"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plumb forget, wuz pore white trash an' he wuz meaner dan de meanest nigger. Anyhow I wuz too little ter do much wuck so I played a heap an' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... that is, as architects build, by plumb line and level. Trinculo picks up the word line and makes a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tied up on the Two-Bar and muzzled, for you're plumb mad, McNair! It's just that kind of firebrand talk that's hurting our cause. The farmers have got enough enemies now, God knows, without making a lot of new ones. Doggone your hide, Mac, what're you trying to do?—Stir up another rebellion like that ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a moment a thought had all but swept her off her feet; yet she realized instantly that this thought was futile. Warrington did not love her; and there was nothing to do but to follow out the course she had planned. She had come to him that night with a single purpose in mind: to plumb the very heart of this man who was an enigma to every woman he met. She had plumbed it. Warrington loved nobody but Warrington and pleasure. Oh, he was capable of the grand passion, she very well knew, but the woman to arouse it had ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... tell you I shook hands with this boy an' was plumb glad to meet him?" demanded Laddy, with considerable heat. Manifestly he had been affronted. "Tom Beldin', he's a gentleman, an' he could lick you in—in half a second. How ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... National Bank, and in its place a chaste Greek Temple of a building looks rather contemptuously down its classic columns upon the farmer's wagons drawn up along the curb. If Fanny Brandeis' sense of proportion had not been out of plumb she might have realized that, to Winnebago, the new First National Bank building was as significant and epochal as had been the Woolworth Building to ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o' ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... 'Well,' says she, 'Huldy Peters is well enough at her trade. I never denied that, though I do say I never did believe in her way o' makin' button-holes; and I must say, if 'twas the dearest friend I hed, that I thought Huldy tryin' to fit Mis' Kit-tridge's plumb-colored silk was a clear piece o' presumption; the silk was jist spiled, so 'twarn't fit to come into the meetin'-house. I must say, Huldy's a gal that's always too ventersome about takin' 'spon-sibilities ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... spirits winged their way down into those dark and intuitive depths of her mind she had never found time to plumb. She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had never imagined a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... sees it in motion, and sees its resistless might in the passive wrecks that follow the uproar. And this from a piece of marble, cold, immovable, lifeless! Surely there is that in man, which the senses cannot reach, nor the plumb of the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico. But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... our drag-rope as it trailed along the ground when we were quite near the earth, and held on with his teeth though we pulled him along over the stubble on his back, and never let go until we had jerked him plumb over ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... caught all the tones they gave out. He gathered knowledge like a true and indefatigable political bee. This walking Bayle dictionary did not act, however, like that famous lexicon; he did not report all opinions without drawing his own conclusions; he had the talent of a fly which drops plumb upon the best bit of meat in the middle of a kitchen. In this way he came to be regarded as an indispensable helper to statesmen. A belief in his capacity had taken such deep root in all minds that the ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... to the right from his house, going west. It's an unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to come sometime, Bound to come, I suppose. 'Tis a poor thing For us, to fall plumb in the chance of it; But, now or another time, 'twas bound to be.— I have been thinking back. When I was a lad I was delighted with my life: there seemed Naught but things to enjoy. Say we were bathing: There'ld be the cool smell of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... "Plumb nervousness," said Buck. "Same as if I was pulling up to the start with fifty thousand on the nag. I want to ask your advice, A. A. Just a little private matter. Oh, nothing serious. Nothing like that, you know. I just thought maybe you'd—Gosh, I never saw it snow ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Flint Kreeger an' the rest. I tell yuh, I'm dead sick of being spied on, an' plotted against, an' never knowin' when yuh may get a knife in the back, or stop a bullet. I hate to leave Bud, but he's so plumb set on—" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... bounds of truth. Chappaz Nicolai, whose name the maire had written in my note-book, that there might be no mistake, appeared to be of that peculiar mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be taken in; otherwise—maire or no maire—not. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... expell'd. Hapless mariners are they, Who beguil'd (as seamen say), Deeming him some rock or island, Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, Anchor in his scaly rind; Soon the difference they find; Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; Does to ruthless seas ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... one o' them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an' thar eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET—they're plumb out o' reach o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't blame her jes' now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched Rufe and hung him, and she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done that, her old daddy wouldn't be in thar on his back nigh to death. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... That willing lad of yours has plumb knocked the answer out of my noodle. Maybe you're thinking of some one else, Buck." Dingwell looked up at him with an innocent, ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Hope are encouraging. Our Christian Endeavor Society has a large membership, and is a power for good. But while we rejoice over these places that have these helps we think of the hundreds of counties along this mountain range that have no such helps. Senator Plumb has stated that the assessment in Alabama for pistols, guns and dirks is four times that on farming implements, and Kentucky's record of crime is far worse than Alabama's. Who of us can say that he is innocent ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... of the wall the ladder that led to one of these houses was 60 feet long, but it was not quite upright, and the tree was growing at some little distance from the bottom of the rock, and the distance by a plumb line from the floor of the verandah to the ground on the lower side of the tree was 94 feet. The floor of the house, which is made first, was 23 feet long and about 11 broad; a narrow verandah is left ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ejaculated, mournfully; "bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity. Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd git ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... I give her the name, myself," he observed, at last. "Seein' I just got her a week ago last Saturday. I ASKED Casper Hoyt what under the canopy possessed him to give her a name like that. Said his father named her. Well, I thought his father must be plumb foolish, or something, but I didn't like to say so to HIM. Seems too bad to waste them gilt letters, or I'd a-had another name on her 'fore this. I wanted to use as many of them letters as I could, an' I thought of callin' her for my ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... the Asquam Utility Emporium. And have you remarked the chairs? Mrs. Hopkins sent those, too. They were in her corn-crib,—on the rafters,—and she said if we didn't see convenient to bring 'em back, never mind, 'cause she was plumb tired of clutterin' 'em round from ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... But none of these tricks will answer with t'other, who misses the whipping off the end of a gasket, as soon as any first luff of us all. And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... you eat your dinner that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... takin' a candy sucker from a baby. 'Curly' let go of that 'six' like he was plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over the ear just oncet. Then he turned on the room; and right there my heart went out to him. He took in the line up at ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... 1745-6. For one thing, almost without exception, the representative peers were dependent on governmental subsidies and this dependence increased during the course of the eighteenth century (see J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England [London: Penguin, 1973], p. 180; and Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne [London: Macmillan, 1967], p. 393). The practice of electing a representative peerage for Scotland was discontinued ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... to his associates as a man of splendid and many-sided vitality. A college classmate, Dr. John Denison, graphically describes him, "A sort of cataclysm of health, like other cyclones from the South seas"; what the Tennessee mountaineers call "plumb survigrous"; an islander, with the high courage and jollity of the tar; "a kind of mental as well as physical amphibiousness." Extraordinary in his training and versatility; able to "manage a boat in a storm, teach a school, edit a newspaper, assist in carrying ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... his way, scraping alongside the big barges which delivered coal from the distant mines to the docks along the river front. At last he found an opening and pushed through. A moment later they were riding under the stern of a broad, cargoless barge, plumb up against the water-lapped piles ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... increases during the fall, the direct line of flight becomes more pronounced until at last they assume a vertical direction free from all wobbling, so that when they alight upon the target they are quite plumb. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... crash, but it was the spirit of my team that thrilled me. Next to that the work of my new find absorbed me. I gloated over his easy, deceiving swing. I rose out of my seat when he threw that straight fast ball, swift as a bullet, true as a plumb line. And when those hard-hitting, sure bunting Bisons chopped in vain at the wonderful drop, I choked back a wild yell. For Rube meant the world to ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... shall the soul thereby Unto the All draw nigh? Shall it avail to plumb the mystic deeps Of flowery beauty, scale the icy steeps Of perilous thought, thy hidden Face to find, Or tread the starry paths to the utmost verge of the sky? Nay, groping dull and blind Within the sheltering dimness of thy wings— Shade that their splendour flings Athwart Eternity— We, out ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... just plumb ruined. He said he'd snatch Ikey bald-headed, and do a lot of other things to him, if he didn't walk right out into State street and bring back that Little Brass God. Holy Moses! You ought to have seen how scared Little ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... Aleck Pop's comment. "I was finkin' dat rascal was plumb dead, suah. And Dan, too! Suah yo' didn't ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... chuckled Jerry. "But, if she was scar't, she warn't plumb stunned in her tracks—no, sir! She gave a leap for the door and she swung it shut right against Mr. B'ar's nose. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... foots it up with wonderful speed and certainty, and comes down again in the same manner, bringing his gourd full of liquor on his arm. Among their fruits are many kinds of plumbs; one like a wheaten plumb is wholesome and savoury; likewise a black one, as large as a horse plumb, which is much esteemed, and has an aromatic flavour. A kind called mansamilbas, resembling a wheaten plumb, is very dangerous, as is likewise the sap ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... car coming along about that time. The skipper yelled to me to ease off the larboard stay. Now, I might know something about mince pie, but a larboard stay is not my long and hasty. Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through the ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... when once the wheels are loosed, How nimbly, with what swift activity. I think, 'tis strange that men should ever sleep, There are so many things to think upon, So many deeds, so many thoughts to weigh, To pierce, and plumb them to the silent depth. Yet in that thought I do rebuke myself, Too little given to probe the inner heart, But rather wont, with the luxurious eye, To catch from life it's outer loveliness, Such things ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... the oak, the plumb-tree and the holme, The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come, Whose mooting on the trees does make to grow Rots-curing ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... dead man and his heirs was certainly much older than any form of Testament or phase of Testamentary jurisprudence. This indeed is the proper moment for suggesting a doubt which will press on us with greater force the further we plumb the depths of this subject,—whether wills would ever have come into being at all if it had not been for these remarkable ideas connected with universal succession. Testamentary law is the application of a principle which may be explained on a variety of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... trigonometry may calculate the heights and distances of objects, the latitude and longitude of a place, the amount any body is lightened by the centrifugal force due to rotation, the deviation of a plumb-line from a true ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... in the United States in 1837-1839 and in England in 1864-1866, large houses and powerful institutions of credit had maintained a whole scaffolding of speculation which was already out of plumb, but still able to stand upright through the general effect of the parts which connected them, and in this unstable equilibrium it sufficed for a single one to detach itself in order to overthrow the whole edifice at a juncture at which it was ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... savages to other islands in sight, and sent some armed men on shore, with orders to keep pretty near us, and to run close along shore in the boats. But they returned without success. This island we called Plumb Island, from its bearing an austere, astringent kind of fruit, resembling plumbs, but not ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... matters of knowledge, and then to study the art and science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All we can do is to define clearly the true idea of the Teachers' ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... to the deep creek bank. A yard or two farther and the brown horse and his burden must have gone over the terrible drop, as straight as a plumb-line, on to the awful rocks below. We could see where the brown had torn up the turf as he struck all four hoofs deep into it at once. Indeed, he had been newly shod, a freak of Jim's about a bet with a travelling blacksmith. Then ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Bibb come out and told us we was free. That is how I came to know it. He came out there on the farm and said, 'Well, you all free as I am. You can stay here if you want to or you can go somewhere else.' We stayed. Mama stayed there on the farm plumb till she come to town. I don't know how many years. I was there in town and so she come onto town later. Moved in with the people she was with. They gave up their place. I was nineteen years old when I left the country. My mother gave me her consent,—to marry then, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... white folks! Here I is done drapped plumb off'n my subject; but a old man's mind will jes' run waa'ry at times. Me and Joe, Alex's son, went to see de officer 'bout gitting Joe's pa buried. He 'lowed dat Alex's body was riddled wid bullets; so we took him and put his bones ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... twenty-four stanzas to it; an' while these interlopin' selectmen sets thar lookin' owley an' sagacious, I'd wallop loose with the twenty-four verses, stampin' up and down, an' accompanyin' said recitations with sech a multitood of reckless gestures, it comes plenty clost to backin' everybody plumb outen the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... of humanity had a spell for those who heard him speak. There was no subject, moral, intellectual, or philosophic too remote or too profound for him to measure it at a moment's notice, with the ever-ready, fallacious plumb-line of his brilliant vanity. He would talk for hours: be eloquent, convincing, almost noble; and afterwards accompany his audience to the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... their errors are all forgiven. It is their best part only that remains unrealised and unread, their purest aspirations which we follow with leaden wings, their deepest thoughts that we still strive to plumb with the short line of our imagination or experience, and to weigh ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not by ill chance This strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud Instinct with fire and nitre hurried him As many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... where we were was plumb full of live things—striped chipmunks, and pine squirrels, and woodpecker families. Fitzpatrick started in to take chipmunk pictures—and you ought to see how he can manage a camera with one hand. He holds it between his ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... in a low, musical murmur. "Hit's plumb dead beautiful!" Her eyes were glowing with ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... scraped cleaner and cleaner, till the last polishes him as smooth as a yearling baby. Having thus reached the lower end of the table, there are a quantity of hooks fitted to strong wooden arms, which revolve round a stout pillar, and which, in describing the circle, plumb the lower end of the table. On these piggy is hooked, and the operation of cutting open and cleansing is performed—at the rate of three a minute—by operators steeped in blood, and standing in an ocean ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... projected towards the captain, quite out of line, while the barrel rested on his own shoulder. Still, as his arms were extended to the utmost, the county Leitrim-man fancied he was performing much better than common. Jamie had correct notions of the perpendicular, from having used the plumb-bob so much, though even he made the trifling mistake of presenting arms with the lock outwards. As for the Yankees, they were all tolerably exact, in everything but time, and the line; bringing their pieces down, one after another, much as ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... straighten the axle, while you see what ails that cussed motor. Good golly! We'll be here all night at this rate. And if we keep on hopping over this field like a lame crow, we'll be plumb outa gas. For a mechanic that can make a motor, Bland, you sure ain't ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... when the workers are returning home; they drifted along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here, quite different from that of the "Ark." The houses were new and orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed ways, and one could see at a glance what ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... all right, all right," murmured Cousin Egbert in a sort of ecstasy, as we drew up at the Floud home. "And yet one of them guys back there called him a typical Britisher. You bet I shut him up quick—saying a thing like that about a plumb stranger. I'd 'a' mixed it with him right there except I thought it was better to have things nice and not start something the minute ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... here, Allen. If you think you can marry Morton Bassett's daughter with that kind of a scandal in your pocket, I tell you you're mad—you've plumb gone insane! Great God, boy, you don't know the meaning of the words you use. You handle that thing like a child with a loaded pistol. Don't you see what that would mean—to Marian, to Blackford, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... practically destroyed; the others were not much injured, but no longer plumb, as they undoubtedly were when constructed. The east wall was in best condition; the outer face was nearly vertical; the top of the highest stone remaining in it was 28 inches above the bottom of the lowest. The general appearance of the ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... next fortnight, poor Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed this extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with an eighty-fathom ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... of you and me, As the two gifts they want, Say Classic lore and Cookery Are things for which they pant; Believe me, my dear Heptarchy, They plumb ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... sullenly. "Mebbe young Dave Steele as come back from ther' with a hole in his head that left him plumb crazy ever since till he died, 'cos o' some racket he had wi' Jake—mebbe that's out of a dime fiction. Say, you git right to it, an' kep on sousin' whisky, Slum Ranks. You ken do that—you can't tell me 'bout ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... natur' a bit, before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o' Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I looks up, he's plumb absent. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... front wheel and prodigious feats of balancing, squeezing out of the machine's momentum the last possible fraction of an inch. There was a magnificent distance record when, on one single occasion only, he had been deposited plumb in line with his own gate; and there was a divertingly lamentable shortage record, touched on more than one occasion, when he had come to ground plumb in line with the gate of Mr. Fargus, his neighbour on ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... more ways than one, for I could not leave the ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute before closing it ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Willis as he turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you're plumb crazy. But all the same—Well, it's got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you're meat just the same, an', by the great Geewhillikins! you'll be dead meat, an' digested meat at that, before you're an hour older, my son, if I know anything o' wolves." Later, as he proceeded to thaw ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... seemed to have a sense of humour. I felt sure that he, at least, was plumb straight. 'Sure, doc,' I said, 'I'm sorry about the tree, and I guess the new bulbs will be on me. But perhaps you'd like to know what I was doing in your garden?' 'I think the facts do call for an explanation,' he replied. 'Well, to begin ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... you would you just as lief drive slower," he said with a grin to the chauffeur as he descended to the safety of the sidewalk. "I ain't awful hardy, an' I sure was plumb scared." ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... for some time he continued: "The door jamb is built in vertically; that is sure. A string, or piece of thread will make a plumb-bob; here it is: now let us see; according to the plumb line the boat is at an angle of 33 degrees, as nearly as our imperfect device indicates. There, now this line A shows the top of the boat and B the base of the conning tower. A line C, ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... but few men. Firm laid across the torrent's course, Their work withstands its mighty force, So damming it from shore to shore, That, gliding smoothly o'er, In even sheets the waters pour. Their work, as it proceeds, they grade and bevel, Or bring it up to plumb or level; First lay their logs, and then with mortar smear, As if directed by an engineer. Each labours for the public good; The old command, the youthful brood Cut down, and shape, and place the wood. Compared with theirs, e'en Plato's model state ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... round-up had started; so Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen Ben Butler. To my discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked, "Why, there's nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, "That's all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me out! he's lying on me!" Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of some sort necessarily take place? What would support the present frail foundations of the city buildings, which seem to be now sustained by hydraulic pressure? Even as it is, no heavy structure can be found in the limits of the capital which is not more or less out of plumb, in emulation of the leaning tower of Pisa. The thick walls of the Iturbide Hotel are so full of cracks and crevices, caused by the settling here and there of its insecure foundation, as to cause anxiety and constant remark among its ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... I'll be darned if the changeablest one ain't the kind to hold a feller longest. But it's h—l. I was married onct. Not any more for mine! A pal I had used to say thet whiskey riled him, thet rattlesnake pisen het up his blood some, but it took a woman to make him plumb bad. D—n if it ain't so. When there's a woman around there's somethin' allus ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... said the man with the wagon. "I thought I knew these here woods pretty well, but I'm blamed if I know where we are now. Everything looks turned around; I'd swear now, that that was the west over there, yet there is the sun a-risin' as big as life. I'm plumb addled!" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... melt lead or pewter. But he succeeded at last, melting down all his spare change to make the small, shining bullet. This was rammed down his gun, a deliberate aim taken, and Dick announced that it had struck the mark plumb in the ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... different!" She nodded her lovely head in firm conviction. "It's heaps different and I'm goin' to know more about such things as clo'es. I ain't plumb poverty poor, like lots o' folks, here in th' mountings. I got land down in th' valley I get rent from—fifty dollars, every year! I'm goin' to ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... he pleaded, "you've drubbed him enough. Shake me if you ain't through yet. You'll have him plumb addled! Really, we were just in for some fun. We never dreamed the kids would scare so easy. That's only vegetable dye on Rosslyn's head. He thought we had scalped him, but we didn't mean ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ship. These were removed, and a heavy trap door, upon which the foot of the flagstaff rested, was its only support. A massive bolt alone held the trap in place. Will and the Professor were by the ice shaft, watching the plumb-line. At a signal, the Doctor struck the bolt a heavy blow with a sledge, the trap fell, and the beautiful mast shot like a flash of lightning down through the frosty atmosphere, entered the ice hole precisely in the center, and sank to the depth of 35 feet into the snow, which, added ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... surfaces as well as the bearing due to taper in piles, and lastly the resistance offered by binding, enter into the determination of so-called skin friction formulas. The essential condition of sinking a caisson is keeping it plumb; and binding, which is another way of writing increased bearing value, will oftentimes be fatal ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had never ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... frenzy, I popped off the crackers and dropped my cigar into Vesuvius. I tell you he was worth four and eightpence, and the man was right when he said there wasn't his match in London. I doubt if there was his match anywhere for being plumb- full of red balls and green balls and blue balls and crimson stars and fizzlegigs and whole torrents of tiny crackers and chase-me- quicks, and when you about thought he was never going to stop he shot up a silver spray and ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... Above all, beware of trusting to the supposed verticals or horizontals in built work, especially in tracery. A thing may be theoretically and intentionally at a certain angle, but actually at quite a different one. If level is important, take it yourself with spirit-level and plumb-line. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... tellin' about the next couple of hours. 'Cordin' to my reckonin' they was years and we'd ought to have sailed plumb through the broadside of the Cape, and be makin' a quick run for Africy. But at last we got into smoother water, and then, right acrost our bows, showed up a white strip. The fog had pretty well blowed clear and I could ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... founder, date, &c. Being furnished with a trowel and mortar by the master mason, Mr. John Holme, he spread it; another massy stone was then let down upon the first, and adjusted to its position, Mr. Wordsworth handling the rule, plumb-line, and mallet, and patting the stone he retired. The Rev. R.P. Graves next offered up the following prayer for the welfare and success of the undertaking: "The foundation-stone of the new parochial school-house of Bowness being now laid, it remains that, as your minister, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... gruffly. "You Mr. Krootzer? Wot? Yes? Well, this kid comes to the station-house and hollers that she's stole a ring and somebody that ain't had anything to do with it is gettin' pinched fer stealin' it. The kid acts plumb bug-house, but Sarge he says fer me to come around and see wot's up. Wot is she, dippy? Did she re'ly steal a di'mond? This don't look like wot you'd call a likely place to find ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... make that start for home and mother and supper right now; or are we going to stay here till she gets plumb dark?" asked Fritz, impatiently, moving his feet out of the way every time anyone approached too closely, as though possessed by a fear lest he be tempted ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... according to the rules of perfection; but yet it is chance alone made it. Among so many pieces of marble there was one that formed itself of its own accord in this manner; the rains and winds have loosened it from the mountains; a violent storm has thrown it plumb upright on this pedestal, which had prepared itself to support it in this place. It is a perfect Apollo, like that of Belvedere; a Venus that equals that of the Medicis; an Hercules, like that of Farnese. You would think, it is true, that this figure walks, lives, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... of flesh than he was. He was walkin' along up Fifth Avenue with Florrie Spencer—I'll always call her Florrie Spencer I don't care how many times she marries—and everybody in the street turned right plumb round to look at 'em. She's prettier than she ever was, ain't she? And such a fit as her dress was! One of them trailin' black things that fit as tight as wax over the hips and flares out all round the feet. She was holdin' ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... from the quantity of water shipped over all, the carpenter disengaged the rope-yarn from the rule, drew another from the junk lying on the deck, which the seamen were working up, and then carefully proceeded to plumb the well. He hauled it up, and, looking at it for some moments aghast, exclaimed, 'Seven feet water ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... mass Called "work" must sentence pass Things done, that took the eye and had the price.... But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... painters drew back, leaving the old man absorbed in ecstasy, and tried to see if the light, falling plumb upon the canvas at which he pointed, had neutralized all effects. They examined the picture, moving from right to left, standing directly before it, bending, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... Yet should not ceaseless hunt about the room To catch each straggling pin to make a plumb: Too oft Economy's an iron vice, That squeezes even the little guts of mice, That peep with fearful eyes, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... fifteen feet high and fifteen inches thick. The dimensions on the ground were 12 x 22 feet outside. It had been of two or three stories, and exhibited considerable skill on the part of the builders, the corners being plumb and square. Under the brink of the cliff was a sort of gallery formed by the erosion of a soft shale between heavy sandstone beds, forming a floor and roof about eight or ten feet wide, separated by six or seven feet in vertical height. A wall had been carried along ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... ascertained the deflection of plumb lines from the vertical, by the action of mountains. The attraction of a projecting mass of known bulk and density, with one whose bulk alone is known, is thus determined, and hence the density of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... once hard at work with charcoal and board and plumb-line, a house-maid posing for her with a broom. He congratulated himself that his little sermon on the advantages of occupation as a cure for discontent had borne fruit so speedy and ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... feel that the Senate was becoming less and less desirable each year, and began to lose interest in it. He did not like the rough-and-tumble methods of debate of a number of Western Senators who were coming to take a more prominent place in the Senate. On one occasion Senator Plumb, of Kansas, attacked Senator Edmunds most violently, and ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... and Mrs. Chase. Nor did he notice individual peculiarities except that something, excitement or a sudden jostle or something, had pushed Aurora's rippling black locks to one side, with the result that the part which divided the ripples, instead of descending plumb-line fashion from the crown of the head to a point directly in the center of the forehead, now had a diagonal twist and ended over the left eye. The effect was rather astonishing, as if the upper section of the lady's head ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... declamatory kind of Lady Macbeth who had stepped into the role flatly on a No. 7 last, rather than from a Juliette who had fattened into the part; that congenial stateliness now thrown completely out of plumb by a violent limp, which, resulting from a railway accident, threw out her entire left leg ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the finer material to a height of nearly twenty-four feet, which is quite enough to account for Xenophon's statement. As for his dimensions, they should not be taken too literally. In their rapid and anxious march the Greek commanders had no time to wield the plumb-line or the measuring-chain; they must have trusted mainly to their eyes in arriving at a notion of the true size of the buildings by which their attention was attracted. The tower at Nimroud must have been about 150 feet square, measured along its plinth; the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon. "They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat—had had it from a kitten. Brought it up ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... find out," said the captain. "At least we can't sink, for we're right on shore," and as he spoke the fog blew away for a moment, showing a bleak shore of rocks with hemlock trees a little way up from the beach. "Yes, sir, we ran plumb on the rocks!" muttered Captain Craig, as he stood up and tried to peer through the fog that ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't have built a ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... hosses. Shore 'nough, one of 'em was still hitched to the fence, an' t'other was gone. We stood around a minute or two examinin' the hoss an' then pa says let's go up the road aways an' see if we c'n see anything. An' by gosh, we hadn't gone more'n fifty feet afore we come plumb on a man layin' in the middle of the road. Pa shook him an' he didn't let out a sound. He was warm but deader'n a tombstone. I wuz fer leavin' him there till we c'd git the coroner, but pa says no. We'd carry him down to our porch, an' lay him there, so's he'd be out o' danger. Ma an' the kids ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... That subtle ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and by an unknown ford Stands, and for a moment yearns and shrinks, Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is, So softly murmurous, So silvered by the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... evidently endeavoring to shore up the walls of the falling temple. He sees the cracks; he knows that the building is out of plumb; he feels that the foundation is insecure. Lies can take the place of stones only so long as they are thoroughly believed. Mr. Beecher is trying to do something to harmonize superstition and science. He is reading between the lines. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... hitherto escaped her notice. She was at last convinced that she had to contend with a man, a man who had dealt with both men and women. How deep was he? Could honors, such as she could give, and money plumb the depths?... He was an American. She smiled the smile ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... eagerly, "Just you take us all 'round the Flats, mister, so's folks can see. An'—an', mind yer, toot that old horn good an' loud, so as everybody'll know we're a-comin'." As the automobile moved away he beamed with proud satisfaction. "Some swells we are—heh? Skinny an' Chuck an' the gang'll be plumb crazy when they see us. Some ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Waldemar watched Average Jones place the ladder against the outside of the pole, mount, nail up the sign, drop a plumb-line, improvised from a key and a length of string, to the ground, set a careful knot in the string ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... eyes were vitriolic with disgust. "I sabe what you are hintin' at when you gas of morals—which I'm a heap acquainted with because I ain't got none to speak of. But I'm plumb flabbergasted when you go to connectin' a battleship with anything that's got a whole lot to do with morals. Accordin' to my schoolin', a monitor is a thing which blows the ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the appearance of an infinite number of rocks cut into conical forms, and built one upon another to a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a mountain; and the tout ensemble compose an enormous mass of the Lundus Helmonti, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in circumference, and what the Spaniards call two leagues in height. As it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... retain its footing; yet there he stands, firm and secure as the rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the fore legs rigid and straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind legs pose easily in attendance upon them. "The cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic comment; and we can recognize the truth of the observation in this image. Perfectly at home and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, the cimmaron curves its great neck and turns its head upward, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Buck, whose mildness of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. You'll do this job, and you'll do it my way. Maybe you got ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand |
