"Spike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... convince Caroline that she is mistaken and that you are indifferent to Madame de Fischtaminel, would cost you dear. This is a blunder that no sensible man commits; he would lose his power and spike his ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... on the long spike which held the horseshoe over the door a pail of water so delicately hung that whoever first entered there must receive its contents in one fell unmitigated deluge upon ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Jensen referred to were in a pasture, tethered to an iron spike driven in the ground, with a rope giving them a range of ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... weighing about 90 pound was brought alongside the Ship for Sale, but those who brought it would not part with it for anything we could offer them but a Carpenter's broad axe, and this was what we could not part with; they carried it away. Thus we see those very People who but 2 years ago prefer'd a spike Nail to an Axe of any Sort, have so far learnt the use of them that they will not part with a Pig of 10 or 12 pounds weight for anything under a Hatchet, and even those of an inferior or small sort are of no great esteem with them, and small Nails such as 10 penny, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... a step closer to the track boss and her voice hardened. "If these spikes were forced out by the impact of the engine, we ought to find torn spike holes inclining toward the end of the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... always kept tucked up under her body. Out of each egg there comes the queerest little creature! It is just large enough to be seen as it wriggles in the water. Then its skin splits, and there appears a quaint thing with long feathery legs, a big head, a spike on the back of its head, and another spike ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... yellow sand that held the sleepers and the rails—almost with his own hands. From far over the horizon to the east he had crept along westward, urging on his big gang with relentless but just hand. And out there before his door they had driven the last spike at the very edge of the valley that ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... canvas, while he was not averse to licking the galvanised compound off the newly painted quarter-deck stanchions whenever an opportunity of doing so presented itself. He was a healthy goat of voracious appetite. His gastric juices would have dissolved a marline-spike, and he even made short work of the greater portion of a pair of ammunition boots belonging to the Sergeant-Major of Royal Marines, and devoured with every symptom of relish a sheaf of official and highly important documents lying on the writing-table ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... academy, had been a pretty fair operator. In fact, being the son of a general superintendent of one of the big trunk lines, he was quite familiar with a railroad, and could do almost anything from driving a spike, or throwing a switch to running an engine. The first three years succeeding his graduation had been those of enervating peace; all of which palled on the soul of Lieutenant Jack to a large degree. The martial spirit beat high within his ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... roll of the kettledrum; in every State procession it is the implements of death and the men of blood that we parade; and not to nursemaids only is the soldier irresistible. The glamour of romance hangs round him. Terrible with knife and spike and pellet he stalks through this puddle of a world, disdainful of drab mankind. Multitudes may toil at keeping alive, drudging through their scanty years for no hope but living and giving life; he shares with very few the function of inflicting death, and moves gaily clad and light ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... was but one affirmation. He believed absolutely in the Devil. He knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was red, and cloven-footed and that his tail ended in a hard, sharp, spike, like Mammy Flathers' ice-pick. He also knew that when he breathed, it was in groans and hisses, such as he was hearing at the present moment. Chick's hair would have risen on his head, it wanted to, but it ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... his head upon the block, and the executioner's axe fell. Although Bishop Fisher was condemned for denying the King's supremacy, he incurred the wrath of Henry by his book against the divorce, and that practically sealed his fate. His head was placed on a spike on London Bridge as a warning to others who might be rash enough to incur the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in the wall, "in order to preserve it from the rats," as he said. As Thenardier was kept in sight, no objection had been made to this spike. Still, it was remembered afterwards, that one of the jailers had said: ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was upon his knees, and with his knife-blade was digging around a plant, as if to raise it by the roots. It was a small herbaceous plant, with erect simple stem, oblong lanceolate leaves, and a terminal spike of not very conspicuous white flowers. Though I knew it not then, it was the famed ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... both his hands he gripped it as he spoke, And, where the butt and top were spliced, in pieces twain he broke; The limber top he cast away, with all its gear abroad, But, grasping the tough hickory butt, with spike of iron shod, He ground the sharp spear to a point; then pulled his bonnet down, And, meditating black revenge, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... would be madness. To save the gun and escape capture must be the "double event." Seizing a ramrod, he ordered an artilleryman to spike the gun, gave the command to retreat, telling the men to "duck their heads," fearing another discharge, and, leading his horse, followed by Macdonell and Glegg and the firing squad of eight ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... her Cromwellian moods, and, scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness—potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes—each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repass wholly ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... own voice. I was a very good linguist in those days, and spoke English particularly well long before I left Switzerland. After breakfast, my dog and I would go out to catch a peculiar sort of fish called the "sting-rae." These curious creatures have a sharp bony spike about two inches in length near the tail and this I found admirably adapted for arrow-heads. The body of the fish resembled a huge flounder, but the tail was long and tapering. They would come close in-shore, and I would spear them from ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... spike the right-hand rail lightly. Then string your gangs again and set a line of spikes for the outside of the standard-gauge right-hand rail straight through ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... those furrows narrow and turning the ground well, a little deeper than it had been plowed before. I didn't realize what I was doing, then. I simply had been brought up to do my work well. I thought I was doing a good job, that was all. When I was through plowing I got my old harrow, a spike-tooth, and harrowed the ground. I had a roller. They were manufactured in our town. The firm bursted and I had a chance to buy one very cheap. I had a roller, harrow, and plow. That was all the tillage implements. The harrow had moved the lumps around a little. I ran the roller over the lumps; then ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... blackroot, blazing star, and unicorn root ) Bitter American herb of the Bloodwort family, with small yellow or white flowers in a long spike ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... (daedalus) attacks and honeycombs it; and riddled as it may occasionally be, still, if spike or nail finds substance enough to hold, or sufficient solidity to resist crushing, then, for many purposes, even such lumber is practically as good as the soundest timber; because when the tree ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... sharp-shooters and one hundred Indians. De Salaberry does not court defeat by neglecting precautions because he is weak. Windfall is hurriedly thrown up as barricade along the trail. Where the path narrows between the river and the bleak forest, De Salaberry has tree trunks laid spike end towards the foe. At the last moment comes McDonnell of Brockville with six hundred men, but De Salaberry's three hundred occupy the front line facing the ford. McDonnell is farther along the river. By the night of October ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... impaled and injudicious Richard [Sir J. Hooker's youngest son, who had managed to spike himself on a fence.] is none the worse. It is wonderful what boys go through ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... have here a hammer. I will drop it to the floor. Listen. Is the noise very loud? Here I have a heavy railroad spike. Hear the noise this makes as it is dropped. And now I shall drop this large nail. The noise that made is not nearly as loud as the noise occasioned by the falling hammer. Here is a small nail. You will have to listen very carefully if you hear the sound of the nail as it strikes the carpet. Have ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... You observe that the scratch on that table is slight at one side, but deepens in the direction of the bedroom door. That in itself is enough to show us that the shoe had been drawn in that direction, and that the culprit had taken refuge there. The earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit and carried away a specimen ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which its own waters have created. Myriads of flowers gleam in their own atmosphere of living light, like jewels among the rich herbage, so that the feet can hardly be set down without crushing scores of them: the Orchis rubra with its splendid spike of crimson blossoms, the bee and spider orchises in great variety, whose flowers mimic the insects after whom they are named, sweet-scented alyssum, golden buttercups and hawkweeds, Roman daisies, larger and taller than the English ones, with the bold wide-eyed gaze ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Clutching Hand, "I want you, Spike, to follow them. See what they do—where they go. It's her birthday. Something's bound to occur that will give you a lead. All you've got to do is to ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... imaginary hat toward the Grdznth. "Spike cracked it," he said. "Spike is a sort of Grdznth genius." He tossed the coffee cup over his shoulder and it ricochetted in graceful slow motion against the far wall. "Now why ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... timbers than a dozen. When it come to spiking them in place he seen me swinging that twelve-pound sledge and near breaking my back. 'I think it's easier this way,' he says. 'Besides you can hit a lot faster if you use just one hand.' And he takes the hammer, and sends that big spike in all the way to the head with one lick. And he wondered why I didn't work the same way! Ain't got any idea how ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... water is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... nothing more; let the Conservatism that would preserve cut it away. Did no wood-forester apprise you that a dead bough with its dead root left sticking there is extraneous, poisonous; is as a dead iron spike, some horrid rusty ploughshare driven into the living substance;—nay is far worse; for in every wind-storm ('commercial crisis' or the like), it frets and creaks, jolts itself to and fro, and cannot lie quiet as your ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... both black and stern. But one was a Hebrew, no less than forty-five years of age. He wore a helmet of polished metal, equipped with a visor, which, when raised, finished the front with a flat plate. The top of the head-piece was ornamented with a spike. His armor was complete—shirt of mail, shenti extending half-way to the knees, greaves ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... sword with as much apparent knowledge of how to use it as if it had been a marlin-spike. Ralph pushed it aside with a stout stick that he carried, and was passing on, when the singing soldier came up and said, "Never mind his name; but whether he be Presbyter Jack or Quaker George, he must drink to the health of the King. Here," he cried, filling ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, free-handed rhythmical swing of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... some of 'em will be letting prisoners escape right under my nose, making us the laughing stock of these damned militia volunteers." (Canker entered service in '61 as a private in a city company that was militia to the tip of its spike-tailed coats, but he had forgotten it.) "I want these young idlers to understand distinctly, by George, that the first prisoner that gets away from this post takes somebody's commission with him. D'you hear that, Mr. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... spook," Patsy began, "I got the fearfulest thump on my crust that I've had since that marline-spike fell off the main yard on to me in the little affair of the ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... took a precaution. Under the staddles was a long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground. The spike attached to it he drove in. Under the shadow of this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... zest to love? On this particular evening, however, he was in a hopeful mood. At the Clarendon Club, where he had gone, a couple of hours before, to verify a certain news item for the morning paper, he had heard a story about Tom Delamere which, he imagined, would spike that gentleman's guns for all time, so far as Miss Pemberton was concerned. So grave an affair as cheating at cards could never be kept secret,—it was certain to reach her ears; and Ellis was morally certain that Clara would never marry a man who had been proved dishonorable. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... which they cut the throats of all whom they could master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in which they had also laid up their provisions, so that the Greeks could get nothing from that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... trophy of the search—a metal spike and some tarnished and corroded metal ornaments. They had lain close beside ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... we shouted, but the sound had not ceased to echo when, out of the horrible tangle about us, rose, with a swift, sinuous motion, a monstrous anacondalike arm, flesh pink in the electric beam, but covered with spike-edged spiracles! It curled itself over the edge of the hovering air ship and ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... sword-like, sweet-scented leaves 3 or 4 ft. long and about an inch wide, closely arranged in two rows as in the true Flag (Iris); the tall, flowering stems (scapes), which very much resemble the leaves, bear an apparently lateral, blunt, tapering spike of densely packed, very small flowers. A long leaf (spathe) borne immediately below the spike forms an apparent continuation of the scape, though really a lateral outgrowth from it, the spike of flowers being terminal. The plant has a wide distribution, growing in wet situations ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... nodded Astro. "I know the old geezer that runs this place. Nice guy. Name's Spike." He turned to the back of the shop ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... February 12, the well was pumped dry and the mate's watch ordered below to get a nap until four. They took their drenched clothing off, wrung the water out, hung it on a line round the bogey fire to dry, and turned into their hammocks as naked as they were born. At three the hand-spike knocked heavily on the deck and a loud voice called down the scuttle hatch, "Larboard watch, ahoy! All hands to the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... about flies as we make nowadays. You cannot pick up a magazine without running plump into an article on the deadly housefly—with pictures of him magnified until he looks like the old million-toed, barrel-eyed, spike-tailed dragon of your boyhood mince-pie dreams. The first two pages convince you that the human race is doomed to extermination within eighteen ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... State legislatures, but the "scamps" are vastly better at promising than fulfilling. The politicians, of course, expect all this flutter and buncombe about doing something for women in New York—in California—in Iowa—is going to spike our guns and make us help the Republican party to carry all before it; but we must not be thus fooled ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of you," Jim answered, with a laugh. "The bed of the creek's simply full of rocks—you can see a spike sticking up here and there in the rapids. We've seen sheep come down in flood-time—they get battered to bits. I don't think I'll try any ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... always at the significant moment some other bloom has reached its perfect hour. One can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has from the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One notices here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind. Part of the charm of the lupine is the continual stir of its plumes to airs not suspected otherwhere. Go and stand by any crown of bloom ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... himself upon Wolf Larsen without warning or provocation. Once he threw his heavy sheath-knife, missing Wolf Larsen's throat by an inch. Another time he dropped a steel marlinspike from the mizzen crosstree. It was a difficult cast to make on a rolling ship, but the sharp point of the spike, whistling seventy-five feet through the air, barely missed Wolf Larsen's head as he emerged from the cabin companion-way and drove its length two inches and over into the solid deck-planking. Still another time, he stole into the steerage, possessed himself of a loaded shot-gun, and was making ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... old names for the Plantain were Waybroad (corrupted to Weybread, Wayborn, and Wayforn) and Ribwort. It was also called Lamb's-tongue and Kemps, while the flower spike with the stalk was called Cocks and Cockfighters (still so called by children).[214:1] The old name of Ribwort was derived from the ribbed leaves, while Waybroad marked its universal appearance, scattered by all roadsides and pathways, and literally bred by the wayside. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... you they will bleed for you; the fount of tears feeds a river as well as betrays a hidden well. Good, then; good, then! He saw a future in all this. From the other spike of the dilemma he saw nothing but his impaling; in this case, if he was impaled, balm at least would be laid upon his wounds. Fra Battista determined to brazen ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... slaves there are to be liberated at twelve o'clock tonight, are to seize the three water towers and to spike the guns, to burn all the shipping in the harbour, to make off with six ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... short swords, with steel edges like those of the ancient Romans, and carried ashen lances ten feet long, with straight and sharp iron spikes: only one-fourth of their number bore halberts instead of lances, the spikes cut into the form of an axe and surmounted by a four-cornered spike, to be used both for cutting like an axe and piercing like a bayonet: the first row of each battalion wore helmets and cuirasses which protected the head and chest, and when the men were drawn up for battle they presented to the enemy a triple array of iron spikes, which ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... standing position the moonlight showed him, impaled upon the horribly sharp stake formed by fining down a good-sized tree and planting it in the bottom, a hideously wolfish-looking hyaena, which, less fortunate than himself, had fallen upon the sharp spike, which had gone completely through the wretched animal's body, leaving it writhing, snarling, and clawing the air with its paws in its vain efforts to ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... five feet; the pedestals on which these immages are fixed are sometimes cut out of the solid stick with the canoe, and the imagary is formed of seperate small peices of timber firmly united with tenants and motices without the assistance of a single spike of any kind. when the natives are engaged in navigating their canoes one sets in the stern and steers with a paddle the others set by pears and paddle over the gunwall next them, they all kneel in the bottom ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Clarke and I have had many a merry squeeze. I am highly delighted with Mr. Allan's etchings. "Woo'd an' married an' a'," is admirable! The grouping is beyond all praise. The expression of the figures, conformable to the story in the ballad, is absolutely faultless perfection. I next admire "Turnim-spike." What I like least is "Jenny said to Jockey." Besides the female being in her appearance * * * *, if you take her stooping into the account, she is at least two inches taller than her lover. Poor Cleghorn! I sincerely sympathize with him. Happy I am to think that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... same.' Such language was unequivocal, and hostilities were resumed as fiercely as before. The besieged welcomed them with rapture, and, as usual, made daily the most desperate sallies. In one outbreak the Haarlemers, under cover of a thick fog, marched up to the enemy's chief battery, and attempted to spike the guns before his face. They were all slain at the cannon's mouth, whither patriotism, not vainglory, had led them, and lay dead around the battery, with their hammers and spikes in their hands. The same spirit was daily manifested. As the spring advanced, the kine went ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... and doubtless beguiled the voyage (for others) with the information of a well-stored mind. By an inspiration of luck he checked a mutiny, holding the quarter-deck against a mob of ruffians with no weapon but a marline-spike. And hereafter, as he tells you in his 'Voyage to New South Wales,' he was accorded the fullest liberty to come or go. He visited many a foreign port with the officers of the ship; he packed a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations; he posed, in brief, as the captain ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... in hand, sat a strongly-built man, whose deeply-furrowed countenance and grizzled hair showed that he had been for many a year a toiler on the ocean. By his side was a boy of about twelve years of age, dressed in flushing coat and sou'wester, busily employed with a marline-spike, in splicing an eye ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... small armed vessels and a shore battery, with which the English for four hours kept up a weak contest with their foes. Then the fleet sailed past the defences and up the river before a strong breeze, and Oglethorpe was obliged to spike the guns and destroy the war-material at Fort St. Simon's and withdraw to the stronger post of Frederica, where he proposed to make his stand. Not long afterward the Spaniards landed their five thousand men four miles below Frederica. These marched ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... straightened, they grew up to wolf-like men, Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran Groan'd for the Roman legions here again, And Caesar's eagle: then his brother king, Urien, assail'd him: last a heathen horde, Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood, And on the spike that split the mother's heart Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed, He knew not whither he should ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... half an acre in size, which flowered three times a year, and during the flowering time it drew the butterflies from all the surrounding plain with its luscious bean-like fragrance, until the field was full of them, red, black, yellow, and white butterflies, fluttering in flocks round every blue spike. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... dwarf palm, each layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted, like the outside of a cocoa-nut. It is a clever plant that; from the leaves we get a vegetable horsehair; - and eat the bottom of the centre spike. All the leaves you pull have the same aromatic scent. But here a little patch of cleared ground shows old friends, who seem to cling by abused civilisation:-fine, hardy thistles, one of them bright yellow, though; - honest, Scotch- looking, large daisies or gowans; - potatoes here and ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about to tear the insides out of their fort with four-hundred-pound shot at quarter-mile range, there was nothing for them to do but consult their own safety, which they did with such haste that they did not spike a gun, or destroy a pound ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... send the worst of us to Spike Island or Dartmoor prison,' said Charley; 'but Mr. Snape, no doubt, has heard and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... with a general preponderance of feminine appellatives, bold incisures, at times, of some worthy professor in profile,—the whole besmutched with ink, and dotted with countless punctures, the result of the sharp spike with which every student's ink-horn is armed, that he may steady it upon the slanting board. The preceding lecture ended when the university-clock struck the hour; the next should begin within ten or fifteen minutes. One by one the students drop in and take their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... distillation an oil termed "oil of spike," or, to distinguish it from oil of L. staechas, "true oil of spike." It is darker in color than the oil of L. vera, and much less grateful in odor, reminding one of turpentine and rancid coker nut oil. It is used by painters on porcelain, and in the manufacture ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... called him. Invariably he spent some part of his day among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited with them public prayers. Often at night he and they together went up to the teeth of the Russian batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the silence of these nights was broken hideously by the wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden roar of the cannon and crack of gunfire, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... grave? Your noble father lieth in no grave, I saw his dust strewn on the air, his ashes Whirled through the windy streets like common straws To plague a beggar's eyesight, and his head, That gentle head, set on the prison spike, For the vile rabble in their insolence To ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... cost from the East, were covered with splashes of grease and liquor; and the few fly-marked pictures on the walls were coarsely suggestive. Scattered among them haphazard, in one instance through a lithographic print, were round holes as large as a spike-head, through which, by closely applying the eye, one could view the world without. When the place was new, similar openings had been carefully refilled with a whittled stick of wood, but the practice had been discontinued; it was too much trouble, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him. It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep. So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous moisture. He seized it ravenously. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... you, Spike,—-this idea of a summer school?" inquired Cooper Fennimore the next morning as the Foxes came back from their early dip ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,— Like some mean life wrapped in its ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... 'n de mawnin' dan yo'self." She watched the animal with all her might, muttering, "Law, see him squot," and "Hole on, hole on!" and "Yasser, he done gone fo' sho. My grashus, you lemme have a scatter shoot-gun an' a spike-tail smell dog, an' I'll git one of ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... a sheet of glassy water, dotted with a hundred sail, from the base of the sultry hill faced with terraces and called Queenstown, to the far Atlantic beyond the Heads. Heavy and dark loom the fortified Government buildings of Haulbowline and the prisons of Spike Island, casting forbidding shadows on the western margin of the tide. Quickly the steam-tug and her follower thread their way among islets and moored barques and guard-ships, southward to the sea. No pause ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... maiden heard no more, But spike: Alas! my heart is very weak, And but for—Stay! And if some dreadful morn, After great search and shouting thorough the wold, We found thee missing,—strangled,—drowned i' the mere, Then should I go distraught ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... broad at base, half clasping the stem and rapidly narrowed to an acute tip; hardly at all spreading from the thread-like twigs; flowers pinkish, in spike-like clusters 6. Tamarix. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... Merrill, with a tinge of impatience, "don't repeat all the old gossips' tales about Madero. Why, if one believed half of them, he would be endowed with hoofs and horns, not to mention a tail with a spike on the end. If either you or Redman or Jennings wishes to leave the mine, you may. I'll write you a check for the amount I ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... the prince. "I know there are guards in every gallery, bolts to every door, cannon and soldiery at every barrier. How will you overcome the sentries—spike the guns? How will you break through the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is heather (erica); The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin." Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a Green beetle as if on a pin, You may roll in it, if you would like a Few holes ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... plant plenty of space for development, and it will be well to stake the rows immediately. Keep the plants under constant observation, especially while quite young, when they are liable to destruction by garden foes. The flowering should be limited to the fourth spike, and from the time the pods appear assistance must be given in the form of liquid manure or a mulching of well-rotted dung. Remove all lateral shoots and promote vigorous healthy growth at every stage. Some means should be adopted to prevent injury of any kind to the pods, which ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... seed-heads, that fringes the tracks over the hills, or the lanes that cross the hollows. Common blues were there in numbers, and small heath butterflies almost as many. The former, each and every one of them, arrange themselves to look like part of the seed-spike that caps the grass-stem. Then the use and purpose of the parti-coloured grey and yellow under-colouring of their wings is seen. The butterfly invariably goes to sleep head downwards, its eyes looking straight ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... a trip to see the great Pie Championship, where men with bulging cheeks and eyes consume vast quantities of pies. A fashionable West Side crowd beheld the champion, Spike O'Dowd, endeavour to defend his throne against an upstart, Blake's Unknown. He wasn't an Unknown at all. He was young ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... has had a very wide repute for its good-qualities. It belongs to the family of plants known as Labiates, which includes mint, sage, thyme, and other aromatic plants; these flowers mostly have a curious lip, and grow in a spike. The self-heal is not a tall plant, though it flourishes more in the rich soil of a garden than on that of the field-bank or the hedgerow. One curious thing about the plant is, that the flowers do not open all together, but a few at a time, so that ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... those kind of silly fumbles. Now, what you need is formation—see? Must have some sort of formation for advance. Must keep in touch. For two men a tandem is right. For three men, what you want is a spike-team—middle man crawls ahead, other men follow on each side just near enough to touch his left heel with right hand and right heel with left hand—a triangle, see? Keep touching once every thirty seconds. If you miss it, leader crawls back, side men crawl in, sure to meet, nobody gets ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... society at the house was that although the major was as well known as the flag on Spike Island, yet somehow, no officer above the rank of an ensign was ever to be met with there. It was not that he had not a large acquaintance; in fact, the "How are you, Major?" "How goes it, Dalrymple?" that kept everlastingly going ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... many a man has covered a period longer than that interval of eighty-six years between 1783, when George Washington had his vision of "the vast inland navigation of these United States," and the year 1869, when the two divisions of the Union Pacific were joined by a golden spike at Promontory Point in Utah. In point of time, those eighty-six years are as nothing; in point of accomplishment, they stand unparalleled. When Washington's horse splashed across the Youghiogheny in October, 1784, the boundary lines of the United States were guarded with all the jealousy and ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... on. Their child came. It was a railroad train, the Golden Spike Limited, the fastest long distance train in the Rootabaga Country. It ran across the prairie, to the mountains, to ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... hair. His fleecy mantle was over him in the house. Every quarrel therein about seat or bed comes to his decision. Should a needle drop in the house, its fall would be heard when he speaks. Above him is a huge black tree, like a millshaft, with its paddles and its cap and its spike. Liken thou ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... topsail-schooner, with an old fellow by the name of Eaton,—just the strangest old scamp you ever dreamed of. I suppose by rights he ought to have been in the hospital; he certainly was the nearest to crazy and not be it. He used to keep a long pole by him on deck,—a pole with a sharp spike in one end,—and any man who'd get near enough to him to let him have a chance would feel that spike. I've known him to keep the cook up till midnight frying doughnuts; then he'd call all hands aft and range 'em on the quarter-deck, and go round with his hat off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... capture and a confession. Peg Tatem in the toils. Timber pirates get prison terms. The lumberjacks' big Christmas. "Sit down, you rough-necks!" roars Hippy. Spike bares his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... is passed and during drier weather, cultivation is carried on for a different purpose, namely, to conserve moisture by making a thin dust mulch of soil over the surface. This is best accomplished by shallow-going implements of which the spike-tooth harrow, the acme harrow, or a light wheel cultivator are best. As the season and the amount of rainfall vary, so must tillage operations be varied. In an early dry season begin with the lighter implements earlier. ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... name of God) before he threw the net. On the first occasion, before I gave him this advice, he had had extremely bad luck, and he told me that "something was wrong with the fish;" as he had thrown his net for an hour without catching anything, except a few uneatable spike-fish. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... pair of stary, pop eyes, a high colored beak that might be used as a danger signal, and a black, shoebrush beard, trimmed close except for a little spike under the chin, that gives the lower part of his face a look like the ace of spades. His mornin' costume is a faded blue jumper, brown checked pants, and an old pair of rubber soled shoes that Swifty had ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... who will let herself be stabbed without dreaming of employing her venomous fangs. Here craft triumphs over strength; and this craft is not inferior to mine, when, wishing to capture the Tarantula, I make her bite a spike of grass which I dip into the burrow, lead her gently to the surface and then with a sudden jerk throw her outside. For the entomologist as for the Pompilus, the essential thing is to make the Spider leave her stronghold. After this there is no difficulty in catching her, thanks ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... chopper, is Billy, observed Benjamin, who held the bridle of the horse while the sheriff mounted; and he handles an axe much the same as a forecastleman does his marling-spike, or a tailor his goose. They say hell lift a potash-kettle off the arch alone, though I cant say that Ive ever seen him do it with my own eyes; but that is the say. And Ive seen sugar of his making, which, maybe, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that the storm was abating; yet the wreck was drifting rapidly toward the inexorable rocks. Wave after wave passed over the uppermost part of the tower, and sometimes the water smote her so that her head reeled, and her senses became dimmed for some moments. A coil of rope hung from a spike in the wall, and fastening an end of it around her slim waist, she bound herself to a stout piece ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... that good-natured quartet, who stood sponsors for that title. We were a pitiful lot of fellows in this garrison. We mixed the handful of flour given to us with snow water, and, wrapping the unsalted dough around a sagebrush spike, we cooked it in the flames, and ate it from the stick, as a dog would gnaw a bone. The officers put a guard around the few little hackberry trees to keep the men from eating the berries and the bark. Not a scrap of the few buffalo we found was wasted. Even ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... your bard shall sit In foremost row before the astonished pit, And grin dislike, and kiss the spike, And twist his mouth and roll his head awry, The arch-absurd quick glancing from ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. "Lord knows, I'm not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... its aspect; the upper part of the flame has, indeed, broken away, and is now shown in that part of the drawing between the two figures on the line above. The same plate also shows various instances of the remarkable spike-like objects, taken, however, at different times and at various parts of the sun. These spikes attain altitudes not generally greater than 20,000 miles, though sometimes they ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball |
