"Gimlet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is extremely curious. When the time for this labour arrives, the tortoise chooses a site. It commences by boring in the earth with the end of its tail, the muscles of which are held firmly contracted; it turns the tail like a gimlet and succeeds in making a conical hole. Gradually the depth of the hole becomes equal to the length of the tail, and the tool then becomes useless. The Cistudo enlarges the cavity with the help of its posterior legs. Using them alternately it withdraws the earth and kicks ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet[obs3], drill, wimble[obs3], awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar[Med], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit[obs3], gouge; spear &c. (weapon) 727; puncher; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with a pair of shrewd, gimlet eyes while a stream of inquiry and comment issued from her lips. Madame was the sister of monsieur, perhaps? Truly, they resembled each other! One could see at a glance. No, not a sister? Ah, a friend, then? And there had been no answer to a letter! But monsieur had left an address. Oh, yes. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... couldn't be a rider I was so sorry I nearly died. Harry Hellinfinger in Beckersville, whose father is Postmaster, is grown up and too lazy to work, but likes to stand around in the street and get up jokes on boys like sending them to a hardware store for a gimlet to bore square holes and other jokes like that. He played one on me. He told me that if I would eat a half a cigar I would be stunted and not grow any more and maybe could be a rider. I did it. When father wasn't looking I took a cigar out ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... which the gimlet eyes of the professor were busy. Then he seemed suddenly to leap to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... thick man, red-faced, with white, short whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye, enormous, hairy ears, wore a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat, and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... a virginal on The peritoneum, or caul wherein an organ. his bowels were wrapped, like His nails, like a gimlet. a billiard-table. His feet, like a guitar. His back, like an overgrown rack- His heels, like a club. bent crossbow. The soles of his feet, like a cru- The vertebrae, or joints of his cible. backbone, like a bagpipe. His legs, like a hawk's lure. His ribs, like a spinning-wheel. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... little money, and I began to study for the stage—that was like heaven! And then—O what idiots women are!" She said the word not tragically, but with such hard-pointed intensity that it sounded like a gimlet. "Then I married, you see—I gave up all my new-won freedom to marry!—and he kept me tighter than ever." She shut her expressive mouth in level lines—stood up suddenly and stretched her arms ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... knife, and he made the hubs with it. He could get a tongue ready-made if he used a broom-handle or a hoop-pole, but that had in either case to be whittled so it could be fastened to the wagon; he even bored the linchpin holes with his knife if he could not get a gimlet; and if he could not get an auger, he bored the holes through the wheels with a red-hot poker, and then whittled them large enough with his knife. He had to use pine for nearly everything, because any other wood ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... him. He was an odd-looking, active little man of about fifty with keen blue eyes that bored into one like a gimlet. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the propinquity of his favourite beverage and decided that he would always remain in the cellar, regaling himself with the vintage. His thirst increased at the prospect, so he produced a gimlet, bored a hole in the vat, and drank and drank till at length he could drink no more; then the fumes of the wine overcame him and he sank down in a drunken stupor. Meanwhile the merry little stream flowed from the vat, covered the floor of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... made a journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that vehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse, lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid of that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the peasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... for all the world like a yellow, shrivelled parchment himself. Regular gimlet eyes, too, and a very fitch for sharpness, though younger than his appearance might make you ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... colleges? I am amazed. What won't these investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely as not to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. You can't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... of fact, Scattergood had amassed considerable more money than even the gimlet eyes and whispering tongues of Coldriver had been able to credit him with. It is doubtful if anybody realized just how strong a foot-hold Scattergood was getting in that valley, but the men who came closest to it were Messrs. Crane and Keith, lumbermen, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... advice of his friend, carried me in a box the next market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but of half an hour: for the horse ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... of it. Bertie was not long in finishing the box. Before they put the birdy in, Amy brought a handful of hay and made a soft nest. She could not bear to see it lying on the bottom of the hard box. Bertie nailed the cover on, and bored a hole with a gimlet. "To look through," he said. But as the hole was very small, and it was very dark inside, ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... a great castle, which must be as strong as could be conceived, and all the furniture and fittings belonging to a castle must be inside it. And when he arose next morning the King gave him a glass axe and a glass gimlet with him, and he was to have all done by six o'clock. As he was cutting down the first briar with the axe, it broke off short, and so small that the pieces flew all round about, and he could not use the gimlet either. Then he was quite miserable, and waited for his dearest to see ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... always intellectual it must be in words, and hence as well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... once upon a time was treated by boring a hole into the horn with a small gimlet and pouring Turpentine into the opening. This treatment is useless and harmful. It produces inflammation of the frontal sinuses of the head and chances are death of the animal will follow as a result of the treatment and ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... at Hampton, when this scant-witted knave invited me to taste some of his master's wine, and accordingly to the cellar we went. 'This wine will surprise you,' quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead. And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another, and another, till we tried half a score of them, and all with the same result. Upon this I seized a hammer which was lying by and sounded the casks, but none of them seeming empty, I at last broke ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... subjected to a scrubbing. Lin had unmercifully bored into his ears with a towel shaped like a gimlet at one corner, assuring his mother he was "dirtier 'an the dirtiest coal digger in town." He was arrayed in a clean gingham suit, topped with an emaculate white shirt, flowing collar and straw hat. Lin spent a long time in curling ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... there was great a man on earth z Mizza Meadows. But the worlz wide. Mizza Levi z greada man—a mudge greada man (hic). He was down upon us like a amma (hic). His Jew's eye went through our lill sgeme like a gimlet. 'Fools!' says he—that's me and Meadows, 'these dodges were used up in our family before Lunnun was built. Fools!' Mizza Levi despises me and Meadows; and I respect him accordingly. I'm ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... was! My stars above! Not the common kind of shipwreck, neither, the kind they have down to Setuckit P'int on the shoals. No sir-ee! This one was sunk on purpose. That Joe Wylie bored holes right down through her with a gimlet, the wicked thing! And that set 'em afloat right out on the sea in a boat, and there wan't anything to eat till Robert Penfold—oh, HE was the smart one; he'd find anything, that man!—he found the barnacles on the bottom of the boat, just the same as he found out how to diffuse intelligence ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... like an owl's beak and a mouth whose corners were drawn by a wild-beast-like rictus were just discernible. The eyes were half hidden by his thick, bushy, curly hair. Each curl ended in a spiral, pointed and twisted like a gimlet, and on peering at them closely it could be seen that each of these ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... was a bullet-headed ownsha," replied Mogue, "and herself—well now, that I may never die in sin, if I could say rightly. I was fetehin' some oats to Gimlet Eye, an' didn't take any particular notice. The ownsha had black sooty hair, cut short, an' walked as if his feet were sore—and indeed it strikes me that he had kibes—for these poor people isn't overly clane, an' don't wash their feet goin' to bed at night, barrin' at Christmas or Easther, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... oft times when he was not under the eye of the boys, whose quick and penetrating regard would frequently become almost intolerable to the self-conscious master in his present anxious care for Sue, making him, in the grey hours of morning, dread to meet anew the gimlet glances, lest they should read what the dream ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... "The Gimlet!" I sithed to myself; and the wild and harrowin' thought went through me like a arrow,—that my worst apprehensions had been realized, and that man had been ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... current stronger, an' sum o'th' wimmen held thair tungs to that pain and misery wal thair stockings fell down ower thair clog tops; but hasumever th' silence wur brokken by a Haworth Parish chap 'at they call Bob Gimlet, he happen'd to be thare an' he said, na lads, look daan th' valley, for I think I see th' skeleton at ony rate, an' Bob wur reight, for it wur as plain to be seen as an ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... you were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head, you couldn't make her believe ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... was holding so fast to it. Cracky, I didn't know what to tell him. Then I said, "I tell you what you do Alf." (I wasn't going to be calling him Skinny,) I said, "You go and ask Vic Norris if he's got an awl or a small gimlet—see? Then I'll fix it for you." Vic had charge of the locker where we kept the lights and oil and tools and all that kind ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... if somebody had run a gimlet into him, and even Psmith started slightly. They had not heard Mr Bickersdyke approaching. Mike, who had been stolidly entering addresses in his ledger during the latter part of the conversation, was also ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age; she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin, parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the countenance ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... good," said Harris. "It was water the boys came down here in search of; and they've tapped five barrels of sirup in the operation, and finally they've stuck the gimlet into ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... I put no value; but some of the articles I immediately comprehended the use of, and they filled me with delight. There were two new tin pannikins, and those would hold water. There were three empty wine bottles, a hammer, a chisel, gimlet, and some other tools, also three or four fishing-lines many fathoms long. But what pleased me most were two knives, one shutting up, with a lanyard sheath to wear round the waist; and the other an American long knife, in a sheath, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... not a lawyer?" she added. A soldier said he would get a gimlet and bore a hole into the Arminian. "Then you must get a gimlet that will reach to the top of the castle, where the Arminian lies abed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and then went right on to say, "I wanted to tell you the first thing, I hadn't nothin' to do with that slightin' piece about you you probable read in the Jonesville Auger. The Nation knew I had writ for it, and for the Gimlet, and I wuz awful afraid you'd think it wuz me, and be mad at me, but I'm as innocent as a infant babe. Keturah Snyder writ it, and she's been through with trials enough to make her bitter but bein' so mad she sez things she can't prove. Now she thinks you ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... wallop you handed our gimlet-eyed friend," said Pringle admiringly. "Neatest bit of work I ever saw. Sir, to you! My compliments!" He placed a chair near the front door and sat down. "I feel like a lion in a den of ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and shoulders and body into the air-drift like a gimlet. A foot at a time he burrowed himself through, heaving his body up and down and sideways to pack the light snow, leaving a round tunnel two feet in diameter behind him. Within an hour he had come to the outer crust on the windward side of the big snow-dune. He did not break through this crust, which ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the first to become aware of it. For two days, frostily silent and gimlet-like as to the eye, she observed Peter's hurricane wooing from afar; then she acted. Peter she sent to London, pacifying him with an invitation to return to the house in the following week. This done, she proceeded to eliminate ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant—a hole as clean and round as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when, remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I made out the shape of a leaden ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... procession go by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Wing's face pleadingly; he looked greatly puzzled, and very, very much disturbed. Then she looked at the gimlet-eyed man in the chair and saw his eyes rove from one to another of the girls questioningly. He began to speak ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... Kingsnorth. Sure it's in good hands I'm lavin' him. But for you he'd be lyin' in the black jail with old Doctor Costello glarin' down at him with his gimlet eyes, I wouldn't wish a dog that. Faith, I've known Costello to open a wound 'just to see if it was healthy,' sez he, an' the patient screamin' 'Holy murther!' all the while, and old 'Cos' leerin' down ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... hole with a gimlet in the frame of one of the windows of his bedroom, passed a piece of string through the hole, and carried it outside the wall of the house down to a similar hole in a window-frame of the room below. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... of the country, undisputed sovereign, the best gun man north of the Rio Grand and south of the Line, if one excepted Jim Last. With him tonight were Black Bart, tall, swarthy, gimlet-eyed, a helf-breed Mexican, and Wylackie Bob his right-hand man. Without these two he seldom moved. They were both able lieutenants, experts with firearms. A formidable trio, the three went where and when they listed, and few ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Miss Sisson's gimlet eyes bored him through before she replied. "Yes, I asked her. She said she didn't expect anything to come here, but if it did I could forward it care of her friend Miss Evans, 133 West Ninth street. Did she owe ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... to think so, too; he took some carpenter's tools down from the shelf, and set to work to try to pierce the back of the bureau with a gimlet, in order to see if the gimlet would appear ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... been made by a nail in the garden wall, the handle of a hammer projected from one pocket, and a pruning-knife from the other. And if there was not a pipe in Bulldog's mouth, stuck in the side of his cheek, "as sure as death!" There was a knife in his hand, with six blades and a corkscrew and a gimlet and the thing for taking the stones out of a horse's hoof—oath again repeated—and Bulldog was trying the edge of the biggest blade upon his finger. Speug, now ascending from height to height, was not surprised to see no necktie, and would have been prepared to see no collar. He had now even ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... opera glasses and sat down to watch me, a task in which he was joined by another man and a boy who had been cleaning the church. There they sat, the three of them, all huddled together, saying nothing, but staring hard at me (as I could feel) with gimlet eyes; while a few feet distant I sat too, peering through the glasses at Giorgione's masterpiece, of which I give a reproduction ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... straight to the horses which stood ready harnessed, slipped his pistols into the holsters, and, profitting by the moment when the other horses were being led into the stable by their postilion, he took a gimlet, which might in case of need serve as a dagger, from his pocket, and screwed the four rings into the woodwork of the coach, one into each door, and the other two into the body of the coach. After which he put the horses to with a rapidity and skill which ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... he. "If it's been done with a wedge and gimlet, you may smash the door, but you'll never force it. Is there a ladder ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... had in mind the typical old maid with gimlet ringlets! So we sat and rocked and laughed, for I was equally surprised to meet a person so "different" from my romantic ideal. Like the two Irishmen, who chancing to meet were each mistaken in the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing gimlet into the soles of his boots, and putting his skates on, with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, with the assistance of Mr. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... unobstructed by furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower portion of the other is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead which is thrust close up against it. The former was found securely fastened from within. It resisted the utmost force of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole had been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was found fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the other window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and a vigorous attempt to raise this ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... knock came at the door. Jack pricked up his ears and wagged his tail; Drysdale recklessly shouted, "Come in!" the door slowly opened about eighteen inches, and a shock head of hair entered the room, from which one lively little gimlet eye went glancing about into every corner. The other eye was closed, but as a perpetual wink to indicate the unsleeping wariness of the owner, or because that hero had really lost the power of using it in some of his numerous encounters with men and beasts, no one, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... point. Of course the maintenance men had checked each item when they had, after his last trip, dismantled, cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part after another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with a gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from there and inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... name across a room full of people, some of whom may be total strangers, invades his privacy and theirs. Have you noticed how, in our Pullman parlor cars, a party sitting together, generally young women, will shriek their conversation in a voice that bores like a gimlet through the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. In England "it isn't done." We shouldn't stand it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we do stand it. It is a good instance to show that the Englishman's right to privacy is larger than ours, and thus that his liberty is ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... enhanced by a wonderful gown of indigo charmeuse. And yet, despite her swaying grace, and the almost ethereal beauty of her face, you felt instinctively the presence of something hard and menacing, a kind of metallic strength that found expression in the tones of her voice and in that gimlet-like ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... properly introduced to your acquaintance. She is remarkably civil to Mr Quin; of whose sarcastic humour she seems to stand in awe; but her caution is no match for her impertinence. 'Mr Gwynn (said she the other day) I was once vastly entertained with your playing the Ghost of Gimlet at Drury-lane, when you rose up through the stage, with a white face and red eyes, and spoke of quails upon the frightful porcofine — Do, pray, spout a little the Ghost of Gimlet.' 'Madam (said Quin, with a glance of ineffable ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... aggressions of the king's ministers. Mr. Hancock was not in the store, but would soon be there. The clerk said he would look at what Robert had to sell, put on his hat, stepped to the wagon, stood upon the thills, held a cheese to his nose, pressed it with his thumb, tapped it with a gimlet, tasted it, and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... — N. perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet^, drill, wimble^, awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar [Med.], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit^, gouge; spear &c (weapon) 727; puncher; punching ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... day he borrowed a dulcimer, and made one by it. With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... she in the old black silk—the one with the gimlet curls and the accelerated lap-cat. Doesn't she average about as I set ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... I heard C. muttering like distant thunder, and asked him mildly if he preferred to take the wheel; but his finger was even more painful than his temper. I felt his glare like a gimlet in the back; but Pat more loudly than needful expressed her delight in seeing Hingham a second time. "It is exactly like Cranford," she said. "New England seems to be full of Cranfords, but Hingham is the most Cranfordy of all. And I don't believe even the Old England Cranford could have ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... same, this persistent silence puzzled the innkeeper. He tried to peep through the keyhole, but the key was in it. Then he quietly drew a gimlet from his pocket and bored a hole in the door. Aunt Palmyra watched him smiling: she winked ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... he examined their butt-ends under the electric light. I saw what he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the portable tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he opened the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I tucked the small end under my arm, and presented ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... a piece of wood with large gimlet holes, and another with small ones, fill them both with water, and let them stand till the water evaporated, and the difference of time it would take to do this would make the case still more plain. So with the blades: the vapor lingers longest ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the trouble? Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?" the slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses. "Love?" he repeated harshly. "Which is it, boy? They're all good to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... out a volume of an old cyclopaedia, and there is the picture of which this is the original. Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you don't, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... time, Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of his feet, and putting his skates on, with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... tint of a piatok [23]. Persons of this kind—persons to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a file or a gimlet and so forth—are not uncommon. Such persons she merely roughhews. One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes. Lastly, scorning to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... on the trunk of a tree, or any thing from which they cannot easily be gathered in a basket, place a leafy bough over them, (it may be fastened with a gimlet,) and if they do not mount it of their own accord, a little smoke will compel them to do so. If the place is inaccessible, and this is about the worst case that occurs, they will enter a basket well shaded by cotton cloth fastened ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... in the afternoon, my thread four times taken away, and came down the chimney; again, my awl and gimlet, wanting, came down the chimney; again, my leather, taken away, came down the chimney; again, my nails, being in the cover of a firkin, taken away, came down the chimney. Again, the same night, the door being locked, a little before day, hearing ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... introduced as "a genuine Jew from Jerusalem" came out from a gloomy recess filled with tusks and sacks of dried red pepper, and watched everything from now on with an eye like a gimlet, writing down in a book against each sergeant's name whatever he took to drink. They appeared to have no check on him. Nobody signed anything. Nobody as much ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Recently a young Spaniard has erected a factory in Borongan for the better preparation of oil. A winch, turned by two carabaos, sets a number of rasps in motion by means of toothed wheels and leather straps. They are somewhat like a gimlet in form, and consist of five iron plates, with dentated edges, which are placed radiating on the end of an iron rod, and close together, forming a blunt point towards the front. The other end of the rod passes through the center of a disk, which communicates the rotary motion ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... there are some men whose heads have to be held while an opening is made with a gimlet before they will take a thing in. You husband is doubtless a good man, but doubtless also dense. How long before your baby was born did ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Miss Betty had become temporarily deranged, and later that she had escaped from the private hospital where she had been taken, and they were doing all in their power to find her. In reply to Candace's gimlet-like questions she had given the name of a hospital where she said Betty had been taken at first, and everything seemed altogether plausible. But as the days went by and the horror of her absence grew into the soul of the lonely woman whose care Betty had been for years, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... up with him was hard, to put him down was impossible, (your long tolerated nuisance of fifty is always incorrigible.) His bore was surprising considering the smallness of his calibre; like a meagre gimlet, he would drill a small hole in some unimportant statement, and then gather up his opima spolia, and march off to the sound of his own trumpet. For instance, on convicting you of assigning a fine picture to a wrong church or gallery, he denied all your pretensions to judge of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... eye in the same place. He could have moved it now for nothing short of a gimlet or ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... 'nis town, an' they boun' Fanny go git 'em a 'nouncer. 'Well, what's mattuh YOU doin' 'at 'nouncin'?' Fanny say. 'Who—me?' I tell her. 'Yes, you kin, too!' she say, an' she say she len' me 'at waituh suit yoosta b'long ole Henry Gimlet what die' when he owin' Fanny sixteen dolluhs—an' Fanny tuck an' keep 'at waituh suit. She use 'at suit on extry waituhs when she got some on her hands what 'ain't got no waituh suit. 'You wear 'at suit,' Fanny say, 'an' you be good 'nouncer, 'cause you' a ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... of the man in black was white with fury. His gimlet eyes had narrowed to slits, and his mouth was distorted with rage. It was the face of a killer—a murderer without conscience ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... to bring it without delay, and then they took their leave of him, after agreeing that on the following night they would make a hole in the turning-box with a gimlet, and that they would try and persuade their mistress to come down. By this time it was nearly daylight, yet the negro wished to take a lesson. Loaysa complied with his desire, and assured him that among all the pupils he had ever taught, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... there ever was any age of chivalry. . . . . It certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days. The point of honor is very ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... babe, Mehetabel had picked the few late flowers that lingered on in spite of frost, some pinched chrysanthemums, a red robin that had withstood the cold, some twigs of butcher's broom with blood-red berries that had defied it, and these she had stuck about the cradle in little gimlet holes that had been drilled round the edge, probably to contain pegs that might hold down a cover, to screen out glaring sun ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... London?—witness the large elms that once stood in Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the trunks for sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in some cases, and it has been suggested that quicksilver has occasionally been inserted in gimlet holes. The mercury is supposed to work up the channels of the sap, and to ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. I don't seem to ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... one eye, like a gimlet on a universal joint; he turned it this and that way without any corresponding movement of his head. It penetrated. You felt he could have seen you with it ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... dimensions of the box, lined with baize. His resources with regard to food and water consisted of the following: One bladder of water and a few small biscuits. His mechanical implement to meet the death-struggle for fresh air, all told, was one large gimlet. Satisfied that it would be far better to peril his life for freedom in this way than to remain under the galling yoke of Slavery, he entered his box, which was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops, and was then addressed by his next friend, James A. Smith, a shoe dealer, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... arranged, Sam got a gimlet, and prepared the chest for the reception of its tenant, who, convinced that he was being put out of the way to make room for a rival, made a ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... injection of morphia to calm his nerves. He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under the horse's skin. But Patrick said that he could do it without the machine. So one day he got the morphia, and began to bore a hole in the horse with a gimlet." ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... pleading. She did not answer, nor even turn his way. But once safely in the lift, out of the range of Kenna's gimlet eyes, over the shoulders of the stunted brown lift-boy she let her glance rest in his, and so told him that he would ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sawed-off, red-headed Irishman, with twinkling, gimlet eyes, two up-curved lips always in a broad smile, and a pair of thin, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pause, during which Buell bored me with gimlet eyes, he said, in a queer voice: "Say ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... its body has a large hole bored in it, which admits of a stick being put through, to prize it round, if it should become jammed. A spigot, to screw into the bung-hole on arriving at camp, might be really useful; but if used, a gimlet-hole must be bored in the cask to act as an air-vent. A large tundish is very convenient, and a spare plug might be taken; but a traveller, with a little painstaking, could soon cut a plug with his ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Do you comprehend me, sir; or will this make you recollect in future?" The rattan was raised, and descended in a shower of blows, until the cooper made his escape into the head. "There, take that, you contaminating, stave-dubbing, gimlet-carrying, quintessence of a bung-hole! I beg your pardon, Mr Simple, for interrupting the conversation, but when duty ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... something. Now, while I was scared, I don't believe in such things as ghosts. Well, then, the noise must have come from some human throat. When I got up at five this morning I began to think harder than ever. Then I went and got this gimlet out of the little tool box and bored a tiny hole through the wood in this shutter. When I peeped I saw a light, surely enough, in the shack. There were sparks, too, coming up out of the chimney. Then I saw a shadow, and next I saw Mr. Fits himself at the ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... last words he gazed at the Prophet with eyes that seemed suddenly to have taken on the peculiar properties of the gimlet. The Prophet began to feel extremely uneasy. But he said nothing. He felt that there was more to come. And ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the left muzzle of the gun is a stack of cannonballs, wads, and a "passbox" or powder bucket. Hanging from the cascabel are two pouches: the tube-pouch containing friction "tubes" (primers for the vent) and the lanyard; and the gunner's pouch with the gunner's level, breech-sight, pick, gimlet, vent-punch, chalk, and fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet beyond the stack of cannonballs. A wormer, ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... feathers one gets out of training, and the Japanese pillows feel very hard and very much in one place. The dreams which one has on these pillows are characteristic. In my first some imps were boring gimlet-holes in the side of my skull, until they had honeycombed it and removed so much brain that I felt too light-headed to preserve my equilibrium. On the present occasion, after falling asleep, I thought that the pillow on which I lay pressed its shape into my head, and the skull, to be repaired, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... direct cuts to accomplish his objects. He illustrated this by telling me, in his own humorous style, " When you want to go from London to Greenwich, don't go round by Inverness." Another of his droll sayings was that he "considered no man a thorough mechanic unless he could cut a plank with a gimlet, and bore a hole ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... eye sights, a b, and, when in use, is placed into a framing of brass which operates as a spring to adjust it to the level position, d, by the action of the large-headed brass screw, c. A stud is affixed to the framing, and pushed firmly into a gimlet-hole in the top of the short rod, which is pushed or driven into the ground at the spot from whence the level is desired to be ascertained. It need scarcely be mentioned, that the height of the eye sight, from the guard, is to be deducted from the height of observation, which quantity ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... door: Hew out planks; two should be enough. Fasten these together with two cross-pieces and one angle-piece, using oak pegs instead of nails, if you wish to be truly primitive. For these the holes should be bored part way with a gimlet, and a peg used larger than the hole. The lower end of the back plank is left projecting in a point. (Fig. 8.) This point fits into a hole pecked with a point or bored with ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... encouragement he received fell short of his expectations, and his laugh died out quite abruptly. There was no responsive smile on Minky's face. Sunny was glowering sulkily; while Bill's fierce brows were drawn together in an angry frown, and his gimlet eyes seemed to bore their way into the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... him what you have heard," it said. "He would be humiliated. Or"—the thought was sharp as a gimlet—"what if he saw you, and knew you were listening? What if he talked just for effect? He is so clever! He is subtle enough for that. And wouldn't it be more like the man, than to say ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... was both backache and headache. She was a steely-faced woman of middle age with gimlet eyes and dank black hair in a ragged fringe. As she spoke she eyed the company at the table with ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... placed it in that absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse—the barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel—here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole in the candle—timed to blow the place up at one o'clock this morning, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the bait stick. Directly opposite to this and an inch from the front edge of the board a notched peg should be inserted. A gimlet hole should now be bored on a line between the auger hole and notched peg, and half an inch from the latter. A small stout screw eye should next be inserted at the rear edge of the board, and another one fastened to the back board, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... years well; he was very tall, and in build reminded you of the canons of the good old times. The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips gave ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... day in ye afternoon, my thread four times taken away and come downe ye chimney againe; my awl and a gimlet wanting came down ye chimney. Againe, my leather and my nailes, being in ye cover of a firkin, taken away, and came ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... boat I fashioned, By my songs a boat I builded, 250 And I sang one day, a second, And at length upon the third day, Broke my sledge as I was singing, Broke the shaft as I was singing, So I came for Tuoni's gimlet. Sought in Manala a borer, That my sledge I thus might finish. And with this might form my song-sledge. Therefore bring your boat to this side, Ferry me across the water, 260 And across the straight convey me, Let me ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... furiously than ever, as soon as it was impossible for him to calm it by drinking. His fixed idea, which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and which was continually increasing in his absolute solitude? pene-trated him like a gimlet. He now walked about his house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his eat to the door to listen if the other were there, and defying him through the wall. Then as soon as he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Don. S'pose I did, but I don't 'member nothing about it. And now look here, sir; seems to me that in half-hour's time it'll be quite dark enough to start; and if I'd got five guineas, I'd give 'em for five big screws, and the use of a gimlet and driver." ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... the purple tent, with the fruits and the cocoa-nut. As you know, a cocoa-nut is not handy to get at the inside of, at the best of times, so Quentin set that aside, meaning to ask Blue Mantle later on for a gimlet and a hammer. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... carrying whatever it can find with it. A 4-foot drainage will be constantly tending to have four feet of soil ready for the reception of rain, and it will take much more rain to saturate four feet than two. Moreover, as a gimlet-hole bored four feet from the surface of a barrel filled with water will discharge much more in a given time than a similar hole bored at the depth of two feet, so will a 4-foot drain discharge in a given time much more water than a drain ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... father she was prepared to sacrifice—they had played for a great stake and had been outwitted. But Dan! That he, too, should be drawn into the whirlpool and sucked down and destroyed! She turned faint at the thought. Then she pulled herself up sharply, for Pachmann's gimlet eyes were upon her, glittering with comprehension, reading her face, while on his own there was an expression of infernal triumph. She shivered as she looked ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... don't know," said Danny to himself, "but whatever it is he won't be gettin' it from old Gimlet-eyes." ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... Carmona walked with us, instead of forging on beside his own car. His friendliness puzzled me. Each look directed at my face was sharp as a gimlet, though his words were genial; but the final shock came when he announced that he was bound for the Escurial, and asked if we would like ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the stationer's he went to an ironmonger's and bought a saw, a brace, a gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After their visit to the confectioner's they ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... were taken off; but the operation had spoilt the delicacy of my white stockings, and Rose said it was impossible to let me go such an untidy figure; we must try some other way. She asked Willy to lend her a gimlet, that she might bore holes at the sides of my feet, and glue the ribbon into them, so as not to show the glue. Willy said she was welcome to the gimlet, but that he advised her to leave it alone, for that she would only break my feet. But Rose would not ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... am thy father's gimlet! (She takes his hand) Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes his head) ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... But mostly small people: Their brethren, the peasants, 50 And soldiers and waggoners, Workmen and beggars. The soldiers and beggars They pass without speaking. Not asking if happy Or grievous their lot: The soldier, we know, Shaves his beard with a gimlet, Has nothing but smoke In the winter to warm him,— 60 What ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... power-machines... droning of girl with adenoids... Arms flapping with a fin-like motion under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid. Light skating on the rims of wheels... boring in gimlet points. Needles flickering fierce white threads of light fine as a wasp's sting. Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes and calico-pallid faces and bodies throwing off smells— and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls and the silence ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... are termed lancet lights, for the ventilating the cellars, larders, &c.; and, previous to the late survey, these lancet lights were never taken; but so stringent were the orders from the tax-board on the late survey, that if they found a gimlet-hole they would ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... teeth determinedly, Ralph Wonderson swarmed up the Virginia-creeper until he reached the closely-shuttered window. Here he clung precariously with one hand while with the other he produced a gimlet and noiselessly bored two holes in the green shutters. Was he too late? The question shot through his brain. With a quick intake of breath he applied an eye to one hole and an ear to the other and watched ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... the outer shell was so hard that Phil went to the tool-room after one of his father's small key saws and a gimlet. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his movements; and for this reason people commonly called him "goodman Fario." But his skin—the color of gingerbread—and his softness of manner ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... of the House did not expose these defects enough. Cannon did well on sugar, but nobody dissected the whiskey section which bored gimlet holes into the bottom of every barrel of high wine to let it out without paying a cent of tax. The Democrats are therefore the real free whiskeyites. This ought to be shown up thoroughly in the Senate. Our miserable platform places ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... nothing between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi. But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time. Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... children espy, but a nice firm deal box, containing a little saw, a little plane, a hammer, a gimlet, a chisel, and sundry different sizes of nails. Was there ever anything so delightful, especially to David, who loved nothing so well as running after George Bowles the carpenter, and handling his tools. What was the price ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... amused Paul very much. From each side of the wearer's head, near the eye, projected a brass ornament, in the shape of a spiral spring, but each circle diminishing in size till the wire ended in a point, like a gimlet. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... with Coupeau. The fair, rosy house surgeon was standing up, having given his chair to a bald old gentleman who was decorated and had a pointed face like a weasel. He was no doubt the head doctor, for his glance was as sharp and piercing as a gimlet. All the dealers in sudden death ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola |
