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More "Blade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... straits it had led him; and, suddenly snatching a spear from the hand of one of his astonished and unwary guards, he strove to drive its point into his own heart. But the owner of the spear recovered himself in a flash, and, seizing the blade of the weapon in his bare hand, he twisted it upward with such strength that the slender wooden shaft snapped, leaving the head in his hand and the innocuous shaft in that of M'Bongwele. At the same instant half a dozen men flung themselves upon ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... said to O'Connor, "I don't believe they are on the tracks." "Well," he said, "I can't see any, I will call them back." He called out "Sambo!" which was the name of the Corporal, "Where track?" Sambo pointed to a blade of spinifex. I asked "Where?" He answered, "There." So I got off my horse, and there was a tiny speck of blood which had dropped on the root, and had not been washed off by the rain. It turned out the Myalls had been carrying ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... now kept secret from her the delight he felt at her refusal. He had tried conscientiously to persuade her into the path of salvation, when his every word was a blade to cut at his heart. Nor was he happy when she refused so definitely the saving hand extended to her. To know she was to come short of her glory in the after-time was anguish to him; and mingling with that anguish, inflaming and aggravating ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Sophos, thy thrice-vowed friend, Is made a stale by this base cursed crew And damned den of vagrant runagates: But here, in sight of sacred heav'ns, I swear By all the sorrows of the Stygian souls, By Mars his bloody blade, and fair Bellona's bowers, I vow, these eyes shall ne'er behold my father's face, These feet shall never pass these desert plains; But pilgrim-like, I'll wander in these woods, Until I find out Sopho's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... oar, which the vigilance and activity of our attentive escort rendered a somewhat dangerous undertaking; when recovered, the marks of six rows of formidable teeth were found deeply indented upon its blade. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... new-comer has to take the last ball of the over—his first. Alas and alack! The sixth ball is dead on to the middle stump. The Harrovian plays forward. Man alive, you ought to have played back to that! The ball grazes the top edge of the bat's blade and flies straight into the welcoming hands of ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... considers as the great means of his being saved, is preserved with great care, and in all probability will be shown a century hence by the descendants of this man. It is a common horn-handle knife, having one blade about five inches long. A piece of silver is now riveted on, and covers one side, on which ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... them with the blade Of his huge war-axe, gold inlaid, And downward shattered to the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... With its desolating vengeance, With its greedy, fatal cravings, Laying hands upon the city. And the doomed victims yielded To the swift-distilling poison; White and black and high and lowly, Fell beneath the sweeping scythe-blade. On the air was borne the crying Of the hurrying, the fleeing, Through the air the sad lamenting Of the helpless and deserted, Cries of anguish and of terror, Wails of suff'ring and despairing. Some brave souls remained in peril, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... blue-bottle was frightened. He showed it plainly. When he saw that Maya wasn't going to let anyone lay down the law to her he backed down. With a surly buzz he swung himself on to a blade that curved above Maya's leaf, and said in a much politer tone, talking down to her ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... have been found at Thebes. The blades are all of bronze, the handles of the acacia or the tamarisk; and the general mode of fastening the blade to the handle appears to have been by thongs of hide. It is probable that some of those discovered in the tombs are only models, or unfinished specimens, and it may have been thought sufficient to show their external appearance, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of them had anticipated, and Ned suffered agony in one wrist as he strained to get at the knife with one hand, while the other was always in the way and kept it back. At last though he was successful and held it in triumph, but there was something more to do, for a closed blade was as ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... factor in the phenomenal success of the Herald. The tone, it has been said, was not always so edifying as that of its contemporaries, the Post and Commercial, still every article was piercing as a Damascus blade. To buy one paper meant to become afterwards one of its customers. It was indeed astonishing what a variety of reading was contained in one of those penny sheets; every thing was fresh and piquant, so different from the old party papers. As originally intended, the Herald ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Geirrod hastily drew his sword, intending to slay the insolent singer; but when he beheld the sudden transformation he started in dismay, tripped, fell upon the sharp blade, and perished as Odin had just foretold. Turning to Agnar, who, according to some accounts, was the king's son, and not his brother, for these old stories are often strangely confused, Odin bade him ascend ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. The second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearly always do on a screw. When it ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the large knife I always carry by a chain and swivel in my trouser pocket, and telling Clinton to hold the lantern, opened the little blade-saw and attacked the ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... distinctly conscious of the pulse-beat of a mysterious life quivering throughout nature, stirring even the tiniest blade of grass. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... well-loved son with fire and flame, his only heir on earth, the best of children, the lasting hope and comfort of his life, for which he long had waited. The farfamed man laid hand upon the lad and drew his ancient sword (loud rang the blade), and showed he held his son's life not more dear than to obey the King of heaven. Up rose the earl. He would have slain his son, and put the lad to death with blood-red blade, if God had not withheld him. The Glorious Father would not take his son in holy sacrifice, but laid ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... the hospital and guarded with the utmost strictness; the wounds were serious, but, thanks to the skill of the physicians who were called in, were not mortal; one of them even healed eventually; but as to the second, the blade having gone between the costal pleura and the pulmonary pleura, an effusion of blood occurred between the two layers, so that, instead of closing the wound, it was kept carefully open, in order that the blood extravasated during the night might be drawn off every morning ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... shopman shambled from the doorway out And twitched it down— Snapped in the blade! 'Twas scarcely dear, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... is so thickly sown with blackened tombstones that there is scant space for blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, step from tomb to tomb; in the time of the Brontes the village women dried their linen on these graves. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... former opening her vision, ranging at random, instinctively seeking relief from the oppression of blank darkness, detected a slender beam of artificial light no thicker than a lead-pencil—a golden blade that lanced the obscurity, gleaming dull upon a rug, more bright on naked parquetry, vivid athwart the dust-cloth ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... had closed the windows before leaving the house didn't interfere very much with the scheme. It's an old-fashioned catch on the ante-room window, and I have seen the marks upon the brass-work where it was forced from the outside with the blade of a knife. For the person who opened the window to take out the real telephone and put the other in its place was easy; and all that remained was to lift the gas-cylinder on to the shed and partly ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... coolie story! One day, in the yellowing cane- fields, among the swarm of veiled and turbaned workers, a word is overheard, a side glance intercepted;—there is the swirling flash of a cutlass blade; a shrieking gathering of women about a headless corpse in the sun; and passing cityward, between armed and helmeted men, the vision of an Indian prisoner, blood- crimsoned, walking very steadily, very erect, with the solemnity of a judge, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... murmured among their leaves, the birds sang upon the boughs, and the lark carolled on high her welcome to the morning. Yes, it was morning; the bright, balmy morning of summer; the minutest leaf, the smallest blade of grass, was instinct with life. The ant crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly fluttered and basked in the warm rays of the sun; myriads of insects spread their transparent wings, and revelled in their brief but ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... making the guide blade straight on the outside (instead of rounding, as then made by all others), from inner point back to bolt or gudgeon, and thick enough at the latter point to let water pass without being obstructed by said ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... weird and precipitated clapping, the tug shot out of the desolate arena. The rocky islets lay on the sea like the heaps of a cyclopean ruin on a plain; the centipedes and scorpions lurked under the stones; there was not a single blade of grass in sight anywhere, not a single lizard sunning himself on a boulder by the shore. When I looked again at Hermann's ship the girl had disappeared. I could not detect the smallest dot of a bird on the immense sky, and the flatness of the land continued the flatness of the sea to ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... suits the tranquillity and tender pathos of the region is that which fills the dimples of the Downs with inexpressibly soft and dreamy expressions, and quickens the plain by revealing the individuality of every blade of grass and plough-turned clod by its ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... naked granite, snowy fields, and verdureless wastes! In every other place in the Alps, we have looked upon the snow in the remote distance, to be dazzled with its sheeny effulgence—ourselves, meanwhile, in the region of verdure and warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert—not a leaf, not a blade of grass—over the deep drifts of snow; and we find our admiration turns to horror. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and Charlemagne, and Napoleon! They were fit conquerors of Rome, who could vanquish the sterner despotism of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in a most excruciating style. In no place is the skinning alive of horses carried to such an extent as in Goettingen; and often, when I beheld some lame and sweating hack, which, to earn the scraps of fodder which maintained his wretched life, was obliged to endure the torment of some roaring blade, or draw a whole wagon-load of students, I reflected: "Unfortunate beast! Most certainly thy first ancestors, in some horse-paradise, did eat of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he deserves everything. Go back, and when you get home your wife will just have had a little boy. Take three drops of blood from the child's little finger, rub them on your servant's wrists with a blade of grass and ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... vengeance. If death comes, she fears "that the haggard doctor will dissect my naked corpse," and pictures herself dying on the operating-table like a stray dog and her well-made body "disgraced by the lustful kiss of the too eager blade" as, "with sinister smile untiring, they tear my bowels out and still gloat over my sold corpse, go on to bare my bones, and veins at will, wrench out my heart," probe vainly for the secrets of hunger and the mystery of pain, until from her "dead ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Barbarians was taught to acknowledge the advantages of regular discipline. At the annual review of the month of March, their arms were diligently inspected; and when they traversed a peaceful territory they were prohibited from touching a blade of grass. The justice of Clovis was inexorable; and his careless or disobedient soldiers were punished with instant death. It would be superfluous to praise the valour of a Frank; but the valour of Clovis was directed by cool and consummate ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... after an interval of comparative neglect, was introduced into this country by Mr. Syme in 1829. His method of performance is simpler and easier than Chopart's. He thus describes it:—"The blade of the knife employed should be about six inches long, and half an inch broad, sharp at the point and blunt on the back. The tourniquet ought to be applied immediately above the ankle, having compresses placed over the posterior and anterior tibial arteries. The surgeon should measure with his ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... illustrates perfectly the relationship that capital and labor should sustain each to the other. Capital is one blade of the shears, and labor is the other blade; either blade without the other is useless, and the two blades are useless unless the rivet is in place. Confidence is to capital and labor what the rivet is to the two blades. The ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... straight for a sabre lying on a table to continue his bloody work. In the meantime the priest had risen to his feet and awaited with resignation new torments which certainly were even worse than the first, for he gave him so many and such hard blows with the sabre that the blade was broken close to the hilt. This accident so infuriated Delfin that he again threw himself upon the priest, kicking him furiously and striking him repeatedly until he again threw him to the ground, and not yet satisfied, his vengefulness led him to throw himself upon ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... villain! you must fight. My Indians are faithful to me. You hate to fight,—you are afraid,—but you must, or I will beat you to death with the blade of ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... to hide him, the lady gave herself up for dead. Nevertheless she made up her mind on the spur of the moment, and springing out of bed "Sir," quoth she to Messer Lambertuccio, "if you have any regard for me, and would save my life, you will do as I bid you: that is to say, you will draw your blade, and put on a fell and wrathful countenance, and hie you downstairs, saying:—'By God, he shall not escape me elsewhere.' And if my husband would stop you, or ask you aught, say nought but what I have told you, and get you on horseback and tarry with him on no account." "To ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in kinship to Vega and Capella, is a golden moment of purer alloy than certified bonds. What magnate remembers where the best tackle squirms, or the taste of grass sucked in from the tender end of the blade? All progress is like that. How immediately are the yesterdays metamorphosed into memories; and memories, even the stanchest ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... forming a slug having on its edge raised characters formed by the matrices. The mould wheel next makes a partial revolution, turning the mould from its original horizontal position to a vertical one in front of an ejector blade, which, advancing from the rear through the mould, pushes the slug from the latter into the receiving galley at the front. A vibrating arm advances the slugs laterally in the galley, assembling ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... we began to circle each other, waiting an opportunity to strike, which presently came to my opponent, who aimed a blow at me which I caught when his blade was within an inch of my heart. Putting forth my strength I strove to force his hand so that with his own blade he might kill or wound himself, but after a desperate struggle he broke away. Not a word was spoken by the onlookers, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... end of a blade of grass, they seemed even more puzzled as to what to do. If not followed by a fellow ant, as was usually the case, they would invariably fall down again to the earth, and sometimes repeat this movement until a new comer joined in the ascent, when the uncertain individual ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the knife and swung it as hard as he could against Brute's neck. It thunked like an ax biting into a tree trunk, biting halfway through the flesh. Brute recoiled at the impact, tearing the handle from Goat's feeble hands and leaving the knife blade ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Usual work day began when the horn blow an' stop when the horn blow. They git off jes' long 'nuf to eat at noon. Didn't have much to eat. They git some suet an' slice a bread fo' breakfas. Well, they give the colored people an allowance every week. Fo' dinner they'd eat ash cake baked on blade of a hoe. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... or maintain them with thy sword!—Crouch, like a low-born slave as thou art, and beg Macpherson's pardon, if thou darest not bare thy coward blade." ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... not a captive, I should love this fair countree; Those fields with maize abounding, This ever-plaintive sea: I'd love those stars unnumbered, If, passing in the shade, Beneath our walls I saw not The spahi's sparkling blade. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... kingly hearts Which changing time nor fickle fate can quell: He stood—reveal'd from his own lips, "The King Of fallen Naples." At those stirring words A hundred swords unsheath'd; for on his head A princely price was set, and flight he scorn'd; For grasp'd his hand the well-accustom'd blade; And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... the eldest, is twenty-four feet in height, with a beard the hairs of which are like copper wire. He carries a magnificent jade ring and a spear, and always fights on foot. He has also a magic sword, 'Blue Cloud,' on the blade of which are engraved the characters Ti, Shui, Huo, Feng (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind). When brandished, it causes a black wind, which produces tens of thousands of spears, which pierce the bodies of men and turn them to dust. The wind is followed by ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... was the sword of Damocles over his pineal gland. D—— that sheer, cold blade! D—— him that forged it! Still there was a great deal of holding in a horse-hair. Had not salmon, of I know not how many pounds' weight, been played and brought to land by that slender towage. There is the sword, a burnished piece of cutlery, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the combatants staggered and swayed. An arm was thrust out at him, but the blade that had been driven against him did not flash in the moonlight, for the body of the wielder was between it and the spectators. Even the jacks stood silent, they having halted at Tom Gray's command, but their breathing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... gallant scoundrel, but my quick riposte confused him," observed Signor SUCCI, who entered the apartment, wiping his blade on the advertisement of a new beef-essence, and taking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... London rents in Ireland, he'd never do another honest day's work while he lived. You could put the whole place down in the hall at Knock Castle, and never know it was there, and Bridgie says she knows every blade of grass in the garden. We had the loveliest grounds at Knock, all the flowers coming up anyway, and volunteers drilling in the park, and the glass-houses full of ferrets and white mice, and tomatoes, and everything ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and turned around, picking up his range hat, an example followed by Nort. The latter had opened his pocket knife, which contained a large, keen blade, and, a moment later, a right-angled cut was made in the back wall ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... leaped into closer quarters and she saw Byrne at the same instant bury his sword in the body of a dark-visaged devil who looked more Malay than Jap, and as the stricken man fell she saw the hilt of the mucker's blade wrenched from his grip by the dead body of his foe. The samurai who had closed upon Byrne at that instant found his enemy unarmed, and with a howl of delight he struck full at the broad chest with his ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... up the paddle and set to work. He was by this time something of an adept in the use of a spruce blade, as most canoeists become in time. That is, he could propel a boat silently, not a swirl or a dripping blade betraying the labor that sent it on. Guides in the Maine woods had taught Frank how to approach a deer at night time on a lake ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... Sikh procured sabre, quoit, and mace, Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place, While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade from the scabbard. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and glared in the speaker's eyes; but he read there a power which was too much for him, and he closed the blade with a snap ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... than not in the presence of acquaintances. She never came to his rooms, and she had never seemed tempted to do any of the imprudent things which many a woman, secure of her own virtue, will sometimes do as if to prove the temper of her honour's blade. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Grandier's prison, caused him to be stripped naked and cleanly shaven, then ordered him to be laid on a table and his eyes bandaged. But the devil was wrong again: Grandier had only two marks, instead of five—one on the shoulder-blade, and the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged—to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block—with the kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the Afghan hates the half-moon blade. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... each partaker scooped out the inside of his plate, and consumed it with his other fare, besides having the sport of pursuing the clots of congealed gravy over the plain of the table, and successfully taking them into his mouth at last from the blade of his knife, in case of their not first ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... ARKEL.]—They have just found another peasant dead of hunger, along by the sea. You would say they all meant to die under our eyes.—[To MELISANDE.] Well, my sword?—Why do you tremble so?—I am not going to kill you. I would simply examine the blade. I do not employ the sword for these uses. Why do you examine me like a beggar?—I do not come to ask alms of you. You hope to see something in my eyes without my seeing anything in yours?—Do you think I may know something?—[To ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... three pulling simultaneously. Sometimes the men stood up, their combined strength being thus apparently more effective in pulling through the rough sea which surrounded the Island. The oars were very thick at the rowlock, tapering off to an almost straight blade, not more than five inches wide. The men pulled well, and soon landed us amid the curious gaze of the inhabitants of the town, who had crowded down to the beach as soon as our steamer ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... C, underground stem of the maiden-hair fern (Adiantum), with one young leaf, and the base of an older one, x 1. D, three cross-sections of a leaf stalk: i, nearest the base; iii, nearest the blade of the leaf, showing the division of the fibro-vascular bundle, x 5. E, part of the blade of the leaf, x 1/2. F, a single spore-bearing leaflet, showing the edge folded over to cover the sporangia, x 1. G, part of ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... "I saw the blade of a poniard glitter. I had no weapon, but I seized my bass by the handle, and, raising it in the air, let it fall with such violence on the captain's skull, that the back of the instrument was smashed in and the bandit's head disappeared in the interior of the bass. Either the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... only living creature that came near me was a bee, which hummed merrily by. What did the busy insect seek there? Not a blade of grass grew, and the only vegetable matter on this point was a cluster of withered moss at the very edge of the awful precipice, and it I gathered at considerable risk as a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... quietly in the garden and watch the evening pass into night. Nature, in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe. A small frog, of the genus Hyla, sits on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... general's leave. But the hero's transport was not to be stopped; he dashed through them all, forced the Norwegian to encounter him, and after a storm of blows that dazzled the man's eyes and took away his senses, ran his sword thrice through the prince's body. He then sent the blade into its sheath reeking as it was, and, taking his way back to his tent, reposed in the calmness of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... at his waistband, like a rudimentary, Darwinian stump. To this, all at once, his hand flung back. With a wrench and a glitter, he flourished a blade above his head. Heywood sprang to intervene, in the same instant that the disturber of trade swept his arm down in frenzy. Against his own body, hilt and fist thumped home, with the sound as of a football lightly punted. He turned, with a freezing look of surprise, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... BALTHAZAR, the patient, from behind, in his nightgown, with a drawn sword.) You talk now like a reasonable hostess, That sometimes has a reckoning with her conscience. Host. He still believes he has an inward bruise. Lamp. I would to heaven he had! or that he'd slipped His shoulder blade, or broke a leg or two, (Not that I bear his person any malice,) Or luxed an arm, or even sprained his ankle! Host. Ay, broken anything except his neck. Lamp. However, for a week I'll manage him, Though he had the constitution of a horse— A farrier should prescribe for ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lay straight up a ridge of bare red rocks, without a blade of grass to ease the foot, or a projecting angle to afford an inch of shade from the south sun. It was past noon, and the rays beat intensely upon the steep path, while the whole atmosphere was motionless, and penetrated with heat. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... soon as she halts before the king, her hands and feet are bound to a bench near the trunk of a tree. The executioner then takes his stand, and with uplifted eyes and arms, seems to invoke a blessing on the people, while with a single blow of his blade, her head is rolled into the river. The bleeding trunk, laid carefully on a mat, is placed beneath a large tree to remain till a spirit shall bear it to the land of rest, and at night it is secretly ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... the sword from its scabbard and laid it across his knee. He felt its edge; he drew his finger down the long groove that ran along the center of the blade; his gaze rested almost passionately on the floral arabesque that fringed that bed of the river of blood. Not a spot of rust from hilt to point; the scabbard, too, was bright ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... speedily placing his wary adversary at the saddest disadvantage. But, having attained this height, his power seemed to pass away as from an over-tasked mind. With twice the weight of arm, and as keen a blade, he appeared quite unable to parry a single lunge of Lee's, quite unable to thrust himself. He allowed his corps commanders to be beaten in detail, with no apparent effort to aid them from his abundant resources, the while his opponent was demanding from every man ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... that famous Albert de Luynes who had been Constable of France in the early days of the late king's reign; he had made me lieutenant of his guards and maitre d'armes to his nephews Andrea and Paolo de Mancini because he knew that a better blade than mine could not be found in France, and because he thought it well to have such swords as mine ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the huge carving-knife with which the general slashed his meat. He pointed suddenly with the knife, and, as he did so, the officer at whom it was leveled, sprang into action, to do as he was bidden, as if the shining blade ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... glint of the metal work about the bits Andy made out two bridles hanging on the wall near the bed. Taking them down, he worked swiftly. As soon as the fellow on the bed would have his breath he would scream. Yet the time sufficed Andy; he had his knife out, flicked the blade open, and cut off the long reins of the bridles. Then he went back to the bed and shoved the cold muzzle of his revolver into the throat of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... old warrior, as he settled in a little crevice and stretched out his tired limbs, while he rolled up a tiny, tiny blade of grass for a would-be cigar, "I am the bearer ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... deir hearts outboorstin, In battle by de blade, From sun to sun mit roarin gun Und donnerin parricade. In vain pefore de depudies De princes tremblin stood, Vot comes in France too late a day Cooms shoost in dime ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... foliage of the oak Shall spread its wonted shade; Now fell'd beneath the hostile stroke Of red destruction's blade. ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... one brick of the old house, one blade of grass of the old park, one leaf of one old tree in the old wood, our acquaintance would end ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... hand came in contact with the handle of the ax. Seizing the tool, he sprang erect, poised for an instant upon the edge of the boat which was already awash, and with the next flash of lightning, brought its blade down upon the wire cable stretched taut as a fiddle gut. The rebound of the ax nearly wrenched it from his grasp, the boat shifted as the cable seemed to stretch ever so slightly, and the Texan noted ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... gold. In the morning, when I crossed the meadows to the forest, the grass was white with frost and crackled beneath my feet like delicate threads of spun glass. My moccasins were powdered with gleaming crystals of frozen dew, but at the first touch of sun every twig and leaf and blade of grass began to drip, as though from a heavy rain. My feet and legs waist-high were soaked in half an hour, and at the end of the morning hunt I was as wet as though I ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... indeed a marvel placed before the observation of our minds. The growth of a blade of grass, the habits of an ant, contain for an attentive observer prodigies of wisdom. A drop of dew reflecting the beams of morning, the play of light among the leaves of a tree, reveal to the poet and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... cudgel with my grip. Why, lads, did I not meet that mad wag Simon of Ely, even at the famous fair at Hertford Town, and beat him in the ring at that place before Sir Robert of Leslie and his lady? This same Robin Hood, of whom, I wot, I never heard before, is a right merry blade, but gin he be strong, am not I stronger? And gin he be sly, am not I slyer? Now by the bright eyes of Nan o' the Mill, and by mine own name and that's Wat o' the Crabstaff, and by mine own mother's son, and that's myself, will I, even I, Wat o' the Crabstaff, meet this same ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... itself to an animal body, also point irresistibly to the same conclusion. In the sunny uplands they act (writes Captain Burton) like the mosquitoes of the hot, humid Beiramar. "The nuisance is general; it seems to be in the air; every blade of grass has its colony; clusters of hundreds adhere to the twigs; myriads are found in the bush clumps. Lean and flat when growing to the leaves, the tick catches man or beast brushing by, fattens rapidly, and, at the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... more bare. The vegetation, indeed, consisted of an abundant variety of shrubs and small plants, and yielded a delightful harvest to the botanists; but to the herdsmen and cultivator it promised nothing: not a blade of grass, nor a square yard of soil from which the seed delivered to it could be expected back, was perceivable by the eye in its course over these ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Isleta is now a powerful fort. It was made so at the time of the Spanish-American War, and no strangers are allowed to see it. So we turned aside and walked miles by a barbed wire fence, among fired rocks and cinders, where never a blade of grass grew. The Isleta is the latest volcano in Grand Canary, and except in certain states of the atmosphere it is utterly and barrenly hideous. Only when one sees it from afar, when the sun is setting and the white sea ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... really fine scene. Shylock enters, learns all; in come soldiers for Shylock, and, of course, accuse him of the murder; whereupon Shylock shows on the blade a cross. "Doth a Jew wear a knife with a cross on it?" says he. "Go to!—'tis a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... George, the son of the Mukaukas; I am the great Mukaukas and our family—all fine men of a proud race; all: My father, my uncle, our lost sons, and Orion here—all palms and oaks! And shall a dwarf, a mere blade of rice be grafted on to the grand old stalwart stock? What would come of that?—Oh, ho! a miserable little brood! But Paula! The cedar of Lebanon—Paula; she would give new life to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but the captain was held in superstitious reverence because of his sword. The natives had daggers, knives, axes, adzes, hammers, and spears of stone, bone, shark teeth, and fire-hardened wood, but metals were unknown to them, and this long, glittering blade, that cut a javelin stem as the javelin would crack a rib, was a daily wonder. It was the common belief on that island that whoever wielded the weapon would win a victory, though his enemies should be thousands in number. This belief ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Florence! at thy day's decline When came the shade from Appennine, And suddenly on blade and bower The fire-flies shed the sparkling shower, As if all heaven to earth had sent Each star that gems the firmament; 'Twas sweet at that enchanting hour, To bathe in fragrance of the Italian clime, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... more solemn and more sinister: glory and crime, victory and death, seemed intertwined in its chorus. It was the song of patriotism, but it was also the imprecation of rage. It conducted our soldiers to the frontier, but it also accompanied our victims to the scaffold. The same blade defends the heart of the country in the hand of the soldier, and sacrifices victims in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... pottage simmered for a considerable time beside the fire, eats tenderly. The back-ribs make an excellent roast; indeed, there is not a sweeter or more varied one in the carcass, having both ribs and shoulder. The shoulder-blade eats best cold, and the ribs warm. The ribs make excellent chops. The Leicester and Southdowns afford the best mutton-chops. The breast is mostly a roasting-piece, consisting of rib and shoulder, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... kills men," says Beecher; "it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... occurred in the course of the passage, is not a little striking. Perceiving, as he walked the deck, a small yataghan, or Turkish dagger, on one of the benches, he took it up, unsheathed it, and, having stood for a few moments contemplating the blade, was heard to say, in an under voice, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a murder!" In this startling speech we may detect, I think, the germ of his future Giaours and Laras. This intense wish to explore ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Hack-saw. Hack-saw Frame. The Blade. Files. Grindstones. Emery and Grinding Wheels. Carelessness in Holding Tools. Calipers. Care in Use of Calipers. Machine Bitts. The Proper Angle for Lathe Tools. Setting the Bitt. The Setting Angle. Bad Practice. Proper Lathe Speeds. Boring Tools on Lathe. The Rake ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... distracting his master's attention. The ladies begin to appear in the background, ready to greet the players, and to tell the truth, are not very welcome to the nervous golfer. Everything turns on half an inch of leather in a "drive," or a stiff blade of grass in a putt, and the interest is wound up to a really breathless pitch. Happy he is who does not in his excitement "top" his ball into the neighbouring brook, or "heel" it and send it devious down to the depths ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... morning Jack was sent out with the four-and-twenty cows, and the place he was told to drive them to had not a blade of grass in it for them, but was full of stones. So Jack looked about for some place where there would be better grass, and after a while he saw a field with good green grass in it, and it belonging to a giant. So he knocked down a bit of the wall and drove them in, ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... He. 2. He made us and fashioned us in time; and neither any authority or magistrate did that. 3. Who is it that provides means for their sustenance daily, and makes these means effectual, but only the Lord? A man cannot make one pyle (blade) of grass, or one ear of corn, to grow for thy entertainment, but only the Lord: and when thou hast gotten these things, it is the blessing of God that makes them effectual. For when ye say the grace to your meat, say ye it to man? No, ye say it only to God. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... we, of shore or wave, To sing of love and tempt the brave: We fled their path, and freedom found Where blue horizons stretched around, And lilies in the grasses made A double sunshine on each blade. No wooers we, but, wooed by them, We yield our maiden diadem, And welcome now, no longer mute, Tried hearts so true ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... echo, a fiercer gust than usual swept down off the ledge of rock above the little house, rattled the loose old window, and sent a sharp blade of icy air full in the old woman's eyes. She gasped and started back. And then, all in a breath, her face grew calm and smooth, and her eyes bright with a sudden resolve. Without a moment's hesitation, she turned to her ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the millet with its drooping heads; There was the sacrificial millet coming into blade[1]. Slowly I moved about, In my heart all-agitated. Those who knew me said I was sad at heart. Those who did not know me, Said I was seeking for something. O thou distant and azure Heaven[2]! By what man ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... is as silent as that of the dewdrop upon the blade of grass, but it is as real. God's voice is the still, small voice that ever speaks in quietness. The stillness of the moment at the mother's knee, the prayer repeated in the reverent, low tone of the mother's voice, the earnest prayer for him offered in his presence, the ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... he slapped her full in the face; but as he was raising his hand again, as if he would strike her, she, almost mad with passion, took up a small dessert knife with a silver blade from the table, and stabbed him in the neck, just above the breast bone. Something that he was going to say was cut short in his throat, and he sat there, with his mouth half open, and a terrible ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... set he before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man that sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. And the servants of the householder came and said unto him, 'Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it tares?' And he said unto them, 'An enemy hath done this.' And the servants say unto him, 'Wilt thou ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... juncture you feel a touch on your shoulder. You spin on your heel, feeling at your hip for an imaginary sword. But 'tis not Master Francois Villon, in tattered doublet, with a sonnet. Nor yet is it a jaunty blade, in silken cloak, with a challenge. It is your friend of the obscene photograph collection. He has followed you all the way from 1914 clear back into the Middle Ages, biding his time and hoping you will change your mind about investing in his ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... out like whips of steel. He thought of the cowardly attack upon the helpless girl, the one he loved better than life. Where was she now? Perhaps already she had become the victim of Seth Lupin. The idea was horrible, and his paddle bent as the glittering blade carved the water. But the base Lupin should not escape. He would track him, if necessary, to the farthest bounds. He would find him, and when he had found him ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... met her father. It was important that they should catch Kenwardine's boat, since he must not be allowed to land and finish his business before they arrived. In the meanwhile, he listened to the measured clank of the engine, which quickened when the top blade of the screw swung out. So long as she did not lift the others she would travel well, but by and by he heard a splash in the crank-pit and called to the ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... (36, 37) of Egyptian fragments of tombs, and weapons of war, illustrating the means of killing and the fashion of burial. In the first division are various goms, or Egyptian sceptres and staffs, some of ebony and some of wood; and the blade of a war-axe, with the name of Thothmes III. inscribed upon it. A variety of offensive weapons are arranged in the second division, including bronze war-axes, one with a hollow silver handle; daggers; bows and arrows, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles or by the sword-blade any longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the arm or knee stake—of which a dull, semicircular knife blade, supported upon a suitable standard upon the floor or upon a beam about opposite the worker's elbow is the main feature—is required. The skin must be drawn across this knife blade with a considerable application of force so as to reduce ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... little imagination; what would you have? There is nothing more churlish than our manner of acting; but to resume, what is more to the point, this blade of steel will suffice, for if you refuse to obey my slightest injunction, my lord, I have already said by way of warning that I ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... I embraced him with an exclamation of delight, which was sarcastic in its intent, but which he took for admiration, and he at once unfolded all the treasures of his whimsical knowledge respecting his possessions, ending with the rusty blade which he said was the very knife with which Saint Peter cut off ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly he left off. "Of all the bloomin' ijits! God drat me fer a goat! He'd feel that cut the first slip through ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... hundred and five persons bore their parts in it. Each of them had in his hand an instrument neatly made, shaped somewhat like a paddle, of two feet and a half in length, with a small handle, and a thin blade; so that they were very light. With these instruments they made many and various flourishes, each of which was accompanied with a different attitude of the body, or a different movement. At first, the performers ranged themselves in three ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... blade of grass but has a story to tell, not a heart but has its romance, not a life which does not hide a secret which is either its thorn or its spur. Everywhere grief, hope, comedy, tragedy; even under the petrifaction of old ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... literary tastes and sedentary habits had ill-fitted him for the rough customs of the colony. Besides having scarcely seen a grain of corn in its progressive state from the blade to its earing and harvest, he knew nothing of agricultural operations. Of stock he was equally ignorant, and of the comparative goodness or badness of soil he was, of course, no judge. Such a man, in the choice of a farm, was sure to be shaved by the shrewd Yankee proprietor, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... hangs by a hair. Christina is to be given ten minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall. On the blade there is something written in strange characters. Don't scratch your head; you will ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... could not have been more astonished; he seemed as if his respiration had utterly ceased, and that he was at the point of death. The honest voice of sincerity, as D'Artagnan had called it, had pierced through his heart like a sword blade. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... bloody knife, O man, what hast thou done? Thy daughter dear and only heir her vital end hath won. Come, fatal blade, make like despatch: come, Atropos: come, aid! Strike home, thou careless arm, with speed; ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... little fruit thy labors seem to yield, And when no springing blade appears in all thy barren field; When those whom thou dost seek to win, seem hard, and cold, and dead— Then, weary worker, stay thine heart on what the Lord hath said; And let it give new life to hopes which seem well-nigh destroyed— This promise, that His ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... fire had burned up the whole surface included under that shadow, and had stripped the earth of its clothing. Nothing had escaped; not a head of khennah, not a rose or carnation, not an orange or an orange blossom, not a boccone, not a cluster of unripe grapes, not a berry of the olive, not a blade of grass. Gardens, meadows, vineyards, orchards, copses, instead of rejoicing in the rich variety of hue which lately was their characteristic, were now reduced to one dreary cinder-colour. The smoke of fires was actually rising from many points, where the spoilt ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... that we know, there is none which is so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension indeed, of growing the fig, the olive, the vine, or any other trees of the kind; but in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundredfold, and when the production is greatest, even three hundredfold. The blade of the wheat plant and barley is often four fingers in breadth. As for millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... carbonic acid and the aqueous vapour of the air. The bud appropriates those constituents of both for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the other constituent to return to the atmosphere. Thus the architecture is carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn upon, and the plant augments in size. We have in succession the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular action being ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of the personage in question, and a little dog's face which, from its pointed shape, might have been mistaken for that of a gigantic rat. In fact, it seemed as if a mysterious harmony reigned between these three salient points—the nose of Don Marcasse, his dog's snout, and the blade of his sword. He got up slowly and raised his hand to his hat. The Jansenist cure did the same. The dog thrust its head forward between its master's legs, and, silent like him, showed its teeth and put back its ears ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... proportion; and in her caulking was a species of moss peculiar to the country in which she was built. In the cabin and other parts of the vessel were found a human skull; a pair of goat's horns attached to a part of the cranium; a dirk or poniard, about half an inch of the blade of which had wholly resisted corrosion; several glazed and ornamental tiles of a square form; some bricks which had formed the fire hearth; several parts of shoes, or rather sandals, fitting low on the foot, one of which was apparently in an unfinished state, having a last ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... her; and yet, were it not for the mere matter of sex, he might have looked upon her as a gay and utterly unscrupulous young adventurer of the old type, the kind to bow gallantly to a lady while wiping the stain of wet blood from a knife blade. ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... receives over his shoulder two deep wounds down his back, inflicting injuries from which one side of (p. 433) his face and two fingers of one hand are still partially paralyzed. He received two more wounds under his left shoulder blade, which proved nearly fatal, and received blows about the head and face from the revolver. At last Payne, probably becoming alarmed for his own safety should he spend more time in the house, wrenched himself loose and fled, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... scream, as the first man might have screamed in the face of the first saber-tooth, he hurled his axe among them and sprang forward, flashing the cold, gray blade of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Devonshire, when, with a merry party of boys and girls, I sallied forth to see how nature looked decked in her robe of virgin white. Hill and valley were one sheet of 'innocent snow;' and every twig, leaf, and blade of grass; every spray of the furze and heath; and every broad, drooping leaf of that beautiful fern the hart's tongue (Scolopendrium vulgare), was coated with hoar-frost, and sparkling in the rosy sunbeams like the flowers in a magic garden. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... as a stretched string, and fast. He had a jump ball, which he evidently worked by putting on a little more steam, and it was the speediest thing I ever saw in the way of a shoot. He had a wide-sweeping outcurve, wide as the blade of a mowing scythe. And he had a drop—an unhittable drop. He did not use it often, for it made his catcher dig too hard into the dirt. But whenever he did I glowed all over. Once or twice he used an underhand motion and ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... purpose, and would not it be better served by living gladly in the phenomenal world than by passing beyond it? But such an idea has rarely satisfied Indian thinkers. If, on the other hand, Maya is an evil or at least an imperfection, if it is like rust on a blade or dimness in a mirror, if, so to speak, the edges of Brahman are weak and break into fragments which are prevented by their own feebleness from realizing the unity of the whole, then the mind wonders uneasily if, in spite of all assurances to the contrary, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... broad daylight, and, consequently, there was little cause of immediate alarm, the worthy publican carried on his shoulder a musket on full cock; and each moment he kept peeping about, as if not only every bush, but every blade of grass contained an ambuscade, ready to spring up the instant he was off his guard. By his side the redoubted Jacobina, who had transferred to her new master, the attachment she had originally possessed for the Corporal, trotted peeringly along, her tail ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... over-swayed. He yielded and ladled out in the old-fashioned way, on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed to be the right amount. Henry immediately sank into a heavy sleep. He died before morning. His chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his death was not necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens, unsparing in his ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... like iron. The older man by and by began to flag: more than once his guard was nearly beaten down: nothing but his great skill in swordsmanship, and the coolness that never deserted him, saved him from the sharp edge of Desmond's blade. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... is, sticking from his chest." Ashton-Kirk drew aside the breast of the dead man's coat and his companion caught sight of a bronze hilt. The broad, sword-like blade had been driven ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... is at this moment! The air is filled with rejoicing, with the murmur of an infinite happiness! A tremulous haze hovers over the fields, the insatiate doves reiterate their glad refrain. Around us, here and there, a slender blade of grass shakes beneath the light weight of a butterfly. But is not everything lovely in the eyes of a woman who is talking of love? It is as though happiness were the harbinger of her glance, flying ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... ween It now to investigate is time, Was nothing but the British spleen Transported to our Russian clime. It gradually possessed his mind; Though, God be praised! he ne'er designed To slay himself with blade or ball, Indifferent he became to all, And like Childe Harold gloomily He to the festival repairs, Nor boston nor the world's affairs Nor tender glance nor amorous sigh Impressed him in the least degree,— Callous to all he seemed ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... round the edges of the drawer. If there was no lock to fasten it why had he been unable to open it? He took out his penknife and tried to push the blade into the surrounding space. It would not penetrate, and he saw that there was no space, but merely a cut half an inch deep in the wood. There was no drawer. What seemed a drawer ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Roc-Amadour for the purpose of 'offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.' After his death, if Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the remains of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... or apron tied in several knots to make the head and body. Twice only was the silence broken. One boy quite forgot himself when given a pocket-knife. He looked at it suspiciously and incredulously, turned it over in his hand, opened it and felt the edge of the blade, and, panting ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... upon the knife. John Bull used to laugh at Brother Jonathan for whittling, and Mr. Punch always drew the Yankee with a blade in his fingers; but they found out long ago in Great Britain that whittling in this land led to something, a Boston notion, a wooden clock, a yacht America, a labor-saving machine, a cargo of wooden-ware, a shop full of knick-knacks, an age of inventions. Boys need not be kept back to the hand-craft ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Piazza Sant' Anastasia at the falling-in of the day, for instance. Thus they put it. All girls—and what else was Vanna, a wife in name?—walked there arm in arm. Others walked there also, she must know. By-and-by some pretty lad, an archer, perhaps, from the palace, some roistering blade of a gentleman's lackey, a friar or twinkling monk out for a frolic, came along with an "Eh, la bellina!" and then there was another arm at work. So, for one, whispered La Testolina, dipping a head full of confidence and mystery close to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... a very young lieutenant beside the prince, showing him his sword, "half the blade is covered with blood, and cannot have received the stain except in a Frenchman's body. Yet I cannot ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... my harp, 'Who hath injured thy chords?' And she replied, 'The crooked finger, which I mocked in my tune.' A blade of silver may be bended—a blade of steel abideth— Kindness ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... circumstances, required of the bailiff of Holland and the judges of his court permission to make a like renunciation. The claim was granted; and, to fulfil the requisite ceremony, she walked at the head of the funeral procession, carrying in her hand a blade of straw, which she placed on the coffin. We thus find that in such cases the reigning families were held liable to follow the common usages of the country. From such instances there required but little progress in the principle of equality to reach the republican ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... deepened; a wisp of cloud turned gold; dim distant mountains showed dark against the red; and low down in a notch a rim of fire appeared. Over the soft ridges and valleys crept a wondrous transfiguration. It was as if every blade of grass, every leaf of sage, every twig of cedar, the flowers, the trees, the rocks came to life at sight of the sun. The red disk rose, and a golden fire burned over the glowing face of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... enough to escape the charge. A trooper pursued him, overtook him before he reached the sidewalk, and knocked him down with a quick stroke given with the flat of his blade. His horse struck the boy with one of his hoofs as the lad ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... procession. All the virtues seemed to have come out for an airing in one chariot, and were now waiting to offer their homage to Francis Hercules Valois. Religion in "red satin," holding the gospel in her hand, was supported by Justice, "in orange velvet," armed with blade and beam. Prudence and Fortitude embraced each other near a column enwreathed by serpents "with their tails in their ears to typify deafness to flattery," while Patriotism as a pelican, and Patience as a brooding hen, looked benignantly upon the scene. This greeting duly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were wrong," put in the major. "I hunted up the letter that came with the blade. It is an old Spanish weapon. Let us all call the affair off, and Mr. Montgomery shall come to Clara's wedding ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... bundle of feathers that made gay colour against the grey monotony, feathers of the bluebird, the redbird, blackbird and dove. Scabbardless, tied with a bit of thong close to the feathers, was a knife with a long blade. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... him. Up rose the chair on which Jasper had leaned—up it rose in his right hand, and two of the assailants fell as falls an ox to the butcher's blow. With his left hand he wrenched a knife from a third of the foes, and thus armed with blade and buckler, he sprang on the table, towering over all. Before him was the man with the revolver, a genteeler outlaw than the rest-ticket-of-leave man, who had been transported for forgery. "Shall I shoot him?" whispered this knave to Cutts. Cutts drew back the hesitating arm. "No; the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... extensive series of experiments was made under the writer's direction in 1881, with a large number of models, the primary object being to determine what value there was in a few of the various twists which inventive ingenuity can give to a screw blade. The results led the experimenters to the conclusion that in free water such twists and curves are valueless as serving to augment efficiency. The experiments were then carried further with a view to determine quantitative ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a kris from Malay, with a blade which undulates like a flame; look at these grooves for the blood to drip from, these teeth reversed so as to tear out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon; it is a fine specimen of a ferocious weapon, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... knowed a man could have as many faults as what she used t' name over fer me." He drained his cup and sighed with great content. "At that, I stayed with her seven months and fourteen days," he boasted. "I admit, two of them months I was laid up with a busted ankle an' shoulder blade. Tunnel caved in ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... seized hold of the whip and with irresistible strength drew it from the Queen's hand. But she drew from her bosom a sharp dagger and with the swiftness of lightning aimed a blow at Inga's heart. He merely stood still and smiled, for the blade rebounded and fell clattering to ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Pecksniff? When did you come to town? DO begin at something or other, Tom. There are only scraps here, but they are not at all bad. Boar's Head potted. Try it, Tom. Make a beginning whatever you do. What an old Blade you are! I ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... their songs of war And chant their hymns of splendid death, Let others praise the soldiers' ways And hail the cannon's flaming breath. Let others sing of Glory's fields Where blood for Victory is paid, I choose to sing some simple thing To those who wield not gun or blade— The ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... where the detectives were standing, and examined the blade beneath the light. It was bright, and had apparently been recently cleaned. It might have been cleaned and oil smeared upon it after the commission of the crime. Yet as far as I could discern with the naked eye there was no evidence that it had ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... arms bare, a cigarette in his mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn in India. The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as he struck the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for them to see and to admire his nautical ability. They thought all his jokes amusing, and they delighted in his way of seizing his partner for a waltz and bearing her off as if she were a prize, hardly allowing her ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... laughingly gave the girl a rough embrace: it was the last act he had to record before entering the spirit world. Hilda drew from her bosom one of the daggers which Jean had noticed on the tower walls, whose blade, still sharp and keen, might have been forged by a Damascus smith; it struck deep to the heart of the ruffian, who fell lifeless into the waves. Jean had now freed the craft, but the respite was short: before ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... so much credit among men. Alas, all that is about him, not in him. If you buy a horse you see him bare of saddle and cloths. When you judge of a man, why consider his wrappings only? In a sword it is the quality of the blade, not the value of the scabbard, to which you give heed. A man should be judged by what he is himself, not ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... that he would never deviate from the path of virtue again, now that his evil genius was removed, if they would only let him come back and graduate, that he was given the chance. Nothing new came up about the cutting of the wires except that the end of a knife blade was found on the floor under the place where the hole had been made in the wall. There were no marks of identification on it and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... as it crept in and nearer to the shaded rays of the lamp. Carey could even see that the black had his club and the curved knife-like blade of his boomerang stuck behind in the coarse hair girdle he wore ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... cried to Phelim in the Gaelic that we had but a half mile more, and I felt the flagging oar of Fergus take up the work afresh, with a swifter swirl of the water round its blade as he pulled, while Phelim muttered words in Latin which doubtless were of thanks. I heard him name one Clement, who, as I have heard since, is the patron saint of seamen. The boat leapt and quivered again as she ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... in at the Roman, throwing himself with all his force against him. He partially warded, with his sword, the blow which the Roman struck at him as he came in; but his weapon was beaten down, and the Roman blade cut through his thick headdress. But the impetus of his spring was sufficient. The Roman, taken by surprise by this sudden attack, tottered, and then fell with a crash, John falling on ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... pages of grave chroniclers of modern date, to say nothing of what books of fiction tell, and what we observe with our own eyes, in the actual world. The truth is, Love smites his victims, just when and where he finds them. Mr. Lansdowne's case then, is not an unprecedented one. The keen Damascus blade, used to pierce our hero and bring him to the pitiful condition of the conquered, had been placed in the hand of Adele. Whether Love intended to employ that young lady in healing the cruel wound she had ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... not plentiful [38] among them; as may be inferred from the nature of their weapons. Swords or broad lances are seldom used; but they generally carry a spear, (called in their language framea, [39]) which has an iron blade, short and narrow, but so sharp and manageable, that, as occasion requires, they employ it either in close or distant fighting. [40] This spear and a shield are all the armor of the cavalry. The foot have, besides, missile weapons, several to each man, which they hurl to ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... produced—was the tone of Galbraith's voice. It rang on her ear a little sharper, louder, and with more of a staccato bruskness than the directions he was giving called for. And it was not his practise to put more cutting edge into his blade, or more power behind his stroke, than was necessary to accomplish what he wanted. He was excited, therefore. But was it by the completeness of her success or the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... wits, and once more stretch the line, Philander's keen blade of Damascus steel is pressed against the rope, and as it comes ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... wonder, a close, hard, and covetous fellow, if he happens to be in love, as iron in fire, becomes pliable and soft, easy, good-natured, and very pleasant; as if there were something in that common jest. A lover's purse is tied with the blade of a leek. Others said that love was like drunkenness; it makes men warm, merry, and dilated; and, when in that condition, they naturally slide down to songs and words in measure; and it is reported of Aeschylus, that ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... is placed by universal acclaim, his companions being Go no Yoshihiro and Fujiwara Yoshimitsu.* In Muromachi days so much depended on the sword that military men thought it worthy of all honour. A present of a fine blade was counted more munificent than a gift of a choice steed, and on the decoration of the scabbard, the guard, and the hilt extraordinary skill was expended. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a wonderful expert in metals, Goto Yujo, devoted himself to the production of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... said Amos reassuringly; "'twa'n't a good oar. The blade was split; 'twas liable to harm somebody. He'll not ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... diverted by the capeadores, is now left to face his doom at the hands of the expert espada. Bull and man slowly approach, eyeing each other as those whose quarrel is to the death, whilst the notes of the music sound low and mournful. Within arm's length the espada extends his shining blade. He glances along it; the bull leaps forward to charge; there is a swift thrust; the blade goes home in that fatal spot which only the expert knows; and tottering, swaying, and falling, the noble bull leans over and falls prone to the dust. He raises ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... darted into the kitchen. Not for a moment did he rest content at any spot until he had investigated every corner. Wasn't that a boyish trait? When the whole house had been exhausted, he was over at the water wheel, and the boys followed, but they did not take in every arm and blade of the wheel, as he did. Then to the shop, and always leading the boys, who were after him ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... him in the narrow cut, yelled with surprise, and turned. He dropped a spear as he turned, and Kettle picked it up and drove the blade between his shoulder-blades as he ran. Then on through the village he raged like a man demented. With what weapons he fought he never afterward remembered. He slew with whatever came to his hand. The villagers, wakened up from their torpid sleep, rushed from the grass and wattle houses on every ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... impatiently, "time is passing, and once lost can never be found again. Show me the way to the young Baron Otto or—." And he whetted the shining blade of his dagger on ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... The ladies begin to appear in the background, ready to greet the players, and to tell the truth, are not very welcome to the nervous golfer. Everything turns on half an inch of leather in a "drive," or a stiff blade of grass in a putt, and the interest is wound up to a really breathless pitch. Happy he is who does not in his excitement "top" his ball into the neighbouring brook, or "heel" it and send it devious down to the depths of ocean. Happy is he who ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... his wardrobe trunk are getting loose, and the side of it has been stove in; his heels are running down in back, his watch needs regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is running out of notebooks and pencils and has broken a blade of his knife in trying to open a bottle with it (because he left his corkscrew in a hotel somewhere along the way). His fountain pen has sprung a leak and spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop is nicked, and he has run out of the kind of cigarettes and cigars ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... fight, louder swelled the din and tumult with the never-ceasing thunder of the guns; and amid it all Don Miguel paced to and fro, impassive as always, the blade of his long rapier gleaming here and there ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... served. He has the largest run of work, as of old; and his income is sufficient not only to meet increased expenses, but to leave a surplus at the end of every year. He is the bright, sharp knife, always in use; not the idle blade, which had so narrowly escaped, falling from the window, rusting to utter worthlessness in the dew ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... about the same, so is the width of the leaves. But the terminal branches of the Spanish Chestnut being much stronger, the leaves can safely be heavier; hence the width being fixed, they grow in length and assume the well-known and peculiar sword-blade shape. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... got a package from Washington. It contained a tin-type of herself; a card with a hole in it (made evidently by having been forced over a button), on which was her name and the old address in town; then there was a ring and a saber, and on the blade of the saber was etched, "Presented to Lieutenant Jas. Dillon, for bravery on the field of battle." At the bottom of the parcel was a note in a strange hand, saying simply, "Found on the body of Lieutenant Dillon after the battle ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... say, there is nothing remarkable in that, as I am not in love with any one, and hope I never shall be. I wonder where Kit can have gone to: will you get up there, Mr. Desmond, and look?" Breaking off a tiny blade of grass from the bank near her, she puts it between her pretty teeth, and slowly nibbles it with an air of utter indifference to all the world that drives Mr. Desmond nearly ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... assist a comrade. Soon afterwards, the doctor, in answer to a telephonic summons, appeared at my H.Q. On our way to reach Fry we were both knocked down in the trench by a 4.2, which also wounded Corporal Rockall in the shoulder-blade. I regret that Fry, though safely moved from the trenches the same night, had received a mortal wound. In him died a fine example of the platoon officer. He met his wound in the course of a trivial duty which, had I guessed that he would do it under heavy shelling, I should have forbidden ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... will save you. The Almighty Himself can't save you there. You will be dead and forgotten in a month. What's more, you will have to drive your own waggon in, for your Kaffirs won't, they know better. A Bible won't turn the blade ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... or what might more properly be called an oil-stone, was discovered at the Breen cabin. On this stone were the initials "J. F. R.," which had evidently been cut into its surface with a knife-blade. Mrs. V. E. Murphy and Mrs. Frank Lewis, the daughters of James F. Reed, at once remembered this whetstone as having belonged to their father, and ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... lake, he hastens to it—lo! it dries before him. The deep blue, bright, refulgent eye, piercing through all the worlds, with wisdom brightens the dark gloom, the darkness for a moment is dispelled. As when the blade shoots through the yielding earth, the clouds collect and we await the welcome shower, then a fierce wind drives the big clouds away, and so with disappointed hope we watch the dried-up field! Deep darkness reigned for want of ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... told me the King had just refused to put on his quilted under-waistcoat; that he had consented to wear it on the 14th of July because he was merely going to a ceremony where the blade of an assassin was to be apprehended, but that on a day on which his party might fight against the revolutionists he thought there was something cowardly in preserving his ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the fish, and bringing one up with a finger under its gill and a finger in its eyes. He laid it on the edge of the pen; the knife-blade glimmered with a sound of tearing, and the fish, slit from throat to vent, with a nick on either side of the neck, dropped at Long ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... highest value; we had no opportunities however to examine this matter farther. The hammered-iron, brass, and iron tools, I brought away with me; but we found a tool exactly in the form of a carpenter's adze, the blade of which was a pearl oyster-shell; possibly this might have been made in imitation of an adze which had belonged to the carpenter of the Dutch ship, for among the tools that I brought away there was one which seemed to be the remains of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the earth grew glad; Radiant each blade of grass, each living thing. What a huge strength, high hope, proud will I had! All the wide world with rapture seemed to ring. Would she but wed me? YES: then fared we forth ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... reflections from the "Odyssey": "Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to love immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent"; or "Too much rest itself becomes a pain"; or still better, "The steel blade itself often incites to deeds of violence." We may have more doubt whether it is psychologically true when we read: "Few sons are equal to their sires, most of them are less worthy, only a few are superior to their fathers"; or, "Though thou lovest ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... with a sudden inrush. 'Accursed sorcerer!' he shrieked furiously, and seizing Muzzio by the throat with one hand, with the other he felt for the dagger in his girdle, and plunged the blade into his ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... reinforcements were pouring along in unbroken streams from the great centres of Russian military power. The fierce Cossack from the Don and the Dneister, the Tartar from the Ukraine, the beetle-browed and predatory Baschkir, with all their variety of wild uniform, and "helm and blade" glancing in the summer's sun, crowded on the great military thoroughfares, while fresh supplies of well-appointed and formidable artillery were carefully transmitted. The foundries of Russia were blazing in the manufacture of warlike weapons; and the workshops of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pony. Terence Murphy is giving him his riding lesson. He sits in the saddle as straight as his father, although he is little more than a baby. He will have Anthony's straight, strenuous, clean look, like a blade or a flame. ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... portions now lying either side of the gulch. That gold was distributed far down the creek, carried by glacier and stream. Casey found indications and worked up to where he believed he had struck the mother vein. He did strike it but it had been worn down like the blade ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a stone to keep a keen edge on the axe. No one can do good work with a dull blade, and an edge that has been nicked by chopping into the ground or hitting a stone ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... blushes pass To be so poor and weak, He falls into the dewy grass, To cool his fevered cheek; And hears a music strangely made, That you have never heard, A sprite in every rustling blade, That sings like ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of smoke have a positive genius for making the obscure obscurer, are thought to be original, because they are so chaotic and clumsy. But we have yet to learn that lead is priceless because it is weighty, or that gold is valueless because it glitters. The Damascus blade is none the less keen because it is polished, nor the Corinthian shaft less strong because it is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... unbelieving. She moved through my days and through my dreams, as the rose-cloud moved upon the mountain sky. She floated between me and my sick. She hovered above me and my dying. She was a mist between me and my books. Once when I took the knife for a dangerous operation, the steel blade caught a sunbeam and flashed; and I looked at the flash—it seemed to contain a new world—and I thought: "She is my own. I am a happy man!" But I was sorry for my patient. I was not rough with him. And ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... singing with it; so the neighbor woman's daughter, who had been peering from behind the fanning-mill, hurried away to the house. And thus it came about that no one but a vagrant night-hawk, perched high on the top of the stack, remained near enough to hear the sawing sound of a dull knife-blade, making ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... which he has unconsciously acquired—to be like the trees and animals, outside of the sad atmosphere of human life and its eternal tragedy! A vain effort and a vain thought, since that from which I sought to escape came from nature itself, from every visible thing; every leaf and flower and blade was eloquent of it, and the very sunshine, that gave life and brilliance to all things, was turned to darkness ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... luxuriant cabbage; it can raise infinite varieties of roses, tulips, and pansies, but can create no new plant, fruit, or flower. Man can make a steam-engine, or a watch, but he cannot make a fly, a midge, or blade of grass. He is an ingenious compiler, but not a creator; and his powers of manufacture and conversion are restricted within narrow boundaries. He cannot wander far in the indulgence of his fancies without being recalled, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... watched her as our column drew nearer, and she pulled her pony to one side to let it pass. I felt as though I were marching in review before an empress, and I all but lifted my sword-blade in salute. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... who measured some of the stones of the Incan palace at Cuzco tells us there were stones so nicely adjusted that it was impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between them, and that some of those stones were thirty-eight feet long, by eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick. What a descent for the "Children of the Sun"! "How are the mighty fallen!" Thoughts ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the bonze ventured to reply, "is enough to make you laugh! They amount to this: there existed in the west, on the bank of the Ling (spiritual) river, by the side of the San Sheng (thrice-born) stone, a blade of the Chiang Chu (purple pearl) grass. At about the same time it was that the block of stone was, consequent upon its rejection by the goddess of works, also left to ramble and wander to its own gratification, and to roam about at pleasure to every and any place. One day it came within ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... recalled the experiences of the day, from the time he received the present directly after breakfast. He had tested the implement many times in the course of the forenoon and afternoon, and by and by remembered snapping the big blade shut and slipping it into his pocket as he was going out of the house to the post office to perform his ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... was sent on shore to cut wood for fuel, and grass for the sheep; but they would not permit a blade of grass to be cut till they ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back of his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his adherents to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for Khoda Dad Khan had been at some pains ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... another, extracting a few grains of the black, oil-soaked stuff on the point of a knife blade. "No wonder your wheel won't turn. How on earth ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... may become the rival of the great seaports and centres of capital, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, is without the field of discussion. It is not more possible than that a magnetized knife-blade should exert a more powerful attraction than the largest lodestone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the dry season; but now my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was scarce possible to keep from it; as first, the goats, and wild creatures which I called hares, which, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day, as soon as it came up, and ate it so close, that it could get no time to shoot ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... to see the black ground covered. By-and-by a few flakes sauntered down, coquetting as to where they would alight; then a few more followed, thickening and thickening until the whole upper air was alive with them, and the frozen ridges whitened along their backs, and every little stiff blade of grass or rush or dead bush held all it could carry. It was pleasant to see the quiet wonder go on, until the landscape was completely changed,—to walk home scuffing the snow from the frozen road on which my feet had ground as I came that way, and see the fences full, and the hollows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... of the meadow in spring; yellow hair, as coarse as rock-moss, fell over his shoulders; and his nose was turned up till it reached his forehead; his ears were scarce larger than a man's thumb-nail, and his mouth than the blade of a pipe. It would have been a matter of wonder with the Nanticoke, how he could get the victuals into such a little mouth, if he had not been employed in noting the odd actions of the strange creature, and in listening to the tones of his voice, which resembled ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... salient thus went out of existence. The entire point in the blade of the dagger that had been thrust at the heart of France had been bitten off. Verdun with its rows upon rows of sacred dead was now liberated from the threat of envelopment from the right. The Allies were in possession of the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the tiny, shiny city, When I shot a glance below, Shaken with a giddy laughter, Sick and blissfully afraid, Was a dew-drop on a blade, And a pair of moments after Was the whirling guess I made,— And the ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... any thing their own country produced. They asked for it by the name of hamaite, probably referring to some instrument, in the making of which iron could be usefully employed; for they applied that name to the blade of a knife, though we could be certain that they had no idea of that particular instrument, nor could they at all handle it properly. For the same reason they frequently called iron by the name of toe, which, in their language, signifies ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... eyes as I heard the steel clash. Then very soon came silence. I looked again, and saw Ringan wiping his blade on a bunch of grass, and a body lying ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... yes, it was a run, if it was anything at all; but such a run! Their limbs felt like lead, and Walford's weight seemed to them enough to drag them down to the very centre of the earth. Every individual blade of grass seemed to be invested with the toughness of a hempen cable, and to trail directly across their path for the express purpose of retarding their progress and tripping them up. Their breath was gone; their mouths were ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... were seized and devoured, the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterwards with a pocket knife, soon forced us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour was to ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... girls on Asteroid 57GM. This place didn't have anything excepting a lonely shack with paper-thin walls made of special heat-insulating material. There wasn't a blade of grass; not a puff of wind; no soil for violets; not even a symmetrical shape, it was lopsided like a beaten-up baseball. Or at least that was what I thought until something happened to the ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,—and never mind the crown and the sceptre. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man for a few days to help replace ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... small, oval affairs, rather hard to open until a thin knife blade was inserted between the two parts of each. One contained a miniature of an old lady in court dress and the other a portrait of an elderly gentleman, with powdered wig and gold-rimmed spectacles. The face of each was ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... of veal, and a calf's foot, and one pound of chorissa, and a large fowl, in four quarts of water, add a piece of fresh lemon peel, six Jerusalem artichokes, a bunch of sweet herbs, a little salt and white pepper, and a little nutmeg, and a blade of mace; when the fowl is thoroughly done, remove the white parts to prepare for thickening, and let the rest continue stewing till the stock is sufficiently strong, the white parts of the fowl must be pounded and sprinkled with flower or ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... their ponies. There was a wire fence on both sides of the lane, and almost at the end of the lane an old cow had her head between the wires and was nibbling the tall dead grass. The larger of the two boys said, "That's old Pendry's cow, and she shan't eat a blade ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... received the coup-de-grace. I also should undoubtedly have received my quietus, had I not had the presence of mind to exclaim in French, just as a stalwart mountaineer was bending over me with his long glittering blade upraised, that I was an Englishman. The man hesitated for an instant, and that slight pause saved me. I rapidly explained who and what I was, and another individual, apparently the leader of the band, approaching at the moment, I was reprieved until an opportunity ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... garnished with an iron button at the head, and a long thin tapering head of coarse bad iron [16], made at Berberah and other places by the Tomal. The length of the shaft may be four feet eight inches; the blade varies from twenty to twenty-six inches, and the whole weapon is about seven feet long. Some polish the entire spear-head, others only its socket or ferule; commonly, however, it is all blackened by heating ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... them from behind him to his side. It seemed to him as though Nature herself had paused to watch and listen. He turned now with his free hand beneath him. Slowly his fingers crept towards his chest, grasped the sheath, freed the blade, and then back to his side once more. He turned to his back, his hand behind him, his fingers grasping ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... aid was even more effectively given and in nine months Zeppelin III. was in the air. More powerful than its predecessors it met with a greater measure of success. On one of its trials a propeller blade flew off and penetrated the envelope, but the ship returned to earth in safety. In October, 1906, the Minister of War reported that the airship was extremely stable, responded readily to her helm, had carried eleven persons sixty-seven miles in ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... and had grasped him by the mane. The lion reared upon his hind legs like a horse—Tarzan had known that he would do this, and he was ready. A giant arm encircled the black-maned throat, and once, twice, a dozen times a sharp blade darted in and out of the bay-black side behind ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... says I, and made a lunge at my Count; but he sprang back (the dog was as active as a hare, and knew, from old times, that I was his master with the small-sword), and his second, wondering, struck up my blade. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Bennett always left Mess after that toast, and being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem on the table, when the Chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade. Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the Chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked him desperately in the stomach. Mr Bennett gasped and doubled up, but without relaxing his grip, rolled ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... near Lafitte, who raised his dagger to stab him to the heart. But the tide of his existence was ebbing like a torrent, his brain was giddy, his aim faltered and the point descended in the Captain's right thigh; dragging away the blade with the last convulsive energy of a death struggle, he lacerated the wound. Again the reeking steel was upheld, and Lafitte placed his left hand near the Captain's heart, to make his aim more sure; again the dizziness of dissolution spread over his sight, down came the dagger into ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... hill-side stood in mystical gloom, in silence that could be felt; when at once,—not suddenly,—as if the night could forbear no more, but must utter some chord with the culmination of midnight horrors, a bird uttered one sharp cry, desolate utterly, hopeless, concentred, as if a keen blade parted its heart and the outraged life within remonstrated and despaired,—despaired not of life, for still the note repeated its monotone, but of death, of period to its pangs. That cry entered into my brain; it was unjust of Nature so ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... tumult of revolt, but he sensibly drove his feelings through his muscles to the blade of his oar, and said nothing. Nance and Bernel were not likely to have gone to these lengths without what seemed to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... lungs came forth. Then by a single impulse the little army rushed forward, led by Ned, Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther, who took them straight toward the mound. As they ran, the great Texan sun proved triumphant. It seemed to cleave the fog like a sword blade, and then the mists and vapors rolled away on either side, to right and to left of the Texans. The whole plain, dewy and fresh, sprang up in the light ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Bill, with great respect. Every man heard the title, stopped his tongue and his knife-blade, and raised his eyes; a few smiled—Hence Sturgill grinned. Mayhall stared, and Bill's left eye closed and opened with lightning quickness in a most portentous wink. Mayhall straightened his shoulders—seeing the game, as did the crowd at once: Flitter Bill was impressing ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... on the altar-steps were three figures; behind the altar a space of gloom, from whence issued the soft, clear singing of the choristers. Then, suddenly, into that clear sweet singing broke a loud blare of trumpets; a man bounded on to the altar-steps; there was the flash of a blade—a shriek—a fall; then the roar of a crowd, sullen, and distant, and awful. It is the cry of a great city; and this poor crouching fugitive, who hides behind the fountain in the Place, is watching for his chance to dart away into some place of safety. But the crowd have let him pass; they ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... before the tepee, Jones strode up and down, suddenly to whip out his knife and make for the tame little musk-oxen, now digging the snow. Then he wheeled abruptly and held out the blade to Rea. ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... was a spare man, and his bald head, garnished with a few spare locks at the back of it, was pear-shaped in conformation. His sunken eyes, overtopped by heavy black brows and surrounded by discolored circles, his nose, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife, the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin, contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance,—something between ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... rises to his legs again; since rescue cannot be nobly purchased save by victory. (31) Let him again bring the weapon to bear in the same fashion, and make a lunge at a point within the shoulder-blade, where lies the throat; (32) and planting his body firmly press with all his force. (33) The boar, by dint of his might and battle rage, will still push on, and were it not that the teeth of the lance-blade hindered, (34) would push his way up ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... seemed only fired to a greater zeal and made assault more fiercely. Quite naturally, it seemed clear to us both, and especially to me, that they were robbers, and of the most dangerous sort. So I forthwith drew the blade which I carry hidden under my cloak for such emergencies, and threw myself, undismayed, into the midst of these highwaymen. One after another, as they successively tried to withstand me, I ran them through, until ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... savage lunge, but Frank deftly caught the blade upon his own, and the next instant they were engaged in a ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... courser's speed, Perchance they did not hear nor heed: 390 It vexes me—for I would fain Have paid their insult back again. I paid it well in after days: There is not of that castle gate, Its drawbridge and portcullis' weight, Stone—bar—moat—bridge—or barrier left; Nor of its fields a blade of grass, Save what grows on a ridge of wall, Where stood the hearth-stone of the hall; And many a time ye there might pass, 400 Nor dream that e'er the fortress was. I saw its turrets in a blaze, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... grated lemon peel, a nutmeg, and half a wine-glass of brandy; butter the pan, and bake it an hour; when it is nearly cold, ice it. If you want a very large cake, double the quantity. You can tell when a cake is done by running in a broom-straw, or the blade of a bright knife; if it comes out without sticking, it is done, but if not, set it back. You can keep a cake a great while in a stone pan that has a ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... with Laconians, fellows I trust no more than I would so many famished wolves? The whole thing, my friends, is nothing else but an attempt to re-establish Tyranny. But I will never submit; I will be on my guard for the future; I will always carry a blade hidden under myrtle boughs; I will post myself in the Public Square under arms, shoulder to shoulder with Aristogiton;[435] and now, to make a start, I must just break a few of that cursed old ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... bundle on the table, on which were papers, and, noticeably, a dagger, brilliant, wicked, thin as a shadow. On the blade was ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... this time was the State murder of Overbury, and the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, one of England's noblest sons, brave and chivalric, who, at the executioner's block, took the axe in his hand, kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." These and kindred acts serve to illustrate the history of a king whose personal and selfish interests overruled all sentiments of honor and regard for his subjects, and who publicly declared that "he would govern ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... see how, like one who uses a trip-hammer, he drew the iron under the rapidly-plied axe, until the round spike was a narrow, thin blade about six inches in length. Then shifting the angle of the iron a little, he directed Regnar how to beat down one side to an edge, and lastly how to curve the flat of the blade a little at the point, or rather end. Then, producing several small pieces ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... should be ground with a bevel on each side, and not on one side only, as is customary with a plasterer's lathing hatchet, because the blade of the hatchet is used for trimming off the edges of boards. Unless ground off with a bevel on both sides it cannot be controlled to cut accurately. A light hatchet is preferable to a heavy one. It should never be used for nailing ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... people, they had forgotten for a moment the stranded boat and its small occupant. As they looked again, they saw she had stuck the oars in the mud, blade down, and was now evidently lashing them to the oar-locks. This done, she stood up and slipped off the blue flannel skirt of her little sailor suit, standing up in her short white petticoat. She hung the ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... auditorium, hires benches and distributes programmes. And then—admitting his recitations to be highly successful—yet all that honour and glory falls within one or two days, prematurely gathered like grass in the blade or flowers in their earliest bloom: it has no sure or solid reward, wins no friendship or following or lasting gratitude, naught save a transient applause, empty words of praise and ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... on this reaction. Whispers went about of strange and threatening orders of arms at Birmingham. A correspondent at the midland capital informed Dundas at the end of September that a Dr. Maxwell, of York, had ordered 20,000 daggers, which were to be 12 inches in the blade and 5 1/4 inches in the handle. The informant convinced the manufacturer that he must apprise the Home Secretary of this order and send him a specimen of the weapon. Probably it was the same which Burke ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... piece clipped from the blade of a safety razor, and keenly sharp. Anyone inserting a finger into the glove would certainly be cut by the razor edge of that sharp scrap of steel. As it lay upon the polished oak I bent to look at it, the valet also standing near ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... there is a cylindrical furnace, and alongside of it there is a well of oil. The car brings the cannon to the edge of the ditch, and a steam crane performs the operation of tempering with as much ease as we would temper a knife blade. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... as they looked,— That Poet stared as fierce as any! He was a mighty proper man, With blade on hip and inches many; The beaux all vowed it was their duty To toast some ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... But we must never forget that all things, not self-contradictory, are possible with God. It is just as possible and easy for him to crystallize the billows of an ocean as to freeze a drop of dew on a blade of grass. At the command of Moses they enter this avenue through the deep, walled by the waves, and roofed by the sky. Surely no eyes but theirs ever witnessed so ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... natural and proper, as he was armed and painted as if for war, his grim-countenance hideously bedaubed on one side with vermillion, and the other with black; a long scalping-knife, without sheath or cover, swinging from his wampum belt; while a hatchet, the blade and handle both of steel, was grasped in his hand. In this guise, and with a wild and demoniacal glitter of eye, that seemed the result of mingled drunkenness and insanity, the old chief stalked and limped up to the prisoner, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... there in the shallows. There was very little foothold on them, but they made excellent nesting places for the ducks that came to the station each year. The boat grounded its nose in the soft mud, and Norah jumped up to push it off. Planting the blade of the oar among the reeds, she leant her weight upon ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... had once more turned to look at the dock, and Andy could not resist the chance to play a little trick on him. Skillfully judging the distance, he suddenly swept back his left oar, so that the flat blade caught the crest of a long roller and a salty spray flew in a ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... that green, shady, smiling land is a carpet of flowers of an incomparable variety of colours. The animals are small and extremely gentle—delicate and playful turtle-doves, blackbirds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, tufted larks which almost venture under the feet of the traveller, little river-tortoises with mild bright eyes, storks of gravely modest mien, which, casting aside all timidity, allow men to come quite near them, and indeed seem to invite ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... writers were ashamed of their heroic style. I have never been able to understand what attraction there can be in coarseness. The coarse work is generally left for the apprentice. Everything coarse, be it a block, a wedge, or a blade, passes as unfinished, as raw, jagged, and just the reverse of cutting. No one is proud of a coarse shirt, but many, even quite distinguished people, proudly strut about the streets in a coarse smock of abusive language, quite unconcernedly, without ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... from under the thwart an old shoe-knife which had been ground down to one third of its original width. It had been well sharpened for this important occasion, but he had provided an old whetstone as a further precaution against a dull blade. To skin a perch neatly and expeditiously is a nice operation; but Paul had had sufficient practice in the art to render him a skilful hand. Seating himself on the lee rail, he commenced work in earnest, occasionally glancing up to see that the boat ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... the "Frederick Herald," writing from Little Rock, says, "Anthony's knife was about twenty-eight inches in length. They all carry knives here, or pistols. There are several kinds of knives in use—a narrow blade, and about twelve inches long, is called ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fine to the king: but evermore the relations of the murdered person seek for revenge upon the murderer or his kindred; so that the more they kill one another the more fines come to the king. The ordinary weapon, which they all wear, is a dagger, called a criss, about two feet long, with a waved blade, crooked to and fro indenture ways, like what is called a flaming sword, and exceedingly sharp, most of them being poisoned, so that not one among five hundred wounded in the body escapes with life. The handles of these weapons are of horn or wood, curiously carved in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... "Whistle thrice upon a blade of grass," she answered, "and the bird will fly to thee. Then place the ring about his neck and bid him hasten to the Fairy ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... of these days. But if I had my life to live over again, I think I should go in for silence, and get as near to Nirvana as I could. This language is such a paltry tool! The handle of it cuts and the blade doesn't. You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean by a word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other people's difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and thought is a ground swell. A string of words, that ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... shank is good for a number of diseases; missing link root is for colds and asthma. George said this is a sure cure for asthma. Fever grass is a purgative when taken in the form of a tea. The blades are steeped in hot water and a tea made. Fever grass is a wide blade grass growing straighter than most grass. It has a blue flower and is found growing wild around many places in Florida. It is plentiful in certain parts ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... smelling the acrid odor of blood. Thor, the brutal god with the little head, was stretching his biceps and clutching the hammer that crushed cities. Wotan was sharpening his lance which had the lightning for its handle, the thunder for its blade. Odin, the one-eyed, was gaping with gluttony on the mountain-tops, awaiting the dead warriors that would crowd around his throne. The dishevelled Valkyries, fat and perspiring, were beginning to gallop from cloud to cloud, hallooing to humanity that they might carry off the corpses doubled like ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... turned the brighter part of his character up to the light. He performed miracles of valor—achieved for himself a name and a post-captain's rank in the infant navy and finally was permitted to retire with a bullet lodged under his shoulder blade, a piece of silver trepanned in the top of his skull, a deep sword-cut across his face from the right temple over his nose to the left cheek—and with the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... as though everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb. The cut bled profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated digits up. It was late ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... grieved Gawaine sore, and he bled sore. Then the knight said to Sir Gawaine, bind thy wound or thy blee[ding] change, for thou be-bleedest all thy horse and thy fair arms, for all the barbers of Brittany shall not con staunch thy blood, for whosomever is hurt with this blade he shall never be staunched of bleeding. Then answered Gawaine, it grieveth me but little, thy great words shall not fear me nor lessen my courage, but thou shalt suffer teen and sorrow or we depart, but tell me in haste who may staunch my bleeding. That may I do, said the knight, if I ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... a man have stepped into the parlor a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... is but begun. A joyful paean swells within my breast, And I must mouth it, else this heart will burst! (Sings) We'll smite the grafters; smite them hip and thigh; Our motto shall be ever, "Do or die." We've got 'em on the run, And with every rising sun, We'll oil the new machine; Its blade we'll sharpen keen. Revenge shall fill the goblet to the brim, And "Pleasure saturnine" shall be our hymn. Francos, applauding: 'Twere well, sweet Quezox! Thou in happy tone Hast voiced a noble sentiment in rhyme. But lurking in my mem'ry it doth seem That I recall in part those words ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... enormously tall, quite as tall as Umslopogaas, I should say, and beautifully, though somewhat slightly, shaped; but with the face of a devil. In his right hand he held a spear about five and a half feet long, the blade being two and a half feet in length, by nearly three inches in width, and having an iron spike at the end of the handle that measured more than a foot. On his left arm was a large and well-made elliptical shield of buffalo hide, on which were painted ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... full of May. Nature hath prodigally enriched thee with her favors, and virtue made thee the mirror of her excellence; and now, through the decree of the unjust stars, to have all these good parts nipped in the blade, and blemished by the inconstancy of fortune! Ah, Rosader, could I help thee, my grief were the less, and happy should my death be, if it might be the beginning of thy relief: but seeing we perish both in one extreme, it is a double sorrow. What shall I do? prevent the sight of his ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... wooden-handled with a straight edge, transverse to the axis and bevelled on one side; stone masons' chisels are bevelled on both sides, and others have oblique, concave or convex edges. A chisel with a semicircular blade is called a "gouge." The tool is worked either by hand-pressure or by blows from a hammer or mallet. The "cold chisel" has a steel edge, highly tempered to cut unheated metal. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... material is not found in quantity in nature. The bayas have, therefore, to manufacture it. This is easily done. The building weaver-bird betakes itself to a clump of elephant-grass, and, perching on one of the blades, makes a notch in another near the base. Then, grasping with its beak the edge of this blade above the notch, the baya flies away and thus strips off a narrow strand. Sometimes the strand adheres to the main part of the blade at the tip so firmly that the force of the flying baya is not sufficient to sever it. The bird then swings for a few ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... scribbled his name below mine; and then, holding the leaf before my eyes, pointed to the signature—but without saying a word. This done, he replaced the document on the stump; and drawing his knife, stuck the blade through the paper, and left the weapon quivering in the wood! All these manoeuvres were gone through with as cool composure, as if they were only the prelude to some ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... over in his bed he called out, "Please, dear Sun, take me with you again." So the sunbeams caught him up a second time, and they flew through the air till the noon-time, when it grew warmer and warmer, and there was no red rose to hide him, not even a blade of grass to shade his tired head; but just as he was crying out, "Please, King Sun, let me go back to the dear mother Ocean," the wind took pity on him, and came with its cool breath and fanned him, with all his brothers, into a heavy gray cloud, after ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... name and I have heard them say they could not look in his eyes. He does not affect me that way. It is not often I can get him to talk, but sometimes he tells me beautiful thing about the woods; how he lives in the wilderness, his home under the great trees; how every leaf on the trees and every blade of grass has its joy for him as well as its knowledge; how he curls up in his little bark shack and is lulled to sleep by the sighing of the wind through the pine tops. He told me he has often watched the stars for hours at a time. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... soon he manned his noble heart, And in the first career they ran, The Elfin Knight fell, horse and man; Yet did a splinter of his lance Through Alexander's visor glance, And razed the skin—a puny wound. The King, light leaping to the ground, With naked blade his phantom foe Compelled the future war to show. Of Largs he saw the glorious plain, Where still gigantic bones remain, Memorial of the Danish war; Himself he saw, amid the field, On high his brandished ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... a spacious park, the undulating ground here turning a broad lawn towards the beams that silvered every blade of grass; there, curving away in banks of velvet green; shadowed by the trees; gnarled old thorns in the holiday suit whence they take their name, giant's nosegays of horse-chestnuts, mighty elms and stalwart oaks, singly or in groups, the aristocracy of the place; while in the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by the light of the lamp above as he turned out of Ragstroar's front-gate was M'riar, dressing-gowned and dishevelled, clinging madly to the man he could recognise as her convict husband. He heard her cry about the knife, saw that her hold relaxed, saw the blade flash as it struck back at her. He saw her fall, and believed the blow a mortal one. He heard the voice of Dolly wailing in the house beyond, crying out for the missing bedfellow she would never dream beside again. At least, that was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... heavy blade, I brought it down with all my strength upon the nearer of those hairy arms where it crossed the window-ledge, severing muscle, tendon and bone as easily as a ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Joints club-shaped, 4 in. to 6 in. long, very spiny, the cushions elevated on ridge-like tubercles. Bristles few, coarse, and long. Spines very numerous, varying in length from 1/4 in. to 11/2 in.; central one in each cushion much the broadest, and flattened like a knife-blade, the others being more or less triangular. Flowers yellowish-green, on the terminal joints, which are clothed with star-shaped clusters of bristle-like spines, the flowers springing from the apex of the ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... interparietal broadly rectangular between temporal ridges, usually short in median line of skull, posterior margin straight or with slight median posterior angle; incisive foramina tapered toward both ends, sometimes narrower anteriorly than posteriorly; anterior palatal spine usually forming a blade thickened on ventral edge, and right and left sides usually incompletely fused; nasal septum with a posterior notch separating vomer from maxillary; posterior margin of palate usually bearing single or double point, sometimes straight; interpterygoid fossa moderately wide, lateral margins ...
— A New Subspecies of Wood Rat (Neotoma mexicana) from Colorado • Robert B. Finley
... gentlemen went ashore and were astonished to find a native occupied in building a small sloop of about thirty tons: the tools of which he made use consisted of a half worn-out axe, an adze, about two-inch blade, made out of a paring chisel, a saw, and an iron rod which he heated red hot and made it serve the purpose of an auger. It required no little patience and dexterity to achieve anything with such instruments: he was apparently not deficient in these qualities, for his work was tolerably well ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... sword and he hewed at the butt of the spear. The edge of the sword turned. The blade leaped back in his hand as if it had been struck against an anvil. And Jason, feeling within him a boundless and ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... then I will meet you blade to blade!" he cried, furiously, and springing to his feet, his eyes blazing with passion. "If entreaties will not move you—if neither bribes nor promises will cause you to yield—we will try what lawful authority will do. I have ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a dry blade! eat a dry blade! From the nest that the kingfisher made! What will the Joblilies do, When the old owl ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... larger inside than it appears to be on the outside. If necessary put a twitch on the ear of the horse to quiet him; run the index finger of your left hand against the tumor; now, with the right hand, carefully insert the knife by running the back of the blade along the index finger of the left hand until the tumor is reached; with the left index finger guide the point of the blade quickly and surely into the tumor; make the opening large. A little blood may flow for a while, but it is of no consequence. Squeeze ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and heard it all, quick as a flash drew his sword, and threw himself upon the soldier; one rapid thrust at the surprised man he made, with all the force and skill begotten of long practice and a strong arm, and the hilt of his blade crushed against the man's throat, and he fell dead upon the floor. At the same instant one of the other soldiers, who had observed the action, struck Seymour over the head with his clubbed musket, and he also fell heavily to the floor, and lay there senseless and still, blood running ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in the summer, when Master Meadow Mouse visited that spot, he had been afraid to cross the lawn because it was clipped so short. But now he could creep through the thick green carpet and nobody could see him, unless a waving grass blade happened to catch somebody's eye. Everybody at the farmhouse had been too busy with haying to spend any time running a ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... southern shoulder of the jar the Third Austro-Hungarian Army pushes forward inside, supported on its right by Boehm-Ermolli, who had been just inside a long time, but could get no farther. They began to shepherd the Russian troops around and in the western passes toward the lower double-edged blade of Von Mackensen's terrible scissors. The Russian retreat to the Wisloka was a serious disaster for Dmitrieff; he had been caught napping, and had to pay dearly in men and guns for not having created a row of alternative ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... and oars, but I find a light canoe infinitely preferable. The double paddle makes less splash than the oars, and if one can use the Canadian single blade, it does not make any noise at all. Added to this it is easier managed, one sees where one is going, and it can be lifted with one hand from stream to lake, and ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... that they both flinched away—the long handled knife which, usually, I carried with me for cutting down alders or other growth which sometimes entangled my flies as I fished along the stream. "Listen," said I, "I swear the pirates' oath. On the point of my blade," and I touched it with my right forefinger, "I swear that I pondered on two things when ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... precincts of his apartment, except in obedience to the stated calls of dinner, lectures, and chapel. Then his small and stooping form might be marked, crossing the quadrangle with a hurried step, and cautiously avoiding the smallest blade of the barren grass-plots, which are forbidden ground to the feet of all the lower orders of the collegiate oligarchy. Many were the smiles and the jeers, from the worse natured and better appointed students, who loitered idly along the court, at the rude garb and saturnine ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lover of Mlle. Clementine makes a violent effort and springs sideways; the Colonel falls and draws his sword. Leon loses no time; he puts himself on guard and fights, but almost instantly feels the Colonel's sword enter his heart to the hilt. The chill of the blade spreads further and further, and ends by freezing Leon from head to foot. The Colonel draws nearer and says, smiling: "The main-spring is broken; the little animal is dead." He puts the body in the walnut box, which is too short and too narrow. Cramped on every side, Leon struggles, strains ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... the equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if he wished—no one could understand him! Rome is wise—the crystallized experience of centuries is hers. Responsibility tames a man—marriage, political office, churchly preferment—read history and note how these things have dulled the bright blade of revolution and turned the radical into a Presbyterian professor at Princeton, a staunch ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... it may be said that the function of all cutting tools is to separate one portion of material from another along a definite path. All such tools act, first, by the keen edge dividing the material into two parts; second, by the wedge or the blade forcing these two portions apart. If a true continuous cut is to be made, both of these actions must occur together. The edge must be sharp enough to enter between the small particles of material, cutting without ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... moral, grandeur. But as an illustration of the creativeness of man's intellect—of its wondrous capability—of its alliance with that attribute of the Divine Nature which is evident in the fibres of the grass-blade and the march of the galaxy—I know of nothing more striking than this piece of mechanism, which is the product of the most profound and patient thought, the harmonizing of antagonistic forces, the combination of the most abstruse details, fitted ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... up," as he called getting drunk, and would ride furiously miles out of his way going home that he might pass the houses of his many lady-loves, and show them by yells and oaths what a rollicking blade he was. The reputation thus acquired won him many a smile; for, deplore the fact as we may, there's a drop of savage blood still alive in the feminine heart that does not despise depravity in man ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... sense is essential to success. Time and tide waits for no man. The tall sunflower and the little violet is turning its face to the sun. The mule and the horse was harnessed together. Every green leaf and every blade of grass ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... small-sized hunting-knife. Blade snapped short. Buck's horn, diamond cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... unbroken streams from the great centres of Russian military power. The fierce Cossack from the Don and the Dneister, the Tartar from the Ukraine, the beetle-browed and predatory Baschkir, with all their variety of wild uniform, and "helm and blade" glancing in the summer's sun, crowded on the great military thoroughfares, while fresh supplies of well-appointed and formidable artillery were carefully transmitted. The foundries of Russia were blazing in the manufacture of warlike weapons; and the workshops of Belgium were ransacked ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me for bringing her there and presently three peasants appeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old man, with a thin nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well known to the whole Carlist army. The two youths stopped under the trees at a distance, but the old fellow came quite close up and gazed at her, screwing up his eyes as if looking at the sun. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... hiding-place? She listened intently, but even if a detachment of cavalry had been on the way, she could have heard nothing save the noisy merriment below her and the splashing water in the cave. Was that a sword-blade flashing in the distance? Yes, thank God! she could see the outer rows of rioters looking anxiously towards where she had seen the glint of steel through the trees. The crowd suddenly dispersed for the most part, men ran hither and thither ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Bluebeard away— "To inspection, sweet love, all my castle I leave, "But remember with this key be on the quivive! "It is not a natural key—think of that! "My sword's in the key of one sharp, and that's flat! "(Then he half drew his blade, and it was sharp ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... looked from the single stake Bemmon had cut that morning to Bemmon's white, unblistered hands. He looked at the hatchet that Bemmon had thrown down in the rocks and at the V notch broken in its keen-edged blade. It had been the best of the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... of wonderful beauty was forging past us. In the golden calm, the scintillant sheet of water seemed to be rushing backward, splitting itself over the prow, like a fabric woven of gold and silver drawn rapidly against a keen stationary blade. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Payne from off the bed, he receives over his shoulder two deep wounds down his back, inflicting injuries from which one side of (p. 433) his face and two fingers of one hand are still partially paralyzed. He received two more wounds under his left shoulder blade, which proved nearly fatal, and received blows about the head and face from the revolver. At last Payne, probably becoming alarmed for his own safety should he spend more time in the house, wrenched himself loose and fled, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... July is in one respect like January; everything depends on the weather. It may be hot, with frequent heavy rains, and vegetation in the most luxuriant growth; or the earth may be iron and the heavens brass, with scarcely a green blade to be seen. The light flying showers that usually occur in July do not render watering unnecessary; in fact, a heavy soaking of a crop after a moderate rainfall is a valuable aid to its growth, for it ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Solomon were the whole day getting their horses across Van Deusen's ferry and headed eastward in the rough road. Mr. Binkus wore his hanger—an old Damascus blade inherited from his father—and carried his long musket and an abundant store of ammunition; Jack wore his two pistols, in the use of which ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is told of one of them who got astray from the rest that he met an Indian alone and gave him the bayonet. At the same time the Indian gave the American the tomahawk, and they were found dead together, one with the blade in his breast, the other with ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... with his father for a week, and now must go. He was chopping wood that morning, with his father looking on. Steele had cast a measuring glance at the pile of wood cut, then wiped the fine dew of perspiration from his brow, buried the ax blade in the chopping-log and seated himself upon a sawn block. A smile shaped itself upon his lips. Though he never chopped wood now except on these rare visits to his recluse father's cabin here on the forested mountain side, his tall lean figure was ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... him. She wrenched her head away from his grip and got her arm between his chest and hers. They began to wrestle fiercely. Each became frightfully aware of the other as a plastic energetic body, of the strong muscles of neck against cheek, of hands gripping shoulder-blade and waist. "How dare you!" she panted, with her world screaming and grimacing insult at her. "How ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... in pastures of lush grass. Swamps had been ditched and drained, and there was evidence of unusual energy in agriculture. The country gained in tropical aspect as we approached the narrow strip of land which is the nexus of Tahiti-nui and Tahiti-iti, of the blade and the handle of the fan. Tahitian mythology does not agree with geology, any more than does the catechism; for though the scientists aver that these separate isles were not united until ages after their formation, a legend ran that ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... everything that is cordial and loving from me. The travelling purse he gave me has been of immense service. It has been constantly opened. All Italy seems to yearn to put its hand in it. I think of hanging it, when I come back to England, on a nail as a trophy, and of gashing the brim like the blade of an old sword, and saying to my son and heir, as they do upon the stage: "You see this notch, boy? Five hundred francs were laid low on that day, for post-horses. Where this gap is, a waiter charged your father treble the correct amount—and got it. This end, worn into teeth ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... light sprays of water at him from over the side of the boat, and he returned by cleverly sprinkling a few drops on her from the blade of ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... so queer, and danced in such a funny way, that the warrior could scarcely keep from laughing. But he saw his young wife's frightened face; and then, remembering that nearly all Japanese ghosts and goblins are afraid of a sword, he drew his blade and rushed out of the closet, and struck at the little dancers. Immediately they all ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... his conquered enemies. "Every guide book," he continues, "mentions my Lord Iron's nickname 'The Wild Beast,' and possibly the legend was invented by way of comment. He drove away all the Persian swordsmiths, and from his day no 'Damascus blade' has been made at Damascus. I have found these French colonies perfectly casual and futile. The men take months before making up their minds to do anything. A most profligate waste of time! My prime object in visiting Tunis was to obtain information ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... One of them was Ceneri, the other Macari. The third man was a stranger to me. These three men were looking at a fourth man—a young man who appeared to be falling out of his chair, clutching convulsively the hilt of a dagger, the blade of which had been buried in his heart, clearly by Macari, who ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... begin to appear in the background, ready to greet the players, and to tell the truth, are not very welcome to the nervous golfer. Everything turns on half an inch of leather in a "drive," or a stiff blade of grass in a putt, and the interest is wound up to a really breathless pitch. Happy he is who does not in his excitement "top" his ball into the neighbouring brook, or "heel" it and send it devious down to the depths of ocean. Happy is he who can "hole out the last hole in four" ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the dogs until excited to frenzy. Then half a dozen of the bolder youths would vault into the ring armed only with their throwing-knives, and the real sport would begin. The master of the ring, having provided himself with a long pole to which a sharp knife-blade had been bound, would watch his opportunity to cut the thong that secured the blind-cloth about the animal's eyes. Woe now to him who was dull of eye or ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... called Balderudgery. Leaving that road, and, at 7 miles, taking to the left, we finally encamped on Spring Creek, after a journey of about 9 miles. We had passed over what I should have called a poor sort of country, but everywhere it was taken up for sheep; and these looked fat; yet not a blade of grass could be seen; and, but for the late timely supply of rain, it had been in contemplation to withdraw these ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... startles the blackbird roosting in the bushes, and he bustles out and flies across the field. There is more rime on the posts and rails around the rickyard, and the thatch on the haystack is white with it in places. He draws out the broad hay-knife—a vast blade, wide at the handle, the edge gradually curving to a point—and then searches for the rubber or whetstone, stuck somewhere in the side of the rick. At the first sound of the stone upon the steel the cattle in the adjoining ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the slack of Gerry's shirt toward him and wiped the blade till it was gleaming again. Then he looked toward Walt. He got to ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... the soup without a word, breaking great pieces of bread into it. Then he pulled out his clasp-knife and opened it; the long blade, keen as a razor and slightly curved, but dark and dull in colour, snapped to its place, as the ring at the back fell into the corresponding sharp notch. With affected delicacy, Stefanone held it between his thumb and one finger ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... to the bar the irresponsible young blade hung out his shingle in Martinsville, Guilford County, North Carolina, and sat down to wait for clients. He was still less than twenty years old, without influence, and with only such friends as his irascible disposition permitted him to make and hold. Naturally business came slowly, and it ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... name because he had an iron hand, in place of one of his own, which had been cut off by the hand of justice. These two men embraced the girls with great glee, and inquired if they had brought the wherewithal to moisten their throats. "How could we think of neglecting that, old blade!" replied one of the girls, who was called Gananciosa.[25] "Silvatillo, your scout, will be here before long with the clothes-basket, crammed with whatever good ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... obeyed, And sheathed the battle blade, And called their bloody legions from the field; In silent awe they wait, And close the warrior's gate, Nor know to whom their ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... aloft his Roman blade, Which, like a falcon towering in the skies, Coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade, Whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies: So under his insulting falchion lies Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells With trembling fear, as ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... like that of an oven; but here, far up on the heights, though the air may be fresh and invigorating at times, when the wind blows it often rises to a hurricane. Here the summer comes late and departs early. While flowers are blooming in the valleys, not a bud or blade of corn is to be seen at Dormilhouse. At the season when vegetation is elsewhere at its richest, the dominant features of the landscape are barrenness and desolation. The very shapes of the mountains are rugged, harsh, and repulsive. Right over against the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, Thou hast worthily behaved thyself. Let me see thy sword. So he showed it him. When he had taken it in his hand, and looked thereon a while, he said, Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade (Isa. 2:3). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as Helen carved, and the beauty of its slimness gave her joy; but suddenly the blade slipped, and she saw blood on Helen's hand and, rushing from the table to the ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... sky. The house was surrounded with evergreens, according to the English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass with its fine crystallisations. The rays of a bright morning sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin, perched upon the top of a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my window, was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... foot of the throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his cimeter, samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or endangering the temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle of tremendous brevity: "In the name of the most merciful God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... its hiding-place the knife I had secreted the day I was brought into that dungeon—a little weapon, but it would serve for the first blow. At whom? Gabord? It all flashed through my mind how I might do it when he came in again: bury this blade in his neck or heart—it was long enough for the work; then, when he was dead, change my clothes for his, take his weapons, and run my chances to get free of the citadel. Free? Where should I go in the dead of winter? Who would hide me, shelter me? I could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... however; for I've been poking about while you were away. The cook's room is just over this one, but the cook didn't do it. A five-foot woman can't reach up and cut down eight and a half feet of bell-rope, and—look, see! She wouldn't be likely to do it with the blade of a ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... more subtle gradations of light and shade reducing even the blaze of the noonday sun to half-tones. Still another, whether by the fault of over-magnifying power or long-sightedness, detects an infinity of detail in nature, and is not satisfied until each particular blade of grass stands on end like the quills of the traditional porcupine, while his brother brush strenuously asserts that every detail is really only a question of mass, and should be treated as such, and that for all practical purposes ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... on. Then when the little man's blade was already out, it swerved aside and went panting by them and past. The eyes of the little man followed its flight. "There was no foam," he said. For a space the man with the silver-studded bridle stared up the valley. "Oh, come on!" he cried at last. "What does it matter?" and ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... himself up, whimpering with rage and knife in hand, but as Huldricksson's voice reached him he stopped. Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back into his belt ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... sounded in Millner's ears the refrain to which he had walked down Fifth Avenue after his first talk with Mr. Spence: "It's too easy—it's too easy—it's too easy." Yes, it was even easier than he had expected. His sensation was that of the skilful carver who feels his good blade sink into a ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... with hands of iron, And his face was copper-colored; Quick the hero full unfolded, Like the full corn from the kernel. On his head a hat of flint-stone, On his feet were sandstone-sandals, In his hand a golden cleaver, And the blade was copper-handled. Thus at last they found a butcher, Found the magic ox a slayer. Nothing has been found so mighty That it has not found a master. As the sea-god saw his booty, Quickly rushed he on his victim, Hurled him to his knees ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... determined to give him a lesson, 'I have taken a liking to your company. Here, come here; I will show you a trick. I learnt it from the Servians when I was three feet high. Look; I lie quite still, you observe. Try to get on the other side of that door and the point of this blade shall scratch you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ready?" says Rupert quickly. And before I had time to answer he brought down his cutlass with such force that unless I had guarded it the blade would ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... some time, he looked about to see if any one were looking at him, and he saw that the only people in sight were a long way off. He took his big clasp-knife out of his pocket and opened it. As the clasp clicked at the back of the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the noise generally ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... saws and chisels, have been found at Thebes. The blades are all of bronze, the handles of the acacia or the tamarisk; and the general mode of fastening the blade to the handle appears to have been by thongs of hide. It is probable that some of those discovered in the tombs are only models, or unfinished specimens, and it may have been thought sufficient to show their external appearance, without the necessity ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... daughter, as he had seen her on the rare occasions when he had dined at the Rainey home or she had come into the LaSalle Street offices, coming into his mind. With a quiver of enjoyment of the mental exercise, he tried to imagine the colonel as a swaggering blade among women. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... war-array, gentles and commons. Come from deep glen, and from mountain so rocky; The war-pipe and pennon are at Inverlocky. Come every hill-plaid, and true heart that wears one, Come every steel blade, and strong hand that bears one. Leave untended the herd, the flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterred, the bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, leave nets and barges: Come with your ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... read it. Oh Mr. Jerrolds, to think of the money that goes to Africa and India and slums full of Syrians and Russian Jews, when these Americans—our real kin, you know!—are putting an axe under the bed, with the blade up, to check a haemorrhage! If they were Zulus," she added, flashing, "some one ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... encamped was the top of an eminence some six hundred yards long and about two hundred and fifty yards from one base across to the other; and its shape was that of an Indian paddle, varying from one hundred and twenty yards at the blade to sixty yards at the handle in width. Outcropping boulders upon the outer edge of the plateau afforded some slight shelter for Ferguson's force; but, unsuspicious of attack, Ferguson had made no abatis to protect his camp from the assault to which it was so vulnerable because ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... the saw was always in his thoughts; it was as he had said. Last winter, when the roads were hard, he had carted up the big circular blade and the fittings, ordered from Trondhjem through the village store. The parts were lying in one of the sheds now, well smeared with oil to keep off the rust. He had brought up some of the beams too, for the framework; he could ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... copper-coloured thief down, and struck another with my fist between the eyes so that he went headlong into the water, sinking like lead, and deep into the great target of his neighbour's chest I drove my blade. Had there been a man beside me, had there been but two or three of all those silken triflers, too late come on the terraces above to watch, we might have won. But all alone what could I do? That last red beast turned on my blade, and as he fell dragged me half down with ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... my sword alone, you hussy! There is blood upon the blade— Dragon-slaying is a messy Sort of trade. Put back ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... appropriates those constituents of both for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the other constituent to return to the atmosphere. Thus the architecture is carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn upon, and the plant augments in size. We have in succession the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular action being completed by the production of grains, similar to that ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... in cutlery is the "musical knife" at the Louvre; the blade is steel, mounted in parcel gilt, and the handle is of ivory. On the blade is engraved a few bars of music (arranged for the bass only), accompanying the words, "What we are about to take may Trinity in Unity bless. Amen." This is a literal translation. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in one dark cloud ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... he said, "and I'll leave you here, Sabina; but be quite happy. I dare say Daniel will be all right. He's a pious blade and all that sort of thing and doesn't understand real life. And as some fool broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was too much for his weak nerves. I shan't take you very far off anyway. We'll have a look round soon. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... headsman's trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined twine—the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe. It was a strange thing to feel in one's hand this weapon, which was no heavier than a riding-rod, and which ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a pleasure-boat As ever fairy had paddled in, For she glowed with purple paint without, And shone with silvery pearl within A sculler's notch in the stern he made, An oar he shaped of the bootle-blade; Then sprung to his seat with a lightsome leap, And launched afar ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... dead and dying English that came in her way. Then, snatching the officer's sword and pistol from him, she knelt down, and, with a look of devilish glee in her glorious eyes, calmly plunged her knife into his heart, working the blade backwards and forwards to assure herself she had made a thorough job of it. Anything more hellish I could not have imagined, and yet it fascinated me—the girl was so fair, so wickedly fair and shapely. Her act of cruelty over, she spoiled her victim of his rings, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Brahman's purpose, and would not it be better served by living gladly in the phenomenal world than by passing beyond it? But such an idea has rarely satisfied Indian thinkers. If, on the other hand, Maya is an evil or at least an imperfection, if it is like rust on a blade or dimness in a mirror, if, so to speak, the edges of Brahman are weak and break into fragments which are prevented by their own feebleness from realizing the unity of the whole, then the mind wonders uneasily if, in spite of all assurances to the contrary, this does ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... with culinary processes must know in what manner the acid of onions will operate upon any steel instrument; it corrodes a knife so as to turn the onions black with the particles eaten away from the edge and the face of the blade. To avoid this unwholsome and unseemly inconvenience, a wooden instrument is generally used in all instances where onions form a part of the cookery appendages. It is consequently evident, that although iron utensils are now greatly used instead of copper, yet many injurious effects ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... in a severe tone. No, Mr Dombey, let us understand each other. That is not the Bagstock vein, Sir. You don't know Joseph B. He is a blunt old blade is Josh. No flattery in him, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... afflicted fell in a fit; and, after coming out of it, cried out of the prisoner for stabbing her in the breast with a knife, and that she had broken the knife in stabbing of her. Accordingly, a piece of the blade of a knife was found about her. Immediately, information being given to the Court, a young man was called, who produced a haft and part of the blade, which the Court, having viewed and compared, saw it to be the same; and, upon inquiry, the young man affirmed that ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... away, or singled out for slaughter, particularly the heads of the financial and diplomatic services who, denounced by Robespierre on the 8th Thermidor, or arrested on the morning of the 9th already felt their necks under the blade of the guillotine; Reinhart and Otto are ambassadors, Mollien is count and treasury minister, Miot becomes councilor of state, Comte de Melito minister of finances at Naples, while Gaudin is made minister of finances in France and Duc de Gaete. Among the transported or fugitives ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... parson at once consulted was the surgeon,—Dr. Cuttenden, as he was called. No man with an injured shoulder-blade had come to him last night or that morning. A man, he said, might receive a very violent blow on his back, in the manner in which the fellow had been struck, and might be disabled for days from any great personal exertion, without having a bone broken. If the blade of his shoulder were broken, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... winds sighed in the tree-tops, Laura knew not; she slept as soundly and as safely as if in her own carefully watched nest in the castle. When she awoke, the sun was rising, birds were singing, and every blade of grass twinkled with dew-drops. After her morning prayer of thanks for the night's rest, a dip into the brook close by, and a little shake and jump by way of dressing, she sat down ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... into the room, where two candles were burning. Mark followed them. The inspector pulled out the dagger. It was but four inches long, with a very thin blade. The handle was little thicker than the blade itself. Mark took it ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... themselves in the shallow inequalities of the surface, they were exposed marks to him. Bullets whistled and thudded about him, and an occasional ricochet sang sharply through the air. One bullet ploughed a crease through his scalp, and a second burned across his shoulder-blade without breaking the skin. ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... I was locked each dawn. Little I dreamed That early or late I ever should With men at the mead-feast mouthless speak forth 10 Words of wisdom. It is a wondrous thing, And strange to the sight when one sees it first That the edge of a knife and the active hand And wit of the earl who wields the blade Should bring it about that I bear unto thee 15 A secret message, meant for thee only, Boldly announce it, so that no other man May speak our ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... maker if it accomplishes that for which it was made. A watch that does not tell time, a knife that does not cut, and a soul that does not love God are three utterly useless things. And why? Because they are no good for what they were made. The watch exists solely to tell the hour, the blade to cut and the soul to love and serve its Maker. Failing in this, there is no more reason for their being. Their utility ceasing, they themselves cease to exist to a certain extent, for a thing is really no longer ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the edge of the great ravine, appearing and disappearing as they dived into some chasm and again emerged from it. At last they stretched out upon the broad prairie, a plain nearly flat and almost devoid of verdure, for every short grass-blade was dried and shriveled by the glaring sun. Now and then the old bull would face toward me; whenever he did so I fell to the ground and lay motionless. In this manner I chased them for about two miles, until at length I heard in front a deep hoarse bellowing. A moment after a band of ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... about. In spite of his fighting-cock airs, he hasn't two farthings' worth of spunk—it would be easy enough to lead him by the nose. Do you see, Claudet, if we were to manage properly, instead of throwing the handle after the blade, we should be able before two weeks are, over to have rain or sunshine here, just as we pleased. We must only ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... with gladness at the sight of him. With his extravagantly cut waistcoat, his elaborately exquisite white tie, his perfectly fitting evening clothes, with his supple ease of body, his charming manner, the preposterous fellow made as gallant a show as any ruffling blade in powder and red-heeled shoes. He had acquired, too, an extra touch of manhood since I had seen him last. I felt proud of him, conscious that to the making of him I had to some small ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and let your light-foote steedes Flying as swift as did that winged horse That with strong fethered Pinions cloue the Ayre, 190 Or'take the coward flight of your base foe. Bru. Do not with-drawe thy mortall woundring blade, But sheath it Caesar in my wounded heart: Let not that heart that did thy Country wound Feare to lay Brutus bleeding on the ground. Thy fatall stroke of death shall more mee glad, Then all thy proud and Pompous victories; My funerall Cypresse, then thy Lawrell Crowne, My mournefull ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... Derevaux spurred his horse against the enemy, twenty blades glittered against him. The first would have pierced his chest had not Hal struck up the blade with ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... prospect was anything but inviting. On both sides of the creek the soil showed evidences of the severity of the past drought. Great gaping fissures—usun cracks we called them—traversed and zig-zagged the hot, parching ground, on which not a blade of grass was to be seen. Here and there, amid the grey-barked ghostly gums, were oases of green—thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... furnace, and alongside of it there is a well of oil. The car brings the cannon to the edge of the ditch, and a steam crane performs the operation of tempering with as much ease as we would temper a knife blade. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Ax with a shining blade that chopped the Tree of a dusky shade that gave the Wood that heated the Oven that baked the Cake that fed the Doll that lived in ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... had the misfortune to lose one of our best dogs, Toekelegeto, Toolooah's leader, on the night of the 13th, who choked to death with a piece of bone in his throat. He had eaten a piece of the shoulder-blade of the reindeer, which is thin and breaks into fine splinters. The Inuits usually hide this bone in the snow, as they say such accidents are frequent, especially when the dogs eat rapidly, as they always do when ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... has been up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,—and never mind the crown and the sceptre. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man for a ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... temper, strong with the strength of manhood and full of the vigour and the love of life, the sense of its shortness and of the mystery of it all woke chords of a pathetic poetry. "Soon will it be," ran the warning rime, "that sickness or sword-blade shear thy strength from thee, or the fire ring thee, or the flood whelm thee, or the sword grip thee, or arrow hit thee, or age o'ertake thee, and thine eye's brightness sink down in darkness." Strong as he might be, man struggled in vain with the doom that encompassed him, that girded his ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... Thine than his own? is there no Judge of all? Shall mortal hand seize with impunity The sword of vengeance, from the armoury Of the Most High? easy to wield, and starred With glory it appears: but all the host Of the archangels, should they strive at once, Would never close again its widening blade. ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... tried this nice way of wit; For he, to be a tearing blade, thought fit To give the ladies a dry bawdy bob; And thus he got the name of Poet Squab. But to be just, 'twill to his praise be found, His excellencies more than faults abound; Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear The laurel, which he best deserves ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... he was ready to Borrow from the Humblest. The same Acquaintances who had tried to Stand In with him when Things were coming his Way, were cutting off Street-Corners and getting down behind their Newspapers to escape the Affectionate Massage, beginning at the Hand and extending to the Shoulder-Blade. It was No Use. He remembered them all, and no one got ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... up from his ham and eggs, with a considerable portion of the eggs on the blade of his knife, handle-down in one fist, his fork standing like a lightning rod in the other, and asked her who the man was and what he wanted at that hour of the day. Chadron was eating by lamplight, and alone, according to his thrifty custom of ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... at the deathly faintly-breathing Wiggins; then he pulled off his woolen gloves, drew his knife from his pocket, opened the blade with his teeth for quickness' sake, tossed it to Erebus and cried: "Cut off his skates! Pull ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... development of the love of Nature through the telling of stories, we are confronted with a great difficulty in the elementary schools because so many of the children have never been out of the towns, have never seen a daisy, a blade of grass and scarcely a tree, so that in giving, in the form of a story, a beautiful description of scenery, you can make no appeal to the retrospective imagination, and only the rarely gifted child well be able to make ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... leaf, and then sat watching her aunt plait a pretty basket of rushes. While she waited she looked about, and kept finding something curious or pleasant to interest and amuse her. First she saw a tiny rainbow in a dewdrop that hung on a blade of grass; then she watched a frisky calf come down to drink on the other side of the brook, and laughed to see him scamper away with his tail in the air. Close by grew a pitcher-plant; and a yellow butterfly sat on the edge, bathing its feet, Daisy said. Presently ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... were dilated in a blank and straining gaze. She rose slowly, staggeringly, to her feet, and as the black clouds parted overhead, and the full moon glimmered through, flooding the wet earth with splendor, as though diamonds strewed every blade of grass, she stepped, slowly, falteringly, down to the road, dragging her drenched body along aimlessly toward the open country that ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... caressing little words in various tones with which she decked her conversation,—"my kitten," "my old darling," "my bibi," "my rat," etc. A "you," cold and sharp and ironically respectful, cut like the blade of a knife through the heart of the miserable old bachelor. The "you" was a declaration of war. Instead of helping the poor man with his toilet, handing him what he wanted, forestalling his wishes, looking at him with the sort of admiration which all women ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... land of the Magyars and the Russian plains, take a sudden turn westward at the Rumanian frontier, then sweep around in a great semicircle, forming a shape resembling a scythe, the handle of which reaches up into Poland, the blade curling around within the Balkan Peninsula. Behind the handle, and above the upper part of the blade, stretch the broad plains of Hungary, through which flows the great Danube, the largest river in Europe next ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... and he is carried into the dining-room, and laid upon the table athwart the chalk lines. The emperor immediately draws his short hunting-knife, and after making several mystic passes with it in the air, strikes the prostrate body of the neophyte a smart blow with the flat of the broad blade. The huntsman toots forth the signal of "dead! dead!" which is used to call the pack off the quarry, and the new-fledged "weide-man" is permitted to struggle off the table and onto ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... renown, With nuns the queens of beauty filled the place, And gay gallants you easily might trace. The courtier, citizen, and parson too, The doctor and the bachelor you'd view, With eager steps:—all visits thither made; And 'mong the latter, one (a pleasing blade) Had free access: was thought a prudent friend, Who might to sisters many comforts lend; Was always closely shaved and nicely dressed; And ev'ry thing he said was well expressed; The breath of scandal, howsoever pat, Ne'er lighted on his ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... since he who sees the tail of a lone wolf imagines the whole pack, he alighted at a distance where the eyes of Heenhadowa saw as one sees in a fog. A space the size a man uses for his lodge he cleared of all bushes and weeds, to the smallest blade of grass he cleared it of ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... hand. The third night, the nails of the cleat that fastened my head-clews up to the deck above me, drew, and I came down by the run, head foremost; and immediately where my head ought to have alighted on the deck was found the carpenter's pitch kettle, with the blade of an axe in the centre of it, and the edge uppermost. No one knew how it came there, and, had I shot out as young gentlemen usually do on such occasions, I should, if I had not been quite decapitated, at least have died ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... was going to say, there is nothing remarkable in that, as I am not in love with any one, and hope I never shall be. I wonder where Kit can have gone to: will you get up there, Mr. Desmond, and look?" Breaking off a tiny blade of grass from the bank near her, she puts it between her pretty teeth, and slowly nibbles it with an air of utter indifference to all the world that drives Mr. Desmond nearly out of ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... our eye as completely defies our scrutiny as the economy of the most distant star. Every leaf and every blade of grass holds within itself secrets which no human penetration will ever fathom. No man can tell what is its principle of life. No man can know what his power of secretion is. Both are inscrutable mysteries. Wherever we place our hand we lay it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... discovered that the heap concealed, as I had suspected, a half-consumed human body, so dreadfully disfigured that it was only with the utmost difficulty I presently succeeded in identifying it as the remains of a Tottie. The metal blade and shank of a Tembu spear—the wooden shaft of which had been consumed by fire—transfixed the throat, and my father's roer, with its stock deeply charred, was still grasped in what remained of the left hand. It was the only body in ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... himself to his first cigar, making the most of the comfort that it gave him. When the stub grew short he held it on the small blade of his knife so as not to miss a puff. What was left he wrapped in a pocket handkerchief ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... thin blade from out his belt, he cut large chunks of choice meat. Sharpening some willow sticks, he planted them around a wood-pile he had ready to kindle. On these stakes he meant ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... things that are visible are but shadow and appearance, are like bubbles in the water which are now here and now gone.[28] Every created and finite thing, however—from a grain of sand to a radiant sun and from a blade of grass to the Seraph that is nearest God—is a beam or a ray or expression of that eternal Reality, is an angel or messenger that in some minute, or in some glorious fashion, reveals God in space and time; and all created things together, from the lowest to the highest, from the treble of the heavenly ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... stopping at Roc-Amadour for the purpose of 'offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.' After his death, if Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the sword to prick his finger, more in a humorous mood than with any real belief that it was all a dream, and dropped it fast as he felt a gummy liquor clotting on the blade. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... us, that the great Emperor Charlemagne stamped his edicts with the hilt of his sword. The greater Emperor, Death, stamps his with the blade; and they are signed and executed with the same stroke. Flemming received that night a letter from Heidelberg, which told him, that Emma of Ilmenau was dead. The fate of this poor girl affected him deeply; and he ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... reply: 'A madman, then, good faith, were I For I should lose all countenance Throughout the pleasant land of France Nay, rather, facing great and small, I'll smite amain with Durandal, Until the blade, with blood that's spilt, Is crimson to the golden hilt.' 'Friend Roland, sound a single blast Ere Charles beyond its reach hath passed.' 'Forbid it, God,' cried Roland, then, 'It should be said by living men That I a single blast did blow For succor from a Paynim ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to look at street-signs. George regarded the short thoroughfare made notorious by the dilettantism, the modishness, and the witticisms of art. It had an impressive aspect. From the portico of one highly illuminated house a crimson carpet stretched across the pavement to the gutter; some dashing blade of the brush had maliciously determined to affront the bourgeois Sabbath. George stamped on the carpet; he hated it because it was not his carpet; and he swore to himself to possess that very carpet or ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... poured a few drops of a watery liquid in a spoon and approached Louison. The latter had her lips parted, but her teeth were tightly drawn together. Robeckal carefully put the blade of his knife between them, and Rolla poured the liquid ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... mud-houses are not, with few exceptions, higher than six feet, and there is nothing else save them and their dreary, yellow-brown, muddy monotony in the whole village: not a palm, not a flower, not one blade of grass, simply a collection of low mud-houses, with trampled mud-paths between, and here and there an ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... unfortunate. A few put their shares into the rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste with foul water; but they were very few. Scott understood dimly that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule, but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen rice in the blade or the ear, and least of all would have believed that, in time of deadly need, men would die at arm's length of plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed by vigorous pantomime what should ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... recklessness in his actions—as though his every movement advertised a careless regard for consequences. She held her breath when he split a short log into slender splinters, for he swung the short-handled axe with a loose grasp, as though he cared very little where its sharp blade landed. But she noted that he struck with precision despite his apparent carelessness, every blow falling true. His manner of handling the axe reflected the spirit that shone in his eyes when, after kindling the fire, he stood up and looked ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... chief ejaculated, "but it is wonderful! It is true I should have been a dead man had your blade been opened, and your movement was so rapid that I could ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... you see that fish rise at him? He has escaped the hungry trout, and has reached a blade of grass, where he will probably rest for some hours. But give me my rod; perhaps the same trout will rise at my artificial fly. There! that throw was exactly over the spot. No; he won't have it. I'll try again and again. No. Objects ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... her secrets; but all things happen the same as on a breathless and cloudless day, when languid wavelets roll to and fro in the limpid, fathomless water; from the ocean arises no living thing, not a blade ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of its shape by some familiar object is difficult, although various comparisons have been attempted. Some old Spanish geographers gave the island the name of La Lengua de Pajaro, "the bird's tongue." Mr. M.M. Ballou likened it to "the blade of a Turkish scimitar slightly curved back, or approaching the form of a long, narrow, crescent." Mr. Robert T. Hill holds that it "resembles a great hammer-headed shark, the head of which forms the straight, south ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... young man had brought with him, concealed under his clothes, one of those poignards formerly used to give the "coup de grace" in a duel when the vanquished adversary begged the victor to despatch him. This horrible weapon had on one side a blade sharpened like a razor, and on the other a blade that was toothed like a saw, but toothed in the reverse direction from that by which it would enter the body. The young man determined to use this latter blade to saw through the wood around the lock. Happily for him the staple ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... didn't come across them, but the night after that I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the proceedings he had slit the waistcoat ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Every blade of grass and every twig spoke of this new language to her, proclaiming a kinship that made her rich in sympathy and comprehension of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Admiral's caravel. He was delighted to obtain, without trouble, specimens of so many important articles of this part of the New World. Among them were hatchets formed of copper, wooden swords with channels on each side of the blade, in which sharp flints were firmly fixed by cords formed of the intestines of fishes, such as were afterwards found among the Mexicans. There were bells and other articles of copper, and clay utensils; cotton ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... windy rain and the dark impeded rather than helped the stranger on his way towards them. The feet of thousands of people, who had visited the spot since the news of the accident was made known, had worn away the last blade of grass from the slippery fields and had left a very Slough of Despond behind them. I was down half a dozen times, and when I reached the hovel where the rescue-party had gathered I was as much like a mud statue as a man. Everything was in readiness, and the descent ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... I exerted my strength, when—I shall never forget that moment—it ran up to the hilt!—a heavy groan followed; I drew it back covered with blood! I stood upon the table stupified with horror, gazing upon the ensanguined blade; two or three heavy drops of blood fell upon my face and went into my eyes. I leaped from the table, and placed the knife where I had found it. The noise ceased; but heavy drops of blood continued to fall and coagulate upon the floor at my feet. I felt stupified ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... it passed along the ranks, until it awoke a thousand echoes from the mountain-tops around; while the rays of the sun, like a consecrating fire, glistened from the point of every bayonet, and flashed from the blade of every waving sword. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... racked his memory to ascertain whether he had left his sword in its scabbard, or had laid the naked blade, as was his custom, by him while he slept. The more he tried to think the more confused his thoughts became. His forehead felt circled with burning iron, his lips were dry and parched, his step faltering as if under the influence of some potent spell. He called for ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... shade.* [At sunrise the temperature was 11.5 degrees; that of grass, cleared on the previous day from snow, and exposed to the sky, 6.5 degrees; that on wool, 2.2 degrees; and that on the surface of the snow, 0.7 degrees.] The sky was clear; and every rock, leaf, twig, blade of grass, and the snow itself, were covered with broad rhomboidal plates of hoar-frost, nearly one-third of an inch across: while the metal scale of the thermometer instantaneously blistered my tongue. As the sun rose, the light reflected from these myriads ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... illustrations are not beneath the attention of the wisest. If this were not true, the present chronicler would never be guilty of the folly of expending his time and ink upon such details as go to make up this true history; it would be lost labor, were not the flower and the blade of grass, the very thistle down upon the breeze, each and all, as wonderful as the grand forests of the splendid tropics. What character or human deed is too small or trivial for study? Never did a great writer utter truer philosophy ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... to tell him would be to put him in the humour for staying—dour fool that he is—out of pure bravado and defiance. To tell the truth, I would bide myself in such a case. 'Thole feud' is my motto. My granddad writ it on his sword-blade in clear round print letters I've often marvelled at the skill of. If it's your will, Elrigmore, we may be doing without the brandy, and give ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... measuring five by seven cm. and another five by six cm. The neck flap of the wound fell away from the muscular structures beneath it, exposing the trapezius muscle almost one-half the distance to the shoulder blade. The right ear was torn across in its lower third, and hung by the side of the neck by a piece of skin less than five mm. wide. The exposed surface of the wound measured 40 cm. from before back, and 34 cm. in width near the temporal portion. The cranial sutures ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and snapped back. And the Toyman began to whittle, whittle away. Sometimes he used the big blade, sometimes ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... toward the ship. She stopped. A procession of rumbling, clanking, earth-moving machinery moved out of the Shed and toward the upright space tug. Prosaically, a bulldozer lowered its wide blade some fifty yards from the ship. It pushed a huge mass of earth before it, covering over the scorched and impossibly hot sand about the rocket's landing place. Other bulldozers began to circle methodically around and around, overturning the earth and burying the hot surface stuff. Water trucks ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... constitutes a crime. They who think so, and who, in consistency with their doctrines, confine themselves to what they term "vegetable" food, are at best but shallow reasoners. They have not studied Nature very closely, else would they know that every time they pluck up a parsnip, or draw their blade across the leaf of a lettuce, they cause ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of, Charles Edward Stuart. "And this," said the old gentleman, "was his sword." It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious gloom of prostrate fortunes it had rusted away at last, the scorn of those who had opposed, and the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... as blade met blade, his sword, in the most effortless way, being edge outward exactly where Roy struck. "Why, do you know, sir, if I'd been in arnest with you, that you would have been spitted like a cockchafer on a pin before you got your ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... face upon the pane; I know the other is trying the lock, but I hear no sound. I am in a silence like that of the grave. I try to speak. My lips move, but, try as I may, no sound comes out of them. A sharp terror is pricking into me, and I flinch as if it were a knife-blade. Well, sir, that is a thing I cannot understand. You know me—I am not a coward. If I were really in a like scene fear would be the least of my emotions; but in the dream I tremble and am afraid. Slowly, silently, the ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... whatever, beyond a certain amount, the latter acquires by labor or succession. If he slanders any of the other castes he pays only nominal fines graduated according to classes. Whatever crime he may commit his personal property cannot be injured, but whoever strikes a Brahman even with a blade of grass becomes an inferior quadruped for twenty-one generations. He is the physician for men's bodies as ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... sea; Our fame, Poseidon, we owe to thee, Son of Kronos, our king divine, Who in these highways first didst fit For the mouth of horses the iron bit; Thou too hast taught us to fashion meet For the arm of the rower the oar-blade fleet, Swift as the Nereids' hundred feet As they ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... was so dense that passage through it seemed impossible. Down the center of the valley, which was but one of many, separated from each other by low easy hills, flowed a little river, cleaving its center like a silver blade. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... near to the chateau, Westerman put spurs to his horse, and changed his trot into a gallop; his troop of course followed his example, and as they.. came to the end of their journey they abandoned all precautions; each man dropped his scabbard to his side, and drew the blade; each man put his hand to his holster, and transferred his pistol to his belt, for he did not know how soon he might have to leave his saddle; each man drew the brazen clasps of his helmet tight beneath his chin, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... men as could cram themselves into the dark hold. Daniel, at the end farthest from the door, was almost smothered before he could break down the rotten wooden shutter, that, when opened, displayed the weedy yard of the old inn, the full clear light defining the outline of each blade of grass by ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ye summer showers, On blade, and leaf, and tree; Ye bring a blessing to the earth, But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... quivered and reeled under the shock, the penthouse roofs were strong and steep, and but one great stone tore a hole for itself, crushing two men beneath it; but the rest bounded into the water, splintering an oar blade or two as they went. And all the while the arrows rained round us, and the javelins strove ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass with its fine crystallisations. The rays of a bright morning sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin, perched upon the top of a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my window, was ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... their allies and in P. Balfouriana the spermoderm is prolonged into an effective wing-blade from a marginal adnate base like that of P. flexilis. This adnate wing cannot be detached ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain, And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade.... (But Don John of Austria rides home from ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... will show you, which is hidden from the wild beasts, to the Serpent's palace. You will find the King asleep upon his bed, which is all hung round with bells, and over his bed you will see a sword hanging. With this sword only it is possible to kill the Serpent, because even if its blade breaks a new one will grow again for every head the monster has. Thus you will be able to cut off all his seven heads. And this you must also do in order to deceive the King: you must slip into his bed-chamber very softly, and stop up all the bells which are round his bed ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... may do me good, as well as harm. The armies consume everything they can get—soldiers resembling locusts, in this respect. My tenants have had the commissaries among them; and, I am told, every blade of grass they can spare—all their surplus grain, potatoes, butter, cheese, and, in a word, everything that can be eaten, and with which they are willing to part, has been contracted for at the top of the market. The King pays in gold, and the sight of the precious metals will keep even ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... table; but I saw the Child through the table, as if it had been only a slightly darker shadow than the colored gloom. In the same instant, I saw that a fluctuating glimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun-barrels and the blade of the sword bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of glimmering light, floating unsupported where the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... as I gazed around me; and, indeed, the prospect was anything but inviting. On both sides of the creek the soil showed evidences of the severity of the past drought. Great gaping fissures—usun cracks we called them—traversed and zig-zagged the hot, parching ground, on which not a blade of grass was to be seen. Here and there, amid the grey-barked ghostly gums, were oases of green—thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter months; but underneath ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... I kissed my blade for luck, and drove it straight and full into the back of the fellow on Madonna Paola's right. He cried out, essayed to turn in his saddle that he might deal with this unlooked-for assailant, then, overcome, he lurched forward on to the withers of his ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... I do; it is one of our national chronicles. The blade had been changed fifteen times, and the handle fifteen times, but it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... I shall set in my scabbard the sabre of Sea, And the spear of Wind shall be my hand's delight. I shall not descend from the Hill. Never go down to the Valley; For I see, on a snow-crowned peak, The glory of the Lord, Erect as Orion, Belted as to his blade. But the roots of the mountains mingle with mist. And raving skeletons run thereon. I shall not go hence, For here is my Priest, Who hath broken me in the waters of Disdain. Here is my Jester, Who hath mended me on the wheels of Mirth. Here is my Champion, Who hath confounded ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... The unhappy lover of Mlle. Clementine makes a violent effort and springs sideways; the Colonel falls and draws his sword. Leon loses no time; he puts himself on guard and fights, but almost instantly feels the Colonel's sword enter his heart to the hilt. The chill of the blade spreads further and further, and ends by freezing Leon from head to foot. The Colonel draws nearer and says, smiling: "The main-spring is broken; the little animal is dead." He puts the body in the walnut box, which is too short and too ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... be set up in a few minutes by the use of a few bowls. There are two methods commonly employed. One consists of the bowl and a knife-blade. An ordinary tableknife is used and a piece of cheese is firmly forced on to the end of the blade, the bowl is then balanced on the edge, allowing the bait to project about an inch and a half beneath the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... grandeur. But as an illustration of the creativeness of man's intellect—of its wondrous capability—of its alliance with that attribute of the Divine Nature which is evident in the fibres of the grass-blade and the march of the galaxy—I know of nothing more striking than this piece of mechanism, which is the product of the most profound and patient thought, the harmonizing of antagonistic forces, the combination of the most abstruse details, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... farm-bred grandfather to show them how easy it is to use a sharp shovel or how impossibly hard it can be to drive a dull one into the soil. Similarly, weeding with a sharp hoe is effortless and fast. But most new hoes are sold without even a proper bevel ground into the blade, much less with an edge that has been carefully honed. So after working with dull shovels and hoes, many home food growers mistakenly conclude that cultivation is not possible without using a rotary tiller for both tillage and weeding between rows. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... that," replied the prisoner, grimly. "But with the blade of a sword in my face and a lighted cigarette pressed against my body, I preferred acquiescence in a story, which they told me that Kim Syong had ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... the priests, and their execution on the will of the sovereign. The constitution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof. It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of grass, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Borgia. Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... up a handful of sand and applied it to a bare shoulder-blade which somehow had failed to ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to me to see how far a seed will fly with but one wing. The air currents set it spinning the moment it leaves its parent tree making of it at once a tiny gyroscope with a single blade of a propeller. Its gyroscopic quality steadies it and the whirl of its propeller tends always to lift its weight. Hence with a downward current it falls with a less velocity than the wind which whirls it, in a level ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... reached through a process of hypothesis and analysis, and in the world of atoms there are no knives and no men to cut. If you have thought with a strong consistent mental movement, then when you have thought of your atom under the knife blade, your knife blade has itself become a cloud of swinging grouped atoms, and your microscope lens a little universe of oscillatory and vibratory molecules. If you think of the universe, thinking at the level of atoms, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... sword of the count's companion flashed in the moonlight, and, in two seconds more, its blue blade would have ended the earthly career of Sir Norman Kingsley, had not the count quickly sprang back, and made a motion for his companion ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... made a point of stopping at Roc-Amadour for the purpose of 'offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.' After his death, if Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... fish a strip of white or red rag—you will have some sport, for these great gars are a hard-fighting fish, and do the tarpon jumping-trick to perfection. But if you have not a line in readiness you can wait your chance, and as he comes close alongside, break his back with a blow from the sharp blade of your paddle, and jump overboard and secure him ere ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... of cold roast veal, a few slices of bacon, 1 pint of bread crumbs, 1/2 pint of good veal gravy, 1/2 teaspoonful of minced lemon-peel, 1 blade of pounded mace, cayenne and salt to taste, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... this fellow has been eating," said Lew. "Maybe we can find out what sort of bait to use." He opened his knife and slit the fish's belly. "Crabs!" he cried, as his knife blade turned up the remains of a crayfish. "Now we know what ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... off to Graspan, their next position. The unwounded Boers who did remain remained—nearly all of them—for good; rifle bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters are deadly enough, but deadliest of all is the bayonet thrust. So much tissue is severed by the broad blade of the Lee-Metford bayonet that the chances of recovery are often very slight. As volunteer recruits know sometimes to their cost, the mere mishandling of a bayonet at the end of a heavy rifle may, even amid the peaceful evolutions of squad drill, inflict a painful wound. When ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... first officer to make a successful flight from the deck of a British warship, and on one occasion he changed an aeroplane propeller blade whilst flying 2,000ft. above ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... and whipped his cutlas out. "Stand clear!" he howled, and Sancho dodged aside. The little terror's blade sang through the air with a wicked whistle; it curved high over Sancho, then flashed down and plunged through the throat of the ox, pinning the beast to the earth. And when he recovered his breath the Spaniard ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... safe by that certainty of instinct which is independent of proof, like the man who prays for a sign and has his prayer answered. He observed that the boy was quietly sobbing. Jaikie surveyed the position for an instant with red-rimmed eyes and then unclasped a knife, feeling the edge of the blade on his thumb. He darted behind the fir, and a second later Dickson's wrists were free. Then he sawed at the legs, and cut the shackles which tied them together, and then—most circumspectly—assaulted the cord which bound Dickson's neck to the trunk. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... so far gone that no one attempted to obtain any sleep. The hunters went out and examined the dead grizzly, learning his dimensions by the sense of feeling alone. Tom picked up the tomahawk, and, wiping off the blade upon the grass, shoved it down in his belt, with the remark that it might come handy again before they reached Fort Havens. The two then made an observation for the purpose of learning whether any of the Indians were ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snowshoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... you!" The Swede had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the throat, and was dragging him from his chair. The other men sprang up. The barkeeper dashed around the corner of his bar. There was a great tumult, and then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power, was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon. The Swede fell with a cry ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... he now gave Malcolm complete instructions as to the hues of the ribbons he was to purchase. As soon as he had started on the important mission, the old man laid aside his instrument, and taking his broadsword from the wall, proceeded with the aid of brick dust and lamp oil, to furbish hilt and blade with the utmost care, searching out spot after spot of rust, to the smallest, with the delicate points of his great bony fingers. Satisfied at length of its brightness, he requested Malcolm, who had returned long ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... chase, and let your light-foote steedes Flying as swift as did that winged horse That with strong fethered Pinions cloue the Ayre, 190 Or'take the coward flight of your base foe. Bru. Do not with-drawe thy mortall woundring blade, But sheath it Caesar in my wounded heart: Let not that heart that did thy Country wound Feare to lay Brutus bleeding on the ground. Thy fatall stroke of death shall more mee glad, Then all ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... campaign against the Dipsodes at once enables Pantagruel to display himself as a war-like hero of romance, permits him fantastic exploits parallel to his father's, and, by installing Panurge in a lordship of the conquered country and determining him, after "eating his corn in the blade," to "marry and settle," introduces the larger and most original part of the whole work—the debates and counsellings on the marriage in the Third Book, and, after the failure of this, the voyage to settle the matter at the Oracle of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... were pouring along in unbroken streams from the great centres of Russian military power. The fierce Cossack from the Don and the Dneister, the Tartar from the Ukraine, the beetle-browed and predatory Baschkir, with all their variety of wild uniform, and "helm and blade" glancing in the summer's sun, crowded on the great military thoroughfares, while fresh supplies of well-appointed and formidable artillery were carefully transmitted. The foundries of Russia were blazing in the manufacture of warlike weapons; and the workshops of Belgium ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... came to her. He took both her hands in his and pumped her arms up and down. "Well, Lord A'mighty, I'm glad to see you," he said heartily. "Lord A'mighty, I'm glad to see you." The old farm hand pulled a long blade of grass out of the ground beneath the fence and leaning against the top rail began to chew it. He asked Clara the same question her aunt had asked, but his asking did not annoy her. She laughed and shook her head. "No, Jim," she said, "I seem to have made a failure of going ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... little time passed by. There gathered together, there came rolling up, a stormcloud; with a terrible raining and hailing did it empty itself over the Moujik's cornfields, cutting down all the crop as if with a knife—not even a single blade did it leave standing. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... previously an attempt had been made to establish the Toledo Blade as a newspaper. The town was young, and though giving promise of vigorous growth, was yet unable to make such a newspaper enterprise an assured success. About fifty numbers were issued, under several ownerships, and then the enterprise ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... go! This marvellous woman was waiting for him with outstretched arms (why should he doubt it?)—and just because Nature had at last succeeded in making a temporary success of Ann's skin and had fashioned a rounded line above her shoulder-blade! It made him quite cross with himself. Ten years ago she had been gawky and sallow-complexioned. Ten years hence she might catch the yellow jaundice and lose it all. Passages in Sylvia's letters returned ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... and looked down at his enemy—his heavy head wagging from side to side. Jerry was fumbling at his belt. The big knife flashed, but Jake's hand was as quick as its gleam, and he had the wrist that held it. His great fingers crushed together, the blade dropped on the ground, and again the big twins looked at each other. Slowly, Yankee Jake picked up the knife. The other moved not a muscle and in his fierce eyes was no plea for mercy. The point of the blade moved slowly down—down over the rebel's heart, and was thrust into its sheath ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... and truth seem greater than all. Show me justice, or try to make me unjust,—force upon me at the point of the sword the unspeakable degradation of abetting villany, and I will seize the hilt, if I can, and write my protest clear with the blade, and while I have it in my hand I will reap what advantages are possible in the desolation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Did you ever, my most acute professor of vivisection, employ your trenchant blade ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... nothing of them. Of that modesty was Capt. Augrere Dawson, of the West Kents, who did not bother much about a bullet he met on his way to a crater, though it traveled through his chest to his shoulder-blade. He had it dressed, and then went back to lead his men, and remained with them until the German night attack was repulsed. He was again wounded, this time in the thigh, but did not trouble the stretcher-men (they had a lot to do on the night of March 18th and ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... As I rushed to the two and cried to them to be gone, a ball from a short gun in the hands of some Bagree smote me upon the shoulder, and this,—" he again touched the shirt-of-mail,—"and my shoulder-blade turned it from my heart. Even then Hunsa thought I was dead. And he was in league with the Dewan to obtain for Nana Sahib a girl of my household, who is called the Gulab because she is as ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... sometimes forget, as she sweeps me a bow, That I gaze on a simple English maid, And I bend my head, as if to a queen Who is courting my lance and blade. ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... only a few feet away. For an instant he hesitated. A faint metallic click from the doorway caused him to make up his mind. His body straightened as his hands traveled upward to the level of his shoulders. The palm of his right hand opened and a thin two-edged blade rattled to the floor. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... flame, seemingly as solid as a blade of metal, spurted for the length of a foot from the tool's tip. Arlok began cutting the plate with the flame, the blade shearing through the heavy metal as easily as a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... "there is nothing to be done but to die." Robespierre, doubtful and hesitating, wrote the first two letters of his name. The rest is a splash of blood. When Bourdon, with a pistol in each hand, and the blade of his sword between his teeth, mounted the stairs of the Hotel de Ville at the head of his troops, Lebas drew two pistols, handed one to Robespierre, and killed himself with the other. What followed is one of the most disputed facts of history. I believe ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... silver, so that when the sun glinted upon it, it shone with a dazzling white radiance, almost blinding to behold. The King, also, resolved to do his share, had ordered for her a light sword, with a blade of Toledo steel; but though the Maid gratefully accepted the gift of the white armour, and appeared before all the Court attired therein, and with her headpiece, with its floating white plumes crowning it all, yet, as she made her reverence before the King, ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... him to lend him his knife. Joe drew it from his pocket, but could not brace his nerves sufficiently to venture within the suffocating man's reach. At length he bethought him of his pole, and opening the blade thrust it in the end of it and cautiously handed it to Sneak. Sneak immediately ran the sharp steel through the many folds of the snake, and it fell to the ground in a dozen pieces! The poor man's strength then completely failed him, and he rolled over on his back in breathless exhaustion. Joe rendered ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Dora sowed her seed, the "good seed" for an immortal harvest; and soon the tender blade began to appear—a most ungainly thing in the eyes of her mother; for the first fruit of Dora's good seed, as shown by little Emma, was a great love of truth—a love which as yet she knew not how to regulate ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... weapons consist of the celebrated kris, with its flame-shaped wavy blade; the sword, regarded, however, more as an ornament; the parang, which is both knife and weapon; the steel-headed spear, which cost us so many lives in the Perak war; matchlocks, blunderbusses, and lelahs, long heavy brass guns used for the defense of the stockades ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... conjured the wild demon of revolt to light the horrid torch and bare the greedy blade, he tore a chapter from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... with its drooping heads; There was the sacrificial millet coming into blade[1]. Slowly I moved about, In my heart all-agitated. Those who knew me said I was sad at heart. Those who did not know me, Said I was seeking for something. O thou distant and azure Heaven[2]! By what man ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... on Sundays and fete-days. Frequently there is one attached to the establishment. We went to see the celebrated water-tank of Casasano, the largest and most beautiful reservoir in this part of the country; the water so pure, that though upwards of thirty feet deep, every blade of grass at the bottom is visible. Even a pin, dropped upon the stones below, is seen shining quite distinctly. A stone wall, level with the water, thirty feet high, encloses it, on which I ventured to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... gliding o'er the meadow yonder? Is it the misty vapors of the moor That form a picture in the morning chill? Now it draws near.—The shade of Catiline! His spectre—! I can see his misty eye, His broken shield, his sword bereft of blade. Ah, he is surely dead; one thing alone,— Remarkable,—his wound ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Twice only was the silence broken. One boy quite forgot himself when given a pocket-knife. He looked at it suspiciously and incredulously, turned it over in his hand, opened it and felt the edge of the blade, and, panting ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... confusing. However, we have located two Bowie knives. Since it is assumed that the two gentlemen opponents are not thoroughly familiar with, ah, Bowie knives, it has been suggested that each be given his blade at this time." ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... splitting a cocoanut in half and removing the "meat." This is readily accomplished by the use of a scraper fitted with a rough iron blade (Fig. 25), over which the concave side or the half nut is drawn. The cocoanut meat is ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... and sensational were not necessary to literature. And just as the dewdrop on the petal is a divine manifestation, and every blade of grass is a miracle, and the three speckled eggs in an English sparrow's nest constitute an immaculate conception, so every human life, with its hopes, aspirations, dream, defeats and successes, is a drama, joyous with comedy, rich in melodrama and also dark ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... as a duellist meets his opponent's blade, instantly but warily, summoning all the craft of her newly awakened womanhood to her aid. She was not conscious of agitation. Her heart felt as if it were turned to stone; it did not seem to be ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... wild, her hair loose and disheveled. "Caramba!" she cried, "but we will make sure that the beast is dead before we go! And if we leave this blade in his heart, it may be a warning to others ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... I don't believe the blade touched a vital spot," answered Vane, who now sat on the bench at the end of ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... in private gatherings and public meetings, through every medium of social control, let the people hear the Catholic solution of the problems now facing the nations of the world. We have a message to deliver. That message, if it comes to the people shining like a steel blade, sounding like the blare of a trumpet, if it wells up from a fiery heart and drops from burning lips—that message will be heard. In this period of strain and suffering the public mind is keyed to its highest pitch, ready to snap at any moment. Strong feeling has generated in many minds intellectual ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... Arctic Ocean for walrus teeth and mammoth tusks, bought furs, sold goods, kept a dog team, was attentive to the ladies, and would have run for Congress had it been possible. He had in his store about half a cord of walrus teeth piled against a back entrance like stove wood. Phillipeus was a roving blade. He kept an agent at Petropavlovsk and came there in person once a year. In February he left St. Petersburg for London, whence he took the Red Sea route to Japan. There he chartered a brig to visit Kamchatka and land him at Ayan, on the Ohotsk Sea. From Ayan ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of the hares which I have shot and will make me something," he thought. He washed and cleaned them, but he needed a knife and he set about making one. He split one end of a tough piece of wood, thrust his stone blade in it and wound it with cocoa fibre. His stone knife now had a handle. He could now cut the skins quite well. But what should he do for needle and thread? Maybe the vines would do. "But they are hardly strong enough," he thought. He pulled the sinews from the bones of the rabbit ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... the blade, and held the heavy basket-hilt toward her. She clasped her small white fingers around the rough, shark-skin handle and raised it over her head as naturally as a veteran leader desiring to ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... though he would have said, "I do not desire to kill you, but to treat you as you deserve, for having presumed to address yourself to a prince of such birth as mine, without his having given you just cause,"—and he struck him with the flat of his sword-blade. Coligny, furious, collected his strength, threw himself backwards, disengaged his sword, and recommenced the strife. In this second bout, Guise was slightly wounded in the shoulder, and Coligny ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until just before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts wriggle, snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The brushwood closes behind them as silently as sand into which a mole has dived. Not a sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a wonderful imitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is answered ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... been riveted on those of the general. He saw that at Caesar's side was girded a long slender dagger in an embossed silver sheath. He saw the Imperator draw out the blade halfway, then point off into the river where the water ran sluggishly through a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... against the shafts of a wagon. Then suddenly he changed his tactics. Realizing at last that a clumsily-wielded bludgeon is powerless against a stick expertly handled rapier-wise, he dropped his club, and the next moment the moonbeams flashed from the broad blade of a knife. This was quite a different affair. He now stood on guard with the knife poised and his left hand outspread ready to snatch at my stick. It was a much more effective plan; only he did not know that inside my stout malacca ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... our lieutenant, held by two Portuguese, while others were pointing their swords at his breast. Almost before they discovered us, uttering a loud shout we were upon them. The lieutenant on seeing us, shaking off the grasp of the two men who held him, knocked up the blade of another, and seizing the sword of a fourth, sprang towards us. At that moment, however, a strong reinforcement arriving we had to retreat, with our faces to the foe. Several of our men fell dead, and others were wounded. An attack ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... slowly, or I know nothing of horses. As they step up the incline, you take their riders, and remember to give them the chance of running away. In midstream I will attack the two on the box, pulling him who is not driving into the water by his legs, and giving him the blade in the right shoulder above the lung. He will think himself dead, but should recover. Then you must join me. We shall be three to three, unless the Englishman's hands are loose; then we shall be four to three, and need do no man any injury. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... partly solidified pour the liquid portion into an evapo- rating-dish of water, and observe the crystals of S forming in the beaker (Fig. 42). The hard mass may be separated from the glass by a little HNO3 and a thin knife-blade, or by CS2. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... little to give her when compared with others; but I never noticed that she sacrificed in any respect the smaller faculty to the greater. She fully realized that the Divine Being makes each part of this creation divine, and that He dwells in the blade of grass as really if not as fully as in the majestic oak which has braved the storm for a hundred years. She felt in full the thought of a poem which she once copied for me from Barry ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the last spot at which the distinguished navigator was heard of, from 1788, until 1826, when the Chevalier Dillon was furnished with a clue to his melancholy fate by finding the handle of a French sword fastened to another blade in the possession of a native of Tucopia, one of the Polynesian group. By this means he was enabled to trace him to the island of Mannicolo, on the reefs fronting ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... agreeable duty—the laying of the first stone. He used for the purpose a very elegant silver trowel {59a} with ivory handle, furnished by the Messrs. Etheridge (which had been presented to his worship by Mr. E. E. Benest) bearing the following inscription on the blade:— ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... found untenable on all sides, we adhere to our doctrine that this entire world, from Brahm down to a blade of grass, springs from the avidy attached to Brahman which in itself is absolutely unlimited; and that the distinctions of consciousness of pleasure and pain, and all similar distinctions, explain themselves from the fact of all of them being of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... 'here is the means of execution.' And she drew from her bosom a Bactrian poniard, with a jade handle enriched with inlaid circles of white gold. 'This blade is not made of brass, but with iron difficult to work, tempered in flame and water, so that Hephaistos himself could not forge one more keenly pointed or finely edged. It would pierce, like thin papyrus, metal cuirasses ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... said these words when suddenly the doctor heard a dull stroke like the sound of a chopper chopping meat upon a block: at that moment she ceased to speak. The blade had sped so quickly that the doctor had not even seen a flash. He stopped, his hair bristling, his brow bathed in sweat; for, not seeing the head fall, he supposed that the executioner had missed the mark and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... longer than he had ever seen it. Earlier in the summer, when Master Meadow Mouse visited that spot, he had been afraid to cross the lawn because it was clipped so short. But now he could creep through the thick green carpet and nobody could see him, unless a waving grass blade happened to catch somebody's eye. Everybody at the farmhouse had been too busy with haying to spend any time running a ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... less time than it takes to tell. The onlookers had not yet recovered from their first consternation; in fact they were still fumbling and tugging at whatever weapons they carried when Sebastian came toward them, brandishing the blade on high. Pedro Miron, the advocate, was the third to fall. He tried to scramble out of the negro's path, but, being an old man, his limbs were too stiff to serve him and he ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... other!" cried the murderer, and threw away the hatchet. That other was himself. They saw him draw from his bosom the small pair of scissors, and before any one could attempt to hinder him, bury them in his breast. The blade was too short to penetrate. He struck them in again and again, so many as twenty times. "Accursed heart! cannot I then reach you?" and finally fell in a dead swoon, bathed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... bonny blade carouses, Pockets full, and spirits high— What are acres? what are houses? Only dirt, or wet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the nail was dipped into aquafortis. A nail of this description was, for a long time, in the cabinet of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Such also, said M. Geoffroy, was the knife presented by a monk to Queen Elizabeth of England; the blade of which was half gold and half steel. Nothing at one time was more common than to see coins, half gold and half silver, which had been operated upon by alchymists, for the same purposes of trickery. In fact, says M. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the seriousness of this event—my first fight in earnest—he was keeping me busy to parry his point and watch his dagger at the same time. I was half-surprised at my own success in turning away his blade, but after I had guarded myself from three or four thrusts, I took to mind that offence is the best defence, and ventured a lunge, which he stopped with his dagger only in the nick of time to save ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... nearly straight line, terminating on the south at a very peculiar mountain group, the shape of which has been compared to a stag's horn, but which perhaps more closely resembles a sword-handle,—the wall representing the blade. When examined under suitable conditions, the latter is seen to be slightly curved, the S. half bending to the west, and the remainder the opposite way. The formation is not a ridge, but is clearly due to a sudden change in the level of the ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... knife-work. Cherokee gives the Lizard aige an p'int, an' all in one motion. Before the Lizard more'n lifts his weepon, Cherokee half slashes his gun-hand off at the wrist; an' then, jest as the Lizard begins to wonder at it, he gets the nine- inch blade plumb through his neck. He's ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment. From the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... water at him from over the side of the boat, and he returned by cleverly sprinkling a few drops on her from the blade of ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... and seizing his bill) Ay, Thorbrand, is it thou? That's a rare blade, To shear through hemp and gut.... Let your wife have it For snipping ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... bottom until it was as bare as the back of a hand, and across the cleaned stone, running from southwest to northeast, there was a thin line of discoloration showing plainly enough as a fissure vein. Gifford dug a little of the crack-filling out with the blade of his pocket-knife and we examined it under the magnifier. We were both ready to swear that we could see flecks and dust grains of free gold in the bluish-brown gangue-matter; ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... cough that poor child's got!" said she. "Elinor, reach me the bellows, and hold the blade o' the knife to the fire, and warm it warm. He must have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... fluttering their yellow wings, that one almost expected to see them fly away, and the snapdragons that went off like little pistol-shots when you cracked them. Splendid dollies did she make out of scarlet and white poppies, with ruffled robes tied round the waist with grass blade sashes, and astonishing hats of coreopsis on their green heads. Pea-pod boats, with rose-leaf sails, received these flower-people, and floated them about a placid pool in the most charming style; for finding that there were no elves, Daisy made her own, and loved the fanciful ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... already been scolded by people who are not altogether wrong in accusing me of losing my time in chattering, first of one thing and then of another. They complain that by thus nibbling at every blade of grass on the way-side we shall never get to the end of our journey; and there is some truth in what they say. Still, I will whisper to you in excuse that I thought we might play truant a little bit while ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted with coral, and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharp as a razor; the blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit was whispering in my breast with calm ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... swords—by an anatomical peculiarity of the throat—and said that the deceased might have swallowed the weapon after cutting his own throat. This was too much for the public to swallow. As for the idea that the suicide had been effected with a penknife or its blade, or a bit of steel, which had got buried in the wound, not even the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... was fastened on a stout ashen staff, hard as iron, an old alpenstock cut down. He swung it up as he ran, and he was within a yard of striking distance, when he saw the spy's hand reappear with something in it glittering like the blade of a dagger. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... Arthur (How high is your desire?) His sword within its scabbard lay, The sword with blade of fire. ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... ran on Tom, "why, we mustn't worry, you and I, if the donkey doesn't. Just think,"—he made a fine diversion by pointing with his knife-blade up to the slender spire of the Matterhorn—"we're going up on a little jaunt to-morrow, to ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... protested against the same sins. Rearing the same standard, they summoned men from formality and hypocrisy to righteousness and reality. They incurred the same hatred on the part of the religious leaders of their nation, and suffered violent deaths—the one beneath the headsman's blade in the dungeons of Herod's castle, the other on the cross, at the hand of Pilate and the Roman soldiers. Each suffered a death of violence at the hand of men whom he had lived to succour; each died when the life-blood throbbed with young manhood's prime, and while there ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... some five farms in cultivation around Melbourne, and the crops of wheat are very fair in quality but fall off in quantity. Thirty bushels per acre is considered a good crop. Oats grow too much to straw, and are generally cut in the slot blade, winnowed, and carted to Melbourne and sold for hay. Rye-grass hay does not answer, and clover is not more successful; but vetches have just been introduced on a small scale, and nothing yet grown has succeeded so well as green food for horses and cows. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... shines in Nidud's belt, which I whetted as I could most skilfully, and tempered, as seemed to me most cunningly. That bright blade forever is taken from me: never shall I see it borne into ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... night, And every strangled branch resumes its right To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... blurred notes. Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without; wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ... Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name, and it gave him a deep thrill of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to the splendour of an autumn morning; and as the sunlight poured along the Boulevard de la Madeleine, as it gilded every blade of grass in the paddock, and streamed in golden pencils through the open window of the cottage, it glittered upon his cheek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... deal with the most lovely form of our art, that which pertains to the floral and vegetable kingdoms. Every flower or blade of grass, every tree of the forest and stagnant weed of the swamp, is the outcome of, and ever surrounded by, its corresponding degree of spiritual life. There is not a single atom but what is the external expression of some separate, living force, within the spaces of Aeth, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... curtain'd, front coupe. The sparkling sun of August shone; The wind was in the West; Your gown and all that you had on Was what became you best; And we were in that seldom mood When soul with soul agrees, Mingling, like flood with equal flood, In agitated ease. Far round, each blade of harvest bare Its little load of bread; Each furlong of that journey fair With separate sweetness sped. The calm of use was coming o'er The wonder of our wealth, And now, maybe, 'twas not much more Than Eden's ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... considering of the knight whom she loved so loyally. Tenderly she called him to her side. Without any long tarrying the bird came flying at her will. He flew in at the open window, and was entangled amongst the blades of steel. One blade pierced his body so deeply, that the red blood gushed from the wound. When the falcon knew that his hurt was to death, he forced himself to pass the barrier, and coming before his lady fell upon her bed, so that the sheets were ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... turned pale, and full of wrath, Brandished the shaft of his winged dart on high. Ganelon saw, laid hand upon his sword, And quick unsheathed two fingers' breadth of blade, Saying: "Sword of mine you are most fair and bright; As long as by me borne in this King's court, Never shall say the Emperor of France Ganelon died alone in foreign land, Ere a high price for you the best have paid!" The Pagans cry in haste: ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... Kalevide picked out the longest, and bent it into a hoop, when it straightened itself at once. He then whirled it round his head, and struck at the massive rock which stood in the smithy with all his might. The sparks flew from the stone and the blade shivered to pieces, while the old smith ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... conscious of the pulse-beat of a mysterious life quivering throughout nature, stirring even the tiniest blade of grass. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... like clouds of gold. Alas! in the Champs-Elysees I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived. Motionless, on the lawn nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and there, kindled to a flame the point of a blade of grass, while the pigeons that had alighted upon it had the appearance of ancient sculptures which the gardener's pick had heaved to the surface of a hallowed soil, I stood with my eyes fixed on the horizon, expecting at every ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... we continued to talk in a sparring way—Mr. Carruthers sharp and subtle, and fine as a sword-blade; Lord Robert downright and simple, with an air of ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... out on the other side—in front, that is to say, for no true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the back—and, protruding thus, will display some pleasing legend, such as "Vendetta," or "I serve my master," or "Viva Corsica," roughly engraved on the long blade. There is a macaroni warehouse. There are two of those mysterious Mediterranean provision warehouses, with some ancient dried sausages hanging in the window, and either doorpost flanked by a tub of sardines, highly, and yet, it would seem, insufficiently, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... it is especially good where the pain is under the right shoulder blade. Use the tincture in ten-drop doses three times a day. Externally rub the juice on the corn or wart. Make an ointment from the root and rub this on the skin for salt rheum. It is said to be good for piles also. Dose:—Powdered root ten to twenty to thirty grains. Tincture, ten to twenty drops, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... it till it is as thick as hasty pudding, keep it stirring all the time, that it may be smooth and fine. When first strained, a spoonful of sugar should be added, two spoonfuls of orange flower-water, two or three spoonfuls of cream, a blade of mace, and a bit of lemon peel. When boiled enough, pour the flummery into a shallow ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Beyle was wholly wanting; a collection of ingenious observations in psychology may be of rare value, but it does not constitute a work of art. His writings are a whetstone for the intelligence, but we must bring intelligence to its use, else it will grind down or break the blade. In 1842 he died, desiring to perpetuate his expatriation by the epitaph which names him ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... behind the shelter of the bar. Pepillo had drawn a poignard and was tip-toeing toward the sleeping captain. Mex gave a catamount cry. Palafox started up, pistol in hand, none too soon to avoid the deadly blade of the assassin. "Palafox!" This one word was all Pepillo uttered. In the act of springing to stab, he leaped to his own death, shot through the head. As he fell, the poignard, escaping his relaxed grasp, rang on the floor. Mex, who tiger-like ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... hand. He gazed at it, touched it, and kissed it frantically. The blade was scarcely yet dry, and the ensanguined hue came off upon the pressure. "Marion! Marion!" cried he, "is it thine? Does not thy blood stain my lip?" He paused for a moment, leaning his burning forehead against the fatal blade; then looking ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... champion of Berne had hanging along his back one of those huge two-handed swords, the blade of which measured five feet, and which were wielded with both hands. These were almost universally used by the Swiss; for, besides the impression which such weapons were calculated to make upon the array of the German ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... in a hamlet of clouds, ruined and abandoned to the fury of the names of sunset; the darkened hills were shrouded in violet tints; through the light mists of the valley the river shone at intervals like the polished surface of a Damascus blade. The blue smoke ascended from the chimneys of the village of Andelys, nestling at the foot of the mountain; the silvery tones of the bells ringing the Angelus came to us on the evening breeze; Venus shone soft and pure in the western sky. Madame ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... never drove your machine beyond the dead-line and cracked champagne-bottles on the wheels in front of the Cliff House, it's because automobiles weren't invented and Cliff House wasn't built. Begging your pardon, dad—I'll bet you were a pretty rollicky young blade, yourself." ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... returned. Suddenly, however, an inspiration, as it were, flashed through her mind. It was fate that this knife should have fallen on her sofa; it was to be the instrument of her revenge! She took it quickly in her blanched hand and examined it. It had a sharp, pointed blade, fit to go through flesh and bone; it seemed to have been freshly sharpened. She felt the edge, and in so doing cut her finger slightly. A few drops of blood spurted on to the shining steel, and near them were the marks left by the bread which it ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... young man his hand. "Why, that's very nice," he said. "I thought I knew your face. I think I've seen you with your father. You've been in Blade ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... or because, the friends of socialism say, the expropriated companies have dumped their worn-out rolling-stock on the commonwealth, which must bear the shame of it with the stranger. Between these clashing claims we will not put our blade. All we say is that Italian railroad travel is as bad as heart could wish—the heart that loves Italy and holds dear the memory of the days when there were few railroads, if any, there, and one still ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... madam," the man assured her, and turned the knife point toward her, with the infinitesimal wedge of cheese reposing on its blade. Jennie tried to keep her hand steady as she delicately picked it off, nibbled as she had seen that other woman do it, her head on one side, before it shook a slow negative. The effort necessary to keep from cramming the entire piece into ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... died on the following day. The matter was hushed up as much as possible for the sake of the Countess's good name, and so successfully that it was presently observed that, among the public, the other gentleman had the credit of having put his blade through M. de Salvi. This gentleman took a fancy not to contradict the impression, and it was allowed to subsist. So long as he consented, it was of course in Camerino's interest not to contradict it, as it left him much more free ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... he had to lose it, since he dishonoured the father of the people even in the face of the assembled clan. But the chiefs were noble in their ire; they punished with the sharp blade, and not with the baton. Their punishments drew blood, but they did not infer dishonour. Canst thou say, the same for the laws under whose yoke thou ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... knife that was so constructed that the blade could not be opened without pressing upon springs. It had one spring that if pressed would allow the blade to open; and there was another spring that would lock the first one so that it would not work, and when the second spring was used, no one could open the blade with the first spring alone. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... Red his blade, it hath late been blooded; Shines above it its silver hilt; Golden bosses his shield have studded, Round its rim the white bronze ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... ones, Crass took a hammer and chisel out of the bag and proceeded to cut off what was left of the tops of the two that remained. But even after this was done the two screws still held the lid on the coffin, and so they had to hammer the end of the blade of the chisel underneath and lever the lid up so that they could get hold of it with their fingers. It split up one side as they tore it off, exposing the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... him, between the two of them, stood his daughter—pale, straight, silent, her hands clasped before her. And her father had come to placate her. He had brought her cates to eat, or he would have beaten her into loving him. Yet Mary of England stood as rigid as a knife-blade; you could move her neither by love nor by threats. This man had sinned against this daughter; here he was brought up against an implacability. He was omnipotent in everything else; this was his Pillars of Hercules. So she ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... King before me, and on fell the other twain, And I tossed up the reddened sword-blade in the gathered rush of the rain And the blood and the water blended, and ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... He has the largest run of work, as of old; and his income is sufficient not only to meet increased expenses, but to leave a surplus at the end of every year. He is the bright, sharp knife, always in use; not the idle blade, which had so narrowly escaped, falling from the window, rusting to utter worthlessness in the dew ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... his paper gave out, and for lack of it he took up a boxwood paper-knife lying near and began work on it. First he decorated the handle in a sort of rococo way, and then dashed off on the blade, with his pen, a very spirited head—a bourgeois physiognomy somewhat in Gavarni's manner. But as he could not tear the paper-knife into bits, and did not care to take it away, he left it upon the table. This was my chance. Immediately after the session I asked the director-general ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of the 9th, we saw an antelope on the top of a little hill, which instantly disappeared, before we had time to shoot it. The Desert seemed to our view one immense plain of sand, on which was seen not one blade of verdure. However, we still found water by digging in the sand. In the forenoon, two officers of marine complained that our family incommoded the progress of the caravan. It is true, the females and the children could not walk so quickly as the ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
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