"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen houses so constructed—somewhere—but let no one dare to imagine that I allude to "my own, my native land." Stones were piled up against the logs, to protect them from the fire. The timber required for floor, door, and beds, was all prepared with the axe; our building being thus rendered habitable without even going to the extent of Lycurgus' frugal laws, for the axe was ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... hand," you say? Hum! History tells us that William the Conqueror wooed his lady with a club, or a battle-axe, or something of the sort, and she consequently liked him the better for it; which was all very natural, and proper of course, in her case, seeing that hers was the day of battle-axes, and things. But then, as I said before, sir,—the times are sadly changed,—women may ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... twinkling, grey eye winked at us. Then a hand came over, gave a jerk, and something fell on our nose. It was an orange. We sent a "thank you" up through the boards and commenced hurriedly and furtively to stow away the orange. But the comedian had an axe to grind—most people have—wanted to drop his peel alongside our berth; and it made us uneasy because we did not want circumstantial evidence lying round us if the captain chanced to come down to inquire. The next man to us had a barney with the man above him about the same thing. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... them when down, and these again more than the under class who make the roads and clear the ground. These money wages, however, are in addition to their diet. The operation requiring the most skill is that of marking the trees for the axe. The largest only are worth cutting, and form and soundness must ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... from the floor,' said the Health Officer. The man, who informed us that his name was William McNamara, 'from Innis, in the County Clare, siventeen miles beyand Limerick,' readily complied, and taking an axe dug up a board without much trouble, as the boards were decayed, and right underneath we found the top of the brick drain, in a bad state of repair, the fecal matter oozing up with a rank stench. Every one ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of shell fish, which he thought he might find on the rocks. My share of the work was to save two large casks which were near the shore. While I was up to my knees in the sea I heard a shrill cry, which I knew to come from Jack. I got out at once, took up an axe, and ran to his help. I found him with his legs in a rock pool, where a large crab held him by his toes. It soon made off as I came near; but I struck at it with the axe, and brought it out of the pool. Jack then took it up, though it gave him a pinch or two ere he found out how ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... working, as she naturally would, danger dogged my steps. I carry a scar on the shin-bone made with an adze I should have been minding when I was looking after her. The forefinger on my left hand has a stiff joint. I cut that off with an axe when she was dancing on a beam close by. Though it was put on again by a clever surgeon and kept on, I have never had the use of it since. But what did a finger matter, or ten, when she was only there! Once I fell off the roof when I must crane my neck to see her go around the corner. But I hardly ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... condition of the bodies of those who in the eastern countries of Europe are called vampires. They buried the corpse under the gallows; but neither the digging up nor the reburying were of avail to banish the spectre. Again the spade and pick-axe were set to work, and the dead man being found considerably improved in condition since his last interment, was, with various horrible indignities, burnt to ashes, "after which the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the Cross," consecutively, even if they were signed with the most glorious names. The scenes of suffering and martyrdom, so many times repeated, were particularly distasteful to him; and he took a still greater dislike even to a certain monk, always represented on his knees in prayer with an axe sticking in his tonsure, than to the everlasting St. Sebastian pierced with arrows. His deadened and depraved attention discerned only the disagreeable and ugly side of a work of art. In the adorable artless originals he could see only childish and barbarous ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... left of me, anyhow," replied Joe Dashwood, as he hung up his helmet and axe on his own particular peg. ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... saved it, in all probability, from its subsequent convulsions and intestine strife. Inuring himself betimes to the weight of armour, this young prince became exceedingly expert in the use of all weapons—could toss the pike, couch the lance, and wield the sword, the battle-axe, or the mace, better than any one of his years. The tilt-yard and the tennis-court were his constant places of resort, and he was ever engaged in robust exercises—too much so, indeed, for a somewhat feeble ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... "as cross as a meat axe." Noah said, and all the boys were afraid of him. If the apples had been anywhere else they would have been much surer of their treat; but in spite of their fears, back came Fred in a few moments, with a heaping measure of nice red apples—apples that made ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... the wagon driver passed down the car and gathered the weapons from the seats of the troopers. Raising a window, they passed them out to their friends outside. Meanwhile, the sound of an axe could be heard battering at the door of the next car, and presently the crash of splintering wood announced that an entrance ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... everything all right, but I don't remember much about it. So then I'm living with her for a bit; but I don't like her goin's on, and I takes the whip to her once, and she gets snake-headed to me, and takes up an axe; and then one day comes a black from this place and he says to me, he says, "Old man," he says, "Maggie and Lucy come back." So then I says to my wife, "I'm off back to the run," I says, "and it's sorry I am that ever I married you." And she says, "Well, I'm not goin' ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... only, unluckily for the walrus, his never grow again. On the other hand, he has two canines in his upper jaw, which, next to the elephant's tusks, are the largest we have yet met with. They are sometimes as much as two feet long, and incline downwards with a curve, like the two bars of a pick- axe. They would play the walrus the same trick that the incisors of rodents are apt to do when they have not work enough to wear them down; that is, stop up the entrance of its mouth, were it not that the lower jaw is contracted in front, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... talk of humane methods of slaughtering; but it is significant that there is considerable difference of opinion as to what is the most humane method. In England the pole-axe is used; in Germany the mallet; the Jews cut the throat; the Italians stab. It is obvious that each of these methods cannot be better than the others, yet the advocates of each method consider the others cruel. As Lieut. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... bungalow, I took a handbag containing my costume as Giuseppe Doria—a plain, blue serge suit, coat, waistcoat and trousers and yachtsman's cap. I also carried a tool—the little instrument with which I murdered the three Redmaynes. It resembled the head of a butcher's pole-axe, of great weight with the working end sharpened. I made it in a forge at Southampton and it lies to-day under the waters of Como. My bag I had taken on previous occasions to the quarry, with a bottle of whisky ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... bridling with disdain, "I reckon I know how to behave myself as well as Telie Doe, or any other girl in the settlement;"—a declaration echoed and re-echoed by her sisters, all of whom bent their eyes towards a corner of the ample porch, where, busied with a rude loom, fashioned perhaps by the axe and knife of the militia colonel himself, on which she was weaving a coarse cloth from the fibres of the flax-nettle, sat a female somewhat younger than the eldest of the sisters, and doubtless of a more humble degree, as was shown ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... of smouldering sawdust. In the front the boarded roof, weighted with heavy stones, descended to within three feet of the ground; in a corner at the right, a kind of box, full of dried heather; a few logs of oak, an axe, a massive bench, and other implements of toil, were lost in the shade. A resinous odour of pine-wood impregnated the air, and the ruddy smoke eddied through ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... governor's presence his attendants unfolded a hanging before him. The giant Masdakite did the chief share of the work; but as soon as the Mukaukas caught sight of the big man, with his bushy, mane-like hair, and a dagger and a battle-axe stuck through his belt, he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subject of vagrants. Hence those reformers enacted not only a new reform bill but also a new poor law. In creating many other modern things they created the modern workhouse, and when Dickens came out to fight it was the first thing that he broke with his battle-axe. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... to his mother and his step-father, "to take the heritage of my forefathers. But not from Danish nor from Swedish kings will I supplicate that which is mine by right. I intend rather to seek my patrimony with battle-axe and sword, and I will so lay hand to the work that one of two things shall happen: Either I shall bring all this kingdom of Norway under my rule, or I shall fall here upon my inheritance in the land of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... arglwydd (lord) of Dinas Brn. Cefn (Elwy Valley) limestone caves hold the prehistoric hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, lion, hyena, bear, reindeer, &c.; Pls Heaton cave, the glutton; Pont Newydd, felstone tools and a polished stone axe (like that of Rhosdigre); Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddian, "platycnemic (skeleton) men of Denbighshire" (like those of Perthi Chwareu). Clawdd Coch has traces of the Romans; so also Penygaer and Penbarras. Roman roads ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... pitiable dead. 135 Then royal Agamemnon call'd abroad Mules and mule-drivers from the tents in haste To gather wood. Uprose a valiant man, Friend of the virtuous Chief Idomeneus, Meriones, who led them to the task. 140 They, bearing each in hand his sharpen'd axe And twisted cord, thence journey'd forth, the mules Driving before them; much uneven space They measured, hill and dale, right onward now, And now circuitous; but at the groves 145 Arrived at length, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... been numerous. From the Crusades to the Palisades they have enriched the arts of history and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick—so they were not followers ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... neck by a strap called guige or gige, a Norman custom of great antiquity. A huge broadsword was carried by his armour-bearer, the person of the chief being without any further means of impediment or defence than a French stabbing sword, fastened on one side of his pommel, and a stout battle-axe on the other. The horse was decorated with great and costly profusion. At a short distance rode William de Bellomonte, the baron's inseparable companion. A small train of archers and cross-bowmen brought up the rear of the escort, save the baggage and sumpter horses, laden not only with provisions ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... he cried, catching up an axe; "rot the difference." All the plundering instincts of the man were aroused and clamoring. He had become a very wolf within scent of its prey—a veritable hyena ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... the hall, the judgment was read aloud, that I was convicted of a premeditated murder, and sentenced to death. To such extremity had I come; forsaken by all that was dear to me on earth, far from my native land, innocent and in the bloom of my years, I was to die by the axe! ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... pumps; once more the struggle against the heavy timbers; once more the "clunk" of the axe as it bit deep into wood, or the pounding of hammers as great spikes were driven into place. Late that afternoon they turned to a new duty,—that of mucking away the dirt and rotted logs from a place that once ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... of water in the streams, and, thanks to their axe work in September, they passed down Jesup's River without a pause, and camped on the Hudson that night, fully ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the lay brother, who departed at once for the Robbers' Cave. When he stepped in there on Christmas Day, the robber came toward him with axe uplifted. "I'd like to hack you monks into bits, as many as you are!" said he. "It must be your fault that Goeinge forest did not last night dress itself in ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express every grain of it that there would be room for—on condition of contriving a splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small number were to people the scene, and each with his or her axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail of, his or her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry on. But Strether's sense of these things, and Strether's only, should avail me for showing them; I should know them but ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by age or storms athwart the current,—a bristling barricade of matted boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, silent as death, yet ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and brought an axe. The axe descended, and a splintered slat flew across the platform. "There's a lot of cake," said Abe. The top of the packing-case crashed on the railroad track, and three new men gathered to look on. "It's fresh cake too," remarked ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... on the thick grass under an oak. On one side of the tree was an old scar, made with an axe, and Henry, pointing to the scar, said: "To cut down this tree was once the task assigned some lusty young fellow, but just as he had begun his work, a neighbor came along and told him that his strong arm was needed ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... some so large that the extended arms of sixteen men could barely reach around them. A thick net-work of vines and creepers hung in bright-colored festoons from tree to tree, beautiful to look at but very difficult to pass. The axe was necessary at every step of the way, while their garments, rotted with the incessant rains, were torn into rags by the bushes and brambles of the woodland. Their provisions had been long since spoiled by the weather, and their ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... she was gone, but waited till her father came home, and said to him, "The unknown lady who danced with me has slipped away, and I think she must have sprung into the pear tree." The father thought to himself, "Can it be Cinderella?" So he ordered an axe to be brought; and they cut down the tree, but found no one upon it. And when they came back into the kitchen, there lay Cinderella in the ashes as usual; for she had slipped down on the other side of the tree, and carried her beautiful clothes back to ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... had been long up and about, for the farm-yard was in order for the day, the carts gone a-field, and the cattle-sheds empty. George and Philip Burton were busily engaged near the barn door, the one in turning a grindstone, the other in sharpening an axe; and from the barn itself came the melodious voices of Lillie and her brother Jack. Presently they came out, she leading a long-legged horse which I immediately recognized as answering to the description of the colt. He was of a dull gray color, and at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... which allowed him to plan and permit the September massacre, but which did not allow him to practice daily and blindly, systematic and wholesale murder. Already in September, "cloaking his pity under his bellowing,"[3176] he had shielded or saved many eminent men from the butchers. When the axe is about to fall on the Girondists, he is "ill with grief" and despair. "I am unable to save them," he exclaimed, " and big tears streamed down his cheeks."—On the other hand, his eyes are not covered by the bandage of incapacity or lack of fore-thought. He detected the innate vice ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... upholsterer." No sound could be heard, save the crackling of the snow beneath Richard's feet, as he put them down with the heaviness of old age. The road he had to follow was very narrow; its complicated windings passed through a dense forest which the axe had not yet assailed, and whose depths were still as entirely unknown as at the period when the Redskins were the sole owners of the territory. This track could only be followed by a pedestrian; no cart road existed ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... lumbering business, which has since grown to such immense proportions. The valleys of the St. Croix, the Rum, and the Upper Mississippi rivers, with their tributaries, soon resounded with the music of the woodman's axe. Saw mills were erected, and Minnesota was recognized among the great lumber ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... what he is talking about, Jack," answered Fred. "And certainly he had no axe to grind in the matter. He doesn't want to see Uncle Dick throw ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... ironwork carried off. Scarcely a door remained on its hinges, and the furniture of the rooms disappeared. The church was violated, its pictures soiled, and its statues smashed; Christ's wounds should be wounds indeed, hard voices cried, as axe and hammer rung over their pitiless work. The library was emptied of its books. Walls and roofs and floors were all that the monks found when they ventured back. Ellenbog, however, fared better ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and Ione, the Christian Olynthus, and the dark Arbaces seemed to haunt the place. In one of the chambers of this very temple, as Michael Angelo was now telling,—even while leading the way to that chamber,—had been found a huge skeleton, with an axe beside it; two walls had been beaten through by that axe, but the desperate fugitive could go no farther. In another part of the city had been found, another skeleton, carrying a bag of Coins and some ornaments of this Temple of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... ago, his predecessors were men of mark and consideration. Our own King Hal took more heed of his executioner than of half the counties over whose necks his axe was suspended; while Louis XI., a legitimate sovereign of France, used to dip in the dish with Tristan Hermite and Olivier le Dain. A few reigns later, and the hangman of the French metropolis (who shares with its diocesan the honour of being styled "Monsieur de Paris") was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... soft the headsman came, Within his hand a mighty axe a-gleam, (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes,) . . . And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... deprived of office, until the reversal of his policy towards the natives was admitted by most people even in England to have been a mistake. He did not leave the Cape until April, 1846, just after the commencement of the War of the Axe. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... for Britain's name, The South's prosperity; And Highland clans from Scotland came— Their sires had aye been free; And England oft her legions gave To found a race of pluck, And ever came the poor and brave And took the axe and struck. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... queen! if ever pity touch'd Your generous breast, let not the cruel axe Destroy his precious life; preserve my Essex, My life, my hope, my joy, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... snake of about six feet long and as thick as a man's arm glided past him. Martin started convulsively, for he had never seen one of the kind before, and he knew that the bite of some of the snakes is deadly. Fortunately his axe was at hand. Grasping it quickly, he killed the reptile with a single blow. Two or three mandioca-cakes, a few wild fruits, and a draught of water from the stream, formed the wanderer's simple breakfast. ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... anticipation. The Swindon of the line was reached, and there, sure enough, was a table spread with food. After the first bite of the first dish X. realized sadly that he had been done, since it would have been impossible to make any impression on that meat with aught less forcible than an axe. Thus, with reluctance, his portion, albeit paid for in advance, was relinquished, to be again paid for probably and again to flatter and deceive some other passing and hungry stranger. The remainder of the ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... situation. The Scouts are rough about that. You're supposed to see those things. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you do and go ahead anyway. They may pat you on the back privately, but they also give you the axe." ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... soldier, she would have been what the French call a beau sabreur, for never was any one so fond of wielding weapons, and boasting of her capacity for using them, as she was. In her bedroom she always had a mace, which was spiked round the head, a steel battle-axe, and a dagger, but her favourite weapon was the mace.' Absurd as it may sound, it was probably her military vanity that led her to belittle the Duke of Wellington, of whose reputation she seems to have felt some personal jealousy. Yet she bears testimony ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... board. The deck having blown up, and the stern gone the same way, we had now the prospect of perishing with cold and hunger. For our ultimate preservation I conceive we were mainly indebted to the carpenter's having providentially retained his axe. With it, the foremast was cut away. While doing this, we found a piece of pork about four pounds weight; and even the possession of this morsel raised our drooping spirits. It would at least prolong ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... look-out was kept on both sides of river, which resulted in the discovery in about 241 deg. south latitude, and 145 deg. east longitude, of a tree marked L, on the eastern bank, and in the neighbourhood were stumps of trees, felled by an axe. Although Leichhardt could not have foreseen his fate, it is unfortunate that he did not mark his trees in a more unmistakeable manner, for a mysterious L without date seems to turn up in all parts of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... chart-room; shoemaker's and sailmaker's, and various odd sorts of work, in the saloon. And all these occupations were carried on with interest and activity during the rest of the expedition. There was nothing, from the most delicate instruments down to wooden shoes and axe-handles, that could not be made on board the Fram. When we were found to be short of sounding-line, a grand rope-walk was constructed on the ice. It proved to be a very profitable undertaking, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... them to colonise on his lands in America. A large number he induced to immigrate, and a vast quantity of the furniture and belongings of these unfortunates was received on board his ships. But before the owners could follow their furniture, the axe had ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... found Sewall and Dow busy cutting the timber for the new house, which was to stand in the shade of a row of cottonwood trees overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri. They were both mighty men with the axe. Roosevelt worked with them for a few days. He himself was no amateur, but he could not compete with the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... riding up on horseback, their hands full of jasmine and wild roses; and the sweet sunny air all perfumed with magnolias and the Southern pine. From the neighboring camp there was a perpetual low hum. Louder voices and laughter re-echoed, amid the sharp sounds of the axe, from the pine woods; and sometimes, when the relieved pickets were discharging their pieces, there came the hollow sound of dropping rifle-shots, as in skirmishing,—perhaps the most unmistakable and fascinating association that war ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... some clever scheme were laid By you this poll-tax to evade. I'll leave you now while you confer With my most trusted minister." The monarch from the throne-room walked And straightway in among them stalked A silent man, with brow concealed, Bare-armed—his gleaming axe revealed! ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... stopped chopping and rested on his axe. He turned his strange, half-dead eyes toward the child, and the shadow of a smile ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... returning to France and Stephen, count of Chartres, basely deserted the standard which he bore, and the council in which he presided. The soldiers were discouraged by the flight of William, viscount of Melun, surnamed the Carpenter, from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the saints were scandalized by the fall [971] of Peter the Hermit, who, after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors, the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... hole, liable to injury from the water which filters through the light soil into which alone he can penetrate. He is in hourly danger of starvation. At length, however, his sons grow up. They combine their exertions with his, and now obtain something like an axe and a spade. They can sink deeper into the soil; and can cut logs, and build something like a house. They obtain more corn and more game, and they can preserve it better. The danger of starvation is diminished. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... haste her nervousness would allow, and they soon sat down to tea. Jack, the eldest son, was sulky, and his father muttered something about knocking the sulks out of him with an axe. ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... wither'd branch, by time impair'd, Hung from an ample and an aged vine, Low bending to the earth: the warriors axe Lopt it at once from the parental stem. This as a sacred relick was consigned To Argus' hands, an image meet to frame Of Rhea, dread Divinity, who ruled Over Bithynia's mountains. With rude art He smooth'd and fashion'd it in homely guise. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... persistent ill-luck which cleaves to property thus obtained, have been proverbial since the young prophet dropped the axe-head in the deep water, and cried, "Alas, for it is borrowed." The old prophet, readily altering the specific gravity of the article, enabled his disciple to regain it. But there are no prophets now, none, at least, who can repair ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... axe and his saw, and he made a thing like a crate, and he told the fox to get into it so that he could see whether it would fit him. The fox went into it, and when the tailor had him down, he shut him in. When the fox was satisfied ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... When the sword for his succour to Fraech she gave, was the cause why her life was spilt! Now see that a bath of fresh bacon broth be prepared that shall heal this prince, And bid them with adze and with axe the flesh of a heifer full small to mince: Let the meat be all thrown in the bath, and there for healing let Fraech be laid!" And all that he ordered was done with care; the queen ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... ancestors. Immortal epics not only present magnificent displays of heroism for imitation, but, like the Iliad and Odyssey, still teach the theogony, national policy, and social history of a people, after the Bema has long been silent, the temples in ruin, and the groves prostrate under the axe of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... is marked in his "Old Fable" (which always means the newest) of "The Peasant and the Forest." It is thus given: "A peasant once went into an old forest of shady oaks, and humbly entreated the same to grant him a small branch to make a handle for his axe, and thereby enable him to pursue his labours at home. The forest very graciously acceded to his request, and the peasant soon formed the required handle; but presently he began to lay about him in every direction, using the very substance with which the forest had furnished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... could get it, Lenoir received something himself that sent him to earth with a hollow groan—felled like a bullock beneath the butcher's pole-axe. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the cabin to-day," announced the Captain, as they walked along in a group. "Mr. Remington and two of the boys will be there to give us a lesson in the use of an axe." ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... hesitate long, but threw her black cloak around her shoulders, placed a dagger and a sword at her belt, and looked for a strong axe: "It will be convenient," she thought, "to break through the heavy walls." She lighted her lantern, and ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... he must flatter and cajole, perhaps yield in some things; but he did not doubt of ultimate triumph. If all other means failed, he could join the bishop against the wife, inspire courage into the unhappy man, lay an axe to the rock of the woman's power, and emancipate ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... years ago, before Jeannette was born, that her father came to the mountains with his sharp axe and cut down some of the fir-trees. Other men helped him, and they cut the great trees into strong logs and boards, and built of them the house of which I have told you. Now he will have a good home of his own for as long as he likes to live there, and to it will come his wife and children as ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... village. One of them stands up to the lower joint of the leg in a river, and some mariners, imagining the water was not deep, were hastening to bathe, when a voice from heaven said—"Step not in there, for seven years ago there a carpenter dropped his axe, and it hath not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... melancholy? I reason, and have convinced myself as follows: No deity, nor anyone else, save the envious, takes pleasure in my infirmity and discomfort, nor sets down to my virtue the tears, sobs, fear, and the like, which axe signs of infirmity of spirit; on the contrary, the greater the pleasure wherewith we are affected, the greater the perfection whereto we pass; in other words, the more must we necessarily partake of the divine nature. Therefore, to make use of what comes in our way, and to ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... unmatched fortitude of our Raleigh, the magnanimity of his sufferings, that large chronicle of fortitude. All the preparations that are terrible presented to his eye, guards and officers about him, fetters and chains upon him, the scaffold and executioner before him, and then the axe, and more cruel expectation of his enemies, and what did all that work on the resolution of that worthy? Made it an impression of weak fear, or a distraction of his reason? Nothing so little did that great soul suffer, but gathered more strength and advantage upon either. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... round me, shouting with laughter, and clapping her hands, I threw myself heavily into a chair. But I jumped up with a bound, for I had sat down on something cold, and as I was no more dressed than my accomplice was, the contact made me start, and I looked round. I had sat down on a small axe, used for cutting wood, and as sharp as a knife. How had it got there? ... I had certainly not seen it when I went in; but Marroca seeing me jump up, nearly choked with laughter, and coughed with both ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... hanging some poor devil of a highwayman broke—when the axe was too blunt to cut a robber rascal's head off—when a man being condemned to death survived by some extraordinary accident—well, such a man became thereafter the King's Serf. He belonged to the King, body, soul, and spirit, and no one but the King could touch ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... and wild hogs, and innumerable rabbits[5]. Among other trees, it produces the drago or dragon tree, the sap or juice of which is drawn out only at certain seasons of the year, when it issues from cuts or clefts, made with an axe near the bottom of the tree in the preceding year. These clefts are found full of a kind of gum; which, decocted and depurated, is the dragons- blood of the apothecaries[6]. The tree bears a yellow fruit, round like like a cherry, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... a few paces from the spot, when a gigantic figure, armed with a short broad-axe, and with a Roman helmet on his head, descended from the rock in front of him, and seizing the reins of the horse forced him to halt. The young man aimed a blow at his enemy's head, and the helmet fell back, cut through the middle, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the sagacious animals given tongue, when Sakalar, through the thick-falling snow and amid the gloom, saw a dull heavy mass rolling directly toward the tent. He leveled his gun, and fired, after which he seized a heavy steel wood-axe, and stood ready. The animal had at first halted, but next minute he came on growling furiously. Ivan and Kolina now both fired, when the animal turned and ran. But the dogs were now round him, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... quocumque in populo videas, quocumque sub axe: sed nee Brutus erit, Bruti nec avunculus usquam. —Juv. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... them, and it is not surprising that Mesopotamia had its god of storms and thunder. He, Raman, it is, perhaps, who is figured in the bas-relief from Nimroud reproduced below (Figs. 13 and 14),[107] in which a god appears bearing an axe in his right hand, and, in his left, a kind of faggot, whose significance might have escaped us but for the light thrown upon it by classic sculpture. The latter no doubt borrowed a well-known form from the east, and the object in question is nothing less than the thunderbolt ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... ice (you'll want Switzerland for this). Draw two circles, one at each end. Draw a line a short distance from each circle. The drawing can be done with a pin, pocket-knife, diamond, axe, friend's razor or other edged or pointed instrument. I give no dimensions because they are dull things and I hate guessing. Talk of the circles at each end as "houses" and the lines as "hogs," and you are well on the road ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... Lord Byron," however, in whose eyes nothing was sacred, when he laid his desolating hand on the groves and forests of Newstead, doomed likewise this traditional tree to the axe. Fortunately the good people of Nottingham heard of the danger of their favorite oak, and hastened to ransom it from destruction. They afterward made a present of it to the poet, when he came to the estate, and the Pilgrim Oak is likely to continue ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... great families, whose doom was in their blood. Instead of all this, we have the homespun fates of Cephas and Prudence repeated in an infinite series of peaceable sameness, and finding space enough for record in the family Bible; we have the noise of axe and hammer and saw, an apotheosis of dogged work, where, reversing the fairy-tale, nothing is left to luck, and, if there be any poetry, it is something that cannot be helped,—the waste of the water over the dam. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... horns, and their long hair hung down their backs. As I looked at my friend standing there by the companion-ladder, I thought that if he only let his grow a little, put one of those chain shirts on to his great shoulders, and took hold of a battle-axe and a horn mug, he might have sat as a model for that picture. And by the way it is a curious thing, and just shows how the blood will out, I discovered afterwards that Sir Henry Curtis, for that was the big ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... axe; fling by the spade; Leave in its track the toiling plow; The rifle and the bayonet-blade For arms like yours were fitter now; And let the hands that ply the pen Quit the light task, and learn to wield The horseman's crooked brand, and rein The charger ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... thing to Mary Jane," directed the devious woman. "You needn't be telling you picked it up and that 'tis no more than a come-by-chance, because then she'd set no store upon it. But just say 'tis a gift for her, and she'll be pleased and axe no questions." ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... shook his head. "That would be like a dove attempting the education of a hawk. The girl has probably learned not to break into the conversation of her elders with an axe," he speculated, "nor to walk ahead of Grandmother when she comes into a room. Any girl learns those things—in time—unless she is an idiot. But there are other things to learn. You can't make fine china ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... his hands and leaped from his bunk, seizing an axe that lay upon the floor. With that he made for the dog, and finally drove him from the tent; but only after he had been badly bitten in ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... that there lies an axe edge up, so Grim crawled thither, and gets the bowstring which bound him cut asunder against the axe, but still he got ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... he has seen him pick up and carry away a chicken-house weighing six hundred pounds. At another time, seeing some men preparing a contrivance for lifting some large posts, Abe quickly shouldered the posts and took them where they were needed. One of his employers says, "He could sink an axe deeper into wood than any man I ever saw." With strength like this and a brain to direct it, a man was a born leader in that country and at that time. There are, of course, foolish stories extant that Abraham used to boast, and that others used to predict, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... season, the wretched nag, put under his charge for fetching water, got stuck in the road, he would simply give it a shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart but the horse itself moving. If he set to chopping wood, the axe fairly rang like glass, and chips and chunks flew in all directions. And as for strangers, after he had one night caught two thieves and knocked their heads together—knocked them so that there was not the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... was in the woods splitting rails, and just as he was turning around to take up his axe to cut a sliver, don't you believe he saw a great bear sitting up on his hind legs, and holding out both fore ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... gave up working, and sat down to rest and eat, Wang Chih took his axe and went up the mountain slope to find a small tree he might cut ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... easy enough," said Harry, working while he talked. "You see, the motor itself can't be hurt unless you take an axe to it, and break it all up! But to start you've got to have a spark—and you get that from electricity. So there are these little wires that make the connection. He didn't cut them, thank Heaven! He just ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... students may be the sooner informed in the knowledge of them: which as [4118]Fuchsius holds, "is most necessary for that exquisite manner of curing," and as great a shame for a physician not to observe them, as for a workman not to know his axe, saw, square, or any other tool which he must ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... twelve years of his imprisonment in writing a "history of the world." This work gave great offence to King James, who endeavored to suppress its circulation. When Raleigh was carried to execution, while on the scaffold, he asked to see the axe. He closely examined its bright, keen edge, and said, with a smile: "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." He then laid his head composedly on the block, moved his lips as if in prayer, and gave the signal ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... of that very day, another mysterious incident occurred. Jake Fairthorn had been sent to Carson's on the old gray mare, on some farm-errand,—perhaps to borrow a pick-axe or a post-spade. He had returned as far as the Philadelphia road, and was entering the thick wood on the level before descending to Redley Creek, when he perceived Betsy Lavender leading Gilbert Potter's bay horse through a gap in the fence, after which she commenced ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... it. And there's another fellow (pointing). His name is Slivertwist. If you get a crack in him, you will find him full of twisted splinters that he holds himself together with. The only way is to cut them through with a sharp axe. But he holds on so tight with them that I don't believe you can get him open. He says he ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... myself, with two gentlemen more; my Lady, and one of the ladies of honour to the Duchesse (no handsome woman, but a most excellent hand). A fine French dinner, and so we after dinner broke up and to Creed's new lodgings in Axe-yard, which I like very well and so with him to White Hall and walked up and down in the galleries with good discourse, and anon Mr. Coventry and Povy, sad for the loss of one of our number we sat down as a Committee for Tangier and did some business and so broke up, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... most law-loving,—the most free! My dear, dear England! sweet and green as now The flower-illumined garden of the sea, And Nature least impair'd by axe and plough! A laughing land!—Thou seest not in the north How the black Dane and vulture Norseman wait The sign of coming forth, The foul Landeyda flap its raven plume, And all the realms once more eclipsed ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... of winter when a man cannot do a full day's work in the open field; all the products meet there, as at nature's own agricultural fair. . . . It is because these blissful ranges are still clamorous for human friendship; it is because many of them are actually virgin to plow, pillar, axe, or mill-wheel, while others have known only the insulting and mean cultivation of the early immigrants who scratched the surface for cotton a year or two, then carelessly abandoned all to sedge and sassafras, and sauntered on ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... distance from the place where the body had fallen, and that the stunned man had staggered nearly thirty feet before he fell. The second blow, which was immediately behind the left ear, had been dealt with the blunt end of an axe, and while he was prostrate ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... through the paint and furrows of his cheek. On the hall a silence had descended. The guests were waiting, and the throb of the harp accentuated the suspense. Presently there was the clatter of men-at-arms, and a negro, naked to the waist, appeared, an axe in one hand, the head of the prophet in ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... woman dropped her pack of firewood to the ground. With her stone axe she hurried to the tree. There before her astonished eyes clung a young brave close ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... Phidyle! So naught shall know Thy crops of blight, thy vine of Afric bane, And hale the nurslings of thy flock remain Through the sick apple-tide. Fit victims grow 'Twixt holm and oak upon the Algid snow, Or Alban grass, that with their necks must stain The Pontiff's axe: to thee can scarce avail Thy modest gods with much slain to assail, Whom myrtle crowns and rosemary can please. Lay on the altar a hand pure of fault; More than rich gifts the Powers it shall appease, Though pious but ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... amidst squeals from the darkness, and Cavor had snapped off the other spear, and was leaping and flourishing it beside me, and making inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, came up through the grating, and then an axe hurtled through the air and whacked against the rocks beyond, to remind me of the fleshers at the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... that frequently occur in the army, happened at this place. A big strapping fellow by the name of Tennessee Thompson, always carried bigger burdens than any other five men in the army. For example, he carried two quilts, three blankets, one gum oil cloth, one overcoat, one axe, one hatchet, one camp-kettle, one oven and lid, one coffee pot, besides his knapsack, haversack, canteen, gun, cartridge- box, and three days' rations. He was a rare bird, anyhow. Tennessee usually had his hair cut short on one side and left long on the other, so that ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... therefore be punished more severely for abusing it, even if the consequences of this abuse were in nothing more grievous or extensive. We cannot clap them in the stocks conveniently, nor whip them at the market-place. Where there is a crown there must be an axe: I would keep ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... glass, which smashes all over th' floor, lowers his head an' plunges loike a football tackle, head fir-rst, roight into th' sharp edge o' that locker there where ye see th' blood an' hairs stickin'. Down he wint, loike he's hit wid an axe, wid his skull broke in siv'ral pieces no doubt. Mad as a hatter, sir, fr-rom th' hate. Though it's sich an onrasonable tale, sir, I won't raysint it if ye call me a liar ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... policeman now alarmed them. Just as the new Tong leader had raised an axe to bring it down with crushing force on Long Sin's skull a shot rang out and the axe fell from the ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Seizing an axe which lay beside him, Moonlight assumed an attitude of defence. Scarlett, who was weaponless, stood firm and rigid, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Menkheperra (Thothmes III). Tcheserkara (Amenhetep I) gave me in gold two rings, two collars, one armlet, one dagger, one fan, and one pectoral (?). Aakheperkara (Thothmes I) gave me in gold four hand rings, four collars, one armlet, six flies, three lions, two axe-heads. Aakheperenra gave me in gold four hand rings, six collars, three armlets (?), one plaque, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... red-headed man had dashed up to the roof by the side of Joel. "You better go down and hand water," he said, "an' bring the axe, we may have to cut away th' ruf." Joel, knowing it was worse than useless to disobey, slid down, and got the axe first, to have it ready—oh, dreadful thought!—to cut the little brown house with; and then the two buckets, as full as they ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... his face and figure were ill suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's hack; but he soon found the new ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... smoke from the smouldering interior of the heaped up houses of Johnstown. Every now and then the gleam of an axe and a group of stooping forms tell that another ghastly find has been made, and a whisper goes round among the hundreds of watchers that other bodies are being brought ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... with a golden clasp, fashioned in the semblance of a boar. His eyes were blue, fierce and shining, and in his hand he held for a weapon the trunk of a young pine-tree, in which was hafted a weighty axe-head ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... gone to speak with Mrs. Drane, Mike repaired to the woodshed, where, picking up an axe, he stood for some moments regarding a short, knotty log on end in front of ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... engines. Their camp is fortified after the manner of the Romans. They pitch their tents and fortify with wall and ditch with wonderful quickness. The masters of works, of engines and hurling machines, stand ready, and the soldiers understand the use of the spade and the axe. ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... 'I'll scourge you if you did it:' What weapon hath the child, save his soft tongue, To say 'I did not?' and my rod's the block. I never lay my head upon the pillow But that I think, 'Wilt thou lie there to-morrow?' How oft the falling axe, that never fell, Hath shock'd me back into the daylight truth That it may fall to-day! Those damp, black, dead Nights in the Tower; dead—with the fear of death Too dead ev'n for a death-watch! Toll of a bell, Stroke of a clock, the scurrying of a rat ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... George Douglas gnashed his teeth with rage when the reply as to Jean had been translated to him. The Duke hurled his fierce defiance at the castle. It should be levelled with the ground, and the robbers should suffer by cord, wheel, and axe. ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... low-born valour quail'd and gone— He—the meek leader of that band— Remained, and fought alone. He stood; fierce foemen throng'd around; The hollow death-groans of despair. The clashing sword, the cleaving axe, The murd'rous dirk were there. Valour more stark, or hands more strong, Ne'er urged the brand or launch'd the spear But what were these to that old man! God was ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... polish'd pool That small, rose face of yours,—so dear, so fair,— A seed of love to cleave into a rock, And bourgeon thence until the granite splits Before its subtle strength. I being gone— Poor soldier of the axe—to bloodless fields, (Inglorious battles, whether lost or won). That sixteen summer'd heart of yours may say: "'I but was budding, and I did not know My core was crimson and my perfume sweet; I did not know how choice a thing I am; I had not seen the sun, and blind I sway'd ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... emerging from the voluminous folds in which it was wrapped, save that the tip of one sandalled foot was visible, resting upon a ballot box. Half covered by the hem of the robe were seen a tomahawk, an axe, a printer's stick, a calumet, and various other emblems of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... ambit arenae et geminis medium se molibus alligat ovum. * * * * * balteus en gemmis, en illita porticus auro certatim radiant; nec non, ubi finis arenae proxima marmoreo praebet spectacula muro, sternitur adiunctis ebur admirabile truncis et coit in rotulum, tereti qui lubricus axe impositos subita vertigine falleret ungues excuteretque feras. auro quoque torta refulgent retia, quae totis in arenam dentibus extant, dentibus aequatis: et erat (mihi crede, Lycota, si qua fides) ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance, is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the axe? will they dare to traffic in the blood of their people, with the grave dug at their feet? will they be dazzled by your gold, while the French bayonet is startling their eyes? Within ten years, if England exists, she will be without an ally; or, if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... entirely opposed to continuance of paths through her forest. She covers them with fallen leaves, and hides them with thick bushes. She drops great trees across them, and blots then out with windfalls. But the blazed line—a succession of broad axe-marks on the trunks of the trees, just high enough to catch the eye on a level—cannot be so easily obliterated, and this, after all, is the safest guide through ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... something that troubled her greatly. An old, grizzled man in a corner of the fireplace where the brisk flames leaped high among the logs, and who seemed to have already eaten his breakfast and was busily stoning an axe blade, looked up as Nan ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... swept out, striking the man full in the face, and Maudlin dropped like an ox hit with an axe, but he was on his feet in another minute. His rapidly swelling face ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... colors, the warm yellows of the silex, the white of the lime carbonates, the russet browns of the sandstone, in many a fantastic shape. As you first enter it, the park is gloomy, the walls are hidden by creeping plants and by trees that for fifty years have heard no sound of axe. One might think it a virgin forest, made primeval again through some phenomenon granted exclusively to forests. The trunks of the trees are swathed with lichen which hangs from one to another. Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves, droops from every fork of the branches where moisture ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... reeds whose crowding myriads stretched away south, west, and north, an open sea of green, its immense distances relieved here and there by strips of swamp forest tinged with their peculiar purple haze. Eastward the railroad's long causeway and telegraph-poles narrowed on the view through its wide axe-hewn lane in the overtowering swamp. New Orleans, sixty miles or more away, was in that direction. Westward, rails, causeway, and telegraph, tapered away again across the illimitable hidden quicksands of the "trembling prairie" till the green disguise of reeds and rushes closed in upon the attenuated ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... on the comb of the roof somewhere, tied with a rope round his waist to the guide and a Frenchman, the guide's foot slipped, and he commenced going down. The Frenchman was just going to cut the rope and let the guide play it alone; but he knocked the knife out of his hand with his long-handled axe, and when the jerk came he was on the other side of the comb, where he could brace himself, and brought them both up standing. Well, he's got muscles like bunches of steel wire. Did n't he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to pluck off her breast, to throw away, some friendly ornament, a familiar flower, a little old jewel, that was part of her daily dress; and to take up and shoulder as a substitute some queer defensive weapon, a musket, a spear, a battle-axe conducive possibly in a higher degree to a striking appearance, but demanding all the effort of the military posture. She felt this instrument, for that matter, already on her back, so that she proceeded now in very truth as a soldier on a march—proceeded ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... resolved to try his fortune once more with that invincible chief. On the 13th of January, 1422, the two armies met on a spacious plain near Kamnitz. Zisca appeared in the centre of his front line, guarded, or rather conducted, by a horseman on each side, armed with a pole-axe. His troops having sung a hymn with a determined coolness drew their swords, and waited for a signal. When his officers had informed him that the ranks were all well closed, he waved his sabre round his head, which was ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... If Drew suggested the Viking type, Parmalee would, with equal fitness, have filled the role of a troubadour. The one was powerful and direct, the other suave and subtle. One could conceive of Drew's wielding a broad axe, but would have put in Parmalee's hands a rapier. Each had his own separate and distinct appeal both to men ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... stranger sees, but dreams not that they are to another the pillars of a temple, whose worshipper is on earth though its divinity is in heaven. I still visit them once or twice each spring, on the anniversaries of these walks; and when the axe lays one low, it seems to me as though it falls upon myself, and carries away a portion ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... collar flying open without a tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out for the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, and more, without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting down saplings for the tent-poles was a delight to see, and his eye in judging the level ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... days before, the gravedigger, while digging up the whitened bones of the ancient dead, had broken up with his pick-axe a mouldering coffin, and a head rolled to his feet It was of later date, for the lower jaw was still fastened to it and it had not the calcareous colour of bones buried long ago. It ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... bit late. So he was layed off, with amigos to carry him or bolo him (like what amigos are when they get a chance), and the old lady give a whoop and took him in charge. My! If she wasn't good to that man. and, as for coals of fire, she regularly slung them at him! The doctor, too, got his little axe in, and was everlastingly praising the old lady, and telling the captain he would have been a goner, if it hadn't been for her! And, when the captain grew better—which he did after a few days—he was that meek he'd eat out of your hand. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... as Ernest found that he had no money to look to upon leaving prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating and farming must come to an end, for he knew that he was incapable of working at the plough or with the axe for long together himself. And now it seemed he should have no money to pay any one else for doing so. It was this that resolved him to part once and for all with his parents. If he had been going abroad he could have kept up relations ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... necessity is greater than mine,' and gave it up to him. This touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well known as any incident in history—is as famous far and wide as the blood-stained Tower of London, with its axe, and block, and murders out of number. So delightful is an act of true humanity, and so glad are ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... afterwards, one morning, when Erasmus was just getting up, he heard a loud knock at his door, and in one and the same instant pushing past his servant into his bedchamber, and to the foot of his bed, rushed this Irishman O'Brien, breathless, and with a face perspiring joy. "I axe your honour's pardon, master, but it's what you're wanting down street in all haste—here's an elegant case for ye, doctor dear!—That painter-jantleman down in the square there beyond ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... et longo fulgentes limite soles: Haec tua sunt: toto hoc quondam versaberis orbe Devia, et in cunctis pandes regionibus alas. Erroris fugient nebulae; fatique licebit Explorare vias, unumque per omnia Numen. Barbarus evictis referat Sesostris ab Indis Signa; triumphanti se jactet in axe Philippus, Laeteturque suum spectans Octavius orbem: Te majora manent: nullis obnoxia curis Regna petis, domitaque ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the dining-room to lunch one day, I saw little Mr.——, a kinsman of Mrs. Fraser's, and particularly short of stature, with an axe in hand, in the act of taking up the boards in a corner of the room, revealing as he did so a sort of shallow cellar, with no light or ventilation. Watching the operation was another man, an Englishman, the dispossessed manager of a local ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... nakedness, darkness, nothingness, passivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages. We shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men talk," repeats the old jargon for pages together. German Mysticism really rested on another basis, and when Luther ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... on townsmen were not mere undergraduate follies, but were countenanced and even led by officials of the University, e.g. on a March night in 1526 one of the proctors "sate uppon a blocke in the streete afore the shoppe of one Robert Jermyns, a barber, havinge a pole axe in his hand, a black cloake on his backe, and a hatt on his head," and organised a riot in which many townsmen were "striken downe and sore beaten." Citizens' houses were attacked and "the saide ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... the Neolithic people progressed in many directions. They improved their methods of making their weapons until they were able to produce axe-heads so perfectly ground and polished and with such a keen cutting edge that it would be impossible to make anything better. These celts like the arrow-heads were always fitted into cleft handles or shafts of wood, and it was probably at a later period that the stone hammer, pierced ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... sharp, light spade, which may work rapidly and well in a light loam or sand, may be entirely unfit to drive into a stiff clay; and the fancy bottoming tools which may cut out a soft clay or sand in nicely-measured slices, will be found quite too delicate for a hard-pan or gravel, where the pick-axe alone can ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... of pieces of timber found, various depths below the surface of the earth, with the marks of the axe palpably visible on them.[13] A sword too, said to have been enclosed in the wood of the roots of a tree not less than five hundred years old, is preserved in Ohio as a curiosity. Many other instances might, if necessary, be adduced to prove, that implements of iron were in use in this country, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... is through Devonshire (where it gives name to Exeter), and it is joined on its way to the English Channel by the lesser streams of the Culm, the Creedy and the Clyst. The Otter, rising on the Blackdown Hills, also runs south, and the Axe, for part of its course, divides the counties of Devon and Dorset. These eastern streams are comparatively slow; while the rivers of Dartmoor have a shorter and more ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various |
