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Pencil   /pˈɛnsəl/   Listen
Pencil

noun
1.
A thin cylindrical pointed writing implement; a rod of marking substance encased in wood.
2.
Graphite (or a similar substance) used in such a way as to be a medium of communication.  "This artist's favorite medium is pencil"
3.
A figure formed by a set of straight lines or light rays meeting at a point.
4.
A cosmetic in a long thin stick; designed to be applied to a particular part of the face.



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"Pencil" Quotes from Famous Books



... this century a great painter has again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil Vesalius again stands on earth, and we look once more into his cell. Its windows and doors, bolted and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... crossing Broadway, I became entangled, God knows how, in the wheels of a swiftly passing vehicle, and found myself, top hat and all, in the most ignominious position before I was well aware of what had really happened. Then a policeman stooped over me, book and pencil in hand, and another held the chauffeur of the victorious taxi-cab at bay some yards further up the street. But I was not hurt and I waved them all away with a magnanimous gesture.... It is owing to this habit of mine that I often ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... persisted in doing as he had threatened, he would soon find himself standing alone. She promised the gentleman that she would repeat to her husband what he had said, and as soon as he had gone seized her pencil and wrote the following impromptu, which serves well to illustrate her firm persistence in any course she believes right, as well as ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... thousand miles straight north of civilization, Sergeant William MacVeigh wrote with the stub end of a pencil between his fingers the last words of his semi-annual report to the Commissioner of the Royal Northwest ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... substitute for thought in many of the lower order of French historians. It is less to history, however, than to romance, that the French public is indebted for its conceptions of the character of Gonsalvo de Cordova, as depicted by the gaudy pencil of Florian, in that highly poetic coloring, which is more attractive to the majority of readers than the cold ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... while learning to form the letters, may have been allowed to acquire the finger movement, and to break this habit both teacher and pupil find much difficulty. By limiting the child to the use of a black-board or a large pencil and tablet, and having him make only relatively large letters while he is learning to form them, the teacher could have the pupil avoid this early formation of the habit of ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... schools. Not only have methods been greatly improved but new uses have been found for the material. To-day the sedge is woven into floor and wall mats, hats, table mats, slippers, book-bags, hand-bags, necktie cases, pencil holders, pencil cases, and pillow and cushion covers. Recently the weaving of matting on looms has been undertaken in the schools and a fine product, similar to the matting of Japan, has been produced on the ordinary ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... his pencil lovingly; proclaiming with just pride the virtues of his countrymen, and revealing with a kindly smile their weaknesses. In this truest, perhaps, of all the portraits that have ever been drawn of the Poles, we see the gallantry ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... since visited Palenque, and reported on the ruins by pen and pencil; but it is not certain that all the ruined edifices belonging to them have been seen, nor that the explorations have made it possible to determine the ancient extent of the city with any approach to accuracy. The very great difficulties which obstruct all attempts ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... graceful creature," said he, with a smile. Then he opened his book, took his pencil in his hand, and slipped in a careful forefinger to mark ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me, my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters' mind. When it was finished, I copied ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "exhibit a nicer perception, or more delicate delineation of life and manners. Wit, humor, and sentiment pervade every page; the vices and follies of the day are touched with the most playful and diverting satire; and English characteristics, in endless variety, are hit off with the pencil ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... at lunch time today, that sharp-eyed and rabbit-eared detective would never have known of the second picture—your picture—because I can eke out my exhibits by a half finished sketch of the lake and a pencil note of the gates. But putting the bits of the puzzle together afterwards, I came to the conclusion that Mary, our kitchen maid, passed my room, saw the picture on the easel and was scandalized. She of course told Eliza, who went to be shocked on her own account, and then came downstairs and ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... sheet of his heavily embossed letter-paper, and, picking up a pencil, began to sketch a rough diagram. Waldron, making no comment, followed every ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... cake, of course, a bottle of currant wine, jam-pots, and no end of pears in the straw. With this money little Briggs will be able to pay the tick which that impudent child has run up with Mrs. Ruggles; and I shall let Briggs Major pay for the pencil-case which Bullock sold to him.—It will be a lesson to the young ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... white-walled court room were too much for Bennie. He would gaze about with puzzled blue eyes; then, giving up the situation as something too vast for his comprehension, he would fall to drawing curly-cues on a bit of paper with a great yellow pencil presented him by ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... edition [with notes and proposed emendations] by R. Bentley. London, 1732, 4to. One of the copies in the British Museum contains MS. notes by B. Stillingfleet, and another MS. notes by W. Cole. A third copy has inserted plates, a pencil sketch of Milton's house at Chalfont St. Giles, and a cutting from the Literary Gazette, May ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... sat nibbling the end of the pencil with which he had been figuring, trying, as I well understood, to be fairly equitable as between even-handed justice and his prejudices. There was a sharp little struggle, but at the end of it he said: "As ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... in this volume was painted by herself in the spring of 1827, to send to her eldest brother, George Giberne (at Dhoolia, Candeish), afterwards Judge in the Bombay Presidency (East India Co.). On the back of it her brother had written in pencil:— ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Drawing. (I) Drawing in charcoal and pencil from simple objects, plaster casts, still life, etc. Elements of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... talked with his associate, Poe would continue to scribble away with his pencil, as if writing, and when his visitor jestingly remonstrated with him on his want of politeness, he replied that he had been all attention, and proved that he had by suitable comment, assigning as a ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... his tablets from his pocket, tore a leaf out, took his pencil, laid the paper upon the corner of the mantel-piece, wrote a few lines, folded the note, and concealed it in his hand as the door opened, and admitted Mrs. Waugh, Marian and Jacquelina. There was a telegraphic glance between the elder lady and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... them seemed to have more than the foggiest notion of camp requirements. Jack made some suggestions which they accepted. There was a lot of scientific equipment on the list, including an X-ray machine. He promptly ran a pencil ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... riches in the architecture of palaces and temples; and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India, Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the oriental artists. A general indulgence was proclaimed; every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people was free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of Timur may remark that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... nineteenth-century explorer that first led me into the relatively unknown region between the Apurimac and the Urubamba, sometimes called "the Cradle of the Incas." Although my photographs cannot compete with the imaginative pencil of such an artist, nevertheless, I hope that some of them may lead future travelers to penetrate still farther into the Land of the Incas and engage in the fascinating game of identifying elusive places mentioned ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... examination of our own histories and our own hearts, in order to come to the conclusion that the world is full of strange and terrible sadness, that every life has dark tracts and long stretches of sombre tint, and that no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light and flings no shadows on the canvas. There is no depth in a Chinese picture, because there is no shade. It is the wrinkles and marks of tear and wear that make the expression in a man's portrait. 'Life's sternest painter "is" its best.' The gloomy thoughts which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... the cover of the big basket. Then the two of them, moving as stealthily as if engaged in a burglary, transferred the contents to the table. Mr. Ralston got out a small pencil and a note book, and by dint of comparing the names attached to the gifts on the table they managed to divide theirs up pretty ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... AUDUBON, A.—Mr. AUDUBON exhibits four pictures this season: of these, No. 133, 'Grove of Palm-trees' in the Island of Cuba, we prefer. This picture appears to be a faithful representation of the scene, and is handled with a free and firm pencil. The trees are perhaps a little too literally represented, to be agreeable to the eye, consisting as they do of so many equally straight and unpicturesque lines. No. 237, 'Moon-light Squall coming up,' is a pleasing representation of one of Nature's poetical moments. The ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... read this with a sort of fascination. Finally, taking from her pocket a little note-book and pencil, she copied it carefully. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... appeared, and I hoped to find him. Sure enough, he was among the books. Three or four large volumes lay open upon a table near the window, and the sturdy professor was turning over the leaves, holding a pencil in his mouth and a sheet of paper in one hand, the image of a student in the pursuit of knowledge. I went straight up ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... sense of disloyalty as he sat down at his desk and picked up a pad and pencil. But a moment later he had forgotten her, as he had forgotten the party across the hall. He had work to ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... distinct vision of this kind of a mother gives her by the nursery lamp, reading to us her own stories, written for ourselves, never meant to go beyond that little public of two, and illustrated in colored crayons by her own pencil. For her gift in this direction was of an original quality, and had she not been a writer she must have ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... said Fran, staring at her pencil and paper, "he's at the head of the show, and watches when ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... I pulled out my pencil, tore a leaf from my note-book, and scribbled a hasty note to Hilda: "The invalid is—whom do you think?—Sebastian! He is dangerously ill with some malignant fever. I am bringing him down into camp to nurse. Get everything ready for him." Then I handed it ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... a rosy pencil of living light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... agreed in a matter-of-fact voice. 'Now, Henrietta. Get a piece of paper and a pencil, Sophia, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... that I come up on the porch and draw some pictures for her. The child was waiting with three sheets of paper and a chewed pencil all ready, just on the chance that I might pass; and you cannot very well refuse a cripple who adores you and is not able to play with the other brats. You get instead into a kind of habit of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... the system of exact and minute measurements which the physicist and chemist use. In one of his interesting works Mr. Charles R. Gibson gives a photograph of two exactly equal pieces of paper in the opposite pans of a fine balance. A single word has been written in pencil on one of these papers, and that little scraping of lead has been enough to bring down the scale! The spectroscope will detect a quantity of matter four million times smaller even than this; and the electroscope is a million times ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... first thought of looking to see if any name was attached, as is often the case, to the "Engaged" label secured to the window of the compartment occupied by the dead man. There was. Written in pencil under the blue-printed "Engaged" were the three ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... white apron and absorbed in the mysteries of the pastry board. Aunt Prudence was a little astonished, but she never would approve of Beth's way of doing things—"didn't see the sense of a note-book and lead-pencil." But Beth knew what she was doing in ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... meeting her old shipmate; she often talks about you. I must make sure of you," continued the doctor, drawing from his pocket a large packet of cards, and inserting, at the top of one of them, Newton Forster's name with his pencil. "This is an invitation to our conversazione of to-morrow night, which you must do us the honour to accept. We shall have all the scientific men of the day, and a very pretty sprinkling of nobility, if not something more. However, you will ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... pencil fell; Thine was the kindest satire, living well: The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see In what thou wert, what they themselves ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in London, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil notes ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... but as a connoisseur of juleps he felt that very possibly he was on the threshold of another drink. Passing a line of billboards, he noticed a brightly colored poster advertising a brand of collars. In sheer light-heartedness he drew a soft pencil from his waistcoat and adorned the comely young man on the collar ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... a nicely cut No. 2 Faber's drawing pencil, a piece of black India rubber, some pieces of tissue-paper to cover the drawings, unless the drawing-book is furnished with tissue-paper. These are the implements required. In this pencil drawing which I now recommend there are ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... despondency that the events and information of the evening before had induced in his morbid temperament. Moreover a piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written, in the boy's hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried: ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... Then turned his face against the rising day, And raised his voice to welcome in the May: "For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear, If not the first, the fairest of the year: For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours, And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers: When thy short reign is past, the feverish sun The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on. So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight, Nor goats with venomed teeth thy tendrils bite, As ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... which I speak is that of cheap incense only,—the incense in general use. There are many other kinds of incense; and the range of quality is amazing. A bundle of common incense- rods—(they are about as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead, and somewhat longer)—can be bought for a few sen; while a bundle of better quality, presenting to inexperienced eyes only some difference in color, may cost several yen, and be cheap at the price. Still costlier sorts of incense,—veritable luxuries,— take the form of lozenges, wafers, pastilles; ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... on the capillary stem with a grease pencil the position of the end of the column ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... need not be very formal. It need not specify the amount that is to be paid; in other words, it need not specify the consideration. Some courts say, however, that it must contain this fact or statement. It may be in pencil. I presume it would be sufficient if written on a blackboard with chalk. But it must be a writing of some kind signed by the party to be charged; that is the essential thing. The courts have also said that this writing need not be on a single piece of paper. If the two parties have ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... come pretty near being ten cent presents for the orphans," James pronounced after some work with pencil and paper. "We can't give them anything that the wildest imagination could ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the Holy Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced with yellow. The brown finger followed the Curator's pencil from point to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One's death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... followed season in rapid succession, and the last rays of an August sun illumined a scene so beautiful, that I long for the pencil of a Claude Lorraine. It was a far-off town, in a far-off state, yet who has gazed on thy loveliness, oh, San Antonio, can e'er forget thee! Thine was the sweetness of nature; no munificent hand had arranged, with artistic skill, a statue here, a ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... Constantinople and let us study its palaces and mosques, its marvellous stuffs, its romantic history, its religions—most profound and impressive—its commerce, industries, and customs. Come to revel in color; to sit for hours, following with reverent pencil the details of an architecture unrivalled on the globe; to watch the sun scale the hills of Scutari and shatter its lances against the fairy minarets of Stamboul; to catch the swing and plash of the rowers rounding their caiques by the bridge of Galata; to wander through ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... that," was the answer. "But no money had changed hands. I enquired. The quarrel arose over the second deal, and as a matter of fact Urquhart had laid no money on the table, but made a pencil-note of a few shillings he lost by the first hand. You may remember, sir, how the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Singing Mouse should find it fit to manifest itself. I knew not when it came, but as I looked, the spot had found a tenant. The small, transparent paws of the Singing Mouse displayed no shadow as they waved and swung across this pencil of the pale, mysterious light. Yet its eyes shone opaline and brilliant as it sat, so that I could hardly gaze without a shiver of surprise akin to fear, fascinated as though I looked upon a thing unreal. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... Below, in pencil, was a list of the party with every name crossed out save Mr. Stott's, and at the bottom, ornamented with many curlicues and beautifully shaded, was the significant sentence, with the date as ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... kneeling beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab's, was eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to himself: Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... had accepted at the time he promised to sign the bill if he were elected Governor. In the course of the same day a letter sent by messenger was handed to him in the executive chamber. It contained simply two lines in pencil in Elton's handwriting—"It continues to be of vital importance to my affairs that the pending bill should receive your signature." That was obviously a polite reminder of their agreement; an intimation that the circumstances ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... alive, however, she feared not to show, nor yet to twist and frizz as in the days when it was so beautiful and so fair.]—her noble open forehead, eyebrows which could be only blamed for being so regularly arched that they looked as if drawn by a pencil, eyes continually beaming with the witchery of fire, a nose of perfect Grecian outline, a mouth so ruby red and gracious that it seemed that, as a flower opens but to let its perfume escape, so it could not open but to give passage to gentle words, with a neck white and graceful ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... some points which the stress of keeping herself companionable would not allow her to attend to while the assemblage was present. At the end of the survey, being somewhat weary with her clambering, she sat down on the slope commanding the gorge where the trees grew, to make a pencil sketch of the landscape as it was revealed between the ragged walls. Thus engaged she weighed the circumstances of Lord Mountclere's invitation, and could not be certain if it were prudishness or simple ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... its first scenario, made according to my habit in rough pen and ink sketches, coloured with a pencil blue and red, and the changes from that early idea do not seem to have been very great, except that in the scene where Conan now hears the secret of the hiding-place of the Spell from the talk of the cats, the Bellows had been at ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... the tendril, whilst young, are highly sensitive. A touch with a pencil, so gentle as only just to move a tendril borne at the end of a long flexible shoot, sufficed to cause it to become perceptibly curved in four or five minutes. It became straight again in rather above one hour. A loop of soft thread weighing one-seventh of a grain ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... which I hope you won't despise because it is not new. I mean I have worn it myself for some time, and I hope you will now, in remembrance of the time when you sheltered the houseless." She held out on her pink palm a flat gold pencil with a single ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller

... beside the query in pencil, "women are cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield their hearts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... men, who, like 'little Jack Horner,' know where to take up a safe position, occasionally enjoy, but which your noisy fellows, who think that women never want to be alone—a sad mistake—and consequently must be always breaking or stringing a guitar, or cutting a pencil, or splitting a crowquill, or overturning the gold ink, or scribbling over a pattern, or doing any other of the thousand acts of ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... Dickie together were in a state of great delight at the little packets handed to the former; studs, purse, pencil-case, writing materials; from Hector Ernescliffe, a watch, with the entreaty that his gifts might not be regarded as unlucky; from Ethel, a photographic book, with the cartes of his own family, whose ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... descending the aisle, he paused before the place where Mrs. Rodney had been seated some days before; as he stood musing on the account which he had heard of her from Mrs. Denley, he observed a few lines written in pencil on the column against which she had been in the habit of leaning. They were so faintly marked, and had probably been so much effaced since, that he found great difficulty in making them out. At last he succeeded in doing so, and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... all his Latin declensions in this way. His love of art had been proved by his desire to adopt it as a profession; his talent for it was evidenced by the life and power of the sketches, often caricatures, which fell from his pen or pencil as easily as written words. Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a very early elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes (now in the possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) through which his ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of the voyage, is simply a model of the national manners according to their best type. And while her husband and the children are 'stretching their legs' on shore, the accomplished lady is seen with her pencil, exercising her talents by sketching ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... attendance. Everybody rushes around hunting for things and pushing them on to Robert and pushing Robert, festooned with them, towards the door. Where was his cap? Where was his satchel? Where was his lunch? Where were his books? Who had seen his atlas? Who had seen his pencil box? Who had seen his gymnasium belt? Was his bicycle ready? Was his coat on his bicycle? Was that button on ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... wire. It seemed to have become the playground of a million devils; moanings, shriekings, mutterings, and noises of all kinds would constantly interrupt the flow of speech. To call up your "party" you would not merely lift the receiver as today; you would tap with a lead pencil, or some other appliance, upon the diaphragm of your transmitter. There were no separate telephone wires. The talking at first was done over the telegraph lines. The earliest "centrals" reminded most persons of madhouses, for the day of the polite, soft-spoken telephone girl had not arrived. ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends to allow the operation to be finished. But when their chins were held up a second time, their fear of the instrument, the wild stare of their eyes, and the smile which they forced, formed a compound upon the rough savage countenance not unworthy the pencil of a Hogarth. I was almost tempted to try what effect a little snip would produce; but our situation was too critical to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, which no disease can ravage, and no years impair. Renounce those wandering fancies that lead you now to myself, and now to yon orator of the human race; to us two, who are the antipodes of each other! Your pencil is your wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams of. I press not yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked more to cheer his path to the grave than ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... immediate, speedy and tremendous success of Pickwick put the booksellers entirely at Dickens's feet. Still, a certain vacillation—an uncertainty of design not often accompanying genius like his—must be acknowledged in Thackeray. For a time he hesitated between pen and pencil, the latter of which implements he fortunately never abandoned, though the former was his predestined wand. Then he could not, or would not, for years, get out of the "miscellaneous" style, or patchwork of styles—reviews, short stories, burlesques, what not. His more ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... spectator,—there, a group, in an exactly opposite direction, is forcing its way into the picture,—while hunters with hound and horn are pursuing the stag on the neighboring hills, and idle spectators stand around, gaping and dazzled; all drawn with a free and accurate pencil, and colored with much brilliancy;—a triumphant and masterly composition, hidden in a dark corner of what has now become a great dusty building, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... Worcester and Essex, presented similar examples of political geography. It is said that Gilbert Stuart, seeing in the office of the Columbian Centinel an outline of the Essex outer district, nearly encircling the rest of the country, added with his pencil a beak to Salisbury, and claws to Salem and Marblehead, exclaiming, 'There, that will do for a salamander!' 'Salamander!' said Mr. Russell, the editor: 'I call it a Gerrymander!' The mot obtained vogue, ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... of Dr. Blair; a view of Boston; and an old French print called L'Ete, representing a shepherdess making hay in high-heeled shoes and a hoop; there were copies of these on bits of paper of all sizes, done with the pen or lead-pencil; and lastly, a number of odd-looking sketches of Charlie's own invention. The sight of these labours of art, was far from giving Miss Patsey pleasure, although it accounted for the surprising disappearance ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... be said to extend along the Stour valley, anywhere within walking distance of his home, Neyland, Stoke, Langham, Stratford, and in the opposite direction, Harwich, all having furnished material for his fruitful pencil. But, despite much admirable work done in each of these places, it was to the few acres of river and meadow round the old mill at Flatford that he owed his first awakening to the wonders of nature around him. To these, his first and truest masters, his memory was ever ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... of what is contained in the following pages. The numerous rays of light now shining from the book of prophecy, seem to find their focal point in our own times. The present age is illuminated in this respect above all others. Here we find the most emphatic touches of the prophetic pencil. The events to transpire, and the agents therein concerned, are brought out in a vivid ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... the Irish Guards, arriving in Dublin on a recruiting tour, is enthusiastically cheered; John E. Redmond reviews at Dublin 25,000 of the Irish National Volunteers; Limerick welcomes recruiting officers; every man in the British Navy has received a pencil case, the gift of Queen Mary, formed of a cartridge which had been used "somewhere in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... little pencil note, crumpled and worn, as if carried for a long time in one's pocket. I found it in a box of precious things that Fanny's mother had hoarded so choicely, because Fanny had been choice of them. I must read it, for everything of Fanny's is dear to us now. Ah! 'tis a note from a gentleman ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... world has seen. Man is borne over the surface of the earth by steam; he is as familiar as the fish with the liquid element; he transmits his words instantaneously from London to New York; he draws pictures without pencil or brush, and has made the sun his slave. The air alone remains to him unsubdued. The proper management of balloons has not yet been discovered. More than that, it appears that balloons are unmanageable, and it is to air-vessels, constructed more nearly upon the model ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... training it gets. The habits of constructiveness may be developed in different sorts of media. The order of their availability is roughly as follows: first, in the use of materials such as wood, clay, raffia, etc.; second, in the use of pencil and brush with color, etc.; third, in the use of words. We should therefore expect and provide for considerable development along manual lines before demanding much in the way of literary expression. Indeed, it may be argued that richness of experience in doing is ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... bond or indemnity," said, the lawyer. "If I had a paper and pencil I could throw it into shape in an instant, and the chief could rely upon its being perfectly correct ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... Qualities immediately agreeable to the person himself]. The image, gentlemen, which you have here delineated of Cleanthes, cried I, is that of accomplished merit. Each of you has given a stroke of the pencil to his figure; and you have unawares exceeded all the pictures drawn by Gratian or Castiglione. A philosopher might select this character as ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... have despised, but which commended itself to an ambitious man who felt that, although a chance comes to all, it is an important point to be prepared for the chance when it does come. A plutocrat once asked Horace Vernet to "do him a little thing in pencil" for his album. Vernet did the little thing and asked 1,000 francs for it. "But it only took you five minutes to draw," exclaimed the man of wealth. "Yes, but it took me thirty years to learn to do it in five minutes," replied Vernet. And so Gambetta, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... did you get along with your tobacco?" "I did very well," I said, "the only trouble was I did not have enough. I sold it for $180." "Well," said he, "if you did, you made more clear money than the works here. How much a plug did you sell it for?" at the same time drawing out his pencil and commencing to figure it up. "I had thirty-six plugs," said I, "and I sold them for five dollars a plug." Nothing more was said just then, but after dinner Brooks and two of the clerks went out on the veranda to smoke. When they were ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes

... lines. This morning I missed two words, but this afternoon I knew them all. And I can't write on the slate. The pencil wabbles so, and then it gives an awful squeak that goes all over you. And I can't do sums. And there's all the tables to learn. And I don't like the teacher. I wish Miss Eunice could teach ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... child, in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, Her aspect and her attitude, All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued. He is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature. Never man, As artist or as artisan, Pursuing his own fantasies, Can touch the human heart, or please, Or satisfy our nobler needs, As he who sets his willing feet In Nature's footprints, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... and foot some five thousand strong—well centred in and about the town and castle of Farnham, with a clear road to London behind us and in front a nearly equal enemy planted across our passage to the West. You may take a map with ruler and pencil and draw a line through from Winchester to Oxford, where the King kept his Court. On the base of it, at Winchester, rested General Hopton's main force. North and east of it, at Alton, my Lord Crawford stood athwart the road with sufficient cavalry and Colonel Bolle's regiment of foot; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... sensitive and so expressive, is only an abstraction and does not exist in nature. What the draughtsman renders as line is objectively in fact the boundary of forms. A head, with all its subtleties of color and light and shade, may be represented by a pencil or charcoal drawing, black upon a white surface. It is not the head which is black and white, but the drawing. Our acceptance of the drawing as an adequate representation of the head rests upon convention. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... docketed, "A Short Account of the Circumstances which occurred near Miss Allerton's Farm in North-West Derbyshire in the Spring of Last Year." The envelope was sealed, and on the other side was written in pencil...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Ethel haunted the brilliant shops, read novels in the hotel-garden, or listlessly followed the sight-seers, Jenny, with the help of her valuable little library, her industrious pencil, and her accomplished guides, laid up a store of precious souvenirs as they visited the celebrated spots that lie like a necklace of pearls around the lovely lake, with Mont Blanc as the splendid opal that fitly clasps the chain. Calvin and Geneva, Voltaire and Ferney, De ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... sixpence for the copyright of his work. I gave him sixpence, and he drew out a manuscript from an inside pocket of his coat, and handed it to me. It was composed of small sheets of whitey-brown wrapping paper sewn together. He had ruled lines on it, and had written his biography with lead pencil. On looking over it I observed that, although he was deficient in some of the inferior qualifications of a great historian, such as spelling, grammar, and a command of words of seven syllables, yet he had the true instincts of a faithful chronicler. He had carefully recorded ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... Turn inland, (another right angle is here necessary) and pace to the point where the object X on the far side of the stream can be seen in direct line with the stake C. At this point place stake E. Measure the distance from E to D. With paper and pencil mark down the example—for such ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... moved in response, Effie's face fairly glowed with delight and affection. The little girl loved Annie. Then her questioning eyes sought Felicia, who beckoned, and drew from the pocket of her rustling silk skirt a tiny pad and pencil. Effie crossed the room and stood at attention while Felicia wrote. When she had read the words on the pad she gave one look at Annie, then ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the guard. He produced a soiled paper, at sight of which the corporal signed to him to enter. Nancy, sure that she had been seen by him, dropped the curtain into place and returned to the mantel. She drew out a piece of paper and a small pencil and, leaning on the mantel, wrote rapidly. She had just finished when the hall door was cautiously opened. Quickly she crumpled the paper in her hand; then, seeing the intruder's face, she stepped into the center ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... Curly took a pencil and an envelope from his pocket. On the latter he jotted down some words and handed the paper to his friend. This was ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... With genial touch, and strokes of patient skill, The very image of each thing he saw:— He limn'd the man all round, for good or ill, Having both sighs and laughter at his will; Life as it went he grasp'd in vision true, Yet stood outside the scene his pencil drew. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... I know all about it, but it don't alter me. Too many strange things occur for me to think that everything can be calculated with a bit of lead-pencil in ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... the topic of business crept into the lighter discussion, and, in an instant, the gaiety evaporated and left expressionless men and quick sharp sentences steely with decision, or indirect and imperturbably blank. A memorandum book and a gold pencil would appear for an enigmatic note, after which the cheerfulness ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... I thus sat, working away with my pencil, Mrs. Murray came, half-sailing, half-bustling, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... them showed a pencil or a note-book, but not a feature of the startling exhibition escaped their intelligence. Every eye flashed with piercing light, every nerve quivered with sensitive impressions. Every sight, sound ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... Tree, they paused in Surprise at seeing Milton asleep beneath it; and in prettie dumb Shew, which we watcht sharplie, exprest their Admiration of his Appearance and Posture, which woulde have suited an Arcadian well enough. The younger Lady, hastilie taking out a Pencil and Paper, wrote something which she laughinglie shewed her Companion, and then put into the Sleeper's Hand. Thereupon, they got into their Caroche, and drove off. King and I, dying with Curiositie to know ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... show that the art of "make-up" had not reached perfection in those times, for a few well-put strokes of the pencil should have destroyed the juvenile aspect of Seyton. It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that the decoration of the face was unknown, and an entry in Pepys' delightful diary proves that "make-up" of a certain kind flourished at the Restoration. "To the King's house," says Pepys, "and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... Treasurer to-day, and sat with him till ten, in spite of my teeth, though my printer waited for me to correct a sheet. I told him of four lines I writ extempore with my pencil, on a bit of paper in his house, while he lay wounded. Some of the servants, I suppose, made waste-paper of them, and he never had heard of them. Shall I tell them you? They were inscribed to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift



Words linked to "Pencil" :   pencil sharpener, figure, trace, delineate, graphite, point, geometry, natural philosophy, rubber eraser, tip, pencil eraser, line, physics, peak, describe, black lead, cosmetic, rubber, draw, writing implement, plumbago



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