"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night," went on Newt joyously. "From a rafter in Ed Higgins's livery stable. With a clothesline. Kicked a step-ladder out from under himself. Why, even Uncle Dad Simms has heard about it. Ed found him when he went out to—wait a second! I'm goin' your way. What's the ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... and portal, And all is hush'd and still; O'er ruin'd wall and rafter I clamber as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... awakened by their treacherous onset, and seeing their swords hanging over his head, called out the name of his stepmother, (Kraka), to which long ago he had been bidden to appeal when in peril, and he found a speedy help in his need. For his shield, which hung aloft from the rafter, instantly fell and covered his unarmed body, and, as if on purpose, covered it from impalement by the cutthroats. He did not fail to make use of his luck, but, snatching his sword, lopped off both feet of the nearest of them. Gunwar, with equal energy, ran a spear through the other: she had ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a few seconds behind the man, but those few seconds were fateful. As the pilot stepped into the saloon he beheld a sight that was enough to freeze him motionless. The big kerosene lamps, swung from the rafter braces above, shed over the interior a peculiar sickly radiance, yellowed now by reason of the pale morning light outside. Beneath one of the lamps a tableau was set. Sam Kirby and the man he had struck the night before were facing each ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... keep them straight at any touch and turn of difficulty. If she has any other function, it is to be patroness of the arts and of all intellectual development. The Minerva of the Odyssey may indeed sit on a rafter like a swallow and hold up her aegis to strike panic into the suitors while Ulysses kills them; but she is a perfect lady, and would no more knock Mars and Venus down one after the other than she would stand ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... after, almost before any hen had time to look round or think, behold! mice were squeaking in every corner, and there were holes behind every wainscot, plank, and rafter. ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... of Diaz, while they themselves were supposed to be more of the same brand. Evidently they had been expected by Ramon's subterranean river, and in taking the boat they must have forestalled the real Con Divver, Jim Hickey, and Ted Rafter. Jack caught himself wondering how long it would take the latter to ride over the mountains ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... the true requisites of cheap and substantial building. Light sticks, uninjured by cutting mortices or tenons, a close basket-like manner of construction, short bearings, a continuous support for each piece of timber from foundation to rafter, and embracing and taking advantage of the practical fact, that the tensile and compressible strength of pine lumber is equal to one-fifth of that of wrought iron, constitute improvements ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... of Murom, at their invitation, turned to go into the palace, little anticipating the danger that awaited him, for the eldest daughter had drawn up by a chain a huge rafter to let fall and slay Iliya as he rode through the gate. But Iliya perceived her design, and slew her with his lance. Thereupon he rode on toward Kiev, and going straight to the palace, prayed to God and saluted the nobles. And the Prince of Kiev said to Iliya, ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... they came to Ben Strudel ("the devouring-gulf"), near Grinon Castle, in Austria. Here the voice of a spirit clamored aloud, "Ho! ho! Bishop Bruno, whither art thou travelling? But go thy ways, bishop Bruno, for thou shalt travel with me tonight." At night, while feasting with the emperor, a rafter fell on his head and killed him. Southey has a ballad called Bishop Bruno, but it deviates from the original legend given by Heywood in several particulars: It makes bishop Bruno hear the voice first on his way to ...
— 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.
... him, a rafter here and there was gaping open, and fiery monsters, with blood-red eyes, were peeping down at him and puffing clouds of blue smoke through the interstices. Thousands and thousands of voices were bickering and chattering with each other, the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... passions will rock thee 25 As the storms rock the ravens on high; Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home 30 Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... once, and his hungry master disposed himself to satisfy the healthiest appetite in France, when suddenly a shadow fell across the table. A man had come to stand beside it, his body screening the light of one of the lamps that hung from a rafter ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... to have lighted it merely for the pleasure of burning furniture and pictures, that had been left behind by the Communal waggoners. They had already begun to pull down the right side of the house; a pickaxe was leaning against a loosened stone; the roof had fallen in, and a rafter was sticking out of one of the windows. The fire rose higher and higher; would it not be better that the flames should reach the house and consume it in an hour or two, than to see it being gradually pulled down, stone by stone, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... all night in a ruined town With a rafter for a bed? With horses stamping underneath In the morning when they are fed? Have you heard the crump-crump whistle? Do you know the dud shell's grunt? Have you played rat in a dugout?— Then you have surely ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes.' They scarce had spoke when fair and soft The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climb'd slowly after; The chimney widen'd and grew higher. Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist; Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost Lost ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... communistic friends, they disbelieve entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted from ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the stems, a few inches from the apex, and as they are borne in abundance and last three or four days each, a large specimen makes a very attractive display for several weeks in the summer. The plant at Kew, a large one, is grafted on the stem of C. Macdonaldiae, which is trained along a rafter, so that the stems of C. Mallisoni ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven, The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven! Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bring To the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king! Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord is kindled amain, And strange is the Lord of Division, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... Resolved thus, without delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of thieves, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... thirty-seconds, sixteenths, twelfths, tenths, and eighths of an inch, also a brace-measure, an eight-square measure, and the Essex board-measure. Another style, instead of an Essex board-measure, and the hundredths graduation has a rafter-table. The side upon which the name of the maker is stamped, is called the "face," and the reverse ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond widout fallin' ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... she ain't much of a ranch now," admitted Jack Harpe. "But everything has to have a beginning. I'm figuring on a right smart growth for the Rafter H within the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... they met; assumed an injured air, when some of her neighbors passed her; and said, "I told you so," a dozen times a day to her husband, who got so many curtain lectures that he took to sleeping on the highest rafter, pretending that ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the barn, The sick wretch hears, like a far-away horn, As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y." All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark assassin, A wandering murmur, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... work, nor did all the work begin in the still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In many an old garret ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said that Glover's voice would carry in a mountain storm from side to side of the Medicine Bend yard. That night the very last rafter in the Wickiup gables rang with his cry. He called only once, for O'Neill came bounding up the long stairs ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... thought to fight. But shortly for to speaken of this thing, With Creon, which that was of Thebes king, He fought, and slew him manly as a knight In plain bataille, and put his folk to flight: And by assault he won the city after, And rent adown both wall, and spar, and rafter; And to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their husbands that were slain, To do obsequies, as was then ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that shone into the loft revealed, to the boy's surprise and wonder, a coil of rope. He examined this, and found a stout clasp-hook at one end. The other end of the rope was made fast to a rafter. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... after breakfast, my party immediately started, taking the trail I had found the day previous. Examining the ice, we went to the westward, until we came to the almost solid new ice, and we took a chance. The ice commenced to rafter under us, but we got across safely with our loads, and started east again, for two miles; when we found ourselves on an island of ice completely surrounded by the heavy raftered ice. Here we halted and mended sledges and in the course of an hour the whole party had caught up. ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... persecuting his own son was the crowning blow for cruel Ralph Nickleby. When he heard this he locked himself up alone in his great house and never was seen alive again. His body was found in the garret where he had hanged himself to a rafter. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... panes the grassy court was starr'd; The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after; And thro' the ragged roof the sky shone, barr'd With naked beam and rafter. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the jigging brass laughter From the yellow tost swing-boats swooping rafter to rafter. Then the blare of all organs, then the roar of all throats, And they shot past the side shows, the ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... rope, sergeant," said one of the men at this point, "and there's a convenient rafter. A lad that won't speak ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... success against the revolutionists, was furnished by their despised and hated enemies in the United States. Every sheet of armor plate, every corrugated zinc roof, every roll of barbed wire, every plank, beam, rafter and girder, even the nails that hold the planks together, the forts themselves, shipped in sections, which are numbered in readiness for setting up, the ties for the military railroad which clings to the trocha from one sea to the other—all of these have been supplied ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... rafters (80 inches long each before shaping) and a line joining their lower ends. Then draw a line bisecting the ridge angle. With this template as guide the rafters can be quickly cut to shape. Another method is to cut one rafter out very carefully, making a notch for half the width of the ridge, and to use it as a pattern for the rest. In any case the chalked lines will prove useful in the next operation of pairing the rafters and uniting them by a tie just ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... struggled upward. And now his right-hand was nearly on a level with the floor of the bridge, and he was stretching out his left hand to grasp one of the rails, when his foot suddenly slipping on a sloping rafter, he lost his hold altogether, and, to the horror of his companions, fell with a heavy thud on ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... the nor'west, too, was another floe. 'Twas there, in the mist, an' 'twas comin' down with the wind. It cotched the first of the gale; 'twas free t' move, too. 'Twould overhaul us soon enough. Ever see the ice rafter, sir? No? Well, 'tis no swift collison. 'Tis horrible an' slow. No shock at all: jus' slow pressure. The big pans rear. They break—an' tumble back. Fields—acres big—slip one atop o' the other. Hummocks ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... wrist. But he found the match-box, struck a light, carefully examined the floor as far as he could see it, jumped out of bed at one bound, and took refuge in the other room. There he looked in every corner, and along every rafter for the other snake, for he knew that at this season snakes are often found in pairs, but he could not see the mate of the one he had left ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the candle down from the rafter, and she went swiftly to the tiny window. She raised her hand, once, then pinched out the flame ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the turkey in a gunny-sack which hung from a kitchen rafter. Should he leave it in the sack, hang it from a rafter of their veranda, out of reach of a chance bobcat or coyote, or—it would be much more of a real surprise to hang the big bird in front of their door in all his feathered glory. The ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... had grown stout, there was the same look. There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... hipodromo. Rack, hay fojnujo. Racket (noise) bruego. Racy sprita. Radiant radiluma. Radiate radii—igi. Radical (grammar) radiko. Radical Radikalo. Radicalism radikalismo. Radish, horse rafano. Radish rafaneto. Radius radio. Raffle ludloto. Raft floso. Rafter tegmenttrabo. Rag cxifono. Rag-picker cxifonisto. Ragamuffin bubo. Rage, to be in a koleregi. Rage kolerego. Ragged cxifona. Ragout spicajxo. Rail (to scoff) moki. Rail off bari. Rail (railway) relo. Raillery mokado. Railroad ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... by the bird's song ye may learn the nest," Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then, Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, The dusky-rafter'd many-cobweb'd hall, He found an ancient dame in dim brocade; And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,[2] That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, Her daughter. In a moment thought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... all things that it was customary for a viking to do. To win fame, to gain wealth, to plunder, and to slay—these were the passions that ruled him. The ocean was his only home. He derided the comforts of a warm fireside and scorned the man who should sleep under a sooty rafter or die on a bed of straw. To give up his last breath amid the clamour of battle was his one unalterable ambition; for only those who died thus, besprinkled with blood, could ever hope to win favour of the pagan gods, or to enter the sacred halls of Valhalla. In the spirit of his times he ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... himself, his father sat immersed in woe, his head in his hands. What calamity, he cried, has fallen on my house, and how have I sinned, O Lord, that punishment should fall upon me, and that my own son should be chosen to mete out my punishment? My house is riven from rafter to foundation stone. But, Father, at most—It seemed useless to plead. He stood apart; his grandmother stood silent and grave, not understanding fully, and Joseph foresaw that he could not count upon her to side with him against his father. But if his father ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Mount Lebanon. Living on the equatorial line and on the meridian so accurately measured by the highest mathematics of France and Spain, Quitonians must needs leave out every right angle or straight line in the walls, and every square beam and rafter. Except on the grand road from Quito to Ambato, commenced by President Moreno, there is not a wheel-barrow to be seen; paving-stones, lime, brick, and dirt, are usually carried on human backs. Saint Crispin never had the fortitude to do penance in the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... which, in another moment, vanished. The world had fled away from these two wanderers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground. It seemed uninhabited. There were ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you have never been in so strong a position to make a stand. We have got all the larger contracts out of the way. Foreseeing what was likely to come, I have lately fought shy of taking new ones. Here are heavy orders from Rafter & Son, the Builders' Company, and others. We must decline ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... complexion, my small, weak-looking blue eyes, that every exposure to the sun and wind would redden, and my long, lean hands and arms, that offended my sense of beauty constantly, as I dwelt on their hopelessly angular turns. I had one beauty; so my little paper-framed glass, that rested on the rough rafter that edged the sloping roof of my garret, told me, whenever I took it down to gaze in it, which, but for that beauty, would have been but seldom. It was a finely cut and firmly set mouth and chin. There was, and I felt it, beauty and character ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... ivory. Amram's house is called the "Two Seas"—"Baherein." It is one hundred feet in length, and twenty feet high, with walls four feet thick, neatly plastered over with mud mortar. The great door is a marvel of carving-work for Unyanyembe artisans. Each rafter within is also carved with fine designs. Before the front of the house is a young plantation of pomegranate trees, which flourish here as if they were indigenous to the soil. A shadoof, such as may be seen on the Nile, serves to draw water to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... their way for fully half a mile, and there, in a deep curve down in the valley, in a turgid stream still running fast, lay in wild confusion, baulk and beam, rafter and mass of swept-down stone, the relics of ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, for the corn and the chaff flew about together, and a cloud of dust arose over the ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... heeded now— (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)— A child may read the moody brow Of yon black mountain lone. With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, And storms are formed behind the storm we feel: The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... the evening, we arrived at Mme. Flamand's, we found her in the doorway, her brown face smiling, her white cap and apron in full relief under the glare of an old-fashioned ship's light, which hung from a rafter of the porch. Baeader inscribed my name in a much-thumbed, ink—stained register, which looked like a neglected ship's log, and then added his own. This, by the by, Baeader never neglected. Neither did he neglect a certain little ceremony always ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of light were caught and sent dancing. Along the wall on the left-hand side presses were overcharged with dusty tea-services. On the right were square grey windows, under which the convex sides of salad-bowls sparkled in the sun; and from rafter to rafter, in garlands and clusters like grapes, hung gilded mugs bearing devices suitable for children, and down the middle of the floor a terrace was ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those whose manner of life he entirely shares; but he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... stockade gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ends and tie beams. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... appointed Town-Major of some brick-dust, a rafter and two empty bully-beef tins—all of which in combination bore the name of a village. He assumed his duties with a bland Pickwickian zest, which did good to the heart. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... But in all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there standing, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Of such a princely present proud, His hopes of fortune sprang full rife; When, slap, the savage made him feel His talons, newly arm'd with steel, By perching on his nasal member, As if it had been senseless timber. Outshriek'd the wight; but peals of laughter, Which threaten'd ceiling, roof, and rafter, From courtier, page, and monarch broke: Who had not laugh'd at such a joke? From me, so prone am I to such a sin, An empire had not held me in. I dare not say, that, had the pope been there, He would have join'd the laugh sonorous; But sad the king, I hold, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all of whom were assembled, were outnumbered by the prodigious ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the roof again: cut away one of those long dry ropes which in the garrets of many houses stretch from one rafter to another, tied to one end of it the weight of an old clock lying idle in the attic, and returned ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... song and laughter. The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly: Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... guiding his oxen in the direction of the cry. He kept Josey upon the sled, so as not to exhaust his strength. He rode himself, too, as much as he could; but he was obliged to jump off very frequently, to keep the oxen in a right direction. He stopped occasionally to put down a rafter, placing it so that its length should be in the line of his road, and taking care to sink one end into the snow, so as to leave the other out as far as possible, to prevent its being all buried up before they should return. Every now and then, too, ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... woods, to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... stretching himself still more, yawning and passing a hand through his black hair. "Hang them, they might as well shut up their guests in the smoke-house with the bacons and hams! I feel as cured as a side of pig, ready to be hung to a dirty rafter." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... you despise her and those others for the predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... little boy wouldn't say his prayers,— So when he went to bed at night, away up stairs, His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubbyhole, an press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout! An' the Gobble-uns git you Ef ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... them all. Presently he soared off into the sky, and left them lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my dream till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. 'Be of good courage,' he said, 'daughter of Icarius; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer an ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... thill^, column, pilaster; pediment, pedicle; pedestal; plinth, shank, leg, socle^, zocle^; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis^, trave^, corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; cantilever, modillion^; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, mainstay. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... would take good care to stop up the road. As to Parsley, it was, moreover, impossible for her to escape, as she had laid a spell upon her, so that unless she had in her hand the three gall-nuts which were in a rafter in the kitchen it would be labour lost to attempt to ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... and nearly empty barn. A lantern is hung by a rope that lifts the bales of straw, to a long ladder leaning against a rafter. This gives all the light there is, save for a slender track of moonlight, slanting in from the end, where the two great doors are not quite closed. On a rude bench in front of a few remaining, stacked, square-cut bundles of last year's hay, sits TIBBY JARLAND, a bit of apple ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lighted by a fist-sized chunk of lumicon, hung in a net bag of thongs from the rafter over the table. It was old—cast off by some rich Southron as past its best brilliance, it had been old when he had bought it from Yorn Nazvik the Trader, and that had been years ago. Now its light was as dim and yellow as firelight. He'd have to replace it soon, but this trip he ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... had placed his funds in a bank at Leavenworth; but his visitors refused to believe his statement to that effect. They maltreated the farmer and his wife, and ended by hanging the farmer's son to a rafter and leaving him for dead. In departing, they took away all the horses ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... which they now entered extended across the entire east end of the building, and had windows upon three sides. These were heavily curtained. The apartment was lighted by a small cresset hanging from a rafter near the center ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on fire in oxygen,' as Professor Faraday said, 'every iron bar, or rafter, or pillar, every nail and iron tool, and the fire-place itself; all the zinc and copper roofs, and leaden coverings, and gutters, and pipes, would consume and burn, increasing ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... phoebe; pewit, phoebe, they contentedly but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter, and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let off superfluous high spirits or to catch a morsel on the wing, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Eyzies is dominated by the ruins of a castle of the tenth or eleventh century, that was restored in the fifteenth, when a graceful turret was added. The keep is planted on a precipitous rock, and rises to the overhanging roof of chalk that is pierced with rafter- holes for the reception of roof beams, and with openings only to be reached by ladders leading to caves that served as storehouses. At the junction of the Beune with the Vezere, a little further down is a rock standing by itself, shaped like a gigantic fungus. This is called the Roche de la Peine, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... priest! I'm going to die!' The Banshee wind took up the cry: 'Give him a priest, he's going to die!' The old house seemed to rock with laughter, Shaking its sides and every rafter. ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... He turned with hot impatience from the consideration of the usages of society, and fell to building with large and strong timbers the edifice of his future. He built on while the dusk gathered, and he built while Joab helped him to dress, and he was yet busy with beam and rafter when at eight o'clock, with some help from the negro, he descended the stairs and crossed the hall to the parlour door. How was he dressed? He was dressed in a high-collared coat of blue cloth with eagle buttons, in cloth breeches and silk stockings, in shoes with silver buckles, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... rafter and ceiling Long ago were to ashes burned, And stair and passage and chapel ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... opening about eighteen inches across; carry it up two feet high, drawing it in a little, then lay a long stone across the front, after which build up {63} the flue behind the corner braces right up to the roof. The top corner-piece carries the rafter that may be cut off to let the flue out. Build the chimney up outside as high as the highest part ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... next evening. In the meanwhile, he took another and more exact survey of his already half-ruined house; and the result was so melancholy that he felt he must stake life itself for the chance of bettering his fortune. There was not a beam, a board, a rafter, a lath, in the whole house that was not ready, upon the slightest assault, to go to wreck. Of glass windows the rumour was long since extinct. All stood open; and had Klaus been a student of meteorology, a better observatory than his loopholed, tumble-down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... threshing, grinding, baking.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks his neck; he would laugh heartily at our folly in building; but it does not follow that men are better without houses. No, Sir, (holding ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... cometh after, Month of all the Loves (and mine); Month of mock and cuckoo-laughter,— May the jocund cometh after. Beaks are gay on roof and rafter; Luckless lovers peak ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... acuteness! It was wonderful. I had a seat in the gallery. The grand old hall was a thrilling scene—the dense throng, the upturned faces, the counsel, the judges, the officers of court, and then the windows, the statues, the echo of history that made every stone and rafter live—Oh, Nan, Nan, listen to me! If I live I'll sit on the bench there some day—I ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... informed on safe authority that the Indian Bottle-bird protects his nest at night by sticking several of these glow-beetles around the entrance by means of clay; and only a few days back an intimate friend of my own was watching three rats on a roof-rafter of his bungalow when a glow-fly lodged very close to them; the rats immediately scampered off."[115] These observations are confirmed by Captain Briant, as reported by Professor R. Dubois.[116] In tropical regions luminous insects give out a brilliant light, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... clung by his elbows. "No good," he whispered hoarsely. "The nearest rafter is a foot below. Let me have the coat. It will be safer than trusting to your hands. I might ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail of ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... was no suspicion aroused by the absence of windows. The entrance to these little attics was through small doors that were a part of the partition, and, as usual in country houses, the clothesline stretched across the end from rafter to rafter held enough old carpets and useless stuff to silence any question of secret doors. Several closets also were provided with false backs, where the surplus linen of the household found a ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallow which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated the experiment ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... square in the ceiling, which was fringed with the heads of the ostlers and stable boys who were looking down from the harness-room above. A carriage- lamp was slung in each corner, and a very large stable-lantern hung from a rafter in the centre. A coil of rope had been brought in, and under the direction of Jackson four men had been stationed ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bill," says Jack to the next blank, "I got it from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the influence of a presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against something which fell over on the cobble-stones that paved the byre. He stopped and picked it up. It was the byre lantern. The wick was still glowing ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett |
