"Plank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But that has not stopped our searching, and has not prevented the examining magistrate and his Registrar from studying the floor plank by plank, as if there had been a ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... guillotine. These young and beautiful girls, all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and from the most refined and opulent families, were beheaded. The group of youth and innocence stood clustered at the foot of the scaffold, while, one by one, their companions ascended, were bound to the plank, the ax fell, and their heads dropped into the basket. It seems that there must have been some supernatural power of support to have sustained children under so awful an ordeal. There were no faintings, no loud lamentations, no shrieks of despair. With the serenity of martyrs they met their ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the law is another, and I don't hanker after forsaking my pine-knot fire, and feather bed, to cleave unto jail bars, and handcuffs. I see you are tired of Dyce's jokes, and you mean bizzness; and I don't intend to consume no more of your valuable solicitous time. Dyce, fetch me that plank bottom cher to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of the stall, about the height of one's head. William Munroe and his son Will took a few turns at the windlass, and the ox would be lifted off his feet. The sides of the stall were only eighteen inches high, and were of thick plank, with a groove in the top edge. They bent up the leg of the ox and rested his cloven hoof in the groove, and shod each part with a ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... and exhausting voyage, a plank started in the mate's boat, and it was with difficulty that they heeled it over in the water, at the risk of their lives, to get to the place and nail it up. One night the captain's boat was attacked by a species of fish known as a "killer" ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... be satisfactory, for the man answered "Good!" and after a brief delay a wicket in the gate was opened, the portcullis creaked upward, and a plank was thrust across the ditch. The horseman waited until the preparations were complete; then he slid to the ground, threw his rein to the servant, and boldly walked across. In an instant he left behind him the dark street, the river, and the sounds of outrage, which the night breeze bore ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... to wear the eccentric headdress of the Rouergue highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned in the middle with a crown a finger's breadth high and hardly wider across than a six franc piece. A black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained the equilibrium of this elegant, but unsteady circle. Pickles, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... national patriotism will then, let us hope, be reduced to its last expression—the holding of annual dinners, or some harmless festivity of this sort, such as is affected by the natives of certain English counties resident in the metropolis. The Nationalist movement, therefore, is an old Radical 'plank' which clearly no longer ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... story told by a dying sailor who confessed that he had seen the crew of such a boat walk the plank, and that among them was a beautiful woman who walked into the sea with a Bible or ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... into the air, fell on the dry shingles of the roof, and hardly a minute passed that a tiny blaze did not spring from one part or another of it. The roof could be gained from the interior, through an opening protected on two sides by a barricade of plank, and here Donald was ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... expected to go in August to—to that lady with whom you first saw me" (Joan looked divinely innocent); "but only yesterday she informed me that she had resolved to go abroad, and asked if it would make any difference to me. She's like that. Her procedure resembles jumping off a diving plank." ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... huge sow lay, black and silent, showing nothing to the enemy but a side of strong plank, covered with hide to prevent its being burned. It lay there for three hours, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... broadest and pleasantest smile on his rugged face. This was the first good view I had of the 'coming man.' The next day we all stopped at the town of Lincoln, where short speeches were made by the contestants, and dinner was served at the hotel; after which, as Mr. Lincoln came out on the plank-walk in front, I was formally presented to him. He saluted me with his natural cordiality, grasping my hand in both his large hands with a vice-like grip, and looking down into my face with his beaming, dark, full eyes, said: 'How do you do? I am glad to meet you. I have read of you ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... had one brig-of-war which (erroneously in my last I rated at sixteen guns) mounted but fourteen long 24-pounders and two mortars; she was made fast in a small bight, with a plank on shore and high rocks on each side of her, behind which were posted a strong corps of Albanian troops; she was likewise protected by a battery close under her bow and five other batteries in other parts. Four small schooners lay quite ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... "the only one which can push its action on to total reform; the only one which can give full effect to each working class demand; the only one which can make of each reform, of each victory, the starting point and basis of more extended demands and bolder conquests...." Here we have the plank on which Jaures undoubtedly laid the greatest weight, and it was supported unanimously partly because of the necessity of party unity. For this is as much as to say that no reform will ever be brought to a point that wholly satisfies ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... time before, and was quite lost to view—had brought my friend's alpenstock, and was developing a considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed nimbly across; but the Kurd stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a little troublesome, as if it ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Godfrey arrived at the prison. Among the convicts was a man named Kobylin, a man of great strength. He boasted that he had committed ten murders, and was always bullying and tyrannizing the quieter and weaker prisoners. One day he passed where Luka and Godfrey were sitting on the edge of the plank bed talking together. Luka happened to get up just as he came along, and Kobylin gave him a violent push, saying, "Get out of the way, you ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... escape. Their good fortune in a moment of despair, threw them on the wreck of a boat, near the beach, which was still capable of repair. In searching about the now deserted town, other materials were found, which were of use to them, and sufficient plank and logs of wood for the construction of a raft. These were both completed in a few days, and the party embarked on them in two divisions, to effect a passage to the Persian shore. One of these rafts was lost in the attempt, and all on board her perished; while the raft, with ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... that plank 5 in our progressive conservation platform is urging the planting of producing trees along the highways. By that we meant not only the native nut trees, all of which are beautiful and ornamental, but also fruit trees, according to the wishes ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... of well seasoned hickory plank. The plank is well steamed in a wash boiler or other large kettle and then bent to a nice curve, as shown in Fig. 1. It is held in this curve until dry, with two pieces nailed on ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... in the service, but this metaphor ought to have been reserved for a small high-pressure steamboat in the summer months in America; the sun darting his fierce rays down upon the roof above you, which is only half-inch plank, and rendering it so hot that you quickly remove your hand if, by chance, you put it there; the deck beneath your feet so heated by the furnaces below that you cannot walk with slippers; you are panting and exhausted between ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... appliances for his real work. He had known what it was to lack books and instruments; and "The Vital Thing" was the magic wand which summoned them to his aid. For some time he had been feeling his way along the edge of a discovery: balancing himself with professional skill on a plank of hypothesis flung across an abyss of uncertainty. The conjecture was the result of years of patient gathering of facts: its corroboration would take months more of comparison and classification. But at the end of the vista victory ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... deal faster than we came. Of course the report soon got about that Captain Goss was an old pirate, or at the best an old bucaneer; and the Barking folks used to tell how many crews he had made walk the plank, and how there was blood-marks on his hands, which he used to try to cover with tar. But no one dared to say a word of this to him; and as he was a prime sailor, and even kind after his fashion, when he had taken first a reg'lar quantity of his five-water grog, he never wanted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... case of two men on a plank at sea, which can only support one, the right of one occupant to throw the other overboard to save his own life, and in the instance of sailors, to save themselves, throwing passengers in the sea, are equally condemned by Lord Coleridge as unjustifiable homicide. So that under no circumstances ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... a rough staircase. At the summit a passage led past two or three doors to one made of the strongest plank, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... wanted to get the fellow out, but my uncle said, 'Oh! let him in by all means.—Well, friend, what do you want to say to me about my coffin?' 'Only, sir, that I'll saw up the oak tree that your honor was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' 'That would be wasteful,' answered my uncle; 'I never was more than six feet and an inch in my vamps, the best day ever I saw.' 'But your honor will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. 'Not eleven inches, I am sure, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... won't do: it's no good joke, I promise you. Ma chere amie, mon coeur," cried mademoiselle to Lady Augusta—"viens— come, let us go—Don't touch that," pursued she, roughly, to black Tom, who was going to draw away the plank that led to the shore. "I will go home dis minute, and speak to Miladi S——. Viens! viens, ma chere amie!"—and she darted out of the boat, whilst Dashwood followed, in vain attempting to stop her. She prudently, however, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... didn't mean nuttin', Marster!" screamed the boy, livid with terror. "I didn't know de lady was dar—fo' de Lawd Jesus, I didn't! My foot jes slipped on de plank w'en I wuz crossin', en ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... present, in the splendid autumn weather—the autumn at least was a pure boon in the terrible place—he loafed about his "work" undeterred, secretly agitated; not in the least "minding" that the whole proposition, as they said, was vulgar and sordid, and ready to climb ladders, to walk the plank, to handle materials and look wise about them, to ask questions, in fine, and challenge explanations and really ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... delivered the official communication regarding our transfer to Villa, while we waited impatiently for his decision. Sergeant Matias at length returned with orders for our disembarkation; we put on the best clothes we had and the rowers placed a broad plank between the lighter and the arsenal and we left our floating prison two abreast. Matias called the roll and the order to march, we were eighty-four friars in a long column climbing the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... into the soul of this young creature as she found herself, with the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on the tiny plank-island of a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she felt that she had sold herself, and had been paid the strict price—nay, paid more than she had dared to ask in the handsome maintenance of her mother:—the husband to whom she had sold her truthfulness ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... best way to drive the hours before you four-in-hand, is to select a soft plank on the gun-deck, and go to sleep. A fine specific, which seldom fails, unless, to be sure, you have been sleeping all ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sweep to the northward, and turns south to Jigatzi, whence it makes another and greater bend to the north, and again turning south flows west of Lhassa, receiving the Kechoo river from that holy city. From Jigatzi it is said to be navigable to near Lhassa by skin and plank-built boats. Thence it flows south-east to the Assam frontier, and while still in Tibet, is said to enter a warm climate, where tea, silk, cotton, and rice, are grown. Of its course after entering the Assam Himalaya little is known, and in answer to my enquiries why it had not been followed, I ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... a cold day in the month of March, when "Cousin Charley," as we called Mr. Miller, was superintending some men who were laying a plank walk in the rear of his premises. Some half dozen of us were invited to an early tea at good Deacon Huntington's. Immediately after dinner, Miss Fitzhugh and Miss Van Schaack decided to take a nap, that they might appear as brilliant ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... cold perspiration starting on his temples when he remembered Mlle. Lucienne's pride, and that honor has her only faith, the safety-plank to which she had desperately clung in the midst of the storms of her life. What if she should leave him, now that the name ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... amount of time to burn it. It was distinctly a hand-to-mouth existence. As I have pointed out, when it is too dark to see the currents, the Congo captains never attempt to travel. So each night at sunset Captain Jensen ran into the bank, and as soon as the plank was out all the black passengers and the crew passed down it and spent the night on shore. In five minutes the women would have the fires lighted and the men would be cutting grass for bedding and running up little shelters of palm boughs and hanging up ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... retire for the night that the ferryman entered his dormitory. Beside his crazy couch stood a litter of empty bottles and a beer cask, crowding the chamber. The latter he rolled aside, and pressing his foot upon the plank beneath it, the board gave way, and a trap-door opening, discovered a ladder, conducting, apparently, into the bowels of the earth. Jem leaned over the abyss, and called in hoarse accents to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... you go I'd like to know, pine-plank, whether you are friendly to me or not," continued Hanson, who was obliged to confess to himself that he had not learned the first thing, during the interview, that could be used against Marcy or ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... their journey lakewards, breaking into the inevitable dogtrot as the long, dark pier came in sight. At the land end, John stooped to pick up a few sun-dried minnows which lay on a plank, and a little farther on Silvey grabbed eagerly ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Bill yet. I'll clean up a t'ousand to-day—say, I like your mug; you ain't no stiff, or I miss my guess, an' I'll put you, next a good t'ing, damme if I don't, an' you don't need to divvy up, neither. Dere's a chestnut runnin' in de Derby what dey call Larcen, an' I'm goin' to plank down a hun'red ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... river. A part of a kitchen went sailing by. The watchers saw the upper window of a half-submerged house. There was a bed, a cradle, and a sewing-machine open and ready for use. There were pathos and tragedy sufficient for a lifetime. There was a touch of humor too, for on a long plank, at either end, sat a rat and a great black cat. They watched each other instinctively, and were unconscious of the danger which ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... baptized received a promise of mercy from God, to which time after time, even from the sins of his future life, he might and was bound to turn, it was taught, that in sinning after baptism, the Christian was like a shipwrecked man, who, instead of the ship, could only reach a plank; this being the sacrament of penance, with its accompanying outward formalities. Whereas further, in true baptism he had vowed to dedicate his whole life and conduct to God, other vows of human invention were now demanded of him. Whereas he then became a full partaker of Christian liberty, he was ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... of JOE CLARK'S Store and the street in front. Porch stretches almost completely across the stage, with a plank bench at either end. At the center of the porch three steps leading from street. Rear of porch, center, door to the store. On either side are single windows on which signs, at left, "POST OFFICE", and at right, "GENERAL STORE" are painted. Soap boxes, axe handles, small kegs, ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... Sicilian, who was of the greatest use to me in government business, and in making all necessary arrangements which my want of local knowledge prevented my doing myself. A dictatorship was spoken of, and I accepted it without hesitation, having always believed it the plank of safety in urgent cases, amid the breakers in which nations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... dilemma. The difficulty was, to square universal Atonement with partial salvation. So the difficulty was solved by one party in adopting the theory of a limited Atonement, and so that doctrine became a cardinal plank in the Calvinistic theology. It could not be conceived of as a possibility that God would make provision for the salvation of the whole world, and thus express His desire for the salvation of the whole world, yet that His provision and His desire ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... curiosity, but little contamination or corruption. But I think he was chiefly pleased with watching the arrival of the Sacramento and Stockton steamers at the wharves, in the hope of discovering his old partner among the passengers on the gang-plank. Here, with his old superstitious tendency and gambler's instinct, he would augur great success in his search that day if any one of the passengers bore the least resemblance to Uncle Jim, if a man or woman stepped off first, or if he met a single person's ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... when we passed Verdiersville. Soon after, we turned down a road, which led over to the plank road on which A. P. Hill's column was moving. Hour after hour all the morning, reports had come flying back along the columns, that our people, at the front, had seen nothing but Federal Cavalry; hadn't been able to unearth any infantry at all. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... beef, ship-plank, and other necessaries, can be sent down the stream of Ohio to West Florida, and from thence to the islands, much cheaper, and in better order, than from New York or Philadelphia. Fifth, Hemp, tobacco, iron, and such bulky articles, can also be sent down the stream of the Ohio to the sea, at ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... cleanly off by the deck as if it had been cut with a saw. No human aid could avail the poor woman and her baby. Master could hear the terrible choking noise of her dying agony right under his feet, with but a two-inch plank between; and the sounds have haunted him ever since. But even had he succeeded in getting her on deck, she could not possibly have survived, mistress. For five long hours we clung to the rigging, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... uncurtained windows the moonlight was streaming, making white splashes upon the floors. Across the plank pathways they wandered locating the halls, the great living-room, the spacious dining-room, the airy, comfortable bedrooms exposed to the south, the library, the kitchen, and the ballroom on the third floor. It was to be a grand house—this ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Colored folks were then apt to be old servants—that is to say, friends—and this was our pensioned porter, Old Tom. I was close behind Wholesome at the door of the counting-house. I am almost sure he said "Damnation!" At all events, he threw down his hat, and in a moment was away up the nearer plank to the ship's deck, followed by me. Meanwhile, however, the black, followed by his pursuer, had reached the wharf, where the negro, stumbling and still clinging to the rail, was seized by the man who had struck him. In the short struggle which ensued the plank was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... now only used with reference to the top of a room—the ceiling. It is an old English word, and means overlaid or lined with wood, wainscot, or plank, either ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... arranged a sort of gang-plank with a railing if any of them wanted to go on shore—that is, step on terra firma—during the voyage. But Samuel Rolands, the mover, heedful of his special prize, urged upon them not to get out any oftener than could be helped, because ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... plank of drift-wood Tossed on the watery main, Another plank encountered, Meets—touches—parts again; So tossed, and drifting ever, On life's unresting sea, Men meet, and greet, and sever, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... it had stayed by him. Its touch recalled him to himself. He got up hastily, and, taking the dog in his arms, went to the police station near by, and asked for shelter. It was the first time he had accepted even such charity, and as he lay down on his rough plank he hugged a little gold locket he wore around his neck, the last link with better days, and thought with a hard sob of home. In the middle of the night he awoke with a start. The locket was gone. One of the tramps who slept with him had stolen it. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... them the judge and his breeches. What they saw from a distance served to set them laughing: then drawing nearer to the dais on which Master Judge was seated, they observed that 'twas easy enough to get under the dais, and moreover that the plank, on which the judge's feet rested, was broken, so that there was plenty of room for the passage of a hand and arm. Whereupon quoth Maso to his comrades:—"'Twere a very easy matter to pull these breeches right down: wherefore I propose that we do so." Each of the men had marked ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... if they had come to stay. And when you drive up from the depot you think everybody's moving. Everything seems to be piled into the street; old houses made over, and new ones going up everywhere. You know the kind of street Main Street always used to be in our section—half plank-road and turnpike, and the rest mud-hole, and a lot of stores and doggeries strung along with false fronts a story higher than the back, and here and there a decent building with the gable end to the public; and a court-house and jail and two taverns and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... intensely interesting, but the Obstacle Race proved an even greater excitement. Two thin planks of wood were placed across the bath, floating upon the water. The competitors started from the deep end, dived under the first plank, and then scrambled over the second. At the shallow end were a number of large round wash-tubs; each candidate had to seize upon one of these and seat herself in it, a most difficult feat of fine balancing, for unless she hit upon the exact center of gravity, the tub promptly ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... Mary's habits this rustic toilet was luxurious. Standing upon a piece of plank, that protected her feet from the damp earth around the trough, she bathed her hands and face again and again, drawing in deep draughts of the bright air between each ablution, with a ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... part where the cider-mill was, was the corn-house. I went up over the wide plank ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... golden sickle. The breeze rising on the steppe warned them that the dawn was not far off. But nowhere was the crow of the cock heard. Neither in the city nor in the devastated neighbourhood had there been a cock for a long time past. They crossed the brook on a small plank, beyond which rose the opposite bank, which appeared higher than the one behind them and rose steeply. It seemed as though this were the strong point of the citadel upon which the besieged could rely; at all events, the earthen wall was lower ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a lot of 'arm; but yet you can't blame 'em: gentlemen will pay for anything rather than plank money down to them naughty girls ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... days, so he thought he would live, going down to the dangers of the sea, trading in strange ports, and transmuting hard, untiring effort into gain for her at home and her children, and he would grow old and grizzled, until he could no longer brace to a heeling plank or stand the responsibility of a ship's mastery, and then they would buy a little house on some harbor, while their sons went rolling down to Rio or fought the typhoon in the China Seas, and he could sit ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... wonder if any of you have ever seen it?—in which a little child is seen walking across a narrow plank which bridges a deep chasm, while behind flies a tall, beautiful angel, with a hand on either side the child, guiding it along. The child does not see the angel, and walks fearlessly; but the heavenly hands are there, and the little one is safe. It may be that ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Paris. The isolation, the darkened days, the suffering that affects the mind and spirits even more than the body, the emptiness of the life,—all these things tend to induce him to cling to the human being who waits on him as a drowned man clings to a plank; and this especially if the bachelor patient's character is as weak as his nature is ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... in the water. August Stout had not learned much about swimming since he fell off the plank while fishing in Meadow Brook, so that out in the waves the other boys had great fun with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... held the G. O. P. Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, and all sorts of people and things. Let's hurry over, as here comes the Elephant now, with Mr. Taft riding it, and the plank might give way." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... free, save for the short chains that were still fastened to his wrists, and the plank walls that rose between ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... go. She gave in to my entreaties, however, much against her will. Just as the boat was about to leave the pier, a vision of her pale face and tear-filled eyes came to me. I heard her voice repeating, "I wish you would not go, Davy." The influence was so strong that I dashed down the gang-plank as it was being pulled in. The boat met with disaster, and many of the children were killed or wounded. These premonitions have also come to me, but I do not believe as I did when a boy that they are warnings from the dead, although I cannot explain them, and they are never wrong; ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... have noticed it, John. If there was anything of that sort it must be outside. However, we will take a good look round the yard to-morrow. The warehouse is strongly built, and I don't believe that any plank could be taken off and put back again, time after time, without making a noise that would be heard in the house. What ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... sunlight was becoming warm and vivid. There had been no frost after all — or, at most, merely a white trace in the shadow — on a fallen plank here and there — but not enough to freeze the ground. And, in the sunshine, it all quickly turned to dew, and glittered and sparkled in a million hues and tints like gems — like that handful of jewels she had poured into ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... leading from Chancellorsville to Fredericksburg—one a plank road, which keeps up near the sources of the streams along the dividing line between Mott Run on the north and Lewis Creek and Massaponax Creek on the South, and the other called the old turnpike, which was more direct ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... set upon feet, and compassed with a list about. And, in another manner, table is a playing board, that men play on at the dice and other games; and this manner of table is double, and arrayed with divers colours. In the third manner it is a thin plank and plane, and therein are letters writ with colours, and sometimes small shingles are planed and made somedeal hollow in either side, and filled full of wax, black, green, or red, to ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... was finished for him on the outer edge of the town, near the bank of a little hill-born stream, a roomy log-house, mud-chinked, with a water-tight roof of spruce shakes and a floor of whipsawed plank,—a residence fit for one of the foremost teachers in the Church, an Elder after the Order of Melchisedek, an eloquent preacher and one true to the blessed Gods. At one end of the cabin, a small room was partitioned off and a bunk built in it. A chair and a water-basin on a block ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... should ha' hated to see all the crew walk on the plank as they call it, specially Dick Halyard, but I thinks I should ha' come it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... was made up of a locomotive, the De Witt Clinton, its tender, and five or six passenger coaches—which were, indeed, nothing but the bodies of stage coaches placed upon trucks. The first two of these coaches were set aside for distinguished visitors; the others were surmounted with seats of plank to accommodate as many as possible of the great throng of persons who were anxious to participate in the trip. Inside and out the coaches were crowded; every seat was full. What followed the starting of the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... was the smallest of houses, with queer Gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham), and a Gothic door, almost too small to get in at.... On Sundays he ran up a real flag.... The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two deep.... At nine o'clock every night "the gun fired," the gun being mounted in a separate fortress made of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... A plank walk from the hotel to the station elevates the foot-passenger in Corry above the mud of the streets, through whose depths flounders a crowd of wagons laden with crude oil for the refinery, with refined oil for the freight-trains, with carboys ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... your brother George will bring you all into trouble. It is little I can do to avert this calamity, but years of economy have enabled me to save 280l. (which is concealed beneath the floor in my room, under the third plank from the south window, about ten inches from the wall). I wish you, niece Anna, to hold this money in trust, as a profound secret, and to be used only in case of an emergency such as I have hinted. In ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... movement for an instant, and then faced back toward the forge, where the three workmen had stood. The last one was just disappearing through an opening in the wall, and, with a bound the boy was after him. A heavy plank door snapped ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... our grips and started for the gangway, when the strains of a band on the dock became audible, and we could see a group of French officers waiting to meet the Russian delegates who were slowly filing down the gang plank. The band slowly played the Russian national anthem, and we all dropped our baggage and stood to attention. As the strains died away we again seized our grips and began to push forward when the band struck up the Marseillaise and again ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... clipper sleds fastened together so that the rear one runs in the tracks of the front one. Then came a board placed lengthwise across the two and the double-runner was fairly begun. Later this board came to be a long plank that would hold a dozen. With that the capacity of the common clipper sled was reached. But they did not stop at that at Ponkapoag. They built two big sleds specially, shod them with proper steel runners at the local blacksmith shop, and ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... heavy smell of rank, boiling coffee in the air. Bacon was sizzling over the fire and a huge corn pone was baking on a plank before the coals. Mag did not propose to starve her guests, that ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... the occasion; and after purchasing these articles, he walked down the road leading to the Portland steamboat wharf. He had gone but a short distance before he overtook Captain Chinks, who was reading the letter he just received as he walked along the plank sidewalk. ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers, blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, and knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber and plank for the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for the blacksmith; his cattle killed for his own consumption and for sale, supplied skins for the tanners, curriers, and shoemakers; and his sheep gave wool and his fields produced cotton and flax for the weavers and spinners, and his own orchards ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... off in the same way as the other boat. I, being the youngest, had the pleasure of standing at the bow, and getting wet through. We went off well, though the seas were high. Some of them lifted us up, and sliding from under us, seemed to let us drop through the air like a flat plank upon the body of the water. In a few minutes we were in the low, regular swell, and pulled for a light, which, as we came up, we found had been run up ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... which he had brought her was such a general confluence, and the river was proportionately voluminous and deep. Across it was a narrow foot-bridge; but now the autumn flood had washed the handrail away, leaving the bare plank only, which, lying a few inches above the speeding current, formed a giddy pathway for even steady heads; and Tess had noticed from the window of the house in the day-time young men walking across ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... our own vessel, which was terribly battered; clapped our black flag on the Frenchman's, and set off merrily, with a brisk wind in our favour. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear old ship. A storm came on, a plank struck; several of us escaped in a boat; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two nights we suffered horribly; but at last we ran ashore near a French seaport. Our sorry plight moved ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dishes containing the remains of he last family meal. One or two three-legged stools made up the rest of the furniture, except for the trunk in the corner and the bed. This bed was Tom Linkhorn's pride, which he used to boast about to his friends, for he was a tolerable carpenter. It was made of plank stuck between the logs of the wall, and supported at the other end by crotched sticks. By way of a curtain top a hickory post had been sunk in the floor and bent over the bed, the end being fixed in the log wall. Tom meant to have a fine skin curtain ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... slaving away at that book of his!" said one of the men. "Much good that'll do him! As if one could saw a plank or hammer a rivet any better for ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... named Wemmick, as secret as he and a deal queerer. Wemmick lived in a little wooden cottage that he called The Castle, and which had its top cut out like a fort. It had a ditch all around it with a plank drawbridge. When he got home from the office in the evening he pulled up the drawbridge and ran up a flag on a flagstaff planted there. And exactly at nine every night he fired off a brass cannon that he kept in a latticework fortress ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... A plank was put over the side and with the eunuch ahead and the old woman behind Arlee was taken ashore and mounted on one of the camels the boys had brought, with the old woman behind, gripping her about the waist. The eunuch, on another camel, held the bridle rope, and led them at a terrific ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... at the back of the house and near it was the tool shed. Then there was a carriage house, and a plank ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... immediately above could only be entered by a plank propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of the country. Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Daniel's business had been transacted, a ship came into port. The passengers crowded the gang plank and the wharf. Several boys and young men pressed forward and offered to show the travellers the way ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... an' pie, it's likely they must have in the house er they think they're not eatin'." Murphy talked as he worked, putting the tools in a pile ready to be carried to camp, picking up pieces of rope and wire and boards and nails, and laying a plank roof over the windlass and weighting it with rocks. Mike had gone pacing to camp, swinging his arms and talking to himself also, though his talk was less humanly kind under the monotonous grumble. Mike was gobbling under his breath, something about law-suing ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... head is still strictly adhered to among the Chinooks. The people bearing the name of Flat Heads are very numerous, but very few among them actually practice the custom. Among the Chinooks it is almost universal. The process is thus effected: The child is placed on a thick plank, to which it is lashed with thongs to a position from which it can not escape, and the back of the head supported by a sort of pillow made of moss or rabbit-skins, with an inclined piece resting on the forehead of the child. This is every day drawn down a little ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... is evaporated, that is, the rate of drying, depends on the size and shape of the piece and on the structure of the wood. An inch board dries more than four times as fast as a four-inch plank, and more than twenty times as fast as a ten-inch timber. White pine dries faster than oak. A very moist piece of pine or oak will, during one hour, lose more than four times as much water per square inch from the cross-section, but only ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... be as thick as a three-inch plank, through which nothin' a'most can pass either from books or anything else, you mustn't think we've bin all built on the same lines. I likes a good book myself, an', though I don't care about prayin' or psalm-singin', seein' I don't understand 'em, I say 'good luck' to the mission smacks, ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... a knot-hole in the plank walls of the house. In spite of Anne Marie's rheumatism they would never stop it up, needing it, they said, for light and air. Jeanne Marie slipped her feet out of her sabots and crept easily toward it, smiling, and saying "Coton-Mai!" ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... U meen bizness i can put U on to whar your dorter is but its goin to kost U sum muney if U evr want to see her agin theres a big gang got her hid where U woodnt find hur in a 100 yerze but if U will plank down 10000 dolers sheze yourze if U dont you'll nevr see hur no moar if sheze wurth thet much to U U can git her by not blabin to nobudy that yer got this leter an plankin down the rino taint no use fer U to try an git the police on our trax fer one uv the gang is alwayz ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... to his station. When I saw him he was on the muelle, surrounded by an army of bluffing cargadores. About twelve of them had managed to get a finger upon his lone carpet-bag while it was being carried down the gang-plank, and each and all of them wanted to get paid for the job. He was in a horrible pickle; couldn't speak a word of Spanish or Visayan. And the first thing he said when I had extricated him, thanks to my vituperative knowledge of these sweet tongues, was: 'If them niggahs, seh, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... a description of the land which was worked under its steward to its own profit, and the land which was held by tenants, and the names of those tenants and of their wives and of their children, and the exact services and rents, down to a plank and an egg, which they had to do for their land. We know today the name of almost every man, woman, and child who was living on those little fiscs in the time of Charlemagne, and a great ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... there. The Miners' Home was unquestionably unique as regards architectural details, having been constructed by sections, in accordance with the rapid development of the camp, and enjoyed the further distinction—there being only two others equally stylish in town—of being built of sawn plank, although, greatly to the regret of its unfortunate occupants, lack of seasoning had resulted in wide cracks in both walls and stairway. These were numerous, and occasionally proved perilous pitfalls to unwary travellers through the ill-lighted ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... down to the shore and in the little harbor of the Castello dell' Ovo passed over the plank that served as a bridge between the dock and a little schooner with a greenish hull. Ferragut, who had taken in its exterior with a single glance, ran his eye over its deck.... "Eighty tons." Then ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... character. But it does not follow that certain religious beliefs and ordinances are in themselves just, because they thus touch the great heroic master-chord of the human soul. To wear sackcloth and sleep on a plank may have been of use to many souls, as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature; but, still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly one which calls to no such outward ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... could empty a second magazine a fortunate bullet ripped a plank out and the sampan filled and went down, amidst a shrill yell of execration from the back of the cliff. The two Dyaks yet living endeavored to swim ashore, half a mile through shark-invested reefs. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... space to the advocacy of Responsible Government, which for many years constituted the main plank in the Liberal platform. He pointed out the injustice and absurdity of the existing state of things, where the people were beguiled with a mockery of representation in Parliament without having any voice ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso |
