"Tinder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blazed up like tinder but the green ones only smoldered, sending forth a volume of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the rack of heart was in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements, flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like structures ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... one of them, the brutal Texan, who had raised his gun at Alice, lingering behind the rest, and looking back to see the result of his infernal deed. Secretly, when no one knew it, he had kindled a fire at the rear of the wooden building, which being old and dry caught readily, and burned like tinder. ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... with a kick, pointed to something on the floor. Amazed and wrathful, Mrs. Cross saw a long roller-towel, half a yard of it burnt to tinder; nor could any satisfactory explanation of the accident be drawn from Martha, who laughed, sobbed, and sniggered by turns as ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... tinder; something caught on fire in Pierre, but still he would say nothing. He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure in his victory, but it was not without a deep sense ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... glass, that I always carried about me, to read off the divisions of my sextants; and, what was still more fortunate, among the few things which had been thrown into the boat and saved, was a piece of brimstone and a tinder-box, so that I secured ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... shaping it with my knife. That night we got fire. Ivy caught some fish in the cove and we cooked them; and—thanks, O Lord!—how good they were! We sat up very late comparing impressions, each saying how each felt when the smoke began to show sparks and when the tinder pieces finally caught, and how each had felt when the broiled smell of the fish had begun to go abroad in the land. We told each other of all the good things we had eaten in our day, but how this surpassed them ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... real difficulty. It will be better appreciated when the men's childish nature is borne in mind. Their patience was terribly strained in their attempts to make the sparks fly into the tinder. Again and again one of them would throw the rocks angrily to the ground, ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... unfortunately come away from "Inglegarth" without his cigarette-case, was longing to smoke, and hung behind for that purpose. But on applying to the Marshal, he was told that only common soldiers ever smoked in Maerchenland. With some trouble a highly flavoured pipe, a tinder-box, and a pouch containing a dried herb that appeared to be the local substitute for tobacco were procured for him. However, a very short experience convinced him that duty required him to put in an appearance at the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... never yielded in this way at the first assault. She had intended to bring together a middle-aged, studious clergyman and a discreet matron who might possibly be induced to marry again, and in doing so she had thrown fire among tinder. Well, it was all as it should be, but she did feel perhaps a little put out by the precipitancy of her own success, and perhaps a little vexed at the readiness of Mrs. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... table a copy of the minutes of the Board of Education of January 9, 1895, in which is underscored a report on a primary school in the Bronx. "It is a wooden shanty," is the inspector's account, "heated by stoves, and is a regular tinder box; cellar wet, and under one classroom only. This building was erected in order, I believe, to determine whether or not there was a school population in the neighborhood to warrant the purchase of property ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Having thus maturely considered the nature of their undertaking, they provided themselves with a musket and powder-horn, containing twelve charges of powder, with as many balls, an axe, a small kettle, a bag with about twenty pounds of flower, a knife, a tinder-box and tinder, a bladder filled with tobacco, and every ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... not long in this way in collecting a supply to last me for some hours, I hoped, for so hot was the atmosphere that I could only have borne to sit by a small fire. I had picked up some rotten wood to serve as tinder, and, as I had a match-box in my pocket, I had no difficulty in creating a flame. Some steps led up to the archway I had selected for my quarters. I carried my sticks up them, and made up my pile of wood in the mouth of it. I had an ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... morning, and went to devise some plans for rescuing her darling husband, as the silly old thing insisted on calling him. She found him walking up and down the garden, thinking of a rhyme for Betsinda (TINDER and WINDA were all he could find), and indeed having forgotten all about the past evening, except that Betsinda was the ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Universities. This our Doctrine forthwith enlightened many excellent people, dispersed here and there in Princes' courts, among whom some of God were chosen to take hold on this our doctrine, like unto tinder, and afterwards kindled ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... neglected. 'Take with you the large mappe of London and let the river be drawn full of shippes to make the more showe of your great trade. The booke of the Attyre of All Nations carried with you and bestowed in gift would be much esteemed. Tinder boxes, with steel, flint, and matches. A painted Bellowes, for perhaps they have not the use of them. All manner of edge tools. Note specially what dyeing they use.' After many more items the authors end up with two bits of good advice. 'Take with you those things that bee in the Perfection ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of Columbia, not with a malicious intent or as the manifestation of a silly 'Roman stoicism,' but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including the officers who had long been imprisoned there, rescued by us, may have assisted in spreading ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... your years, you have, with the observations these have enabled you to make, been flint and steel too, as I may say, to yourself: so that you have struck fire when you pleased, wanting nothing but a few dry leaves, like the first pair in old Du Bartas, to serve as tinder to catch your animating sparks. So that reading constantly, and thus using yourself to write, and enjoying besides a good memory, every thing you heard and read became your own; and not only so, but was improved by passing through more salubrious ducts and vehicles; like ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the storm, a shower which died away, leaving changing patches of blue in the lumpy sky, and all nature calm and pleased, but oh, so wet! Of course the fire was out in the lodge and nearly all the wood was wet. Now Quonab drew from a small cave some dry cedar and got down his tinder-box with flint and steel to light up; but a serious difficulty appeared at once—the tinder was ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... giver's pigs. Destitution of this kind, brought about by unswerving loyalty to an ideal, ceases to exist in its sordid manifestations: it exalts the sufferer. And his life's work is there. Hitherto there had been no "Albanian Question" to perplex the chanceries of Europe. He applied the match to the tinder; he conjured up that phantom ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of Italian courtesy, the deep downward lines revealed the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did not venture to speak; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him much. He laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon the steel, and struck the spark—still not a word, nor did Riccabocca stretch ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... taking a flint, steel, and tinder from his pocket, he, with a couple of strokes, ignited the latter, and approached the hearth, which the faint light from the burning "punk" enabled him to reach. The fire had long since gone out, but the crisp and blackened embers, soon grew under the care of the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... to the salon to fetch what he needed; he brought in a tiny and graceful Chinese tea-pot of the Rose family, which he filled with gun powder, and through the neck of which he carefully introduced a long piece of tinder, lighted it and, running, carried this infernal machine ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... nourishment suitable to the meat on which we feed; so our souls do as insensibly take in vice by the example or conversation with wicked company:" and would therefore as often say, "That ignorance of vice was the best preservation of virtue; and that the very knowledge of wickedness was as tinder to inflame and kindle sin and keep it burning." For these reasons she endeared him to her own company, and continued with him in Oxford four years; in which time her great and harmless wit, her ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... discussing news about it, and in visiting the Stone-pits. The rain had washed away all possibility of distinguishing foot-marks, but a close investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the direction opposite to the village, a tinder-box, with a flint and steel, half sunk in the mud. It was not Silas's tinder-box, for the only one he had ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the inference generally accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch was somehow connected with the robbery. A small minority ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... for the tinder-box, which lay within, handy for emergencies; found it, and kneeling on the grass-plot beside the mast, struck flint upon steel. As he blew upon the tinder and the faint glow lit up his face and nightcap, a timorous exclamation ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... puzzled him. There were some odd lengths of knotted string, and a coil of yellow tubular fabric, about the thickness of his little finger, some inches in length. Colwyn recognized it at once. It was the wick of a tinder-lighter, then being sold by thousands by English tobacconists to replace a war-time scarcity of matches, and greatly used ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... under the trees on the lawn of some country inn, where the enchanting music of harp and fiddle twangled on the summer air, where great bowls of punch chimed gently as the lumps of ice knocked on the thin crystal. The little tables were spread tinder the trees, and then, later on, perhaps, the customers were spread under the tables.—I would ask you to recall the manly seidel of dark beer as you knew it, the bitter chill of it as it went down, the simple felicity it induced in the care-burdened mind. I could ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... with a friend below, and been seen by Messer Alessandro del Dardo, who within the cuirass of Sub-Prefect of Padua nourished the heart of an approved Poet; been seen of him for the miracle of young beauty she really was. Chance sparks kindle chance tinder; and so here. I am far from alleging the heart of Messer Alessandro to be dry tow; but I do repeat it, Padua was a freakish cityful, Ippolita lovely exceedingly, amorous poetry in ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... ability in mechanics. "Lieutenant Douglas occupied a room barely habitable, and had to contest the tenancy with rats, which asserted their claim with such tenacity, that he went to sleep at the risk of being devoured. Their incursions compelled him to furnish himself with loaded pistols and a tinder-box, and he kept watch one night, remaining quiet till there was an irruption, when he started up and struck a light. But his vigilance proved of no avail, for the clink of the flint and steel caused a stampede, and not a rat remained ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... myself to make room for his person; not, however, leaving more than a yard of interval, just what any reasonable man would have regarded as a convenient, respectful allowance of bench. But M. Emanuel never was reasonable; flint and tinder that he was! he struck and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... cried the pirate, foaming with rage; "bind him to the mainmast; unbandage his eyes; let us have plenty of tinder; lay a train of powder, and to the ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... through a pond. After we had done this, and had a little rested ourselves, we began to look about in search of food, but we could find nothing except a few crumbs of bread and cheese in a man's coat pocket, and a piece of tallow-candle stuck on the top of a tinder-box. This, however, though not such delicate eating as we had been used to, yet served to satisfy our present hunger; and we had just finished the candle when we were greatly alarmed by the sight of ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... a theft, for the matches have been thrown away, as you might say. Those foolish people will suppose the dead have struck them. They used to put wax candles and tinder-boxes with them in the niches, but when these sulphur matches came in fashion, they preferred them for economy. When I am working in this wood I take no fire with me, being quite sure to find the means of lighting one. Praise be to Allah for ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... ets aine mama unn ain papa edam (wesen). unn (unt) diesa abn wais (twai) kinna (tinder) ghatf (dehappt). unn die kinna sint (dsint) in den walt tegang (gangen). unn-daben (habn) holz (olz) geh[o]l (ohlt). dann sint (dsint) sie an ain utsom-haendom (zuke-haeussn) zezan (gangn). unn (unt) habn (abn) ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... agony.) Why, what makes you stand twisting there like an eel or an ape, child?—What, in the name of the ould one, is it you're afeard on?—Was the chist full now of love-letter scrawls from the grand signior or the pope himself, you could not be more tinder ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... dissimilitude between his fair captivator, as she appeared to others and as she seemed when invested with the attributes he gave her." "My heart," he himself, speaking of those days, observes, "was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other." Yet, it must be acknowledged that sufficient room exists for believing that Burns and his brethren of the West had very different notions of the captivating and the beautiful; while they were moved by rosy checks and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... in the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he was knighted—a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer has a box at the opera. On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a match fizzling, the crest ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... weel-plenish'd mailin has Geordie, An' routh o' gude gowd in his kist, An' if siller comes at my wordie, His beauty I never will miss 't. Daft gowks, wha catch fire like tinder, Think love-raptures ever will burn? But wi' poortith, hearts het as a cinder, Will ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of gunpowder had been found in the morning, and dried in the sun, during the day, which was very fine; a steel, some gun-flints and tinder were also found in the same parcel. After infinite trouble we succeeded in setting fire to some pieces of dry linen. We made a large hole in one side of an empty cask, and placed at the bottom of it several things which we wetted, and on ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... at hand. There it seemed warm after the long days on the open sea, but we were very wet. So we found a sheltered hollow whence we could look across the beach to the ship, and there gathered a great pile of driftwood and lit a fire, starting it with dry grass and the tinder which Bertric kept, seamanlike, with his flint and steel in his leathern pouch, secure from even the sea. Then we sat round it and dried ourselves more or less, while the tide reached its full, left the bare timbers of the ship's ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... earliest method appears to have been through the agency of iron pyrites, called "cozgeen" or "igneen," and from the latter has been derived "ignek," the Tigara word for fire. Two pieces of "igneen," being struck together, would emit a spark; a small-sized heap of tinder being placed on the ground the operator would continue striking the glancing blows until a lucky spark ignited the mass. The operation, to say the least, must have required a great amount of patience on the part of the operator. It was the only method of fire-making known for a great ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... other priest, "that at twenty you must indeed have been excitable, a veritable tinder-box, to have retained so much energy! Come, monsieur, try to calm yourself and have patience: you yourself admit it can only ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... pencil but nearly twice as long, of hard mulga wood. He squatted down and set the soft piece on the ground and held it in place with his toes, and teased out a few pieces of very dry bark till they were like tinder, and put it near the hollow. Then he took the long piece of mulga and twirled it with his two hands in the hollow. He did this faster than any white man could possibly twirl it, and in a couple of minutes a coil of smoke ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... this desert world of thistles dead and dry as tinder continued standing, a menace and danger, the one desire and hope of every one was for the pampero—the south-west wind, which in hot weather is apt to come with startling suddenness, and to blow with extraordinary violence. And it would ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... in hunting all manner of small bits of dry fuel under the sheltered sides of the logs, and in hollow stumps. As soon as he had gathered a few handfuls of this tinder, he drew out a match, and ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... greatest enemies of books, the sulphur in the gas fumes attacking the leather bindings readily, so that in time they are reduced to tinder. So if gas be the illuminant in your study, see to it that no volume of yours be above the level of the burner. In any case, if space will permit, the highest shelf should not be more than six feet from the ground. For similar reasons of temperature, the bottom shelves should be six inches ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... against the water, impedes the progress of the whale. Besides these things, each boat is supplied with a case in which are stowed several necessary articles, the most important being a lantern and tinder-box—the lantern to be used as a signal when caught out at night—a compass, and perhaps a small cooking-apparatus. A whale-boat, when going in chase, has a crew of six men: one is called the headsman, the other the boat-steerer. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... glancin' keen at me from Tinder his bushy eyebrows, "this Mrs. Bagstock seems to think we are using her badly. As a matter of fact, those Inter-Lake shareholders were lucky. We might have frozen them ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... hollow of the tree and confidently awaited results. A sound like the snort of a steam-engine followed, and presently flames were seen bursting from the top of the chimney-like trunk. The dry mould and dust of ages that had collected inside this shaft had now caught fire, like so much tinder, turning the whole tree in a twinkling ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... off as if lit simultaneously by the rocket. One of the ship-houses contained the old 'New York,' a ship thirty years on the stocks, and yet unfinished; the other was vacant. But both houses, and the old 'New York,' burned like tinder. The vessels fired were the 'Pennsylvania,' the 'Merrimac,' the 'Germantown,' the 'Plymouth,' the 'Raritan,' the 'Columbia,' and the 'Dolphin.' The old 'Delaware' and 'Columbus," worn-out and disabled seventy-fours, were scuttled, and sunk at ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of absence without leave, who was bound to a stake in the presence of his sister, and destroyed by a cannon placed six paces off, but only loaded with powder, in order to prolong the agony; now, a Christian accused of having tried to blow up Janina by introducing mice with tinder fastened to their tails into the powder magazine, who was shut up in the cage of Ali's favourite tiger ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the lighted tinder in the firebox. The fuse must already be burning. Yet the girl remained stooped before the still. She would be blown to pieces no ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... supervises the food in a restaurant. "The food is tinder the special supervision of a doctor." He copies out the chemical composition of the mineral water; the students believe him—and ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... carelessness of campers and tourists to put out their camp fires. A single match or a cigarette stub tossed from a passing automobile may start a costly fire. During the season from May to October, the western forests usually are as dry as tinder. Rains are rare during that period. A fire once started runs riot unless efficient control measures are used ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... they did; a moment more and Rose lay panting in her father's arms, enveloped in a thick blanket which he had thrown around her burning night-dress. The fire was extinguished, the babe lay unawakened, and only the dark flecks of tinder scattered over the bed, and the trampled mass on the floor, told what had been. But Rose had breathed the hot breath of the flame, deadly to human life, and no water could quench ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... it came time to set the fire. Then, whether the building was older and more tinder-like than was supposed, or whether Mr. Levinberg, the "villain" who fired the shack, used too much red fire ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... four or five of the performers as they came out, and closely examined their feet. They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a quarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or not ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... shelter of so much as a hut, it was necessary to take tents and bearskin beds for the Chamberlain, his Cossack guard, valet-de-chambre, cook and other servants, one set of fine blankets and linen, cooking utensils, axes, arms, tinder-boxes, provisions for the entire trip, besides a ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... take Madame Coutance seriously?" said he. "You are wrong, she is a very troublesome woman. She is like a child playing with tinder, and may make a blaze at any moment without knowing it. The safety of the State demands that such persons should be deprived of the power ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... had come to think that the man was innately a libertine, awaiting but the right one to strike the hidden flint and set the tinder aglow—the tinder that would burn, and consume, and destroy. He had known of men like that—of men who went the even pathway of their lives until there crossed it another who tore them from it; and that one they followed, leaving soul and morals and decency ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... free herself,—that this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... letters, which I value above gold. Through them all, breathes the same spirit of ardent love to Jesus, with a deep sense of her own helplessness. Her character was that of an humble soul constantly living tinder the rays of the Sun of righteousness. I have often heard her express fears concerning herself, but never doubting the faithfulness of Jesus, in whom she trusted. Since I had the happiness of knowing her—which ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... carpets were ripped up from the floors before the warning cry came to stand back, that the roof was about to fall in. The fire brigade turned its attention to saving the barn, but that was old, too, and burned like tinder, as the breath of the approaching storm fanned the flames higher ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... strictly orthodox Shinto family there is always a small box containing the ancient instruments used for the lighting of' holy fire. These consist of the hi-uchi-ishi, or 'fire-strike-stone'; the hi-uchi-gane, or steel; the hokuchi, or tinder, made of dried moss; and the tsukegi, fine slivers of resinous pine. A little tinder is laid upon the flint and set smouldering with a few strokes of the steel, and blown upon until it flames. A slip of pine is then ignited at this flame, and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... forgotten now, so many extravagancies tread upon one another's heels, and hustle each its predecessor off the stage. Spirit-rapping is the last, and is spreading like wildfire throughout the land: some characters have so much tinder in their composition, that they catch in a moment. But it will soon go out—'tis like the crackling of thorns under the pot—a quick blaze for a moment, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... who tried to kindle the fire was such a long time about it, owing to the damp tinder, that Dame Zudar impatiently snatched the flint and steel out of his hands, struck away at it till she had ignited the tinder, then thrust it with her own hand in the midst of the straw surrounding the faggots, fanned it with her apron till it burst into a vivid ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... with that Mauser, they will hang you. Take the Webley. Then you can always draw Service ammunition." Wagstaffe ran his eye over the rest of Bobby's outfit. "Smokes? Take your pipe and a tinder-box: you will get baccy and cigarettes to burn out there. Keep that electric torch; and your binoculars, of course. Also that small map-case: it's a good one. Also wire-cutters. You can write letters in ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... this time, and you has escaped; but as shure as there is a God in heav'n, if you don't get Squire to consint to let me go back, there'll be mischief. There now, Miss Nora, I've spoken. You're purty, and you're swate, and 'tis you has got a tinder heart; but that won't do you no good, for I'm mad with misery. It's me bit of a cabin I want to die in, and nothing less will contint me. You may go back now, for I've said what I come to say; but it's to-morrow night I'll be here waiting for ye, and I warn ye to bring me the consint that ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... for Jawborough, who is going out to inspect the operations of the Zollverein, and will put some very severe questions to Lord Palmerston next session upon England and her relations with the Prussian-blue trade, the Naples-soap trade, the German-tinder trade, &c. Spout will patronize King Leopold at Brussels; will write letters from abroad to the JAWBOROUGH INDEPENDENT; and in his quality of MEMBER DU PARLIAMONG BRITANNIQUE, will expect to be invited to a family dinner ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... themselves among the thick branches till they were almost hid from view, David lighted a pine torch and gave it into the hands of the eager boy, who seized it and like a young Prometheus started forth. A single touch to the dry tinder was enough. With a dull explosion, the mass burst into flame. Shouting in his exultation, the little torch-bearer rushed on, igniting pile after pile, and leaving behind him almost at every step a mighty conflagration. At each new instant, as the night advanced, a new outburst of light ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... issue of the conflict, was ever in the thickest of the battle, notwithstanding the severity of the wound from which he was suffering. At length, to drive his foes from the protection of their houses, the torch was applied in many places. The timber of which they were built was dry almost as tinder. Soon the whole place was in flames, the fiery billows surging to and fro like a furnace. All alike fled from the conflagration. The horsemen were already upon the plain, and they cut down the fugitive ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... was commenced in 1867, tinder the labors of Rev. George Fellows, and was completed during the Pastorate of Rev. Wm. R. Jones in 1868. It was dedicated by Bishop Thomson. Oconomowoc has grown to be one of the strongest and most desirable appointments ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... marked that by far the most important item of a whale-boat's furniture was snugly secured in its place. This was the water-tight keg, at both ends firmly headed, containing a small compass, tinder-box and flint, candles, and a score or two of biscuit. This keg is an invariable precaution against what so frequently occurs in pursuing the sperm whale—prolonged absence from the ship, losing sight of her, or never seeing her more, till years after you reach home again. In this ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... parched air by day. These fires commence by some carelessness, though they are sometimes attributed to the action of the son's rays, concentrated by the gray cliffs upon great masses of vegetation dried to tinder. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... suspect there be verily evil work in the cape, and a witch's bodkin hath pierced these cunning eyelets. It goeth so fast now that erelong every guileless, senseless thing in our houses, down to the tinder-box and the candle-stick, will find hinges and turn into a gate, whereby witchcraft can enter. You say, Widow Hutchins, that Olive Corey gave this cape to ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... own room in the adjoining house. This Doubleday allowed, posting himself as watchmen at the door. No sooner was Fawkes alone than he took the opportunity to rid himself of the chief evidences against him, by flinging the match and tinder out of his window, which overlooked the river. In another minute Sir Thomas Knevet and his men entered ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... trees and began gathering wood with which to start a blaze. Both boys were such experts at this that only a brief time was necessary. Fred laid the buffalo steak on the leaves and took part, striking the flame with his own flint and tinder. There was no water within reach and this was quite a deprivation, but the boys were hungry enough to wait for that. From his scant store of mixed salt and sugar, Fred drew forth enough to season the enormous slice and it was ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... in which was kept all the ripe maize of the tribe, together with much starch-root (koonti katki) and a large quantity of yams. The granary was built of pitch-pine posts and poles, heavily thatched with palm-leaves, that the summer suns had dried to a tinder. ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... perfect autumn weather, I was walking down the main road of a residential suburb, and observing the fragile-wheeled station-wagons, and the ice-wagons enormously labeled "DANGER" (perhaps by the gastric experts of the medical faculty), and the Colonial-style dwellings, and the "tinder" boarding-houses, and the towering boot-shine stands, and the roast-chestnut emporia, and the gasometers flanking a noble and beautiful river—I was observing all this when a number of young men and maids came out of a high-school ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... in the cliff, which have been termed outlooks, were not in any sense watch towers, but rather places of abode during the harvest season, where the workers in the field lived when not actually employed in labor, and where the fields tinder cultivation could always be kept in view—an arrangement quite as necessary and quite as extensively practiced now as ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... and our little belongings, to advance. One of them came forward, and, producing a lamp, lit it from his brazier (for the Amahagger when on a journey nearly always carried with them a little lighted brazier, from which to provide fire). The tinder of this brazier was made of broken fragments of mummy carefully damped, and, if the admixture of moisture was properly managed, this unholy compound would smoulder away for hours.[*] As soon as the lamp was lit we entered the place before which Ayesha ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of air liberates its latent heat, and produces fire. On this principle the pneumatic tinder-box is constructed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the difficulty attendant upon flint and steel and burnt rag, they had to be kept alight from morning till night and from night till morning. If a fire went out it was a woful business to start it again with the reluctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an easier way, of going round to a neighbor and borrowing a shovelful of hot embers wherewith to kindle the blackened hearth. But in villages built for the most part ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... resulted. The primitive mind is slow to resent an affront, and while the chief deputy had couched his last remarks in well-chosen language, his intimation that I was a fugitive from justice, and an outlaw in resisting arrest, was tinder to stubble. Knowing the metal of my outfit, I curbed the tempest within me, and relying on a brother whom I would gladly follow to death if need be, I waved hands off to my boys. "Now, men," said Bob to the deputies, "the easiest way out of this matter is the best. No one here has committed any ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... importance to the heart. The heart is said to be the lord of the body, which it rules as a master rules his house. Shall the lord, who is the heart, be ailing and his sickness be neglected, while his servants, who are the members only, are cared for? If the knee be lacerated, apply tinder to stop the bleeding; if the moxa should suppurate, spread a plaster; if a cold be caught, prepare medicine and garlic and gruel, and ginger wine! For a trifle, you will doctor and care for your bodies, and yet for your hearts you will take no care. Although you are born of ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in the side of the staircase he took a candle, flint, and tinder, talking the while to Molly, as she rubbed the balusters. Having produced a tiny candle-flame that did not light up half the hall, Williams started towards the dining-room, but stopped at a distant sound of galloping horses, which were evidently coming down ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Clearing away the snow from the roots of a large spreading pine-tree, he strewed branches on the ground, and thus made a rude couch. On this he spread his blanket. Then he cut some firewood with the axe that hung at his side, and soon kindled, by means of flint, steel, and tinder, a good fire. Seating himself before the warm blaze, the exhausted man rested awhile, with his legs drawn together and his head resting on ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dying torch about his head. Recalling how the aliens had sent his horse mad, he tossed it behind him into the grass between the tents and the herd. The tinder-dry stuff caught immediately. Now if the men tried to ride after him, they ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... burnt itself out, employed himself in endeavouring to buy some warm garments. Money was plentiful, for there had been no means of spending it since they entered Russia, and he was fortunate in being able to buy some very warm tinder-garments that had been looted by the plunderers on the night of their first arrival before Moscow. He also purchased a peasant's sheep-skin caftan with a hood, and sewed this into his military cloak so as to form a lining, the hood being for the time turned inside. From another sheep-skin ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... don't, I must tell you. On the evening of the trial, two or three of the young buccaneers of literature went down to two or three newspaper offices, and wrote two or three heart-rending leading articles on the subject of the proceedings in court. The next morning the public caught light like tinder; and the prisoner was tried over again, before an amateur court of justice, in the columns of the newspapers. All the people who had no personal experience whatever on the subject seized their pens, and rushed (by kind permission ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant brushed the tinder into ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the Diet what it might, it was controlled by bodies of stubborn squires or yeomen in each county, who fully understood their own power, and stoutly forbade the passing of any measure which imposed a share of the public burdens upon themselves. The impossibility of carrying out reforms tinder existing conditions had been demonstrated by the failures of 1843. In order to overcome the obstruction as well of the Magnates as of the county assemblies, it was necessary that an appeal should be made to the country at large, and that a force of public sentiment should be aroused which should ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... passenger on the first passenger railroad train that was ever run; until she was five years old, there was no such thing as an iron plow in all the world, and until she was grown up, the people were dependent on tinder boxes and sun glasses to light their fires. She had reached the age of twenty-three years when steam communication between Europe and America was established, and when the first telegram ever sent passed between Baltimore and Washington ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... branches of pine had been spread over the timber, and the branches in turn covered with a thick layer of straw to prevent the earth from filtering between the logs. This material was as dry as tinder, and held ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... to save you. Think what it will be to hang as at this moment your servant hangs over that yawning gulf of space, waiting through the long hours till at last you see the little wreaths of smoke begin to curl from the tinder of the cord. Why! before the end found them I have known men go mad, and, like wolves, tear with their teeth at ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... Saunders, "you are right there, George. Look how she flares up. Why, she must be as dry as tinder. Ah! there they go with their buckets. But what is the use of buckets against a blaze like that; why don't they get their hose along and start their head-pump? They'll never put out that fire by balin' up ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... bailiff, turning to his men, who had once more got the spar on their shoulders. "No, no," he said; "half of you get one side, half the other, and swing it by your hands. Keep step, and run with it against the gate. The rotten old wood will fly like tinder." ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... the fireplace where he knew the tinder-box to be kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light throughout the hut, and choking back ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... made to secure whatever could be saved from the wreck. Bales of cloth, cases of wine, a few boxes of cheese, some hams, the carcass of a milch cow that had been washed on shore, buckets, tubs, butts, a seaman's chest, (containing a tinder-box and needles and thread,) with a number of elegant mahogany turned bed-posts, and part of an investment for the India market, were got on shore. The rain poured down in torrents—all hands were busily at work to procure shelter from the weather; and with the bed-posts and broad-cloths, and ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... ground in places with a perfect network of gnarled, twisted, and interlocking trunks. For some reason it always seems to die when it has attained a certain age, and wherever you find its green spiny foliage you will also find dry white trunks as inflammable as tinder. It furnishes almost the only firewood of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis, and without it many parts of north-eastern Siberia would be absolutely uninhabitable by man. Scores of nights during our explorations in Siberia, we should have been compelled to camp without ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Rome burned. The fire, started by Nero's soldiers near the Palatine Hill, spread from house to house and quarter to quarter until it reached my couch. The old shell parted and burned as tinder. Then the mortal put on immortality and the shackled darkness of the old soul gave ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... fate to be lost in the wilderness, which I did not much relish. We were all at this time "hungry as hunters," and beginning to feel very miserable from being wet through. What little ammunition I had left I fired off as signals, or made tinder of to get up a fire, but the wood would not burn. In this hapless condition the black boys began murmuring, wishing to go on, pretending, though both held opposite views, that each knew the way; for they thought nothing could be worse than ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... words Meg lifted her milking-stool and vanished within. The cuif sat for a long time on his byne lost in thought. Then he arose, struck his flint and steel together, and stood looking at the tinder burning till it went out, without having remembered to put it to the pipe which he held in his other hand. After the last sparks ran every way and flickered, he threw the glowing red embers on the ground, kicked the pail on which he had ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... transportation, and munitions, and even axes, picks, and shovels, so much in use later in the war, evidenced the forethought that governed this force. The boats, from their open lower deck construction, proved admirable for transports, but their tinder-box construction made fire-traps of them, requiring unremitting vigilance. These points were well understood, and the readiness with which the troops adapted themselves to circumstances was a constant ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... he was distinctively a preacher, and his serene and sweet genius never unbent into a frolicsome mood. As early as 1820 a volume of Robert Burns's poems fell into Whittier's hands like a spark into tinder, and the flame that has so long illuminated and cheered began to blaze. It was, however, a softened ray, not yet the tongue of lyric fire which it afterwards became. But none of the poets smiled as they sang. The Muse of New England was staid and stately—or was she, after all, not a true ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... be carried in abundance, together with a lantern, axe, bill-hook, tinder-box, matches, candles, oil, tea, coffee, sugar, biscuits, wine, brandy, sauces, etc., a few hams, some tins of preserved meats and soups, and a few bottles of curacea, a glass of which, in the early ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... come back and capture the depot. We have got to fight for it, that's evident; and the boats of a fleet could hardly make their way in here. We had best get the three craft moored with their broadsides to the entrance. We will blow the boats to tinder if they try to come in, and then we can load up with all the most valuable goods and slip out at night-time. That is our ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... time to be scare at skeletons that slide down and disappear, for Mamselle Rosalin must have her camp and her place to sleep. Every man use to the bateaux have always his tinder-box, his knife, his tobacco, but I have more than that; I have leave Mackinac so quick I forget to take out the storekeeper's bacon that line the bottom of the sledge, and Mamselle Eosalin sit on it in the furs! We have plenty meat, ...
— The Skeleton On Round Island - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... amount of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my room reading, writing, or drawing. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... went out, and we were in darkness. Amante proposed that we should carry the letters back to my salon, collecting them as well as we could in the dark, and returning all but the expected one for me; but I begged her to return to my room, where I kept tinder and flint, and to strike a fresh light; and I remained alone in the room, of which I could only just distinguish the size, and the principal articles of furniture: a large table, with a deep, overhanging cloth, in the middle, escritoires and other heavy articles ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Waring found his tinder-box, made a blaze of driftwood, and bound up the bleeding arm and leg roughly. 'Wretch,' he said, 'you ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... and a scuffling of feet, the sound of an opening window, a call for lights. But lights were no such speedy matters in those days when matches had not been invented. When at length the scratching of the tinder boxes was done and the candles relit, every one looked eagerly at the table. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... coffins. The huge door grated on its hinges, as they opened it. The coffins were borne in, and the whole party entered; the priest mumbling a short Latin prayer. In a short time, the priest alone returned; and looking cautiously around, and seeing no one, struck a light from a tinder box, and lighted his cigar. The other two men brought back the coffins, evidently relieved of their weight; and the priest—the boy—with the man who had last joined them, and who had also lit his cigar—entered the first caleche, after exchanging some jokes with George's companion, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... over and above the sixpence charged. I believe she'd have made it a shillin', too, only when I told her she lived in a very pretty house, and asked if she owned it or rented it, she turned very stiff in her manner. Touchy as tinder she was; and if that comes of being a lady, I'm glad ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q) |
