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Crowbar   Listen
noun
Crowbar  n.  A bar of iron sharpened at one end, and used as a lever.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crowbar" Quotes from Famous Books



... echoes caused by the blasting of rocks in the limestone quarries which run along their southern and western ridges. But during the month of May last, this solitude and silence were completely destroyed, by thousands of persons plying every kind of instrument upon them, from the ponderous crowbar and pickaxe, to the easily-wielded trowel and hammer, in search of gold, which they believed to be hidden in their recesses. The information on which they acted seemed to them to come from an authentic source, and to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... have been, Simon Ford was proud of belonging to this ancient family of Scotch miners. He had worked diligently in the same place where his ancestors had wielded the pick, the crowbar, and the mattock. At thirty he was overman of the Dochart pit, the most important in the Aberfoyle colliery. He was devoted to his trade. During long years he zealously performed his duty. His only grief had been to perceive the bed becoming impoverished, and to see the hour approaching ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... the turns was Professor Some One's Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out of them, if I have to use a crowbar." ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... time was lost. Down to Plymouth went the engineer and his staff again. They searched for a quarry to dig the stone from, and found it at Oreston, in the north-east corner of the Sound. In March, 1812, crowbar and gunpowder began to be busy there. Meanwhile, on the water of the Sound, two and a half miles south of Plymouth Town, a number of buoys were moored in two parallel lines, extending over a distance of one thousand two hundred yards, east and west. They marked the place where the ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... were seen walking down the road that night about eight o'clock, dressed in a style common to boatmen. One carried a pair of oars over his shoulder; the other had a well-filled haversack slung across his, and a crowbar in his right hand. They halted on reaching Bright's inn, and having stacked the oars and the bar against the little porch, entered, and were greeted by a number of friends already refreshing themselves at the counter. The appearance of these men—for ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... had distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down in the great rest. The graveyard ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (He glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. (With a bewitching smile) I now introduce ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... to look at, is it?" said he; "but it is a crowbar, chisel, hammer and wrench, all in one. It only took me two nights to cut ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... at that moment with his boy Fred on a windy hillside beside Lake Erie, where Tomlinson's Creek ran again untrammelled to the lake. Nor was the scene altered to the eye, for Tomlinson and his son had long since broken a hole in the dam with pickaxe and crowbar, and day by day the angry water carried down the vestiges of the embankment till all were gone. The cedar poles of the electric lights had been cut into fence-rails; the wooden shanties of the Italian gang of Auriferous workers had been torn down and split into fire ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... which is extremely sensitive; come in about midday to supple the thing and stretch it." Now see the results. Take my own case—as a Magistrate I have enlisted rowers; I want money to pay 'em, and lo! the women clap to the door in my face.[424] But why do we stand here with arms crossed? Bring me a crowbar; I'll chastise their insolence!—Ho! there, my fine fellow! (addressing one of his attendant officers) what are you gaping at the crows about? looking for a tavern, I suppose, eh? Come, crowbars ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... the valve in the outlet pipe, and made a motion as though prying on a crowbar. He wanted to indicate that he needed some sort of lever to ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum

... them are in working-clothes and only possess what they stand in. Here and there is a man with some tool upon his shoulder—a shovel or a crowbar. Those that have any luggage, get it turned inside out by the custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in Sweden. Now and then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has to put up with the officers' coarse witticisms. There, for instance, is Handsome Sara from Cimrishamn, whom ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... of Periphas, the conqueror of the two-formed Pyretus? Why of Ampyx, who fixed his cornel-wood spear, without a point, full in the face of the four-footed Oeclus? Macareus, struck down the Pelethronian[41] Erigdupus,[42] by driving a crowbar into his breast. I remember, too, that a hunting spear, hurled by the hand of Nessus, was buried in the groin of Cymelus. And do not believe that Mopsus,[43] the son of Ampycus, only foretold things to come; a two-formed {monster} was slain by ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... long thick pole between two enormous wheels some seven or eight feet in diameter. Above these wheels a very strong iron arch is fastened, provided with heavy chains, by means of which and with the aid of an iron crowbar, used as a lever, almost any weight of timber can be raised from the ground. The apparatus is called a 'jinka.' The men engaged in the work sit upon the pole with the greatest sangfroid as it goes bumping and crashing through the forest, striking up ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... hidden mine, Or luck at play, or any favour. Nay, more, if any storm whatever Brew'd trouble here or there, The man was sure to have his share, And suffer in his purse, Although the god fared none the worse. At last, by sheer impatience bold, The man a crowbar seizes, His idol breaks in pieces, And finds it richly stuff'd with gold. 'How's this? Have I devoutly treated,' Says he, 'your godship, to be cheated? Now leave my house, and go your way, And search for altars where you may. You're like ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... when, by appointment, the lad met Josiah. Josiah had provided himself with a crowbar and a short length of line, which he said would be sure to come useful, for he had always found it so. Then the two set off for the jail together, and there arrived some time after the drums had warned all good people ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... and sloping, without any tongues under water. To such an one the Intrepid and Pioneer made fast, although the boat's crew that first reached it, in making a hole, were wetted by a projecting mass detaching itself with the first blow of the seaman's crowbar. A gale sprang up almost immediately, and during the night the Assistance blew adrift. Next day it abated, and the ice to the northward ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... struggle—terrific and horrible to see! The devil shrieked and howled; he scratched and bit; while Crowbar, dumb and purple in the face, gave telling blows with his fists. He could not strike the devil's head, because of the horns, and he could not grab his body, because it was so sleek and slimy. At length the devil's ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... he discovered, and forced them open with the crowbar, which Maxwell had dropped when he was struck insensible, but they contained nothing worth the labour of having them hoisted up. At last he was about to leave, after a careful search of more than ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... loosens the soil all about the tree with a crowbar, dislodging any binding surface stones in the meantime; then the roots are followed to the end and secured entire when possible, a bit of detective work more difficult than it sounds in a bank where forest trees of old growth have knit roots with saplings ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... those who were about to join their companion in the mutilation of the idol; but after an interval their hesitation vanished, they dealt blow after blow at the statue, and no more groans followed—no more sounds were heard, save the wild echoes of the stroke of hammer, crowbar, and club, resounding through the lofty hall. In an incredibly short space of time the image of Serapis lay in great fragments on the marble floor. The multitude seized on the limbs of the idol and ran forth to drag them in triumph through the streets. Yet ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... me, as may well be the case," answered the Jew, "you have only to make use of this crowbar and wrench off the lock of the door. But if rioters enter the house, be careful not to do it until some time after they are gone, and all is quiet. When free, you must use your ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... all shape, sir," said he. "The blacksmith pried out the lid wid a crowbar. The books are singed and soaked and the packages ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... to you; but I fancy nothing short of a crowbar would make Dick wince. His soul seems to have been fired before we came across him. He"s intensely suspicious and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... this twist sent Ware's body forward, so that Jumbo could reach up under his right armpit and, placing the palm of his right hand on the back of Ware's head, make use of that crowbar known as the right Half-Nelson. This pressure was gradually forcing Ware forward on the top of his head; but he knew the proper break for the Hammerlock, and simply threw himself ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... the depths of the bed to see what the little gnomes had prepared for me. Now I found out. The spading-fork gave a familiar dull clink as it struck rock. I felt about for the edge; it was a big one. I got the crowbar and dropped it, in testing prods; it was a very big one, and only four inches below the surface. Grass would never grow there in a dry season. I moved to another part. Another rock, big too! I prodded all over the allotted space, and found six big fellows ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... skill into the groups, to make them split and separate like firewood. He made use sometimes of the hilt of his sword as an additional help: introducing it between ribs that were too rebellious, making it take the part of a lever or crowbar, to separate husband from wife, uncle from nephew, and brother from brother. And all this was done so naturally, and with such gracious smiles, that people must have had ribs of bronze not to cry thank you when the wrist made its ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... let me get in with a crowbar. He'll never be able to pronounce his t's right, and when he's dressed up he looks like a 'bus-boy at Mouquin's, but he can see a bluff farther than I can throw one—and that's somewhere beyond the horizon, as you'll admit. Talk it over with ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... expenditure of strength may be seen in the attempt of an illiterate laborer to sign his name. He grips the pen as though it were a crowbar, and puts forth enough strength to handle a twenty-pound weight. Learning to dance, or to skate, or to row a boat, is usually accompanied in the beginning by this form ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... and abandoned to the savages. There did not at first sight appear to be anything of value among the ancient relics, but I noticed some iron boxes, which had rusted at the locks, so that it became difficult to open them. With the aid of a crowbar, however, which I sent for from the ship, we were able to prise the lid off one of them, when it was found to be filled with Spanish money, much gold coin being amongst it. There were twelve iron boxes, and we reckoned that each box contained money to the value of two thousand English pounds. At ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... could be compared, and which were the residences of fantastical beings. Determined, then, on seeing with our own eyes all these wonders, we set out for San-Mateo, taking with us an Indian, having with him a crowbar and a couple of pickaxes, to dig us out a way, should we have the chance of prolonging our subterraneous walk beyond the limits which we all already knew. We also took with us a good provision of flambeaus, so necessary to put our project into ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... silence in which a dropped pin would have made a noise like a crowbar. Half the audience had turned their heads in the direction of Doctor Proctor's smiling gaze, but all eyes were fixed on his lips. The breathless silence lengthened. Then ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... there is no living creature. There, with almost hopeless labor we have dug deep wells. Without a guide we have crossed the wilderness, we have ventured into trackless prairies, where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pickax in hand we have worked our way over mountains, which seemed to defy aught but the wild goat, and hewed a passage through a chasm of rock, more narrow ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson

... appeared. The skipper reported to the passenger. Going to each of the slaves, the latter signed them to descend. The negro swung himself down like a monkey, and received the baggage, which, besides the bundles already mentioned, consisted of some tools, notably a pick, a shovel, and a stout crowbar. An empty water-skin was also sent down, followed by a basket suggestive of food. Then the passenger, with a foot over the side of the vessel, gave his ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... be despaired of." Injuries at first sight apparently slight may prove fatal from haemorrhage or infection; on the other hand, recovery has followed injuries of great severity—for example, the famous "American crowbar case," in which a bar of iron three and a half feet long and one and a half inches thick passed through the head, and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar." ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... a hair of some sort. How will you be able to sleep to-night with a hair on your conscience? For your own sake, lift that crowbar. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... about amidships of the log, Neewa flattened tight, his sharp claws dug in like hooks, and his little brown eyes half starting from his head. It would have taken a crowbar to wrench him from the log. But with Miki it was an open question from the beginning whether he would weather the storm. He had no claws that he could dig into the wood, and it was impossible for him to use his clumsy legs as ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... difficult situation had passed without undue effort. Unhappily the man reopened it. Whilst using a crowbar as a wedge he endeavored to put matters on a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... attended by the most disheartening nervousness, I tried to find my cap to remove it in the presence of royalty. Unfortunately I was obliged to release the somewhat cumbersome crowbar I had been carrying about with me, and it dropped with a sullen thwack upon my toes. In moments of gravity I am always doing something like that. The pain was terrific, but I clutched at the forlorn hope that she might at ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... crowbar! (At work.) That's it. Put down the glim, Badger, and help at the wrench. Your whole weight, men! Put your backs to it! (While they work at the bar, BRODIE stands by, dusting his hands with a pocket-handkerchief. As the door opens.) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pointed it out to us, it was plainly visible. One of the detectives picked up a crowbar and others, still with the hastily selected implements they had seized to fight the fire, started in to pry ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... that feller," he pursued, "and he's as soft as cheese on you. All right; pool your troubles and go on off together for all I care, but before you turn another wheel you'll put the crowbar under that man that'll lift him off of that land; savvy? ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... cunning, but withal very honest sort of fellow; he was, nevertheless, in heart and soul, a housebreaker of the first order. One night, Jemmy quitted his respectable abode, and, furnished with dark lantern, pistol, crowbar, and crape, joined half-a-dozen neophyte burglars—his pupils and his victims. The hostelry chosen for attack was "The Spaniards." The host and his servants were, however, on the alert; and, after a smart struggle in the passage, the housebreakers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Riggins. The second mate probably went forward to let the men out of the forecastle, while the fireman went aft to let the engine-room gang out of the sterncastle. They haven't had time to do it yet; they'll have to pry those rings out of the door with a crowbar. I'll go aft and drive the fireman forward; when I have them ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the mouth which constantly betrays the lucky man of business. His abundant long hair was iron-gray and wiry—Erasmus Walker had seldom time to waste in getting it cut—his eyes were small and shrewd; his hand was firm, and gripped the pen in its grasp like a ponderous crowbar. His writing, Tyrrel could see, was thick, black, and decisive. Altogether the kind of man on whose brow it was written in legible characters that it's dogged as does it. The delicately organized Cornishman felt an instinctive dislike at once for this great coarse mountain of a bullying Teuton. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... great frequenter of evening schools, did not even know that anybody had been killed, his part with a few others being to force open the door at the back of the special conveyance. When arrested he had a bunch of skeleton keys in one pocket a heavy chisel in another, and a short crowbar in his hand: neither more nor less than a burglar. But no burglar would have received such a heavy sentence. The death of the constable had made him miserable at heart, but the failure of the plot also. He did not conceal either of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... holes were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended on the wood and not on the earth between the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... are merely cuttings or branches of the vines. These cuttings may be 5 to 10 inches long. They are inserted into the ground in a hole made by a crowbar or stick. They are usually planted at distances of 12 to 18 inches each way, and the vines are allowed to cover the entire ground as with a mat. In three years a good crop should be secured, if the weeds and wild growth are kept down. A crop ranges ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... the trees while Tom touched them off. This time there were three sharp explosions, a shower of fragments rattled through the branches above our heads, and on going to inspect the result we found that the rock had been so shattered that it was an easy matter to pry out the pieces with pick and crowbar—a task of which Joe and ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... of the master, spoke louder than the angriest reproaches, and when in silence he flung the crowbar down, and began sharpening a pick, it was sufficiently evident that there was thunder ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... the pot, when they may be taken out and killed. Clean bowls of tobacco-pipes, placed in like manner on the tops of smaller sticks, are very good traps: or very deep holes may be made in the ground with a crowbar, into which they will fall, and may be destroyed by ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... he spoke in the name of all the five men who, with Janki Meah, composed the gang in Number Seven gallery of Twenty-Two. Janki Meah had been blind for the thirty years during which he had served the Jimahari Collieries with pick and crowbar. All through those thirty years he had regularly, every morning before going down, drawn from the overseer his allowance of lamp-oil—just as if he had been an eyed miner. What Kundoo's gang resented, as hundreds of gangs had resented before, was Janki Meah's selfishness. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... raft and landed soon after, a little chipping with a crowbar having turned a rough mass into a pier which ran right up to the sand and sort of put an end to the ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... except through the somewhat confused accounts of Bob. Then the plain of the crater offered nothing beside a coarse and shelly ashes. These ashes were deep enough for any agricultural purpose, it is true, for Mark could work a crowbar down into them its entire length; but they appeared to him to be totally wanting in the fertilizing principle. Nor could he account for the absence of everything like vegetation, on or about the reef, if the elements of plants of any ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... whispered Sikes, when a crowbar had overcome the shutter, and the lattice had been opened. "I'm going to put you through there." Drawing a dark lantern from his pocket, he added, "Take this light; go softly up the steps straight afore you, and along the hall ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... crowbar through the center of one of the spools, puts a man on either side to push, and rolls it along as easy as wheelin' ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself." The Indian certainly has a very pompous way of expressing a common thought. He sets about it with an array of prefix and suffix, and polysyllabic strength, as if he were about to crush a cob-house with a crowbar. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... something has happened, and we must force open the door, my good girl,' I said by way of calming her. You may well judge, sir, that I did not send for a locksmith; but with a crowbar, hastily procured from below, I hoisted the door from its hangings and effected ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... infinite succession of thieves; but may not this inference be somewhat too hastily drawn? Have we any right to assume that burglars work by means analogous to those employed by other people? If any thief happened to pick up any crowbar which happened to be ever such a little better suited to his purpose than the one he had been in the habit of using hitherto, he would at once seize and carefully preserve it. If it got worn out or broken he would begin searching for a crowbar as like as possible to ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it. Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we were hitching ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge

... himself and recollect the condition in which he was placed. But the door, framed to withstand attacks from excisemen, constables, and other personages, considered as worthy to use what are called the king's keys, [In common parlance, a crowbar and hatchet.] 'and therewith to make lockfast places open and patent,' set his efforts at defiance. Meantime the noise continued without, and we are to give an account of its ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... mean to do so!) I am essentially a painter and a leaf dissector; and my powers of thought are all purely mathematical, seizing ultimate principles only—never accidents; a line is always, to me, length without breadth; it is not a cable or a crowbar; and though I can almost infallibly reason out the final law of anything, if within reach of my industry, I neither care for, nor can trace, the minor exigencies of its daily appliance. So, in every way, I like a quiet life; and I don't like seeing people ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... accomplices—women both, and one his own sister! A paltry pair of boots was the clue of discovery, and a goodly stretch was the proper reward of a clumsy indiscretion. So for twenty years he wavered between the crowbar and the prison house, now perfecting a brilliant scheme, now captured through recklessness or drink. Once when a mistake at Manchester sent him to the Hulks, he owned his failure was the fruit of brandy, and after his wont delivered (from the dock) ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... was a Troll as clear as day—asked if the old dame would stay and keep house for him a few days; and as the day went on he took a great iron crowbar, and asked the lad if he had a mind to go with him up the hill and quarry a few corner-stones. With all his heart, he said, and went with him; and so, after they had split a few stones, the Troll wanted him to go down below and look after cracks in the rock; and while ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... fittings, accouterments; barde^; equipment, equipmentage^; appointments, furniture, upholstery; chattels; paraphernalia &c (belongings) 780. mechanical powers; lever, leverage; mechanical advantage; crow, crowbar; handspike^, gavelock^, jemmy^, jimmy, arm, limb, wing; oar, paddle; pulley; wheel and axle; wheelwork, clockwork; wheels within wheels; pinion, crank, winch; cam; pedal; capstan &c (lift) 307; wheel &c (rotation) 312; inclined ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... that followed the sound of her voice, the sawing noise sounded regularly, rhythmically. In desperation Betty seized an iron crowbar she had backed into on the wall, and hurled it in the ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... provided three logs—two each 15 feet long and one 13 feet. From another tree another 13-foot log was sawn. All the sapwood was adzed off; the ends were "checked" so that they would interlock. Far too weighty to lift, the logs were toilfully transported inch by inch on rollers with a crowbar as a lever. Duly packed up with stones and levelled, they formed the foundations, but prior to setting them a bed of home-made asphalt (boiling tar and seashore sand) was spread on the ground where ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling fall by the hand of violence! The ripping off of the shelter that has kept out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once ornamental woodwork, the wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the murderous blows of the axe, the progressive ruin, which ends by rending all the joints asunder and flinging the tenoned and mortised timbers into heaps that will be sawed and split to warm some new habitation as firewood,—what a brutal act ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... after this, Ezekiel went to the little cairn, and by the aid of a crowbar, he soon overturned the stones, and laid the ground bare. He then commenced digging, and had not proceeded far when his spade struck against some other metal. He carefully cleared away the earth, and he then felt—for ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... colony. By suspending it in chains beneath the axles, however, it was found possible to draw it, though several of the women had to lend their aid in moving the mass. When at the head of the Stairs, the timber was lowered on the rock, and was slid downwards, with occasional lifts by the crowbar and handspike. When it reached the water it was found to be much too heavy to float, and it was by no means an easy matter to buoy it up in such a way that it might be towed. The Anne was three times as long making ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... Yes, sir, that's what Peter Jones did—dug through the gravel floor and tunneled out, rising from the grave, so to speak, to the general uproar and hullabaloo of the entire settlement. Then—no one stopping him—he armed himself with an old Springfield rifle and an ax and a crowbar, and the cry went up he was going to murder the pastor, with the children running along in front and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... 'arms' in the house. They consisted of an old sword and a horse pistol, the latter of which we loaded with ball. The front door was a very wide one, and here I planted one of the porters with a large kitchen poker. In one of the windows I placed a strong man with a crowbar, and in the other an active fellow with the sword. Presently we heard our upper windows smashing, and simultaneously, an attack was made upon our front door and windows by men armed with railings they had taken from Nelson's monument. These heavy bars were evidently ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... was lightly loaded with a sleeping- and a grub-outfit. A small coil of steel cable protruded inconspicuously from underneath a grub-sack, while a crowbar lay half hidden along the bottom of the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... bridge every window in the entire train was fastened down and there were strict orders against raising them. We discovered that under the boulders were carefully concealed large charges of dynamite ready for immediate use in case of invasion—so that Horatius need not be called upon while axe and crowbar were at work. The windows, it appears, were locked to prevent throwing out of lighted cigars ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... That crowbar of curiosity wedged the boys away from their fear that they were accepting too much from strangers. So they followed their mysterious conductors inside. Young Mr. Hibbert ordered ices similar to those that had been enjoyed that afternoon. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... broken by the passing of Pierre, with a pleasant "Bon jour, M'sieur," and a touch of his cap. Pierre carried a rope and crowbar, unusual implements ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... court members, and such other drill officers as may be requisite in the march of mind, might be seen delving in grim earnest, breaking the frozen earth, uprooting swamp-maples and hemlocks, and waking, with sledge and crowbar, unwonted echoes in a solitude which had heretofore only answered to the woodman's axe or the scream of the wild fowl. The snows of December put an end to their labors; but the yawning excavation still remains, a silent but somewhat expressive commentary ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Bahama Bill, Aleck, and the three boys. Nearly everybody went armed, and the party carried with them a small electric searchlight, run by a "pocket" battery, and two oil lanterns. They also took with them some provisions, and a pick, a shovel and a crowbar, for Bahama Bill said there might be some digging to do to get ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... in the bunk house with some thirty others of his shift. At half-past five in the evening the cook at the boarding-house sounded a prolonged alarm upon a crowbar bent in the form of a triangle, that hung upon the porch of the boarding-house. McTeague rose and dressed, and with his shift had supper. Their lunch-pails were distributed to them. Then he made his way to the tunnel mouth, climbed into ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... Burrage's Oi laid holt av a man's-size crowbar, but at that minit th' thing Oi helt in me hand luked about th' heft av a tinpinny nail. Be that toime all th' others wuz av loike moind to me. They wuz considerable crowdin', an', bein' crippled, Oi dhropped me crowbar an' laid a good holt on th' ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... seized a crowbar, traced in the slush the huge outlines of the buried beast, then, measuring with practiced eye the irregular zone of cleavage, she marked out a vast oval, dug holes along it with her bar, dropped into each hole a stick of dynamite, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... leaps! The solid forest gives fluid utterances; They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, Hoe, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... taken her right in—gave her, pried Kitty's trembling mouth open like a crowbar, and leaning against Charlie's ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... no; I can't come in!" The gas over the door had been lighted as usual at eight o'clock, but was now out, although not turned off at the meter. The evidence taken by the coroner showed that the instrument of murder had probably been a small crowbar used to wrench open packing-cases; one was found near the body, unstained with blood, and another was missing from the premises. The murderer has never ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... my eye down to the crack, but could not see it. There was but one thing to be done,—the floor-boards must come up. I got a hatchet, but could do nothing. I called father; he brought a crowbar and pried up the board, then crawled under it and found the screw. I took good care not to lose it a ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... repairing or replacing. Many years ago, when I was spending the whole Long Vacation at Oxford, I could watch from my windows a man who was supposed to be testing the strength of these pinnacles. He was armed with a large crowbar, which he ran with all his might against the unfortunate pinnacle. I doubt whether the walls of any Roman castellum could have resisted such a ram. I spoke to some of the Fellows, and when the builder made his next report to us, we rather objected ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... eyes to hers, and then, with a sudden cry, dropped the rope and crowbar he was carrying, and reeled against ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... of the river that ran between the hills afar off—the same stream that further up country was to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. Sitting there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty of it all, with never a thought of pick and spade, grub axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks of the knoll to find the depth or quality of its soil ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... while in the captain's cabin, he found a narrow door opening from it. It was securely locked, and though he searched everywhere for keys and found many, none would fit the lock. At last he seized an iron crowbar, with which he forced the door off its hinges. Before him was a curious sort of compartment like a vault, the inside of which was lined with sheet iron. There lay before him several large, long boxes made of strong wood. He wondered what ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... saw, at the bottom of the scooped-out hole, a crevice in the flat wall of rock which we had been following down the passage, after its turn from the right angle way to creep along the mountainside. Out of this crevice protruded a large iron crowbar, apparently jammed into place, the first tool ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... had been plastered more recently than the bulk of the outhouse. Manston loosened the plaster with some kind of tool, flinging the pieces into a basket as they fell. Having now stripped clear about two feet area of wall, he inserted a crowbar between the joints of the bricks beneath, softly wriggling it until several were loosened. There was now disclosed the mouth of an old oven, which was apparently contrived in the thickness of the wall, and having fallen into disuse, had been closed up with bricks in this manner. It was ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... the personality of the Squire, everything was in apple-pie order on the glorious summer morning when he and his huntsmen made their way down river to the wood inhabited by Brock. A complete collection of tools—crowbar, earth-drill, shovels, picks, a woodman's axe, and a badger-tongs that had been used many years ago to unearth a badger in a distant county, and ever since had occupied a corner in the Squire's harness-room—had already been conveyed to the scene of operations, together with a big ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... no end of things Corbie could do with that beak of his. Sometimes it was a little crowbar for lifting stones or bits of wood when he wanted to see what was underneath; for as every outdoor child, either crow or human, knows, very, very interesting things live in such places. Sometimes it was a spade for digging in the dirt. Sometimes it was a pick for loosening up old wood in ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... a wonder he wouldn't stay till winter. If I was setting on an iceberg in latitude umpty-ump north of Evanston these days, they couldn't pry me off it with a crowbar. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... men.) Advance hither to the main body, Donax, with your crowbar; you, Simalio, to the left wing; you, Syriscus, to the right. Bring up the rest; where's the centurion Sanga, and his ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... "A crust crowbar. For openin' one of them cast-iron pies same as you made for us last week. You drill a hole in the crust nigh the edge of the plate and then put that thing in and pry the upper deck loose. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... crowbar there was found Besmeared with blood and hair, Which proved conclusively to all What had ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... was a shower of blows on the door, and a similar attack was begun by a party behind the house. The door was strong, and after a minute or two the hammering ceased, and then there was a creaking, straining noise, and Ronald knew they were applying a crowbar to force it open. He retreated to a landing halfway up the stairs, placed a lamp behind him so that it would show its light full on the faces of those ascending the stairs, and waited. A minute later there was a crash; the lock had yielded, but the bar ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... and ten feet from the man, the latter can raise ten pounds with a pull of one pound, but he has to move his end of the lever ten times as far as the log rises. Try it. See other examples in plough handles, see-saw, balance, scissors, wheel-barrow, pump-handle, handspike, crowbar, canthook, nut-crackers. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... we looked, all the floor of the house was broken up, and the stone paving was piled in corners, and a pick or two lay on them with a spade and crowbar. ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... at his loaded donkey, and thinking that it was very heavy, he picked it up, and found it full of pure silver: the vein occurred at no great distance, standing up like a wedge of metal. The miners, also, taking a crowbar with them, often wander on Sundays over the mountains. In this south part of Chile the men who drive cattle into the Cordillera, and who frequent every ravine where there is a little pasture, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... captain. "I shall be only too glad to get this slab up, if I can, but I am afraid we shall want a crowbar and more help. It's a heavy piece of stone, and I see no way of getting ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... fell; but such is the fact. Elfonzo and his gang stood up and black-guarded Mr. Valeer with vigor all night, getting their outlay back with interest; then in the early morning the army and its general retired from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary adversary and his crowbar. This is the first time this has happened in romantic literature. The invention is original. Everything in this book is original; there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere. Always, in other romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, you know ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... incumbrance on the soil that ought to be removed. Landlords began to act upon this view: they began to evict, to exterminate, to consolidate; and in this fearful work the awful Famine of '47 became a powerful, and I fear in many cases even a welcome, auxiliary to the Crowbar Brigade.[56] ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... of his coat and transformed each hair into a little monkey and each monkey had an iron rod in its hand. He himself had a special iron rod, which had been given to him by the King of Sea Dragons. This rod he could make any size he wanted from a needle to a crowbar. ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... beat Aggie?" scoffed Neale. "That Trix girl has been treating her as mean as she knows how for months, and now you couldn't pry Aggie away from her with a crowbar." ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... poor fellow; and when Jones got up in a surly humour, and said it was time to go away, instead of walking home arm in arm, we went side by side, like two big dogs with their tails as stiff up as a crowbar, and ready for a fight; neither he nor I saying a word, and we parted without saying good-night. Well, I dreamed of your mother all that night, and the next day went to see her, and felt worser and worser each time, and she snubbed Jones, and ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... a crowbar under the hasp, and the whole thing came away with a single metallic report. If any sleeper was awakened by the sound, hearing no other sounds, he probably fell asleep again. Anyhow no ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... banco bank. banda band. bandera banner. bandido highwayman. bando faction, party, proclamation. bandolero bandit, highwayman. baqueta ramrod. baratura cheapness. barba chin, beard. barbaro barbarous. barco boat. barra crowbar. barranco ravine; barranquillo (dim.). barreno hole made with a borer or pick. barriga abdomen, belly; barrigon (aug.) barrilla alkali. barro clay, mud. barrunto conjecture. base f. base. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... William, like myself, has far too great a mastery of the patois to handle delicate situations with success. For instance, when the fanner approaches me with tidings that my troopers have burnt two ploughshares and a crowbar and my troop horses have masticated a brick wall I engage him in palaver, with the result that we eventually part, I under the impression that the incident is closed, and he under the impression that I have promised to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various

... I was not deceived. By means of a crowbar I easily dislodged the bricks, and having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while with little trouble I relaid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... see to-night. I'll carry this to the Sasassa Valley. You get the loan of Madison's crowbar, and come with me; but mind you tell no man where you are going, or what you want ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... laugh. Queerer things have happened. Sellers knows everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter. He'd introduce you to Washington life quick enough. It doesn't need a crowbar to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It's democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any door. If I were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any better place than the capital to pick up a prince ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... another: there is work for the hangman; work for the hammerman, not in building. The very Houses of Aristocrats, we say, are doomed. Paralytic Couthon, borne in a chair, taps on the wall, with emblematic mallet, saying, "La Loi te frappe, The Law strikes thee;" masons, with wedge and crowbar, begin demolition. Crash of downfall, dim ruin and dust-clouds fly in the winter wind. Had Lyons been of soft stuff, it had all vanished in those weeks, and the Jacobin prophecy had been fulfilled. But Towns ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... roads. To be out of the firing line did not mean rest. In fact, as far as physical exertion went, it was easier to be fighting than in reserve. From sunrise till dark and often later the roadmakers were at work with pick, shovel, and crowbar, and the tools were not too many for the job. The gunners joined in the work and managed to take their batteries over the roads long before they were considered suitable for other wheels. The battery commanders sometimes selected firing positions which appeared quite inaccessible to any one ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... all, which—priest or gallant—was the dupe of a delusion, and I was resolved to sacrifice one of my two lives for the good of the other—yea, if it were necessary, to sacrifice both, for such an existence as I was leading could not last.... Father Serapion procured a mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, and at midnight we set out for the cemetery, whose plan and arrangements he knew well. After directing the rays of the dark lantern on the inscriptions of several graves, we came at last to a stone half buried ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... this Dyckman to boost your career, get behind you with a bunch of kale and whoop up the publicity, we can stampede the public, and the little theater managers will mob the exchanges for reels of you. It's only a question of money, Anita. Talk about the Archimedean lever! Give me the crowbar of advertising, and I'll set the earth rolling the other way round so the sun will rise in the west and print ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... entrails of Mother Earth, and of which no man would have the enjoyment to the end of time! These treasures—mighty and inexhaustible, were buried in the morning of the earth's history, at such awful depths, that no crowbar or pickax will ever drag them ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... no living creature. There, with almost hopeless labor we have dug wells, which the future traveler will enjoy. Without a guide who had traversed them, we have ventured into trackless tablelands where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pick, and ax in hand, we worked our way over mountains, which seemed to defy aught save the wild goat, and hewed a pass through a chasm of living rock more narrow than our wagons. To bring these ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... trying to guess now. First of all, we will get the rest of the stone up. It won't be difficult, for now that we have made a start we can use our crowbars. Jose, run up and tell my brother to come down. We shall want him to help with the crowbar; and besides, he would, of course, wish to be here, now that we are on the point of making a discovery one way ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... the marbles were very hard to work, and ill-adapted to their purpose; even had they been of the proper kind, it would be difficult and costly to convey them to the sea. A road of many miles would have to be made through the mountains with pick and crowbar, and along the plain on piles, since the ground there was marshy. Michelangelo wrote all this to the Pope, who preferred, however, to believe the persons who had written to him from Florence. So he ordered him to construct the road." The road, it may parenthetically ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... of the cliff. He'd plenty of stuff left for the flashlight thing, and twenty-eight more films in his kodak, and said we might as well get through with the job then as make a return journey all on purpose. So he took the crowbar, and I shouldered the rope, and away we went up to the ridge of the cliff, where we had got such a baking from the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... wouldn't go. You couldn't pry her out with a crowbar. She's made up her mind to stay till a week from to-morrow, and till a week ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... the object, or the profundity of the calculation. Our faith in the absolute infallibility of scientific observers, and consequently in the absolute certainty of science, being thus rudely upheaved from its very foundations by Sir John Herschel's crowbar, we are prepared to learn that scientific men have ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... hands he holds a compass made of two pointed sticks. Matvey, a fine-looking old man in a new sheepskin and high felt boots, looks with mild blue eyes upwards where on the high sloping bank a village nestles picturesquely. In his hands there is a heavy crowbar. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... to work with young Jack Pollock stringing barbed wire fence. He had never done this before. The spools of wire weighed on him heavily. A crowbar thrust through the core made them a sort of axle with which to carry it. Thus they walked forward, revolving the heavy spool with the greatest care while the strand of wire unwound behind them. Every once in a while a coil would kink, or buckle back, or strike ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... the hardest things that ever met me,' said the giant, 'but if I had my lever and my crowbar, I would not be long in making my way through this rock also,' but as he had not got them, he had to go home and fetch them. Then it took him but a short time to hew ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... Greg another. Dan made a rush for the bow and arrow, fitting a steel tipped arrow to the string. Tom Reade espied the crowbar, and reached it in two bounds. Dave Darrin caught up a stick of ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... desperate enterprise could only be pushed to a successful issue by desperate tactics, and every available battalion was hurried forward to the assault. Before the San Cosme Gate the pioneers were ordered up, and within the suburb pick and crowbar forced a passage from house to house. The guns, moving slowly forward, battered the crumbling masonry at closest range. The Mexicans were driven back from breastwork to breastwork; and a mountain howitzer, which ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... uncertainly, my own candle blinding me. Water trickled from the roof and walls of this rock-bound passage seven feet high and four feet wide. A stream of it flowed by the tiny tram track. The hollow sound of the mallet on the crowbar forcing its way into the stubborn wall grew louder as we approached, until we stood with the miners in a foot or so of water which showed yellow and shining in the flickering light of four candles. Then we went back to the smithy to wait the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... shipyards. It was a manly form of labor, requiring a considerable outlay of apparatus, and developing finely the whole muscular organization. The implement employed, beside the ordinary tools, such as wedges, beetles, the broad-axe, chains, and crowbar, was a strong steel cutting-plate, of great breadth, with large teeth, highly polished and thoroughly wrought, some eight or ten feet in length, with a double handle, crossing the plate at each end at a right angle. It was ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... Since the quarrying of the rock had commenced, my work had been overseeing the native help, of which we had some fifteen cutting and hauling. In numerous places within a mile of headquarters, a soft porous rock cropped out. By using a crowbar with a tempered chisel point, the Mexicans easily channeled the rock into blocks, eighteen by thirty inches, splitting each stone a foot in thickness, so that when hauled to the place of use, each piece ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... getting stone from the hillside on one of the little plateaus, for a house-cellar, discovered, partly embedded, a piece of pottery unique in this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through it, and broke the bowl into several pieces. The joint fragments, however, give us the form of the dish. It is a bowl about nine inches high and eight inches across, made of red clay, baked but not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... answering. Every ounce of energy of all seven men was being flung into that mad labor. Sweat streamed into their eyes, half blinding them; they dashed it off, and struck again and again. The cement crumbled and gave; the heavy gold band commenced to bend; Rennes got his crowbar into an advantageous leverage ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... two queen-bees in a hive,—as though elementary nature herself recoiled from the abominable concursus,—do but open a child's epitome of history, and you find it to have required four entire centuries before the destroyer's hammer and crowbar began to ring loudly against the temples of idolatrous worship; and not before five, nay, locally six, or even seven centuries had elapsed, could the better angel of mankind have sung gratulations announcing that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Instead of returning to drink with Gregory and his comrades, Ivan went to prepare a sledge, filled it with straw, and hid at the bottom an iron crowbar. He brought this to the outside gate, and assuring himself he was not being spied upon, he raised the body of the dead man in his arms, hid it under the straw, and sat down above it. He had the gate of the hotel opened, followed Niewski Street as far as the Zunamenie Church, passed through the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... car-drivers, and must be taken with more than the proverbial grain of seasoning. I find him as a rule very quiet until I have administered to him a dose of "the wine of the country," and then he mourns over the desolation of the land and the ravages of the so-called "crowbar brigade" as if they were things of yesterday. Whether the local Press reflects the opinion of the peasants of Mayo, or the peasants only echo the opinion of the Press as reproduced to them by native orators, I am at ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... as the echo of their steps was dead, Charron, old Jerry, and another man jumped down from a loop-hole into the vault they had left, piled up a hoarding at the entrance, and with a crowbar swung back a heavy oak hatch in the footings of the outer wall. A volume of water poured in from the moat, or rather from the stream which had once supplied it. Seeing this, they disappeared with ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... landing two companies is to be prepared to land with the small-arm men six Pioneers—2 with a saw and axe each, 2 with a pickaxe and spade each, 2 with a small crowbar and sledge-hammer, or such intrenching or other tools as the nature of the expedition may require; the tools to be slung on the men's backs; smaller detachments ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... work. The hawk, with his eyes fixed intently on his prey, did not, I fancy, see the snake lying motionless in the grass; or, if he did see him, he did not think he was a snake, but something else,—my crowbar, perhaps. After a little while, the hawk pounced down, and was just about to give the minar a blow and a grip, when the snake suddenly lifted his head, raised his hood, and hissed. The hawk gave a shriek, fluttered, flapped his wings with all his might, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... inside shet up jest like a trap! I screamed, of course, but 'twant no use. Then I worked that hull long night A-tryin' to open the pesky thing. At last I got in a fright: I couldn't hear his voice inside, and I thought he might be dyin', So I took a crowbar and smashed it in. There was 'Bijah peacefully lyin', Inventin' a way to git out agin. That was all very well to say, But I don't believe he'd have found it out if I'd left him in all day. Now, since I've told you my story, do you wonder I'm tired of life, Or think it strange I often wish I ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... pack-horse reel — Too blind to see there was no shade, and too done-up to feel. And charcoaled on the canvas bag ('twas written pretty clear) We read the message Marshall wrote. It said: 'I'm taken queer — I'm somewhere off of Deadman's Track, half-blind and nearly dead; Find Crowbar, get him sobered up, and follow back,' ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson



Words linked to "Crowbar" :   wrecking bar, lever, jemmy, jimmy, pry, pry bar



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