"Barbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pewley Hill, a modern villa; opposite it, which would infuriate the old reformer if he could see it, War Office Ground, marked off with barbed wire and minatory notice-boards. A hundred years hence, perhaps the fort on Pewley Hill will be exhibited as one of the curiosities of ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... If rests the traveller his weary head, Grim MANCINELLA haunts the mossy bed, Brews her black hebenon, and, stealing near, 190 Pours the curst venom in his tortured ear.— Wide o'er the mad'ning throng URTICA flings Her barbed shafts, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... among the company? Would it not be well to summon them, that they may hear the father's instructions, and join in the song which we shall all sing as we draw near to Shiloh?" Cruel words! and they do their work. Like barbed arrows, they stick fast in the sore heart of this injured one. Her head sinks, but she utters no reply. She only draws nearer to her husband, and walks ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... "The barbed formation of the point explains how, under the stroking with the finger, it was forced through the dense tarsal cartilage and against the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of new-scraped water ditches began to appear, and the first wire fences. Next, they were passing cabins and occasional fields, the outposts of habitation. The free road became wholly imprisoned, running between unbroken stretches of barbed wire. Far off to the eastward a flowing column of dust marked the approaching stage, bringing the bishop, probably, for whose visit here they had timed their wedding. The day still brimmed with heat ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... vastly amused, no doubt, had she known of the phenomenon. But knowing a little more, such as its source and the man himself, she must have flushed and drooped, piteously hurt, as none in her own circle could have wounded her. The shafts which flashed in that circle were keenly barbed. They were the more merciless for being politely gilded. But she understood, and despised, the point of view there. It was a dais of velvet, of scarlet velvet. And a worldly little gentlewoman like the Marquise Jeanne was not one to be unaware of the abyss beneath, of which the flaming color ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... knowledge of metal.] The chief weapons were small triangles of close-grained basalt and iztli (obsidian flakes) for tabonas, or knives, both being without handles. They carried rude clubs and banot, or barbed spears of pine-wood with fire-charred points. The garrotes (pikes) had heads like two flattened semicircles, a shape preserved amongst negroes to the present day. Our old author tells us that the people would 'leap from rock to rock, sometimes making ten Fathoms deep at one ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... now in plain view, not over two hundred yards distant. In front and to one side was a level stretch. The reddish rocks were behind, leading to a small hill. There were numerous outbuildings, and a heavy barbed fence surrounded the whole, excepting at one point, where there was a wide-swinging gate ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... gravel. The companies were going back to their barracks. He wanted to smile but he didn't dare. He wanted to smile because he had a pass till midnight, because in ten minutes he'd be outside the gates, outside the green fence and the sentries and the strands of barbed wire. Crunch, crunch, crunch; oh, they were so slow in getting back to the barracks and he was losing time, precious free minutes. "Hep, hep, hep," cried the sergeant, glaring down the ranks, with his aggressive bulldog expression, to where someone ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... of expansion were merely the cost of subduing naked savages, the business was a remunerative one; but when, to these ordinary costs must be added the stupendous price of capturing trenches protected by barbed wire entanglements, of bombing whole countrysides, of desolating states and wiping out industries, not to mention the cost of building forty million dollar ships that can be sunk in six or seven minutes with one well aimed torpedo, the limit ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... been deferred till daylight; but it seemed too wearisome to wait. So bethinking me of our tinder-box and candles, I sent him into the boat for them. Presently, two candles were lit; one of which the Skyeman tied up and down the barbed end of his harpoon; so that upon going below, the keen steel might not be far off, should the light be blown out by ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fix up some other way to settle their differences. About that Zeppelin, Tubby; don't you see how they might be able to drop a few bombs on the enemy's trenches; or where the Belgians have fixed barbed-wire entanglements to stop the rush of the charging German troops? Just to think that here we are really watching a battle that isn't like one of the sham rights they have every summer at home. It's ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... foaming white through the darkness against her tall side. 'Fun!' he repeated rather grimly. 'You won't think it so funny when you find yourself crawling up a cliff with quick-firers barking at you from behind every rock, and a strand of barbed wire to cut each five yards, to say nothing of snipers socking lead at you the whole time. No, Dave, I'll lay, whatever you think, you won't consider ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... is not a pleasant companion as all persons know who have had any experience with it. Its needles are not only very sharp, but also finely barbed, and they penetrate and cling fast like a burr the moment that they are touched. Cowboys profess to believe that the plant has some kind of sense as they say that it jumps and takes hold of its victim ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... She cast a barbed glance towards Stella as she spoke as Monck guided her to the least crowded corner of the ball-room. Stella's delicate face was flushed, but it was the exquisite flush of a blush-rose. Her eyes were of a starry brightness; she had the radiant look of ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... attached himself, and I believe his spirit has joined the deathless army of the unburied dead that watch over our patrols and inspire our sentries with the realization that on an Australian front No Man's Land has shrunk and our possession reaches right up to the enemy barbed wire. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... burrowing and bursting, pockmarked the ground like a telescopic photograph of the moon. Fields, so lately rich with waving grain, were blasted into subsidences and cavities, bisected by crumbled trenches before which the wreckage of barbed-wire entanglements—a fortnight since forming barriers so impregnable as to resemble from a distance walls of red rust—lay snarled and tied into a million knots by the ruthless ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... from every one in court but the victim, greeted this sally, the chorus being, as it were, barbed by a shrill crow ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... against the handicap of high-powered cars. He was in high humor as the buckboard was greased, a team of buckskins given a special feed and a rub-down, and various articles gathered for transportation. Among these were a spool of barbed wire and a dozen ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... outpourings of our special correspondents—ten francs. At night grand S.O.S. rocket and Very light display—ten francs. While for a further twenty francs the tourist will be allowed to pick up as many souvenirs in the way of rolls of barbed wire, dud bombs and blind crumps as he can stagger away with. By this means the country will be cleared of its explosive matter and I shall be able to spend my declining years in Park Lane, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... was now in sight. The German cause was doomed. One great victory remained to be gained, the clearing of the Argonne forest, wild, tangled, meshed with thousands of miles of barbed wire, crowded with machine gun nests and swept with a hurricane of shot and shell. But nothing could stop America's boys now that their blood was up, and they did much in helping to win here the final and greatest ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... the Cockney School to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking into their works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh, brave public! This epithet proved too much for one of the writers in question, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats! What was sport to the town was death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate, he ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the formula—"Submit to be mine——" words which seem horribly selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no ideas. Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more, though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were very keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should lose all ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... thankful for His protection to this time. I have a consolation within that no earthly effort can deprive me of, and that is that neither ambitions nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, can never reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, while I am set up as a mark they ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... woman's looks Are barbed hooks, That catch by art The strongest heart When yet they spend no breath; But let them speak, And sighing break Forth into tears, Their words are spears That wound our ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the chariot races in the wide Piazza Santa Maria Novella, where the small obelisks point the start and finish of the races. These were followed by the corso dei barberi—barbed horse-races without riders—down the longest street of the town. Then followed the French Minister's masked ball, amusing as well as splendid, readers of Cooper's "Italy" will find. But more than all, on their return to Villa St. Illario, were they charmed with the brilliant illumination ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit. 'Before he could revenge himself on Sidney, before he could stir against the Scots, before he could strike a blow at O'Donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was fastened in his ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... on; but as he moved be saw a foot-long piece of barbed wire lying in the trench bottom. He asked gravely whether he would be allowed to take it, and, receiving a somewhat puzzled and grudging assent, picked it up, carefully rolled it in a small coil, and placed it in a side jacket pocket. He derived immense gratification and enjoyment ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... trotted on in Indian file, each of us now leading spare horses, in silence, except when one of us asked how many leagues it was to the estancia, only to jog on again for what seemed two or three hours, until almost midnight. With a cheerful yell we suddenly came on a barbed wire fence, and after hunting about for a time, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, And now instead of mounting barbed steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... a sharp hissing. Something struck the rock above the Hunter as he was stooping over Venning, and fell down into the fire. It was a barbed arrow. He fired again, scattered the fire with a kick, and crouched over the boy. Several arrows rang viciously against the rock. He felt for Venning's carbine, swung it round with one hand, and emptied the magazine, firing at different ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... the toy-like fortifications of which Paris was proud in the 'fifties; there was the black tangle of barbed wire, and the trace of trenches (a mere depression on the earth's surface, as if a serpent had laid its heavy length on a great, green velvet cushion) with which Paris had hoped to delay the German wave. Only a ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sufficient. He climbed over all the fences round the neighbouring villas, over all the walls that were protected by barbed wire ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... or possibly occasion—spurred desire to act of his own initiative and keep the high priest in his place—impelled the Maharajah in that minute. Men said afterward that Jaimihr had whispered to him advice which he knew was barbed because it was his brother whispering, and that he promptly did the opposite; but, whatever the motive, he drew himself up in all his jewelled splendor and demanded: "What do ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... be plainly seen. Periodically our air service issued aeroplane photographs showing the extraordinary development of these trenches, their elaborate construction, the concrete dug-outs, and solid rows of heavy barbed wire, until it almost came to be recognised that an assault upon them would only be attempted by the maddest of leaders, and the prospect of having to take part in it took ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... period 1860 to 1880 was one of great mechanical and industrial progress. During this time dynamite and the barbed-wire fence were introduced; the compressed-air rock drill, the typewriter, the Westinghouse air brake, the Janney car coupler, the cable car, the trolley systems, the electric light, the search light, electric motors, the Bell ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... this man belongs to the National Trotting-Cow Association," said Jack, as he crawled under the barbed-wire fence into the yard. "That red beast over there in the corner ought to be able to trot a mile ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... the foreman's gibes grew less frequent. Kermode was more than a match for him, and his barbed replies were repeated with laughter about the camp; but his oppressor now relied on galling commands which could not be disobeyed. Kermode's companions sympathized with him, and waited for the inevitable rupture, which they thought would take a dramatic shape. At length two big steel dump ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... extremely nervous and more ill at ease than I can ever remember. My mind is a seething blank, and I think my left sock-suspender is coming down. However ... Of course, it is beginning to be forcibly what they call 'borne in upon' me that we ought to have brought some barbed wire and a turnstile. As it is, we shall miss about two-thirds of them. Here's your chance," he added, nodding at a stout lady with a green suit-case and a defiant glare. "I'll take ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... was interested by a strange proceeding on the part of the boat's crew. Upright pipes, serving as stanchions, were being screwed into the top of the Arangi's rail so that they served to support three strands of barbed wire that ran completely around the vessel, being broken only at the gangway for a narrow space of fifteen inches. That this was a precaution against danger, Jerry sensed without a passing thought to ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... forest tree the fire. Thee to my father's lone retreat will quickly lead yon onward path, Oh, haste his pardon to entreat, or ere he curse thee in his wrath. Yet first that gently I may die, draw forth the barbed steel from hence, Allay thy fears, no Brahmin I, not thine of Brahmin blood the offence. My sire, a Brahmin hermit he, my mother was of Sudra race.' So spake the wounded boy, on me while turned his unreproaching face. As from his palpitating breast I gently ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... drifts. On the banks of the stream, on the slopes of the mountain, in wildest jungles, in the niches and crevices of bare cliffs, the holly-berries glowed red in the midst of the ever-green snow-laden leaves and ice-barbed twigs. When his house at last came into view, the roof was deeply covered; the dizzying whirl had followed every line of the rail-fence; scurrying away along the furthest zigzags there was a vanishing glimpse of a squirrel; ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... week, the election was over, and the Government defeated. The newspapers, in red headlines, gave the women the credit, and declared it to be the most sensational campaign the country had ever seen. "The barbed arrows of ridicule had pierced the strong man's armor," one editorial said, "and accomplished something that the heaviest blows of the Opposition had been powerless to achieve." Dr. Clay had defeated George Steadman by a large majority, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... was almost impossible to miss the mobs of the Abati who, having no experience of war, were fighting without order. Nor could the light mail they wore withstand the rush of the heavy barbed arrows which pierced them through and through. In two minutes they began to give, in three they were flying back to their main body, those who were left of them, a huddled rout of men and horses. So the French must have fled before the terrible longbows ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... to know fear, though the night riders were getting busy now in the counties adjacent to the Blue-grass, and were threatening raids into the colonel's own county—the proudest in the State. Other "independents" hardly less lonely, hardly less hated, had electrified their barbed-wire fences, and had hired guards—fighting men from the mountains—to watch their barns and houses, but such an example the colonel would not follow, though John Burnham pleaded with him, and even Jason dared at last ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... addition to having more elaborately barbed points, are further embellished by incised decorations the entire length of the shaft. These incisions consist simply of a series of lines into which dirt has been rubbed so that they offer a striking contrast to the white surface ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... knowledge grows the child begins to distinguish between what may and what may not happen, though there will always be individual differences, and the more poetic souls are apt to suffer when the outrush of their imagination is checked by a barbed wire of fact. The question "Is it true?" and the desire for true stories arise in the average child of seven to eight years, and at that age history stories are enjoyed. Real history is of course impossible to young children, whose idea of time is still ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... in the seventies, Full many summers past, There was grass and water plenty, But it was too good to last. I little dreamed what would happen Some twenty summers hence, When the nester came with his wife, his kids, His dogs, and his barbed-wire fence." ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... species of wheat vary, as Godron (9/30. Ibid tome 2 page 75.) has remarked, in an exactly parallel manner,—in the seed being downy or glabrous, and in colour,—and in the florets being barbed or not barbed, etc. Those who believe that all the kinds are descended from a single wild species may account for this parallel variation by the inheritance of a similar constitution, and a consequent ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... militarism. There has been a revolution in Russia. A British statesman in the House of Commons, in 1917, said it was bliss to be alive, and to be young was very heaven. Some millions of young men died before Armistice Day, 1918. Since then there has been great work clearing away barbed-wire entanglements along the old front. But it seems to be a nightmare task: entanglements multiply upon us faster than we can clear the old ones away. You cannot get across Europe because of the obstructions: ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... arrange with him some delicate little extinctive operation to be performed on that malignant or that radical in the course of the evening, and would relate to us exultingly the next day all the incidents of the power of arms, and vindictively (for him) dwell on the barbed points and double edge of the beautiful episcopalian repartee with ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... this sea-girt headland the land-fight had been fought. No wonder the region was covered with the scars and waste of war. Our journey took us past old trenches and gun-positions; disused telephone lines and rusting, barbed wire; dead mules, scattered ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... all the woman in her was uppermost, and one which made Monsieur d'Agreste's pale cheeks flush like a boy's. He was a philosopher and a scientist; but all his science and philosophy had not saved him from the barbed shafts of a certain mischievous little god. He, also, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Baylis. Now Miss Baylis at her very best was not a restful individual with whom to come in touch, and after a long morning of hard work and the growing hunger of healthy appetites for food for the body rather than for the mind, the girls did not find "a barbed tongue" and ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... as they reach the summit!— Strength and stir new-primed in their plump battalions: Puffs of barbed flame blown on the lines opposing Higher ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoes were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone-barbed arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps bespoke the fact that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run was on. In the background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames, rose the ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... hard wood, and were undoubtedly capable of doing considerable injury when dexterously and accurately thrown. The blacks kept up a terrific hubbub on shore, yelling like madmen, and hurling at me showers of barbed spears. The fact that they had boomerangs convinced me that I must be nearing the Australian mainland. All this time the current was carrying the Veielland rapidly along, and I had soon left the natives jabbering furiously far ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... alternately on either side; in this primitive manner he contrived to make way with a rapidity that astonished us all. He had two spears on the raft, besides the one he used for paddling; one of them was about 12 feet long, also pointed at each end, though not barbed; and a small stick, similar to that used by other natives for throwing at birds, and small animals. As well as we could understand by his signs, it appeared that he had been anxiously waiting our arrival, and had pushed off from the main to intercept the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... make an attack and take the Regina trench that afternoon at all costs. We got everything prepared for it that morning and that afternoon at three o'clock we went over again, but it was a futile attempt for they had all sorts of machine guns and barbed wire there waiting for us. But we kept on as far as the Regina, but could not capture it as our numbers were too depleted by this time. It was here I got the M.M. This makes a coincidence in our family, two brothers having the ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... meeting, dear Mamma? It is funny! All these old gentlemen sit up on a platform and talk such a lot. The Duke put in "buts" and "ifs" and "thats" over and over again when he could not think of a word, and you weren't a bit the wiser when he had finished, except that it was awfully wrong to put up barbed wire; but I can't see what that has to do with politics, can you? One of the pepper-and-salts did speak nicely, and so did one of the new people—quite a youngish person; but they all had such a lot of words, when it would have done just as well if they ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... for the low, rolling hills were everywhere checkered with squares and oblongs of plowed ground, freshly turned, and guarded by tall fences of barbed-wire. They could be jumped, but jumping was no easy matter for a tiring horse, and Barry saw, with a sigh of relief, a sharp gulch to the left which cut straight through that region of broken farms ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... should never be compelled to learn any but the fewest facts necessary to make him as harmless as he was happy; chiefly not to bark at old ladies and babies, no matter how threatening their aspect, as they passed our house. A few things he had already learned—to avoid fences of the barbed wire, to respect the big cat from across the way who sometimes called and treated him with watchful disdain, and not to chew a baby robin if by any chance he caught one. This last had been a hard lesson, his first contact with ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... before that interview was at an end, he hated Madame la Marechale. His passion (as I am led to understand by one who was present) stood confessed in a burning eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utterance; Madame meanwhile tasting the joys of the matador, goading him with barbed words and staring ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remarked, "that I have already received five barbed-wire-cutters, three vacuum flasks, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... over the barbed-wire fence which marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch and their own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as only the far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thick and low-so low that it seemed they might almost be plucked by an upstretched hand-and a silent ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty To strut before ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... broad slip of cane fixed to one end of the bow; and fitted with a noose to go over the other end when strung. The arrow is a cane of about four feet long, into which a pointed piece of the hard, heavy, casuarina wood is firmly and neatly fitted; and some of them were barbed. Their clubs are made of casuarina, and are powerful weapons. The hand part is indented, and has a small knob, by which the firmness of the grasp is much assisted; and the heavy end is usually carved with some device. One had ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... with all our might, and as we drew near, the captain ordered Tom Lokins to "stand up", so he at once laid in his oar, and took up the harpoon. The harpoon is an iron lance with a barbed point. A whale-line is attached to it, and this line is coiled away in a tub. When we were within a few yards of the fish, which was going slowly through the water, all ignorant of the terrible foes who were pursuing him, Tom Lokins raised the harpoon high above ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... crouching in the secure fork of a tree. Lop-Ear went right on. I called to him—most plaintively, I remember; and he stopped and looked back. Then he returned to me, climbing into the fork and examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, but one way the flesh resisted the barbed lead, and the other way it resisted the feathered shaft. Also, it hurt grievously, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... the thorns so that he can pull them to pieces easier. You see his feet and claws are not big and stout enough to hold his victims while he tears them to pieces with his hooked bill. Sometimes, instead of sticking them on thorns, he sticks them on the barbed wire of a fence and sometimes he wedges them into the fork ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... behind we must be in all matters of ingenuity, device, and mechanical contrivance. I am reminded again of the days during the Boer war, when one realised that it had never occurred to our happy-go-lucky Army that it was possible to make a military use of barbed wire or construct a trench to defy shrapnel. Suppose in the North Sea we got a surprise like that, and fished out a parboiled, half-drowned admiral explaining what a confoundedly slim, unexpected, almost ungentlemanly thing the enemy had done ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... are, however, nothing but what ordinary retail houses would show—we pause for a while at the excellent collection of native tools and implements, and the weapons employed in war and the chase by the aboriginal inhabitants—wooden spears of the grass tree, and, among many others barbed for fishing and variously notched for war, one which does not belong to Australia, but has evidently been brought from the Philippines, and should not have been included. The same might be said of several Fijian clubs and a Marquesas spear barbed with sharks' teeth, which are well enough in their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... that a scene of the wildest excitement ensued among the men! The two boats—one of which was, as we have said, a large one—were got ready, barbed spears and lances and ropes were thrown into them, as many men as they could hold with safety jumped in, and pulled away, might and main, after ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the west of the Lupkow Pass. The forests which cover these mountains offer special facilities for the construction of strong fortifications." March 25: "The woods in the Lupkow region are a perfect entanglement of barbed wire ... surrounded by several layers of trenches, strengthened by deep ditches and palisades. On this day our troops carried by assault a very important Austrian position on the great crest of the Beskid Mountains." The Russian captures for the day amounted to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... were howling mobs, every constable was on duty. The hall was stormed and when Lloyd George appeared on the platform he faced turmoil. Hundreds of men carried sticks, clubs and bricks covered with rags and fastened to barbed wire. When he rose to speak Bedlam let loose. Jeers, catcalls and frightful epithets rained on him and with them rocks and vegetables. He removed his overcoat and stood calm and smiling. When he raised his voice, however, the grand assault was made. Only a double cordon ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... leave them. Wallace gave his highness a packet for the king, containing a brief statement of his vow to Lord Mar, and a promise, that when he had fulfilled it, Philip should see him at Paris. The royal cavalcade then separated from the deliverer of its prince; and Wallace, mounting a richly-barbed Arabian, which had accompanied his splendid armor, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... us all over the munition works. They're so strict they won't let anybody go through now; but Uncle's the head, so of course he could take Dona and me. And we saw a Belgian town for the Belgian workers there. It's built quite separately, and has barbed-wire entanglements round. There are a thousand houses, and six hundred hostels, and ever so many huts as well, and shops, and a post office, and a hall of justice. You can't go in through the gate without a pass, but Uncle knew the manager, so it ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... people, so that the people who visited us to-day went away at two turns. Their lances were like those that we had seen in Botany Bay, except that they had but a single point, which in some of them was the sting of the ray, and barbed with two or three sharp bones of the same fish: It was indeed a most terrible weapon, and the instrument which they used in throwing it, seemed to be formed with more art than any we had seen before. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the air between them and stuck in the earth beyond. They went to it. It was a large arrow having a barbed point and flighted with ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... kind," I explained. "Cabinet Ministers, Secretaries of State, the whole machinery of government shall writhe under the barbed shafts of my mockery. Ridicule is the power of the age. Ridicule in my hands shall be as bayonets to NAPOLEON, as poison to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... that French division came back ten thousand strong they brought more than ten thousand German prisoners with them to spend the night inside of barbed wire fences. ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... home begging for more engineers, a lot of hand grenades, trench mortars, periscopes and tools. The barbed wire bothers me! Am specially keen about trench mortars; if it comes to close fighting on the Peninsula with its restricted area trench mortars may make up for our lack of artillery and especially of howitzers. Luckily, they ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... and gave the information. The General telephoned to his cousin, who said that the allegation was absurd and that Pivko was one of his best officers. The orderly was therefore thrown into prison, and Pivko, having turned off the electricity from the barbed wires and arranged matters with a Bosnian regiment, made his way to the Italians. The suggestion is that, owing to the lie of the land and the weak Austrian forces, it was possible for the Italians to reach Trent; anyhow the Austrians ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... and we will make a feast for you. We will hunt the nimble deer with you, and show you where the mighty eagle roosts, and where the fish with shining scales abides. If you come painted, your war-pipe filled, your bow bent, your arrow sharp and barbed, your heart strong, and your cry loud, we too will paint ourselves; we will smoke our pipe of war, we will bend our bow, make sharp our arrows, and stout our hearts, and will cry our war-cry, till the startled heron ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of Nathan's sharp sentence was speedily disclosed when the broken-down king exclaimed, 'I have sinned against the Lord,' and when, with laconic force as great as that which barbed the condemnation, the prophet stanched the wound with the brief words, 'And the Lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.' The intention of the accusation is the extension of the mercy and forgiveness. God, as the Apostle puts it, 'hath concluded ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of Scripture with such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... a dismal twilight of their own, in which nothing was visible but their terrific speeding. Through these slinging, soft, and singing masses of spume drove the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed they were barbed weapons of bright metal, darted by armies of invisible spirits raving out their war cries ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... But it's barbed wire fence, and section line, And kill-horse travel now; Scoot you down the canyon bank, — The old road's ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... imminent crisis, his nerves were steady, never had they been more steady, and his eyes pierced the darkness. Never before and never again did he bend so well the bow of Ulysses. The arrow, feathered and barbed, hummed through the air, going as straight and swift as a bullet to its mark, and then it pierced the throat of the wolf so deep that the barb stood out on one side and the feathers ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Scottish archers were first formed into a company and obtained a charter, granting them great privileges, under the reign of queen Anne, for which they were to pay to the crown, annually, a pair of barbed arrows. One of these allowances was, that they might meet and go forth under their officer's conduct, in military form, in manner of weapon-showing, as often as they should think convenient. "But they have made no public parade since 1743,"[3] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... six months. "I don't want to be food dictator for the American people," he said, plaintively, a few days after the President had announced what he wanted him to do. "The man who accepts such a job will lie on the barbed wire of ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... and the other day they ran into a snag. You know Calvin & Calvin are representing the owners since Tom's got this life job, though he's got all his money invested down there and still advises 'em. Well, anyway, they decided to put a barbed-wire trocha around all the mines and the factories. Well, four carloads of wire and posts shows up down in the Valley this week, and, 'y gory, man,—they can't get a carpenter in town or down there to touch it. Grant's ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... her. One wild leap in the air, and the sound of tearing clothes as her already tattered skirt came in contact with the barbed wire—and Tess was crouching down in the safe-keeping of the brindle bull. The dog whirled frantically around, licking her face. Fear weakened her tongue—she could not speak—only little spasmodic sobs burst from the parted lips. She caught the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... The death of love had been so gradual that she had not noticed it in time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in its wake....She had had enough left, more than many women who had made the same blind plunge into the barbed wire maze of matrimony....And now she had nothing. She would have liked to drive right out on to a liner about to sail through the Golden Gate...but she would no doubt have to live on...and on...in changed, possibly humble, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... in England, said something to this effect: "You think we have no classes in America because we have no titles to distinguish them. But a barbed wire fence is as effectual in keeping out intruders as one of boards, though you can see the boards and the barbed ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... been sent out as a working party to a near by farm. They were locked in the room as usual at nine o'clock that night after the day's work and then waited until they had heard the sentry pass by a couple of times on his rounds. The window was covered with barbed wire which they had no difficulty in removing. By morning they were well on the way to Switzerland. They figured that they, too, could do it in six weeks' of walking by night, laying their course by the stars. They had no money ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... indignantly, "that's the only unkind thing I've heard you say in years. Oh, yes,"—for her husband had spread his hands in mild protest—"I know you didn't mean it, but barbed shafts of humor often fall in places where they hurt, and it is terrible to think of your nephew being mixed up in a murder, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... no dog at all, and he must be careful of his health or I wouldn't have no Pa at all. He looked at me and asked me, as he felt for the place where the back of his linen duster was, what had become of his coat-tail and hat if there was no dog, and I told him he had probably caught his coat on that barbed wire fence down street, and he said he saw the dog and a boy just as plain as could be, and for me to help him up stairs and go for the doctor. I got him to the bed, and he said, "this is a hellish climate my boy," and I went for the doctor. Pa said he wanted to be cauterised, so he ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... cactus from my feet. Whether my horse lost me or I lost my horse, I am unable to say. I left him grazing in a gulch, and was not again able to locate the gulch. I wandered all night—or until Fate guided me into a barbed wire fence, where, as you will observe, I tore my trousers. I followed the fence, and here I am—I and my companion"—McArthur patted the skull lovingly—"this giant—the slayer of mastodons—whose history lies concealed in 'the dark backward ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Englander's bogy). The other side of the road he had "improved;" it gloried in what looked at a little distance like a single-file procession of glaring new posts, which on approaching were found to be the supports of one of man's neighborly devices—barbed wire. Rejoicing in this work of his hands on the left, he longed to turn his murderous weapons against the right side. He was labored with; he bided his time; but I knew in my heart that whoever went there next summer would find that ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... direction, hopping and halting and wiggling his nose at every bush, till he heard our approach and rose on his hind legs to listen. He gave a great jump as Unk Wunk hove into sight, covered all over with the dead leaves that his barbed quills had picked up on his way downhill, and lay quiet where he thought ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... moonlight. They stood in a thick plantation of runner beans, trained on rough trellis-work, in a garden beyond the barbed-wire fence of the camp. The tunnel had turned sharply upwards at the end; they had brought with them some boards and other materials for filling it up, and now they set to work furiously, after giving the signal ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the hedge, where the dead oak leaves still cumber the trailing ivy, he can scarcely avoid seeing that pointed tongues of green are pushing up. Some have widened into black-spotted leaves; some are notched like the many-barbed bone harpoons of savage races. The hardy docks are showing, and the young nettles have risen up. Slowly the dark and grey hues of winter are yielding to the lively tints of spring. The blackthorn has white buds on its lesser branches, and the warm rays of the sun have drawn forth ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... may be determined is to be fenced with the best quality of galvanized iron barbed wire, strung upon posts placed 20 feet apart. The posts are to be of mesquite, not less than 3 inches in diameter and of a reasonable degree of straightness (not varying more than 5 inches from a straight line). The ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... they fondly supposed, perceptibly nearer home. Assisted by many an undesirable expletive, they staggered and darkly groped their way over some of the very roughest ground we had thus far been required to traverse; they got repeatedly entangled in a profusion of barbed wire; scrambled into deep railway ditches, then scrambled out again; till at last they reached their appointed resting-place, and in dead darkness proceeded as best they could to cook ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... to look over his nearest jay neighbor, I should imagine, and see what sort of a curio he is. He thinks it may be necessary to put up barbed ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... yellow branches reared itself above the rich tones of the first fallen leaves and announced that "Trespassers in these Woods will be Prosecuted." The dark shadow of a gap in the hedge threw a stretch of barbed wire into relief. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... with a skin covering, tied with a bit of string. Returning to them, and removing the wrapper, he exposes to view a half-dozen little rolls, in shape somewhat like regalia cigars, sharp-pointed at one end, and barbed ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... deal the same sort of development that's struck the cattle country," the Westerner said, meditatively. "When I was a youngster, a cattle-puncher was really the wild and woolly broncho-buster that you read about in books. In the days of the old Jones and Plummer trail, when there wasn't a foot of barbed wire west of the Mississippi, a cowboy's life was adventurous enough. A round-up gang might meet a bunch of hostile Indians 'most any time, and a man had to ride hard and shoot straight. But now the ranges are all divided up ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... dreamed that he was in the convict camp, and, by an easy transition, that he was in hell, consumed with hunger, burning with thirst. Suddenly the grinning devil who stood over him with a barbed whip faded away, and a little white angel came and handed him a drink of water. As he raised it to his lips the glass slipped, and he struggled back ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... the next moment, almost as silently as a passing cloud shadow, the great Wolfhound streaked across the thirty yards of moonlit paddock which divided the camp from the ring-barked bush, and melted away among that crowded assembly of tree ghosts. The barbed wire fence of the paddock was no more than four feet high, and this Finn took in his ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... came to the surface to breathe. Tom Turner and one of the men were in the bow. Within his reach was one of those javelin-bombs, of Californian make, which are shot from an arquebus and which are shaped as a metallic cylinder terminated by a cylindrical shell armed with a shaft having a barbed point. Robur was a little farther aft, and with his right hand signaled to the engineers, while with his left, he directed the steersman. He thus controlled the aeronef in every way, horizontally and vertically, and it is almost impossible ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... with a sign of a resolute decision on his face, as if it had been a development of his sleep. He would see Marjory as soon as possible, see her despite any barbed-wire entanglements which might be placed in the way by her mother, whom he regarded as his strenuous enemy. And he would ask Marjory's hand in the presence of all Athens ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... being placed so near to the front; the Triarii, from having been arrayed behind the first two lines as a body of reserve, armed with the pilum, thicker and stronger than the Grecian lance,—four and a half feet long, of wood, with a barbed head of iron,—so that the whole length of the weapon was six feet nine inches. It was used either to throw or thrust with, and when it pierced the enemy's shield, [Footnote: Liv. viii. 8.] the iron head was bent, and the spear, owing to the twist ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... still as the rope had to be abandoned, and the pole called into requisition, so that it was nearly dark when we reached Ganderbul. Passed a number of men wading in the water up to their necks, and spearing the ground with poles armed with a single barbed spike. Although this seems an insane way of attempting to catch fish, their boat was well laden with a small species of trout, and I saw several drawn from the water impaled and wriggling upon the ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... country. Tons upon tons of war material, abandoned by the retiring German troops, littered roads and fields. Clothing, helmets, small arms of all description, whole batteries of Howitzers still in position, dense black fumes from burning ammunition dumps, acres of barbed wire fields and hillsides shell-torn, bodies still unburied—all this was the spectacle of war havoc greeting the eye on ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... the fire indicated by his departed friend. As he reeled, he bethought him of the welcome his comrades would give him. He had a conviction that he would soon feel in his sore heart the barbed missiles of ridicule. He had no strength to invent a tale; he would be a ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... shore. A troop of the inhabitants came down to the beach and danced; while others, who had been fishing, approached in their canoes, came on board the vessel, and showed Champlain their fish-hooks, consisting of a barbed bone lashed at an acute angle to a ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... book and eyed his crouching venomous assailant full in the face, majestically, as one can fancy a lion rearing his ponderous head, and looking lazily and steadily at a snake that has just hissed in a corner. Each word of Skinner's was a barbed icicle to him, yet not a muscle of his close ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... than Methuselah because she knew a lot of things that Methuselah never heard of. Then he mentioned a number of more or less modern inventions, and wound up by saying, "What did Methuselah know about a barbed-wire fence?" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... there, dead game to the last, When he feels the barbed hook and finds that he's fast, And plunges and struggles, disdaining to yield, Till exhausted at last to the bank he is reeled, And carefully lifted from out the old stream, While he flounders and gasps and his scaly sides ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy |
