"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the anvil rest, Dews upon the gowan's breast; Young hearts heave with tender thought, Low winds sigh, with odours fraught, Stars bedeck the blue above, Earth is full of joy and love; Row, lads, row; row, lads, row; Let your oars in concert ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... planned and ready to be put into execution. The iron is red on the anvil. At least five hundred men are pledged to me, and I have on my memorandum books, the names of as many thousands who will join us when wanted. Every man is to receive one hundred acres of the Bastrop land, besides his regular pay. All are to present themselves armed and equipped, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... with a furious bound, overturning three or four prisoners who separated him from Germain, he sprung upon Skeleton, and struck him on his head, between the eyes, such a torrent of blows with his fists that the sound was like a hammer upon an anvil. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... chains of matrimony on the religious anvil of Gretna Green, I am now one of the happiest fellows in existence. My election is crowned with success, and I venture to presume all after-petitions will be rejected as frivolous and vexatious. The once lovely Miss Mortimer is now the ever ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... crossed, but that of the Moor broke like matchwood. Both leaped to earth, sword in hand, and rushed at each other like lions. Many lusty strokes were given and taken, and from their armour flew sparks like those from a smith's anvil. Then the Moor, grasping his sword with both hands, made ready to strike a mighty blow, when swift and trenchantly Morvan thrust his blade far into the arm-pit and the heart and the giant tumbled to the earth like a falling tree. Morvan placed his foot on the dead man's breast, withdrew his sword, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... hear the 'Anvil Chorus'?" she asked watching him curiously. "It's in the second act ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... from my son away out West, An' my old heart is heavy as an anvil in my breast, To think the boy whose future I had once so nicely planned Should wander from the right and come to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece, but the ancient ...
— English Satires • Various
... hero which went beyond grown-up credence altogether. But there are some few narratives that survive the application of the laws of evidence. For instance, it is recorded that, taking advantage of the temporary absence of a rival smith, he carried away an anvil under his cloak without exciting suspicion that he was bearing any weight ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... arrive! Accidents, inns, roads, mountains, and the sea, are all in my map!- but I hope no slopes to be run down, no f'etes for a new Grand Duke. I should dread your meeting armies, if I had much faith in the counter-revolution said to be on the anvil. The French ladies in my vicinage (a, word of the late Lord Chatham's coin) are all hen-a-hoop on the expectation of a grand alliance formed for that purpose, and I believe think they shall be at Paris before you are in England; but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... narrow passage lined with delicate, ciliated epithelium. On the posterior portion it is connected with the mastoid cells. Three small bones are stretched across the cavity of the tympanum, and called, from their form, the malleus, incus and stapes, or the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. Agassiz mentions a fourth, which he terms the os orbiculare. Each wave of sound falling upon the membrana tympani, throws its molecules into vibrations which are communicated to the chain of bones, which, in turn, transmits them to the membrane of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to try the experiment. At four o'clock that Sunday morning she came downstairs and stepped out into the starlight. The weather was still favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... had to say in a small pamphlet. "That's all r-right, Martin. But ye're talkin' like a Populist an' an anarchist an' a big bullhead gen'rally. Ye bring up two or three Jew men, an' think f'r to scare us with thim. But look here. Supposin' a man comes into my place an' lays down on th' anvil a silver dollar, an' I give it ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... p 154 hour a ray of light traverses over a space of 592 millions of miles. While according to the theogony of Hesiod, the dimensions of the universe were supposed to be expressed by the time occupied by bodies in falling to the ground ("the brazen anvil was not more than nine days and nine nights in falling from heaven to earth"), the elder Herschel was of opinion* that light required almost two millions of years to pass to the Earth from the remotest luminous vapor reached by his ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... sharp thrill of benevolence, Mr. Spratt retraced his steps, an eager look in his eyes. He found the old man standing in the broad, open door of Bill Kepsal's blacksmith shop. The blacksmith's assistant was banging away with might and main at his anvil, and Uncle Dad wore a pleased, satisfied smile on his thin old lips. He always said he loved to stand there and listen to the faint, faraway music of the hammer on the anvil, so different from the hammers and anvils they used to have when he was a boy,—when they were so blamed ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... clang, softened by distance and interposition, came musical to her ear. The armourer's hammer was the keener, the quicker, the less intermittent, and yet had the most variations of time and note, as he shifted the piece on his anvil, or changed breastplate for gorget, or greave for pauldron—or it might be sword for pike-head or halbert. Mingled with it came now and then the creak and squeak of the wooden wheel at the draw-well near the hall-door in the farther court, and the muffled splash of the bucket as it ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... fight, but the linen masks flapped about their eyes, so that their blows went wide, while the long swords of the brothers smote and smote again upon their helms and harness as the hammers of smiths smite upon an anvil, until they rolled over ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... heavens, certainly at an altitude of many miles, the flaming thing swept across my view, comet-shaped and stretching over at least ten degrees of arc, swift as a meteor, brilliantly flesh-red, sputtering sparks like an anvil, and leaving behind it a long ruddy trail that only slowly faded out ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... time there were but five boys of that age who had become full-fledged puddlers. Of these young iron workers, I suppose there were few that "doubled in brass." But why should not an iron worker be a musician? The anvil, symbol of his trade, is a musical instrument and is heard in the anvil chorus from Trovatore. In our rolling mill we did not have an anvil on which the "bloom" was beaten by a trip-hammer as is done in the Old Country. The "squeezer" which combines the functions ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... when the mass was over and they passed out into the churchyard, there they beheld a large block of stone, upon which rested a heavy anvil. The blade of a jeweled sword was ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... carver encouraged the smith, He that smoothed with the hammer Him that smote on the anvil; Saying of the solder, It is good; And fixing the idol with nails, lest it ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... come at all! What more likely than that she had been detained by her grandmother? How could he expect it? Indeed, he told himself he did not expect it. He had come out here because it was a fine night, and the night air cooled his brain for his studies. His heart, hammering on his life's anvil, contradicted him. He could not have repeated the Hebrew alphabet. His head, bent a little forward in the agony of listening, whirled madly round; ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... was a man of powerful build, wide forehead, overhanging brows, broad chest and shoulders, short thick neck, and strong arms developed at the anvil. His superintendent from boyhood had studied him, but never before had he seen the lion in ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's anvil." (Septuagint, "He hath ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the children in the big houses were making the walls ring with laughter and shouts of joy. Rockets whizzed against the dawn, fire-crackers popped unceasingly, and now and then a loaded anvil boomed through the crackling air, but there was no happy awakening for little Jason. All night his pride had smarted like a hornet sting, his sleep was restless and bitter with dreams of revenge, and the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the shorter the space through which it moves, or, in other words, the greater the proportion of weight and the smaller the proportion of velocity making up the energy of the striking body, the more energy the specimen will absorb. The rest is lost in friction, vibrations, heat, and motion of the anvil. ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... London before Christmas, upon pain of cursing, that Jesus, of His great mercy, should show some miracle who should be rightwise king. So in the greatest church of London there was seen against the high altar a great stone and in the midst thereof there was an anvil of steel, and therein stuck a fair sword, naked by the point, and letters of gold were written about the sword that said, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... important business, I forthwith set about my work. Selecting a piece of iron which I thought would serve my purpose, I placed it in the fire, and plying the bellows in a furious manner, soon made it hot; then seizing it with the tongs, I laid it on my anvil, and began to beat it with my hammer, according to the rules of my art. The dingle resounded with my strokes. Belle sat still, and occasionally smiled, but suddenly started up and retreated towards her encampment, on a spark which I purposely sent in her direction alighting on her knee. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... retourne agayne. Thanne he rode a lytell forthe, thyderwarde, and anone he sawe where his master layn upon the erthe, bytwene foure men, layenge on him strokes, as they wolde have stryken on a stethey (anvil); and than the squyer was so affreyed, that he durst go no farther; for he sawe well he could nat helpe his mayster. Therefore he retourned as fast as he myght: so there the sayd knyghte was slayne. And ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... direct influence a passive, merely receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully, was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, and as little capable of playing anvil to another mind for long. He rebelled against her ascendancy, but suffered from the spell. She was no Countess Guiccioli, content to adore and be adored, and exercise an indirect power for good on a capricious lover. Her ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... new doctor the place looked half asleep, and uncompromisingly healthful. The clear May morning air was filled with a chorus of robins and orioles. A bluebird in the orchard bordering his lawn was singing ecstatically. Far up the street the musical cling-clang of the blacksmith's anvil, and from the depths of the ravine, in the opposite direction, the hum of the sawmill, served only like a lullaby to make the silence ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... at Arac's side, and down From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail, The large blows rained, as here and everywhere He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists, And all the plain,—brand, mace, and shaft, and shield— Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged With hammers; till I thought, can this be he From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so, The mother makes us most—and in my dream I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, And highest, among the statues, statuelike, Between ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... under the spiritual direction of the Jesuits. The gaol consisted of a large cellar or dungeon, fitted with huge beams of oak fixed close to the floor. Thick iron collars were attached by iron chains to the beams. The collar being placed round the prisoner's neck, it was closed and riveted upon an anvil with heavy ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... of a child, while the glass was not in the slightest degree injured or disturbed. The labor saved by this hammer is immense. One man sits perched up on the frame to direct it, and another stands below to guide the iron on the anvil. The great long bar, white with heat, is pulled out of the furnace, laid on the massive piece of iron under the frame, and, with a dull, heavy sound, down conies the hammer, swiftly or slowly, according to the wishes of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... &c.] Musick is said to be invented by Pythagoras, who first found out the proportion of notes from the sounds of hammers upon an anvil ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... grinned, thinking it all a jest; but he soon saw that Myles was serious enough, and when the seventeen shillings were produced and counted down upon the anvil, he took off his cap and made Myles a low bow as he swept them into his pouch. "Now, by my faith and troth," quoth he, "that I do call a true lordly gift. Is ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... town street was as empty as usual. There was Grader's cat in the window, a dog asleep on a step, and a few chickens picking about in front of the carrier's, while the only sounds were the clink, clink of the blacksmith's hammer upon his anvil, and the brisk tapping made by Chakes, as he neatly executed repairs ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... playing children, the belated smith ringing the evening chimes on his anvil in the smithy, the tits chirping among the firs, the crackle of the rough scales on the red boughs of the Scotch fir above him as they cooled—all fed his soul as though Peter's sheet had been let down, and there was nothing common or unclean ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... swell up like ropes and his blood pound on his temples like blows on an anvil, so great was his wrath against the wrongdoers who had treacherously unscrewed poor Meltzar's lovely ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe. Most of the tools were blacksmith's tongs and hammers for heating and beating out shapes on the anvil. The only things that gladdened Jason's heart were the massive drill press and lathe that worked off the slave-power drive belts. In the tool holder of the lathe was clamped a chip of some hard mineral that did a good enough job of cutting the forged iron and low-carbon steel. Even ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... this army was justly thought the equal of twice its own number of raw yeomanry, suddenly called to the field from the anvil, the workshop, or the plough. Its strongest arm was its artillery; its ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... anvil ringing To some slow fantastic plan, I can hear the sword-smith singing In the heart of old Japan— Till the cunning blade grows tragic With his malice and his magic— Tenka tairan! Tenka ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... Bamborough had to deal with metal of a harder grain than the majority of us. Claude de Chauxville was for the moment forced to assume the humble role of anvil because he had no choice. Maggie Delafield was passive for the time being, because that which would make her active was no more than a tiny seedling in her heart. The girl bid fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... shade Thackeray, Keene, and Leech loved to foregather round his al fresco dinner-table, I have hearkened to the pretty clink, clink, clink, of a far-distant smith as he smote his hammer upon the anvil, and, wondering that so sweet a sound could trouble any man, I have realised how shattered must have been the sufferer's nervous system as ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... have sold their work for more. The salaries of superintendents and clerks would have been partly saved, and partly shared, and nails been sometimes cheaper by a farthing in a hundred. But then if the smith could not have found an immediate purchaser, he must have deserted his anvil; if there had by accident at any time been more sellers than buyers, the workmen must have reduced their profit to nothing, by underselling one another; and as no great stock could have been in any hand, no sudden demand of large quantities could have been answered and ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... office; and the traveller who passes that way, if he lays his ear close to the mouth of the cavern, may hear a ghastly noise of iron chains and brazen caldrons, the loud strokes of the hammer, and the ringing sound of the anvil, intermixed with the pants and groans of the workmen, enough to unsettle the brain and confound the faculties of him that for any time shall listen to ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... had been shaped by the furnace, the bellows, the hammer and the anvil, cried: "It is not each of you alone, that keeps up the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... indeed, amounting, with my household, to two hundred persons. In the centre of the open space a small forge-fire had been kindled, the red glow of which added much to the strangeness of the scene; and on the anvil beside it were ranged a number of horses' and donkeys' shoes, with a full complement of tools used ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... pound them up with honey, and lay them on the belly of the child or grown person, at the same time administering a dose of some good physic. 3. Take garden parsley, make it into a tea and let the patient drink freely of it. 4. Take the scales that will fall around the blacksmith's anvil, powder them fine, and put them in sweetened rum. Shake when you take them, and give a ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... but what a blow was that you gave me; why, one would think that your muscles were made of steel. I thought that I could hit a good downright blow, seeing that I have been hammering at the anvil for the last seven years; but strike as I would I could not beat down your guard, while mine went down, as if it had been a feather, before yours. I knew, directly that I had struck the first blow, and felt how firm was your defence, that it was all up with me, knowing that in point of skill ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... driven by water or steam power, were merely enlarged modifications—that the difficulty had arisen; as, whenever the largest forge hammer was tilted up to its full height, its range was so small that when a piece of work of considerable size was placed on the anvil, the hammer became "gagged;" so that, when the forging required the most powerful blow, it received next to no blow at all, as the clear space for the fall of the hammer was almost entirely occupied by the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... sides, barons and knights came riding in to keep the birth-feast of Our Lord. And when they had prayed, and were coming forth from the cathedral they saw a strange sight. There, in the open space before the church, stood, on a great stone, an anvil thrust through with a sword; and on the stone were written these words: "Whoso can draw forth this sword is rightful ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... may follow crime. I am no Nicodemite. This day I have made public confession of my faith, and abide the consequences. From this day I am an exile from France so long as it pleases God to make His Church an anvil for the blows of ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... known to every one in the neighborhood as "Uncle Abram." He soon removed to the west side of the river, and thence to Brooklyn, where he built him one of the first houses erected on that side, on top of the hill. Hard knocks upon the anvil could barely enable him to support his family, so the boy, at the age of nine, was sent to the Granite State, where for ten years he enjoyed, during the Winter months, the advantages of a New England district school, and worked and delved among the rocks upon ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... rock, and making his way hastily to the spot which had privately given him alarm, he had the satisfaction to ascertain that he had only been deceived by the peculiar situation and aspect of the smith's anvil and block, which very completely represented the appearance of a lifeless body upon the rock. The writer carefully suppressed his feelings, the simple mention of which might have had a bad effect upon the artificers, and his haste passed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... According to the tradition, it was safer for him to strike on his head than on his shins. Certainly he was not badly injured, and if reduced to extremity he might have let out his head for use as a blacksmith's anvil. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... My heart the Anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the Hammers fashioning my Desire; My breast the Forge including all the heat, Love is the Fuel which maintains the fire. My sighs the Bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... into a certain conventional thing which they mendaciously term their "intelligence," from a Latin verb intelligo, said to mean "I understand." It is a poor thing, after all the varnishing. It is neither hammer nor anvil; it cannot strike, and, if you strike it, dissolution instantly takes place, after which the poor driveller is erroneously said to have "lost his mind," and is removed to an asylum. It is curious that the great majority of lunatics should be found in "society." ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... within the shelter and half without; the shoeing-stool, a broken plough, an empty keg, a log, and a rickety chair sufficed to seat the company. The moonlight falling into the door showed the great slouching, darkling figures, the anvil, the fire of the forge (a dim ashy coal), and the shadowy hood merging indistinguishably into the deep duskiness of the interior. In contrast, the scene glimpsed through the low window at the back of the shop had a certain ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sad experiment with the "Wonderful Specialist," I did not want to go home and listen to the Anvil Chorus of "It Can't Be Done!" and "I Told You So!" I had no desire to be the object of laughter as well as pity. So I tried to get a job in that same city. I went from office to office—but nobody had a job ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... colleagues in the surf-boat which is taking them shoreward, and the ship is headed to the south. The expedition is important—yes, and it was much more important than Master Day imagined; for something more serious than profits on muslin and brocade was on the anvil of fate. ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... shadow of Anvil Mountain, the motor boat ran up to a little wharf, almost completely hidden in greenery, and there Cecil and the boy landed. Stuart did not fail to observe that the motor boat engineer needed no directions as to the place of landing. Evidently this ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... conscience is fallen asleep and grown hard, will lie like the smith's dog at the foot of the anvil, though the fire-sparks fly ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... father, in a great voice, like one who would startle a creature out of mania, "you will write a deed in your legal manner granting these lands to your brother's child. And after that"—his words were like the blows of a hammer on an anvil—"I will give you until daybreak to vanish out of our sight and hearing—through the gap in the mountains into Maryland on your horse, as you say your brother David went, or into the abandoned cistern in the ancient orchard where he lies under the horse ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... gymnastic drills given by the boarding pupils. Their wielding of the heavy dumbbells elicited hearty applause. With no breaks they went through with marching, stepping movements, wand-drills and the anvil chorus, the exercises closing with a full chorus, "The Song of the Sea," by Veazie. Our only regret was that so many must be turned away. Between the concert and the gymnastic drills, Miss Dickerman's tiny ones entertained the company with motion songs, recitations and solos, showing the careful ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... attitude of your godmother, whom she has always found supple to her will, as a personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they have now arrived at such a point that Mademoiselle Brigitte is packing her trunks to leave ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... land of no name, outracing the storm wind; We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God: all's well with Thy troopers ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... links must be forged on Fashion's anvil, or it is good for nothing. How shocking to be friendly with an unfashionable lady! It will never do. How soon one would lose caste! No matter if her mind is a treasury of gems, and her heart a flower-garden ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... in a portion of which, called the Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, covered with beautiful dog's tooth spar, called ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... window; and, not least, the glorious view from the churchyard. The Palace of the Archbishops is now a convent: it was restored by Pugin after being in a state of ruin for many years. Certain portions may be seen at uncertain times. In the ancient dining-room are preserved the hammer, tongs and anvil of St. Dunstan. The Saint's well is in the garden. It was hereabouts that St. Dunstan had his great tussle with the Devil, holding the fiend by the nose with his tongs; eventually the Evil One wrenched himself free; making an eight mile leap he cooled his nose in a pool of water, giving ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... quietly, "and I intend to throw that star in such a way that we can escape between the twin fields! We can escape between the hammer and the anvil as millions of millions of millions of tons of ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... shut the east away from the high tree-tops, the garish street light would have kept it dim. The trees were silent and stirless, as quiet as the graves beneath them—more quiet; in fact; for there issued from a grated hole among the tombs the sound of an anvil, deep down and muffled, but unmistakably ringing, as if Governor Winthrop were forging chains in his vault. Then came a rush, a deadened roar, and an emanation of dank gaseous breath, such as the ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... you are stronger than I then I'll let you off; come, let's have a try." Then he led him through some dark passages to a forge, and grasping an axe he drove one of the anvils with a blow into the earth. "I can do better than that," cried the youth, and went to the other anvil. The old man drew near him in order to watch closely, and his white beard hung right down. The youth seized the axe, cleft the anvil open, and jammed in the old man's beard. "Now I have you," said the youth; ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... They that have power are royal; and those base That live at the devotion of another. What birth gave Ptolomy, or fortune Caesar, By Engines fashion'd in this Protean Anvil I have made mine; and only stoop at you, Whom I would still preserve free to command me; For Caesar's frowns, they are below my thoughts, And but in these fair Eyes I still have read The story of a supream Monarchy, To which ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... up. For my own failure I should not sorrow: my concern would be for the one who has so carefully shaped me after a pattern of her own. However else one may feel, one must be fair to the ambitions of others, even though one is the mere material that is heated and beaten into form on the anvil of another's will. But I am ripe for revolt. The devil is in me,—a restrained, quiet, well-appearing devil, but all the more terrible ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... doors, knave, if thou likest it not. I cry you mercy! is your ears so fine? I tell thee, knave, these get when I do sleep; I will not have my Anvil ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... within the cave heard all these strange noises; the crowing of the cocks, the hammering on the anvil, the chopping of wood, the music of the koto, the clappering of the hard wood, the tinkling of the bells, the shouting of Uzume and the boisterous laughter of the gods. Wondering what it all meant, she ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... that each, The elder proposition and the new, Which so persuade thee, are the voice of heav'n?" "The works, that follow'd, evidence their truth; " I answer'd: "Nature did not make for these The iron hot, or on her anvil mould them." "Who voucheth to thee of the works themselves, Was the reply, "that they in very deed Are that they purport? None hath sworn so to thee." "That all the world," said I, "should have bee turn'd To Christian, and no miracle been wrought, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... hypocrisy; to be neat, and you leap over into dandyism, fancying all the while that bluster is manliness. No, sir. You may make shoes, you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins knotted, your hands grimed; and yet you may be a hero. And, on the other hand, you may write verses and be a clown. It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to become divine; nor shall one ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... blacksmith's shop, in the village, he had the man who pounded iron fashion for him on his anvil, a set of tools, exactly like those used by the kabouter and the elf, which he had seen in his dream. Then he hung out a sign, marked "Wooden blocks for shoes." He made klomps for the little folks just out of the nursery, for boys and girls, for grown men and women, and for ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... give them a muscular power and activity not often surpassed. It is recorded on the island that George Young and Edward Quintal have each carried, at one time, a kedge anchor, two sledge hammers, and an armourer's anvil, weighing together upwards of six hundred pounds; and that Quintal once carried a boat twenty-eight feet in length. In the water they are almost as much at home as on land, and can remain almost a whole day in the sea. They frequently swim round their little island, the circuit ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Carolinian's dryness. We can best judge of their merit and their effect by comparing them with those of his associates. They were not only forcible, but they were vivid also and full of life, and his words when he was roused fell like the blows of a hammer on an anvil. They lacked the polish and richness of his later efforts, but the force and power of statement and the purity of diction were all there, and men began to realize that one destined to great achievements had entered the field ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... In the rear of this resolution, he shifted his lodgings into a private court, being distracted with the din of carriages, that disturb the inhabitants who live towards the open street; and gave his acquaintance to understand, that he had a medical work upon the anvil, which he could not finish without being indulged in silence and tranquillity. In effect, he gradually put on the exteriors of an author. His watch, with an horizontal movement by Graham, which he had often mentioned, and shown as a very curious piece of workmanship, began, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... carried a horse on his shoulders. According to Guyot-Daubes there was, in the last century, a Major Barsaba who could seize the limb of a horse and fracture its bone. There was a tale of his lifting an iron anvil, in a blacksmith's forge, and placing it ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... root out the lovely pests, but little did our Caleb care! If he had ever trod his ancestral acres either for pleasure or profit he might in time have "stomped out" the whiteweed, so the neighbors said, for he had the family foot, the size of an anvil; but he much preferred a sedentary life, and the whiteweed went on seeding ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a forge and seen a blacksmith at work? It is quite exciting, I assure you, to see the flames being fanned by the bellows, and myriads of sparks flying upwards and outwards on all sides, while the blacksmith hammers the red-hot metal on the anvil and shapes it into horseshoes and other useful ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense Is broken—each gem with a flaw— Be comforted thou! For rising in air Thy flight shall ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... noses out of the window. And slowly, athwart the air, in which the shots had suddenly resounded, one of the cathedral bells began to ring the tocsin with so irregular, so strange a rhythm, that one might have thought the noise to be the hammering of an anvil or the echoes of a colossal kettle struck by a child in a fit of passion. This howling bell, whose sound the citizens did not recognise, terrified them yet more than the reports of the fire-arms had done; and there were some who ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... could have made such music? A gleam of sun, shining through the unsashed window and checkering the dark workshop with a broad patch of light, fell full upon him, as though attracted by his sunny heart. There he stood working at his anvil, his face radiant with exercise and gladness, his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off his shining forehead—the easiest, freest, happiest man ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... horse Ebenezer called to him. "There's no danger. That noise is nothing to be afraid of. It's only the smith pounding a horseshoe on his anvil." ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... affairs of state, he had only two interests that absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and the other was his desire to shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he could hammer away at the anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small trifles of mechanical inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge, sooty and greasy, an object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with her foamy laces and perfumes and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... proposition[5] which are so conclusive to thee,—why dost thou hold them for divine speech?" And I, "The proofs which disclose the truth to me are the works[6] that followed, for which nature never heated iron, nor beat anvil." It was replied to me, "Say, what assures thee that these works were? The very thing itself which requires to be proved, naught else, affirms it to thee." "If the world were converted to Christianity," said I, "without miracles, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... feared no man; but he feared a woman. It was easy to see this as he chatted the golden hours away to me. His pale eyes seldom left the road where it came over a distant hill. When the woman did arrive—Oh, surely the merry clang of the hammer on the anvil would be heard in Abner's shop, where he led a dog's life. But, for a ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Please give me your promise again to sit tight and see it through—or go home and leave it all to me." Mr. Vandeford was surprised to feel how hard his heart beat, and he was afraid that it sounded like the echo of an anvil chorus in the big ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in every tent a hammer, consisting of an oval stone with a hollow round it for a skin thong, with which the stone is fastened to the short shaft of wood or bone. The bones which are used for food are finely crushed with this implement against a stone anvil or a whale's vertebra, and then boiled with water and blood, before being eaten. At first we believed that this dish was intended for the dogs, but afterwards I had an opportunity of convincing myself ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... scaffolding for the fireworks and benches for the audience. General Banks urged me to remain over the 4th of March, to participate in the ceremonies, which he explained would include the performance of the "Anvil Chorus" by all the bands of his army, and during the performance the church-bells were to be rung, and cannons were to be fired by electricity. I regarded all such ceremonies as out of place at a time when it seemed to me every hour ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... another, they launched from their strong hands and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and buried them beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit, as far beneath the earth to Tartarus. For a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth. Round it runs a fence ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Simeon, fast and double-locked in sleep in the next bed. He saw also the open trunk by the dressing-table in front of the window. Then he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the silent witness of the hours. And a pair of pincers seemed to clutch his heart, and an anvil to drop on his stomach and rest heavily there, producing an awful nausea. Why had he not looked at the clock before? Was it possible that he had been awake even five seconds without looking at the clock—the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... First in all wisdom, of a prudent mind, Yet none the less him too his fate shall find Unfenced by these, a man 'mongst other men. Yea, and will Fortune pick out, now and then, The noblest for the anvil of her blows; Great names are few, and yet, indeed, who knows What greater souls have fallen 'neath the stroke Of careless fate? Purblind are most of folk, The happy are the masters of the earth Which ever give ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... anvil, Beaten by the winds; Star sparks, Burning and dying in the heavens; The furnace glare Red ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... Harvard. But no, Elihu said he could get his education himself, even though he had to work twelve or fourteen hours a day at the forge. Here was a determined boy. He snatched every spare moment at the anvil and forge as if it were gold. He believed, with Gladstone, that thrift of time would repay him in after years with usury, and that waste of it would make him dwindle. Think of a boy working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith shop, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... little steels. I forged them out of old files, which proved excellent material for the purpose. I filed them up into neat and correct forms, and then hardened and tempered them, secundum artem, at the little furnace stove in my father's workroom, where of course there were also a suitable anvil, hammer, and tongs. I often made potent use of these steels in escaping from the ordeal of some severe task imposed upon me at school. The schoolmaster often deputed his authority to the monitors to hear ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... is the whole matter: White jet comes from Norway, black jet comes from England, black glass jewellery comes from Germany. Jet is the lightest, the most precious, the most costly. Imitations can be made in France as well as in Germany. What is needed is a little anvil two inches square, and a lamp burning spirits of wine to soften the wax. The wax was formerly made with resin and lampblack, and cost four livres the pound. I invented a way of making it with gum shellac and turpentine. It does not cost more than thirty sous, and is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... European nations, who had done us no harm, in order to arouse a feeling of Americanism in the Confederate States, was an outgrowth of this conviction. It was an indefensible proposition, akin to that which prompted Bismarck to make use of France as an anvil on which to hammer and weld Germany together, but it was not an unpatriotic one, since it was bottomed on a desire to preserve ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... you, keep a brave heart, otherwise you will have gone on a fruitless errand." He went and did according to the instructions of the ogress. In taking away the mirror the earth shook under him, but he made his heart as hard as an anvil and cared nothing for the shaking. But when he brought the mirror to his sister and she had placed it before the rose of Arab Zandyk, still the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... soul! before I let you go I will make you so that you will never want to hammer on any feminine anvil again. Get up, and let yourself be bound, unless you wish ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... the smiths should get no eric, great or small, for the death of their monster. The smiths thereupon armed themselves with their hammers, and tongs, and fire-poles, and great bars of unwrought brass, and Culain himself seized an anvil withal to lay waste the ranks of the Red Branch. The Ultonians on their side ran to the walls and plucked down their spears from the pegs, and they raised their shields and balanced their long spears, and swords flashed and screeched as they rushed to light out ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... enabled their sovereign not only to maintain invincible navies and formidable armies, but likewise to give subsidies to all the powers of Europe. He knew that a treaty of this kind was actually upon the anvil between his Britannic majesty and the czarina, and he began to be apprehensive of seeing an army of Russians in the Netherlands. His fears from this quarter were not without foundation. In the month of November, the earl of Hyndford, ambassador ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... an amusing anecdote illustrating the pleasure derived from a book, not assuredly of the first order. In a certain village the blacksmith having got hold of Richardson's novel, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, used to sit on his anvil in the long summer evenings and read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. It is by no means a short book, but they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the stage. But unfortunately it always happens that the words cannot be heard because of the orchestra, and the fire sinks when the orchestral swell rises, and rises when the orchestral surge subsides. I have caught the orchestral sound of hammer on anvil long before the two have come into contact, and have heard Spring described as entering through a door which persists in staying closed. I have seen boats being pushed by human hands, Rhine maidens suspended on a wire, ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... him his full name which he insisted on at all times, John Royce Pederstone—was busy on his anvil, turning a horse shoe. His sleeves were rolled up almost to his shoulders and his lithe muscles slipped and rippled under his white skin in a rhythm of harmony. His broad chest was bare as his arms, and his chubby apple-red cheeks shone with perspiration which oozed from his every pore. He ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... echoed the aphorism until it has come to believe in some sort that bufferings are benedictions, and hard knocks merely the compacting blows that harden virtues, as the blacksmith's hammer beats a finer temper into the steel upon the anvil. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the locksmith could have made such music! A gleam of sun shining through the unsashed window, and chequering the dark workshop with a broad patch of light, fell full upon him, as though attracted by his sunny heart. There he stood working at his anvil, his face all radiant with exercise and gladness, his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off his shining forehead—the easiest, freest, happiest man in all the world. Beside him sat a sleek cat, purring and winking in the light, and falling every now and then into an idle doze, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... marriage, which was thought very probable and very near, of Napoleon with the sister of the Czar. Thus imprisoned between two vast empires, between that of the East and that of the West, as if between hammer and anvil, what would become of Austria, shorn of its territory and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... thinking that he'll be caught between the hammer and the anvil of Lee and Jackson, just as ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... epithets; and, accordingly, we find that the best German writers, like Uhland and Heine, get rid of them as much as possible, and succeed thereby, every word striking and ringing down with full force, no cushion of an epithet intruding between the reader's brain-anvil and the poet's hammer to break the blow. In Uhland's "Three Burschen," if we recollect right, there are but two epithets, and those of the simplest descriptive kind: "Thy fair daughter" and a "black pall." Were there more, we question whether the poet would have ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... must I not give nature all; thy art, My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His heart doth give the fashion: and, that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou! Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... considerable distance above and below the iron, was a mass of putrefaction, the most loathsome of any wound he had ever witnessed on any living creature. The slave lay on his back on the floor, with his leg on an anvil which sat also on the floor, one man had a chisel used for splitting iron, and another struck it with a sledge, to drive it between the ends of the hoop and separate it so that it might be taken off. Mr. Lyman said that the man swung the sledge over his shoulders as if ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, "Non marte sed arte." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School" express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... female scarlet, says the nurse. It is a good thing that she was made that way, for she is very popular. So are Mother Goose and her ten companion rubber toys. The bear and the man that strike alternately a wooden anvil with a ditto hammer are scarcely less exciting to the infantile mind; but, being of wood, they are steady boarders permanently attached each to his ward. The dominos fell to the lot of the male scarlets. That ward has half a dozen grown ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... 148). Mankind suffers much from brassy incompetency and over-complacency, but Pattison is only one of many examples how much more it may lose in a man who has ability, but no fight and no mastery in him. As we have all been told, in this world a man must be either anvil or hammer, and it always seemed as if Pattison deliberately chose to be anvil—not merely in the shape of a renunciation of the delusive pomps and vanities of life, but in the truly questionable sense ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... intrigue; and what one exacted, and the other was content to yield, towards the mutual accommodation, might add one more example to the large chapter of political infirmity. Both workmen attempting to convert each other into tools, by first trying their respective malleability on the anvil, are liable to be disconcerted by even a slight accident, whenever that proves, to perfect conviction, how little they can depend on each other, and that each party comes to cheat, and not to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... deserves especial notice for its excellence. The anvil is a big piece of iron which is embedded firmly in the ground. Its upper surface is flat, and pointed at both ends. The hammers are solid cones of iron, the upper part of the cones prolonged so as to give a good grip, and the blows are given directly downwards, like the blows of a pestle. The ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Provision, or a bottle of Rack, desiring him to appoint his time, when they shall come to have their work done. Which when he hath appointed them, they come at the set time, and bring both Coals and Iron with them. The Smith sits very gravely upon his Stool, his Anvil before him, with his left hand towards the Forge, and a little Hammer in his Right. They themselves who come with their work must blow the Bellows, and when the Iron is to be beaten with the great Maul, he ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... as you may, love is the one sunbeam of poetry that gilds with a softened splendor the hard, bare outline of many a prosaic life. "Work, work, work, from weary chime to chime"; tramp behind the plough, hammer on the lapstone, beat the anvil, drive the plane, "from morn till dewy eve"; but when the dewy eve comes, ah! Hesperus gleams soft and golden over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is our guide! From field, from wave, The plough, the anvil, and the loom, We come, our country's rights to save, And speak a tyrant faction's doom. And hark! we raise, from sea to sea, Our sacred ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... is work for you to do and for me to do in order to this grand accomplishment! Here is my pulpit, and I preach in it. Your pulpit is the bank. Your pulpit is the store. Your pulpit is the editorial chair. Your pulpit is the anvil. Your pulpit is the house scaffolding. Your pulpit is the mechanic's shop. I may stand in this place and, through cowardice or through self-seeking, may keep back the word I ought to utter; while you, with sleeve rolled up and brow besweated with toil, may utter the word that will ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... that, Pompadour meditates great things this Year,—Invasions of England; stronger German Armies; better German Plans, and slashings home upon Hanover itself, or the vital point;—and flatters herself, and her poor Louis, that there is on the anvil, for 1759, such a French Campaign as will perhaps astonish Pitt and another insolent King. Very fixed, fell and feminine is the Pompadour's humor in this matter. Nor is the Czarina's less so; but more, if possible; unappeasable except by death. Imperial Maria Theresa has masculine reasons ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... confined, the walls were found covered with verses written by him in finely formed characters with the tongue of his shoe-buckle. Every letter he sent to James Melville contained a number of verses 'warm from the anvil.' His nephew, in one of his letters enclosing a remittance of money, had remarked: 'I shall send you money, and you shall send me songs. I have good hope that you will run short of verses for my use before I run short ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... (pandei) from any old iron he can procure. When you engage one of them to execute a piece of work his first request is usually for a piece of iron hoop to make his wire-drawing instrument; an old hammer head, stuck in a block, serves for an anvil; and I have seen a pair of compasses composed of two old nails tied together at one end. The gold is melted in a piece of a priuk or earthen rice-pot, or sometimes in a crucible of their own making, of common clay. In general they use no bellows ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and old-fashioned feasting—all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... bullocks tear round the circle where the Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house; the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or dripping refuse;—form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have never ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... night as by day; they that cut gravings of signets, and his diligence is to make great variety; he will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith sitting by the anvil, and considering the unwrought iron; the vapour of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise of the hammer will be ever in his ear, and his ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... proudly reared its crest, covered with grey slate, above the thatched hovels by which it was surrounded. The adjoining smithy betokened none of the Sabbatical silence and repose which Ebenezer had augured from the sanctity of his friend. On the contrary, hammer clashed and anvil rang, the bellows groaned, and the whole apparatus of Vulcan appeared to be in full activity. Nor was the labour of a rural and pacific nature. The master smith, benempt, as his sign intimated, John ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... entered the shop of John Sweetland, the village blacksmith, and there paid his sixpence. Sweetland extracted the teeth of the village, whenever they required it, in the simplest and most effectual way. A piece of fine wire was fastened round the tooth, and the other end round the anvil's nose, then the sturdy blacksmith shut the lower half of his shop door, which was about breast-high, with the patient outside and the anvil within; a strong push of the foot upset the anvil, and the tooth flew out like ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... any publick Affair is upon the Anvil, I love to hear the Reflections that arise upon it in the several Districts and Parishes of London and Westminster, and to ramble up and down a whole Day together, in order to make my self acquainted with the Opinions of my Ingenious Countrymen. By ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... lame, deformed and squalid man, with a beard, and hair neglected; half naked; his habit reaching down to his knee only, and having a round peaked cap on his head, a hammer in his right hand, and a smith's tongs in his left, working at the anvil, and usually attended by the Cyclops, or by some of the gods or goddesses for whom he ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... promised to give a decisive answer in the morning. O'Mooney saw that this man was too great a fool to be a knave; his perturbation was evidently the perturbation of a dupe, not of an accomplice: Queasy was made to "be an anvil, not a hammer." In the midst of his own disappointment, our good-natured Hibernian ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth |
