"Wedge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wedge or spike of iron, Gainest, readiest, Gar, cause, Gart, compelled, Gentily, like a gentleman, Gerfalcon, a fine hawk, Germane, closely allied, Gest, deed, story, Gisarm, halberd, battle-axe, Glaive, sword, Glasting, barking, Glatisant, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... the stone wall beside the fallen man, but the iron wedge of the Spaniards pressed farther ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... provided with a round backed wedge, which is pushed in from the side of the breech, and forced firmly home by a screw provided with handles; the face of the wedge is fitted with an easily removable flat plate, which abuts against a Broad well ring, let into a recess in the end of the bore. On firing, the gas presses the ring ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... said brusquely. "Never mind the fee, and take these coppers. They may be of some use to you. Good-bye!" He bowed her out, and closed the door behind her. After all she was the thin edge of the wedge. These wandering people have great powers of recommendation. All large practices have been built up from such foundations. The hangers-on to the kitchen recommend to the kitchen, they to the drawing-room, and so it ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sweet. But she's that sensible as it don't worry any. Say, you ain't goin' to marry that gal; ye never meant to. You're a skunk, an' I'd as lief choke the life out o' ye as not. But I'm goin' to pay ye sorer than that. Savvee? Ye'll bide here till Davi' comes. I'll jest fix this wedge in your mouth till I've cleared them drivers out o' the store. I don't fancy to hear your lungs ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... aperture so low, this was closed. A surviving superstition inclines me to this view. When a Zuni woman has completed the me' he ton nearly to the apex, by the coiling-process, and before she has inserted the nozzle (Fig. 549.b), she prepares a little wedge of clay, and, as she closes the apex with it, she turns her eyes away. If you ask her why she does this, she will tell you that it is a'k ta ni (fearful) to look at the vessel while closing it at this point; ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... to commit the clan to any set plan, that even to get this scouting party to come against the stubborn resistance of Deklay and his reactionaries was a major achievement. There was now an opening wedge of ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... accidents of an unusual nature seemed always to be happening, wandered off with a wedge of pie and a cup of coffee and sat down ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... and a great traveller in spring and fall, when flocks fly high overhead in a wedge-shaped figure or in a long line, with one old Gander leading, and all ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... the city of Ai, the three thousand men sent to take it were repulsed, in punishment for the sin of Achan, who had taken at the spoil of Jericho, a Babylonian garment and three hundred sheckels of silver and a wedge of gold. After he had expiated this crime, the city of Ai was taken, and all its inhabitants were put to death. The spoil of the city was reserved ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... device is shown in Fig. 208; mica is cemented to the line carbon and is large enough to provide a projecting margin all around. The spark gap is not uniform over the entire surface of the block but is made wedge-shaped by grinding away the line carbon as shown. It is claimed that a continuous arcing fills the wedge-shaped chamber with heated air or gas, converting the whole of the space into a field of low resistance to ground, and that this gas in expanding drives out every particle of carbon ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... imperial purple, against the azure sky. To-day, sign, as she noted, of fine weather, omen, as she trusted, of good fortune, the smoke of its everlasting burnings towered up and up into the translucent atmosphere, and then drifted away—a gigantic, wedge-shaped pennon—towards Capri and the open sea. And, beholding these things, out of simple, physical well-being, fulness of bread, conviction of her own undiminished beauty, and the merry devilry begotten of these, she fell to projecting a second, a companion, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... regarded the wooden wedge under the door that jammed it fast. Racey drew a finger across the top of the wedge. He held up the finger-tip for the sheriff's inspection. The tip was black with ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the sprouting hoe. It is generally from six to eight inches wide, and ten or twelve in the length of the blade, according to the strength of the person who is to use it; the blade is thin, and by means of a movable wedge which is driven into the eye of the hoe, it can be set more or less digging (as it is termed), that is, on a greater or less angle with the helve, at pleasure. In this respect there are few instances where the American blacksmith is not employed ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... by Ellis in making compound plates is to take two separate plates, one of good wrought iron and one of hard forged steel, placing the forged steel plate on the wrought iron plate, keeping them separate by a wedge frame or berm of steel around three sides, and placing small blocks of steel at various points near the middle of the plates (see Fig. 8). These blocks are called distance blocks. After covering all the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... white and green mixture, the yellow predominating; they are produced in loose spare racemes, on well-foliaged diffuse stems, which are also angular; the calyx is composed of two leaves; the petals are four, forming a snapdragon-like flower. The leaves are bipinnate, leaflets wedge-shape, trifoliate, and glaucous; the foliage very dense, having a pretty drooping habit. It flowers all summer, and is one of the most useful plants in a garden to cut from, the foliage being more ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... is this whilom capital of the tiny feudal kingdom; topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, coated of many colours are its zig-zag little streets, one house tumbling on the back of its neighbour, another having contrived to wedge itself between two of portlier bulk, a third coolly taking possession of some inviting frontage, shutting out its fellow's light, air, and sunshine; here, meeting the eye, breakneck alley, there aerial terrace, and on all sides architectural reminders of the Souvigny ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... before they relaxed any, but continued going round and round like a water wheel or an endless chain. The foreman ordered three men on the heaviest horses to split them. The men rode out a short distance to get the required momentum, wheeled their horses, and, wedge-shaped, struck this sea of cattle and entered, but it instantly closed in their wake as though it had been water. For an hour they rode through the herd, back and forth, now from this quarter, now from that, and finally the mill ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... the curly-headed Marcus Aurelius, with his lifted brow and projecting eyes, from the full, round beauty of his youth to the more haggard look of his latest years? Are there any modern portraits more familiar than the pensive, wedge-like head of Augustus, with his sharp-cut lips and nose,—or the dull phiz of Hadrian, with his hair combed down over his low forehead,—or the vain, perking face of Lucius Verus, with his thin nose, low brow, and profusion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... tightening the thumb-screw constituted by the anvil and its bolt. The device by which the extent of the hammer-fall is controlled consists of cam-shaped sheets of thin wood mounted within parallel grooves on opposite sides of the loose collars and clamped to the anvils by the resistance of two wedge-shaped flanges of metal carried on the anvil bolt and acting against the sides of slots cut into the sheets of wood at opposite sides. The periphery of these sheets of wood—as exhibited by that ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... The wedge that the Germans attempted to drive in western Europe was less dangerous in actual terms of winning the war than the wedges which they are continually attempting to drive ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sure of getting that position in the bank. One of the directors had as good as promised it to me. While it wouldn't have paid much at first, it would have been an entering wedge, and have put me in the direct line of promotion. And you know that from the time I was Macklin's age it has been my ambition to be a banker like grandfather. Since I failed to get that, nobody, not even Aunt Eunice, knows how hard I've tried to get into some steady, good-paying ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... amiability fixed his gaze on the bill of fare and ordered cold beef. For an instant he felt resentful against Adams for luring him on to soliloquize; but the next moment his whole mind was gripped by the fascinating spectacle of Mr. Simmonds dealing with a wedge of Stilton cheese, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to drive their way through life like a wedge. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... westward march of emigration and settlement was so slow during the first one hundred and fifty or sixty years of our history. New England had, it is true, been largely subjugated and reclaimed; a considerable body of emigrants, wedge-like, were driving slowly up through the Mohawk Valley towards Niagara; a weak, thin line, was straggling with difficulty across the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, towards the Ohio, and a more compact and confident battalion ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the day, the water made by melting finds its way into the crevices, freezes, and hence expands, and, acting like a wedge, forces the berg ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... various common uses of wood where the material is subjected to sudden shocks and jars or impact. Such is the action on the felloes and spokes of a wagon wheel passing over a rough road; on a hammer handle when a blow is struck; on a maul when it strikes a wedge. ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... his eyes, and half-opened them, many times during the day; once, to his utter amazement, when a huge wedge-tailed eagle swept gloriously past with a lamb in its talons no more than ten feet from his nose; but the day was practically done, and nightfall approaching, when the Wolfhound finally rose from his sandy bed and stretched his seven-foot length from nose to tail. The long stretch ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... fills a wider space cannot fall through a space less wide; but the force which, laid upon a flat, would press directly downwards, is dispersed each way in a lateral direction, as the parts of a beam are pushed out to the right and left by a wedge driven between them. In proportion as the stones are wider at the top than at the bottom, they can less easily be forced downwards, and, as their lateral surfaces tend more from the centre to each side, to so much more is the pressure directed laterally towards the piers, and so ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... trial plants may remain longer to more definitely prove their worth and that a greater work may be done for the state. We notice in a report made just six years before, viz., October 12, 1909, by Brothers Wedge, Underwood and the then president of the society, Prof. Green, that even runnerless everbearing strawberries were represented and that they had the usual pleasure of picking strawberry blossoms in October. Had they been with us they would have had a large dish of No. 1017 covered with ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... a two-edged axe. [38] And this is in reality its appearance, exclusive of Caledonia; whence it has been popularly attributed to the whole island. But that tract of country, irregularly stretching out to an immense length towards the furthest shore, is gradually contracted in form of a wedge. [39] The Roman fleet, at this period first sailing round this remotest coast, gave certain proof that Britain was an island; and at the same time discovered and subdued the Orcades, [40] islands till then unknown. Thule [41] was also distinctly seen, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... poles forty or fifty feet high. This is the manner in which it is gathered. The farmer, attended by his wife, goes out, and slipping a loose loop of rope over his feet to keep them together, so that when he gets the trunk of a tree between them it may fit like a wedge, he clasps one of the trees with his hands and goes up at a surprising rate. He carries with him a long rope, and when he reaches the top, he fastens one end of it to the tree, and throws the other to his wife, who goes to a distance and draws it ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... it's for that," said Mary, softly. "Jem did want that ash-wood, I know, for he told me in the morning he didn't think that deal would do. He wants to make a wedge to keep the window from rattling so on windy nights; you know ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Weeks makes an alteration, calls it an improvement, the expense is but a trifle more; it is sufficient to be sanctioned by a patent. From front to rear, the bottom is about three inches narrower than the top, somewhat wedge-shape; it has the merit to prevent the combs from slipping down, when they happen to be made, to have the edges supported. The objections are, that filth from the bees will not fall as readily to the bottom ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... "There is a wedge applied even now, Daisy—the question whether the new States forming out of our Western territories, shall have slavery in them or shall be ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was full to suffocation; and, as it sometimes happens on such occasions, the greatest crowd was close about the doors, from the fact that few saw, on their first entrance, where there might be possible spaces into which they could wedge themselves. Yet they were impatient of any arrivals from the outside, and pushed and hustled Faith, and after her Lois, till the two were forced on to a conspicuous place in the very centre of the building, where there was no chance of a seat, but still space to stand in. Several stood around, the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to do it now, before he ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... at last, in such a sort as to disperse our chorus; the schooner was about forty tons measurement, sharp as a wedge below, and not over three feet and a half between decks; the cabin was about the same square measurement, with two little berths, into which we stowed the ladies, the managers and the principals occupying the remaining space; in the hold, over the ballast, the rest of the company ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... turned and bored and shrunk over one another, without successively increasing tension, however, to form a gun. The breech-end of the second tube from the bore is forged solid so that its grain will run parallel with the bore and give the gun longitudinal strength. Both the wedge and the screw breech-loading apparatus are employed on guns of 7 inches bore (110-pounders) and under. It will thus be seen that the defects of large solid forgings are avoided; that the iron may be well worked before it is formed into a gun; and that its greatest strength is in the direction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... also be willing to lend a hand in improving the status of women in this educational organization. Mrs. Willard, however, declined the nomination, refusing to be drawn into Susan's rebellion.[41] Susan, nevertheless, left the convention satisfied that she had driven an entering wedge into Professor Davies' male stronghold, and she continued battering at this stronghold whenever she had an opportunity. She meant to put women in office and to win approval for ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... our Western frontier with various Indian tribes; and it was especially fierce in the campaign that a backwoods general of Tennessee, named Andrew Jackson, carried on against the powerful confederacy of the Creeks, a nation that was thrust in like a wedge between the United States proper and their dependency, the newly acquired French province of Louisiana. After several slaughtering fights, the most noted being the battle of the Horse-shoe Bend, the power of the Creeks was broken for ever; and afterward, as there was much question over the proper ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... goose!" exclaimed he. "I wanted to have split the tree, in order to get a little wood for my kitchen, for the little wood which we use is soon burned up with great fagots, not like what you rough, greedy people devour! I had driven the wedge in properly, and everything was going on well, when the smooth wood flew upward, and the tree closed so suddenly together that I could not draw my beautiful beard out, and here it sticks and I cannot get away. There, don't laugh, you milk- ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... her usual unceremonious fashion, found the doctor and his mother at table, before a bowl of lamb's lettuce, the cheapest of all salad-stuffs. The dessert consisted of a thin wedge of Brie cheese flanked by a plate of specked foreign apples and a dish of mixed dry fruits, known as quatre-mendiants, in which the raisin ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... stage of full bloom, lest the hay when cured should prove hurtful to horses and possibly to other live stock, because of the presence of hair balls, which are then liable to form from the hairs so numerously found on this plant. These balls produce death by forming an impermeable wedge in the intestines of horses, thereby impeding and in some instances totally arresting the process of digestion. These balls, almost circular in form, are composed of minute and rather stiff hairs, ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... Southern sky was dun with cloud; And looming lurid o'er its edge The brows of awful forms were bowed, That forged in flame the fateful wedge Which waited in ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... was still fighting at the Dardanelles. It was not Italy, whose special efforts were directed towards preventing the junction of Austria with Greece, and who was satisfied with establishing herself at Valona and thus driving a wedge between her two ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... hospitality, their guests, who watched with wary eyes every movement of the hosts whom they hardly trusted, while Samoset, stepping forward, unrolled a fine mat, or wrapping-rug, in his arm, and ceremoniously laid two axes and a wedge at the feet of Standish, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... pointing wedge of iron, used to drive through a mortise hole in the end of a bolt, to retain it firmly in its place. The forelock is sometimes twisted round the bolt's point to prevent its drawing. Also, spring-forelock, which expands ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... fire-making are a little log about as thick as a man's arm, of Nummaybirah wood—a rather soft white wood—and a split flat piece about a foot long and three inches wide. The little log was split open at one end, a wedge put in it, and the opening filled up with dry grass broken up. This log was laid on the ground and firmly held there; the fire-maker squatted in front, and with the flat piece rubbed edgeways across the opening in the log. The sawdust ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... provided a mat for him to sit on, and one of the party undertook to prepare something to eat. He began by bringing in a piece of pine wood that had drifted down the river, which he split into small pieces with a wedge made of elkhorn, by means of a mallet of stone curiously carved. The pieces of wood were then laid on the fire, and several round stones placed upon them. One of the squaws now brought a bucket of water, in which was ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven into the northwest mountains of North Carolina. A narrow-gauge railway, starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the Doe River, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the upper men crawled through the rungs to wedge himself between the top and the cliff. The third man handed up the short ladder and began to creep down again. The second topman gingerly hoisted the last link in the shaky line ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... hostess be a very fashionable woman, and the visitor decidedly not so, it is equally vulgar to make one's friend who may be a guest in the house a sort of entering wedge for an acquaintance; a card should be left, but unaccompanied by any request to see the lady of the house. This every lady will at once understand. A lady who has a guest staying with her who receives really calls should always try to place a parlor at her disposal where she can see her friends ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... turned towards it, had several undarned holes and discoloured places, and in the centre stood a tarnished cruet which contained mustard, pepper, vinegar, and three ambiguous dried-up bottles. The bread was on an ample board with a pious rim, and an honest wedge of cheese loomed disproportionate on a little plate. Mr. and Mrs. Lewisham were seated facing one another, and Mrs. Chaffery sat in the broken chair because she ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... pa," he muttered. "Never could teach him to tek keer o' a hoss. Think all a hoss got to do is to run! Forty mile, an' want to put him at a five-foot fence when he cold as a wedge!" ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... called God's shepherd by Xenophon, as well as by Isaiah, Isaiah 44:28; as also it is said of him by the same prophet, that "I will make a man more precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir," Isaiah 13:12, which character makes Xenophon's most excellent ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph announced the slaughter of the quarry. The first ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his hat to avoid meeting the eyes of the lady. "I didn't have no call to toller, and he knowed how to run, I reckon. Time Mr. Harkless come out the yard again, he was near out o' sight, and we see him take across the road to the wedge-woods, near half-a-mile up. Somebody else with him then—looked like a kid. Must 'a' cut acrost the field to join him. They're fur ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... section, which may run from four to eight feet in length, is first cut at the top and bottom; then a two-inch strip is removed from top to bottom in order to make room for working a chisel-shaped wooden wedge—about two feet long—with which the bark is taken off. Where knots appear great care is exercised that the bark be not torn. To make it easier to pack, the sheet of bark is then rolled up the narrow way, and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... earthquakes can not budge. The Bible refers to it when it says: "In God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms." Oh, fling yourself into it! Tread down unceremoniously everything that intercepts you. Wedge your way there. There are enough hounds of death and peril after you to make you hurry. Many a man has perished just outside the tower, with his foot on the step, with his hand on the latch. Oh, get inside! Not one surplus ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the house-tops, and from the darkened windows, they opened fire with rifle and artillery. But our men had seen the dead faces of their leaders and comrades, and they were frantic, desperate. They charged like madmen. Nothing could hold them. Our wedge swept steadily forward, and the guns sputtered from the front and rear and sides, flashing and illuminating the night like ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... is all contained in a single box, the lower portion of which contains the battery, the upper, the manipulator and signal apparatus. When required to be used, one of the wires is hooked on to the wires of the telegraph, and the other attached to an iron wedge thrust into the earth. It answers so well, that the directors of the Orleans line have provided thirty of their trains with the portable instruments. In connection with this, I may tell you that Lamont of Munich, after patient inquiry, has come to the conclusion, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... lived in hewed-log houses. I have often seen hewed-log houses. Have you ever seen one? You cut big logs and split them open with a maul and a wedge. Then you take a pole ax and hack it on both sides. Then you notch it—cut it into a sort of tongue and groove joint in each end. Before you cut the notches in the end, you take a broad ax and hew it on both sides. The notch holds the corners ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... put the pamphlet in his pocket. That evening he was with Rose and remained pretty late. When he sought his room he could not sleep, so he ran over the statement. It was a captivating showing. The mine was called the "Wedge of Gold." It was located in the Transvaal. The main ledge was fully sixteen feet wide, with an easy average value of six pounds per ton in free gold, besides deposits and spurs that went much higher. ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... conception of a power, similar to the power of God. He glanced at the speakers: one of them was a gray little old man, with a kind face; the other was younger, with big, weary eyes and with a little black wedge-shaped beard. His big gristly nose and his yellow, sunken cheeks reminded Foma ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... been made to carry her by boarding. The crew of the "Merrimac" were prepared for the attack; and four gunboats accompanying her were crowded with men, divided into squads, each with its specified duty. Some were to try and wedge the turret, some were to cover the pilot-house and all the openings with tarpaulin, others were to try to throw shells and gunpowder down the smokestack. But all these preparations proved useless, as the "Monitor" still remained quietly at her anchorage. On ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... no nearer; Nor could, unless it had been sunder'd, To parts at least a hundred. While musing deeply on this sight, Another dragon came to light, Whose single head avails To lead a hundred tails: And, seized with juster fright, I saw him pass the hedge,— Head, body, tails,—a wedge Of living and resistless powers.— The other was ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... acts of the retiring Congress has not been noted so far, but, though not a large item in itself, it is the entering wedge of subsequent legislation which will be of the highest importance to the country. It is the item in the legislative appropriation bill which allows of the expenditure of $10,000 by the bureau of labor "for the collection of statistics ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... must not be wider than it is deep. The larger the head in circumference, caused by the prominent cheeks, the greater the quantity of muscle to hold the jaws together. The head should be of great depth from the occiput to the base of the lower jaw, and should not in any way be wedge-shaped, dome-shaped, or peaked. In circumference the skull should measure in front of the ears at least the height of the dog at the shoulders. The cheeks should be well rounded, extend sideways beyond the eyes, and be well furnished with muscle. Length of skull—that is, the distance between the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... you know about railroading. Don't you understand that this suit we have lost will be the entering wedge for hundreds of others. The very existence of the road may be at stake. And between you and me," he added in a lower key, "with Judge Rossmore on the bench we never stood much show. It's Judge Rossmore that scares 'em, not the injunction. They've found it easy to corrupt ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... packed so that sometimes it was almost impossible to wedge one's way through. The china plates, stacked high, fairly melted away, as did the dolls piled on the counters. Mrs. Brandeis imported her china and dolls, and no store in Winnebago, not even Gerretson's big department store, could touch ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... from anticipation. The veins of his forehead stood out, pulsating with every throb of his heart. He clutched the heavy club and continually gritted his white, sharp-filed teeth in concentrated rage. It was wisely calculated that the Peruvians would unconsciously wedge themselves into this trap, and by the time they could realise their danger their return would be cut off by our ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... and broke for cultivation by spring. Six or eight men worked together. They used tong-hand sticks to carry the logs to the piles where they were burning them. A saw was a side show, they used mall, axe and wedge. After the log rolling there would be a big supper and a good one. The visitors got what they wanted from the table ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... of Section D. Below them yawned a huge pit with uneven walls sheer from top to bottom. Fronting them, on the river side, solid piles went down into an abyss that ended in black water; these were a barrier—a support to the wedge of earth that the mighty river pressed against their backs. From the land side to the tops of the piles stretched transverse beams, two and three yards apart; more beams lower down, constituting stays against the piles buckling; the whole a giant ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... lie heads and points. With a bar of iron about two inches and a half broad, a quarter of an inch thick, and two feet and a half long, the ends being square, he could easily (as with a rammer) drive down one wedge upon the other; very gently at first, so that the opposite pairs of wedges being equally tightened, they would equally resist each other, and the stone would therefore keep place. A couple of wedges were also, in ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... the first trial the whole seemed to be returned from the mouth, but she was greatly refreshed in having it rubbed upon the throat. On the second occasion she drank off a pint at once, but could not be prevailed upon to drink any more, although her father had now fixed a wedge between her teeth. With these exceptions, however, she seemed to have passed upwards of four years without either liquids or solids of any kind, or even an appearance of swallowing; she lay for the most part like a log of wood, with a pulse scarcely perceptible ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... spring, were partaken of most sociably and Al Stevens didn't always smoke. How good everything tasted! I don't believe I have ever really enjoyed apple pie with a fork as I enjoyed it sitting on a log with a generous wedge in one hand and a hearty morsel of mouse-trap cheese in ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... it is generally known. As it was the instrument most used during the six centuries which followed, it is worthy of close study. In shape it much resembled a small square piano without frame or legs. The strings were of brass, struck by a wedge made of the same metal which was called a tangent. It was capable of soft tones only, but they were very sweet and melancholy. The elder Bach loved this instrument. He did not take kindly to the piano which was about to supplant his beloved clavichord. One regrets ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... went to his bride, And laid a mallet by his side: What means this mallet, John? saith she. Why! 'tis to wedge thee home, quoth he. Alas! cried she, the man's a fool: What need you use a wooden tool? When lusty John does to me come, He never shoves but with ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... but his coat as well, and sit around bareheaded in his shirt-sleeves, smoking. This glimpse of an officer of the law, shorn, as it were, of his dignity, had made Johnnie realize, even as a babe, that policemen are but mortals after all, as ready to be pleased with a wedge of pie as any youngster, and given to the wearing of ordinary striped percale shirts under their majestic blue. So Johnnie was neither in ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... first seed sown, which germinated for one hundred and thirty years, and then ripened in the American Revolution; it was the opening wedge which shivered the transatlantic branches from the parent stock. It was the consciousness of having abused the Royal confidence and broken faith with their Sovereign, of having acted contrary to the laws and statutes of England, that led the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... passers-by, he found himself in one of the side streets leading off Piccadilly, and there at the end of the street, a large house was blazing furiously. He worked his way vigorously through the spectators, now so densely gathered as to form a living wedge in the narrow street and block it against all traffic, and at length found himself in a position to see clearly the ruin that had already been wrought on ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... announced policy of the department, and it was strictly carried out. The commissioning of this large number of colored men even to lieutenancies was, without doubt, a distinct step in advance; it was an entering wedge. But it was also an advance singularly inadequate and embarrassing. In one of these colored volunteer, commonly called "immune" regiments, of the twelve captains, but five had previous military training, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... PRAIRIE WHITE-FRINGED ORCHIS (H. lepicophea), found in bloom in June and July, on moist, open ground from western New York to Minnesota and Arkansas, differs from the preceding chiefly in having larger and greenish-white flowers, the lip cleft into wedge-shaped segments deeply fringed. The hawk-moth removes on its tongue one, but not often both, of the pollinia attached to disks on either side of the entrance to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a baking sheet, and drop on it a teaspoonful of the mixture at a time, leaving a space between each. Bake in a cool oven; watch the pieces of paste, and, when half done, roll them up like wafers and put in a small wedge of bread or piece of wood, to keep them in shape. Return them to the oven until crisp. Before serving, remove the bread, put a spoonful of preserve in the widest end, and fill up with whipped cream. This is a very pretty and ornamental dish for the supper-table, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... secure a good position for the great race without delay, and accordingly he pilots his father out of the crush, and makes for a spot near the winning-post, where the crowd at the cords has a few gaps; and here, by a little unscrupulous shoving, he contrives to wedge himself in, with his father close behind, at about the very best spot on the course, with a full view of the last two hundred yards, and only a ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... constructions built of wedge-shaped blocks, which by reason of their shape give support one to another, and to the [Sidenote: Arches.] super-imposed weight, the resulting load being transmitted through the blocks to the abutments ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... why the unique value of children is their service as an entering wedge in the close-grown love of husband and wife, a wedge that widens and holds forever wider the unity of love it has penetrated. Other responsibilities, other interests, may serve a similar purpose, though more easily dislodged and seldom striking ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... long back-combs out'n cow horn, and knitting needles out'n second hickory. Split a young hickory and put in a big wedge to prize it open, then cut it down and let it season, and you got good bent grain for wagon hames ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... shoulders with a restless neighbour, which leaves him little to do beyond riding round occasionally, to keep his "boys" at their posts, and himself alert and ready for emergencies. But a Chinaman's idea of watching cattle is to wedge them into a solid body, and hold them huddled together like a mob of frightened sheep, riding incessantly round them and forcing back every beast that looks as though it might extricate itself from the tangle, and galloping ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... way off; and we soon afterwards heard the stroke of the hatchet, hewing down the trees of the forest. As we came nearer, traces of destruction marked the presence of civilized man; the road was strewn with shattered boughs; trunks of trees, half consumed by fire, or cleft by the wedge, were still standing in the track we were following. We continued to proceed till we reached a wood in which all the trees seemed to have been suddenly struck dead; in the height of summer their boughs were as leafless as ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... for sale. There used to be one there. At least, I've seen an old woman who used to be always knitting, sitting at a corner window. I don't know whether she sold it or not, or whether she was from the country. But it will do for an opening wedge, and with her to start on you can easily get into conversation with any of them." Then, as Mary still hesitated, he added, "If you really want to investigate and feel anyways backward about it, I'll walk ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... his magic had come to him, he used his power, and put Pitcher with her back against a tree; and there she stayed, stuck to it, unable to get away. But the chief and Sable went to the camp. Now Pitcher had a hatchet and wedge, and with much ado she cut herself away, and the Black Cats heard her pounding and chopping all night long. And in the morning she came to them, and there was a great piece of wood sticking to her back, and they laughed her to scorn, and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... for the Quakers, walked up to the plate. He was another Billy Hamilton, built like a wedge. I saw him ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... in the face of the cliff, a wall of rock rising to within four or five feet of the level of the edge of the ravine. At one end it touched the face of the rock, at the other it was ten or twelve feet from it, the space between being in the form of a long wedge, which was completely filled up with trees and brushwood. A ledge ran down from the point where Hunting Dog was standing to the mouth of ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... absorbed by the Dutch in 1655. The capital of New Netherlands was established on Manhattan Island, to the south of the palisade still known as Wall Street, and the city was named New Amsterdam. The Hudson is such an important artery of commerce between the Atlantic and the great lakes, that this wedge between the two sets of English colonies would have been a bar to any future progress. This was recognised by Charles II., who in 1664 despatched an expedition to demand its surrender, even though England and Holland were at that time at peace. New Amsterdam was taken, and named New York, after ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... rolling the iron as the most valuable of his inventions. A competent authority has spoken of Cort's grooved rollers as of "high philosophical interest, being scarcely less than the discovery of a new mechanical Power, in reversing the action of the wedge, by the application of force to four surfaces, so as to elongate a mass, instead of applying force to a mass to divide the four surfaces." One of the best authorities in the iron trade of last century, Mr. Alexander ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... wedge, was unconscionably long; and as the bird showed against the sky, I could think of nothing but an animated sign of addition. A better man—the Emperor Constantine, shall we say?—might have seen in it a ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... impenetrable hedge against cavalry, he found a remedy for the disadvantages of the ground, which afforded no protection to either of his flanks. After advancing in these two lines Alexander manoeuvred his troops into a phalanx, or wedge-shaped figure, and this wedge he drove into the masses of the enemy to force the wings asunder. In spite of local reverses in parts of the field, the depth and weight of the main attack carried it through the enemy's forces: the survivors ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... length and breadth of the land. In many cases this one phase of the child's training would be of far more vital value and import as he grows to manhood than all the rest of the schooling combined, and it would form a most vital entering wedge in the solution of ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... In your very midst there dwell Ten thousand thousand blacks, a wedge Forged in the furnaces of hell, And sharpened to a cruel edge By wrong and by injustice fell, And driven by hatred ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... tobacco from his pocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek. "Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... refusal not only of any imposed standard of belief, but of any statement of common opinions, and with unlimited freedom of opinion in every direction, unless, perhaps, in the direction of orthodoxy, it was not easy to see how a splitting wedge could be started in it. But the infection of the time was not to be resisted. Even Unitarianism must have its heresies and heresiarchs to deal with. No sooner did the pressure of outside attack abate than antagonisms began pretty sharply to declare themselves. In 1832 Mr. Ralph Waldo ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... burned silently, but no one looked up at them. Underfoot, lay the thick, black veil of mud, which the Lane never lifted, but none looked down on it. It was impossible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, in the cram and crush, in the wedge and the jam, in the squeezing and shouting, in the hubbub and medley. Such a jolly, rampant, screaming, fighting, maddening, jostling, polyglot, quarrelling, laughing broth of a Vanity Fair! Mendicants, vendors, buyers, gossips, showmen, all swelled ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... my machine, and followed the retreating brown back of Mr. John Smith, of Oxford—surely a most non-committing name—round sharp corners and over rutty lanes, tire-deep in mud, across the rusty-red moor, till, all at once, at a turn, a gap of stormy sea appeared wedge-shape ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... table, with the bloody heads of the squire's former wives ranged upon it. The lady dropped the key in her horror, and on picking it up found it covered with blood-stains, which nothing could remove, while the door stood a handbreadth open, as if an invisible wedge had fallen between the door and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... wake. They'll have a hell of a time." And the event fully redeemed the promise. The whole Gap turned out to do the dead bully honor. I have not heard from the Gap, and hardly from Hell's Kitchen, in five years. The last news from the Kitchen was when the thin wedge of a column of negroes, in their up-town migration, tried to squeeze in, and provoked a race war; but that in fairness should not be laid up against it. In certain local aspects it might be accounted a sacred duty; as much so as to get drunk and provoke a ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... From the French coin, in turn from Latin cuneus, wedge, suggestive either of an earlier wedge-shaped piece, or of a wedge-shaped mark on the piece. The German word Muenze is from the Latin moneta (as is the English mint, the place where coins are made), which meant money, that name being ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... or coat of mail. In vain Somerset threw himself into the melee. The instant Edward and his cavalry had made a path through the lines for his foot-soldiery, the fortunes of the day were half retrieved. It was no rapid passage, pierced and reclosed, that he desired to effect,—it was the wedge in the oak of war. There, rooted in the very midst of Somerset's troops, doubling on each side, passing on but to return again, where helm could be crashed and man overthrown, the mighty strength of Edward widened the breach more and more, till faster and faster poured ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was a sharp crack, and the ledge upon which he was sitting gave way, dropping down with its burden, many feet on either side of him parting clean from the wall of rock, just as if it had been riven off by some mighty wedge. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... how the pulse-wave is transmitted along an artery. Use the same apparatus as in Experiment 106, p. 201. Take several thin, narrow strips of pine wood. Make little flags by fastening a small piece of tissue paper on one end of a wooden toothpick. Wedge the other end of the toothpick into one end of the strips of pine wood. Use these strips like levers by placing them across the long rubber tube at different points. Let each lever compress the tube ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... each man as he best could, but struggling on against all hope, by mere indomitable courage. For the Roman columns on the right and left, finding the Gaulish and Spanish foot advancing in a convex line or wedge, pressed forwards to assail what seemed the flanks of the enemy's column; so that, being already drawn up with too narrow a front by their original formation, they now became compressed still more by their own movements, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, etc.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... and crew, tattered, demedaled, bruised and completely defeated in morale, formed a flying wedge and drove for the ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... our footing secure on the Aubers Ridge the gates of Lille and La Bassee would be at our mercy. Then with a mobile field army there would be nothing to stop us till we got to Ghent or Brussels. This was the place to drive the wedge that would cut the German line in two, and once we had Lille we would endanger the whole German lines of communication north and south. It used to be a favourite amusement among the officers of our staff in the evenings to take the map of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... a water-vessel becomes leaky, the hole should be caulked by stuffing a rag, a wedge of wood, a tuft of grass, or anything else into it, as shown in the upper figure and also in the left side of the lower one (p. 230), and then greasing or waxing it over. A larger rent must be Seized upon, the lips of the wound pinched up, a thorn or other spike run through ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton |
