"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanderers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground. It seemed uninhabited. There were the relics ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the hall are song and laughter; The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... fighting with the insurrectos against the troops of Diaz, while they themselves were supposed to be more of the same brand. Evidently they had been expected by Ramon's subterranean river, and in taking the boat they must have forestalled the real Con Divver, Jim Hickey, and Ted Rafter. Jack caught himself wondering how long it would take the latter to ride over the ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... dried themselves at a hospitable hut-fire in a village. It was Lady Day. Hood noted the seasonable blue-and-white of his blanket as he hung it on a rafter. He made the morning Offering behind that vaporous screen. Then they ate their food, and drugged themselves belatedly with quinine against those perils of ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... feebly protested that he could not discharge them. Thereon Ramani Babu ordered him to be hung up. Forthwith, a dozen eager hands were laid on him, a rope was passed under his armpits, and the free end thrown over a rafter of the office. By this means he was hauled from the ground and swung suspended, a butt of sarcasm and abuse for Ramani Babu's myrmidons. After enduring this humiliation for an hour or so, he was let down and a final demand made on him ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... dents on the edge, sir, At Bronkhurst Spruit they were done; I was getting a door for a fire, For out of wood we had run. I was smiting hard at the door, sir, Or rafter, I'm not sure which, When I struck on an iron screw, sir, And the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned to Tentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely; and before they left the table it had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not commit suicide ages ago, and thus end the eventful history with a blank page in the middle of the book. I dare say the very bashfulness which has been my bane has prevented me; the idea of being cut down from a rafter, with a black-and-blue face, and drawn out of the water with a swollen one, has put me so out of countenance that I had not the courage to brave a coroner's jury ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... kinglier girdle and a kingly crown, Whilst crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast. All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale, But special burnishment adorned his mail, And special terror weighed upon his frown; His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ground them with inexorable jaw: The luscious ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... that shone into the loft revealed, to the boy's surprise and wonder, a coil of rope. He examined this, and found a stout clasp-hook at one end. The other end of the rope was made fast to a rafter. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... for that pack of churlish boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes.' They scarce had spoke when fair and soft The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climb'd slowly after; The chimney widen'd and grew higher. Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist; Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost Lost by disuse ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which shelter ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... gone are door and portal, And all is hush'd and still; O'er ruin'd wall and rafter I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the four walls of the hall and ran in the form of a cross athwart the middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... lane, thick grown with bushes. Here, years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck, who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being haunted, and no one ever went near it after dark. A couple ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... night," went on Newt joyously. "From a rafter in Ed Higgins's livery stable. With a clothesline. Kicked a step-ladder out from under himself. Why, even Uncle Dad Simms has heard about it. Ed found him when he went out to—wait a second! I'm goin' your way. What's ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... act of Parliament was there that I should be happy?" Three passenger cars and ten freight cars, as was then the vicious custom of that road, passed me. But I held on, repeating to myself texts of Scripture to give me courage. As the last car passed, I was whirled into the air by the rebound of the rafter. "Heavens!" I said, "if my orbit is a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth." Hastily I estimated its ordinates, and calculated the curve. What bliss! It was a parabola! After a flight of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head down, in a ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Clever as Gum was, he was scarcely a match for two men, who, as noted horse-thieves, were experts in the use of the lasso, and in a short time the monkey was ignominiously driven from his perch on a rafter, tied up in Donald's pillow-case, and swung over the shoulder of one of the men. Then the robbers wished Donald a grim good-night, and marched off with their 'purse.' As they were going out of the door Donald called after them, 'Good-night, ye blackguards, and mark my words, if ye lay a hand on that ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... light and shadow. Trove stopped a moment, looking up at the forest roof. They could hear a baying of hounds in the far valley. Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on a bough—a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds. Above, they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on reefs of evergreen. The little people of this odd winter land had begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket. A partridge ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... they climbed from storey to storey it is doubtful if the children caught their leader's words at all. There were no echoes—the spaces were too vast for that—and they swung away from spar to spar, and from rafter to rafter, as easily as acrobats on huge trapezes. Jimbo and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... little boy wouldn't say his prayers, An' when he went to bed at night, away upstairs, His Mammy heered him holler, an' his daddy heered him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout, An' the gobble-uns'll git ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... water stood in the kitchen, close to the narrow stairway which led into the loft. Three or four pails of water and some quick work in running up and down the stairs was all that was needed. Ford, standing in the low, unfinished loft, looked at the rafter which was burnt half through, and wiped his perspiring face with ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... those canvas daubs, with which strolling showmen adorn their booths, hangs from a rafter, no doubt to prevent its being spoilt by too long rolling up. It bore ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and pictures, that had been left behind by the Communal waggoners. They had already begun to pull down the right side of the house; a pickaxe was leaning against a loosened stone; the roof had fallen in, and a rafter was sticking out of one of the windows. The fire rose higher and higher; would it not be better that the flames should reach the house and consume it in an hour or two, than to see it being gradually pulled down, stone by stone, for many days to come? In the court I perceived several trucks full ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... recoiled from a worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the harshness of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted Mr. Archer's palace. Well, she faced ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Grinon Castle, in Austria. Here the voice of a spirit clamored aloud, "Ho! ho! Bishop Bruno, whither art thou travelling? But go thy ways, bishop Bruno, for thou shalt travel with me tonight." At night, while feasting with the emperor, a rafter fell on his head and killed him. Southey has a ballad called Bishop Bruno, but it deviates from the original legend given by Heywood in several particulars: It makes bishop Bruno hear the voice first on his way to the emperor, who had ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed; The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... stayed all night in a ruined town With a rafter for a bed? With horses stamping underneath In the morning when they are fed? Have you heard the crump-crump whistle? Do you know the dud shell's grunt? Have you played rat in a dugout?— Then you ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my dream till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. 'Be of good courage,' he said, 'daughter of Icarius; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer an eagle, but your own husband, who ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... women were sitting. The orderly and four soldier friends came running in, holding their eyes. When Hilda entered the kitchen, she saw that the shell had hit just above those quiet bodies, bringing the rafters and glass and brick upon them. A beam, from the rafter, had been driven into the breast of one of the boys—transfixing him as if by a lance. Shells were breaking in the road, the garden, the field and the near-by houses, every five seconds. In her own house, bricks were strewn about, and the windows smashed in. A large hole, in a shed back ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... a rasher of bacon from a hook on a rafter, and with his big pocket-knife deftly cut some thin slices into a frying-pan on the smoky stove, and into the hot grease he broke some fresh eggs which he had purloined from a hen's nest in the stable-loft. He ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... pillar, shaft, thill^, column, pilaster; pediment, pedicle; pedestal; plinth, shank, leg, socle^, zocle^; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis^, trave^, corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; cantilever, modillion^; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, mainstay. trunnion, pivot, rowlock^; peg &c (pendency) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... glance. The gods quickly followed her advice, and no sooner were they concealed than the old giant Hymir came in. When his wife told him that visitors had come, he frowned so portentously, and flashed such a wrathful look towards their hiding-place, that the rafter split and the kettles fell with a crash, and, except the largest, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace me— Yes, one more favor I implore, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... light foot, the faint sweet laughter Happy stir and murmur of a child that plays: Slowly the darkness creeps up from floor to rafter, Slowly the fallen snow covers ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... supposed. To be sure, she cut Mrs. Sooty-back when they met; assumed an injured air, when some of her neighbors passed her; and said, "I told you so," a dozen times a day to her husband, who got so many curtain lectures that he took to sleeping on the highest rafter, pretending that the children's ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... are the remains of two buttresses. There is a small building which abuts on the east, and ranges along the southern side, which was probably the Chapter House of the Nuns. The walls are entire, the roof is of wood, and some of the rafter work is in fair preservation. It is in this building that the remains of Rosamond are supposed to have been deposited, when they were removed from the choir of the church, by the order of Hugh, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... woods, to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... United States of America. Sir,—The members of the Traders' Association, Gloucester, England, ask your acceptance of a bound copy of their guide to this ancient and historic City, together with this box made from part of a rafter taken from the room in which Bishop Hooper was lodged the night before his burning, and from oak formerly in old All Saints' Church, as souvenirs of the regard which the association entertains for you and its recognition of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the light of the moon we could see the pack as it began to break and pile up just beyond the edge of the ice-foot outside us. A few minutes later the whole mass broke with a rabid roar into a tumbling chaos of ice blocks, some upheaving, some going under, and a big rafter, thirty feet high, formed at the edge of the ice-foot within twenty feet of the ship. The invading mass grew larger and larger and steadily advanced toward us. The grounded piece off our starboard beam was forced in and driven against the big ice block under ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... builder! Had this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? Not ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... found the match-box, struck a light, carefully examined the floor as far as he could see it, jumped out of bed at one bound, and took refuge in the other room. There he looked in every corner, and along every rafter for the other snake, for he knew that at this season snakes are often found in pairs, but he could not see the mate of the one he had left ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have been ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... the passages leading to the buttery and kitchens, in which the clerk of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all of whom were assembled, were outnumbered by the prodigious array of serving-men, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... store. It consisted of five men, about which seemed thrown an invisible but heavy cloak of somnolence. They had entered languidly but politely into his plans. The storekeeper had gladly parted with one-third of the comestible stock which was slowly petrifying on shelf and rafter; a little burro, grazing on the dump, had been transformed into a pack-animal; and after standing treat three times around, Charles-Norton, leading by a rope his fuzzy four-footed companion, to a great flapping of amicable sombreros had ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... before him stops the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides. One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in bloody rows. See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate! ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Roy whom Pee-wee chose to accompany him on his important mission. They had reached a point about fifty yards from the shacks, two of which were well-nigh demolished, when they heard a voice and turning saw Warde Hollister drop from a rafter and come running ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... high and nearly empty barn. A lantern is hung by a rope that lifts the bales of straw, to a long ladder leaning against a rafter. This gives all the light there is, save for a slender track of moonlight, slanting in from the end, where the two great doors are not quite closed. On a rude bench in front of a few remaining, stacked, square-cut ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... my hermitage, during some boisterous night of winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the roof, and the rain beating on the casement, but when, in the calm within, the cheerful flame would roar in the chimney, and glance bright on rafter and wall, still impress me as if the recollection were in reality that of a scene witnessed, not of a mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on former occasions, have avoided going to school—that best and noblest of all schools, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... my wife and children praying, although I could not see them. I did not pray. They were taken and I was left for some purpose, I suppose. My house finally landed up against the stone railway bridge. I was then pinned down to the floor by a heavy rafter or something. Somehow or other I was lifted from the floor and thrown almost out upon the bridge. Then some people got hold of me and pulled me out and took me over to a brickyard. My eyes and nose were full of cinders. After I reached ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... times, humanity is retrograding," murmured Capitan Basilio, thinking of the past. "The day after you left they found the senior sacristan dead, hanging from a rafter in his own house. Padre Salvi was greatly affected by his death and took possession of all his papers. Ah, yes, the old Sage, Tasio, also died and was buried ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... against a rafter, and was quite bewildered for a moment by the shock, the multitude of meteors that rushed across his firmament, and the sudden apparition. Gad, at the same time, stood ready to take a plunge down the stairs in case the schoolmaster should ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... ease and convenience to them during divine worship, put up backs to their forms. But still, for many a year, there was no inclosure of pews; the first, indeed, that made a pew, as I have been told, was one Archibald Rafter, a wright, and the grandfather of Mr Rafter, the architect, who has had so much to do with the edification of the new town of Edinburgh. This Archibald's form happened to be near the door, on the left side of the pulpit; and in the winter, when the wind was ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... out. Then he began to drag posts, pieces of rafter and other wreckage over to the cave. He laid the longest pieces sloping against the cave-mouth—he badly wanted his father to be within four walls,—covered them over and filled the gaps with bits of sail-cloth and anything else ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... stockade gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... awaited the arrival of the next evening. In the meanwhile, he took another and more exact survey of his already half-ruined house; and the result was so melancholy that he felt he must stake life itself for the chance of bettering his fortune. There was not a beam, a board, a rafter, a lath, in the whole house that was not ready, upon the slightest assault, to go to wreck. Of glass windows the rumour was long since extinct. All stood open; and had Klaus been a student of meteorology, a better observatory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper to send ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... sou'east. In the nor'west, too, was another floe. 'Twas there, in the mist, an' 'twas comin' down with the wind. It cotched the first of the gale; 'twas free t' move, too. 'Twould overhaul us soon enough. Ever see the ice rafter, sir? No? Well, 'tis no swift collison. 'Tis horrible an' slow. No shock at all: jus' slow pressure. The big pans rear. They break—an' tumble back. Fields—acres big—slip one atop o' the other. Hummocks are crunched t' slush. The big bergs ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... beings, of every size and shape, to people its alleys and smile through its thickets; and is by no means displeased to find some of its inventions half-realized in a decorated panel or grinning extremity of a rafter. ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... in dread of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven, The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven! Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bring To the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king! Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord is kindled amain, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of thieves, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... fish were very plentiful. During our first winter, we had a deer hung on every rafter on the north side of the house. Our supply of meat for the first year or two depended upon our ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... household is busily toiling, And hither and thither boys bustle and girls; Whilst, up from the hearth-fires careering and coiling, The smoke round the rafter-beams languidly curls. Let the joys of the revel be parted between us! 'Tis the Ides of young April, the day which divides The month, dearest Phyllis, of ocean-sprung Venus, A day to me ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... silk, decorated with black dragons, with only one tear in its entire circumference, and that one Auntie Gossburger darned so skilfully that nobody noticed the hole. This, Felix, after much consideration, swung to the rafter immediately over the throne, so that its mellow light should fall ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... door,—like some brown, honest hand of toil, And honorable with service of the soil,— Forever open; to which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack, And while the miller measures out his toll, Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,— That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,— The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that says how so-and-so Lived, died, or wedded: how curculio And codling-moth play havoc with the fruit, Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot: Or what is news from town: next county fair: How well the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... trail to Sunnydale, Amid the lure of laughter. Oh, how can we unhappy be Beneath its leafy rafter! Each perfect hour is like a flower, Each day is like a posy. How can you say the skies are grey? You're wrong, my ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... hundred two-foot shingles, stacked in the angle outside. It was about half-past ten when Rory was awakened by a crackling sound close beside him; and the first sight he saw was a broad tongue of flame leaping in under the eave, and licking the rafter above his head. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... court was starr'd; The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after; And thro' the ragged roof the sky shone, barr'd With naked beam and rafter. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... that she was "hidebound." His house he had never had time to complete. The rafters were unobstructed by ceiling, so she was favorably situated for treatment. He fixed a lasso under her arms, threw the end around a rafter, and proceeded to ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... With some pang of laughter— Louder than the drowsy bird Crooning 'neath the rafter? Just one bitter word, to shriek Madly ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... their mighty shaping, and the struggle and the strain Of their hands, the deft in labour, they tugged thereat in vain; And still as the shouting and jeers, and the names of men and the laughter Beat backward from gable to gable, and rattled o'er roof-tree and rafter, Moody and still sat Siggeir; for he said: "They have trained me here As a mock for their woodland bondsmen; and yet shall they ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... his castle wall; The gate was burnt with fire; Roof and rafter were fallen down, The folk were strangers all in the town, And strangers all in ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... by the bird's song ye may learn the nest," Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then, Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, The dusky-rafter'd many-cobweb'd hall, He found an ancient dame in dim brocade; And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,[2] That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint, "Here by God's rood ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... communistic friends, they disbelieve entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the ceiling follow the course of the great beams supporting the roof. Till it was resolved to construct this ceiling the beams were exposed, and the whole was open to the leads. Canon Stewart speaks of it as a "remarkable example of a trussed rafter roof of seven cants," and says that such a roof was sometimes called a compass roof. He thinks it might have taken the place of an original ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... The stable burned to the ground, while the crowd cheered at every falling rafter, and the volunteer fire department sprayed it with a garden hose. And in the house Alex and Halsey searched every corner of the lower ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... much of a ranch now," admitted Jack Harpe. "But everything has to have a beginning. I'm figuring on a right smart growth for the Rafter H within ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you will need if you would survive your unbuilding. The bare rafters, solid ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... informed on safe authority that the Indian Bottle-bird protects his nest at night by sticking several of these glow-beetles around the entrance by means of clay; and only a few days back an intimate friend of my own was watching three rats on a roof-rafter of his bungalow when a glow-fly lodged very close to them; the rats immediately scampered off."[115] These observations are confirmed by Captain Briant, as reported by Professor R. Dubois.[116] In tropical regions luminous insects give out a brilliant light, of which the Glow-worms of northern countries ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the queen haughtily. "Procure me my crown." Suzanna looked about her. An old dried-up Christmas wreath hanging on a rafter attracted her attention. Quickly she procured it and held it out to Drusilla. "Here is your crown, Queen," she said. And then, her voice changing, she said: "You'd better let me put it on, Drusilla, it's liable to crumble ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... thing!" Altamont raged. "'Wielding a gold-plated spade handled with oak from an original rafter of the Congressional Library, at three-fifteen one afternoon last week—' One afternoon last week!" He cursed luridly. "Why couldn't that blasted magazine say what afternoon? I've gone over a lot of twentieth ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... mountain. "This village," said my guide, "is called Los Angeles, because its church was built long since by the angels; they placed a beam of gold beneath it, which they brought down from heaven, and which was once a rafter of God's own house. It runs all the way under the ground from hence to the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... haze, born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman, who wore a slop-shop blue suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily, then I realized that a sort of tourniquet of wire-netting was screwed ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... while the shoemaker still slept, the soldier was astir again. He shivered as he rose, and went to the window, where his clothes were hanging from a rafter. The water was still dripping from them. Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the open window to write while the morning ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... frasilah of ivory. Amram's house is called the "Two Seas"—"Baherein." It is one hundred feet in length, and twenty feet high, with walls four feet thick, neatly plastered over with mud mortar. The great door is a marvel of carving-work for Unyanyembe artisans. Each rafter within is also carved with fine designs. Before the front of the house is a young plantation of pomegranate trees, which flourish here as if they were indigenous to the soil. A shadoof, such as may be seen on the Nile, serves to draw ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... by this time," responded the journeyman. The old gentleman did not repeat his question; he held fast to the rafter on which he was leaning. "He was already on his way home," continued the journeyman. "I came with him as far as the gate. Then he sent me to the tinner's to see if the tin was ready at last. Joerg told me that he had already brought it to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... old store. Though Phil had grown stout, there was the same look. There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... almost before any hen had time to look round or think, behold! mice were squeaking in every corner, and there were holes behind every wainscot, plank, and rafter. ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... three or four beds arranged along the middle of the floor. The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... was a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,— So when he went to bed at night, away up stairs, His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubbyhole, an press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout! An' the Gobble-uns git you Ef ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... suddent-like. He jumped tull hus feet an' fetched the puck-handle down on the monster eediot's head. An' he hut ut again an' again like ut was a mod dog an' hum afeard o' ut. An' he went straight tull the stable an' hung humsel' tull a rafter. An' I was no for stoppun' on after such-like, an' I went tull stay along wuth me suster thot was married ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... was customary for a viking to do. To win fame, to gain wealth, to plunder, and to slay—these were the passions that ruled him. The ocean was his only home. He derided the comforts of a warm fireside and scorned the man who should sleep under a sooty rafter or die on a bed of straw. To give up his last breath amid the clamour of battle was his one unalterable ambition; for only those who died thus, besprinkled with blood, could ever hope to win favour of the pagan gods, or to enter the sacred halls of Valhalla. In the spirit of his times he ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... bits of mortar which we stepped upon gave way beneath our feet, and tumbled us down together with them lower than when we first set off. However, as we were very light, we were not much hurt by our falls; only indeed poor Brighteyes, by endeavouring to save himself, caught by his nails on a rafter, and tore one of them from off his right fore-foot, which was very sore and inconvenient. At length we surmounted all difficulties, and, invited by a strong scent of plum-cake, entered a closet, where we found a fine large one, quite ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... the whole twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a beautiful appearance in a flower garden—that is, eight, ten, or twelve stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two or three ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... his offence to himself, his father sat immersed in woe, his head in his hands. What calamity, he cried, has fallen on my house, and how have I sinned, O Lord, that punishment should fall upon me, and that my own son should be chosen to mete out my punishment? My house is riven from rafter to foundation stone. But, Father, at most—It seemed useless to plead. He stood apart; his grandmother stood silent and grave, not understanding fully, and Joseph foresaw that he could not count upon her to side with him against his father. But if his father ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... (Fig. 9.) Make the opening about eighteen inches across; carry it up two feet high, drawing it in a little, then lay a long stone across the front, after which build up {63} the flue behind the corner braces right up to the roof. The top corner-piece carries the rafter that may be cut off to let the flue out. Build the chimney up outside as high as the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... side and soon had some of those wooden slates off, to find as I crawled on to the roof that it was quite evening, and whereabouts I was to get down I couldn't tell. I dare not stop though, for fear the others should come to look after their mate, so unfastening the rope from my waist I tied it to a rafter, slid down as far as it would reach, and hung swinging at the end, thinking that it was all no good, for you two would be gone; and then I dropped, and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... escape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down to the steerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the bow, with an open stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary oil-lamp swinging from a rafter overhead. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung himself up into the garret. Then, lying on his face, he reached down for the lamp and held it while ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... threshing, grinding, baking.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks his neck; he would laugh heartily at our folly in building; but it does not follow that men are better without houses. No, Sir, (holding up a slice of a good ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... proposed the expedition, climbed up first, Paul handing him the rope. He soon reached a rafter, and lowering the rope until he knew that it touched the ground, he fastened it securely, and at once descended, followed by Paul. They had dropped into their own bedroom, which they had given up to Hector; after feeling about, however, ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... sawing, too, but after he was married he dropped that. But I've heard mother say that he took great pride in the hut when he brought her to it first, and said it was the best-built hut within fifty miles. He split every slab, cut every post and wallplate and rafter himself, with a man to help him at odd times; and after the frame was up, and the bark on the roof, he camped underneath and finished every bit of it—chimney, flooring, doors, windows, and partitions—by ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture, that old Jewish ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... wreckage, borne onward by the tide, A loving mother with her babe close sheltered at her side; One hand has grasped a rafter, the other guards her child; Oh, how she pleads with God and man in accents loud and wild! Men hear but give no answer, no human hand can save; Her voice, alas, is hushed in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... been raised from the ground, new sills placed under it, and while every part—scantling, rafter, joist, crossbeam, lath and weatherboard—of the original house has been retained, it has been put in such order that it is ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... good deal less injured than his rescuer; for, though a falling rafter had struck him down as he turned to leave the hut, this very accident had given him the benefit of such air as there had been in the cabin. Here and there he had been slightly burned, but he had not been ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... heights—which are called here, in the language of the country "Diablerets" close to a rapid mountain stream, which was of a greyish white, like bubbling soap suds. A smaller stream, rushes forth from the rocks on the other side of the river, passes through an enclosed, broad rafter-made-gutter and turns the large wheel of the mill. The gutter was so full of water, that it streamed over and offered a most slippery way, to one who had the idea of crossing more quickly to the ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... voids are for stone of uniform size whatever that size be. As was the case with sand a mixture of coarse and fine particles gives the fewest voids; for stone an L{1}M{0}F{1} mixture and for gravel an L{8}M{0}F{2} mixture. Tamping reduces the voids in broken stone. Mr. Geo. W. Rafter gives the voids in clean, hand-broken limestone passing a 2-in. ring as 43 per cent. after being lightly shaken and 37 per cent. after being rammed. Generally speaking heavy ramming will reduce the voids in loose stone about 20 ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... after— No whimpering ghost remain, In wall, or beam, or rafter, Of any hate or pain. Cleanse and call home thy spirit, Deny her leave to cast, On aught thy heirs inherit, The shadow of her past. For think, in all thy sadness, What road our griefs may take; Whose brain reflect our madness, Or whom our terrors ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... he saw, with a rough, narrow bed in one corner and a box table at its head. From the ceiling hung a lantern with the chimney smoked on one side and the warped, pole rafter above it slightly blackened to show how long the lantern had hung there lighted. A door opposite the tiny window was closed, and there was no latch or fastening on the inner side. An Indian blanket covered ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... archer hid his precious pill under a rafter, lest anyone should steal it, and then began the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... at empty space. He was on the lip of the front trench. The sound was now a yard to his right, and with infinite care he shifted his position. Now the bell was just below him, and he felt the big rafter of the woodwork from which it had fallen. He felt something else—a stretch of wire fixed in the ground with the far end hanging in the void. That would be the spy's explanation if anyone heard the sound and came ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song-sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knot-hole of a fence rail, and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... flames surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies one huge and burning beacon. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter, and the combatants were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... VP's couldn't make the calf Manley's. If anybody came and saw that cow, why—" Val looked at him rafter pityingly, as if she could not quite understand how he could even question her upon that point. "And, after all," she added forlornly, "he's my husband. I couldn't—I had to do what I could to shield ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... flying through the open window, beyond the fact that he liked to prowl around the great, dusty room under the eaves, to see what he could find. Once he was inside, he noticed something that had not caught his eye on his former visit. Hanging from a rafter, where the slanting rays of the setting sun fell squarely upon it, was a big bunch of ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the roof again: cut away one of those long dry ropes which in the garrets of many houses stretch from one rafter to another, tied to one end of it the weight of an old clock lying idle in the attic, and returned ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... palace of gold ever had a room equal to that chamber? It had a row of barrels, behind which or in which you could safely hide. It had a ladder that would let you smartly bump your head against the highest rafter in the roof, a cross-beam, too, from which you could suspend a swing, and a window in the rear from which you could look upon the Missigatchee River (supposed to have been christened by the Indians). This river-view you could have had, if the window had not been ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... rope was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ready to ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... got Jock Merritt up on the carpet and they haven't decided yet whether to hang him to a rafter or boil him in oil. Some of 'em think he pulled Elisha to-day. Merritt is giving 'em a powerful argument. Says he never rode a harder finish in his life, but that the horse took a sudden notion to quit and did it. Didn't seem to be tired or anything, but just ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... phoebe, they contentedly but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter, and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let off superfluous high spirits or to catch a morsel on the wing, and ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... appointed Town-Major of some brick-dust, a rafter and two empty bully-beef tins—all of which in combination bore the name of a village. He assumed his duties with a bland Pickwickian zest, which did good to the heart. He had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... Tish had lifted a small rifle into position and was standing, with her feet apart, pointing it at a white target hanging by a string from a rafter. As she gave the signal. Hannah sighed, and, picking up a broomhandle, started the target to swaying, pendulum fashion; Tish followed it with ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sorter wipe his mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... light were caught and sent dancing. Along the wall on the left-hand side presses were overcharged with dusty tea-services. On the right were square grey windows, under which the convex sides of salad-bowls sparkled in the sun; and from rafter to rafter, in garlands and clusters like grapes, hung gilded mugs bearing devices suitable for children, and down the middle of the floor a terrace was built ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... sword dropped from its hook on a rafter, Jane danced in glee and declared "a ghost did it," although Dozia insisted she had cut a piece of cord on that very hook. Finally Jane was "canned," as Dozia described the state of being inside of tin things, and an ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... burned in the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the kettle. The ticking of a huge, old-fashioned repeating-watch ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stock. He had placed his funds in a bank at Leavenworth; but his visitors refused to believe his statement to that effect. They maltreated the farmer and his wife, and ended by hanging the farmer's son to a rafter and leaving him for dead. In departing, they took away all the horses and ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... mindful of thy love. She spake; nor made she victory as yet Entire his own, proving the valour, first, Both of the sire and of his glorious son, But, springing in a swallow's form aloft, Perch'd on a rafter of the splendid roof. Then, Agelaues animated loud The suitors, whom Eurynomus also roused, Amphimedon, and Demoptolemus, And Polyctorides, Pisander named, 280 And Polybus the brave; for noblest ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... beneath, the wreathed smoke and dim hot fume of the consuming fire told him of certain death; unable to retreat,—for the insidious flame had already destroyed the door which Roupall had failed to move, and danced, like a fiend at play with destruction, from rafter to rafter, and beam to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... fantastic with their skirts and hair and their shadows on the wall. Before Frosted Moses had said that sentence about Courage, Peter had been taking the room in. Because he had been there very often before he knew every flagstone in the floor and every rafter in the roof and all the sporting pictures on the walls, and the long shining row of mugs and coloured plates by the fire-place and the cured hams hanging from the ceiling ... but to-night was Christmas Eve and a very especial occasion, and he was sure to be beaten when he got home, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... coming at a gallop. We lay bracing the stalks, the blanket tied above us and were quite dry for a time. The rain rattled in the sounding sheaves and then came flooding down the steep gutters. Above us beam and rafter creaked, swaying, and showing glimpses of the dark sky. The rain passed—we could hear the last battalion leaving the field—and then the tumult ended as suddenly as it began. The corn trembled a few moments and hushed to a faint whisper. Then we could ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... that steal From the shocking laughter Of the old, to kneel By a dripping rafter Under the discolored eaves, Out of trunks with hingeless covers Lifting tales of saints and ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of the Indian Medical Service "pinched" them for splints.) ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... one house there was left standing only a breadth of front wall between the places where windows had been. It rose in a ragged column to the line of the roof-rafters—only, of course, there was neither roof nor rafter now. On the face of the column, as though done in a spirit of bitter irony, was posted a proclamation, signed by the burgomaster and the military commandant, calling on the vanished dwellers of this place ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... on each other, and then in consternation upon the burning building, every window of which was belching flame, while the sound of some falling rafter, or the explosion of some combustible substance, was continually heard! To venture into that blazing house, with its sinking roof and falling rafters, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... forgets old friendship." Yet she left the victory still uncertain, that she might prove his courage to the full. She turned herself into a swallow and flew up into the roof and perched on a blackened rafter overhead. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... was broken into, the horse dragged out to the door, and every bone of him broken. Next night Grettir sat up to watch; and when a third of the night was past, he heard a terrible din as of one riding the roof, and driving his heels against the thatch so that every rafter cracked again. He went to the door, and saw Glam, whose head, as it appeared to him, was monstrously big. Glam came slowly in and took hold of a bundle lying on the seat, but Grettir planted his foot against a ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else . . .'), and if by any ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... note or learning May we gather now these tales, Heard beneath the cotter's rafter, Or where smithy sparks are burning, Or at sea, when hushed the laughter Of the breeze on ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... inches long each before shaping) and a line joining their lower ends. Then draw a line bisecting the ridge angle. With this template as guide the rafters can be quickly cut to shape. Another method is to cut one rafter out very carefully, making a notch for half the width of the ridge, and to use it as a pattern for the rest. In any case the chalked lines will prove useful in the next operation of pairing the rafters and uniting ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... for some time, and Piccolissima, who was eager to help him through his difficulties, and who was tormented with a desire to enter into conversation with him, took it into her head to assist the insect, and hoped thus to render herself agreeable to him. She seized one end of the little rafter he was carrying, and in a tone which she tried to make as soft as possible, she said, "Will you allow me, little ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... the house of God!" thundered Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, with tones so resonant that they woke rafter echoes the organ itself had never roused. "Silence, and cease this sacrilegious brawling, or the consequences will be unutterably serious! Let those involved," he concluded more calmly, "appear before me in the vestry after divine ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts |
