"Axeman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said he, "I feel as mad as a meat axe, and I hope I may be darned to all darnation, if I wouldn't chaw up your ugly mummyised corpse, hair, hide, and hoof, this blessed minute, as quick as I would mother's dough-nuts, if I warn't afraid you'd pyson me with your ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... its last born son Is vanished, and the bloody axe of Fate Has felled the goodly tree that blossomed late. O Oedipus, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... there were no shells, and the wrecked ship's anchor turned out to be only the broken end of a pick-axe handle, and the cave party were just making up their minds that sand makes you thirstier when it is not by the seaside, and someone had suggested that they all go home for ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... the horse may be taught to keep pace with his fellows, whose fault it is that he leaves them behind. We know that a few strokes of the axe will lop a cedar; but what arts of cultivation can ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... halfpenny? To live on one's land by the labour of one's own hands and the sweat of one's brow is only possible on one condition; that is, if one works oneself like a peasant, without regard for class or sex. There is no making use of slaves nowadays, one must take the scythe and axe oneself, and if one can't do that, no gardens will help one. Even the smallest success in farming is only gained in Russia at the price of a cruel struggle with nature, and wishing is not enough for the struggle, you need bodily strength and grit, you want traditions—and have young ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the ragged old arm that felled it down as an axe fells the last rings of a stricken tree. Not too big for the remnant of strength in the once muscular slave. Not too big for the fiery old heart that trouble and toil and hunger ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... that destroyed Liege made their first breach at Verdun, what chance was there for Paris? Those few weeks of warning and preparation saved France, and left Germany as she now is, like a weary and furious bull, tethered fast in the place of trespass and waiting for the inevitable pole-axe. ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the king's expense. They were the last succour of this kind, which the mother country supplied. They were given in marriage to such soldiers whose good conduct entitled them to a discharge. Land was allotted to each couple, with a cow and calf, a cock and five hens; a gun, axe, and hoe. During the three first years, rations were allowed them, with a small quantity of powder, shot, and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... could one of my own. Maybe they know that too—if they don't we'll let 'em think we're coming along, as innocent as Mary's little lamb, so I'll let their ray stay on us. It's too thin to carry anything, and if they thicken it up much I've got an axe set to chop it off." Seaton whistled a merry lilting refrain as his fingers played over the stops ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... gems and other small works of art, and also in statuettes that were either objects of worship or dedicated in shrines; but we have at present no evidence as to whether monumental images of the gods were made in human form, though some objects of worship, such as the double-axe, were certainly set up in regular shrines. We know too little about the religious beliefs and customs of this prehistoric age to be able to judge whether such objects were regarded merely as symbols of the deity or as having immanent in them some divine or superhuman ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age. When Homer speaks of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is always concerned, except in the two cases given, not with [blank space] but with implements, which really were of iron. The wheelwright fells a tree "with the iron," that is, with an axe; Antilochus fears that Achilles "will cut his own throat with the iron," that is, with his knife, a thing never used in battle; the cattle struggle when slain with "the iron," that is, the butcher's ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Rogero and Duke Aymon's son prepared; The choice whereof with that good warrior lay, The Roman empire's knight by Charles declared; And he, like one that ever from the day He lost his goodly steed afoot had fared, Made choice, afoot and fenced with plate and mail, His foe with axe and dagger to assail. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... to manhood, for that a man must needs live, Beltane builded him a hut beside the brook, and set up an anvil thereby whereon he beat out bill-hooks and axe-heads and such implements as the charcoal-burners and they that lived within the green had ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... had learned as much about dogs as he felt he could bear for that day, he felt free to go down to the dockyard and go on learning how ships were built. Sebastian looked up at the voice and ceased the blows with which his axe was smoothing a great tree trunk that was to be a mast, and smiled ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... Rocque's altars and ornaments alone can give. In the evening we looked at the new square called the Palais Royal, whence the Due de Chartres has removed a vast number of noble trees, which it was a sin and shame to profane with an axe, after they had adorned that spot for so many centuries.—The people were accordingly as angry, I believe, as Frenchmen can be, when the folly was first committed: the court, however, had wit enough to convert the place into a sort of Vauxhall, with tents, fountains, shops, full ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Souday, who lived close by the Fosse des Tanneurs (Tanners' Ditch.) Jean had a somewhat ancient mare to dispose of, which our landed proprietor thought might answer his purpose. Cocotte was a slight waif, sheared off by the sharp axe of the Place de la Revolution, and Souday could therefore afford to sell her cheap. Fifty francs argent metallique would, Delessert knew, purchase her; but with assignats, it was quite another affair. But, courage! He might ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... bar; and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to-night? It is a part of our programme that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth of the picnic can hardly be assuaged. Upon one occasion, the dummy axe floated, and the laugh turned ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... was slain by a blow with a battle-axe, and Margaret, snatched from her palfrey, was thrown across the saddle-bow of one of the mounted men, who then with his comrades dashed off ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... on the ground, would present only the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a little closer, and could make out a mark or two here and there. The larger trees had been avoided, and the axe used only on the small saplings and underbrush, which had been lopped off a couple of feet from the ground. By being constantly on the alert, we followed it till near the top of the mountain; but, when looking ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... turned her a delicate sea-green, while she murmured, "I am going to die," I sat down and took counsel with myself. What next? I bought a rattlesnake antidote outfit—that, at least, I could anticipate, and then I went out with the axe and hacked out the words "Suma Paz" from the pergola. We are now "The Smiling Hill-Top," for though peace does not abide with us, we keep ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... there's another fellow (pointing). His name is Slivertwist. If you get a crack in him, you will find him full of twisted splinters that he holds himself together with. The only way is to cut them through with a sharp axe. But he holds on so tight with them that I don't believe you can get him open. He says he never gives ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... questions of state—a judge, whose decisions helped to build up the as yet unwritten code of law. Descending from these high altitudes, he could take up his bow and spear, and go forth to hunt the boar and the stag, or wield the woodman's axe, or the carpenter's saw and chisel. He could kill, dress, and serve his own dinner; and when the strenuous day was over, he could tune the harp, discourse sweet music, and sing of the deeds ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... his trusty sword, And with his bow and quiver slung behind, And at his belt his mighty battle-axe, Rode calmly forth to slay the hurtful Beast. And no man knew that he was Guy, for all Believed him far away on foreign shores; Which pleased him passing well, "Because," he said, "I do this thing for Phoelice and the King, And none shall know but Heaven that sees the deed. ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... carrying golf clubs had passed along the monotonous road during the morning and Max had longed to be a caddie. Once a woodcutter had gone along with his axe over his shoulder and Lynn had been moved to recite—to the disgust of the others—"Woodman, spare that tree." And once Larkin had flashed past on horseback, Howie tearing along not far behind, it having come to their ears five minutes before that a cottage far away through ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... to an officer of the towne, Hys axe out hys hand he wronge, On eche syde he smote them downe, Hym thought he had ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... fly thick as oaths on board a ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet—and urchins as they play marbles. And for the real noble a whole private dialect is set apart. The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo, a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of English ladies. Special words are set apart ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... field father was our teacher. He taught us, and the 'grieve,' or bailiff, taught us everything one needs to know about a farm. Not in headwork alone. No; for, young as we were at this time, my brothers and I could wield axe, scythe, ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... otherwise no honest man can accept it with a good conscience. This were a marriage on constraint; out of which a thousand INCONVENIENTIAE might spring!'" Hear Linsenbarth, in the piebald dialect, with the sound heart, and preference of starvation itself to some other things! Kettenbeil (CHAIN-AXE) went home; and there was found another Candidatus willing for the marriage on constraint, "out of which INCONVENIENTIAE might spring," in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... or four, and wounded twice as many. Then the second mate and the rest of the watch below came tumbling up, headed by a big Nova Scotian A.B. He was a tremendously powerful fellow, and had armed himself with the carpenter's broad axe, and in a few minutes he cut down five of the natives, one of whom was the ringleader. Then the steward and supercargo turned up with nine-bore double-barrelled shot-guns, loaded with No. 1 shot, and they and the bluenose{*} ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... on in amazement, he found that by heating one he could flatten it out, then he could make small ones stick to it while hot and hammer all into one mass, then into a bar, and from that he could make an axe-head with an edge which would cut clean through a copper ring as though it was but cheese; next, when he was in a hurry to cool it off, and for that reason put it into water, he found that the metal became so hard that he had no tool which ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... dangling about the old screw's heels, and Mr. Crowdey scrambling up a steep bank to where a very thick boundary-hedge shut out the view of the adjacent country. Presently, chop, chop, chop, was heard, from Mr. Crowdey's pocket axe, with a tug—wheeze—puff from himself; next a crash of separation; and then the purple-faced Mr. Crowdey came bearing down the bank dragging a great blackthorn bush ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... observed, briefly; and then, unlocking the ponderous padlock that protected their cabin from hungry sheepmen, he went in and fetched out the axe. "Guess I'll cut a tree for that ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... it had done more for us than we had even ventured to hope. It had shattered gaolers as well as gaol. The first thing that I saw as I came out into the hall was a man with a butcher's axe in his hand, lying flat upon his back, with a gaping wound across his forehead. The second was a huge dog, with two of its legs broken, twisting in agony upon the floor. As it raised itself up I saw the two broken ends ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flood-tide of his argument, ignored the interruption. "That's the value of the war," he went on. "It has burst up all the old conventions, and we've got to finish the destruction before we can build. It is the same with literature and religion, and society and politics. At them with the axe, say I. I have no use for priests and pedants. I've no use for upper classes and middle classes. There's only one class that matters, the plain man, the workers, who ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... down and look right along the cleft, and you'll soon learn how to cut wood," said the soldier. "In the meantime I'll show you how to use the axe." ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... ensuite, en s'amoindrissant du haut en bas; tandis qu'au contraire le movement de redressement commence par la partie infrieur pour se terminer a la partie suprieure qui, quelquefois, peu de temps avant de se relever tout fait, forme avec l'axe ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... happened if Boggs hadn't dropped in on Jimmy Mason and Pellams when they were cramming for an examination, for, although Pellams had long "kept an axe" for Boggs, he needed the inspiration of the moment to swing it like this. It was always so with ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... throne to overturn, no privileged orders to cast down, no violent changes of property to encounter. In the American Revolution, no man sought or wished for more than to defend and enjoy his own. None hoped for plunder or for spoil. Rapacity was unknown to it; the axe was not among the instruments of its accomplishment; and we all know that it could not have lived a single day under any well-founded imputation of possessing a tendency adverse to the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Buondelmonte to Pocock, describe it in the same place, and almost in the same manner; the differences between them are occasioned only by the injuries which it has sustained from the Turks. Mahomet the Second broke the under jaw of one of the serpents with a stroke of his battle axe Thevenot, l. i. c. 17. * Note: See note 75, ch. lxviii. for Dr. Clarke's rejection of Thevenot's authority. Von Hammer, however, repeats the story of Thevenot without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... had just felled a giant tree when, seeing an honest man approaching, he dropped his axe and fled. The next day when he cautiously returned to get his axe, he found the following lines pencilled ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... another word between us, we returned, picked up axe, saw, and a wallet to collect any specimens of fruit we might find on our way, and, still without a word, breasted the hill side by side, the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on them had been counted, be entirely explained by lack of technique? The generation of those days surely had a very different archetype of the intact, uncontaminated splendor of the forest than is possessed by us, for whom there remains scarcely anything but a cultivated forest ravaged by the axe and inclosed within boundaries fixed by rule and measure. The medieval poets felt deeply enough the poetic beauty of the forest, but men saw it with the appreciative eye of the artist only when they had gone away from the forest, when they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... the wagon driver passed down the car and gathered the weapons from the seats of the troopers. Raising a window, they passed them out to their friends outside. Meanwhile, the sound of an axe could be heard battering at the door of the next car, and presently the crash of splintering wood announced that ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... arrangement of his hair and dress I can see that he imagines he is to die as a nobleman, by the axe. May Heaven support him when he sees the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... evening hour when others were preparing to offer sacrifice he took the images and the altars of his Rites down from their honourable positions and cast them into a heap on a waste expanse beyond his courtyard. Then with an axe he unceremoniously detached their incomparable limbs from their sublime bodies and flung the parts into a ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... retrieve the estates and reprieve the name. And what is still more conducive to the longevity of families, no member had appeared as yet of a power too large and an aim too lofty, whose eminence must be cut short with axe, outlawry, and attainder. Therefore there ever had been a Yordas, good or bad (and by his own showing more often of the latter kind), to stand before heaven, and hold the land, and harass them that dwelt thereon. But now at last the world seemed to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... eyes open and to recognize the signs of gold and silver and other metals. A faithful friend goes with him, a donkey or mule which carries his bacon and beans, blankets, saucepan, and a few tools, such as a pan, pick, shovel, hammer, and axe. Sometimes the prospector also takes with him a magnifying glass and a little acid to test specimens, but usually he ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... looked for it, and every day they had the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. 'As for you, Benjamin Gunn,' says they, 'here's a musket,' they says, 'and a spade, and pick-axe. You can stay here and find Flint's money for ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will be: You see a tremendous tower-like pine-tree in the forest; it seems as it will stand there forever; but strike it fairly with your axe and it will reveal hollowness and punk will come out. So is it with the strength of the Knights of the Cross. But I commanded you to tell me what you have done and what you have accomplished there. Let me see, you said you fought there with weapons, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... time at the McKittrick cottage. Nor did she notice that the reptile was coiled in a most impossible manner, with its head propped up by two tiny wires. She merely hustled the thing out of doors, hacked it into pieces with the axe, and buried the remnants under a pile of rocks to make sure no harm came of them. It never occurred to her to wonder how General, who was not allowed in the house, could have dragged the snake inside without someone seeing or hearing him, for he was proud of his snake-killing ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... punishments under the English law were repealed, or fell into disuse. For instance, when torture, such as the rack, was last applied; when embowelling alive and quartering ceased to be practised; and whose was the last head that fell under the axe's bloody stroke. A word also on the use of the pillory, ducking-stool, stocks, &c. would interest. Any illustrations of the modification of our penal code would throw valuable light on the philosophy and improvement of the national character. And I believe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... the sun turning red." The most practical reminder of the quest of cinchona which the travelers found was an occasional ajoupa alone in the wilderness, with a broken pot and a rusted knife or axe beneath it—witness that some eager searcher had traveled the road before themselves. The cascarilleros are very avaricious and very brave, going out alone, setting up a hut in a probable-looking spot, and diverging from their head-quarters in every direction. If by any accident they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... a ship and sail home. Nothing could have seemed wilder. Not one of them had any experience of ship-building. But they went to work with a will. They had a forge, tools, and some iron. Soon the forest rang with the sound of the axe and with the crash of falling trees. They laid the keel and pushed the work with amazing energy and ingenuity, caulked the seams with long moss gathered from the neighboring trees and smeared the bottoms ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... to direct me. The head was out of the barrel; and the captain took a lighted stick out of the fire to blow himself and me up, because there was a vessel then in sight coming in, which he supposed was a Spaniard, and he was afraid of falling into their hands. Seeing this I got an axe, unnoticed by him, and placed myself between him and the powder, having resolved in myself as soon as he attempted to put the fire in the barrel to chop him down that instant. I was more than an hour in this situation; during which he struck me often, still keeping the fire in his ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... eighteen. One side of the wainscotting is covered with tapestry, the remainder is decorated with old family pictures, and some ancient pieces of embroidery, probably the handiwork of nuns. Over a press, which has doors of Venetian glass, is an ancient oaken figure, with a battle-axe in his hand, which was one of those formerly placed on the walls of the City of Carlisle, to represent guards. There used to be also an old-fashioned bed and some dark furniture in this room; but ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... at last, taking hold of the axe. "I'll have to chop a cord of yours now in order to make this ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... ideal of self-control in both. It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.' 'In withstanding of the passions standeth very peace of heart.' 'Let us set the axe to the root, that we being purged of our passions may have a peaceable mind.' To this end there must be continual self-examination. 'If thou may not continually gather thyself together, namely sometimes do it, at least once a day, the morning or the evening. In ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... tall and stately, ponderous axe on shoulder hung, For the distant darksome jungle issued forth ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... tents, I said that with the aid of a small axe I could within a few minutes, by following certain directions given in "The Complete Boy Camper," construct commodious and comfortable lean-forwards. The work in question had spoken of these edifices as lean-tos, but I preferred the word lean-forwards as being ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... progress. Once Clint tripped over a fallen branch and measured his length and once Amy ran head-on into a sapling and declared irately, as he rubbed his nose, that he would come back the next day with an axe and settle matters. At last, after a silence of many minutes: "We're doing it, I'll bet ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... one-handed battle axe (Garcilasso de la Vega, I. lib. ix. cap. 31). Novices received it at the festival of Huarachicu, with the word Auccacunapac, ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... his servant with a rod."—The instrument used, gives a clue to the intent. See Numbers xxxv. 16, 18. It was a rod, not an axe, nor a sword, nor a bludgeon, nor any other death-weapon—hence, from the kind of instrument, no design to kill would be inferred; for intent to kill would hardly have taken a rod for its weapon. But if the servant dies under his hand, then the unfitness of the instrument, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labor, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an instant ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... prosperous as it was, could not be compared to the rock-bound coasts of New England or the beautiful shores of New York Bay, so filled with legends and adventures, memories of the past, battles and shipwrecks, all dating back before the first axe resounded in the Western wilderness. Everything here was new. There were no houses with the marks of Revolutionary bullets, no families of unbroken aristocratic descent from over the ocean, no traditions of Colonial times, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... philosophize; to paint the manners living as they rise, or dead as they fall; to take Time by the forelock, and measure the marks of his footsteps; to show us the smoke curling up from embowered chimneys; or, since woods must go down, to record the conquests of the biting axe; to celebrate the raising of every considerable roof-tree, to lament all dilapidations and crumbling away of ivied walls; to inform us how many fathoms deep is the lake with its abbeyed island—why the pool below the aged ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... delighted with the idea of being able soon to occupy it, when it was discovered that a single piece of timber, contributed by one of the boys, had been obtained without leave. As soon as this was known, one of the boys seized an axe, and demolished the building, in the presence of the offender, the rest looking on and approving; nor could they afterward be induced to go on with it. At one time, several years since, there were two or three petty thefts committed, (and a good deal of prevarication naturally followed,) mainly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... a sledge to the forest, taking with him an axe, a bite of food, and 'Silly Zoska's' daughter. The mother had never asked after her, and Maciek had mothered the child; he fed her, took her to the stable with him at night and to his work in ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... familiar enclosure she gazed around her like a caged animal seeking escape. The sun beat down on her bare head mercilessly, and mechanically she moved to the shade of a half-grown hickory tree that voluntarily had sprouted beside the milk house. At her feet lay an axe with which she made kindlings for fires. She stooped and picked it up. The memory of that prone figure sobbing in the grass caught her with a renewed spasm. She shut her eyes as if to close it out. That made hearing so acute she felt ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... quietly began cutting down the post which supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was armed with an axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious mob at once collected, and made ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... save the singing of the Marseillaise, (the Marseillaise of Slavery!) and the striking down of the Federal colors before the flag of the pelican and the rattlesnake. A great many blue ribbons and Colt's revolvers are sold; and busts of Calhoun, the first theorist of secession, axe carried about ostentatiously. Next, to present a good mien to the eyes of Europe, a Constitution is voted in haste, a government is formed, an army is decreed; but the revolutionary basis is remaining, and we ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the Heruli and Goths in the centre; the prospect was closed by the Moors and Vandals, and their loose array seemed to multiply their numbers. Their dress was light and active; one soldier carried a whip, another a sword, a third a bow, a fourth, perhaps, a battle axe, and the whole picture exhibited the intrepidity of the troops and the vigilance of the general. Chosroes was deluded by the address, and awed by the genius, of the lieutenant of Justinian. Conscious of the merit, and ignorant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Elizabeth was fond of executions. She loved Essex, of all men, best; and yet the same axe which murdered Anne Bulleyn, was used to revenge herself on him. The bloody task took three strokes, which so enraged the multitude, (who loved Essex) that they would have torn the executioner to pieces, had not the soldiers prevented them. Mr. Hutton, in his "Journey to London," observes, that "their ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... found in the city. Glaucus and Ione, the Christian Olynthus, and the dark Arbaces seemed to haunt the place. In one of the chambers of this very temple, as Michael Angelo was now telling,—even while leading the way to that chamber,—had been found a huge skeleton, with an axe beside it; two walls had been beaten through by that axe, but the desperate fugitive could go no farther. In another part of the city had been found, another skeleton, carrying a bag of Coins and ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... part of the Place d'Armes, a broad, roughly-paved square. The Chateau of St. Louis, with its massive buildings and high, peaked roofs, filled one side of the square. On the other side, embowered in ancient trees that had escaped the axe of Champlain's hardy followers, stood the old-fashioned Monastery of the Recollets, with its high belfry and broad shady porch, where the monks in gray gowns and sandals sat in summer, reading their breviaries or exchanging salutations with the passers-by, who always ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... positions are simply impossible, each a moral reductio ad absurdam. We must institute a new and higher order. To do so we women must unite in a great silent movement, a temple slowly rising up beneath our hands without sound of axe or hammer. It will not make itself heard on platforms; its cry will not be heard in our streets. It will go on beneath the surface of our life, probably unheeded and unnoticed of men. Women must educate women; those who know must teach those who are in ignorance. Let mothers who have been roused ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Bride-streams, The Axe, and the Otter I passed, to the gate of the city Where Exe scents ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... Immediately there rose from the sea a pygmy, armed in copper, whom Wainamoinen deemed incapable of coping with so large a tree, until the dwarf suddenly transformed himself into a giant of such proportions that four blows from his copper axe felled the oak, scattering its trunk to the east, its top to the west, its leaves to the south, and its branches to the north. The chips from the fallen oak were collected by a Northland maiden to make enchanted arrows for a magician, and the soil ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... her forehead and bedecked with ribbons and strings of pearls in the fashion then newly imported out of France, the last modish freak of Marie Antoinette before she laid her own stately head under the axe of the guillotine. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... thousand different names. Of all these thousand forms, Durga and Karle are the most regarded by the people. I will speak of Durga first. Of all the festivals in Eastern India, hers is the most celebrated. She has ten hands, in which she holds an iron club, a trident, a battle-axe, spears, thunderbolts, etc. Thus armed, she is ever ready to ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... It's an intellectual exercise. He's the right man, Fanny. You see it isn't a party in the active sense at all, except now and then when it's captured by someone with an axe to grind. ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... jocund Spring came in, He crowned the wedded pair. And sent them forth with hearts elate Their wildwood home to share. For he had built a snug log-house, Beneath a maple tree; And his axe had cleared a wide domain, While store ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... connection between evil done and evil suffered, which reaches its highest exemplification in the death which is the 'wages of sin.' And just as some men that have invented instruments for capital punishment have themselves had to prove the sharpness of their own axe, so the lawgiver, whose message it had been to declare, 'the soul that sinneth it shall die,' had himself to go up alone to the mountain-top to receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion (with many ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... they had their choice of timber and prairie lands. Thinking the prairies worthless—since land which could not raise a tree certainly could not raise crops—these first occupants of the Middle West spent a generation or more, axe in hand, along the heavily timbered river-bottoms. The prairies were long in settling. No one then could have predicted that farm lands in that region would be worth three hundred dollars an acre or better, and that these prairies of ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... that Moses and Solomon, in building the temples, were wise in the knowledge of God and of man; from which point it is not difficult to pass on to the moral meaning altogether, and to affirm that the building which was erected without 'the noise of a hammer or axe, or any tool of iron,' was altogether a moral building—a building of God, not made with hands: in short, many see in the story of Solomon's temple a symbolical representation of MAN as the temple of God, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... of the walrus which Annatock was now cutting up with his axe into portable blocks of beef. For several days previous to the thaw which had now set in, the weather had been intensely cold, and the walrus had perished in consequence of its ambitious desire to repose in the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... sounds ceased at the first blow of the axe, and a deathly silence succeeded, followed by a ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... man is weak he gives him a blow with a hatchet, to make him fall into sin, but when he sees him strong he strikes him down with an axe. If there be a young woman, honest and well brought up, he sets an immoral youth near her, and with all kinds of flattery deceives her, and makes her fall into sin. Here the devil has dealt a blow with an axe. Here is an honorable citizen, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... prince seized his dagger between his teeth, fastened his sash to a block of stone, took his axe in one hand, and with the other slid down this substitute for a rope; falling a few steps from the wild beast, he sprang upon her, and, swift as lightning, dealt her two mortal strokes, just as the black, losing his strength, was about ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wedge or spike of iron, Gainest, readiest, Gar, cause, Gart, compelled, Gentily, like a gentleman, Gerfalcon, a fine hawk, Germane, closely allied, Gest, deed, story, Gisarm, halberd, battle-axe, Glaive, sword, Glasting, barking, Glatisant, barking, yelping, Gobbets, lumps, Graithed, made ready, Gree, degree, superiority, Greed, pp., pleased, content, Grescs, steps, Grimly, ugly, Grovelling, on his face, Guerdonless, without reward, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... hall were decorated with all manner of armour, ancient swords of Eastern handiwork, barbaric weapons from central Africa, savage implements of medieval warfare; and an idea came to him. He took down a huge battle-axe and ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... centuries passed the Neolithic people progressed in many directions. They improved their methods of making their weapons until they were able to produce axe-heads so perfectly ground and polished and with such a keen cutting edge that it would be impossible to make anything better. These celts like the arrow-heads were always fitted into cleft handles or shafts of wood, and it was probably at a later period that the stone hammer, pierced ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... first remember what he was awakened for, nor how he came to be upon the floor. 'Come,' said Mazzuolo, 'come, she's fast asleep; I have just been to her room to look at her. You must step down now to the carriage and bring up the axe ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... for fuel, for which it is much used, and chestnut, the same as in the Netherlands, growing in the woods without order. There are three varieties of beech—water beech, common Beech, and hedge beech—also axe-handle wood, two species of canoe wood, ash, birch, pine, fir, juniper or wild cedar, linden, alder, willow, thorn, elder, and many other kinds useful for many purposes, but unknown to us by name, and which we will be glad to submit to ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... the woods, or a hare in her bed among the brownest broomsedge in the county, and he knew the habits of fish and bird and animal as if he had created them; and though he could not or would not handle a hoe, he was the best hand at an axe "in the stump", in the district, and Mrs. Stanley was kept in game ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... of flight: the whole army retired to their ships, hard chased by the Grecian victors, who, amid the carnage, fired the fleet. Cynaegirus, brother to Aeschylus, the tragic poet (himself highly distinguished for his feats that day), seized one of the vessels by the poop: his hand was severed by an axe; he died gloriously of his wounds. But to none did the fortunes of that field open a more illustrious career than to a youth of the tribe Leontis, in whom, though probably then but a simple soldier in the ranks, was first ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there was the sound of the axe busy in the woods; not the ringing sound of the bright large English axe, this being wanted in the stroke of the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary's arm out when she took it. It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a wood-axe, but ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... encounter. The riders were, however, uninjured. The horses wheeled, made a short circuit, and rushed toward each other again. At the second encounter, Bernard brought down so heavy a blow with a battle-axe upon the iron armor that covered De Langurant's shoulder, that the unfortunate trooper was hurled out of his saddle and thrown to ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... between Vice and Crime—viz., between the corrupting habits and the violent act—which scarce touches the former with the lightest twig in the fasces—which lifts against the latter the edge of the Lictor's axe. Let a child steal an apple in sport, let a starveling steal a roll in despair, and Law conducts them to the Prison, for evil commune to mellow them for the gibbet. But let a man spend one apprenticeship from youth to old age in vice—let him devote a fortune, perhaps colossal, to the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... exceeds in barbarity that custom which only a few years since was practised in enlightened England:—a convicted traitor, perhaps a man found guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlike heinous crimes, had his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowels dragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into four quarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot and fester among ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... a raw, ungainly, but powerful looking youth from Kintail was seen staring about, as the Mackenzies were starting to meet the enemy, in an apparently idiotic manner, as if looking for something. He ultimately came across an old rusty battle-axe, of great size, and, setting off after the others, he arrived at the scene of strife just as the combatants were closing with each other. Duncan Macrae (for such was his name), from his stupid and ungainly appearance, was taken little notice of, and was wandering ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... melancholy? I reason, and have convinced myself as follows: No deity, nor anyone else, save the envious, takes pleasure in my infirmity and discomfort, nor sets down to my virtue the tears, sobs, fear, and the like, which axe signs of infirmity of spirit; on the contrary, the greater the pleasure wherewith we are affected, the greater the perfection whereto we pass; in other words, the more must we necessarily partake of the divine ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with his axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in his life, and likes it. He is as yet far from being an expert woodsman—mark the blood on his hands at places where he has hit them instead of the tree; but note also that he does not waste time in bandaging ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... common people listened to gladly, what the fishermen of Galilee, and the sick and sorrowing rejoiced to hear, Jerusalem rejected. And so Jerusalem was doomed. Over gorgeous temple, stately palace, and quiet home alike was written Ichabod—thy glory is departed. Already the axe was laid to the root of the tree; already the sentence had gone forth, "cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?" Already the hand of the destroyer was upon the city; the Roman eagle glittered amid the halls of Zion, and the once glorious sceptre had departed from Judah. Over ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... terrible lioness-mothers of the Western jungles who had been used like men to fight with rifle, knife, and axe—now sat silent in the doorways of their rough cabins, wrinkled, scarred, fierce, silent, scornful of all advancing luxury and refinement. Flitting gaily past them, on their way to the dry goods stores—supplied by trains of pack-horses from over ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... than a hundred yards I came to the house I was seeking, a small, log structure, overshadowed by a gigantic oak, and standing isolated and alone. It appeared dark and silent, although evidently inhabited, as an axe stood leaning against the jamb of the door, while a variety of utensils were scattered about. Believing the place to be occupied by a slave, or possibly some white squatter, I advanced directly to the door, and called loudly ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... desired effect—but in all probability it would have fallen of itself and have done injury to the people; it now hung over the side, and promised to serve as a raft in case of necessity. The foremast was then cut away, and the mizenmast was doomed to follow—but the axe and tomahawk, which had been carried forward, were lost, or washed away. The ship by this time had fallen upon her beam ends, and the sea was making breaches over her, so that every individual had enough to do to keep himself from ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... done this, they instantly, and with the most atrocious perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root of all property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by the principles they established, and the example they set, in confiscating all the possessions of the church. They made and recorded a sort of INSTITUTE and DIGEST of anarchy, called the rights of man, in such a pedantic ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... passing to the forest, I met with an amusing accident. I was riding a huge sixteen-hand black mare and had heavy swags of blankets strapped before and behind the saddle, in addition to which I carried a new axe, some cooking utensils and a large leg and loin of mutton, which I had called for at the station, fearing that my men were out of meat. Near the forest I had to cross a small stream with steep banks. There had been heavy rain the previous night, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... around in deep cuts, which begin close to the branches and go down almost to the roots. A ladder is used to mount to the upper part of the trunk, and the cuts, or incisions, are made with a long knife or with an axe. Then they strip off the sheets of cork between the circles. This operation is a very delicate one, and requires much care and skill lest the inner part should be injured. If the operation is carried out successfully, the cork-like ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... mentioned wood, which is antagonistic to metal, but has an affinity for fluid from which it draws its sustenance, whereas the metal forged into an axe ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... bend in the Ohio River, dwelt a man named Hedden, with his wife and three children. His farm stretched further into the wilderness than his neighbors', for his had been one of the first cabins built there, and his axe, ringing merrily through the long days, had hewn down an opening in the forest, afterward famous in that locality as "Neighbor Hedden's Clearing." Here he had planted and gathered his crops year after year, and in spite of annoyances from the Indians, who robbed his fields, and ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... stature, hideous of aspect, with ravening yellow eyes. He wore a skin roughly sewn together, and a grey cloak over it, and he sheltered himself from the light with a spreading tree torn up by the roots. In his hand he bore an enormous axe, with keen and shining edge. This hideous apparition strode up the hall and leant against a carved ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... related to her my childhood and youth, not as I have told it to you, judged from a distance, but in the language of a young man whose wounds are still bleeding. My voice was like the axe of a woodsman in the forest. At every word the dead years fell with echoing sound, bristling with their anguish like branches robbed of their foliage. I described to her in feverish language many cruel details which I have here spared ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Within the hollow quiver still remained the rest, which the Achaians soon should prove. Then laying the arrow on the arch, he drew the string and arrow notches, and forth from the bench on which he sat let fly the shaft, with careful aim, and did not miss an axe's ring from first to last, but clean through all sped on the bronze-tipped arrow; ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... as it may, the river is its leader and engineer. Fortunes and ages almost would have been necessary to tunnel those mountains, if indeed tunnelling had been possible, but the river winds at its own sweet will. Without sound of hammer or axe, by force of its own heaven-born instincts, it has levelled its lovely way unerring, and wherever it goes, thither goes the railroad, to its own infinite gain. Railroads are not generally considered picturesque, but from the standpoint of that hennery, and from ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the big trees had been partly chopped through, and standing beside it, with an uplifted axe in his hands, was a man made entirely of tin. His head and arms and legs were jointed upon his body, but he stood perfectly motionless, as if he could not stir ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... thinkin' we'll have to. I'm thinkin' they'll find us in a fortni't, whatever," reassured Bob, rising and picking up the axe. "We'll be needin' a shelter, an' I'm thinkin' I'll build ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... see him die; they stood at corners relentlessly smoothing their beards and curling their moustaches with their right fists and crying "A Morire!" Periglio in chains was led on, blindfolded. The solemn headsman followed, carrying his axe, and, as the boy left off turning the handle of the mechanical piano, the cornet blasted a broken-hearted minor ninth over the last chord of the funeral march and prolonged it till—well, after all it was a mistake; Periglio had not really helped the Christians; his brother proved that, on the ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... elastic rungs one perceives clearly the points at which the rungs are fastened to the sides. The points at which an elastic trellis is fastened is felt when it is shaken, and the resistance of the wood when an axe is used on it. In the same way the soldier senses clearly the entrance of his sword-point or blade into the body of his enemy. The last fact is confirmed by the students. One can clearly distinguish whether the sword has merely beaten through the skin or has sunk ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of bloody axe, Guiding hand of princess led the captive forward— "Sire, he's mine," she cried, "Adopt him for thy son, If thou Matoax lovest best of all thine own." Powhatan thus answered to the lovely maid, "'Tis ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... himself of all spare clothing, and his father's horse of its saddle blanket; then, straightening out the sick man, he wrapped him in the clothes and blanket, and rode like mad for the nearest ranch-house. The neighbour, a young man, came at once, with a pot to make tea, an axe, and a rope. They found the older Cree conscious but despairing. A fire was made, and hot tea revived him. Then Josh cut two long poles from the nearest timber and made a stretcher, or travois, Indian fashion, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... having been disobedient and having with a fair occasion attacked the enemy and gained a victory. In this scene Domenico painted Postumius as an old man with shaven face, with the right hand on his axe, and with the left showing to the army his son lying dead upon the ground, and depicted very well in foreshortening; and below this picture, which is most beautiful, is an inscription very well composed. In the octagon that follows, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... accompanied with a lunge, which the Highlander received on his target, but instead of using his sword in cutting down his now defenceless antagonist, he employed it in parrying the blow of a Lochaber axe aimed at the officer by the Miller, one of his own followers, a grim-looking old Highlander, whom I remember to have seen. Thus overpowered, Lieutenant-Colonel Allan Whitefoord, a gentleman of rank and consequence, as well as a brave officer, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... for the action was too quick for the eye to follow. But, all the same, that metal-like left fist shot forward with the speed of lightning, and landing on the point of the chin, the recipient went down like an ox stricken by the axe of a butcher. Rather curiously, he did not fall backward, but lurched forward and lay senseless, knocked out ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis |
