"Sledge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with tragic emphasis—"Verse which nobody reads—verse which nobody wants—verse which whenever it struggles into publication, my erudite friend here, Mr. Longford, batters into pulp with a sledge-hammer review of half-a-dozen lines in the heavier magazines. Verse, my dear Miss Vancourt!—verse written to please myself, though its results do not feed myself. But what matter! I am happy! This village of St. Rest, for example, has exercised ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... following morning, at twelve punctually, Arthur was informed that the conveyance had arrived to fetch him. He went down, and was quite appalled at its magnificence. It was sledge-like in form, built to hold four, and mounted on wooden runners that glided over the round pebbles with which the Madeira streets are paved, with scarcely a sound, and as smoothly as though they ran on ice. The chariot, as Arthur always called it afterwards, was built of beautiful woods, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... gently down the stairs. In a corner, at the foot of the staircase, lay sundry matters, a few faggots, and a cleaver. He caught up the last. "Aha," he muttered; "and there's the sledge-hammer somewhere for Walters." Leaning himself against the door, he then applied his eye to a chink which admitted a dim view of the room within, lighted fitfully by ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... driving on their way to dinner with a friend in the most festive state of mind. And they beheld a pretty woman in a hired sledge; she overtakes them, looks round at them, and, so they fancy anyway, nods to them and laughs. They, of course, follow her. They gallop at full speed. To their amazement, the fair one alights at ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Island, the land of which looked illusively near as they approached it. So strong was this deception that the engines were eased when the ship was still nearly two miles away from the cliffs. Later on, in their winter quarters and during their sledge journeys, they got to know how easy it was to be deluded as regards distance, and what very false appearances distant objects could assume. This matter is of interest, because it shows that Polar explorers must be exceedingly cautious in believing the evidence of their own ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... run depicts Dr. Clawbonny in a single phrase. During the ethnographical studies of the worthy doctor, Shandon, according to his instructions, was occupied in procuring means of transport to cross the ice. He had to pay 4 pounds for a sledge and six dogs, and even then he had great difficulty in persuading the natives to part with them. Shandon wanted also to engage Hans Christian, the clever dog-driver, who made one of the party of Captain McClintock's expedition; ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... a hill and watch a laborer striking with his sledge upon the distant railway. I hear the sound of the blow while I see his tool raised above his head. I account for this by saying that it has taken some time for the sound-waves to reach my ear, and I regard my sensation as arising only when this has ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... in coming. It did not come until the next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bang than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to be a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had been called William Rufus. His hat was tied over his ears with a tape from his mother's apron, and he wore a long pair of his father's knitted stockings which covered his boots and came ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... bottom, which was about a foot thick, or more, to be taken out by the day shift. They drilled a hole about two feet horizontally to blast out this bench. King would sit and hold the drill between his feet, while Quirk would strike with a heavy sledge. When the hole was loaded they tramped down the charge very hard so as to be sure it would not blow out, but lift the whole bench. One day when they were loading a hole, King told Quirk to come down pretty heavy on the tamping, so as to make all sure, and after a few ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... is the same with the means of locomotion. The peasant driving in a cart, or a sledge, must be a very ill-tempered man when he will not give a pedestrian a lift; and there is both room for this and a possibility of doing it. But the richer the equipage, the farther is a man from all possibility of giving a seat to any person ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... "the traitor is in my toils. Is it just luck, I wonder, or has fate taken a hand in the game? How the Kaiser would frown, if he knew what I am doing to-night; and how Daddy would laugh! But—let's see!—perhaps this is just a wedge, and I'll need a sledge-hammer to crack ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... still used as anvils and sledge-hammers by many of the African smiths, when considered from their point of view, show sounder sense than if they were burdened with the great weights we use. They are unacquainted with the process of case-hardening, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... milk-and-water and a bun! What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what spelling- book moralities, what adaptations of the orator's insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding! If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that drove him at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby who played with them, he could ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... quickly, and a howl of "No smoking in Milan—fuori!—down with tobacco-smokers!" beset the carriage. He tossed half-a-dozen cigars on the pavement derisively. They were scrambled for, as when a pack of wolves are diverted by a garment dropped from the flying sledge, but the unluckier hands came after his heels in fuller howl. He noticed the singular appearance of the streets. Bands of the scum of the population hung at various points: from time to time a shout was raised at a distance, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... use his longer reach. He forgot everything but the determination to make ruins of that handsome face before he went out. He knocked loose one tooth and bleared an eye, but it was not enough. Finally Cheever got to him with a sledge-hammer smash in the groin. It hurled Dyckman against and along the big table, just as he put home one magnificent, majestic, mellifluous swinge with all his body in it. It planted an ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... runners, like a sledge?" asked the Major. "That's the only way it could travel through this snow. Or perhaps you'll hire a snowplow to go ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... shore, the preceding day, a quantity of wood, which I thought would suit to make a sledge, to convey our casks and heavy stores from Tent House to Falcon's Nest. At dawn of day I woke Ernest, whose inclination to indolence I wished to overcome, and leaving the rest asleep, we descended, and harnessing the ass to a strong ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... and southeast. To-day I drove out there with eight dogs; the driving goes capitally now; some of the others followed on snow-shoes. Still northerly wind. This is slow work; but anyhow we are having clear, bright weather. Yes, it is all very well—we snow-shoe, sledge, read both for instruction and amusement, write, take observations, play cards, chat, smoke, play chess, eat and drink; but all the same it is an execrable life in the long-run, this—at least, so it seems to me at times. When I look at the picture ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... them. A detachment of thirty men were then ordered to advance on the street into which the Winchester pike leads, and burn the houses in which the Federals had ensconced themselves. With torch, axe and sledge hammer these men under McCormick and Cunningham forced their way into the heart of the town. As they reached the "Old Hotel," which was occupied by a body of the Federals, and used also as a hospital, a flag of truce was displayed. McCormick, Cunningham, and six others entered, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... the Comptroller's, and with him by coach to White Hall; In our way meeting Venner and Pritchard upon a sledge, who with two more Fifth Monarchy men were hanged to-day, and the two first drawn and quartered. [Thomas Venner, a cooper, and preacher to a conventicle in Coleman-street. He was a violent enthusiast and leader in ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... darted about whilst under close-reefed topsails we struggled against the gale, rounding the stormy southern cape; when great blue seas, "green glimmering towards the summit," towered on every side, or struck our gallant ship like a sledge, making it shiver with the blow, and sending a driving cloud of spray from stem to stern. Then the petrels were in their element; then they darted about—above, below, now here, now there—all life and motion; as if their chief pleasure was, like Ariel, "to ride on the curled cloud" and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... quietly resuming their walk, when out from the abode of the miners poured a tumultuous crowd of men, women, and children, who surrounded the little party in a menacing manner, while their leader, a stalwart fellow, called Brennan, seized John by the arm, and, shaking a sledge-hammer fist in his face, inquired what he meant by coming to "spy round an honest man's house, and make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... It seems my time has come! What have you done with me? How the little bones crunched, and how it whimpered! My own mother! What have you done with me? [Steps aside and sits down on the sledge]. ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... travel Philadelphia would gain trade, and had to cross the Delaware on a scow, or lay up in some inn over night. New Jerseymen, I hear, pray every morning for their daily stranger; Philadelphia has much sinned to entrap its daily customer. But Maillefert—by which name I designate the inevitable sledge which spares the grand and pulverizes the little—has built a road around the Quaker City. It is a very curious road, going by two hypothenuses of about fifteen miles to make a base of three or four, so ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... afflicted. It is His nature to exalt the humble, to comfort the sorrowing, to heal the broken-hearted, to justify the sinners, and to save the condemned. The fatuous idea that a person can be holy by himself denies God the pleasure of saving sinners. God must therefore first take the sledge-hammer of the Law in His fists and smash the beast of self-righteousness and its brood of self-confidence, self-wisdom, self-righteousness, and self-help. When the conscience has been thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its message of a Savior who came ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... out on Lovell's grave countenance, and his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... see the Valdez once again, as on that day I met her first driving in state, with her eight mules and her retinue of gentlemen, by the side of yellow Mancanares! Oh, for another drive with Hegenheim, in the gilded sledge, over the Saxon snow! False as Schuvaloff was, 'twas better to be jilted by her than to be adored by any other woman. I can't think of any one of them without tenderness. I have ringlets of all their hair in my poor little museum ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the liveries, and the sledge-covers and the harness there, and they expect things kept clean! Perhaps the porter's lodge ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... and no melodramatic author could have contrived a more startling, a more shocking denouement. Burton, notes in hand, stood on the platform, facing the great audience, his brain heavy with arguments and bursting with sesquipedalian and sledge-hammer words to pulverize his exasperating opponent. Mrs. Burton, who had dressed with unusual care, occupied a seat on the platform. "From the time I went in to the time I came out," says one who was present, "I could do nothing but admire her. I was dazed by her beauty." The Council and other ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... The frank, fearless, sledge-hammer talk of the lawyer made a deep impression on the boy, as a long letter written next day to his father and mother clearly shows. He went to the house of the printer, where he did not receive the warm welcome he had expected. Deborah ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... Sudds read signs other than those of which the professor made notes. Jack saw the old hunter watching the sledge dogs with a puzzled frown wrinkling ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... that opened into the garden, they easily forced an entrance. With drawn revolvers they leaped inside, and began to prowl about the place. Finally in a wardrobe on an upper floor they discovered a servant hiding. As they dragged him out at first he showed fight, but one blow from Andrieff's sledge-like fist beat him into submission, and in another moment they had ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Laudabat quippe ferientes, hortabaturque ut auderent." When one of our theatres let down an iron curtain upon the stage as a means of insulating the audience from any fire amongst the scenery, and sent men to prove the strength of this curtain by playing upon it with sledge-hammers in the sight and hearing of the public, who would not have laughed at the hollowness of the mummery, if the blows had been gentle, considerate, and forbearing? A "make-believe" blow would have implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... from afar, he would be barred out from the splendour of life, he would wander along the outside edge of things, forlorn and lonely. His popularity, his brilliance, his joy of living, had all been crushed to atoms with that single, sledge-hammer blow of Fate. Better—ten thousand times better—to have killed him outright! For this thing ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... time appointed I went with a horse and sledge to the wood, but was much surprised to find that my master was not at the spot where he said he would be;—a surprise which was not a little increased by perceiving, from two or three felled sticks ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... red crept into Nancy Ellen's cheeks. She had meant to be diplomatic, but diplomacy never worked well with Kate. As Nancy Ellen often said, Kate understood a sledge-hammer better. Nancy Ellen used the hammer. Her face flushed, her arms closed tightly. "Give me this ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... suspect the aged knave Had been of all her servitors the chief Had he but known a fig's reluctant leaf Is more than e'er she wore on land or wave. No, David served not Naked Truth when he Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race; Nor did he hit the nail upon the head: For reason shows that it could never be, And the facts contradict him to his face. Men are not liars all, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... up there, Lub?" asked Ethan, who had also it seemed been watching the other. "This isn't the time for old Santa Claus to come down with his pack of toys. His reindeer need snow for their sledge, you know." ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... Farwell called at Lonely Farm. Followed by his two lean, ugly sledge dogs he made his way to the barn where Nathaniel was doing the evening's work. While the men talked, the dogs, behind the building, fought silently and ferociously. Farwell had fed one before he left home and a bitter jealousy lay between the animals. It was ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... been the fashion of their race for a thousand years. Among all the story-tellers there is none like Urda, for she is the daughter and the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter of storytellers. It is given to her to talk, as it is given to John Thorlaksson to sing—he who sings so as his sledge flies over the snow at night, that the people come out in the bitter air from their doors to listen, and the dogs put up their noses and howl, not ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... ride with me, if you will stand on the runners of my sledge," answered the man, and turned into a side street where ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... not dull. Word by word he had drunk in the bitter truth that this big, dark, gruff, ill-mannered man was not to be put down with impunity. Call it bullying—any hard name you would, there was no evading the fact that it was power in sledge hammer strokes. "The professor" was just wise enough to see that there lay before him the ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... school, the winter nights in presiding at Conway's inn, the summer evenings strolling up the banks of the Inny to play the flute, learning French from the Irish priests, or winning a prize for throwing a sledge-hammer at the fair. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... sinking too deep in it. Of these sledges indeed there are many in our own country, for 'tis just such that are used in winter for carrying hay and straw when there have been heavy rains and the country is deep in mire. On such a sledge then they lay a bear-skin on which the courier sits, and the sledge is drawn by six of those big dogs that I spoke of. The dogs have no driver, but go straight for the next post-house, drawing the sledge famously over ice and mire. The keeper of the post-house however ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... rapid travel over the snow in the Arctic regions by means of dog sleds, the extremely limited transportation by dog travail (or sledge) in the Sioux province, and the use of the llama as a beast of burden throughout the Peruvian highlands, land travel was on foot, and land transportation on the backs of men and women. One of the most interesting topics of study is the trails along which the seasonal and annual migrations ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... height, such as no fire would easily burn through, and around each of them a kind of bower of faggots open to the front. Moreover, to the posts hung new wagon chains, and near by stood the village blacksmith and his apprentice, who carried a hand anvil and a sledge hammer for the cold welding of ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... was when winter came, and the big white snowflakes once more fell from a gray sky, that Gerda felt loneliest, for Kay now drew on his thick gloves, slung his little sledge across his back, and marched off alone. "I am going to ride in the square," he shouted in her ear as he passed. But Gerda could not answer; she could only think of the winters that had gone, when she and Kay always sat side by side in that same little sledge. How happy they had been! ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge, without meeting some of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the student leave his books, and wield an iron sledge, and the muscles of his arm will increase in size and firmness. On the other hand, let the blacksmith assume the student's vocation, and the muscles of his arm will become soft and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... was not until Saturday morning that the truth dawned upon him, and struck him like a blow from a sledge-hammer. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... weak still after his illness, but he could help a little with the unpacking. It took very little, though, to make him out of breath and giddy, and there was a sledge-hammer continually thumping somewhere in the back of his head. Suppose—suppose, after all, the change here does you no good? You are at the last stage. You've managed to borrow the money to keep you all here for a year. And then? Your wife and children? Hush!—better not think ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the moment the rich man blunders into any department of the world's labour, his wealth shows at a disadvantage. And gold pens and silver inkpots and jade paper-weights are as incongruous as ivory-handled sledge-hammers and rose-wood jack-planes, when you come to ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... converging columns, is almost always fatal to the assailants, for a force in the centre, by the virtue of its position, has nearly double the strength of one on the circumference. Yet his is the first mistake made by every tyro in generalship. A strong blow can be given by a sledge- hammer, but if we divide it into twenty small hammers, the blows will necessarily be scattering and uncertain. Let us suppose an army holds the junction of six roads. It seems theoretically possible that different ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... sleep. A clock that chimes the quarters, or a watch that in the silence ticks with sledge-hammer beats, has invoked many a malediction. Traffic and other intermittent noises are very trying, as the victim waits for them to recur. Townsmen who seek rural quiet have got so used to town clatter, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... faith, remembering two eight-inch shells which a few minutes before had burst in our immediate neighborhood, cutting off twigs of trees and one branch with a scatter of steel as sharp as knives and as heavy as sledge-hammers. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... sledge and hammer lie reclined; My bellows too have lost their wind; My fire extinct, my forge decay'd, And in the dust my vice is laid. My coal is spent, my iron's gone; My nails are drove, my ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... people should go about complaining of them as they do, both in literature and in life. My experience has been almost always favorable. In New York, in Saratoga, in Canada, all through the mountain district, we found ample and adequate entertainment for man and beast. Trollope brings his sledge-hammer down unequivocally. Of course there will be certain viands not cooked precisely according to one's favorite method, and at these prolonged dining-tables you miss the home-feeling of quiet and seclusion; but I should like to know if one does not travel ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Kid in a voice ringing like a sledge on solid steel, "fo' the murdah of the ownah of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is devoted ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... a short 'bull-dog' with a horn tip, whose massive, square-jawed bowl and ferocious short-curved stem breathe forth aggressiveness, and, jamming it full of 'plug cut,' he writes one of those satirical, sledge-hammer roasts which make him feared by ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... familiar from the window; all was unfamiliar on the landing and the stairs. No one had been down; the blinds were all drawn; a clock ticked like a sledge-hammer in the hall. Rachel ran downstairs like a mouse, and almost into the arms of her husband, whom she met coming out of the dining-room with a loaded tray. Another would have dropped it; with Steel there was not so ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... found in the king's forests, and in the neighbours' as well. He did not stop to cut the branches or the tops off, but he left them lying there as if a hurricane had blown them down. He put a proper load on the sledge and put all the horses to it, but they could not even move it; so he took the horses by the heads to give the sledge a start, but he pulled so hard that the horses' heads came off. He then turned the horses out of the shafts and drew ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Why, of course! And I promised to be round by ten—ill-mannered cur that I am!" He sank wearily into his chair. "Truth is," he added in a changed tone, "I couldn't get a wink of sleep till near dawn; and then it came down on me like a sledge-hammer. You know the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the sledge to the tavern, and stayed there drinking until the tavern-keeper said they had had all that the cart and the sledge were worth. Then the tavern-keeper took them and threw them out of doors into the night, and they picked themselves up ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... were hardly out of his mouth when Nikolai sprang upon him with both fists like a pair of sledge-hammers, and for a few blissful seconds hammered out every trace of difference in birth and position. Now he should feel "both ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... the letter. I mastered its contents. I still have it," continued Master Freake, every sentence, like the crash of a sledge-hammer, making these craven bystanders shake at the knees. "It is deposited, sealed up again, with a sure friend, who has instructions, unless I claim it in person on or before the last day of this year, to deliver it in person to the King. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... body was laid on a flat boulder in the shelter of a shallow cave in the cliffside nearby—later they would bring a sledge to fetch him into the village. For a long time little Snjolfur stood by old Snjolfur and stroked his white hair; he murmured something as he did it, but no one heard what he said. But he did not cry and he showed no dismay. The ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... stirred me to a rejoinder. I, of course, was in no way equal to meeting him, with his vast erudition and scholarly accomplishments. I could only give what the Bible critic would regard as valueless, a sledge-hammer expression of faith. Somebody took the speech down. Doctor John Hall, the famous preacher and for many years pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, told me that the Bible and the church societies ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... excellent in that sledge-hammer sort of way, a superb example of the direct. Stamboul is very indirect. Perhaps it has colored my taste. It's full of mystery. Bach isn't mysterious, except now and then—in rare bits of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... they felt their footing sag beneath them, heard a shivering creak on every side, and, before they could do more than cry out warningly, saw water rising about the sled-runners. The momentum of the heavy sledge, together with the speed of the racing dogs, forced them out upon the treacherous ice before they could check their speed. Emerson shouted, the dogs leaped, but with a crash the ice gave way, and for a moment the water closed ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... my scientific sledge-hammer," panted Kennedy, as he worked the little lever backward and forward more quickly—"a hydraulic ram. There is no swinging of axes or wielding of crowbars necessary in breaking down an obstruction like this, nowadays. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... you supplied me with fitted me well. I could not take it off without having recourse to a sledge-hammer." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... after being put in place; the last touches of the chisel and the brush will then be given to it; but the heaviest part of the work is already done and the block has lost much of its original size and weight. Firmly packed with timber, the bull lies upon its side upon a sledge which is curved in front like a boat, or a modern sleigh. Two cables are fastened to its prow and two to its stern. The engineer is again seated upon the stone and claps his hands to give the time, but now he is accompanied by three soldiers who ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... point home to the apprehension of juries and of the people which was rarely equalled. He was a man of few words and infrequent speech, without wit or imagination. He thoroughly mastered the subjects with which he dealt. When he had inserted his wedge, he drove it home with a few sledge-hammer blows. It was commonly impossible for anybody to extract it. It was only the great weight of his authority, and the importance of the matters with which he dealt, which kept him from seeming exceedingly tedious. I remember thinking when I heard him make a speech in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... winter sky and a naked forest; a furious bear endeavors to overthrow a tall and athletic man; a young woman, wearing a hunting costume, comes behind the bear and places a pistol at each ear. In the distance is a horse running away and dragging behind him an upset sledge. I asked an explanation of the picture, and was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... head. Behind the penitents came a man of vast stature and proportions. He was naked, with the exception of cloth drawers at the left side of which hung a large knife in a sheath, and he bore on his right shoulder a heavy iron sledge-hammer. This man was the executioner. He had, moreover, sandals bound on his feet by cords. Behind the executioner came, in the order in which they were to die, first Peppino and then Andrea. Each was accompanied by two priests. Neither had his eyes bandaged. Peppino walked with a firm ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... away. The decoys were to be rearranged, heading to windward, and at least half an hour was consumed in making these necessary arrangements. At last all was ready, the guns, ammunition, &c., were placed in the boat, and La Salle had gone to hide the sledge behind a neighboring hummock, when, turning his head, he saw Davies and Creamer running hastily to their box, and Kennedy frantically gesticulating and calling on ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the watch into the mortar and grasped a sledge hammer from the table. There was a sound of violent smashing, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... when we try to bring it into harmony with the tyrannical generalities which are bequeathed from grandfather to grandchild; then it congeals, and the stream that might have afforded us the most delicious bath can, at the most, be transformed into a sledge-road. Protect yourself against the sea but do not strive to hamper and dam up its movement; if this ever succeeded, the sea would become a swamp, and all of you—not only the sailors—would die a miserable death. To begin with, it is a misfortune ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to steel himself against his wife's possible disappointment, "I found a buyer for Bruce—a Dr. Halding, from New York. He likes the pup. Says Bruce looks as if he was strong and had lots of endurance. I wonder if he wants him for a sledge-dog. He paid me fifteen dollars for him; and it was a mighty good bargain. I was lucky to get more than a ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... second Sledge Hume's great frame filled the doorway as he paused, looking in sharply, drawing at his gauntlets. Then, brushing by Conway, he entered and stood with his back to the fireplace, still drawing off his gauntlets, his hat ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and purification, or, as the phrase was, "he committed his soul and spirit into the forging and tempering of the steel." Every swing of the sledge, every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there is more ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... neighbourhood of the Castle of Pohjola, where the chatelaine, Louhi, receives him hospitably, and offers him her beautiful daughter if he will forge for her the talisman called the Sampo. He replies that he cannot do so himself, but will send his brother Ilmarinen, so Louhi gives him a sledge in ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... sledges, looked; they were so ruddy and strong and full of health, as indeed they might well be—living an active outdoor life in such an air; besides, they were picked men, for the passage in winter is never without possible dangers. It was delightful travelling in the sledge. The sky was of a deep blue; there was not a single cloud either in sky or on mountain, but the snow was already deep, and had covered everything beneath its smooth and heaving bosom. There was no breath of ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... by means of men belabouring it from behind, and this rope dragging it in front, was brought in and its head drawn down towards the ring, when a man with a sledge-hammer felled it instantaneously to the ground; and without a struggle it was turned over on its back by the side of eight or ten of its predecessors who had just shared the same fate, and were already undergoing the various processes to which they had afterwards ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... the same Richard, who had come upon them unobserved, and stood before the father and daughter; looking down upon them with a face as glowing as the iron on which his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A handsome, well-made, powerful youngster he was; with eyes that sparkled like the red-hot droppings from a furnace fire; black hair that curled about his swarthy temples rarely; and a smile—a smile that ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the departure of the hours of darkness with a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrow bottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the defile; then, with the first rays of dawn, we distinguished a sledge driven by the baron's servant; its bottom was littered with straw; on ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... water, chewing away at the dripping roots of lily-pads. There were deer, also, and he caught sight of one or two big bull-moose but forebore to shoot, for the antlers were still in velvet and there was not enough snow on the ground to sledge the great carcasses home. He contented himself with a couple of bucks, which he carried home and divided with his few neighbors, also bringing some of the meat to Stefan's wife at Carcajou. Later on he killed two of the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... his reindeer sledge, And drawing me down by his side, He whistled, and off on the wings of the wind We flew for ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... to what the dogs said, and he did as they told him. Soon the sledge which the dogs had drawn to the woods was piled high ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... the word. A whirlwind was upon him. Before he could raise a hand to defend himself, Kenneth Gwynne's brawny fist smote him squarely between the eyes. He went down as though struck by a sledge-hammer, crashing to the ground full six feet from where he stood. Behind that clumsy blow was the weight of a thirteen stone body, hurled as from a ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... vaster far and more conservative than England. The world moves faster now, and the change-producing forces of the present exceed those of former centuries as a modern steam hammer exceeds a wooden sledge. But China is ponderous, and a few decades are short for so ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... likely to prove useful to them. The place was almost like a museum in the variety of its contents; and they were not long in confiscating a dozen fathoms of three-inch rope, the remains of a coil of ratline, a small ball of spun-yarn for seizings, a sledge-hammer, an axe apiece, a marline-spike, a few long spike-nails, which Lance decided would be capital tools for the ladies to use in picking out the nuggets, and a few other trifling matters. Then, hanging the lantern upon its nail once more, they extinguished ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... three wounded men in Rogers' company; they were put upon a sledge and well covered up. Then the party moved along to a position at some distance from that where they ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... charms of which I have been writing are combined in a sledge-drive. With an arrowy gliding motion one passes through the snow-world as through a dream. In the sunlight the snow surface sparkles with its myriad stars of crystals. In the shadow it ceases to glitter, and assumes a blueness scarcely less blue than the sky. So ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner, with a style that was like the stroke of a sledge-hammer. In spite of this literary work, for which he got very well paid, Mr. Saltram generally contrived to be in debt; and there were few periods of his life in which he was not engaged more or less in the delicate operation of raising ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Sleigh is the word used in every part of the United States to denote a traineau. It is of local use in the west of England, whence it is most probably derived by the Americans. The latter draw a distinction between a sled, or sledge, and a sleigh, the sleigh being shod with metal. Sleighs are also subdivided into two - horse and one-horse sleighs. Of the latter, there are the cutter, with thills so arranged as to permit the horse to travel in the side track; the pung, or tow-pung ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... heard at Fundu that the launch had gone up the Bistritza. I wish it wasn't so cold. There are signs of snow coming. And if it falls heavy it will stop us. In such case we must get a sledge and ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... travel about at all times and all seasons. You must know that everybody in this country lives upon the shore, and therefore the settlements are reached only by the sea. In the winter I travel over the ice with my dog sledge, and in the summer, when the ice has broken up, I go from place to place in that little five-ton yacht which you saw lying in the harbor. Sometimes I go from choice, stopping at the villages, and exhibiting my professional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... carried fuse, drills, and the powder-can to the shaft; it was now eight feet deep, and to get into it and out of it a short ladder was used. They descended, and by command Fetlock held the drill—without any instructions as to the right way to hold it—and Flint proceeded to strike. The sledge came down; the drill sprang out of Fetlock's hand, almost ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... peasants use are remarkable, the front part rests upon curved pieces of wood, or sledge-bars; the hinder part upon two small ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... all novel and interesting to Charley. He lent a hand here and there, and as they worked Skipper Zeb and Toby talked of the fishing season just ended, and of the winter hunting and trapping, and of journeys on snowshoes and with dogs and sledge, and related many exciting adventures, until Charley quite forgot that he was marooned in a ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... with a smile, "but it was then. But I must get on with my story. One morning soon after Galitzin's departure, the horses attached to the royal sledge ran away just outside of Moscow. The princess was thrown out upon the hard ground, and badly dislocated her right wrist. By the time she had been taken back to the palace her arm and hand ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... watching it in breathless silence, in which the clicking of the mechanism which kept the great telescope moving so as to exactly counteract the motion of the machinery of the Universe, sounded like the blows of a sledge-hammer on an anvil, Gilbert Lennard stood beside her, wondering if he should begin to tell her, and what he ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... did not linger. Scrambling to his feet after his fall, caused by his leap from the broken window, which he had smashed with a sledge hammer as soon as he understood that his game was up, he raced out of the yard. He turned long enough to shake his fist at the group assembled around the projectile, and then leaped away, calling out some words which ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the second blast the door was not courteously opened, my lord cried majestically, "Give fire, gunner," and a sturdy smith burst the pannels open with a huge sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived, attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At eleven o'clock on the Sunday night the two monarchs came into collision in Hare Alley (now Hare Court). The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to him, but Palmer, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... London—"Get yourself driven to the only inn in the place, dine as well as you can, and some time in the evening my own confidential servant, factotum and majordomo, a Mr. V. S. (I warn you he is of noble extraction), will present himself before you, reporting the arrival of the small sledge which will take you here on the next day. I send with him my heaviest fur, which I suppose with such overcoats as you may have with you will keep you from ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... wine, and sweets for themselves. The ladies wrapped up in their white dogskins. The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses. The troyka-bells tinkled and the sledge-runners squeaked over the snow. ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy |
