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Shaft   /ʃæft/   Listen
Shaft

noun
1.
A line that forms the length of an arrow pointer.
2.
An aggressive remark directed at a person like a missile and intended to have a telling effect.  Synonyms: barb, dig, gibe, jibe, shot, slam.  "She threw shafts of sarcasm" , "She takes a dig at me every chance she gets"
3.
A long rod or pole (especially the handle of an implement or the body of a weapon like a spear or arrow).
4.
A column of light (as from a beacon).  Synonyms: beam, beam of light, irradiation, light beam, ray, ray of light, shaft of light.
5.
The main (mid) section of a long bone.  Synonym: diaphysis.
6.
Obscene terms for penis.  Synonyms: cock, dick, pecker, peter, prick, putz, tool.
7.
A long pointed rod used as a tool or weapon.  Synonyms: lance, spear.
8.
A vertical passageway through a building (as for an elevator).
9.
(architecture) upright consisting of the vertical part of a column.  Synonym: scape.
10.
A long vertical passage sunk into the earth, as for a mine or tunnel.
11.
A revolving rod that transmits power or motion.  Synonym: rotating shaft.
12.
The hollow spine of a feather.  Synonyms: calamus, quill.



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"Shaft" Quotes from Famous Books



... the base of the columns of the porch is on a level with the pavement; consequently what was once the ground-floor of the house of which we speak is now its cellar. A portico, reached by a few steps, leads to the entrance of the tower, in which a spiral stairway winds up round a central shaft carved with a grape-vine. This style, which recalls the stairways of Louis XII. at the chateau of Blois, dates from the fourteenth century. Struck by these and other evidences of antiquity, Godefroid could not help saying, with a smile, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... buildings lay a little to the southeast of the town, across the creek and close to the foot of the mountain which towered above it sheer and straight. A few hundred feet down the canon below it, and a little farther back from the creek, was the shaft leading down into the mine, and beside it the engine house with the machinery needful for raising the ore, and for carrying the miners to and from the ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap and rein,—a ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... they fled from a large number of their enemies, who had got them separated from their comrades. Boccagh ran across a field, in order to get before them in the road, and was in the act of climbing a ditch, when one of them, who carried a spade-shaft, struck him a blow on the head, which put ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... stream the work had been gradually slowing down to a standstill with the subsidence of the first rush of water after the sluice-gate was opened. Tom North, leaning gracefully against the shaft of a peavy, looked up eagerly as his ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... Chalons-sur-Saone we travelled, but before we ran on to the rough cobbles of old-world Macon darkness had already fallen, and our big search-light was shedding a shaft of white brilliancy ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... our hearts is rending, Falls the Mullah on his knee, To the Lord of Light bows he, To the Prophet he is bending: Like a shaft his prayer ascending, Upward flies to Allah's throne— Il-Allah! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... more, as we climbed through the wreck and desolation, that was what we seemed. The road was choked with stones between which the grass was sprouting; there was nothing left of the little church save a single pointed shaft. We climbed rapidly, the girl always gazing up at the castle with that same feverish eagerness. She had forgotten, I think, that ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... met with in cultivation in America. If this species cannot be had by the student, other pines, or indeed almost any other conifer, will answer. The Scotch pine is a tree of moderate size, symmetrical in growth when young, with a central main shaft, and circles of branches at regular intervals; but as it grows older its growth becomes irregular, and the crown is divided into several main branches.[10] The trunk and branches are covered with a ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... accomplished, his brothers let him go, saying, 'Far be it from us to detain a man who has labored seven years for the salvation of his soul with the holy Columba!' He then returned to Iona, bringing with him the sword which was to have been his ransom. 'Henceforward thou shaft be called Libran, for thou art free and emancipated from all ties,' said Columba; and he immediately admitted him to take ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... forward of the wheels without injury. At last, however, the Queen was able to strike just abaft the starboard wheel-house, crushing the wheel, disabling the starboard rudder, and starting a number of leaks abaft the shaft. The starboard engine was thus useless and the Indianola helpless to avoid the onset of the Webb, which struck her fair in the stern, starting the timbers and starboard rudder-box so that the water poured in in large volumes. This settled the fight, and Brent reported to Colonel Brand that ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... 'gainst the high-walled city fought, He marched around it with his banner high, His troops in serried order following nigh, But not a sword was drawn, no shaft outsprang, Only the trumpets the shrill onset rang. At the first blast, smiled scornfully the king, And at the second sneered, half wondering: "Hop'st thou with noise my stronghold to break down?" At the third round, the ark of old renown Swept forward, still the trumpets sounding loud, And ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... carbine bent, Some o'er their courser's harness leant, 580 Half sheltered by the steed; Some fly beneath the nearest rock, And there await the coming shock, Nor tamely stand to bleed Beneath the shaft of foes unseen, Who dare not quit their craggy screen. Stern Hassan only from his horse Disdains to light, and keeps his course, Till fiery flashes in the van Proclaim too sure the robber-clan 590 Have well secured the only way Could now avail the promised prey; Then curled ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... Vulcan one day, And besought him to look at his arrow; "'Tis useless," he cried, "you must mend it, I say, 'Tisn't fit to let fly at a sparrow. There's something that's wrong in the shaft or the dart, For it flutters quite false to my aim; 'Tis an age since it fairly went home to the heart, And the world really ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... feet, and have an average weight of 1,350 pounds. Each roll from which the New York Tribune is printed contains an unbroken sheet 23,000 feet (4-1/3 miles) long. A few hours before the paper is to be printed, an iron shaft having journal ends is passed through the core, the roll is placed in a frame where it may revolve, the end of the sheet is grasped by steel fingers and the roll is unwound at a speed of from 13 to 15 miles an hour, while a fan-like spray of water plays evenly across its width, so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... ocean toss'd, I see thee sit calm in thy beaten bark; As NOAH sat, throned in his high-borne ark, Secure and fearless while a world was lost! In vain contending storms thy head enzone, Thy bosom shrinks not from the bolt that falls: The dreadful shaft plays harmless, nor appals Thy stedfast eye, fix'd on Jehovah's throne! E'en though thou saw'st the mighty fabric nod, Of system'd worlds, thou hear'st a sacred charm, Graved on thy heart, to shelter thee from harm. And ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... with his treachery, and rulers with their hostility, and Pilate with his authority, and the soldiers with their nails, and centurions with their lances, and the grim figure of Death itself with its shaft, would have been all equally powerless against Christ if it had not been his loving will to die on the Cross for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... charged down upon them, slamming the door at their backs, extinguishing the broad shaft of light that had momentarily shot out into the darkness, and swept them a dozen yards away. Gaining the lee of a madrono tree, Lance opened his blanketed arms, enfolded the girl, and felt her for one brief moment tremble and nestle in his bosom ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... sorrow greatly trembled, Since the battle of most active tumult, At the border of Ban Carw; {150c} Round the border of Ban Carw The fingers of Brych {150d} were hurt by the shaft of a spear. {150e} In defence of Pwyll, {150f} of Disteir and Distar, In defence of Pwyll, of Rodri, and of Rhychwardd, A stout {151a} bow was spent by Rhys {151b} in Rhiwdrech; They that were not bold would not attain their purpose; ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... personal triumph, for not many cub drillers could boast of bringing in a gusher the first time. It was, in fact, no mean accomplishment to make any sort of a well; to pierce the earth with an absolutely vertical shaft a half mile deep and line it with tons upon tons of heavy casing joined air-tight and fitted to a hair's breadth was an engineering feat in itself. It was something that only an oil man could appreciate. And he was an oil man; a darn good one, too, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... their barbarous deed, caused lay himself alongside the ship and recking not of shaft or stone, boarded it, as if courting death, in spite of those who were therein; then,—even as a hungry lion, coming among a herd of oxen, slaughtereth now this, now that, and with teeth and claws sateth rather his fury than his hunger,—sword in hand, hewing ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... candle?" the teamster asked Cleena; and when she had done so he fastened it to the end of the clothesline and slowly lowered it into the shaft. The flame was ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... to break down the wall between, and there they were—and I give you my word for it, Hal, I was thankful! When they were all busy watching what was being done, and the gold was being handed up through a shaft that they dug, I just dropped down and went to sleep. It wasn't for long, but when I woke up I felt fit to face Sher Singh or ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the buried cities are of bronze; some few of iron. In their general plan and appearance there is a great resemblance, though the details of the ornaments admit of infinite variety. All stand on three feet, usually griffins', or lions' claws, which support a light shaft, plain or fluted according to the fancy of the maker. The whole supports either a plinth large enough for a lamp to stand on, or a socket to receive a wax-candle, which the Romans used sometimes instead of oil in lighting their rooms. Some of them have a sliding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... made of some grass material, not unlike a Zanzibar mat in appearance, hung over the doorway. This the mute drew back with another profound obeisance, and led the way into a good-sized apartment, hewn, of course, out of the solid rock, but to my great relief lighted by means of a shaft pierced in the face of the precipice. In this room was a stone bedstead, pots full of water for washing, and beautifully tanned leopard skins ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... attitude; so he insisted that the cat had come to stay. And indeed it looked as if she had, for no one wanted the homely, starved creature, and though three times Tabitha surreptitiously pushed her down the shaft of an abandoned mine on the other side of the mountain, the animal always appeared serenely at meal time with a more ravenous appetite than ever, and Tabitha began to think that the "nine lives of a cat" was no joke, ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... lancets; the other two, large plain ones; the uppermost tier of lancets being open. A singular effect is produced in the third stage from the top by the lancets being divided in the centre by the main shaft that rises from the ground at the angles of the tower. On the south and east these ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting

... The shaft snapped, and the little man tottered back. Red Wull jumped down from the table, and, in doing so, brushed against the Cup. It toppled* over on to the floor, and rolled tinkling away in the dust. And the little man fled madly out of the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... and the issues of to-day are recorded in eternity. We are like men perched up in a signal-box by the side of the line; we pull over a lever here, and it lifts an arm half a mile off. The smallest wheel upon one end of a shaft may cause another ten times its diameter to revolve, at the other end of the shaft through the wall there. Here we prepare, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... dashed with the detached lines that seem to have quilted the tree-teguments together. Around the foot of the cross rises a mound of lovely moss-work in relief, with feathery filaments creeping up and wreathing about the shaft and thwart-beam. Miss Craydocke is just dotting in some bits of slender coral-headed stems among little brown mushrooms and chalices, as there comes a sudden, imperative knocking at the door of communication, or defense, between her ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... enthusiasm stood about in cars, ready for the smelters. Enthusiasm roared and whirred from the concentrating mill where wheels were turning and bands were slipping; where a tub, ore-laden, was jerking and clanking through the hoister shaft; where men on an upper platform were shovelling the dump from the tub into great crusher rolls; where the rolls were grinding and pounding, and the water was fashing and gurgling down the jigs. The whirr of it all, the whizz and bang of it, the whole effect of it all, was, to any man ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... lagoon, which mirrored the burning spots in heaven! Deep down into its innermost heart penetrated the slanting rays of Hesperus like a shaft of light, sunk far into mysterious Golcondas, where myriad gnomes seemed toiling. Soon a light breeze rippled the water, and the shaft was seen no more. But the moon's bright wake was still revealed: a silver track, tipping every wave-crest in its course, till each seemed ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... second does not demand development, but is varied much as Beethoven varied his melodies in his last pianoforte sonatas. The most important of those that are metamorphosed is the Spear motive. The Spear is the symbol at once of Wotan's sovereignty and of his bondage. On its shaft, the world ash-tree stem, are graven the mystic laws by virtue of which he rules; did he break these laws his power would be gone from him. The essence of the laws lies in the sanctity of compacts, and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... he was in the act of lifting a cup of wine to his mouth. Amazement seized the suitors, as their great champion fell dead, and they raged highly against Ulysses, and said that it should prove the dearest shaft which he ever let fly, for he had slain a man, whose like breathed not in any part of the kingdom: and they flew to their arms, and would have seized the lances, but Minerva struck them with dimness of sight that they went erring up ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... necessities to those ingenious, delicate, and learned efforts of invention by which the Egyptians and Greeks arrived at what we call orders. This term is well understood. By it we mean supports of which the principal parts, base, shaft, and capital, have certain constant and closely defined mutual relations. Like a zoological species, each order has a distinctive character and personal physiognomy of its own. An art that is deprived of such a resource is condemned to a real inferiority. It may cover every surface ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... spite of its wide beam and shallow draught, for the great designer who had fashioned the lines of the fastest destroyer afloat had himself drawn up the plans after giving a day's careful thought to the job. The shaft, which rested on nickel-steel sockets, with ball bearings supported by nickel-steel ribs for lightness, was protected by a water-tight casing, and all the other parts made of the very best metal, so as to secure both lightness and strength, with a complicated set of cog-wheels to take off the strain. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... sat down, Julius was little inclined to divagate into an account of his travels. His glance swept round and noted everything; he remarked on a soft effect of a shaft of sunshine that lit up the small conservatory, and burnished the green of a certain plant; he perceived a fine black Persian cat, the latest pet of the Club, and exclaimed, "What a beautiful, superb creature!" He called it, and it came, daintily sniffed at ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... her cottage door; O sweetly my love sings! Like a shaft of light her voice breaks forth, My soul to meet it springs As the shining water leaped of old, When stirred by angel wings. Aye longing to list anew, Awake and in my dream, But never a song she sang like this, Sewing her long ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... hand as well as true aim that sent this arrow," said the young man, drawing the shaft out of the animal's brain, in which the barbed point, coming off, remained behind, "and I must furnish ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a niblick's shaft, We have learned to make a mashie with a wondrous handicraft, We know that a hazard is often played best by re-driving off, But the Devil whoops as he whooped of old, "It's easy, but ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... The very first evening statements were whispered about to the effect that her state of disrepair is such that she has not been to her own port for nine months, and has been sailing for that time without a certificate; that her starboard shaft is partially fractured, and that to reduce the strain upon it the floats of her starboard wheel have been shortened five inches, the strain being further reduced by giving her a decided list to port; that her crank is "bandaged," that she is leaky; that her ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... by virtue of the new gas works; at certain intervals flickering and wholly incompetent lights serving to make the gloom more visible. None the less, as I passed for the last time, I plainly saw a shaft of light fall upon the half darkness from a little side door. There emerged upon the street the figure of a woman. I do not know what led me to cast a second glance, for certainly my business was not with ladies, any more than I would have supposed ladies had business there; ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... possible that the greatest battle of all time was taking place at the very moment not sixty miles away? Yet it was a real "Bon soir" that a passing gendarme gave me as I strolled homeward past the great bronze shaft erected by Napoleon in the Place Vendome and now towering black in the white moonlight, while the river Seine shimmered like molten silver in its way to the sea. It was really true but it was one of those times when a soldier in Europe ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... the flywheel, shaft, valve cams, pistons and bracing rods connecting the upper and lower plates of the frame proper, is of brass, the other parts named being of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... allowed to drop at this point. Many a barbed shaft of wit-winged sarcasm was shot by the light-armed scholar against the ranks of the Reformers. "Where Lutheranism reigns," he wrote Pirckheimer, "sound learning perishes." "With disgust," he confessed to Ber, "I see the cause of Christianity approaching ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... beside a brook which formed a narrow deep cove, a sort of natural miniature dock where their boat floated. A log hut, mossed with years, was set back some fifty yards towards the forest. What pines were those! what giants of arborescence! Seventy feet of massive shaft without a bough; and then a dense thicket of black inwoven branches, making a dusk beneath ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... its own beak, which is serrated, in lieu of a pair of scissors. As soon as his tail is full grown, he begins about an inch from the extremity of the two longest feathers in it and cuts away the web on both sides of the shaft, making a gap about an inch long. Both male and female adonise their tails in this manner, which gives them a remarkable appearance amongst all other birds. While we consider the tail of the houtou blemished ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... he turned the head Of any dart, its power was such That Nature quailed with mortal dread, And crippling pain and foul disease For sorrowing leagues around him spread. Whene'er he cast o'er lands and seas That fatal shaft, there rose a groan; And borne along on every breeze Came up the church-bell's solemn tone, And cries that swept o'er open graves, And equal sobs from cot and throne. Against the winds she tasks and braves, The tall ship paused, the sailors sighed, And something ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... absolutely red-hot. Mick caught hold of them, but dropped them with a yell. Eagle had forgotten to pile sand over the handles to keep them cool, and had allowed the heat to run up the whole length of the shaft. ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... under which he had been sitting in the shade, Rocjean grasped the iron-pointed shaft, into which the handle of the umbrella fitted, and, accompanied by Caper, rushed to the rescue of the German. It was none too soon. While sketching, a shepherd, with a very large flock of sheep, had gradually approached ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is,—the old man! Caught in a great shaft of sunlight striking from south to north, across the church, and just touching the chapel of the Holy Sacrament—the Pope emerges. The white figure, high above the crowd, sways from side to side; the hand upraised gives the benediction. Fragile, spiritual as is the apparition, the sunbeam ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... evening had she returned, and then only in this condition. It seemed she had pressed forward too boldly toward the person of the sovereign, and without any fault of his, but merely through the rough zeal of a body-guard which surrounded him, she had received a blow on the chest with the shaft of a lance. At least this was what the people said who, toward evening, had brought her back unconscious to the inn; for she herself could talk but little for the blood which flowed from her mouth. The petition had been taken from her afterward by a knight. Sternbald said that it had been ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... was removing the cups and the plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Dona Rita's profile, irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn't hear what she said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She spoke with fire without raising ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... of a water cruse, as slow it filled, the gurgling sound I heard, Nought saw I, but the sullen low of elephant that sound appeared. The swift well-feathered arrow I upon the bowstring fitting straight, Towards the sound the shaft let fly, ah, cruelly deceived by fate! The winged arrow scarce had flown, and scarce had reached its destined aim, 'Ah me, I'm slain,' a feeble moan in trembling human accents came. 'Ah, whence hath come this fatal shaft against a poor recluse like ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... was on the platform of the Temple, far from the shaft by which he had entered the underground galleries. He appeared at night, clad in white, and the Roman guards at first took him for a spectre; and he thus escaped instant death, and had time to declare who he was. Titus had already left; but Terentius Rufus—who ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... him and sneered. Then he snatched from Vigitello's hands one of the cross-bows that he bore and set a shaft to it. And then at last Sakr-el-Bahr was to learn the malice that was at the root of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... his wrath and struck the man so sharply with the shaft of the spear he held that it ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... us kept on mining. Our luck was not very good, but we persevered, for there was nothing to be gained by fainting by the way. I went into an old abandoned shaft about ten feet deep and found the bottom filled with a big quartz boulder, and as I had been a lead miner in Wisconsin, I began drifting, and soon found bed rock, when I picked up a piece of pure gold that weighed ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... rabbit burrow, with hundreds of tents and huts dotted about among the heaps of rubbish; dark evergreen forests in the distance, and, above all, the great volcanic mountain of Buninyong towering far aloft—these are the "Black Hills of Ballarat;" and that windlass at that shaft's mouth belongs in ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... great bull-frog, which had dropped out of sight at his approach, soon returned again, and croaked hoarsely of his personal affairs. For, in wet weather, this was a marshy spot, and he remembered happier days. Presently the clouds parted and the moon sent a brilliant spear shaft through the rent, making it almost like day. A startled peewit cried out, from his nest under the planking, that he had overslept, but was calmed into drowsiness by his wife's assuring tones; and a noisy beetle of some ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Dordogne. As a boy, while climbing here, he may have torn his hose into tatters, notwithstanding his precocious knowledge of Greek. The future churchman may even have robbed a jay's nest on this very spot. What quietude and what deep shadow! Not a leaf stirred; only a fiery shaft of sunshine forced its way here and there through the dark roof of unchanging green to the brown soil and the rampart's ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... in safety, and had just gained the wood near to where the attendants lay in wait with the horses, when an arrow whizzed past De Poininges. For him the shaft was intended, but its destiny was otherwise—the unfortunate chanter lay stretched on the ground in his last agony. De Poininges flew on ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... he stood listening to a "solemn wind" that began to blow—"the saddest that ear ever heard." What followed should appear in De Quincey's own words: "A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran on before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on forever and ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... the kitchen. She leaned out of the bed and pulled open her door. She heard voices below, but could not distinguish the words, so she rose and went noiselessly out into the hall, knelt down by the stair railing and listened. The door of the kitchen was open below her and a narrow shaft of light struck on her white, intent face. She looked like a woman waiting for the decree ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... could into the interior blackness of the vault. For a time I believe I was indeed mad—the echoes rang with the piercing shrieks I could not restrain! Silent at last through sneer exhaustion I glared about me. The moonbeam had vanished, in its place lay a shaft of pale gray light, by which I could easily distinguish the whole length of the staircase and the closed gateway it its summit. I rushed up the ascent with the feverish haste of a madman—I grasped the iron ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at the sight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled, then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grom was upon them. The flame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip. With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in the nearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy of terror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. The fire was speedily whipped out by the branches, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the London and Edinburgh Journal of Medical Science for 1845, Mr. Syme advocated a method of amputation through the condyles of the femur as specially suitable in case of diseased knee-joint. Amputation at this spot has certain advantages:—1. The shaft of the bone being untouched, there is no injury of the medullary cavity, and hence no fear of inflammation of its lining membrane. 2. There is less risk of exfoliation, the cancellated texture of the epiphysis not being liable to it. 3. Being close to the joint, ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... constructed in the following manner: Take a large hollow log, of suitable length, say five or six feet; hew out the inequalities with an adz, and close up the ends with pieces of strong plank, into which bearing have been cut to support a revolving shaft. This shaft should be sufficiently thick to permit being transfixed with wooden pins long enough to reach within an inch or two of the sides of the log or trough, and they should be so beveled as to form in their aggregate shape ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... might think, but studies on the various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal- bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, and the very hoppers, became effective subjects ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... in a little glade in the wilderness, I found two skeletons, one of a porcupine, the other of a large lynx, lying side by side. In the latter three quills lay where the throat had once been; the shaft of another stood firmly out of an empty eye orbit; a dozen more lay about in such a way that one could not tell by what path they had entered the body. It needed no great help of imagination to read the story here of a starving lynx, too famished to remember caution, and ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... thing through to the end. It occurred to me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of a kite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment, and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft of flying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Syx's pretended mine and ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... stood the coxswain of the celebrated Deal lifeboat, Richard Roberts. Intently he gazed at the projecting anchor fluke—shaft and chain had long been sucked down into the Goodwins—and then, after a good long look all round, taking the bearings of the deadly thing, at last he said, 'What a dangerous thing on a dark night ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... all alike, nothing but trees, trees and trees—great trees rising as high as an arrow shot to the sky, lifting their crowns intertwining their branches, pressing and crowding one against the other, until neither the sunbeam nor shaft of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... the black coat beneath, and said, touching the whitened seams, "I should not be driven to the subterfuge of wearing a greatcoat this hot weather to conceal the poverty of my dress beneath, if it were not that I wish to give you the advantage of such instruction as you are now neglecting."' The shaft went home, and the music-mistress had no occasion to complain again. After three years the headmistress retired on her fortune, the school was given up, and the two girls were placed at what they considered a very inferior establishment in Dublin. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... compelled to do a little philosophising on his own account as to the cause and origin of the rumbling and flashing which he saw so constantly around him. Naturally enough, he concluded that the sound must be the voice of somebody; and that the fiery shaft, whose effects he sometimes noted upon trees, animals, and his fellow-man, must be the somebody's arrow. It is immaterial from this point of view whether, as the scientific anthropologists hold, he was led ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... horses were wheeled around and the battery unlimbered. A hostile shell suddenly struck the shaft of the gun-carriage, and in a second the horses were a bloody mass of legs wildly beating the air and of ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... Hyacinth began with the yellow pony, the oldest and staidest of the two. The little mare, who had a temper of her own, gave him more trouble. She disliked his way of putting the crupper under her tail, and one day, to her owner's great delight, 'rose the divil on them' when her new groom got the shaft of the car ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... enterprise. He wears a jacket closely buttoned, and round his head a handkerchief tightly bound: in his hands he holds the dreadful weapon, made of the best steel, marked sometimes with the name of their town, and sometimes with that of their vessel; to the shaft of which the end of a cord of due length, coiled up with the utmost care in the middle of the boat, is firmly tied; the other end is fastened to the bottom of the boat. Thus prepared they row in profound silence, leaving the whole conduct of the enterprise ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... laugh with a bitter taste in it. "I wanted to help a man to drive his car to the summit, and the car has stuck. I could inspire, but my inspiring goes to waste. I'm an engine racing without a shaft to take up its energy. Clifford is developing scruples. I don't know where he caught them. I can't stand sick people. That's my temperament—I must have energy ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... cable was all out. Our young readers may not all understand the meaning of Paul's question. If the vessel rides at anchor with a short cable, her motion, as she rises and falls with the sea, raises up the shaft of the anchor, which has a tendency to detach the flukes, or points from the bottom. But Paul had been careful the night before to give the Fawn all the cable he could spare; and it was evident, therefore, ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams

... paces. He was a negro, already old, tall and powerfully built, but evidently did not suffer from too much courage, as the calves of his legs quivered so that he had to implant the edge of a spear in the ground and support himself on the shaft in order ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... a new company who have bought it for a mere song. When I tell my clients that I have got all my information from the Chairman, who took down under his greatcoat a carpet-bag full of crushed quartz carefully mixed with five ounces of gold nuggets, and emptied this out at the bottom of a disused shaft, and then got a Yankee engineer to report the discovery of ore in "lumps as big as your fist," and state this in the new prospectus, they will at once see what a solid foundation I have for this new venture, which must inevitably fly upwards by leaps and bounds as soon ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... and no drink were given to him during the rest of the long, weary, monotonous day. He watched a shaft of sunlight moving slowly across the earthen floor of the wigwam until it became a thin streak and ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... still tall, and superb, and intact, gleaming like a blood-streaked jewel in the glowing night. The 'copter settled on the roof of a low building across a large courtyard from the glittering Palace. Ann Strang stepped out, and motioned Roger to follow down a shaft and stairway into a small room below. She knocked at a door, and a strange man dressed in the curious glowing fabric opened it. His face lit up ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse

... painfully down the slope, steadying himself with the shaft of his gleaming spear; but all at once he stopped; for it seemed to him that he heard voices borne on the wind that blew up the mountain-side. But he shook his head and said: "Now forsooth beginneth the dream which shall last for ever; nowise am I beguiled by it." ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... Time and the grinding wheels of heavy-laden carts, however, have worn innumerable ruts seven or eight inches deep into the solid stone, so that in passing over it a springless cart crashes from side to side with great violence, almost throwing shaft animals to the ground and rendering it quite impossible for any European to ride in the vehicle, while crockery or any other fragile article, however carefully packed, is doomed ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... pointed and limited the compliment, and, at the same time, there was a wary shrewdness in it;—he was measuring how deep his shaft had sunk, as he always instinctively measured the person ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... an illuminated clock upon a large white shaft that lifted its marble shoulders towards the stars. It was nine o'clock. He turned on the lights, ran over the telephone book until he reached the name of what he considered the most important daily. He said: "Mr. John Thor's ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... of the rotating type is formed of a set of fixed semi-circular metal plates which are slightly separated from each other and between these a similar set of movable semi-circular metal plates is made to interleave; the latter are secured to a shaft on the top end of which is a knob and by turning it the capacitance of the condenser, and, hence, of the circuit in which it is connected, is varied. This condenser, which is shown at D, is made in two sizes, the smaller one being large enough for all ordinary wave lengths while the larger ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... was revealed the fair outline of Florence, with its encircling hills, and its glorious Val d'Arno. There arose the stupendous outline of Il Duomo, the stately form of the Baptistery, the graceful shaft of the Campanile, the medieval grandeur of the Palazzo Vecchio; and the severe Etruscan massiveness of the Pitti Palace was just below. Far away the Arno wound on, through the verdurous plain, while on either side the hills arose dotted ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... in many ways was Janki Meah, the white-haired, hot tempered, sightless weaver who had turned pitman. All day long—except on Sundays and Mondays when he was usually drunk—he worked in the Twenty-Two shaft of the Jimahari Colliery as cleverly as a man with all the senses. At evening he went up in the great steam-hauled cage to the pit-bank, and there called for his pony—a rusty, coal-dusty beast, nearly as old as Janki ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... water, and to flake arrow-heads from obsidian for the deer and the wild horse, the elk and old Sabre-Tooth. But the flaking of stone they laughed at, till I shot an elk through and through, the flaked stone standing out and beyond, the feathered shaft sunk in its vitals, the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... last—at last she was off. The morning had been a sore trial to her: in all the noisy and effusive leave-taking, she was odd man out; no one had been sorry to part from her; no one had extracted a promise that she would write. Her sole valediction had been a minatory shaft from Maria: if she valued her skin, to learn to stop telling crams before she showed up there again. Now, she was free of them; she would not be humiliated afresh, would not need to stand eye to eye with anyone who knew of her disgrace, for weeks to come; perhaps never again, if Mother agreed. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... rooted to the spot. At length the participatory efforts of the peasants rose to an unprecedented degree of enthusiasm, and they shouted in an intermittent chorus the advice, "Do you, Andrusha, take the head of the trace horse on the right, while Uncle Mitai mounts the shaft horse. Get up, Uncle Mitai." Upon that the lean, long, and red-bearded Uncle Mitai mounted the shaft horse; in which position he looked like a village steeple or the winder which is used to raise water from wells. The coachman whipped up his steeds afresh, but nothing came of it, and Uncle Mitai ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... "the Toffs' Shanty," and from both sides of the river the diggers begin to assemble in anticipation of a "spree." Across the scarred, disfigured valley, over the mullock-heaps, from every calico tent, from out of every shaft, from the edge of the dark forest itself, bearded men, toil-stained but smiling, bent on festivity, collect in Canvas Town's ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... hand of his preserver and placed it near a crevice through which a current of fresh air was blowing. She then perceived that the opening was made in the shaft of ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... extraordinary strength that they were proof against artillery—at all events, any artillery of the calibre possessed by the besiegers. Whish resolved to effect their destruction by mines. On the 18th three mines were exploded, and the counterscarp was blown into the ditch. A shaft was then sunk under the trench, and a gallery cut towards the wall. At the same time a battery was placed on a level higher than the citadel itself; another carrying eighteen and twenty-four pounders was placed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the under-girders of a trireme. From these ends is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn. The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth; and the description of it implied that there is ...
— The Republic • Plato

... the teeth of the wind, and the wind seized the frail thing and toppled it over upon its back, and twisted and turned it and hurled it over and over; the propellor raced for an instant in an air pocket and then the tempest seized it again and twisted it from its shaft, leaving the girl helpless upon an unmanageable atom that rose and fell, and rolled and tumbled—the sport of the elements she had defied. Tara of Helium's first sensation was one of surprise—that she had failed ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... happens very often in little children, and is commonly only a partial break or splitting of the bone, not extending wholly through the shaft so as to divide it into two fragments, but causing little more than bending of the bone (the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and Dublin too, reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious, the city of rich laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft of sunlight through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along its broad warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... monument stands the Potomac beside, And what says the shaft to the river? "When the hero has lived for his country, and died, Death crowns ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... somewhat over a meter long, with a bamboo head. The head is a sliver of bamboo[7] varying in length from 20 to 36 centimeters. On the upper Agsan, where the Manbos seem to have assimilated much from the Mandyas, both the head and the shaft of the arrow are much shorter, much neater, and, in general, much handier. The arrowhead is broadest at about two-thirds of its distance from the point. From this broad part, or shoulder, as we might call it, the head tapers to a ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... has yielded one bevelled arrow shaft, made of reindeer antler, with a deep groove on the surface. A similar arrow-head was found in the Pacard Cave, and in other places arrows have been found with one or more grooves on the surface. Were these grooves or drills intended to hold poison, and was man already acquainted with ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... that a shaft had fallen and struck her, indeed, but not the one Madeleine meant. She stretched out her hand and clasped that of her ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... quality of the Massillon grade, about four and a half feet thick, and for steam, manufacturing and domestic uses is claimed to have no superior. The company employed at this mine from seventy-five to a hundred and fifty men; built extensive shaft works for elevating coal to the surface; erected about forty comfortable tenements for the workmen and miners, and, in short, used all their past experience to make this a model mine. It is the nearest coal ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... was fixed at one end of a long shaft of wood, which had a sharp point at the other end for the purpose of fixing it in the ground. The eagle was gold, or gilded metal; and, according to Dion Cassius, it was kept in a small moveable case or ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... N. depth; deepness &c adj.; profundity, depression &c (concavity) 252. hollow, pit, shaft, well, crater; gulf &c 198; bowels of the earth, botttomless pit^, hell. soundings, depth of water, water, draught, submersion; plummet, sound, probe; sounding rod, sounding line; lead. bathymetry. [instrument ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... of the pit—was only an incident. Adam was in a state of intellectual tumult, which had no parallel in his experience. He tried to rush away from the horrible place; even the baleful green light, thrown up through the gloomy well-shaft, was dying away as its source sank deeper into the primeval ooze. The darkness was closing in on him in overwhelming density—darkness in such a place and with ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... and almost in a rage, One magic shaft at last he sent, A sample of his science sage, To quiet but the noises meant. Unerring to its goal it flew, No death ensued, no blood was dropped, But by the hush the young man knew At last that howling noise ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... they could overlook the neighboring highways in every direction, and could bring a merchant train to, with a shaft from a crossbow, or a shot from an arquebuse, at pleasure. With General Triscoe's leave, March praised the strategic strength of the unique position, which he found expressive of the past, and yet suggestive of the present. It ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awful sinners against the law ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... was a small round cave, the glow of a fire under a shaft that led all betraying smoke heaven knew where into the side of the hill, and two spruce beds with blankets. The permanent look of the place was the last straw on my own blind idiocy of never suspecting Macartney, and I burst out, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... surface. At each end of its axis this screw is supported by pillars of hollow brass tube descending from the hoop. In the lower ends of these tubes are holes in which the pivots of the axis revolve. From the end of the axis which is next the car, proceeds a shaft of steel, connecting the screw with the pinion of a piece of spring machinery fixed in the car. By the operation of this spring, the screw is made to revolve with great rapidity, communicating a progressive motion to the whole. By means of the rudder, the machine was readily turned in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... time afterwards that John learned the particulars of the capture of Josephus. When he saw that all was lost, Josephus had leaped down the shaft of a dry well, from the bottom of which a long cavern led off, entirely concealed from the sight of those above. Here he found forty of the leading citizens, who had laid in a store of food sufficient to last for many days. Josephus, at least, who gives his account of all these circumstances, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... mortal. With arrows whose point was shaped into the form of crescent, Commodus often intercepted the rapid career, and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich. [33] A panther was let loose; and the archer waited till he had leaped upon a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they run raging round the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... disease it is rare, consisting simply of a brittleness and an uneven and irregular formation of the hair-shaft, with a tendency to split up into filaments (fragilitas crinium); or there may be localized swelling and bursting of the hair-shaft, the nodes thus produced having a shining, semi-transparent appearance (trichorrhexis nodosa). This latter usually ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... right-hand side the path began to descend to a narrow landing-place in the cove. The girl stood still for a moment when she reached the highest point, and shading her eyes looked out to sea. On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock, formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a character of power and imperturbability that crowned it a king among islands. The sea ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... invented by Campbell is [shown in Figure 83—not shown—ed.]. The wheels of this machine eighteen inches in diameter, with rims one inch thick at the inner part, beveled two and a half inches to a sharp outer edge, are placed on a shaft, five inches apart. In practice about five hundred pounds of weight ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small head with a mass of black, wild-flying hair, on red lips curved with discontent, ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... They have a long list of heroic deeds on their records. The monument in Colon Cemetery commemorates one of those deeds. In an extensive and dangerous fire, in May, 1890, thirty of these men lost their lives. A few years later, this beautiful and costly shaft was erected, by private subscription, as a tribute to their valor and devotion. Another shaft, perhaps no less notable, commemorates a deplorable and unpardonable event. A number of medical students, mere boys, in the University ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... child was a real human child and no phantom, he did not hesitate long. He entered and found it lead spirally downwards. Descending with some difficulty, for the passage was narrow, he arrived at a small chamber, into one corner of which the stone shaft, containing the stair, projected half its round. The chamber looked as if it had been hollowed out of the rock. A narrow window, little more than a loop-hole through the thick wall, admitted the roar of the waves and a dim grey light. This light ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... serious and self-respecting paper; which perhaps," he added parenthetically, "may exercise a worthy influence before very long, and win respect, and carry weight; but this Royalist artillery is destined for a first attempt at reprisals, the Liberals are to be paid back in their own coin—shaft ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... probable number, this was not unlikely. Pipes and coffee were in the mean-time served. The pipe presented to the Vizier was at least twelve feet long; the mouth-piece was formed of a single block of amber, about the size of an ordinary cucumber, and fastened to the shaft by a broad hoop of gold, decorated with jewels. While the pipes and coffee were distributing, a musical clock, which stood in a niche, began to play, and continued doing so until this ceremony was over. The coffee was literally a drop of dregs in a very small china cup, placed ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... his reflections for a time were bitter. He alludes to the subject himself in this way: "In the very midst of death I am permitted to drag out a weary life, while dear ones in a land of health, freedom and plenty are struck down by the fatal shaft. Her death occurred on the nineteenth of October, the very day of my capture. I was thrust into prison, and doubly bound to the groveling discomforts of earth, while she was released from the prison-house of clay, and received, I believe into the joyous, freedom of Heaven. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... nineteen years of age, their hatred thus blinding their judgment. If Napoleon had natural children, why could he not have legitimate ones, especially with a young wife who was known to be in most flourishing health. Besides, it was not the first, as it was not the last, shaft of malice aimed at Napoleon; for his position was too high, his glory too brilliant, not to inspire exaggerated sentiments whether of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... inertia on the one hand and to study this queer girl on the other. Any financial return was inconsiderable against the promise of this psychological treat. The girl was like some north-country woodland pool, penetrated by a single shaft of sunlight—beautifully clear in one spot and mysteriously obscured elsewhere. She would be elemental; there would be in her somewhere the sleeping tigress. The elemental woman was always close to the cat: as the elemental man was always but a point ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... shoulder, making sure they were safely alone on that stretch of highway. After all, one horse among so many would be no great loss to his commander. "You'd better turn around. The boys'll have Lady Jane out of the shaft before you get into Lexington if you keep on. And the Yankees are still pepperin' the place with round shot." He wondered why she was driving without a groom, but did not quite ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... in contempt the fine abstract theories of physics, mechanics, and dynamics. It was safe for them to do so. The machinery went on running, apparently of its own volition. All went well until the War. Now the propeller-shaft of industrial society is fractured, our ship is wallowing in the trough of the seas, and the men who should put things right for us do not even know that it is the main shaft on which they should concentrate. They are irritating the passengers by changing the cabins, confiscating luggage, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... stem thus produced he deftly fashioned a shaft with which he hastened back to Idavold, where the gods were still hurling missiles at Balder, Hodur alone leaning mournfully against a tree the while, and taking no part in the game. Carelessly ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... reach them, if you know them. If you lose your way or have a long tramp, it's good to know which plants will give you drink and where they are. And if you're short of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an arrow shaft or an arrow, even. If Donald were lost now, he could keep alive for days, because he would know what wood would make him a bow and how he could take amole fiber and braid a bow string and where he could make arrows and arrow points so that he could shoot game for food. I've taught ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... in connection with some form of rotary fans. The principle of fans in series, first introduced by Cousans, of Lincoln, England, under the name of the Kinetic Blower, is now accepted as standard. This consists of a number of cleverly designed fans mounted in series on one shaft, the first delivering air to the second at, say, 3-inch pressure, to be raised another step and delivered to the next in series, etc., etc. This plan permits tapping off desired amounts of air at intermediate pressures with marked economy, and as ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... United States. In the latter region beds of limestone carry lenses of sulphur and gypsum which are apparently localized in dome-like upbowings of the strata. The deposits are overlain by several hundred feet of loose, water-bearing sands, through which it is difficult to sink a shaft. An ingenious and efficient process of mining is used whereby superheated water is pumped down to melt the sulphur, which is then forced to the surface by compressed air and allowed to consolidate in large bins. The Sicilian deposits are similar lenses in clayey limestones ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... the top floor, the youth noticed a shaft of light streaming from beneath a door in ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill

... white soil was so painful that I was obliged to close my eyes, and so ran a continual risk of falling asleep and tumbling from my horse. Thus, drowsy and half unconscious of my whereabouts, I rode on in the heat and arid silence of the plain until noon, when we reached a well. It was a shaft, sunk about thirty feet deep, with a long, sloping gallery slanting off to the surface. The well was nearly dry, but by descending the gallery we obtained a sufficient supply of cold, pure water. We breakfasted in the shaded doorway, sharing our provisions with a Turcoman boy, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... architecture, connected with the preference for enormous blocks over stones of a moderate size, is the frequent combination in a single mass of distinct architectural members; for instance, of the shaft and capital of pillars, of entire pediments with a portion of the wall below them, and of the walls of monuments with the cornice and architrave. M. Renan has made some strong remarks on this idiosyncrasy. ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... their hope to see the expected sail shining in the first rays of the rising sun, the man and the woman, without attempting to relight the fire, lounged on their sleeping mats. At their feet a common canoe, hauled out of the water, was, for more security, moored by a grass rope to the shaft of a long spear planted firmly on the white beach, and the incoming tide lapped monotonously against ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... seems to take a lingering last farewell, As down her cheek the pearly teardrops flow, Of some lamented spirit she lov'd well, By Fate's inexorable shaft laid low; And thus half broken-hearted to complain "When shall we look upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... that isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the back ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... Territory of Utah, in 1872, the writer discovered a natural cave not far from the House Range of mountains, the entrance to which resembled the shaft of a mine. In this the Gosi-Ute Indians had deposited their dead, surrounded with different articles, until it was quite filled up; at least it so appeared from the cursory examination made, limited time preventing a careful exploration. In the fall of the same year ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... adieu! Adieu, my playful cat, to thee! Who every morning round me came, And were my little family. But thee, my dog, I shall not leave No, thou shalt ever follow me, Shalt share my toils, shaft share my fame ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... me. You know, I think it wrong to kill a bird, or worm, or even a Tartar. But such is the precision and rapidity of perfect science that, with my own arrows, I split every arrow as it came against me. I struck every flying shaft as if it were a flying bird. Therefore, Sire, I may say truly, that I shot nothing but arrows." The king said, "I know how clever you engineers are with your fingers." The archer said, "Oh," ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... destructors, few trustworthy data can be given. The outlay necessarily depends, amongst other things, upon the difficulty of preparing the site, upon the nature of the foundations required, the height of the chimney-shaft, the length of the inclined or approach roadway, and the varying prices of labour and materials in different localities. As an example may be mentioned the case of Bristol, where, in 1892, the total cost of constructing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... closely, and looked again, while Jack looked on, shaking, and holding his mouth. Apparently at last satisfied that the "operator" within was asleep at his post, the intruder turned about and threw a shaft of light up toward the wires of the loop. Expectantly Jack waited. Had he ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... a lantern there, I see,' said the traveller dismounting, 'lend it me for a moment. You have wounded my horse, I think, with your shaft or wheel.' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal sunshine at her husband, and her husband with a quiet strange smile looked across through the sunshine at his wife. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... friends, and I had to reflect that numbers of persons had gone out in the same attire before I could make up my mind to run the gauntlet of the loiterers round the door. Here a negro guide of most repulsive appearance awaited me, and I waded through a perfect sea of mud to the shaft by which people go under Table Rock. My friends were evidently ashamed of my appearance, but they met me here to wish me a safe return, and, following the guide, I dived down a spiral staircase, very dark and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... of outlying open country which the cloven hills let in, was a second round hole, twin of the first. Except after storms, water was never in this place, and it lay dry as a kiln nine-tenths of the year. But in size and depth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemed man's rather than nature's design, it might have been the real Tinaja's reflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfully represented ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... prayers gladly. In the moment that Death was aiming at him a missile of down, Hughes-Jones prayed: "Bad I've been. Don't let me fall into the Fiery Pool. Give me a brief while and a grand one I'll be for the religion." A shaft of fire came out of the mouth of the Lord and the shaft stood in the way of the missile, consuming it utterly; "so," said the Lord, ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... Eusebius, who saw it himself (Vita Const. i. 30), consisted of a long spear overlaid with gold, and a cross piece of wood, from which hung a square flag of purple cloth, embroidered and covered with precious stones. On the top of the shaft was a crown composed of gold and precious stones, and containing the monogram of Christ (see next note), and just under this crown was a likeness of the emperor and his sons in gold. The emperor told Eusebius (I. ii. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... touch. He prepared instinctively for battle against any foe who might present himself. For a moment he held himself taut; then, nothing of an alarming nature having happened, he drew a swift breath of relief and flashed on his light. He gave vent to a low exclamation. The swiftly darting shaft from the torch had revealed the figure of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... lovely glade which lay at the foot of a gentle eminence, immediately behind which lay the pit whose ugly shaft was almost hid by it. No one would have imagined that such a thing lay in the immediate neighbourhood who saw the glade before the row of miner's cottages had been erected on one side of it by Mr. Kimberley ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden

... Jim," said Grummidge, after hastily extracting the shaft. "You couldn't do much with a wound like that. I'll take your place and follow up the men, and you'll take mine here, as nurse to Swinton. We mustn't leave him ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... fiery and high-souled Moor uttered his boast, than, from some unseen hand amidst the groves, a javelin whirred past him, and as the air it raised came sharp upon his cheek, half buried its quivering shaft in the trunk of a tree ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Laney sat on the pile of rocks at the entrance to the Holy Smoke shaft. Across his knees lay the thirty-calibre rifle. His face was very white and set. Perhaps he was thinking of his return to New York in disgrace, of his interview with Bishop, of his inevitable meeting with a multitude of friends, who would read in the daily papers the accounts of his incompetence—criminal ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... should arrive at "something!" Foolish man! he had been long enough in the Highlands by that time to have known that to walk down the bed of a mountain-burn was about as possible as to walk down the shaft of a coal-mine. They came to the edge of its banks, however, and, looking over, tried to pierce its gloom. There was a pale gleam of white foam—a rumbling, rustling sound beneath, and a sensation of moisture ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne



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