"Pestle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have the rice barn key and rice been money! So my father gone in woods (he have a head, my father!), take a old stump, have 'em hollow out. Now he (the stump) same as mortar to the barn yard. And my father keep a pestle hide handy. Hide two pestle! Them pestle make outer heart pine. When that pestle been miss (missed), I wuzn't know nothing! The way I knows my age, when the slavery time war come I been old enough to go in ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... to say, "that up to this moment the world has remained without knowledge of a God."[73] It is from the folly of his heart; and, as Solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[74] I fully agree with Hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but I think the several arguments given above, which ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... country from Vercelli to Pavia, about sixty miles. I found the machine to be absolutely the same with that used in Carolina, as well as I could recollect a description which Mr. E. Rutledge had given me of it. It is on the plan of a powder mill. In some of them, indeed, they arm each pestle with an iron tooth, consisting of nine spikes hooked together, which I do not remember in the description of Mr. Rutledge. I therefore had a tooth made, which I have the honor of forwarding you with this letter; observing, at ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... "all-sufficient medicine for mankind" of Mr Enouy; having which, I wondered, on my first arrival, why we troubled ourselves about any others. The shop was large, and at the back part there was a most capacious iron mortar, with a pestle to correspond. The first floor was tenanted by Mr Cophagus, who was a bachelor; the second floor was let; the others were appropriated to the housekeeper, and to those who formed the establishment. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create disorder in a tranquil society. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... they phrased it in later days, by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly spirits of household life and of settled agricultural pursuits had taken up ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of "Jupiter's Corinth" (that is, much begging the question) admitted into their reasoning. For I would have you let alone the saying about the turning of the pestle, lest you should seem to mock them; although an accident like to that has insinuated itself into their discourse. For it seems that, to the understanding of good, one has need to understand prudence, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... brushes were made of corn husks. Corn was shelled by hand and was then either carried in a bag slung over a horse's back to the nearest mill, perhaps fifteen miles away, or was pounded in a wooden hominy mortar with a wooden pestle, or ground in a hand mill. Chickens and game were roasted by hanging them with leather strings before the open fire. Cooking stoves were unknown, and all cooking was done in a "Dutch oven," on the hearth, or in a clay "out oven" ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Of the Burning Pestle. Full of Mirth and Delight. Written by Francis Beamount and Iohn Fletcher. Gent. As it is now acted by her Majesties Servants at the Private house in Drury ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... some few melodies from heaven and countless blasts from hell meet, and make such strange, unequal dissonance. But, alack! alack! it is not for the feeble, or the young soldier, fresh from his plough or his yardstick, his briefs or his pestle. For how shall we who have all our lives been standing guard against the approach of death, who start horror-shaken from the dropping of a tile, whose small wounds are quickly bound up by tender mother or sister, and lamented over,—how shall we feel romantic in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... "You pestle her, pardner, an' I'll fix the scales." McTeague ground the lumps to fine dust in the iron mortar while Cribbens set up the tiny scales and got out the "spoons" from ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... visit the first time to my Lady Carteret) come by coach, and going to Hide Parke, I was resolved to follow them; and so went to Mrs. Turner's: and thence at the Theatre, where I saw the last act of the "Knight of the Burning Pestle," [A Comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher.] (which pleased me not at all), and so after the play done, she and The. Turner and Mrs. Lucin and I, in her coach to the Parke; and there found them out, and spoke to them; and observed ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... a day. Yes'um, beat rice many a day for my grandmother en my mamma too. Had a mortar en a pestle dat beat rice wid. Dey take big tree en saw log off en set it up just like a tub. Den dey hollow it out in de middle en take pestle dat have block on both it end en beat rice in dat mortar. Beat it long time en take it out en fan it en den put it back. De last time ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... her, though in their helpless glancing round they looked straight at her. She hastily ran into a drug store on the corner. A young man in shirt sleeves held up by pink garters, and with oily black hair carefully parted and plastered, put down a pestle and mortar and came forward. He had kind brown eyes, but there was something wrong with the lower part of his face. Susan did not dare look to see what it was, lest he should think her unfeeling. He was behind the counter. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... huts that resembled nothing so much as a collection of old-fashioned straw covered beehives, enlarged to shelter human bees. All about them women and children were bustling; setting about getting the evening meal. Before one hut sat a woman, pounding something in a stone pestle—"like the drugstore men use at home,"—whispered Lathrop ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... only a little while by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. Then remember to hew your timber: it is the season for that work. Cut a mortar [1313] three feet wide and a pestle three cubits long, and an axle of seven feet, for it will do very well so; but if you make it eight feet long, you can cut a beetle [1314] from it as well. Cut a felloe three spans across for a waggon of ten palms' width. Hew also many bent timbers, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of the hut was fragrant with the scent of herbs which were strewn all over the floor, and on a wooden stool in the middle lay a broken pestle and mortar. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... prepare the powdered glass, Theophilus advises placing a piece of glass in the fire, and, when it has become glowing, "throw it into a copper vessel in which there is water, and it instantly flies into small fragments which you break with a round pestle until quite fine. The next step is to put the powder in its destined cloison, and to place the whole jewel upon a thin piece of iron, over which fits a cover to protect the enamel from the coals, and put it in the most intensely hot part of the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... 14, gives a story of babies killed by a witch. St. Augustine records that the god Silvanus was feared as likely to injure women in child-bed, and that for their protection three men were employed to go round the house during the night and to strike the threshold with a hatchet and a pestle and sweep it with a brush; and he makes merry over the superstition ("De Civ. Dei," l. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... around and talk, and smoke, and eat peanuts. Mosquitoes likewise contribute to the general inducement to keep awake; and after the others have finally lain down, my ancient next neighbor produces a small mortar and pestle and busies himself pounding drugs. For this operation he assumes a pair of large, round spectacles, that in the dimly lighted apartment and its nocturnal associations are highly suggestive of owls and owlish wisdom. The old quack works away at his mortar, regardless of the approach ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... please, a corpulent sweet potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment, and then it is poi—and an unseductive mixture it is, almost tasteless before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing is more nutritious. When solely used, however, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the overhanging cliffsides Gives protection from the rainstorms. If you search among the thickets Of the low widespreading buckeyes You will find their ancient mortars In the bedrock still remaining— Mortar holes ground deep, and polished By the toil of many women Pounding, grinding with a pestle ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice flour" and broken grain, and barreled ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... and swim upon the mercury, are to be accurately collected, and the whole is to be weighed. The iron will be found in that state called martial ethiops by the old chemists, possessing a degree of metallic brilliancy, very friable, and readily reducible into powder, under the hammer, or with a pestle and mortar. If the experiment has succeeded well, from 100 grains of iron will be obtained 135 or 136 grains of ethiops, which is an augmentation of 35 ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... but they are unbreakable, and therefore cheaper in the end; they cost about 4s. 6d. each. A small sausage machine is very necessary, for by means of this useful contrivance many scraps of meat and bread can be utilized; the cost of one is 10s. 6d. A pestle and mortar, too, will be found of great use in making up odds and ends into dainty tit-bits; these, too, cost about 10s. 6d. Wire and hair sieves are invaluable for preparing soups and many other dishes; sieves with a wooden rim will be found the most durable; they cost 2s. 6d. Each. ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... linger here, thou weak one, Why dost murmur on these borders, Why come wooing at my fireside, Wooing me in belt of copper? Have no time to waste upon thee, Rather give this stone its polish, Rather would I turn the pestle In the heavy sandstone mortar; Rather sit beside my mother In the dwellings of my father. Never shall I heed thy wooing, Neither wights nor whisks I care for, Sooner have a slender husband Since I have a slender body; Wish to have him fine of figure, Since perchance I am well-shapen; ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... you will see the fireplace in the middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... antiquity of prehistoric man in Arizona, is the following: In digging a well on the desert north of Phoenix, at the depth of 115 feet from the surface a stone mortar, such as the ancients used, was found standing upright, and in it was found a stone pestle, showing the mortar had not been carried there by any underground current of water, and that it had not been disturbed from the position in which its ancient owner had left it with the pestle in it. There is only one way to account ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... were two glass tubes labelled "Hypodermic Tabloids: Strophanthin 1/500 grain," and a minute glass mortar and pestle, of which the former contained a few crystals which have since been analysed by me and found ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... is a useful thing for sickness. If it be necessary to wash your currants, be sure they are thoroughly drained, or your jelly will be thin. Break them up with a pestle, and squeeze them through a cloth. Put a pint of clean sugar to a pint of juice, and boil it slowly, till it becomes ropy. Great care must be taken not to do it too fast; it is spoiled by being scorched. ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... to the sufferer's eyes, the idea perhaps being that the fiery glance from the evil eye which struck him is quenched like the gunpowder. To bring on rain they perform a frog marriage, tying two frogs to a pestle and pouring oil and turmeric over them as in a real marriage. The children carry them round begging from door to door and finally deposit them in water. They say that when rain falls and the sun shines together the jackals are being married. Formerly a woman suspected of being a witch ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... boxes and their contents are not of frequent occurrence in these lowly dwellings. Near this hut was another small one which served for a kitchen: it contained some earthen pots, wooden bowls, and calabashes, with iron pots and neat baskets as articles of distinction. Here was also the large pestle and mortar, the use of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... which the buried dead had used in their different employments during life; but they were all broken, as if to be employed no more. A piece of fishing-net and a broken paddle told where a fisherman lay. The graves of the women had the wooden mortar, and the heavy pestle used in pounding the corn, and the basket in which the meal is sifted, while all had numerous broken calabashes and pots arranged around them. The idea that the future life is like the present does ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Well! Good God! The next minute the man came for me like a lunatic—clutching out at me with those great hands of his and with the most murderous expression on his face you can imagine. I backed away to the medicine cabinet and caught hold of a pestle and told him I'd brain him with it if he touched me. I threatened I'd lay an information against him for assault, and that seemed to quiet him down. He began to expostulate then, and eventually broke down and apologised to me—in the most abject fashion. Begged ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the morning coffee but the tortilla. This was a thin cake made of meal from corn ground by Indian women who used for the grinding either a stone mortar and pestle, or a metate. The metate was a three-legged stone about two feet in length and one in breadth, slightly hollowed out in the center; grain was ground in this by rubbing with a smaller stone. It took ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... husk, which has to be removed by another process. In travelling through Burma one may often notice standing outside a native dwelling a large and deep bowl composed of some hard wood in which lies a rounded log about 4 feet in length, much like a large mortar and pestle. These are the "pounders," in which by a vigorous use of the pestle the husk is separated from the rice, which is again winnowed and washed, and is then ready for use. Though generally eaten in its simple state, bread and cakes are often made from rice-flour, which is ground in ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... of test-tubes, etc., cover the bottom with a layer of thick asbestos cloth; or take some asbestos fibre, moisten it with a little water and knead it into a paste; plaster the paste over the bottom of the crate, working it into the meshes and smoothing the surface by means of a pestle. When several crates have been thus treated, place them inside the hot-air oven, close the door, open the ventilating slide, light the gas, and run the temperature of the interior up to about 160 deg. C. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... called Babylonians and Hyperboreans. A Syrian from Palestine professes to drive devils out of people (perhaps alluding to the exorcists of the early church.) He makes Eucrates speak of one Pancrates, who would take a broom or the pestle of a wooden mortar, and upon saying a couple of magical words, it appeared to become a man, drew water, and ordered food. When Pancrates had no further need of him, he spoke a couple of words, and the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... square, bevelled end, Two small nigrivorine erasers, Holder for nigrivorine erasers, Piece of chamois skin, Cotton batting of the best quality, A sheet of fine emery paper, A sharp pen knife, One pound of pulverized pumice stone, Mortar and pestle, A large black apron, Paste-board box about ten inches square and two inches deep, Back-boards for mounting crayon paper and photographic enlargements, Pliers, Paste brush, three inches wide, to be used for starch ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... goldsmith; they use it when prepared in this way for polishing their gold, and you will get a few pence for it—with them buy a little firewood, a few cheap dishes, and an earthen pipkin, and bring also a wooden mortar with a long pestle.' On this errand the old woman departed, and soon returned, bringing the ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... outside. Alvez lived like the other natives of Kazounde. The women of the establishment worked as they would have done in the town, for the greater comfort of their husbands or their masters. Their occupations included preparing rice with heavy blows of the pestle in wooden mortars, to perfect decortication; cleansing and winnowing maize, and all the manipulations necessary to draw from it a granulous substance which serves to compose that potage called "mtyelle" in the country; the harvesting of the sorgho, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the cabin. Beside the stump a slender birch tree bent beneath the weight of a large circular piece of wood hung to its top by a leather thong. This was the samp-mill, where their corn was pounded into meal. Seizing the birch tree with her hands, she brought the wooden pestle down into the hollow stump with a resounding thump. The birch tree sprang back lifting the block with it and again she pulled it down and struck the stump another blow, then paused to listen. This time there was, beside the echo, an answering shout, ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... town than Purdy. The houses are old, and the streets are rutted. The court-house, in the center of the square—my temple of fame—is mean and rain-streaked. And this is what I saw at a glance: An enormous wooden watch, with its paint cracking off, hanging in front of a jeweler's; the mortar and pestle of a druggist on top of a post; a brick jail, with a pale face at the bars; lawyers' signs; doctors' signs; a livery stable, with a negro in front, pouring water on the wheels of a buggy; a red-looking negro, with a string of shuck horse ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... out among Multnomah's attendants. The howling of medicine-men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or mimaluse island. And no concoction of herbs,—however skilfully compounded with stone mortar and pestle,—no incantation of medicine-men or steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... George the Magnificent, there lived in a small town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon; and where he not only attended gentlemen in their ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... except—two—three,' murmured the thoughtful Puddock when he had read over the list of ingredients. These, however, he got from Toole, close at hand, and with a little silver grater and a pretty little agate pocket pestle and mortar—an heirloom derived from poor Aunt Bell—he made a wonderful powder; 'nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,' as the song says, and every other stinging product of nature and chemistry which the author of this famous ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... horizontal levers as there are circular rows of cogs; these levers act on pivots, that are fastened into a low brick wall built parallel to the axis, and at the distance of about two feet from it. At the further extremity of each lever, and perpendicular to it, is fixed a hollow pestle, directly over a large mortar of stone or iron sunk into the ground; the other extremity extending beyond the wall, being pressed upon by the cogs of the axis in its revolution, elevates the pestle, which by its own gravity falls into the mortar. An axis of this kind sometimes gives ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... is a second man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire-light. No wind whistles outside ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... tears; Beth felt that even her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this, and Jo wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay; while Hannah shook her fist at the "villain," and pounded potatoes for dinner as if she had him under her pestle. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... often pounded in olden times in a primitive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed block of wood or a stump of a tree, which had been cut off about three feet from the ground. The pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped like the inside of the mortar, and fitted with a handle attached to one side. This block was fastened to the top of a young and slender tree, a growing sapling, which was bent over and thus gave a sort of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the chill in Fownes' fingers was clearly not unendurable, for in a moment he came to the table, and putting his hand over that of Janice, which held the pestle, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... harsh work of its two gouges, or curved chisels, the larva of the Capricorn concentrates its muscular strength in the front of its body, which swells into a pestle-head. The Buprestis-grubs, those other industrious carpenters, adopt a similar form; they even exaggerate their pestle. The part that toils and carves hard wood requires a robust structure; the rest of the body, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Perverse obstina, kontrauxa. Pervert malkonverti, malverigi. Perversion malkonverto, malverigo, malverigxo. Pervious penetrebla. Pest pesto. Pester enui, turmenteti. Pestiferous pesta. Pestilence pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was found ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... says that cannot happen. Then the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all born, is our own, and she likes the notion of returning thither. Mrs. Evelyn, after all you and Sir James have done for me, what should you think of my giving it up, and taking to the pestle and mortar?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... silence, during which the physician crossed the floor, opened a glass door and surveyed the stock of drugs. When he came back, and took up the pestle, he spoke ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... thinly enclosed area, equipped with a large fireplace and attached to the house. Here, there were andirons, racks, a spit, hooks and bellows. Utensils for preparing food included an iron pot, a gridiron, frying-pan, dripping-pan, two brass kettles, a skimmer, a mortar and pestle, and a grater. Pewter-ware and a supply of three dozen napkins and six tablecloths made meals something of ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... Aristophanes; Aves, 711; and in several other passages.), and rob on the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven (The police officers of Athens.); beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at other people's expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear the pestle give its last bang against the mortar, when the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... large mortar scooped out of the trunk of some tree is found, being the instrument employed to free their paddy from the husk, and convert it into rice. This operation appears to rank among those household duties which fall to the wife's share to perform. The pestle is sometimes of considerable weight; and when it is so, is worked by two women ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... wheat, and these are very good evidence of man's progress in the way of invention. The earliest method consisted in crushing the grain by hand between two stones, and from this crude device came the mortar and pestle. A little later millstones in the form of thick, heavy disks were brought into use for grinding grain. Two of these stones were placed so that their surfaces came together, the lower one being stationary and the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... dish of this, when I was unable to taste the fresh meat. She would pound it fine with a heavy pestle, and then put it to simmer, seasoning it with the green or red pepper. It was most savory. There was no butter at all during the hot months, but our hens laid a few eggs, and the Quartermaster was allowed to keep a small lot of commissary stores, from ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... hollowed, a pit about five inches in diameter and nine inches in depth. Into this pit about a quarter of a bushel of PADI is put. Two women stand on the mortar facing one another on either side of the pit, each holding by the middle a large wooden pestle. This is a solid bar of hardwood about seven feet long, about two inches in diameter in the middle third, and some three or four inches in diameter in the rest of its length. The two ends are rounded and polished by use. Each woman raises her pestle ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... five feet in diameter and more than a foot thick. It lay near a huge, flat rock of white granite, hollowed out so as to enable the millstone to be rolled slowly around in a hollow trough. There was also a very large Indian mortar and pestle, heavy enough to need the services of four men to work it. The mortar was merely the hollowed-out top of a large boulder which projected a few inches above the surface of the ground. The pestle, four feet ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... use finely powdered sugar, and it will be found a saving of both time and trouble to buy pounded sugar for the purpose. It is sold by grocers under the name of castor sugar. We cannot make this at home in a pestle and mortar to the same degree of fineness any more than we could grind our own flour. We ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... they tell (And little folks will always have their say) That Rose was once engaged to Lionel Who swore to love for ever and a day; But matters (and they often chance that way) Abruptly turned and took a fitful start, 'Twas whispered too, but be that as it may. That Rose with pestle and mortar broke his heart; So now it's up ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... to find a stone large and hard enough out of which he might hollow a vessel or kind of mortar. He thought he could put the corn into this mortar and grind it by means of another stone or pestle. It was with great difficulty that he could get a stone of suitable size and form. After several days' trial he at last got one cut out from some layers of rock near the shore. He made a hollow place in it. Then he took a smaller oblong shaped ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... in a mortar, pounded them to powder with an iron pestle, and, measuring out the tiniest pinch—scarcely enough to cover the point of a penknife, placed a few grains in several paper cartridges. Two wads followed the powder, then an ounce and a half of shot, then a wad, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... as in Bayley's Reward Claim, Londonderry, and one or two other mines. In the latter case the rich find would immediately be pegged out as a claim, or lease, and work commenced, the coarse gold being won by the simple process of "dollying" the ore; or pounding it in an iron mortar with an iron pestle, and passing it when crushed, through a series of sieves in which the gold, too large to ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... pestles, and you will do little more. But get him, if I may continue the metaphor, not into the mortar, but set him in the sunshine of the divine love, and that will do more than break, it will melt the hardest heart that no pestle would do anything but triturate. The great evangelical doctrine of full and free forgiveness through Jesus Christ produces a far more vital, vigorous, transforming recoil from transgression than anything besides. 'Do we make void the law through ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ought to succeed is perhaps the most general and invincible folly affecting the human judgment Observation can not shake it, nor experience destroy. Though you bray a partisan in the mortar of adversity till he numbers the strokes of the pestle by the hairs of his head, yet will not this fool notion depart from him. He is always going to win the next time, however frequently and disastrously he has lost before. And he can always give ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... without removing the entrails, and snakes, frogs and the like. They know how to preserve fish and meat until winter, and to cook them with corn-meal. They make their bread of maize, but it is very plain, and cook it either whole or broken in a pestle block. The women do this and make of it a pap or porridge, which some of them call Sapsis,(1) others Enimdare, and which is their daily food. They mix this also sometimes with small beans of different colors, which they ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... Daphne, the village coquette, As women to splendour were never blind yet, He resolved with his grandeur to strike her; So he bought a new buggy, where, girt in a wreath, Were his arms, pills, and pestle—this motto beneath— "Ego opifer per ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... the leaves of the wild raspberry for tea. Our neighbors went to mill at Canton—a journey of five days, going and coming, with an ox-team, and beset with many difficulties. Then one of them hollowed the top of a stump for his mortar and tied his pestle to the bough of a tree. With a rope he drew the bough down, which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle that ground ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amusements are lacking; ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... flat ceiling and hung like a mist about the lamps; before the altar lay a supply of fuel—fine, evenly-cut sticks of white pine-wood, piled in regular order in a symmetrical heap. At one extremity of the oblong hall stood a huge mortar of black marble, having a heavy wooden pestle, and standing upon a circular base, in which was cut a channel all around, with an opening in the front from which the Haoma juice poured out abundantly when the fresh milkweed was moistened and pounded together in the mortar. A square receptacle of marble ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... while the old housekeeper is cutting it into cubes before the open window, and the children of the house crowd around her to watch the movements of her rugged hands as those members ply the smoking pestle; and airy squadrons of flies, borne on the breeze, enter boldly, as though free of the house, and, taking advantage of the fact that the glare of the sunshine is troubling the old lady's sight, disperse themselves over broken and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... many things they had never anticipated. But, unfortunately, Mrs. Elton must likewise read certain remarks, in the form of a homily, intended to impress the scripture which preceded it upon the minds of the listeners. Between the mortar of the homilist's faith, and the dull blows of the pestle of his arrogance, the fair form of truth was ground into the powder of pious small talk. This result was not pleasant either to Harry or to Euphra. Euphra, with her life threatening to go to ruin about her, was crying out for him who made ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... dreams invade, And win to verse the talents due to trade. Curb then, O youth! these raptures as they rise, Keep down the evil spirit and be wise; Follow your calling, think the Muses foes, Nor lean upon the pestle and compose. I know your day-dreams, and I know the snare Hid in your flow'ry path, and cry "Beware!" Thoughtless of ill, and to the future blind, A sudden couplet rushes on your mind; Here you may nameless print your idle rhymes, And read your first-born ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... like the others. I can't have the pestle and mortar carried into the drawing-room, and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... worthy peasant had mentioned to me. Standing in the yard, I heard distinctly heavy blows struck under the ground at intervals of three or four minutes. It was like the noise which would be made by a heavy pestle falling in a large copper mortar. I took my pistols and placed myself near the self-moving door of the cellar, holding a dark lantern in my hand. I saw the door open slowly, and in about thirty seconds closing with violence. I opened and closed it myself several ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... under forests like these—I mean that part of it which is not still cased in ice and snow. A late official gave me out of his cabinet a relic of the past. It is a stone pestle, rudely but symmetrically hewn,—evidently the work of the aborigines. This pestle, with several stone implements of domestic utility, was discovered by a party of prospectors who had dug under the roots of a giant tree. Eleven feet beneath the surface, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... then gave him the wooden pestle and told him to do the work for a short time while she rested. He took the pestle, but instead of doing the work as he was told, the badger at once sprang upon the old woman and knocked her down with the heavy ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry. In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— 60 But zeal outruns ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... with me for one of them, paying you well. Our friend, quoth the quacklike sheepman, do but mind the wonders of nature that are found in those animals, even in a member which one would think were of no use. Take me but these horns, and bray them a little with an iron pestle, or with an andiron, which you please, it is all one to me; then bury them wherever you will, provided it be where the sun may shine, and water them frequently; in a few months I'll engage you will have the best asparagus in the world, not ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Prussian Royal Guard had crushed the French Army. It was done from above, with the terrible authority of Destiny. It seemed as though they had come there purposely, these to kill, the others to die. A valley for a mortar, the German Army for a pestle, such is the battle of Sedan. I gazed, powerless to avert my eyes, at this field of disaster, at this undulating country which had proved no protection to our regiments, at this ravine where all our cavalry ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed through his thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself, remember that she was, or might be made, an attractive young woman; and, yes, throw her mortar and pestle out of the window without, however, discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities of mind which enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence. But he soon had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... de nex' night, en sho' 'nuff, Aun' Peggy tol' 'im w'at ter do. She gun 'im some stuff w'at look' lack it be'n made by poundin' up some roots en yarbs wid a pestle in ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... four grass huts beneath tufts of tall cocoanut palms. Several scantily-clad children rolled about on the ground, and in the shade of a tamarind tree an old gray-headed man was pounding taro-root. The gray mass lay before him on a flat stone, and he pounded it with a stone pestle, then dipped his hands into a calabash of water and kneaded it. A woman was bathing in the stream, and another stood at the door of one of the huts holding her child on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... now I heard some old cross-grained pleaders on the market-place who hold not this opinion discoursing together. Said they, "If Cleon had not had the power we should have lacked two most useful tools, the pestle and the soup-ladle."[109] You also know what a pig's education he has had; his school-fellows can recall that he only liked the Dorian style and would study no other; his music-master in displeasure sent him away, saying: "This youth in matters of harmony, will only ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... genial warmth. Concerning Barmaht (vulg Barambt), of old Phamenoth (seventh month), the popular jingle is, Ruh el-Ghayt wa ht—"Go to the field and bring (what it yields);" this being the month of flowers, when the world is green. Barmdah (Pharmuthi)! dukh bi'l-'amdah ("April! pound with the pestle!") alludes to the ripening of the spring crops; and so forth almost ad infinitum. For more information see the "Egyptian Calendar," etc. (Alexandria: Mours, 1878), a valuable compilation by our friend Mr. Roland L. N. Michell, who will, let us hope, prefix his name to a future edition, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... which were found thirteen coins of Titus, Vespasian, and Domitian. Among the most curious things discovered, were seven glazed plates found packed in straw. There were also seventeen unvarnished vases of terra-cotta and seven clay dishes, and a large pestle and mortar. The scales and steelyard which we have given are said to have been found at the same time. On the beam of the steelyard are Roman numerals from X. to XXXX.; a V was placed for division between each X.; smaller divisions are also ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... classes in Japan towards the neolithic implements. So completely has all memory of the human uses of these implements faded, that they are regarded as relics of supernatural beings and called by such names as raifu (thunder-axe), raitsui (thunder-club), kitsune no kuwa (fox-hoe), raiko (thunder-pestle), and tengu no meshigai (rice-spoon of the goblins). Many of the neolithic relics show that the people who used them had reached a tolerably ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... pestle lying on a table near my hand. Seizing it, I swayed it gently to and fro, ready to knock him down with it if he should rush at me, or to turn and fly, as should seem most advisable. I was terribly excited, and a good deal alarmed as to the possible consequences, but managed ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Venison Pasty, and brought her once even upon her Knees to gnaw off the Ears of a Pig from the Spit. The Gratifications of her Palate were easily preferred to those of her Vanity; and sometimes a Partridge or a Quail, a Wheat-Ear or the Pestle of a Lark, were chearfully purchased; nay, I could be contented tho I were to feed her with green Pease in April, or Cherries in May. But with the Babe she now goes, she is turned Girl again, and fallen to eating of Chalk, pretending twill make ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... informing him of the great reputation he had already acquired in Persia; that Locman[35] was a fool when compared to one of his wisdom; and that as for his contemporaries, the Persian physicians, they were not fit to handle his pestle for him. To all this he said nothing. I then told him that the king himself, having heard of the wonderful effects of his medicine upon the person of his grand vizier, had ordered his historian to insert the circumstance in the annals of the empire, as one of the most ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... set of common plates, and the cabin is furnished. The hominy mortar and hand mill are in use in all frontier settlements. The first consists of a block of wood with an excavation burned at one end and scraped out with an iron tool, wide at top and narrow at the bottom that the action of the pestle may operate to the best advantage. Sometimes a stump of a large tree is excavated while in its natural position. An elastic pole, 20 or 30 feet in length, with the large end fastened under the ground log of the cabin, and the other elevated 10 or 15 feet and supported by two forks, to which ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... unglazed porcelain capsule which has had the polish removed from the lower part of its cavity by rubbing it with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an instant with a bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six minutes; then the mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and pestle, which is to take four minutes; then to be again rubbed for six minutes. Four minutes are then to be devoted to scraping the powder into a heap, and the second third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk to be added. Then they are to be stirred an instant and rubbed six ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... water; from between these elevated leaves rises to a still greater height the stem of the flower. The corolla itself is a gold-colored cup a foot in diameter, lily-like in a general way, but with a large pestle-shaped ovary rising in the centre of the flower, in which are planted a number of large seeds, the 'pins' of Wampapin. These huge golden cups are poised on their stems, and wave in the breeze above ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Next the pestle and mortar find. Pure rock-crystal,—these to grind Into paste more smooth than silk, Whiter than the milkweed's milk: Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, Cate to please Theocritus; Then the fire with spices swell, While, for her completer spell, Mystic canticles she croons,— Eleanor ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... out in the yard, preparing some of the family food, by the aid of a curious flat stone supported on three legs, and a stone pestle or roller,—a very primitive arrangement. Kneeling down upon the ground, she placed her corn, or Chili peppers—or whatever article she wished to grind—upon the stone; and, taking the hand-stone, she rolled ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... order, I doubted not, that its owner might confer with the young girl who had been inquiring for him. This Lee, I must observe, had no legal right to the prefix of doctor tacked to his name. He was merely a peripatetic quack-salver and vender of infallible medicines, who, having wielded the pestle in an apothecary's shop for some years during his youth, had acquired a little skill in the use of drugs, and could open a vein or draw a tooth with considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... Lund. "Soft, like a rat." He lunged forward, felt for the poke, and found it, lifted it, hefted it, his forehead puckered with deep seams, discovered the open end, poured out some of the colors on one palm, and used that for a mortar, grinding at the grains with his finger for a pestle, still weighing the stuff with a slight up-and-down movement ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... anything so lucky that the strike of the masons should have happened at this identical juncture! Parliament is prorogued. Now, deducting Sir Robert Peel, physician, with his train of apothecaries and pestle-and-mortar apprentices, who, until February next, are to sit cross-legged and try to think, there are at least six hundred and thirty unemployed members of the House of Commons, turned upon the world ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm in it. And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on pounding—click, click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff! up went the whole into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar across the study, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Pound of fine sifted Sugar, and grate the Outside Rind of two large Oranges or Lemmons; put the Rind to the Sugar, and beat them well together in a Mortar; grind it well with a Pestle, and make it up to a stiff Paste with Gum-Dragon well steep'd; then beat the Paste again, rowl or square it, and bake it in a cool ...
— Mrs. Mary Eales's receipts. (1733) • Mary Eales
... hour and more she laboured with her arms, shoulders, loins, in fact, all her body; but an indifferent result followed from the great exertion. The flour, made to undergo several grindings in this rustic mortar, was coarse, uneven, mixed with bran, or whole grains, which had escaped the pestle, and contaminated with dust and abraded particles of the stone. She kneaded it with a little water, blended with it, as a sort of yeast, a piece of stale dough of the day before, and made from the mass round cakes, about half an inch thick and some four inches ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... upon him the impropriety of sending for you at the festivities," resumed the man, sniffing at the vial, "but he became excited, swore he would leave the bed and brain me with mine own pestle if I ventured to hinder him. So I consented to convey ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the smallest surprise among the remainder of the party. The young men, who had already completed their tasks with the axe, were all engaged after their lounging and listless manner; some in bestowing equitable portions of the fodder among the different animals; others in plying the heavy pestle of a moveable homminy-mortar[*]; and one or two in wheeling the remainder of the wagons aside, and arranging them in such a manner as to form a sort of outwork ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... preposition. But, as the instrument of an action is with the agent rather than with the object, if you will have the substantives alone for antecedents, the natural order of the sense must be supposed to be this: "Though thou with a pestle shouldest bray a, fool in a mortar [and] among wheat, yet will not his foolishness from him depart." This gives to each of the prepositions an antecedent different from that which I should assign. Sanborn observes, "There seem to be two kinds of relation expressed by prepositions,—an ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... or triturating quartz there is no lack, and every year gives us fresh inventions for the purpose, each one better than that which preceded it, according to its inventor. Most practical men, however, prefer to continue the use of the stamper battery, which is virtually a pestle and mortar on a large scale. Why we adhere to this form of pulverising machine is that, though somewhat wasteful of power, it is easily understood, its wearing parts are cheaply and expeditiously replaced, and it is so strong that even the most perversely stupid workman cannot easily ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... and Pestle.—This mortar is used for the purpose of pulverizing hard substances, and for mixing fluxes. As this mortar will not yield to abrasion, there is no danger of any foreign matter becoming mixed with the substance pulverized in it. ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... a cement for fixing bricks together; otherwise, a kind of cannon for firing bomb-shells; a kind of vessel in which anything is broken by a pestle ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... a slow, enormous pulse exactly under his ear. It is a great, soft, dull buffet of sound—like a heartbeat in its regularity, in its muffled depth, in the way it quakes up through one's pillow so as to be felt rather than heard. It is simply the pounding of the ponderous pestle of the kometsuki, the cleaner of rice—a sort of colossal wooden mallet with a handle about fifteen feet long horizontally balanced on a pivot. By treading with all his force on the end of the handle, the naked kometsuki elevates the pestle, which is then allowed to fall back by ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... legs. Pestle is a hock, Fr. Faucille (in a horse), the bought or pestle of the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... in the shade of the potter's dwelling, and the first process is a thorough mixing of the two clays. The balls of the crudely mixed material are put into a small, wooden trough, are slightly moistened, and then thoroughly worked with a wooden pestle, the potter crouching on her haunches or resting on her knees during the labors. She is shown in Pl. LXXXIX A. After the clay is mixed it is manipulated in small handfuls, between the thumb and fingers, in order that all stones and coarse pieces of vegetable ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... carry his sack of grain on his shoulder. If the settler lived on or near a stream, he put his sacks of grain in a canoe and paddled downstream to the nearest mill. In the early days before the mills, the grain was pounded into meal by using a heavy pestle and a hollowed-out stump, a crude mortar ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... the most satisfactory powder. For his own use the farmer can pulverize smaller quantities by the simple method of pounding the flowers in a mortar. It is necessary that the mortar be closed, and a piece of leather through which the pestle moves, such as is generally used in pulverizing pharmaceutic substances in a laboratory, will answer. The quantity to be pulverized should not exceed one pound at a time, thus avoiding too high a degree of heat, which would be injurious ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... any set of men. In every parish you now saw one or two of these apron farmers, gentlemen who knew very well how to handle a yard, so as to make short measure in selling a piece of cloth; men who could acquit themselves well at a pestle and mortar, who could tie up a paper parcel, or "split a fig;" who could drive a goose-quill, or ogle the ladies from behind a counter, very decently; but who knew no more about the management of a farm than they did ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... less sun, more rain, and more wind; and at last the sun seemed to give it up; the wind grew to a hurricane, and the rain strove with it which should inhabit the space. The whole upper region was like a huge mortar, in which the wind was the pestle, and, with innumerable gyres, vainly ground at the rain. Gibbie drove his sheep to the refuge of a pen on the lower slope of a valley that ran at right angles to the wind, where they were sheltered by a rock behind, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... arm, and had strengthened his arms to bend the 'bow of steel.' We see him in swift pursuit, pressing hard on the flying foe, crushing them with his fierce charge, trampling them under foot. 'I did beat them small as the dust of the earth.' His blows fell like those of a great pestle, pulverising some substance in a mortar. 'I did stamp them as the mire of the streets,'—a vivid picture of trampling down the prostrate wretches, for which Psalm xviii. gives the less picturesque variant, 'did cast them out.' In their despair the fugitives shriek aloud for God's help, and the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is admitted by all writers to have been a man of noble descent, as will be explained in his life: and I imagine that the family of Phokion was not altogether mean and contemptible. If his father had really been a pestle maker, as we are told by Idomeneus, who may be sure that Glaukippus, the son of Hypereides, who collected and flung at him such a mass of abuse, would not have omitted to mention his low birth, nor would he have been so well brought up as to have been a scholar of Plato ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch |
