"Gimlet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus agreeably arranged, Sam got a gimlet, and prepared the chest for the reception of its tenant, who, convinced that he was being put out of the way to make room for a rival, made a ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... had to come from something. Now, while I was scared, I don't believe in such things as ghosts. Well, then, the noise must have come from some human throat. When I got up at five this morning I began to think harder than ever. Then I went and got this gimlet out of the little tool box and bored a tiny hole through the wood in this shutter. When I peeped I saw a light, surely enough, in the shack. There were sparks, too, coming up out of the chimney. Then I saw a shadow, and next I saw Mr. Fits ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... the brute came out from a farmhouse. My wind had gone, and I happened to be last and he made at me. Some fool has written in a book that if you keep your eyes fixed upon a dog he will never bite you. I fixed my eye on him like a gimlet but it did not act, and he came right at me and sprang at me and knocked me down and got my hand in his mouth, and I don't know what would have happened if Skinner hadn't pulled a stick out of the hedge, and rushed back and hit ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... there was great a man on earth z Mizza Meadows. But the worlz wide. Mizza Levi z greada man—a mudge greada man (hic). He was down upon us like a amma (hic). His Jew's eye went through our lill sgeme like a gimlet. 'Fools!' says he—that's me and Meadows, 'these dodges were used up in our family before Lunnun was built. Fools!' Mizza Levi despises me and Meadows; and I respect him accordingly. I'm ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Silverado, small but very active, a destructive fellow. This was a black, ugly fly—a bore, the Hansons called him—who lived by hundreds in the boarding of our house. He entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest—we had no easy-chairs in Silverado—I would hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of his ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scant-witted knave invited me to taste some of his master's wine, and accordingly to the cellar we went. 'This wine will surprise you,' quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead. And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another, and another, till we tried half a score of them, and all with the same result. Upon this I seized a hammer which was lying by and sounded the casks, but none of them ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (She takes his hand) Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... carried me in a box the next market-day, to the neighboring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion[48] behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... with jumbled calculations. Miller had a chance to study him. He was tall, heavily built, with wide, sturdy shoulders despite his sixty years. Oddly, he wore a gray-green smock. His eyes, narrowed and intent, looked gimlet-sharp beneath those toothbrush brows of his, as he stared ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... M. de Bausset, an eye-witness of the ceremony, tells us in his Memoirs: "I was naturally anxious to see the Empress as soon as she should reach the middle room to take a place on the throne, and give her courtiers time to arrange themselves about her, before we were introduced. I had brought a gimlet, and with this I had bored a good many holes in the door of our room. This little indiscretion, which was not mentioned in our report, gave us an opportunity to inspect the appearance of our young sovereign at our ease. I need not say that it was the ladies of our party who were ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the answer increased Darrow's interest in Miss Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the heart ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... but without his apparatus for sewing, to the no small disadvantage of me, who was to undergo the operation. Mrs. Dayton, however, furnished him with a large darning-needle, which, as soon as I felt going through my skin, I thought was more like a gimlet boring into me; but, with the help of a glass of wine, I grinned and bore it, until he took a few stitches in the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... rash business scuttling your own ship. Now as I am in a way a practical person, which is, I take it, a diminutive state of hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look as if I were squatted and set on ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... nodded and Oswald began. He told the story from the very beginning, as he has always been taught to, though he hated to lay bare the family honour's wound before a stranger, however judgelike and gimlet-eyed He told all—not concealing the pudding-throwing, nor what the young man said ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... held plumb against the surface, and the boring commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which progresses by little bites, by alternative erosion, first in one ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of turning the anchor round on its fluke, so that the motion of the stock appears similar to that of the handle of a gimlet when it is employed to bore a hole. To turn anything round on ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... determinedly, Ralph Wonderson swarmed up the Virginia-creeper until he reached the closely-shuttered window. Here he clung precariously with one hand while with the other he produced a gimlet and noiselessly bored two holes in the green shutters. Was he too late? The question shot through his brain. With a quick intake of breath he applied an eye to one hole and an ear to the other and watched ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... introduced as "a genuine Jew from Jerusalem" came out from a gloomy recess filled with tusks and sacks of dried red pepper, and watched everything from now on with an eye like a gimlet, writing down in a book against each sergeant's name whatever he took to drink. They appeared to have no check on him. Nobody signed anything. Nobody as much as glanced ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... look here, old girl: there's no occasion for you to tear your clothes with me this way. Besides, I sometimes get on the prod myself, and when I do, I don't bar no man, Jew nor Gentile, horse, mare or gelding. You may think different, but I'm not afraid of any man in your outfit, from the gimlet to the big auger. I've tried to treat you white, but I see I've failed. Now I want to give it out to you straight and cold, that I'll pass you to-morrow, or mix two herds trying. Think it over to-night and nominate your ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... with gimlet-like black eyes and a heavy moustache, at which he had been tugging nervously during Peter Dale's remarks, plunged into the discussion. His name was Abraham Weavel and he came ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... satisfaction, some of the more recent incidents of his vocation. He smiled as he remembered how, not very far from where he sat, he had on a cloudy evening got into a horse-box, and boring a hole in it with a gimlet, applied his eye thereto,—his satellite David Blunt doing the same in another end of the same horse-box, and how, having thus obtained a clear view of a truck in which several casks of wine were placed, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... you handed our gimlet-eyed friend," said Pringle admiringly. "Neatest bit of work I ever saw. Sir, to you! My compliments!" He placed a chair near the front door and sat down. "I feel like a lion in a ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... words he gazed at the Prophet with eyes that seemed suddenly to have taken on the peculiar properties of the gimlet. The Prophet began to feel extremely uneasy. But he said nothing. He felt that there was more to come. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... bought in most winter sports shops. Holes, at different intervals fitting the clamps which should be put on lengthwise, may be bored beforehand in the Ski tip, in order to save time when the tip may be needed on tour. The gimlet supplied with the clamps is usually a poor one, and I always carry a spare gimlet, a little larger than is necessary, as it is difficult to make the holes in exactly the right place in a broken Ski. Cold and clumsy hands have always to be reckoned ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... a nail in the garden wall, the handle of a hammer projected from one pocket, and a pruning-knife from the other. And if there was not a pipe in Bulldog's mouth, stuck in the side of his cheek, "as sure as death!" There was a knife in his hand, with six blades and a corkscrew and a gimlet and the thing for taking the stones out of a horse's hoof—oath again repeated—and Bulldog was trying the edge of the biggest blade upon his finger. Speug, now ascending from height to height, was not surprised to see no necktie, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... looked at Vida and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it was from sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at her with his gimlet eyes and says: ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... him to bring it without delay, and then they took their leave of him, after agreeing that on the following night they would make a hole in the turning-box with a gimlet, and that they would try and persuade their mistress to come down. By this time it was nearly daylight, yet the negro wished to take a lesson. Loaysa complied with his desire, and assured him that ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... avoided the other's gimlet eye. "The only quarrel that I am aware of between them," he said, "was concerned with this very enactment of your lordship's. Samoval proclaimed it infamous, and Tremayne resented the term. Hot words passed between them, but the altercation ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... intellectual it must be in words, and hence as well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories he has heard about ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a jack-knife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after all, only a single and a very undefined item in his general ideal world, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... subjected to a scrubbing. Lin had unmercifully bored into his ears with a towel shaped like a gimlet at one corner, assuring his mother he was "dirtier 'an the dirtiest coal digger in town." He was arrayed in a clean gingham suit, topped with an emaculate white shirt, flowing collar and straw hat. Lin spent a long time in curling ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the improvement in tool design that had occurred since Moxon's Exercises. From Nicholson's list of the tools required by the carpenter—"a ripping saw, a hand saw, an axe, an adze, a socket chisel, a firmer chisel, a ripping chisel, an auguer, a gimlet, a hammer, a mallet, a pair of pincers, and sometimes planes"—there would seem at first glance slight advance since the 1600's. The enumeration of the joiner's tools, however, indicates a considerable proliferation, particularly when compared to earlier writers. By the early 19th century, ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... On other days Jeremy, when he heard this screech, shivered with a cosy, creeping thrill; but now he put his head under the bedclothes, shut his eyes very tight, and tried not to see the Captain with his ugly nose and tiny gimlet eyes. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... high collar of the cape that concealed half of his face, he went straight to the horses which stood ready harnessed, slipped his pistols into the holsters, and, profitting by the moment when the other horses were being led into the stable by their postilion, he took a gimlet, which might in case of need serve as a dagger, from his pocket, and screwed the four rings into the woodwork of the coach, one into each door, and the other two into the body of the coach. After which he put the horses to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... like a gimlet on a universal joint; he turned it this and that way without any corresponding movement of his head. It penetrated. You felt he could have seen you with it in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?" the slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses. "Love?" he repeated harshly. "Which is it, boy? They're ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... one's cheeks once whitened, one can't—you are tickling me with your brush—one can't remain like a miller, so a touch of rouge is inevitable. And then—see how wicked it is—if, after all that, one does not enlarge the eyes a bit, they look as if they had been bored with a gimlet, don't they? It is like this that one goes on little by little, till one comes to ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... scrawls by villanous hands in thievish hierolgyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachite penknife, the golden toothpick, the jewelled pencil-case, once so neatly set within their satin lappets. Ugly implements, indeed,—a file, a gimlet, loaded dice. Pell-mell, with such more hideous and recent contents, dishonoured evidences of gaudier summer life,—locks of ladies' hair, love-notes treasured mechanically, not from amorous sentiment, but perhaps from some vague idea that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coming down again, like a gimlet!" shouted the Highlander; and, as they all looked up, sure enough there was the little door slowly coming down, around and around, as if it were descending an invisible staircase on the outside of ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... of fact, Scattergood had amassed considerable more money than even the gimlet eyes and whispering tongues of Coldriver had been able to credit him with. It is doubtful if anybody realized just how strong a foot-hold Scattergood was getting in that valley, but the men who came closest to it were Messrs. Crane and Keith, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... your mittens for next winter," she said softly, more softly than he had ever heard her speak. And the quieting melody of her mere tone!—how unlike that other voice which bored joyously into you as a bright gimlet twists its unfeeling head into wood. He turned on her one quick, beautiful ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... him strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes, snorted out a laugh, clapped his reins, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the daily bulletin of the Gap. He knew whose cow died the night before, who was at the strawberry dance, and all about Abe Anderson's night in jail up at the Siding. If his coming was welcome to the Kennedy's, who took the Bluff Siding Gimlet and the county paper, how much the more cordial ought his greeting to be at Haldeman's, where they only took the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... remarked Lord Raygan, as Miss Child obeyed. He might have meant the wearer or the dress. Peter Rolls flashed a gimlet glance his way to see which. He felt uncomfortably responsible for the manners of the visitors and the feelings of the visited. But the face of Rags was grave, and no offence could be taken. Peter Rolls withdrew the glance, though not before Winifred ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... appearance. 'I must get on with the milking.' And then I made my plunge. 'Perhaps you would speak to Sister-in-charge. Not this one here, but Sister-in-charge,' I hurriedly added as Sister Agatha drew nearer, her thin lips tightly compressed, her gimlet eyes full of promise of ear-tweakings. 'She would perhaps give me leave to—to do anything you wanted. I—I am sure ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which made ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... else. Within the courtyard was growing the trunk of an olive; round it I built my bed-chamber with thick stones and roofed it well, placing in it doors that shut tight. Then I cut away the olive branches, smoothed the trunk, made a bedpost, and bored all with a gimlet. From that foundation I smoothed my bed, tricking it out with gold and silver and ivory and stretching from its frame thongs of cow-hide dyed red. Such is the wonder I tell of, yet I know not, Lady, whether the bed is yet fixed there, or whether another ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... "Said he was thinking of buying some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper. You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together—if that ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind detectives and post-office inspectors—I talk ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... is a stack of cannonballs, wads, and a "passbox" or powder bucket. Hanging from the cascabel are two pouches: the tube-pouch containing friction "tubes" (primers for the vent) and the lanyard; and the gunner's pouch with the gunner's level, breech-sight, pick, gimlet, vent-punch, chalk, and fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet beyond the ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... the procession go by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a policeman. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... wife told Miss Dagget and she told the Editor of the Augur's wife, and she told Ben Lowry's widder, and she told the Editor of the Gimlet's mother-in-law, and she told me. It come straight, that Serenus only stayed there nights and to a early breakfast, but spent his hull durin' time to Coney Island, and he a twin too. She said Sylvester felt so hurt she wuz afraid it ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Borers had then left the trees, and their descendants had either not thought it worth while to lay any eggs on them, or the eggs had, from the lowered temperature caused by the shade, become addled. Many years ago I remember cutting down a fine coffee tree, when the round gimlet-made looking hole through which the insect makes its escape was plainly to be seen, when I found that a single Borer had drilled a hole down a part of the centre of the tree, then passed into the fly state and left the tree. It was a fine succulent and nourishing tree, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... a chair with a gimlet in his hand, and screwed it tightly into the wainscotting as high as he could reach; then he took a cord from the sacking of his bed, secured it to the gimlet, made a noose, put his head in, kicked the chair away—and swung ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... if somebody had run a gimlet into him, and even Psmith started slightly. They had not heard Mr Bickersdyke approaching. Mike, who had been stolidly entering addresses in his ledger during the latter part of the conversation, was also taken ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Thou art a Didymus, Bardolph;—an incredulous paynim, a most unspeculative rogue! Have I carracks trading in the Indies? Have I robbed the exchequer of late? Have I the Golden Fleece for a cloak? Nay, it is paltry gimlet, and that augurs badly. Why, does this knavish watchman take me for a raven to feed him in the wilderness? Tell him there are no such ravens hereabout; else had I ravenously limed the house-tops and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... that it would be delicate at that moment to protest. Therefore on leaving the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the stationer's he went to an ironmonger's and bought a saw, a brace, a gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After their visit to the confectioner's they rode ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat deed he guv you. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Fetching a gimlet, he bored a hole right in the centre of the carved blossom, but though it turned and creaked a ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... anxious to have a proportion of fine, able-bodied north-country sailors, as a steadying influence on the devil-may-care portion of the crew. The signing on of a packet ship was quite an historic occasion. All the "gimlet-eyed" rascals in town were on the alert to bleed the sailor as soon as he had got his advance. It was usual for the sailors to sign articles binding themselves to be aboard at 5.30 or 6 a.m. on a ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear, grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim, broad-shouldered ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... low; the worshipful lady nodded graciously, but rapidly, having business on hand, or rather on foot; for in a moment she poked the point of her little shoe into the sleeper, and worked it round in him like a gimlet, till with a long snarl he woke. The incarnate shutter rising and grumbling vaguely, the lady swept in and deigned him no further notice. He retreated to his neighbour's shop, the tailor's, and sitting on the step, protected it from the impertinence of morning calls. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the puerilities of sweets or of effervescing wines. She rounds her elbows and turns her wrist outward, as men round their elbows and turn their wrists outward. She is fond of carpentry, she says, and boasts of her powers with the plane and saw; for charms to her watch-chain she wears a corkscrew, a gimlet, a big knife, and a small foot-rule; and in entire contrast with the intensely womanly woman, who uses the tips of her fingers only, the mannish woman when she does anything uses the whole hand, and if she had to thread a needle would thread it as much by her palm ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... say there was! My stars above! Not the common kind of shipwreck, neither, the kind they have down to Setuckit P'int on the shoals. No sir-ee! This one was sunk on purpose. That Joe Wylie bored holes right down through her with a gimlet, the wicked thing! And that set 'em afloat right out on the sea in a boat, and there wan't anything to eat till Robert Penfold—oh, HE was the smart one; he'd find anything, that man!—he found the barnacles on the bottom of the boat, just the same as he ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Bombus'es widow, wouldn't give — and for all the world — I went right there from Miss Whymper'ses. Miss Bombus wouldn't give because I didn't put the names in the Jonesville Augur or Gimlet, for she said, "Let ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... with a gimlet bore a hole in any tree in the woods, and draw from it as he pleased; any kind of wine or other liquor. Once he was far in the forest with some white gentlemen; he wished to entertain them. He did this, to their astonishment. ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... practised as a religious rite, is met with among the Kabyles, who are established at the foot of Mount Aures on the south of the Atlas. The operation is performed among them by the THEBIBE, one of their priests, by the aid of a simple gimlet which he turns rapidly round between his fingers. Among the Kabyles are men who have submitted to an operation ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... Their brethren, the peasants, 50 And soldiers and waggoners, Workmen and beggars. The soldiers and beggars They pass without speaking. Not asking if happy Or grievous their lot: The soldier, we know, Shaves his beard with a gimlet, Has nothing but smoke In the winter to warm him,— 60 What joy can ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... blanket between them and the prisoners without. The counter of the ship was covered with hard oak plank, four inches thick; and through this we undertook to cut an opening sufficiently large for a man to descend; and to do this with no other tools than our jack knives and a single gimlet. All the occupants of the Gun-room assisted in this labor in rotation; some in confidence that the plan was practicable, and the rest for amusement, or for the sake of being employed. Some one of our number was constantly at work, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... song ceased, and the reminiscent smile gave place to an expression of surprise, as the singer became conscious of a deeper shadow falling directly in front of her. She glanced up quickly, and found herself looking into the face of a man whose gimlet-like ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... They were dressed in a shirt, jacket, and trousers, and had a respectable appearance. Judging from one trifling anecdote, I should think they must be honest. When walking in the fields, a young labourer came up to Mr. Davies, and gave him a knife and gimlet, saying that he had found them on the road, and did not know to whom they belonged! These young men and boys appeared very merry and good-humoured. In the evening I saw a party of them at cricket: when I thought of the austerity of which ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the hotel, and indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing, any unusual gaping in the joints, would have sufficed to ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... try to 'ceive my mama," was the reply of the other little girl; "she's got such gimlet eyes and ears she can tell with 'em shut if you're fibbing. I gave up hope long ago, so I just go 'long and tell her the plain gospel truth when she asks me, 'cause I know those gimlet eyes and ears of hers 're going to worm it out ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... exacting group of bons vivants, these. The host had realized it and had brought out his best. Most of it, to be sure, had come from Beaver Street, something "rather dry, with an excellent bouquet," the crafty salesman with gimlet eyes had said; but, then, most of the old Madeira does come from Beaver Street, except Portman's, who has a fellow with a nose and a palate hunting the auction rooms for that particular Sunset of 1834 which had lain ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the doorway and beckoned. A middle-aged man, with blond hair and gimlet like black eyes stepped in. He nodded curtly to the others ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of his feet, and putting his skates on, with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, with ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... disease "Hollow Horn" once upon a time was treated by boring a hole into the horn with a small gimlet and pouring Turpentine into the opening. This treatment is useless and harmful. It produces inflammation of the frontal sinuses of the head and chances are death of the animal will follow as a result of the treatment ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... of a cornfield scarecrow and Mr. Luther Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known as a "goatee" that sprouted from his lower rip. For the rest of the boys noticed that Mr. Barr was gifted with a singularly gimlet-like pair of steely blue eyes that seemed to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... that time a man of sixty-seven or thereabouts, but he carried his years well; he was very tall, and in build reminded you of the canons of the good old times. The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips gave expression ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the children espy, but a nice firm deal box, containing a little saw, a little plane, a hammer, a gimlet, a chisel, and sundry different sizes of nails. Was there ever anything so delightful, especially to David, who loved nothing so well as running after George Bowles the carpenter, and handling his tools. What ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Teppahoo to acquaint me the heifer was brought to Matavai. I immediately went on shore and found that he had been as good as his word. The purchase money was paid, which consisted of a shirt, a hatchet, a spike nail, a knife, a pair of scissors, a gimlet, and file; to which was added a small quantity of loaf-sugar. Teppahoo appeared well pleased with his bargain; and I sent the heifer to Poeeno's residence near which ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant—a hole as clean and round as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when, remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I made out ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that once stood in Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the trunks for sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in some cases, and it has been suggested that quicksilver has occasionally been inserted in gimlet holes. The mercury is supposed to work up the channels of the sap, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... which the gimlet eyes of the professor were busy. Then he seemed suddenly to leap to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... thanked him for his kindness, that I did not appear perfectly satisfied, he glanced at me scrutinisingly. His eye was like a gimlet, and seemed to penetrate my inmost thoughts; for, I declare, he guessed the feeling that ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... of a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that you see in Rembrandt's or Metsu's portraits of alchemists and shrunken old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a gimlet. His voice was so low; he always spoke suavely; he never flew into a passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether he had grown old before his time, or whether by economy of youth he had saved enough to last ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... was as if some fierce emotion made it impossible for him to remain another second. His heavy brows depressed, and his deep-set eyes narrowed to gimlet holes. Skert pursued him. Once clear of the window, and beyond earshot, Bat flung his reply with all the passionate force of his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Sally was merciless. She replied to his tyrannic voice with one as hard and stabbing as a gimlet. "Ah, I thought that was it. What ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... that it was both backache and headache. She was a steely-faced woman of middle age with gimlet eyes and dank black hair in a ragged fringe. As she spoke she eyed the company at the table with a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Sensible. My dear, there are some men whose heads have to be held while an opening is made with a gimlet before they will take a thing in. You husband is doubtless a good man, but doubtless also dense. How long before your baby was born did you ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... game of charity was yet at its height, a limping, gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person—it may be some discharged custom-house officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself miserable for life, either by hating or suspecting everything and everybody—this ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... he called himself the Admiral, and I am sure he deserved to be one. The Admiral's flag was flying, and I soon procured a gimlet ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the House did not expose these defects enough. Cannon did well on sugar, but nobody dissected the whiskey section which bored gimlet holes into the bottom of every barrel of high wine to let it out without paying a cent of tax. The Democrats are therefore the real free whiskeyites. This ought to be shown up thoroughly in the Senate. Our miserable platform ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... N. perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet^, drill, wimble^, awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar [Med.], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit^, gouge; spear &c (weapon) 727; puncher; punching machine, punching ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a piatok [23]. Persons of this kind—persons to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a file or a gimlet and so forth—are not uncommon. Such persons she merely roughhews. One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes. Lastly, scorning to plane down the roughness, she ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... briars which must all be cut down, and at the top of it the youth must build up a great castle, which must be as strong as could be conceived, and all the furniture and fittings belonging to a castle must be inside it. And when he arose next morning the King gave him a glass axe and a glass gimlet with him, and he was to have all done by six o'clock. As he was cutting down the first briar with the axe, it broke off short, and so small that the pieces flew all round about, and he could not use the gimlet either. Then he was quite miserable, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... something about him, though, that was kind of dignified. He was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... with him. He placed it in that absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse—the barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel—here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole in the candle—timed to blow ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... Jason came the sound of rubbing palms. "We've come a long way from Gimlet Street, haven't we, Jasey? You particularly. Captain. Promotions. Pay raises ..." Then Lonnie was in front of him, staring up. "You're quite a substantial citizen now. Yes? Well, look at that. Go on, look ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... the trunk of a tree, or any thing from which they cannot easily be gathered in a basket, place a leafy bough over them, (it may be fastened with a gimlet,) and if they do not mount it of their own accord, a little smoke will compel them to do so. If the place is inaccessible, and this is about the worst case that occurs, they will enter a basket well shaded by cotton cloth fastened around it, and elevated so as to rest with its open top sideways ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... everything that he undertook. One day he borrowed a dulcimer, and made one by it. With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the character of ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... had two eyes as bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry;—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, And working his face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round too, Till his nose seemed bent to catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheek and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of these tusks have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success. Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and fifteen inches ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... boy—one of those child veterans the big city develops. He had a long and extremely narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty. His expression was sophisticated and cynical. "Well, sir!" he said with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... disappears almost entirely. This is the tit-bit, not very substantial, but extremely tasty, it would seem. Here, in fact, in the insect's crop, the syrup is accumulated, the sugary sap which the Cicada's gimlet taps from the tender bark. Is it because of this dainty that the prey's abdomen is preferred to any other morsel? It ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... considered on account of years alone "unfit" to proceed to the front. For many years he had commanded a field battery in the Canadian militia, went on manoeuvres with his "cannons", and fired round shot. When the time came for using shells he bored the fuse with a gimlet; and if the gimlet were lost in the grass, the gun was out of action until the useful tool could be found. This "cannon ball" would travel over the country according to the obstacles it encountered and, "if it struck a man, it might ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... meat is another man's poison," said the captain, philosophically; "no use fretting, care killed a cat. I am as badly off as you; for, hang me, if there was not a Bow Street runner in the town. I caught his eye fixed on me like a gimlet: so I bolted—went to N——, left my pheaton and groom there for the present, and have doubled back, to bauffle pursuit, and cut across the country. You recollect that voice girl we saw in the coach; 'gad, I served her spouse that is to be a praetty trick! ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his movements; and for this reason people commonly called him "goodman Fario." But his skin—the color of gingerbread—and his softness of manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... with white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... from that, I should like to know? Godfrey was hardly better provided. However, it was with extreme satisfaction that he discovered in his pocket an excellent knife, whose leather case had kept it from the sea-water. This knife, with blade, gimlet, hook, and saw, was a valuable instrument under the circumstances. But besides this tool, Godfrey and his companion had only their two hands; and as the hands of the professor had never been used except in playing his fiddle, and making his gestures, Godfrey concluded that he would ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... virginal on The peritoneum, or caul wherein an organ. his bowels were wrapped, like His nails, like a gimlet. a billiard-table. His feet, like a guitar. His back, like an overgrown rack- His heels, like a club. bent crossbow. The soles of his feet, like a cru- The vertebrae, or joints of his cible. backbone, like a bagpipe. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Sparks, carefully preserved under the ashes, served both Greeks and Romans to light the fire. The ancients had, however, a lighting apparatus consisting of two pieces of wood, of which the one was driven into the other, like a gimlet, the friction effecting a flame. According to Theophrast, the wood of nut or chestnut trees was generally used for ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the false keys, and, finally, he made a snatch at the tray, and turned it ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... cyclopaedia, and there is the picture of which this is the original. Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you don't, you 're made a fool of by your lying intelligence, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... now erecting what are termed lancet lights, for the ventilating the cellars, larders, &c.; and, previous to the late survey, these lancet lights were never taken; but so stringent were the orders from the tax-board on the late survey, that if they found a gimlet-hole they would ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... the old black silk—the one with the gimlet curls and the accelerated lap-cat. Doesn't she average about as ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... pull his hand off my arm, he was holding so fast to it. Cracky, I didn't know what to tell him. Then I said, "I tell you what you do Alf." (I wasn't going to be calling him Skinny,) I said, "You go and ask Vic Norris if he's got an awl or a small gimlet—see? Then I'll fix it for you." Vic had charge of the locker where we kept the lights and oil and tools and all that ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... purple tent, with the fruits and the cocoa-nut. As you know, a cocoa-nut is not handy to get at the inside of, at the best of times, so Quentin set that aside, meaning to ask Blue Mantle later on for a gimlet and a hammer. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... is it?" said Tom, and his look went through her like a gimlet. Then, pointing his finger ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... whether there ever was any age of chivalry. . . . . It certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days. The point of honor is ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... king-sized tooth as hard as steel. Some of these teeth have been found buried in the bodies of baleen whales, which the narwhale attacks with invariable success. Others have been wrenched, not without difficulty, from the undersides of vessels that narwhales have pierced clean through, as a gimlet pierces a wine barrel. The museum at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris owns one of these tusks with a length of 2.25 meters and a width at ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... best," said Mr. Dodd, and passed on up the street. But he felt the judge's gimlet eyes boring holes in his back. The judge's position was very fine, no doubt for the judge. All of which tends to show that Levi Dodd had swept his mind, and that it was ready now for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... drummed them out of the township. When feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by means of gimlet-holes. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... large, thick man, red-faced, with white, short whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye, enormous, hairy ears, wore a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat, and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant trumpeting "Well, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... have been doing their best, and I have done my best; but it is my opinion and my duty to express it: the ship won't swim four and twenty hours longer," said Mr Gimlet. "All hands are ready to work on at the pumps and with the buckets until we drop, but the water is rushing in faster than we can pump it out, and should it come on to blow again, no human power can ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the stable and the young man were still busy doctoring the sore when Curly arrived with Warren. The buyer was a roundbodied man with black gimlet eyes that saw much he never told. The bargain he drove was a hard one, but it did not take long to come to terms at about one-third the value of the string he was purchasing. Very likely he had his suspicions, but he did not voice them. No doubt they cut a figure in the price. He let it ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... you were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head, you couldn't make her believe anybody would smile ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... By sleeping on civilized feathers one gets out of training, and the Japanese pillows feel very hard and very much in one place. The dreams which one has on these pillows are characteristic. In my first some imps were boring gimlet-holes in the side of my skull, until they had honeycombed it and removed so much brain that I felt too light-headed to preserve my equilibrium. On the present occasion, after falling asleep, I thought that the pillow on which I lay pressed its shape into my head, and the skull, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... carefully concealed their clothes. The petards were taken out from beneath a heap of stones, where Hugh had hid them, and were fixed on the piece of timber, one end of which was just afloat in the stream. By their side was placed some lengths of fuse, a brace of pistols, a long gimlet, some hooks, and cord. Then just as it was fairly dark the log was silently pushed into the water, and swimming beside it, with one hand upon it, the little party started upon their ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... portion. This making of brooms for domestic use is but an example of one of the many score of useful domestic and farm articles which were furnished by the natural resources of every wood-lot, adapted by the Yankee jack-knife and a few equally simple tools, of which the gimlet might ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle |
