"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... postman, Tommy Thwaite the "Colonel," so called for his willingness to place his advice at the service of any of the Allied Commanders-in-Chief, and Owd Jerry the smith, who knew how to keep silent, but whose opinion, when given, fell with the weight of his hammer on the anvil. He refuted his opponents by asking them questions, after the manner of Socrates. The subject of conversation was the village school-mistress, who had recently been placed in charge of some thirty children, and was winning golden opinions on ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... an outcast. This was an old fellow who bore the name of Vulcan, and who worked as a blacksmith on the skirts of the farm, having been named by my grandfather with the express intention of placing him at the anvil. This fellow's trade caused him to pass most of his youth in an adjacent village, or hamlet, where unfortunately he had acquired habits that unsuited him to live as those around him were accustomed to live. He became in a measure alienated from ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... are excellent blacksmiths, producing a result that would astonish an English workman, considering the rough nature of their tools, which are confined to a hammer, anvil, and tongs; the latter formed of a cleft-stick of green wood, while the two former are stones of various sizes. Their bellows consist of two pots about a foot deep; from the bottom of each is an earthenware ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... with long retinues of servants, crowded into London and gathered into the greatest church. When the people came forth from the service there was seen in the churchyard a great marble stone, four square, and having in the midst of it a steel anvil a foot high. Through the middle of this anvil a beautiful sword was sticking, with the point projecting beyond. Around the sword in letters ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Assembly Ball by the order of Folinsbee. This much Madrono Hollow knew and could swear to; but there were other strange rumors afloat, of which the blacksmith was an able expounder. "You see, gentlemen," he said to the crowd gathered around his anvil, "I ain't got no theory of this affair, I only give a few facts as have come to my knowledge. Culpepper and Jack meets quite accidental like in Bob's saloon. Jack goes up to Culpepper and says, 'A word with you.' Culpepper ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... I see them in homespun and broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I see them in cap and apron, the servants of the Calf. They swarm on the land and they dot the sea. They are chained to the anvil and counter; they are chained to the bench and the desk. They make ready the soil, they till the fields where the Golden Calf is born. They build the ship, and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf. They fashion the pots, they mould ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... which moves in this cylinder, under a pressure of 5 atmospheres, is capable of lifting a weight of 100 tons. The hammer, which is fixed to this piston by a rod, has therefore an ascensional force of 88,000 pounds. It can be raised 16 feet above the anvil, and this gives it a power three and a third times greater than that of the Prussian hammer. Large guns can therefore be made in France just as well as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... along the timber railways of the Tyne. But when the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten as with a palsy. The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a wealthy rival house attempted to crush him, by reducing prices of iron to cost, but Mr. Garrett, nothing dismayed, employed another person to attend his store, put on his leather apron, took to his anvil, and in the prosecution of his trade, as an edge-tool maker, prepared to support himself as long as this ruinous rivalry was kept up. Thus in the sweat of the brow of one of the heroes and philanthropists of this age, was laid the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... has, as a rule, its special relation to the verb of the same root: thus from dac, "strike," are derived daca, "weapon" or "hammer;", daco, a "stroke" or "striking" [as given] both masculine; daca, "anvil;" dacoo, "blow" or "beating" [as received]; and dake, "a thing beaten," feminine. The sixth form, daky, masculine, has in this case no proper signification, and not being wanted, is not used. Individual letters or syllables are largely employed in combination ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... this operation is rudely performed, it is attended with a great waste of metal, which is also very hard and difficult to be worked; so that English iron is used when it can be obtained, and bars of iron form a considerable article of commerce. The blacksmith's utensils consist of a hammer, anvil, forceps, and a pair of double bellows made of two goat-skins. When we saw him he and his slaves were making stirrups, but the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... inquisitive, and addicted to sleep," said Gamin to me; "he was fond to excess of lock-making, and he concealed himself from the Queen and the Court to file and forge with me. In order to convey his anvil and my own backwards and forwards we were obliged to use a thousand stratagems, the history of which would: never end." Above the King's and Gamin's forges and anvils was an, observatory, erected upon a platform covered with lead. There, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... army of black servants who hung on her word as the deliverance of an oracle. He could hear the hum of the life of the place already awake with the rising sun. Down in the ravine behind the house he caught the ring of a hammer on an anvil and closer in the sweep of a carpenter's plane over a board. A colt was calling to his mother at the stables and he could hear the chatter and cries of the stable boys busy ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... this you may take many other bits of verse which were hammered out on the anvil of the ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... strangeness evoked by the first vision of it. You will soon observe that even the physical actions of the people are unfamiliar,—that their work is done in ways the opposite of Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after surprising methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a hammer such as no Western smith could use without long practice; the carpenter pulls, instead of pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong; and keys must be turned, to open ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... rise of the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with a heavy difficulty. He is fashioning a sword for Siegfried,—still another sword, after ever so many,—realising even as he works that no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... there?' cried the miller, who was near enough to hear Roller's salutation of the magistrate. 'A blacksmith's anvil?' ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... he was twenty years old, when he fell in love with the fair daughter of a painter. The story goes that the father would not permit his daughter to marry any man that was not an artist, and the blacksmith abandoned his anvil for the easel. He had a genius for art, and soon painted better than his masters. He won his bride, and achieved a great reputation in his new art. The picture of The Misers, which you saw at Windsor ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... me as compatriots are not always the nearest. The families of our souls are scattered through the world. Let us re-unite them! Our task is to undo these chaotic nations, and in their place to bind together more harmonious groups. Nothing can prevent it; on the anvil of a common suffering, persecution will forge the common affection of the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... couple of minutes neither spoke, and his head was throbbing with anvil-beats. Twice she started to speak, but stopped each time as though ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... sting of pleasure spurred them up to fiercer action; then began the storm of heaves, which, from the undermost combatant, were thrust at the same time, he crossing his hands over her, and drawing her home to him with a sweet violence: the inverted strokes of anvil over hammer soon brought on the critical period, in which all the signs of a close conspiring extasy informed us of the ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... word." Then he says, "One—two—three—jump!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders—so—like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use—he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... In another part of the court was a granary erected on posts about six feet above the ground, having billets of fire-wood piled below it. At another place, under a tree in the village, he saw a blacksmith's anvil fixed in a block; the forge was of masonry, having an air hole, but ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... have known human nature in all its mutations; and humanity has echoed the aphorism until it has come to believe in some sort that bufferings are benedictions, and hard knocks merely the compacting blows that harden virtues, as the blacksmith's hammer beats a finer temper into the steel upon the anvil. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... dazzling to the sublime with a brilliancy that is captivating. If sorrow is depicted, his course through its horrible depths brings a shudder over the most listless reader. If happiness is to be portrayed, the coziest nook in Elysium is laid bare. If anger pleads for expression, no bolt from Vulcan's anvil has ever fallen with ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... strong man to hammer and weld the state like a smith. Our strong men were too strong for us, and too strong for themselves. They were too strong for their own aim of a just and equal monarchy. The smith broke upon the anvil the sword of state that he was hammering for himself. Whether or no this will serve as a key to the very complicated story of our kings and barons, it is the exact posture of Henry II. to his rival. He ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... principle of choice, he has now on the anvil another scheme, full of difficulty and desperate hazard, which totally alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms, and, what end soever it shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heartburning and discontent to one of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latest posterity. This ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... from the political arena. National parties would again crystallize upon legitimate questions of National interest—questions of tariff, finance, and foreign relations. The disastrous conflict between Federal and State jurisdiction would cease. North and South, no longer hammer and anvil, would forget and forgive the past. School-houses and churches would be our fortifications and intrenchments. Capital and population would flow, like the Mississippi, toward the Gulf. The black race would gravitate by the law of nature toward the tropics. The memory and spirit of Washington ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it does not seem to be words at all which touch us. It seems to be things—things living or dead, things in motion or at rest. Words are there indeed; they must be there—but they are so hammered on the anvil of his hard purpose that they have become porous and transparent. Their one role now is to get themselves out of the way; or rather to turn themselves into thin air and clean water, through which the reality beyond can come at us with ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... generally at the blacksmith's, to whom the passing of the coach is an event fruitful of much speculation. The smith, with the horse's heel in his lap, pauses as the vehicle whirls by; the cyclops round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers and suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in brown paper cap laboring at the bellows leans on the handle for a moment, and permits the asthmatic engine to heave a long-drawn sigh, while ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... over a piece of glowing iron which he held in long tongs, and the red sparks radiated in showers as the hammer thumped dully on the soft metal—thumps sharply punctuated by the clean ring of steel as the polished face of the tool bounced merrily upon the chilled surface of the anvil. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... but could see no sign of the bordermen. As it was now broad daylight he felt convinced that further watch was unnecessary, and went in to breakfast. When he came out again the villagers were astir. The sharp strokes of axes rang out on the clear morning air, and a mellow anvil-clang pealed up from the blacksmith shop. Colonel Zane found his brother Silas and ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... beating that he flies back howling "to his swamp." After a time, the soldier induces the whole of the fiendish party to enter his knapsack, prevents them from getting out again by signing it with a cross, and then has it thumped on an anvil to his heart's content. Afterwards he carries it about on his back, the fiends remaining under it all the while. But at last some women open it, during his absence from a cottage in which he has left it, and out rush the fiends ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... the anvil of my brain And beat a metal out of pageantry. Figure and form I carry in my train To load the scaffolds of Eternity. Where the masters are Building star on star; Where, in solemn ritual, The great Dead Mathematical Wait and wait ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... lays my heart, all heated, On the hard anvil, minded so Into his own fair shape to beat it With his great hammer, blow on blow: And yet I whisper, As God will! And at his heaviest ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... year he was never without a shotgun and revolver. The shotgun was allowed, but the revolver was still contraband and kept carefully concealed. On Fourth of July he always helped to fire the anvil and fireworks, for he was deft and sure and quite at home with explosives. He had acquired great skill with both gun and pistol as early as his thirteenth year, and his feats of marksmanship came now and then to the ears of ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... thirteen, I became a master puddler at sixteen. At that time there were but five boys of that age who had become full-fledged puddlers. Of these young iron workers, I suppose there were few that "doubled in brass." But why should not an iron worker be a musician? The anvil, symbol of his trade, is a musical instrument and is heard in the anvil chorus from Trovatore. In our rolling mill we did not have an anvil on which the "bloom" was beaten by a trip-hammer as is done in the Old Country. The "squeezer" which combines the functions of hammer ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... flax-spindle heard in its cottages, in those old days,—"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only bleached, stamped and sold, by the Dutch," says Busching. A Country, in our days, which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and the loom. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... glorious chivalry, First in all wisdom, of a prudent mind, Yet none the less him too his fate shall find Unfenced by these, a man 'mongst other men. Yea, and will Fortune pick out, now and then, The noblest for the anvil of her blows; Great names are few, and yet, indeed, who knows What greater souls have fallen 'neath the stroke Of careless fate? Purblind are most of folk, The happy are the masters of the earth Which ever give small heed to hapless worth; So goes the world, and this we needs must bear ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... who, ten to one, will not tell me the real translation. I think the first hour of the morning is also favourable to the bodily strength. Among other feats, when I was a young man, I was able at times to lift a smith's anvil with one hand, by what is called the horn, or projecting piece of iron on which things are beaten to turn them round. But I could only do this before breakfast, and shortly after rising. It required my full ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... was won'erful weather-tender, too,' said Hobden. 'I've seen her brish sparks like off an anvil out of her hair in thunderstorms. But she never laid out to ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... morning I saw more activity among Negroes than I had ever seen before in my life. Not only was everybody at work, but every soul seemed to be in earnest. I heard the ringing of the anvil, the click of machinery, the music of the carpenters' hammers. Before my eyes was a pair of big fat mules drawing a piece of new and improved farm machinery, which literally gutted the earth as the mules moved. Here was a herd of cattle, there a herd of swine; here thumped the mighty ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... strengthen us, if it is strong, for all the work that is to be done. Persistence in the path of duty, though my heart be beating like a smith's hammer on the anvil, is what Christian men should aim at, and possess. If we have within our hearts that fire of a certain hope, it will impel us to diligence in doing the humblest duty, whether circumstances be for or against us; as some great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... whole, this army was justly thought the equal of twice its own number of raw yeomanry, suddenly called to the field from the anvil, the workshop, or the plough. Its strongest arm was its artillery; its weakest, ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... spaces on either side are a number of trade emblems—a square, an axe, an adze, a mallet and chisel, a millrind, an axe-pick of the kind used by millers for dressing the mill-stone, the coulter of a plough, a hammer and anvil (?), and an auger, indicating probably the various mechanical aptitudes of the deceased. The connection of the family of Reidheuchs or Ridochs with Strathearn began in 1502, when King James IV. granted ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... stood the two women who were to make my life, ruling it between them, as it were, striking it out between the impact of their natures, as underneath the blows of two smiths upon the ringing anvil the iron, hissing hot, becomes a sword or ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... further part of the rock, where he kept his eye steadily upon the progress of the vessel. While the artificers were at work, chiefly in sitting and kneeling postures, excavating the rock, or boring with the tools, and while their numerous hammers, and the sound of the smith's anvil continued, the situation of things did not appear so awful. In this state of suspense, with almost certain destruction at hand, the water began to rise upon those who were at work on the lower parts of the sites of the beacon and lighthouse. From the ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... it as it were between his love for her and the tremendous passion that was consuming him. Contrition at his sharp words to her hammered the upper plate, wrath at the manner of her reception of his news was anvil beneath. The ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... ceremonies, and old-fashioned feasting—all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... ode, and reproduced it at Covent Garden, with deserved success. Not often do such a poet and such a musician meet at the same anvil. The great German also set the former ode, which is known as "The Ode on St. Cecilia's Day." Dryden himself told Tonson that he thought with the town that this ode was the best of all his poetry; and he said to a young flatterer at Will's, with honest ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... stir the discussion now and again with a sagacious word. It is easy to imagine the ripple of musical Welsh which sometimes drowned the tap-tap of the cobbler's hammer, or was submerged beneath the clang of the anvil. The bright eyes and excited faces of these Celts partly illumined by the oil-lamp or by the sudden glow of the blacksmith's furnace must have provided pictures worth record for themselves, quite apart from the personal ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... He carried a hammer of stone in one hand and tongs of 15 bronze in the other, and a song of peace was upon his lips. On a green hillock, where the south wind blew, he built him a smithy, and in it he placed the tools of his craft. His anvil was a block of gray granite; his forge was carefully built of sand and clay; his bellows was made of the 20 skins of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... she was able to walk, he would take her to the forge, and keep her for hours on a sheepskin in one corner, whence she watched, with infantile delight, the blast of the furnace, and the shower of sparks that fell from the anvil, and where she often slept, lulled by the monotonous chorus of trip and sledge. As she grew older, the mystery of bellows and slack-tub engaged her attention, and at one end of the shop, on a pile of shavings, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... machine is the cracker. This cracker is the Wylie cracker in principle and is made in Eugene, Oregon. Simply explained it could be likened to two pages in a book. One page is perpendicular while the other page is off the perpendicular about 7 degrees. The first page which is the anvil is fixed save for adjustments for nuts of varying size. The other page or hammer riding up and down through an inch and one quarter of travel is fixed to a crank below. Both of these pages or plates are heavy cast iron plates that are fluted and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... it seemed that they must crash down upon their riders. Yet with consummate horsemanship they both swung round in a long curvet, and then plucking out their swords they lashed at each other like two lusty smiths hammering upon an anvil. The chargers spun round each other, biting and striking, while the two blades wheeled and whizzed and circled in gleams of dazzling light. Cut, parry, and thrust followed so swiftly upon each other that the eye could not follow them, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when Bully led you off. Him and me ain't friends no more, so's you could notice. Seven years now since I hit him for cussin' me for somethin' that wa'n't my fault! But, by gee whiz, old Bully Presby could go some! We tipped an anvil over that day, and wrecked a bellows before they pulled us off each other. I've always wondered, since then which of us ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with stardust, atoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... loading a ship. At first they said he was too small, but he finally persuaded them to give him a trial. He seemed to be making good, and they gradually increased the size of his load until on the last trip he was carrying a 300-pound anvil under each arm. When he was half-way across the gangplank it broke and the Irishman fell in. With a great splashing and spluttering he came to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... them the precious stones which attached themselves, have everywhere ranked among the luxuries of a refined cultivation. It is the most brilliant of stones, and the hardest known body. Pliny says it is so hard a substance, that, if one should be laid on an anvil and struck with a hammer, look out for the hammer! [Mem. If the reader have a particularly fine diamond, never mind Pliny's story: the risk is something, and Pliny cannot be reached for an explanation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... not take means for that end, I fear lest despair should teach the sufferers that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms; and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he should cease to become an anvil only that he may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the blacksmith and the only infidel in the country, a grimy old Vulcan with white beard and the eagle's implacable eye. One of William's braveries was to go there to have his red-headed horse shod and to sit upon the edge of the anvil block while it was being done, and gently try to wheedle him toward Heaven. Now, however, at last he was to have the best of the argument. Davy was dying, about to be turned out of the house and home of his spirit, and he wanted the preacher to help him find another. He must have another. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... ordinary condition, if it were for no other reason than that he might continue to live. He was accordingly, at his own request led into the smithy, multitudes flocking around to tender him their kindest offices, or to witness the process of release; and, having laid down his head upon the anvil, the smith lost no time in seizing and poising his goodly forehammer. "Will I come sair on, minister?" exclaimed the considerate man of iron, in at the brink of the pot. "As sair as ye like," was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... remained standing, leaning his forehead upon the back of his great hands, which held the handle of his hammer upright upon the anvil. He mused. His four companions watched him, and, like a tiny mite among these giants, Simon anxiously waited. Suddenly, one of the smiths, voicing the sentiment of all, said ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... lofty and original eloquence. I felt riveted to my seat till he finished it. There was no oratory about it, in the ordinary sense of that word; no graces of elocution. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from his heated mind like the sparkles from the glowing steel on his own anvil, getting on as they come out what clothing of language they might, and thus having on the most appropriate and expressive imaginable. Not a waste word, nor a wanting one. And he stood and delivered himself in a simplicity and earnestness of attitude and ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... they resolved to make two lances to defend themselves against the white bears. The iron hook was therefore fashioned into a hammer, by widening a hole which it happened to have about the middle, with one of the largest nails. A large pebble served for an anvil, and a couple of rein-deer horns served for ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... she has always found supple to her will, as a personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they have now arrived at such a point that Mademoiselle Brigitte is packing her trunks to leave ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... past the Forum, past the Coliseum, in view of St. Peter's. Soon we entered a dusty road. The houses were small now, broken and old. At last we drew up into an open space surrounded by little buildings: a blacksmith's shop where the anvil was ringing, little bakeries, markets where vegetables and bologna were vended. Ragged Italian children, gay and soiled with healthy dirt, were playing in the dust, turning somersaults, chasing each other, laughing. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... light of the forge has died away, The anvil's ringing voice is still, And the bell in the church upon the hill Mournfully ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... in the shuttle's song; There's triumph in the anvil's stroke; There's merit in the brave and strong Who dig the mine or ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... round the piston so as to act as a valve, and produce a regular blast. Both cylinders communicate with the same nozzle, one piston rising while the other falls. An oblong piece of iron on the ground was the anvil, and a small vice was fixed on the projecting root of a tree outside. These, with a few files and hammers, were literally the only tools with which an old man makes these fine guns, finishing then himself from the rough ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... might with a vicious strength from which there would be no escape, until, in the climax of the river's madness, the object of its angry sport would be dashed against the cliff, and torn, and crushed, and hammered by the terrific weight of the rushing flood against that rocky anvil, into ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... shillings and sixpence a week worked sixteen hours a day for the fogger, hammering hot iron into nails. The scar upon my forehead—look! it is shaped like the red-hot nail that one day leapt upon me from her anvil, as I lay asleep in my swing above her head. I would not lose it for all the diadems of all the monarchs of this world. She was much too poor to educate us. When the wolf is at the door, Mr. Aylwin, and the very flesh and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... plains I saw a sight! Ragged hills of ice were thrown up, as if they'd been heaved out by the breaking earth, jutting here and there like wedges—like the teeth of a world. Alors, on one crag, shaped as an anvil, I saw what struck me like a blow, and I felt the blood shoot out of my heart and leave it dry. I was for a minute like a pump with no water in its throat to work the piston and fetch the stream up. I got sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and ice I saw a big white bear, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... his work. The introduction of wing-made sounds in the middle of a vocal performance was of itself a stroke of something like genius. It put me in mind of the firing of cannons as an accompaniment to the Anvil Chorus. Why should a creature of such gifts be named for his bodily dimensions, or the shape of his tail? Why not ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... meant for ages' reading. I don't like Ivanhoe, Tho' Dymoke does—it makes him think of clattering In iron overalls before the king Secure from battering, to ladies flattering, Tuning, his challenge to the gauntlet's ring— Oh better far than all that anvil clang It was to hear thee touch the famous string Of Robin Hood's tough bow and make it twang, Rousing him up, all verdant, with his clan, Like ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... British minister for India—of a doubtful nature, couched in terms which seem to have aroused his resentment. From this moment, there can be no doubt that the Ameer's course was decided upon. He was between the hammer and the anvil and, as he could obtain no guarantee of assistance from England, he determined to throw himself into the arms ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... consider that "the profits, pleasures, and vanities of the world" will one day "give thee the slip, and leave thee in the sands and the brambles of all that thou hast done." The careless man lies "like the smith's dog at the foot of the anvil, though the fire sparks flee in his face." The rich man remembers how he once despised Lazarus, "scrubbed beggarly Lazarus. What, shall I dishonour my fair sumptuous and gay house with such a scabbed creephedge as he? The Lazaruses are not allowed ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Yspaddaden Penkawr grievously with it through the knee. {85a} Then he said, "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. I shall ever walk the worse for his rudeness, and shall ever be without a cure. This poisoned iron pains me like the bite of a gad-fly. Cursed be the smith who forged it, and the anvil whereon it was wrought! So ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... battery continues its barking a hundred yards behind us—the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy scream of force and fury—a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side. "It's a gran'pa, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... intended doing, and could not. She groped desperately, but overwhelming, insistent, there had developed in her a sudden, preventing tumult—in paradox, a confusion in rhythm—like the beating of a great hammer on an anvil, only incredibly more swift than blows from human hands. Over and over again she repeated to herself the one word: "wait," "wait," "wait," but mechanically now, without thought as to the reason. Then, all at once, soft, all-enfolding, kindly Nature ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... more ado they did, the cheering and inspiring ring of iron on anvil awakening the echoes of the Alf-thal ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... an anvil, and leaning against the anvil-block was a heavy sledge. As the old merchant turned from him, he had caught up the sledge and had struck him a savage blow on the head. McBride had dropped to the ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task, which Scaliger compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprize vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... he was before. But he has no choice; the appointment being once made and confirmed, he cannot decline, nor resign, under penalty of being a "suspect;" he must be the hammer in order not to become the anvil. Whether he is a wine-grower, miller, ploughman or quarry-man, he acts reluctantly, "submitting a petition for resignation," as soon as the Terror diminishes, on the ground that "he writes badly," that "he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pinch, and grind and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces: made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to the human shape—they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped—that ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... proclaimed aloud, Freedom for Persia! Need I blush for him? To him the empire owes its greatest blessing, The prosperous rule of virtuous Feridun." Tus wrathfully rejoined: "Old man! thy arrow May pierce an anvil—mine can pierce the heart Of the Kaf mountain! If thy mace can break A rock asunder—mine can ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Governor Wolcott, who seemed to have been expecting some such outcome of the battle, gave his answer clear as an anvil-blow: ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the road passed beneath a clump of trees, which hid a few houses, and they could distinguish the vibrating and regular blows of a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil; and presently they saw a wagon standing on the right side of the road in front of a low cottage, and two men shoeing ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and I like her husband, Jack Frothingham, so it's no secret conclave of the Anvil Association when I whisper them wise that the next time they give a musical evening my address is Forest Avenue, corner of ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... of the noble author convey no flattery;—but amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the anvil toil, And strike the sounding blow, Where, from the burning iron's breast, The sparks fly to and fro, While answering to the hammer's ring, And fire's intenser glow!—Oh, while ye feel 'tis hard to toil And sweat the long day through, Remember, it is harder still To have ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... portable as easily to go into the pocket, and containing instantaneous light on touching a spring, with pens, ink, seal and wax. Amongst the endless number of paper presses is one with a blacksmith, who, when light is required, strikes the anvil and fire appears; abundance of cigar stands with matches are arranged after a variety of whimsical methods, some of them very tasteful, and having quite an ornamental effect. Fortunately, Madame Merckel has ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... was not only Thorogood but thorough-going. The father was a blacksmith, with five sons and one daughter, and he used to hammer truth into his children's heads with as much vigour as he was wont to hammer the tough iron on his anvil; but he did it kindly. He was not a growly-wowly, cross-grained man, like some fathers we know of—not he. His broad, hairy face was like a sun, and his eyes darted sunbeams wherever they turned. The faces of his five sons were just like his own, except in regard to roughness ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... heat of which is urged by a pair of double bellows of a very simple construction, being made of two goats' skins; the tubes from which unite, before they enter the forge, and supply a constant and very regular blast. The hammer, forceps, and anvil, are all very simple, and the workmanship (particularly in the formation of knives and spears) is not destitute of merit. The iron, indeed, is hard and brittle, and requires much labour before it can be ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... been as ruthlessly ruined. For, while the rents were lowered, the charges on the land, made on the larger basis, were kept to their same value; and the fate of the landlord was sealed. Between the hammer and the anvil as he was and is placed, his times have not been pleasant. Families who have bought their estates on the faith of Government sales and Government contracts, and families who have owned theirs for ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... as they don't like, my lad. Look here," he said, holding a glowing piece of steel upon his anvil and giving it a tremendous thump. "See that? I give that bit o' steel a crack, and it was a bad un, but I can't take that ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... a virgin anvil, It is heated and hammered and rolled, It is shaped and tempered and burnished, And set in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith up this way? If we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him by the hair of his head to his anvil, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... form a skeleton of iron, the size and strength of the iron rods corresponding to the size of the figure to be modelled; and here, not only strong hands and arms are requisite, but the blacksmith with his forge, many of the irons requiring to be heated and bent upon the anvil to the desired angle. This solid framework being prepared, and the various irons of which it is composed firmly wired and welded together, the next thing is to hang thereon a series of crosses, often several hundred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... influences from them, and if there be not more exports than imports, if there be not more influences and mightier influences raying out from him than are coming into him, he is a poor creature, and at the mercy of circumstances. 'Men must either be hammers or anvil';—must either give blows or receive them. I am afraid that a great many of us who call ourselves Christians get a great deal more harm from the world than we ever dream of doing good to it. Remember this, 'you are the salt ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life, Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus, on its sounding anvil, shaped ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... expected to find an acquaintance in this neighborhood, but a chase makes quick fellowship. I happened to hear of it at the Anvil Tavern,—am on my way to the Rising Sun; so, you see, if the hunt goes down Tuffkenamon, as is likely, it's so much of a lift on ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... not have thee fool'd. Lea. I have strange Engines Fashioning here: and Bartolus on the Anvil, Disswade ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to answer, his eye fell suddenly on the burly form of Cecco del Vecchio, who was leaning his bare and brawny arms over his anvil, and gazing, with a smile, upon the group. There was something in that smile which turned the current of Adrian's thoughts, and which he could not contemplate without an ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... making a gurgling sound of content, children at play, a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of Bea and a grocer's boy in the kitchen, a clinking anvil, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Bill to St. Catherines.—Pass close south of the Shambles and steer for Anvil Point, thence hug the coast, ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... sometimes would take up those pieces, and hurle them about the room, and into the other room; and when it did not hurle the glasse at their heads, it did strike upon the tables, as if many smiths, with their greatest hammers, had been laying on as upon an anvil; sometimes it thumpt against the walls as if it would beat a hole through; then upon their heads, such stamping, as if the roof of the house were beating down upon their heads; and having done thus, during the space (as was conjectured) ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... am in Wildman's, I may ask the man to quit selling soap and tobacco for the moment and to close and lock the door. If I am at Valmore's shop, I will go up into his loft and listen to him pounding on the anvil below. If he or Freedom Smith go to your house, I warn them I will cut their friendship. When I see the carriages going through the street and know that the thing is right well done and over, I will buy flowers and take them to Mary Underwood as an appreciation ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... not only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the Musick of a Kettle-Drum, the Project was ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... used by its possessor as an instrument or tool for the effecting of some purpose which he considers or has considered for his advantage—when we see living tools which are as admirably fitted for the work required of them, as is the carpenter's plane for planing, or the blacksmith's hammer and anvil for the hammering of iron, or the tailor's needle for sewing, what conclusion ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... One lived in the grass and rose leaves of our garden, for the German blacksmith who lately occupied our hospital building had planted his garden with "Caroline Testout" and crimson ramblers. His voice was like the tinkling of fairy hammers upon a silver anvil. And with this fine clear note was the elusive voice of another cricket that had such a marked ventriloquial character that we could never tell whether he lived in the rose bushes or in the trees. His note was the music of silver bells upon the naked feet ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... that he can be practical. If Mr. Burritt should prove as good a statesman as a theorist, he would be an exception to most who belong to the aerial school. As a writer he stands deservedly high. In his "Sparks from the Anvil," and "Voice from the Forge," are to be found as fine pieces as have been produced by any writer of the day. His "Drunkard's Wife" is the most splendid thing of the kind in the language. His stature is of the middle ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... so valuable as arms, of whatever style and fashion they might be. The bellows blew, and the hammer clanged continually upon the anvil, while the blacksmiths were repairing the broken weapons of other wars. Doubtless, some of the soldiers lugged out those enormous, heavy muskets, which used to be fired with rests, in the time of the early Puritans. Great horse-pistols, too, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of which, called the Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, covered with beautiful dog's tooth spar, called the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... toiling millions, free and brave, Whose shores two mighty oceans lave: Your cultured fields, your marts of trade, Keels by the hand of genius laid, The shuttle's hum, the anvil's ring Echo your ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Anvil Rock and old Camp Hualapais were our next two stopping places. We drove through groves of oaks, cedars and pines, and the days began hopefully and ended pleasantly. To be sure, the roads were very rough and our bones ached after a long day's travelling. But our tents were now ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... apartment, a sort of observatory, on the leads, in which was an immense telescope. Duret was always at hand, either sharpening tools, or cleaning the anvil, or pasting maps; and the king employed him to fix the lens of the telescope so as to suit his majesty's eye; and there, in an arm-chair at the end of the telescope, sat the king, for hours together, spying at ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... admonition, generally attributed to Pittacus, see Griffiths, and for a modern illustration in the miseries of Sir John Anvil (or Enville), Knt., the ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... inferior clergy's side, who with a profound duty to her Majesty, are perfectly pleased with the present turn of affairs. Besides, curious people will be apt to enquire into the dates of some promotions, to call to mind what designs were then upon the anvil, and from thence make malicious deductions. Perhaps they will observe the manner of voting on the bishops' bench, and compare it with what shall pass in the upper house of convocation. There is, however, one comfort, that under the present dispositions of the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the mir, or communal system, is now penetrating these fertile districts, and systematically replacing the Mongolian culture. But the ignorance of this lower class of Russians is almost as noticeable as that of the natives themselves. As soon as we entered a village, the blacksmith left his anvil, the carpenter his bench, the storekeeper his counter, and the milkmaid her task. After our parade of the principal street, the crowd would gather round us at the station-house. All sorts of queries and ejaculations ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... of the pantheon, but he was indispensable to the dynasty, and to none more than his father and mother, who were often unkind to him; he had his smithy in Olympus in the vicinity of the gods, and the marvellous creations of his art were shaped on an anvil, the hammer of which was plied by 20 bellows that worked at his bidding; in later traditions he had his workshop elsewhere, and the Cyclops for his servants, employed in manufacturing thunderbolts for Zeus; he was wedded to Aphrodite, whom he caught playing false ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... daughters of the Weald (That in their heavy breasts had long their griefs concealed), Foreseeing their decay each hour so fast come on, Under the axe's stroke, fetched many a grievous groan. When as the anvil's weight, and hammer's dreadful sound, Even rent the hollow woods and shook the queachy ground; So that the trembling nymphs, oppressed through ghastly fear, Ran madding to the downs, with loose dishevelled hair. The Sylvans that about the neighbouring woods did dwell, Both in the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... is fallen asleep and grown hard, will lie like the smith's dog at the foot of the anvil, though the fire-sparks fly in ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... workshop, and bade his bellows—there were twenty of them—blow the blasts on the fire and prepare the earthen moulds; and as Vulcan willed, the work was done. He melted the tough bronze and tin, the gold and silver, with the fire; and placed an anvil and took a strong hammer in one hand, and tongs in the other, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... speaking of the cautious deliberation of some men, "A second-best position to-day is better than a first-best to-morrow, when the occasion has passed." Strike while the iron is hot! and between reading and thinking my iron was very hot by the time I laid it on the anvil. Moreover, I had to meet the emergency of lecturing, one of the main reliances of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... playing on the millpond, the barking of a dog, the musical clang of Peter McNabb's anvil arose to the hills where the minister walked. Away across the valley a sleigh was moving slowly down the winding road; he could hear the clear tinkle of the bells as though they were at ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully, was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, and as little capable of playing anvil to another mind for long. He rebelled against her ascendancy, but suffered from the spell. She was no Countess Guiccioli, content to adore and be adored, and exercise an indirect power for good on a capricious lover. Her logical mind, energetic and independent, grew impatient of the seeming ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and tempted by passion; that they do not need so much to be told what is their duty, as persuaded to do it. To me, brought up on the very battle field of controversial theology, accustomed to hear every religious idea guarded by definitions, and thoroughly hammered on a logical anvil before the preacher thought of making any use of it for heart or conscience, though I enjoyed the discourse extremely, I could not help wondering what an American theological professor would make ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had planted himself square in front of his antagonist just as a second tomahawk was on the tip of leaping at him, which he sent ringing after the other, before it had quitted the red giant's grasp. Foiled again, and ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... stryke therat with his glayve, and retourne agayne. Thanne he rode a lytell forthe, thyderwarde, and anone he sawe where his master layn upon the erthe, bytwene foure men, layenge on him strokes, as they wolde have stryken on a stethey (anvil); and than the squyer was so affreyed, that he durst go no farther; for he sawe well he could nat helpe his mayster. Therefore he retourned as fast as he myght: so there the sayd knyghte was slayne. And the knyghtes, that were at the gate, caused hym to be buried in holy ground."—Froissart, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... certainly at an altitude of many miles, the flaming thing swept across my view, comet-shaped and stretching over at least ten degrees of arc, swift as a meteor, brilliantly flesh-red, sputtering sparks like an anvil, and leaving behind it a long ruddy trail that only slowly faded out amid ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... Cliff'.—Leaning on the barren turf, which is dead to the roots, and looking at a rock, flat as an anvil's face, and left dry by the surf, with no trace of living thing about it (Death's altar by the lone shore), she sees a cricket spring gay, with films of blue, upon the parched turf, and a beautiful butterfly settle and spread its two red fans, on the rock. And then there is to her, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... advantageously, I assure you. I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil. It is a true picture of that country to which they say we shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his angels in splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled under their feet. While the great mass of the people are thus suffering under physical and moral oppression, I have endeavored ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... effected a whole lifetime later by the immortal Columbus—an achievement which formed the connecting link between the Old World and the New; yet the explorations instituted by Prince Henry of Portugal were in truth the anvil upon ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... House in April, 1888. I then started in my buggy alone to hold meetings at the different stations. At Elderslie one was held at the woolshed, where I had a bale of wool as the platform. At Vindex, the meeting was held in the blacksmith's shop, I standing on the anvil block ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... is told of Titus by the rabbis: he heard a gnawing sound at his brain; it caused him great pain. He heard a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, and the gnawing ceased. The blacksmith was paid to go on hammering in Titus' neighbourhood. At the end of a few days the "animal" that gnawed at his brain got indifferent to the hammering, went on gnawing, and Titus died. His brain was opened, and an animal as big as ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... blacksmith" because he was always singing that particular tune. Somehow the name got transferred from the singer to the song, and in 1835 the story of Handel's having been inspired to compose the tune after hearing a blacksmith at Edgware produce musical notes from his anvil was first put into print in a letter to The Times. Not long afterwards an imaginary blacksmith of Edgware was invented, and his alleged ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... arrangements of scaffolding for the fireworks and benches for the audience. General Banks urged me to remain over the 4th of March, to participate in the ceremonies, which he explained would include the performance of the "Anvil Chorus" by all the bands of his army, and during the performance the church-bells were to be rung, and cannons were to be fired by electricity. I regarded all such ceremonies as out of place at a time when it seemed to me every ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... have made such music! A gleam of sun shining through the unsashed window, and chequering the dark workshop with a broad patch of light, fell full upon him, as though attracted by his sunny heart. There he stood working at his anvil, his face all radiant with exercise and gladness, his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off his shining forehead—the easiest, freest, happiest man in all the world. Beside him sat a sleek cat, purring and winking in the light, and falling every now and then into an idle doze, as from ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... said Sep, reining in the red horse in front of a smithy, where the apprentices were crying on to the fires, and the smith was dropping tears on the anvil. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... Eager each new effect to try, The solemn artist cast aside, Rainbow and shell and butterfly, As some stern blacksmith scatters wide The sparks that from his anvil fly. ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... waist, engulfing the men there in a well of green wave and foam; while, at the same moment, the squall ahead struck her on the port bow, the vessel, between the two opposing forces, being like a piece of iron 'twixt hammer and anvil. The concussion was tremendous, knocking everybody off their feet just as if the ship ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Sunday evening he decided to be done with dallying, and to bring Ruth between the hammer and the anvil of his will. It was the last Sunday in July, exactly three weeks after Sedgemoor, and the odd coincidence of his having chosen such a day and hour you shall ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the blue god. Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly; Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load. Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened; Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends. Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer; Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel. Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the swift-whirling spindles, Through the strings of the yarn whizzes ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... little air balloons are made in Paris (their value is $300,000) by Brissonet from English Mackintosh cloth. Powdered soapstone is strewed over it in cutting. The edges are united by hammering on a horn anvil, or by machinery through simple adhesion, and the cut surfaces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... roses: but had a good-sized "garden" at the back; and here Hogarth soon had a shed nailed together, with bellows, anvil, sledges, rasps, setts, drifts, and so on, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... mother of invention, made them deft and handy with axe and adze, bradawl and waxed end, anvil and forge. The squire himself was no mean blacksmith, and could shoe a horse, or forge a plough coulter, or set a tire as well as the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... incessantly gave forth a succession of reports too rapid to be reckoned. These sounds, although unremitting, were clear and distinct, the one from the other. I can find no better comparison for them than the strokes of a hammer falling on an anvil. Had the ancients heard a similar noise, I can readily conceive whence arose the idea of their imagining a forge in the centre of Etna, with the Cyclops ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... Greek philosopher, is said to have discovered the musical scale from hearing the sounds produced by a blacksmith hammering iron on his anvil.—See Dictionary of Phrase ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Philip remained standing, leaning his forehead upon the back of his great hands, which supported the handle of his hammer standing upright upon the anvil. He mused. His four companions watched him, and, quite a tiny mite among these giants, Simon anxiously waited. Suddenly, one of the smiths, answering to the sentiment ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... man on the ground with his face downwards, the officers of justice sent away two of their number, who speedily returned with a blacksmith's anvil and forehammer. On this they placed one of their victim's ankles, and Flaggan now saw, with a sickening heart, that they were about to break it with the ponderous hammer. One blow sufficed to crush the bones in pieces, and drew from the man an appalling shriek of agony. Pushing his ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... said Niccolo. "Don't you be bringing up my speeches again after you've swallowed them, and handing them about as if they were none the worse. I vote and I speak when there's any use in it: if there's hot metal on the anvil, I lose no time before I strike; but I don't spend good hours in tinkling on cold iron, or in standing on the pavement as thou dost, Goro, with snout upward, like a pig under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzo—dead and gone before his time—he was a man who had ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to bear fruit five weeks later in the brilliant capture of that Vimy ridge I had seen on March 2, filling the blue middle distance, from the bare upland of Notre Dame de Lorette. If on the Somme the anvil was to some extent escaping from the hammer, in the coming battle of Arras the hammer was to take ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Smithy, and Schlorge had soon turned his anvil into an operating table, on which they laid the uncomplaining little sufferer. The Snimmy's wife said there were plenty of onions at home in the sugar-bowl, and Schlorge offered to send a Gunkus after them; but the Kewpie would not hear of it, so Schlorge ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... ceased to be exciting and grew tiresome, idleness so oppressive that battle, murder and sudden death were a relief from the inactivity of sluggish peace; a state in which the mind was no longer a moving power in man, but only by turns the smelting pot and the anvil of half-smothered passions that now and then broke out with fire and flame and sword to slash and burn the world with a history ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... that, Pompadour meditates great things this Year,—Invasions of England; stronger German Armies; better German Plans, and slashings home upon Hanover itself, or the vital point;—and flatters herself, and her poor Louis, that there is on the anvil, for 1759, such a French Campaign as will perhaps astonish Pitt and another insolent King. Very fixed, fell and feminine is the Pompadour's humor in this matter. Nor is the Czarina's less so; but more, if possible; unappeasable except by death. Imperial Maria Theresa has masculine ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... see, there was much going on to make life endurable in those times. Not every day, you may be sure, was a day of slaughter and tumult, though the histories read almost as if it were so; but every day the hammer chinked on the anvil, and the chisel played about the oak beam, and never without some beauty and invention being born of it, and consequently ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... are from the northwest, and the rainfall is much heavier on the northern shores and mountain slopes than on the southern. The height of the ridge is on the average close to 1,500 feet, one bold peak, the Anvil being 3,600 feet high. The rainy north and the droughty south, with the lift of the land from the low shores to the central slopes and rugged elevations, under the tropical sun, with the influence of the great oceans east, south and north, and the multitude of western and southern islands, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... her stove broke and today she had taken it to be mended; she had been to the smith's and now she could not get out of her mind what she had seen there: a black cave, like an oven, down three steps; a dark hole hung and filled on every side with black iron tools; and, amid all this jumble, an anvil and, in the red glow from the dancing light of the smithy fire, a small, stunted, black little fellow, hidden out of knowledge in that gloom; a bent, thin little man wound in a leathern apron and with a black face, from which a pair of good-humoured eyes peered out at her, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... to be remembered, however, in the way of reassurance that the alterations most likely to find favor with the reviewers are such as will enrich by restoring lost excellencies, rather than by introducing forms fashioned on a modern anvil. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... his steward was Dichu, and Len Linfiaclach was the smith of the Brugh. It was he lived in the lake, making the bright vessels of Fand, daughter of Flidhais; and every evening when he left off work he would make a cast of the anvil eastward to Indeoin na Dese, the Anvil of the Dese, as far as the Grave End. Three showers it used to cast, a shower of fire, and a shower of water, and a shower of ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... on his old clothes, his sabots and his leather apron, and for ten long days the hammer beat incessantly upon the anvil. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... instructive case is the behaviour of the song-thrush when it takes a wood-snail in its beak and hammers it against a stone, its so-called anvil. To a young thrush, which she had brought up by hand, Miss Frances Pitt offered some wood-snails, but it took no interest in them until one put out its head and began to move about. The bird then pecked at ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... anvil, let him deal sound blows on the irons for the pier, repeated and strong, and the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... side; that the paths which lead to these beautiful walks can only be entered by the road of experience, the portals of which are alone opened to those who apply to them the key of truth: this key is of very simple structure, has no complicated intricacy of wards, and is easily formed on the anvil of social intercourse, merely by not doing unto others that which you would not wish ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach |
