his brothers with joy, and observed that his whetstone had taken effect; and Fin replied he seldom needed sharpening for such work. Then they proceeded north with all their forces to Throndhjem, and Stein was along with them. When they came to Agdanes, Kaff Arnason was there before them; and he also ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... of great spiritual exaltation the barrier crumbles and becomes, in places, less insuperable. Such ages are commonly called great religious ages: nor is the name ill-chosen. For, more often than not, religion is the whetstone on which men sharpen the spiritual sense. Religion, like art, is concerned with the world of emotional reality, and with material things only in so far as they are emotionally significant. For the mystic, as for the artist, the physical universe is a means to ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... might be the Custom among the Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the brains in the morning of those they had feasted over-night. Yet, as there never was Schoolboy, I suppose, but delighted in Soiling of his raiment, and making himself as Black as any sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I begin to feel something like a Pleasure in being masqueraded up to this Disguise, and began to wish for a Pistol such as Captain Night had in his Hand, and such a Diamond Ring as he wore on ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... porticoes filled with busy lawyers; bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Naevius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... his clue, our reporter instantly went in search of cab 19,796, or rather the driver of that vehicle, who was discovered with no small difficulty at his residence, Whetstone Park, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he lives with his family of nine children. Having received two sovereigns, instead doubtless of two shillings (his regular fare, by the way, would have been only one-and-eightpence), ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Ku was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears run down ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... was placed for him opposite to Gwernach. And Gwernach said to him, "O man, is it true that is reported of thee, that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kay. Then was the sword of Gwernach brought to him. And Kay took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, or as thou wouldst if it were thine own." Then Kay polished one half of the blade, and put it in his hand. "Will ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... he said, when I had signified my eagerness to hear, "that I graduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, but blue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was a clergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covered a multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, and consequently twenty when, at the beginning ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... of course, as he recounts what marvels he's gone ag'inst in Red Dog, but we don't yield him as much attention as we otherwise might, bein' preeockepied as a public with word of a hold-up that's come off over near the Whetstone Springs. Some bandit—all alone—sticks up the Lordsburg coach, an' quits winner sixty thousand dollars. Nacherally our cur'osity is a heap stirred up, for with sech encouragement thar's no tellin' when he'll make a play at Monte an' the Wolfville stage, an' take to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... These are made truly according to Vitruvius's writings. At Aachen I bought an ox horn for 1 gold florin. I have taken the portraits of Herr Hans Ebner and George Schlaudersbach, and Hans Ebner's a second time. I paid 2 stivers for a fine whetstone, also 5 stivers for a bath and drinking in company; changed 1 florin for expenses. I gave the town servant who took me up into the hall 2 white pf.; spent 5 white pf. With companions, drinking and bathing; I have lost 7 stivers at play with Herr Hans Ebner at the Mirror. I have made a ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... And a chair was placed for him opposite to Gwrnach. And Gwrnach said to him, "Oh man! is it true that is reported of thee that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kai. Then was the sword of Gwrnach brought to him. And Kai took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked him whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, and as thou wouldest if it were thine own." Then Kai polished one half of ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... in the flame, till they melt and run into a small round Globul, or drop, which will hang at the end of the thread; and if further you stick several of these upon the end of a stick with a little sealing Wax, so as that the threads stand upwards, and then on a Whetstone first grind off a good part of them, and afterward on a smooth Metal plate, with a little Tripoly, rub them till they come to be very smooth; if one of these be fixt with a little soft Wax against a small needle hole, prick'd ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... in an alcohol or Bunsen flame and then, by drawing the two portions apart and twisting at the same time, the tube may be drawn to a sharp point. An opening of any desired size is made in the point by rubbing it on a whetstone. Owing to the fact that the style of universal joint described has so little friction, the stylus point ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... down beneath the weight of the gathering freezing snow, when all beasts and men lay close in their lairs, would they sit long hours about the house-fire with the knife or the gouge in hand, with the timber twixt their knees and the whetstone beside them, hearkening to some tale of old times and the days when their banner was abroad in the world; and they the while wheedling into growth out of the tough wood knots and blossoms and leaves and the images of ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... full of relish for intellectual power and accuracy, and so attached to and proud of my father, and bent on his making the best of himself, that this trial was never relaxed. His firm and close-grained mind was a sort of whetstone on which my father sharpened his wits at ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... going down to get a rig to go out home in. It's colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme your check, and I'll get your ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... shoes, for horsemen. 3 towels. 1 gutta percha poncho. 1 broad-brimmed hat of soft felt. 1 comb and brush. 2 tooth-brushes. 1 pound Castile soap. 3 pounds bar soap for washing clothes. 1 belt-knife and small whetstone. Stout linen thread, large needles, a bit of beeswax, a few buttons, paper of pins, and a thimble, all contained in a small buckskin or ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... if Mother Hubbard, in the vaine of Chawcer, happen to tel one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vaine of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit an hundred dogged fables, libles, slaunders, lies, for the whetstone. But many will sooner lose their liues than the least jott of their reputation. What mortal feudes, what cruel bloodshed, what terrible slaughterdome have been committed for the point of honour ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... "What a whetstone for the imagination the business sense is!" I commented. "Perhaps if your grandfather owned shares in the Eclipse, you will be able to see the second signal station erected the next year on Point Lobos, ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... this is not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... no further change had come. Prowlers, made bold by the long silence in the nunnery, came and went under the very walls of the compound. In the court, beside a candle, Ah Pat the compradore sat with a bundle of halberds and a whetstone, sharpening edge after edge, placidly, against the time when there should be no more cartridges. Heywood and Rudolph stood near the water gate, and argued with Gilbert Forrester, who would not quit his post ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... by all that was consistent, have been. Lute, evidently, observed no traces of transcendent happiness, when I encountered him in the back yard, beside the woodpile, sharpening the kindling hatchet with a whetstone, a process peculiarly satisfying to his temperament because it took such a long time ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... discovered in the circular huts, called Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, which are the earliest remains of human abodes in Wales, are by the people called Fairy Whetstones, but, undoubtedly, this name was given them from their resemblance to the large circular whetstone at present in common use, the finders being ignorant of the original use of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... there in the house and had good meat and drink, but never saw anyone but the tabby-cat and her servants. Once she said to him, "Go and mow my meadow, and dry the grass," and gave him a scythe of silver, and a whetstone of gold, but bade him deliver them up again carefully. So Hans went thither, and did what he was bidden, and when he had finished the work, he carried the scythe, whetstone, and hay to the house, and asked if it was not yet time for her to give him his reward. "No," said the cat, "you must ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the master must compare it with Tullies booke, and laie them both togither: and where the childe doth well, either in chosing, or true placing of Tullies wordes, let the master // Children praise him, and saie here ye do well. For I // learne by assure you, there is no such whetstone, to // prayse. sharpen a good witte and encourage a will to learninge, as is praise. But if the childe misse, either in forgetting a worde, or in chaunging a good with a worse, or misordering the sentence, I would not haue the master, either froune, or chide with him, if the childe haue done his ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... the creaking wheels of the pioneer's ox-wagon. It will sound above the clatter of Baltic ship-yards and in the silence of the desert where the caravan routes stretch white beneath the moon. The Afghan, bending knife in hand over a whetstone, and the Chinese coolie knee-deep in his wet paddy-fields, will pause in their work to listen to the sound, uncomprehending, even while the dust is gathering on the labours of the historian ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had no doubt that sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah passed on to that undiscovered country, with a ripe experience ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... being a decided amelioration of her health. And I never knew any human being to be more sincerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with crocus powder, "to put an edge on." He had a remarkably fine whetstone, "the best in England; it was worth half a sovereign," and this he often and vainly begged me to accept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an evening to the lodging-house, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... stuck on each single hair there, for the twisting of the anger which met it as it rose from his hair above him. The Lon Laith ('Champion's Light') stood out of his forehead, so that it was as long and as thick as a warrior's whetstone, [7]so that it was as long as his nose, till he got furious handling the shields, thrusting out the charioteer, destroying the hosts.[7] As high, as thick, as strong, as steady, as long as the sail-tree of some huge [W.2623.] ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... I wish you had shot him! They're a terribul nuisance, tramps is. One day my wife give two on 'em a dinner an' they up afterwards an' stole my new sickle an' whetstone. Tramps ought all to be hung. ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... an Indian walked into my house and asked me for a whetstone. I gave it, not daring to refuse him. He sat down and sharpened his knife, feeling its edge and pointing often ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... in their stronghold at New Providence Island in 1660, withstood an attack by a Spanish fleet for five days. The three English captains, Stanley, Sir Thomas Whetstone, and Major Smith, were carried to Panama and there cast into a dungeon and bound in ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there's no stirring on the road. I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward, so they are come back again ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I shouldn't wonder if he wasn't a trull's bully from Lewknor's Lane or Whetstone Park. The rascals pass themselves off as sparks of fashion at ridottos, masquerades and what not and live by robbery and blood money. I warrant I'll soon run your fine gentleman to earth. He talks about telling his father. Pooh! That was but to bait the trap and ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... polecat, the miniver, the weasel, stote, fulmart, squirrel, fitchew, and such like, which Cardan includeth under the word Mustela: also of the otter, and likewise of the beaver, whose hinder feet and tail only are supposed to be fish. Certes the tail of this beast is like unto a thin whetstone, as the body unto a monstrous rat: as the beast also itself is of such force in the teeth that it will gnaw a hole through a thick plank, or shere through a double billet in a night; it loveth also the stillest rivers, and it is given to them by nature to go by ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... I; 'we are the very pink and perfection of the true Attic' 'Done with you!' says Callicles, 'frequent quizzings are a whetstone of conversation' 'For my part,' cries Eudemus, '—it grows chill—I like my liquor stronger, and more of it; I am deathly cold; if I could get some warmth into me, I had rather listen to these light- fingered gentry of flute and lyre.' 'What is this you say, Eudemus?' says I; 'You ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... sleck stone," I take to mean a "jagged whetstone," very unfit for its purpose; but what is the force of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... into broad Portland Place, and on into the Park, where I was afforded some scope to see what she could do. The Count declared that he was in no hurry, therefore we went up through Hampstead to Highgate Station, and then on the Great North Road, through East End, Whetstone, Barnet, and Hatfield, to Hitchin—thirty-five miles of road which was as well known ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... passed through all the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true representative of the ancient Mime, but afterwards degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella; the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his notions of one, from ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see {h}), the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see {gabriel}), the SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See also {machoflops}, {MIPS}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Whetstone Park is called by its present title, and the western half is Phillips Rents. He mentions it as "once famous for its infamous and ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... said, "Come, thou diviner, tell me, whether what I am thinking on can be done or not?" When he had tried the matter by divination, he affirmed it certainly could. "But I was thinking," says he, "whether you could cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, and perform what thy birds portend may be done." Upon this, as they say, he immediately cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, was erected in the comitium, upon the very steps on the left of the senate-house, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... And beyond, and again beyond, lay the naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana—white with poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect, to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. You ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... has survived Mr. Burne-Jones' desertion of his old associates, as it would survive art itself. I for one should regret its disappearance. It is a whetstone for wit, like everything established and respectable. I am only sorry we have no Academy of Letters. It gives one such a standing not to be a member—almost as good a standing as to be one. If you are left out in the cold you loudly ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... slaves busily heaped a great bonfire; torches were thrust into iron rings on doorpost and tree-trunk; noisy ruffians tramped into a cool cave in the rock and trundled forth casks and horn cups; while Sancho, the Spaniard, bent over a whetstone, giving his knife a final edge against the arrival ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... while they were preparing a dinner for him, he took out a big knife and sharpened it on a whetstone, repeating his threat of searching the ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... Mr. Jones. And I will warn you, in time, of one man in particular. His name is John Mason. Keep clear of him, if you wish to keep out of trouble. He's as smooth and oily as a whetstone; and, like a whetstone, abrades every thing he touches. He's a bad ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... bore up somewhat better than Neal. The latter was subdued in heart and in spirit, thoroughly, completely, and intensely vanquished. His features became sharpened by misery, for a termagant wife is the whetstone on which all the calamities of a henpecked husband are painted by the devil. He no longer strutted as he was wont to do, he no longer carried a cudgel as if he wished to wage a universal battle ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... not quite meet with her approval. The first of these was only a little thing,—a failure to keep shaved. Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was no one to see him except Virginia and the guide. The stubble matted and grew on his lips and jowls. Bill, in contrast, shaved with greatest care every evening. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... ancient Mime; but, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, he degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, Brighella, the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, however, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became, in after years, a child of nature, and the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding speech, which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing loth. Mother of my mother was Stymphalian Metope[11] of fair flowers, for she bare Thebe the charioteer, whose pleasant fountain I will drink, while I weave ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... hurry." With the utmost diligence they rowed back and forth all day. They made nine trips. They had now on shore a surprising quantity of all kinds of tools, goods and weapons. They had all kinds of ware to use in the kitchen, clothes, and food. Robinson prized a little four-wheeled wagon and a whetstone. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge in medias res, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... and that vanished at his advent, we think usually of the rhyming plays written wholly or mainly in ballad verse of fourteen syllables—of the Kings Darius and Cambyses, the Promos and Cassandra of Whetstone, or the Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes of George Peele. If we turn from these abortions of tragedy to the metrical farces which may fairly be said to contain the germ or embryo of English comedy (a form of dramatic art which certainly owes nothing to the father ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know, but I cannot bear them; not ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone from his pocket, spat on it, and fell to ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... in a Palace would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would try the best of you. You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you see. There's thousands of couples among you getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the Divorce Court in a cart. Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide; but in a cart it does come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a cart ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... "extemporal wit," or gagging of the comic actors, was indispensably necessary. The "comedians of Ravenna," who were not "tied to any written device," but who, nevertheless, had "certain grounds or principles of their own," are mentioned in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582, and references to such performers are also to be found in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and Ben Jonson's "Case is Altered." In "Antony and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... under his right arm. In his bullet pouch he also carries spare flints, steel and various odds and ends. Beneath the broad belt which encircles his waist there is a large butcher knife in a sheath of buffalo hide. There is a whetstone in a buckskin case made fast to the belt, and also a small ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... interpreter [literally, a truceman]: "For he that is the Trouchman of a Straungers tongue may well declare his meaning, but yet shall marre the grace of his Tale" (G. Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582). ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... accomplished courtier. Rather thank heaven, Piercie Shafton, which hath sent thee a subject, wherein, without derogating from thy rank, (since the honours of the Avenel family are beyond dispute,) thou mayest find a whetstone for thy witty compliments, a strop whereon to sharpen thine acute engine, a butt whereat to shoot the arrows of thy gallantry. For even as a Bilboa blade, the more it is rubbed, the brighter and the sharper will it prove, so—But what need I waste my stock of similitudes ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... other odds and ends. Round his waist he wore a belt, in which was stuck a large knife in a sheath of buffalo-hide, made fast to the belt by a chain or guard of steel. It also supported a little buckskin case, which contained a whetstone, a very necessary article; for in taking off the hides of the beaver a sharp knife was required. His pipe-holder hung around his neck, and was generally a gage d'amour, a triumph of squaw workmanship, wrought with beads and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... let's see what he dare do; cut off his ears! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I'll run my rapier to ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... treatises of a similar title, is only to be pardoned on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college. It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment; the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, and Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied the matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract is extravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with great vehemence, but only in that temper which permitted the young ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... I, nor Burd so blithe Had driven them in this haste; But the old, old man, so lean and lithe, That afar behind us paced; So lean and lithe, with shoulder'd scythe, And a whetstone at his waist. ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... summers lapse away beneath Their cool Athenian shade: And I a string for myrtle-wreath, A whetstone unto blade; ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... were the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Kau was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears run down ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... of the big red brick wall one bright winter's day, for the time had gone by very quickly. Old Brownsmith had a sharp knife in his hand, and I was holding the whetstone and a thin-bladed saw that he used to cut through ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... birds, and tell me, whether the thing I have now in my mind can be done, or cannot be done." Accius proceeded according to the rules of his art, and told the king it could be done. "What I was thinking of," replied Tarquinius, "was whether you could cut this whetstone in two with this razor." Accius immediately took the one instrument and the other, and performed the prodigy in the face of the assembled ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... William Morris, proclaims a heaven here below without law, where man kills his fellow man and answers only to his own conscience; where we will tear up the railroads and walk, blow up our steamships and use rowboats, in our harvest fields the whetstone on the old hand-scythe will still the music of the McCormick reaper. With his delicate tastes he fears the hoof-beat of your herd. But you all agree that to go backward means to go forward, and that ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... are. Some very very few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und so weiter. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 8. A whetstone; if the sword of a brave man were sharpened thereon, and any one were wounded therewith, he would be sure to die; but if it were that of a coward that was sharpened on it, he would be ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... principal canons of faith, and the one best observed in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen edge of the eyes. Semble—as the lawyers say—that this idea was born of great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better than the way to spell it; and when, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of the Bone.*—Prepare a section of bone for microscopic study as follows: With a jeweler's saw cut as thin a slice as possible. Place this upon a good-sized whetstone, not having too much grit, and keeping it wet rub it under the finger, or a piece of leather, until it is thin enough to let the light shine through. The section may then be washed and examined with the microscope. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... during the discussion. He seated himself, and recommenced his favorite task of stropping his knife upon a whetstone. At the Cockney's last words ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... there for something; now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself. At last he found what he seemed to want—a rusty old butcher knife and a whetstone. Then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. The winds sighed around the lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... night-sky, and a single star sparkling upon it, and as he looks upon the star, he takes a sword from under his cloak, draws the steel from the scabbard, and, still gazing upon the star, sharpens it on his whetstone. Thus, with widely opened eye, yet seeing, hearing nothing, the somnambulist, wrapped in deep, magnetic sleep, strides on in the moonlight, possessed by a power of which he is not conscious, which may stain his hands with blood, or hold him back from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... teacher," said Captain Cy, pushing forward a rocker. "My! but I'm glad to see you. 'Twas bluer'n a whetstone 'round here to-day. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... raise his eyes, but drew a damp cloth up and down the counter, slowly and heavily, as a man sharpens a knife on a whetstone. ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... is not Fortunes work neither, but Natures, who perceiueth our naturall wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this Naturall for our whetstone: for alwaies the dulnesse of the foole, is the whetstone of the wits. How now Witte, whether wander you? Clow. Mistresse, you must come away to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of silica causes the argillaceous schist to be traversed by quartz, transforming it, in part, into whetstone and silicious schist; the latter sometimes containing carbon, and being then capable of producing galvanic effects on the nerves. The highest degree of silicifaction of schist is that observed in ribbon ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... land, but may be auerted and turned away from all christian kingdomes, through his mercie, whose wrath by sinne being set on fire, is like a consuming flame; and the swoord of whose vengeance being sharpened with the whetstone of mens wickednesse, shall hew them in peeces as wood for ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed |
