"Pried" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mouth. Her screaming stilled, but his own outcry more than replaced it. In a twinkling the virago's hard teeth closed over his fingers. Two ran from the oars to him. But the woman, conscious that she fought for life or death, held fast. Curses, blows, even a dagger pried betwixt her lips—all bootless. She seemed as a thing possessed. And all the time the Etruscan howled in ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... committed upon the graves of our soldiers by the rebels. About twenty of a Boston company and a Chelsea company had been buried near each other, but every skull had been taken away, and nearly all the principal bones of the bodies were gone. Some of the bodies had been dug out, and others pried out of the graves with levers, and in some the sleeves of uniforms were split to obtain the bones of the arms. It was described as a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... put one of his big long teeth under a root. Then with a twist of his head he pried the root ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... closing his rather warm quarters. Suddenly a dark, lithe shadow slipped down into the hollow, leaped upon the priest; and struck him down with a glittering knife. Then the murderer sprang at the image of the goddess like a cat and pried out the glowing central eye of Kali with his weapon. Straight toward me he ran with his royal prize. When he was within two paces I rose to my feet and struck him with all my force between the eyes. He rolled over senseless and the magnificent jewel fell from his hand. That ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... late in the summer of his first year, became a passion with him. He climbed the elms and the maples along the road and the fruit trees in the orchard. In the barn, too, he clambered about on the scaffolds and pried into all the corners with ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... boots. He privately valued the carpet at so much a yard as he walked over it. He privately valued the chair at so much the dozen as he sat down on it. He was quite at his ease: it was no matter to him whether he waited and did nothing, or whether he pried into the private character of every one in the room, as long as ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... pried the trees apart and got his head loose. Then he was all right. I tied him good and tight in his stable, and I guess he ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... impassable; but when they ascertained of what it was composed, they piled up timber at its base, and set it on fire. When the glass was hot, they dashed upon the heated mass cold water, which broke it into fragments. Then with huge levers, picks, and shovels, they pushed and pried the shining pieces down into the lake, and opened thus a wagon-road a ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... a small, ditch-like spring branch. Mr. Stewart had to stay on our wagon to hold the bronco, but all the rest, even Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, gathered around and tried to help. They hitched on a snap team, but not a trace tightened. They didn't want to unload the game in the snow. The men lifted and pried on the wheels. Still the ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... who goest backward, who comest forth from the city of Bast (Bubastis), I have never pried ...
— Egyptian Literature
... any more breath? Besides, I'd been hearin' a lot of these young hicks talk big about spots where the lid could be pried off. Maybe it was so. Ambrose and 'Chita should have a look, anyway. And I spent the rest of the afternoon interviewin' sporty acquaintances over the 'phone, gettin' dope on where to hunt for active capers and poppin' ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the strain of the encounter, but he pried with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked tranquilly meditative, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... how an oyster makes his shell, but the nose has not stood in the middle of his face for nothing. There has been some prying on either side of it, apparently; and he has pried to such good purpose, that some of the prime secrets of the new philosophy appear to have turned up in his researches. 'To take it again perforce,' mutters the king. 'If thou wert my fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being OLD before ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... consequence. One of the most painful recollections I have is of seeing a child six years old forced to swallow a febrifuge that was not unpalatable in itself. The mother, father, and nurse held the struggling boy, while the physician pried open the set teeth and poured the liquid down his throat. Under these circumstances it is probable that the remedy ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... I thought. Well, she's done it, though thet has n't pried her loose from Gaskins. He 's hauntin' her like a shadow. It 's garrison talk they 're engaged, but I ain't so sure 'bout thet. She an' I hev got to be pretty good friends, though, o' course, it's strictly on the quiet. I ain't ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... laid bare a broad flat stone. This they pried up, but it required all their strength to lift and stand it on edge. Just below, they saw a flight of steps. They were slippery with wet and they looked very old, as if worn, ages ago, by many feet passing up and ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... deep regret came into his eyes. He was quite sane, yet he hated those men at mealtime. He was haunted by a fear that the food would not last. He inquired of the cook, the cabin-boy, the captain, concerning the food stores. They reassured him countless times; but he could not believe them, and pried cunningly about the lazarette to see with his ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... of all that pried about The walls, I overlook'd em best, An' what o' that? Why, I meaede out Noo mwore than all the rest: That there wer woonce the nest of zome That wer ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... are found on San Miguel. They are pried off with a crow-bar, the shells are polished for sale, made into buttons, etc., and the meat is dried and sent to China, where it is ground and made into soup. It has been used here, and pronounced by some to be equal to terrapin, and by others ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... was carried back again. The man would then move it a little to one side, just far enough for the thickness of the board which he wished to make, and then begin to saw again. He moved the log by means of an iron bar with a sharp point, which he struck into the end of the log, and thus pried it over, one end at a time. When the log was placed in its new position, the machinery was set in motion again, and the log was sawed through in another place, from end to end, parallel to the first ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... faced the crate. It must be done at once. Discovery was too probable. Gingerly he forced the blade under one of the boards and pried. The nails screeched horribly as they were withdrawn. The task was simple enough; the crate was a flimsy affair to have withstood so difficult a journey. But after each board was removed he peered to the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... natural voice for his care of her—quite innocently—until in the questioning, unconvinced gaze that met hers she found her own eyes softening and growing dim; and she looked away suddenly, lest he read her ere she had dared turn the first page in the book of self—ere she had studied, pried, probed among the pages of a new chapter whose familiar title, so long meaningless to her, had taken on a sudden troubling significance. And for the first time in her life she glanced uneasily at the new page in the book of self, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... do fur me but I must go and see that factory. I couldn't till the quarantine was pried loose from our house. But when it was, I went down town and hunted up the place and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to the facts that Big Business has up to the present been unable to get control of the reins of government in Canada, that the courts have been kept comparatively free of political influence and that the doors of underground politics are not easily pried open by corruption. Why is this? Canadians would fain take unction to themselves that it is owing to their superior national ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... at ease. She played for a time with the ears of Black Bart, or pried open his mouth and made him show the great white fangs, or scratched odd designs on the hearth with pieces of charcoal; but finally she lost interest in all these things and let her head lie on the rough pelt of the wolf-dog, sound ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... to the postoffice, pried open a window, unlocked the mail bag that was ready for Jim Bennett to carry to the morning train at Chargrove and from it abstracted a number of letters which he unsealed and read with great care. They had all ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... in reaching the sandy flat. But when we got there we found it torn up from one end to the other. A few scattered timbers and three empty chests with the covers pried off alone remained. Handy Solomon ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... the social magnates of the place does not occur to these ladies,—one the widow of a Prussian officer, and the other her niece, who have returned to America after a long residence abroad. They prefer to remain, as it were, incognito; and, pried; into as the seclusion of the new-comers is by all the curious, this reticence soon causes misconstructions and scandals. The petty gossip, the solemnities of self-importance, and the Phariseeism of a country ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... The air was whistling around my face. Papers began to swirl off the chart table. I twisted my body frantically, kicking loose from the grip of the slot, fighting the sucking pull of air. I fell to the floor inside the room, the slot cover slamming behind me. I staggered to my feet. I pried at the cover, but I couldn't open it against the vacuum. Then it budged, and Thomas' hand came through. The metal edge cut into it, blood started, but the cover was held open half an inch. I reached the chart table, almost falling over my leaden feet, seized a short permal T-square, and levered ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... like a swarm of bees, angry at first, humming a note like that of the telegraph wire on a mountain road, but, as he stood his ground, curiosity prevailed among them and they pried closely at him. They touched him, felt his arms, his knees, handled his clothing, peered into his eyes. All this he endured, though he was in a horrible fright. Then one, the black-haired girl with a bold, proud face, came and stood closely before him and looked him full into his eyes. He gave her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... until he reached the last morning newspaper on the list. Here he was obliged to proceed to the city room—risky business. A queer advertisement coming into the city room late at night was always pried into, as he knew from experience. Still, he felt that he ought not to miss any chance to ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... go, over on you' back, like snap' turtle; I see where you lay there before. What the dev'! I say!" Bonny, much excited with his find, extracted a rusty tin tobacco-box from the hole, pried open the spring lid and drew forth its contents: a discolored canvas bag bulging with coin and whipped around the neck with a leather whang. The canvas was rotten; Bonny supported its contents tenderly as he brought it over ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... ain't braggin' about it none," Blackie admitted. "Von Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so t' live, about two, three years ago. He don't approve of me. Pried into my private life, old Von Gerhard did, somethin' scand'lous. I had sort of went to pieces about that time, and I went t' him to be patched up. He thumps me fore 'an' aft, firing a volley of questions, lookin' up the roof of m' mouth, and squintin' at m' finger ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... I saw Mr. Hunt and Mr. Kendall chuckling together over a book. I divined a secret. Now, I was a very honourable boy, and never pried into secrets, but where a quaint old book was concerned I had no more conscience than a pirate. And seeing Mr. Hunt put the book into his desk, I abode my time till he had gone forth, when I raised the lid, and . ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... appointed censor, would work foolishly, are justified by all he has heard of such functionaries as they have worked in other fields and in other lands. This was true of the gag which the doughty Brieux finally pried off the mouth of the French playwright. It has certainly been true of the mild and intermittent discipline to which the remote and slightly puzzled Lord Chamberlain has subjected the English dramatists. Indeed, when their mutinous mutterings finally jogged ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... meantime pried up her eyelids and asked what was wrong with that. And her eyes were coy about it, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... drawer in the desk that was locked. Ruthlessly Carter smashed the woodwork and pried it open. Its only contents was a small parcel, a folded paper in a parchment envelope. Hastily he drew forth the ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... vnconscionable quirk some haue of late time pried into, viz. in a ioynt-lease to three intended by the taker and payer, to descend successiuely and intirely, one of them passeth ouer his interest to a stranger, who by rigour of law shall hold it during the liues ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... a hypnotherapist of exceptional ability," Dasinger said. "Leed Farous wasn't so far gone that the information couldn't be pried out of him with an ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... renewed the battle with all the fury of her youthful strength. Finally the flimsy lock gave a bit beneath her efforts; a narrow slit appeared between the door and jamb in which she forced her hands and thus secured a great purchase. Then, one foot against the wall, she tugged and pried and pulled until, with a sudden crack, the bar ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... passed without either's speaking. The deck-steward brought them tea and biscuits which he declined and she accepted. She tried the big, hard, tasteless disk between her strong white teeth, then said with a sly smile: "You pried into my secret a few minutes ago. I'm going to pry into yours. Who ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... heel and pried with his knife; Billy hammered with his rifle-butt; and when they knocked off even a chip, it showed traces of gold. Why, wherever the rock stuck up, making little humps and furrows, it seemed to be the one ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... of how the thumb was removed for good and all. It was Mrs. Budlong herself that removed it. Carthage could never have pried it up. ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... point of the chisel between the stones and pried and pressed—here and there, and at the other end—till the stone moved forward a little at a time, and they were able to get hold of it, and drag it out. Behind was darkness, a hollow—Dickie plunged his ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... the exacting duties of the Supreme Court, found time for the study of philosophy. In men less noted was the same spirit. Thus Robert Carter of Nomini Hall in his love for music, did not content himself with acquiring the ability to perform on various instruments, but pried into the depths of the art, studying carefully the theory of thorough bass.[134] He himself invented an appliance for tuning harpsichords.[135] This gentleman was also fond of the study of law, while he and his wife often read philosophy together.[136] Fithian speaks of him as a good scholar, ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... "I pried the boat loose, jumped in as she swung clear, and pulled with all my might, headed toward the centre of the river. I was almost clear when I was drawn over a dip, bow first, and struck a glancing blow against another rock I had never seen. There was a crash, and the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... I took hold of it and she says: 'Oh, it doesn't want to come, does it! It must have a very affectionate disposition to be so attached to you.' Seemed to me 'twas attached by its claws more'n its disposition, but I pried it loose and handed it to her. Then she says again, 'What unusual colorin'! Will you sell this one to me? I'll give ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the latter, because he didn't have time enough in the short minute between our hearing the shots and racing out there to have fallen asleep again, especially when he was tied up so tightly. I think you will find that I am right,—when Holmes returns with the information he has pried out of ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... He had got up quietly when all were asleep, and, drawing the woman's trunk from under her bed, had carried it out into the yard, pried open the lock, stolen the money, ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... folk should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing. What matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their approval could have been taken as a foregone conclusion. That is to say, had not the author pried over-deeply into Chichikov's soul, nor stirred up in its depths what shunned and lay hidden from the light, nor disclosed those of his hero's thoughts which that hero would have not have disclosed even to his most intimate friend; had the author, indeed, exhibited ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... an answering shot, and then voices approaching to within a few yards of the hut. We pried the door open far enough to hand out the spade. The unknown visitors already had one spade, and between the two we were soon excavated, the door was opened, and we leaped forth! There stood an Indian squaw with a boy of ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... he started to go out again when he stubbed his toe on the same floor board. That set him thinking. Examining the board more closely, Kiki found it had been pried up and then nailed down again in such a manner that it was a little higher than the other boards. But why had his father taken up the board? Had he hidden some of his ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in revenge for a previous offence, "Nay, sir, we'll send you to him. If your presence doesn't drive a man out of his house, nothing will." Boswell was "horribly shocked," but he still stuck to his victim like a leech, and pried into the minutest details of his life and manners. He observed with conscientious accuracy that though Johnson abstained from milk one fast-day, he did not reject it when put in his cup. He notes the whistlings and puffings, the trick of saying "too-too-too" of ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... been paneled, but the paneling had long ago vanished. Holes had been dug here and there in the walls, and he remembered having noticed that the door was gone and the metal groove in which it had slid had been pried out. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... a tin one, and not all rusty. Gale pried open the reluctant lid. A faint old musty odor penetrated his nostrils. Inside the box lay a packet wrapped in what once might have been oilskin. He took it out and removed this covering. A folded paper remained ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... quinta, of course, whenever she had a chance, but she discovered nothing—with the result that the mystery began to engross her whole thought. She pried into the obscurest corners, she questioned the slaves, she lay awake at night listening to Esteban's breathing, in the hope of surprising his secret from his dreams. Naturally such a life was trying to the husband, but as his wife's obsession grew his determination to foil her only strengthened. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a clove-hitch onto Prince. He had to give him one or two welts over the head 'fore he could do it; the dog acted like he'd been cheated. Then I pried myself loose from that blessed limb and shinned down to solid ground. My! but I was b'iling inside. 'Taint pleasant to be made a show afore folks, but 'twas the feller's condescending what-excuse-you-got-for-living manners that ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... consent of a mutual distrust, the throng drew quickly apart, each eyeing his neighbor warily, and scattered into the woods. Only the two grim bird-lizards remained, seeming to have a sort of understanding or partnership, or possibly being a mated pair. They pried into the cartilages and between the joints of the skeletons with the iron wedges of their beaks, till there was not another tit-bit to be enjoyed. Then, hooting once more with satisfaction, they spread their batlike vanes and ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The lads pried the boulder away, blocking it so that it could not crash down the slope and so warn the men inside of the approach of the boys. Then Will crept cautiously ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... my way down the face of the Citadel until I was just above the steep snow fields. Here was a drop of six feet. If the snow was soft, all right. If it was frozen underneath, I would be very likely to toboggan off into space. I pried loose a small rock and dropped it, watching with great interest how it lit. It sunk with a dull plunk. Therefore I made my leap, and found myself waist deep ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... it now is, its chief and priceless treasure. There also is a braid of Queen Bengerd's hair that was found when her grave was opened in 1855. The people's hate had followed her even there, and would not let her rest. The slab that covered her tomb had been pried off, and a round stone dropped into the place made for her head. Otherwise her ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the bluff was rather crumbly, with big rocks near the edge looking as if they had been left there by the frost, or rather as if the frost had pried away their brothers to let them crash down into the lake. They soon found a big rock that looked as if it would move easily. Pud found a small tree that had fallen down, and with this as a lever they loosened the rock and it started down the cliff. It moved slowly at first and the boys drew close ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... noticed—no legislative attempt to meet the consequences of this dangerous condition of things. The administration of local affairs was still, at that date, intrusted to native officials. The whole internal regulation was in the hands of the famous Muhamad Reza Ehan. Hindu or Mussulman assessors pried into every barn and shrewdly estimated the probable dimensions of the crops on every field; and the courts, as well as the police, were still in native hands. "These men," says our author, "knew the country, its capabilities, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... that it stood for. The sight of a clergyman with his vestments and his benedictions would make her fairly bristle with hostility. They talked to her about her sins, and she did not know what they meant; they pried into the state of her soul, and she shrunk from them as if they had been hairy spiders. Here, too, they taught her to sing—droning hymns that were a mockery of all ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... lad had repaired to a nearby house, borrowed a red hot poker, and returning to the hall, bored two peep-holes through another shutter, while an enterprising companion pried open a third window, thus giving a full view of the pictures to all who were fortunate enough to ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... occasionally came from her small salon to play on the piano there and lingered apparently in wait. But no one seemed stirring, and Billy stole to the door on his right, opening on the encased stairs, and found it locked. Hurriedly he pried at it with a burglarious tool, and then a sudden ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of some alloy of steel and nickel, impervious to rust, and very hard. It resisted all gentle methods of attack, and it was finally found necessary to force the lock with a charge of powder. Within was found another case, which was pried open with the point of the ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... have discovered by close inspection that the brush had been too familiar with his coat and worn it threadbare, that his silk hat had been doctored to preserve its lustre and smoothness, and that his gloves were elaborately darned. If an inquisitive critic could have pried into the bottom of the vehicle, he would have detected a large crack in the side of the left boot, beneath which a gray stocking had been carefully masked with ink. Still, all these signs of poverty were so artfully concealed, and ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... leaving marks of their devastation everywhere. Not content with stealing many unequalled works of art, they often wantonly destroyed what they could not conveniently take away with them. In the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Grenada, they pried open the royal coffins, in search of treasure; at Seville they broke open the coffin of Murillo, and scattered his ashes to the wind; Marshal Soult treated the ashes of Cervantes in a similar manner. War desecrates all things, human and divine, but sometimes becomes a Nemesis (goddess of retribution), ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... when I find him." And the Rube stalked on down the aisle, a tragically comic figure in his pajamas. In his search for Mac he pried into several upper berths that contained occupants who were not ball players, and these protested in affright. Then the Rube began to investigate the lower berths. A row of heads protruded in a bobbing line from between the curtains of ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... may be inserted in any part of a hickory tree. The bark slot method consists in using a chisel and mallet for cutting parallel lines the width of the scion in the bark of the stock. The tongue of bark between the parallel lines is pried outward with the point of the chisel until the scion has been inserted next the wood and the tongue of bark is then allowed to return to place, leaving the scion interposed between the tongue of bark and the wood. Rules which apply to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... others. He found them delving in the after part of the wreck, but by motions our hero caused them to follow him. Captain Weston showed the excitement he felt as soon as he caught sight of the boxes. He and Mr. Sharp lifted one out, and placed it on the cabin floor. They pried off the ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... unladylike proceedings of sundry old women at that auction. With what a free and contemptuous manner they examined the fine old furniture, and handled the fine old china, and coolly rummaged and ransacked every nook and corner, and peeped and pried into every box, chest, and closet that was not locked! And their tongues, you may be sure, were not idle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Conants, and her mother had bidden her to treasure it because it had belonged to her when she was a girl of Mary Louise's age. The watch was stem-winding and had a closed case, the back lid of which had seldom been opened because it fitted very tightly. But now Mary Louise pried it open with a hatpin and carried it to the light. On the inside of the gold case the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... and showed Miss Sally over the place. Miss Sally poked and pried and sniffed and wrinkled her forehead, and finally stood on the stairs ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... yet the fact was there and must be proven. My own children were teething at the time, and it gave me an idea. I got Dr. Tracy to write out that table for me, showing at what age the dog-teeth should appear, when the molars, etc. Armed with that I went into the factories and pried open the little workers' mouths. The girls objected: their teeth were quite generally bad; but I saw enough to enable me to speak positively. Even allowing for the backwardness of the slum, it was clear that a child that had not yet grown its dog-teeth was ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Mother Corey pried his eyes off the cards and ran a thick tongue over heavy lips. "Eh? Oh. Eat. There's a place about ten blocks back. Cobber, stop teasing me! With elections coming up, and the boys loaded with vote money back in ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... six miles, to a neighbor's, and got two men, and betwixt 'em all they pried up the beams of the barn, that had blowed on to the roof and pinned it down over me, and then lifted up the boards and got me out; and I wa'n't hurt, except a few bruises: but after that day I begun to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan. At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold. In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose with a quick jerk every single pede and threw the odious thing a dozen yards. A trail of red, inflamed spots rose where it had stood and remained painful and swollen ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... her beauty the more seductive. That the sight had the power to melt some jurymen and irritate others, who should deny? That, in the secret depraved heart of him, one of these magistrates may have pried into the most sacred intimacies of the fair body that was to his morbid fancy at the same moment a living and a dead woman's, and that, gloating over voluptuous and ghoulish imaginings he may have found an atrocious pleasure in giving over to the headsman those ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... lad. "When we get this cover pried off, we'll hand you a bucket or so of gold for ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... climate—the imaginative refinements of a voluptuous civilization. He was removed from the sight of a superior wealth; he was without rivals to his riches; he was free from the spies of a jealous court. As long as he was rich, none pried into his conduct. He pursued the dark tenour of his way undisturbed ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... again from the empty rooms, so that I was taken with a panic and fled downward, sliding and falling, until I reached the hall. Frantically as I tried, I could not unfasten the bolts on the front door. And so, running into the drawing-room, I pried open the window, and sat me down in the embrasure to think, and to try to quiet the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was damp above it was far more so below, and the boys shivered in spite of themselves. The cellar had only a mud bottom and this was covered with slime and mold. There was little there to interest them outside of an old chest which, when they pried it open, proved to ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... strenuously she scoured the countryside; pried into houses; popped her head into stable doors. This woman nothing spared herself; in the result, at the end of two days, was considerably dejected. For it was clear to her that the Rose had not strayed, but had been stolen; was not concealed in the vicinity of ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... piles she at last found a regularly formed cake some eight inches thick and two feet square. With some difficulty she pried this out and stood it on edge. The edge was uneven, the cake tippy. Rolling it on its side she chipped it smooth with the point ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... the modern Argonaut. At first the Mexican pried through the debris-choked rooms, or feebly tunneled under the walls. With the coming of the white races and the drill, holes have been sunk into the original bed-rock. To the simple stories of the natives, fable-bearers have added maps, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... unresisting dumb! In wide earth's harvest-gold She asked no share, If in the dust a crumb Might be for her; If she might round her aching body fold One hour's undriven sleep,— But one hour more, Safe from the Want that pried Her thin and shaken door,— That hour the shivering dawn denied With scream that cut life through, And made her wretched pillow seem a rose Her clinging cheek would keep In soft, ungoaded death! And ah, suppose ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and calked the cracks; And a bucket of water, which one would think He had brought up into the loft to drink When he chanced ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... while before Mrs. Rose returned with the wooden box. She had to search for it, and found it under the bed. The Dickey boy also had hidden his treasures. She got the hammer and Hiram pried off the lid, which was quite securely nailed. "I'd ought to have had it opened before," said she. "He hadn't no business to have a nailed-up box 'round. Don't joggle it so, Hiram. There's no knowin' what's in it. There ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... ominously grey and grim from their north light, at watering-places prevailingly homes of humbug, or even when they wore some aspect still less, if not perhaps still more, insidious. He had been everywhere, pried and prowled everywhere, going, on occasion, so far as to risk, he believed, life, health and the very bloom of honour; but where, while precious things, extracted one by one from thrice-locked yet often vulgar drawers and soft satchels of old oriental ilk, were impressively ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the centre of White's dormitory," said King. "There are double floor-boards there to deaden noise. No boy, even in my own house, could possibly have pried up the boards without leaving some trace—and Rabbits-Eggs was phenomenally drunk ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... that in days past plebes who occupied this room had pried up two of the bricks from the base of the fireplace and had a hiding ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... house-tops and in the windows cheering like mad. The ends of the heavy chains resting on the strip of dirt were now caught up and hauled along the cobbles to be intertwined with the squared timber; anchors weighing tons were pried up and dragged across the tracks by lines of men urged on by gray-haired old merchants in Quaker-cut dress coats, many of them bare-headed, who had yielded to the sudden unaccountable delirium that had seized upon ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was from suffocation; to meet this Mrs. Dalton and her companion pried open the door as far as the fallen trunk would allow, and kept it in position by means of a large chip which they found in the pit. This gave them sufficient air through a chink three inches in width; and they next looked about them for means ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... highly necessary, as the behaviour of the keeper had proved; for when he came into my chamber in the morning, as he did early with his customary attendants, he searched and pried about with all the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... produced a large key, threw open the door and half the battery was ushered inside. It immediately fell their task to brush the cow-webs from the ceilings; gather up the fallen plaster from the floor; sweep out several years' accumulation of dirt and dust; while the old-fashioned shutters were pried open for the first time in many years and the sunshine streamed into the rooms, to drive away, to some degree, the mustiness ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... cephalopod, allowing it to wrap some of the tentacles about him, then pried its grasp from the boat with the handle of the gaff. He made no attempt to free himself from the squid, but as he stood still for a minute or two, the creature voluntarily released its hold, falling to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... lessons I was wild with surplus spirits, and found joyous relief in running loose in the open again. Many a summer afternoon a party of four or five of my playmates roamed over the hills with me. We each carried a light sharpened rod about four feet long, with which we pried up certain sweet roots. When we had eaten all the choice roots we chanced upon, we shouldered our rods and strayed off into patches of a stalky plant under whose yellow blossoms we found little crystal drops of gum. Drop by drop we gathered ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... With his knife Bob pried away at likely looking places, and soon had several large sheets off. These, when smoothed out, looked good enough ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... clamp and tried to flip it. No luck, with my heavy, clumsy boot. I tried again, and this time it snapped open. I got the tip of my boot in and pried upward. The oxymask came off, slowly, scraping a jagged red scratch up the side of ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg
... When I have taken my solitary walks in the woods and pried into the secrets of the little wild things that live there in order to turn my mind from my own musing, I found always, always, that you were in them—I cannot tell you how, but you were, Madelon. There was a meaning of you in every bird-call and flutter of wings and race ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, bump against other couples, and at every bump they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though they will have to be pried apart with a handspike; they look into each other's eyes as though they would bite, and they keep going around till their backs are broke. Well, a party of these kind of dancers went to the cheese ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... few bad moments until I could take a closer look. You were a bloody mess, to put it mildly, with more than a few splinters adding color. But I could see your manly beauty wasn't gone forever. We pried you loose from the rocket and stretched you out on the lawn. Your pulse was pretty good and you were breathing steadily, so we gave you a few whiffs of oxygen from Scotty's ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the door of an anteroom behind his office. The apartment was unfurnished except for one or two chairs. In the middle of the uncarpeted floor was a long wooden box from which the lid had just been pried. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... men about the 'new one' you heard, Jim," laughed Tom. "By the time you get back Harry will have the joke pried loose ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... the workingman be pried loose from his traditional party affiliation by a labor event of transcendent importance for the time being, should he be stirred to political revolt by an oppressive court decision, or the use of troops to break a strike; then, at the next election, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... "Classifieds" and "Top Secrets" for so long it had become a mental conditioning and automatically hedged over information that had been public property for years via the popular technical mags; but in time they pried from him an admittance that the Station Service Lift rocket A. J. "Able Jake" Four had indeed failed to rendezvous with Space Station One, due ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor |
