"Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "A Thumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr. Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a few years earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life by Conybeare and Howson, now so well known, were ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... that the Little Doctor had not returned from Denson's, where she had been summoned to attend one of the children, who had run a rusty nail into her foot. She had gone alone, for Dr. Cecil was learning to make bread, and had refused to budge from the kitchen till her ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... we could but give the Fram wings as well! Knives are being forged, bear-spears which we never have any use for, bear-traps in which we never catch a bear, axes, and many other things of like usefulness. For the moment there is a great manufacture of wooden shoes going on, and a newly started nail-making industry. The only shareholders in this company are Sverdrup and Smith Lars, called 'Storm King,' because he always comes upon us like hard weather. The output is excellent and is in active demand, as all our small nails ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... whipping-post remained in its place for several years, a possible terror to future evildoers. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," was the Draconian code then; and the rod, in the shape of a little bundle of birchen twigs, bound together with a small cord, was generally suspended on a nail against the wall in the kitchen, and was as much a part of the necessary furniture as the crane that hung in the fireplace or the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... necklets, like nearly all the Guayana savages; but one, I observed, possessed a necklet unlike that of the others, which greatly aroused my curiosity. It was made of thirteen gold plates, irregular in form, about as broad as a man's thumb-nail, and linked together with fibres. I was allowed to examine it, and had no doubt that the pieces were of pure gold, beaten flat by the savages. When questioned about it, they said it was originally obtained from the Indians of Parahuari, and Parahuari, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... encamped in lat. 17 degrees 41 minutes 52 seconds; about ten miles south by west from our last camp. Charley was remarkably lucky to-day, in catching an emu, and shooting six teals, a brown wallabi of the Mitchell, and a kangaroo with a broad nail at the end of its tail. Brown also shot a sheldrake and a Malacorhynchus membranaceus. During the time that we were travelling to the southward, we had a north-east wind during the forenoon, which in the afternoon veered round to the east and south. Such ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... Great-Heart? "To lift Today above the Past; To make Tomorrow sure and fast; To nail God's colors to the mast." Then God ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... was in a state of collapse that silenced all scruples. Mrs. Treacher—a powerfully-built woman—caught up the all but inanimate lady in both arms, and bore her into the passage, nodding to Miss Gabriel to unhitch from its nail a lamp which hung, backed by a tin reflector, just within ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the day been from the dawn 35 Close by the threshold of a door nail'd fast 303 Come dear children, let us away 50 Come listen to me, you gallants so free 44 Come live with me and be my Love 7 Come unto ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... revolt against? Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against everything! Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . . Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you, persecute me! Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage, Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue, Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital, Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming Dictionaries, Clothes, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... Platt. "D'ye want to nail the trip, Dan? That's Jonah sure, 'less you sing it after ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... non-natural things that make the charm and wonder of ordinary dreams. If we did so our true dream was blurred, and became as an ordinary dream—vague, futile, unreal, and untrue—the baseless fabric of a vision. Nor must we alter ourselves in any way; even to the shape of a finger-nail, we must remain ourselves; although we kept ourselves at our very best, and could choose what age we should be. We chose from twenty-six to twenty-eight, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... and the performance of it in a prescribed way; but he is able to do this for the following reasons only: So far as ordinary labour is concerned, any one man, by simply observing another, can tell with approximate accuracy what the other man can do—whether he can trundle a wheel-barrow, hit a nail on the head, file a casting, or lay brick on brick. Further, the director of labour knows the precise nature of the result which he requires in each case that the individual labourer shall accomplish. Hence he can exact from each labourer conformity to the injunctions laid on him, in respect both ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... not be despatched, I suppose, because the ships might at any time in July have been swept by the ice whither it pleased, and the junction of boats and ships rendered uncertain. Future expeditions will, however, hit this nail on the head, and three distinct periods for Arctic exploration will be found to exist, viz.:—The spring, from April to June 25th, for foot journeys; from June 25th to the first week in August, for boat expeditions; ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes like the body, and believes that to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same habits and haunts, and is not likely ever ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... work in another part of the shed. This hammer is the invention of Mr. Nasmyth, of the Bridgewater Foundry, near Manchester. It moves up and down in a strong frame, at a speed subject to such nice regulations, that, according to the will of its director, it can gently drive a nail, or crush to splinters a log of wood. When Lord John Russell lately visited Manchester, the delicate touch of this hammer was strikingly displayed before him: an egg was procured, and placed in a wine-glass, and such was the power possessed over this giant, that after a little adjustment, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... to see everything there is to be seen," suggested Louis, as he looked about him. "The king is taking us to his palace in high style. If he meant to astonish us, he has hit the nail on ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... it was, but he had the other taken out and a wooden peg, which would be easily broken, put in its place; the design being that the spear when it had struck the enemy's shield should not remain straight, for when the wooden nail broke, the iron head would bend, and the spear, owing to the twist in the metal part, would still hold to the shield, and so drag along the ground. Now Boeorix, the king of the Cimbri, with a very few men about him, riding up to the camp, challenged ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... thing which men are prone to do, and which it would be well that they should not do, and that is, "nail their colours to the mast" in early youth. The world is a school. We are ever learning—or ought to be—and, in some cases, "never coming to a knowledge of the truth!" Is not this partly owing to that fatal habit of nailing the colours? I do ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... three hundred Sikhs under major Renaud, and Havelock, who had arrived in the town just as they were starting, promised to follow in a day or two, as soon as he could get ready a larger force. Eager soldier though he was, he had long ago laid to heart the truth of the old saying, 'for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the man was lost; for want of a man the kingdom was lost,' and he always took care that his nails were in their places. Therefore he waited a few days longer than he expected to do, ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything—and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this flor—Dan'l ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exist in the world, and their uses to man. Further, their resemblances to celestial and terrestrial things, produced both by nature and art, are so given that I was astonished when I saw a fish which was like a bishop, one like a chain, another like a garment, a fourth like a nail, a fifth like a star, and others like images of those things existing among us, the relation in each case being completely manifest. There are sea-urchins to be seen, and the purple shell-fish and mussels; and whatever the watery world possesses worthy of being known is there ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... all the way down the line. Walter had fought it tooth and nail since the day Torkleson had installed the moose heads in Walter's old office, and moved him down to the cubbyhole, under Bailey's watchful eye. He had argued, and battled, and pleaded, and lost. He had watched the company deteriorate day by day. Now ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... funny situation were it not so tragic. Her father and three brothers fighting these men with tooth and nail while an officer saluted and put his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... of placing such a tank is to nail the floor joists onto the bottom of the rafters, so that a truss is formed, and the box or tank is properly supported on the floor and also hung from the rafters by iron straps bolted both to tank and rafters. If possible, this tank should be placed directly over ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... hypothesis that Miller was murdered, the rest was easy. If you will go back there, Brasher, and dig your nail into the putty holding the window nearest to the bolt, you will find it soft; the other putty is hard. There are five rows of panes. The one I refer to is in the middle row at the extreme left. The killer had the forethought to use putty that was of about the same color ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... to town I sent this "ad." to two papers: "Wanted: Ten good carpenters to go to the country." The Sunday papers gave a lurid account of the sentiment of the Carpenters' Union and its sympathetic attitude toward the striking hoisters. The forecast was that there would not be a nail driven if the strike were not settled by Tuesday night. It seemed that I had not moved a day too soon. On Monday thirty-seven carpenters applied at my office. Most of them had union tickets and were not considered. Thirteen, however, were not of the union, and they were investigated. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... human beings worked with practiced ease, even while masked and submerged, to set the probe in place, aiming it landward at the check point of the Finger's protruding nail of rock. After Ashe made the final adjustments, tested each and every part of the assembly, ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... in the almshouses. They wanted Davy, the son of Bill Davy the milkman, to see me home with the lantern, but I wouldn't let him 'cause of his sore throat. Throat!—no, it wasn't his throat as was rare sore—it was—no, it wasn't—yes, it was—it was his toe as was sore. His big toe. A nail out of his boot had got into it. I told him he'd be sure to have a bad toe, if he didn't go to church more regular, but he wouldn't listen; and so my words come'd true. But, as I was a-saying, I wouldn't let ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... occasion of Captain Owen visiting the brother of the King of Baracouta, a calabash of palm-wine was produced, which, in consequence of some imperfection in the vessel, leaked out its contents; in order to cure this defect, the hospitable chief took off his hat, and, scraping with his thumb-nail a portion of the clay and grease from his head, effectually checked further leakage, with this veritable Fernando ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... great Venetian school of the thirteenth century. Here is a mixture, still visible, of the Byzantine and the Saracenic. It is crowned with a circular pediment, now wreathed with vegetation,—a bouquet, rose, brown, yellow, or blue, according to the season. The door, of oak, nail-studded, gives entrance to a noble hall, at the end of which is another door, opening upon another portico which leads ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... within a few yards of the trees, when, the first I knew, I heard the crack of a rifle, and a bullet came singing through my side. Says I to myself, 'That's a red-skin's compliments!' and making believe that I was a gorner, I pitched forward and lay still as a door nail, in the tall grass. I hadn't lain there more 'n a minute, when, sure enough, a red-skin popped out from behind a tree close by, and made for me, to take my scalp. I had my revolver ready, and when he was within a few feet of me, I just ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... pencil. This small sketch should determine, first, the general balance of the page; second, the inter-relations and spacings of the various lines and words and their relative importance and sizes. From this thumb-nail sketch the design should be drawn out at full size in pencil, and much more carefully. In this redrawing the separate letter shapes and their harmonious relations to each other should be determined, and such deviations made from the smaller ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... Helene Vauquier, monsieur, after I had locked up the garage. And she hung it on a nail in ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... he, 'who, at this critical crisis, does not avow the sentiments of a constitutionalist, is a nail in the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "I predict this is the most valuable tree in the swamp. You found it. I'm going to play that you're my knight. Now, you nail ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... then he makes them forswear cream and baptism, makes them renounce Jesus Christ and his church; and, to give them a distinctive character and make them known for his own, he imprints on their bodies a certain mark with the nail of the little finger of one of his hands; this mark, or character, thus impressed, renders the part insensible to pain. They even pretend that he impresses this character in three different parts of the body, and at three different ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Parenthetically, one remembers that the ostrich's neck is not always thin. Catch Atkinson here in a roaring soliloquy, and you shall see his red neck distended as a bladder, with a mighty grumbling and grunting. This by the way. The neck makes nothing of the domino difficulty, or the tenpenny nail difficulty, or the door-knob difficulty, or the broken bottle difficulty—which are not difficulties to the camel-goose. On the contrary, the neck revels in them and keeps the dainties as long as possible. Give Pontius Pilate, or Atkinson—I am quite impartial—an ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hardly two feet in the direction of the stairs when his coat caught on a nail and he struck a match to see if it had torn. The damage was slight, and, with his customary attention to details, he saw that the nail was one of several which had fastened a narrow strip of molding around the cabinet. About two feet of this molding had been torn ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... didn't, friend," Shanklin agreed in his old easy, persuasive way. "And I never done it to you. You owe the honorable Mr. Jerry Boyle for the red mark you've got on your forrid there. I'll own up that I helped him nail you up and dump you in the river; but I done it because I thought you was finished, and I didn't want the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... this light, modern business has largely solved the age-long problem of producing and distributing the material necessities and amenities of life; and nothing remains except to perfect the system in detail, develop its further potentialities, and fight tooth and nail those who are led by lack of personal success or a maudlin sympathy for the incompetent to ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... "Nary a nail! I saw to that before we used the barrel," answered Randy. "Such a rolling won't hurt him a bit;" and the cadets continued their sport with the barrel, finally sending it down a slight hill in the direction ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... in town. And then, too, they are always sighing and groaning and trying to make out that they are too good for the business. I don't like such people myself. Those who are likely to excel in this business show their teeth betimes. Those children who put out the eyes of birds, nail bats to barn doors, and love to shoot at little dogs, those are the sort of fellows from which apt ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... external organs of generation of a female. A little over three inches from the anus was a rudimentary limb with a movable articulation; it measured five inches in length and tapered to a fine point, being furnished with a distinct nail, and it contracted strongly to irritation. Marie, the left child, was of fair complexion and more strongly developed than Rosa. The sensations of hunger and thirst were not experienced at the same time, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the ladies' committee a general idea of it. Just see, Maggie, if I know the peroration. 'In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, these are the reasonable demands of every intelligent Englishwoman'— I had better say British woman—'and I am proud to nail ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... Pao-yue's cheek on the left side of his face, a spot of blood about the size of a button, and speedily bending her body, she drew near to him, and rubbing it with her hand, she scrutinised it closely. "Whose nail," she went on to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... preliminary sketches for the St. Peter Martyr are: a pen-and-ink sketch in the Louvre showing the assassin chasing the companion of the victim; another, also in the Louvre, in which the murderer gazes at the saint lying dead; yet another at Lille, containing on one sheet thumb-nail sketches of (or from) the attendant friar, the actual massacre, and the angels in mid-air. At the British Museum is the drawing of a soldier attacking the prostrate Dominican, which gives the impression of being an adaptation or variation of that drawing ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... hugged him tight. If her lips did not brush his cheek, Peter deluded himself. Then she sprang up and ran from the garage. Later he took the coat from its nail, the papers from its pockets, and carefully looked them over. There was nothing among them that would give him the slightest clue to Linda's conduct. He looked again, penetratingly, searchingly, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... visit his friend. On reaching the house, he learnt that Mr. Gunnery had suffered an accident which threatened serious results. Walking barefoot in his bedroom the night before, he had stepped upon the point of a large nail, and was now prostrate, enduring much pain. Two days elapsed before Godwin could be admitted; he then found the old man a mere shadow of his familiar ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... was the sum they named To pay the doctor's bill and tide me over. It's that or fight, and I don't want to fight— I just want to get settled in my life, Such as it's going to be, and know the worst, Or best—it may not be so bad. The firm Promise me all the shooks I want to nail." "But what about your flora of the valley?" "You have me there. But that—you didn't think That was worth money to me? Still I own It goes against me not to finish it For the friends it might bring me. By the way, I had a letter from Burroughs—did ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... the waves are solid floor, And the clods are iron-bound, And the boughs are crystall'd hoar, And the red leaf nail'd aground. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images. Sharpened by incessant training, it is all culture, but it has retained hardly ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on a nail up above the eigener Heerd motto, so high that if it hadn't found its match in me I'd only be able to see my eyebrows in it. As it is, I do see as far as my chin. What goes on below that I shall never know while I continue to ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... "it hangs on a nail at the back entry. But the chances are that Patten took it up to his room this time, for safety, You'd know it if you saw it. It has some buttons off sombody's batheing suit tied ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... face and shifty eyes paused in passing to say, "You'll find out how different the boy is onct he's put to the test. He's the same breed, an' it's just like Jake Vodell said last night, there ain't one of the greedy capitalist class that wouldn't nail a laboring man to the cross of their damnable system of slavery ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... the Superiour Court, at their late session here, to the useful branch of nail making at the Castle, yesterday morning took their departure hence, to enter on their new employment, having, with others, previously received ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... Bill. Let the brutes alone and push on with the pack. This is not the time for a row. As for you, Jim Steadbolt—you know me, and you know that if this was any other sort of occasion, you'd pay on the nail for your infernal cheek.... Leave go of those reins. D'ye hear'; for the man of the ragged beard was jerking the near leader's bit and putting the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... warned me. Old men hold their fingers up—so! One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never. It's a round finger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're lecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders—or, Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to the face of a corpse. I declare, it's just like! I feel as if I didn't a bit mind talking of corpses tonight. And my money's gone, and I don't much mind. I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to make money. Look at this here hotel and livery stable, Danny. Twenty years ago I didn't have no more'n you've got, Danny. But I always went by them mottoes—hard work and being honest. You GOTTO nail them shoes on, Danny, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to nail his colors to her mast; to give his affairs and perplexities into her hands; to abide ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... continued David. "Ten thousand francs, father! Why, that is two francs a pound, and the Messrs. Didot only ask thirty-six sous for their Cicero! These nail-heads of yours will only fetch the price of old ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... worried by that time, but far more collected than he was. She sat, absently tapping the shelf with a nail file, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... o' de balls, an' I laid 'im down onder a big tree till I could git somebody to ketch the sorrel for me. He wuz cotched arfter a while, an' I hed some money, so I got some pine plank an' made a coffin dat evenin', an' wrapt Marse Chan's body up in de fleg, and put 'im in de coffin; but I didn' nail de top on strong, 'cause I knowed ole missis wan' see 'im; an' I got a' ambulance, an' set out for home dat night. We reached dyar de nex' evenin', arfter travellin' all dat night an' ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... monk's narrow bed, and high above the kneeling-desk, a great bare cross proclaimed: "Christ is risen; now nail thy soul to me!" In fact some one, perhaps Don Clemente, perhaps one of his predecessors, had written, below it: "Omnes superbiae motus ligno crucis affigat." Benedetto prostrated himself on the floor, and placed his forehead where the knees should rest. ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... ourselves up in the place where gravitation has no effect. Suppose we lay a nail on the surface of a bowl of water. It stays there and does not sink. This does not seem at all surprising, of course, since the nail no longer has weight. But when we put a cork in the midst of the water, it stays there instead of floating to the surface. This seems ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... all like to pack On my load, without thought of my ribs or my back. I know there are heaps of things there that I hate, But it's always been so. I guess it's my fate." And he flicked his long ears, and switched his thin tail, And rasped his rough neck with a hinder-foot nail. ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... a transient world is terrifying. A permanent husband is a bore, and we do not know what to do with him. He cannot be put on a shelf. He cannot be hung on a nail. He will not go out of the house. There is no escape from him, and he is always the same. A smile of a certain dimension, moustaches of this inevitable measurement, hands that waggle and flop like those of ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin—unless a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... together with red tape," writes Bismarck at this stage of his political apprenticeship, at Frankfort; and he hit the nail on the head. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... inflicted on the butcher of the Endeavour, who was accused of having threatened, or attempted the life of a woman, that was the wife of Tubourai Tamaide, a chief, remarkable for his attachment to our navigators. The butcher wanted to purchase of her a stone hatchet for a nail. To this bargain she absolutely refused to accede; upon which the fellow catched up the hatchet, and threw down the nail; threatening, at the same time, that if she made any resistance, he would cut her throat ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... doubt. But before he told the story he had excluded all but himself and the groom. He and the groom had taken the horse out of the stable, it being the animal's nature to eat his corn better after slight exercise, and while doing so a nail ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... and is waiting till the magician breaks the spell. You know, Uncle Allan, he has hung it on a nail in his shop, by the door, just as if he were ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... letter V, made one feel one was confronting a man who never doubted of himself. He was a pedant, to the most extreme point, the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and with that had a vanity only befitting Alexander of Macedon. He was in love with every button on his coat, every nail on his fingers—absolutely in love with them, and he looked it! In his behaviour to me he was a perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me, and if he chanced to glance at me he gave me a firm, majestically self-confident and invariably ironical look that drove me sometimes to fury. ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... independent studies of maps, and an old geography book at Snuffy's from which I was allowed to give lessons to the lowest form; rough in looks, and dress, and manners (I knew it, but it requires some self-respect even to use a nail-brush, and self-respect was next door to impossible at Crayshaw's); and with my north-country accent deepened, and my conversation disfigured by slang which, not being fashionable slang, was as inadmissible as thieves' lingo; it was hard, ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is my right to forbid you,—you shall not go!' he cried. Then ensued a quarrel, bitter, terrible, between two beings who so short a while before had loved so madly. The quarrel ended by the man giving in, as usual, but the wrangle pierced one more nail in his love's coffin for ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... monster stood before me. It was something like a dog and something like a broom, something like being thrown out of the larder by cook—I can't describe it. It caught me up, and in less than a moment it had hung my tabby skin on a nail behind the door. ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... "Black, all black, every nail of them," said Daughtry, "an' as clean feet as ever a dog walked on, straight-out toes with the proper arch 'n' small 'n' not too small. I bet your daddy and your mother cantered away with the ribbons ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... fastened by every window, thicker and thicker on the upper walls and shaky balconies the black melons and yellowish grey cantelopes hung up to keep in the high fresh air, each slung in a hitch of yarn to a nail of ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... in that matter of the Sculls at Henley. I never felt my boat row so heavily as it did then. When it was taken out of the water it was found that a piece of curved iron hoop was fixed to the bottom by a nail that had been pushed through the thin skin. It certainly was not there when it was on the rack, but it was there when I rowed back to the boathouse, and it could only have got there by being put on as ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... the mark upon thy brow is yet No broader than my little finger-nail. Thy force is not abated, and thy step Is firm. Wilt thou surrender to the enemy Before thy strength is touched? Why, let me put A drop of courage from my breast in thine! There is a hope for thee. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... to the weapons, too. She had taken off her pistol when she had been nursing Bill and hadn't put it on since. Quietly, so as not to attract attention, she glanced about to locate it. It was hanging on a nail at the opposite end of the table,—and Joe stood just beside it. She had no desire to waken his suspicions of her fear. She knew she must put up a bold front, at least. Nevertheless her fingers longed for the ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... the street, and their large living-room was chiefly remarkable for the beams supporting the floor above it. They had all been sawn lengthwise out of a single oak-tree, and the outer edges of some had been left untrimmed. From a nail in the midmost beam hung a small rusty key, around which the spiders wove webs and the children many speculations: for the story went that a brother of the old Doctor's— the scapegrace of the family—had hung it (the key of his quadrant) there, with strong injunctions that ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... a great head on you, old chap," he said, affectionately. "It certainly seems as though you have hit the nail on the head this time. I understand, now, why their leader was so anxious to have us move away. They expect to encounter the Indians somewhere in this neighborhood and they do not want any witnesses. What shall ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of dust Soiling our cup, will make our sense reject Fastidiously the draught which we did thirst for; A rusted nail, placed near the faithful compass, Will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy. Even this small cause of anger and disgust Will break the bonds of amity 'mongst princes, And wreck their noblest purposes. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... casual inspection of the records of the Auxiliary Patrol probably locked up somewhere in Whitehall. Some day these records may be made public, and then we shall read of happenings which will cause us to hold our breath, and our hair to bristle like a nail-brush. Who has not heard the story of the unarmed fishing boat which attacked a hostile periscope with nothing more formidable than a coal hammer, or the ex-fisherman who attempted to cloud Fritz's ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... return, and whether he thought it would be two months or—my tongue faltered—two years; whereupon the Moldavian clerk made more signs than before, and yet more unintelligible; as I persisted, however, he flung down his pen, and, putting his thumb into his mouth, moved it rapidly, causing the nail to sound against the lower jaw; whereupon I saw that he was dumb, and hurried away, for I had always entertained a horror of dumb people, having once heard my another say, when I was a child, that dumb people were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... with a rifle when we emigrated to Canada. And when he became an Athabasca trader, and I was only twelve years old, I could set a moose-hide shoe-lace swinging and cut it in two with a revolver at thirty yards. And I can drive a shingle nail at that distance and drive the bullet that drove it, and the next and the next, until my revolver is empty. You don't believe ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... concubine ... this slim, yellow creature was much in love with the lusty young farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the keys. For, every day, she informed us, she passed them by where they hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... been some few cases of erysipelas." It deserves notice that the partner of Dr. C., who attended the autopsy of the man above mentioned and took an active part in it; who also suffered very slightly from a prick under the thumb-nail received during the examination, had twelve cases of midwifery between March 26th and April 12th, all of which did well, and presented no peculiar symptoms. It should also be stated, that during these seventeen days he was in attendance on all the cases of erysipelas ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mounds have been found the bones of a woman and of a dog, a bracelet of filigree work, and a curious pin shaped like a bird, but no sign of Wodin's presence. Yet peasants believe that Wodin passes by on dark nights, and his horse's shoe, with eight nail-holes, is exhibited in the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Life, how and what is it? As here I lie 10 In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with. God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... others love and praise my verses, still Thy long black thumb-nail marks them out for ill: A fellon take it, or some whitflaw come For to unslate or to untile that thumb! But cry thee mercy: exercise thy nails To scratch or claw, so that thy tongue not rails: Some numbers prurient are, and some of these Are wanton with their ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... dat blow nowhar,—dat ar a fact," said Sam, sententiously, giving an additional hoist to his pantaloons, and adroitly substituting a long nail in place of a missing suspender-button, with which effort of mechanical genius he ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pride, had given the King some ill hours before he had put her away to her death. Katharine of Aragon had been no Katharine Howard to study her lord's ways and twist him about her finger; and Mary took her rosary from a nail beside her and told her beads for a quarter hour ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... a rim or flange on the wagon wheels to keep them on the rails. The first road of this kind in America was built at Boston in 1807. It was a very rude affair and was only used to carry dirt from the top of a hill to the harbor. The wooden rails soon wore out, so the next step was to nail strips of iron on top of them. Long lines of railroads of this kind were soon built. Both passengers and goods could be carried on them. Some of them were built by private persons or by companies. Others were built by a town or a state. ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... supply of nail-polish, nail-tint, rouge, face-paint, blackening for painting eyebrows and eyelashes, and of perfumery, cosmetics, unguents and such like. If I were sufficiently whitened, reddened, rouged, and painted I hoped I should be well enough ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion. But I have another desire'—the seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the Curator, and the long forefinger-nail tapped on the table. 'Your scholars, by these books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all their wanderings; but there are things which they have not sought out. I know nothing—nothing do I know—but I go to free myself from the Wheel of Things by a broad and open road.' ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... deposed from office. Marius sees his chance again. Unshaven and unshorn since he left Rome last, he joins Cinna, leading six thousand fugitives, seizes and plunders the towns about Rome, while Cinna encamps beneath the walls. Together they enter Rome and nail Octavius' head to the Rostra. Then the vengeance of wholesale slaying, in another reign of terror, and Marius is despot of the city for a while, as Sylla had been before, till spent with age, his life goes out amid drunkenness and blood. The people tear down Sylla's house, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... might affirm, that throughout all the mature original poems in these volumes, there is not one image, the expression of which does not, in a greater or less degree, individualize it and appropriate it to the poet's feelings. Tear the passage out of its place, and nail it down at the head of a chapter of a modern novel, and it will be like hanging up in a London exhibition-room a picture painted for the dim light of a cathedral. Sometimes a single word—an epithet—has the effect to the reader of a Claude ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... represents a model which is a little more complicated, but which gives remarkable results. The largest nail is here two inches in length, and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... that," said Dick sullenly, "who make confession in my own way, and do not wish to be married, and care not the worth of a horseshoe nail how and where I am buried, provided those ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard |
