Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Cast-iron   /kæst-ˈaɪərn/   Listen
Cast-iron

adjective
1.
Extremely robust.  Synonym: iron.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Cast-iron" Quotes from Famous Books



... that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry, supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark, and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy frock coat, and the common dining room with a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder everywhere, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... and in various parts of the parapets are shields, charged in relievo with the armorial bearings of the Grosvenor family, and of other ancient families that, by intermarriages, the Grosvenors are entitled to quarter with their own. The windows, which are "richly dight" with tracery, are of cast-iron, moulded on both sides, and grooved to receive the glass. The walls, battlements, and pinnacles, are of stone, of a light and beautiful colour, from the Manly ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... shipment by means of small cars. Queen Elizabeth had miners brought into England, to develop the English mines, and through them the rail track was introduced into Great Britain. Later the wooden rail was covered with an iron strap to prevent the rapid wear of the wood, and about the year 1768 cast-iron rails commenced to be used. At the end of the last century wheels were constructed with flanges, to prevent derailing. More attention was also paid to the substructure, wood, iron and stone ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... painful proceeding is to dine in such a place. Unless you are blessed with a cast-iron constitution and a stomach of the same pattern, you are not likely to survive. Usually they put down boiled meat first, after which comes the soup. The chief regret in your case is that the soup had not come first, so that you could have ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann

... me what girl in your world, who approaches the qualitative standard set by Valerie West, would go about by day or evening with any man except her brother? Valerie does. What girl would be fearless enough to ignore the cast-iron fetters of her caste? Valerie West is a law unto herself—a law as sweet and good and excellent and as inflexible as any law made by men to restrain women's liberty, arouse them to unhappy self-consciousness and infect them with suspicion. Every one of you are the terrified ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... taste and culture, if, that is, he took down and carried over to his own collection the four Barbizon pictures he had given them. The still sky-blue walls, tile green curtains patterned with red flowers and ferns; the crewel-worked fire-screen before the cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with glass windows, full of little knickknacks; the beaded footstools; Keats, Shelley, Southey, Cowper, Coleridge, Byron's Corsair (but nothing else), and the Victorian poets in a bookshelf row; the marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... principles adopted by the missionaries, the domesticated Indians were held down rigorously in a condition of servile dependence and subjection. They were indeed, as one of the early travelers in California put it, slaves under another name—slaves to the cast-iron power of a system which, like all systems, was capable of unlimited abuse, and which, at the very best, was narrow and arbitrary. Every vestige of freedom was taken from them when they entered, or were brought into, the settlement. Henceforth they belonged, body and soul, ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... Dr. Scroggie Park, of Kilspindie, strongly advocates the abolition of the hole altogether and the substitution of a bell, as in the old form of croquet. But, as he wisely adds, variety, not cast-iron uniformity should be our aim. The principle of self-determination should in his opinion be conceded to all properly constituted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... makes a difference in these places. One mustn't expect this to be quite what it used to be." . . . Well, I hadn't, of course, and I dare say it wasn't. It had sand on the floor, and spittoons. It was crowded, between the spittoons, with little cast-iron tables, covered with dirty table-cloths spread upon American cloth and garnished with artificial flowers and napkins of Japanese paper. Farrell called them 'serviettes.' He also said he felt 'peckish.' I—well, I had taken the precaution of dining ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... coupler was added (!) and various changes made in the stops, the Vox Humana transferred from the Swell to the Solo organ, and two of the Solo wind-chests were enclosed in a Swell-box. We note that the Tubas are still left outside. The cast-iron pipes of the lowest octave of the 32-ft. Double Open Diapason on the Pedal organ were replaced by pipes of stout zinc, and four composition pedals added to control ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... and cold that sent the tinted alcohol in the thermometer at the station down very close to the bulb. Carcajou and its inhabitants seemed to go to sleep. The village street was generally deserted. Even the dogs stayed indoors most of the day, hugging the cast-iron stoves. At this time all the Indians were away at their winter hunting grounds, and many of the lumberjacks had gone further south where the weather did not prevent honest toil. The big sawmill was utterly silent and the river, wont to race madly beneath ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... His hands were always dry and hot, but his heart at times would suddenly grow cold, as if a cake of unmelting ice had been placed upon his chest, sending a slight, dry shiver through his whole body. At such times, Tsiganok, always dark in complexion, would turn black, assuming the shade of bluish cast-iron. And he acquired a curious habit; as though he had eaten too much of something sickeningly sweet, he kept licking his lips, smacking them, and would spit on the floor, hissingly, through his teeth. When he spoke, he did not finish his words, ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... first evening, the Grange girls decided that, though they wished they had cast-iron backs, the experience on the whole was great fun. They liked the camp life, and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... the Dom Pedro Segundo Railway is 1.60 meters, or 5 ft. 3 in. nearly, between the rails. At each end of the transverse Barlow rails is fixed the customary simple iron handrail, carried by light cast-iron standards. The iron piers are each formed of four columns, and the columns consist of two Barlow rails, with a slotted iron plate 1/2 inch thick let in between the rails, and the whole being riveted together connects each ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... historical novel, pretending to reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether wonderfully and fearfully made—the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is supposed to hold ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Water Pipes.—Sal-ammoniac, 2 oz.; sublimed sulphur, 1 oz.; cast-iron filings, 1 lb. Mix in a mortar, and keep the powder dry. When it is to be used, mix it with twenty times its weight of clean iron filings, and grind the whole in a mortar. Wet with water until it becomes of convenient ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... avoided them, but at length he fell into a particularly damp one, and would inevitably have been drowned, had not the sagacious Stray brought men to his assistance. And thus SONOGUN, the scoffer, the agnostic, the moody, gloomy, morose, cast-iron, Roman-faced misanthrope, got home. That same evening he changed his clothes and his character, and on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various

... know every one of them, if nature still keeps ichthyological secrets from us, nothing is more admissible than to accept the existence of fish or cetaceans of new species or even new genera, animals with a basically 'cast-iron' constitution that inhabit strata beyond the reach of our soundings, and which some development or other, an urge or a whim if you prefer, can bring to the upper level of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... is no man if he doesn't improve even on that. Moreover, how is one to fill in the dismal vacuum subsequent on the return from one leave otherwise than by the discussion of subtle schemes for the betterment of the next leave? The duration of it having assumed a cast-iron rigidity, it only remained to improve the manner of travelling to and fro. John ferreted about and became aware of the existence of a civilian train to the port and of a Staff boat to the other port. He worked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various

... lines, and the commercial man who travels for a big sausage-casing house in New York has the bridal chamber, while the meek and lowly minister of the Gospel gets a wall-pocket room with a cot, a slippery-elm towel, a cake of cast-iron soap, a disconnected bell, a view of the laundry, a tin roof ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... 1804 constructed a locomotive for the Merthyr and Tydvil Rail in South Wales, which succeeded in drawing ten tons at five miles an hour. The boiler was of cast-iron, with a one-cylinder engine, spur gear and a fly-wheel on one side. He sent the waste steam into the chimney, and by this means was very nearly arriving at the blast-pipe, afterwards the great ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... imagine their splendour, were they possessed of the symmetry and well-favoured situation of the Dom at Cologne? And so it is that we can but feel regret when we mentally note the lack of nave at Beauvais, of spires at Bourges, and, yet again, regret even with more pain the monstrousness of the cast-iron fleche which has been added to the central tower at Rouen. But these are after all minor imperfections—seldom, if ever, in aught but pleasurable anticipation, do we see in the masterpieces of art or nature a perfect unity; so why seek to negative their virtues by futile criticism? It would ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... their undeviating system he owed a great measure of the comfort and tranquillity of his well-ordered house, and hence he struggled earnestly not to complain at the bondage that resulted from their cast-iron methods. Long since he had despaired of expecting adaptability from them. They must cling to their rut or all was lost. Once out of their customary channel, and they were like tossing ships, rudderless and ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... years of Freeland were also marked by the construction of a net of canals and aqueducts, both for Eden Vale and for the Dana plateau. The canals served merely to carry the storm-water into the Dana; whilst the refuse-water and the sewage were carried away in cast-iron pipes by means of a system of pneumatic exhaust-tubes, and then disinfected and utilised as manure. The aqueducts were connected with the best springs in the upper hills, and possessed a provisional capacity of supplying 22,000,000 gallons daily, and were ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... proclivities of the modern woman is only an inheritance of the prejudices of my ancestors, who thought all worldly amusements sinful, and worst of all in a woman. Even the Mayflower saints and heroes had their cast-iron limitations, and we can't escape from them, try as we will. We may throw over creed and catechism; but inherited instinct remains. The shadow of Plymouth Rock is over ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... cot, and, like others so situated from time immemorial, had nothing to do, and scarcely did anything else but watch the neighbors. Among the cherished possessions of our company was an old-fashioned cast-iron Dutch oven, of generous proportions, which was just the dandy for baking mutton. Well, Bill would, in the first place, get his chunk of mutton, a fine big piece of the saddle, or of a ham, and put it on to cook in the oven. Then we had another oven, a smaller ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... rejects this single cast-iron principle. He refuses to bow down before it, regardless of changing circumstances, regardless of the policy of other countries and of that of the other Dominions of the Crown. He wants a free hand in dealing with imports, ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner

... specific excellence, are commonly spoken of by their friends as "thoroughly estimable women." She possessed all the virtues, but none of the graces which make virtue attractive to the youthful mind; and she regulated her daily life by a cast-iron code that was as unvarying and heartless as the smile which sixty years of habit had stamped upon her thin, bloodless lips. Mrs. Pennypoker was said to have been handsome in her day, handsome with an austere, cold beauty; but her day was long past, and the only remaining trace of her good looks ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... were just coming into use, and Lieutenant Brooke, who designed the Merrimac, considered the question of having some of her guns rifled. How to procure such cannon was not easily discovered, as we had no foundries in the South. There were many cast-iron cannon that had fallen into our hands at Norfolk, and he conceived the idea of turning some of this ordnance into rifles. In order to enable them to stand the additional bursting strain we forged wrought-iron bands and shrank them over the chambers, and we devised a special tool for rifling ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... the old man lit two lamps, which served dimly to gloze the shadows, and thrust logs of wood into the cast-iron stove. Soon after, the men came in. They were a queer, mixed lot. Some carried the indisputable stamp of the frontiersman in their bearing and glance; others looked to be mere day-laborers, capable of performing whatever task they were set to, and of finding the trail home again. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... made the constitution impossible, in my judgment, and there were other far-reaching objections. It was formed on the cast-iron methods of the Old World—the methods which, I held, ought to be kept absolutely out of the New World. My motto might have been, "Leave us to ourselves; let us try what we can contrive." What was I to do with ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... as if carefully iron'd and starch'd, While a cast-iron bridge, meant for wooden, o'er-arch'd Something more like a road than a river. Prythee, who in such characteristics could see Any trace of the beautiful land of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... Hill and passes through the hill in two single-track rock tunnels to a large permanent shaft at Weehawken, near the west shore of the North River, and thence eastward a distance of 224 ft. to the Weehawken shield-chamber. It then passes under the river through two cast-iron, concrete-lined, single-track tunnels, with outside diameters of 23 ft., to a point under 32d Street, near Eleventh Avenue, in New York City, and thence through two single-track tunnels of varying cross-section, partly constructed in cut-and-cover, to the east side of Tenth Avenue. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond

... of iron, cast-iron, or copper, which are not attacked by the exciting liquid, allows us to easily construct elements exposing a large surface ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... IV. on the top. The workmanship of this arch is expected to rival any thing of the sort in the kingdom, and to equal the finest works of antiquity. From each side of the arch a semicircular railing will extend to the wings, executed in the most beautiful style, in cast-iron, and surmounted by tips or ornamental spears of mosaic gold. The area, within, will consist of a grass-plat, in the centre of which will be an ornamental fountain, and the whole will be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... a rectilinear Glasgow; and to an Edinburgh man, or rather boy, no comparison could appear more damaging. How different is the impression produced by the Chicago of to-day! In 1877 the city was extensive enough, indeed, and handsome to boot, in a commonplace, cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen-Victoria-streets. To-day its area is appalling, its architecture grandiose. It is the young giant among the cities of the earth, and it stands but on the threshold of its destiny. It embraces ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... the 'Enterprise', strict stylistic disciplinarians of the Dana school of journalism, Clemens learned the advantages of the crisp, direct style which characterizes his writing. As a reporter, he was really industrious in matters that met his fancy; but "cast-iron items"—for he hated facts and figures requiring absolute accuracy—got from him only "a lick and a promise." He was much interested in Tom Fitch's effort to establish a literary journal, 'The Weekly Occidental'. Daggett's opening chapters of a wonderful story, of which ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... 18) is located directly over the firebox, inside the cab. It is lagged and jacketed in an identical manner to the boiler. The shell of the dome is of 5/16-inch wrought iron, the top cap is a cast-iron plate which also serves as a manhole cover offering access to the boiler's interior for ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White

... quite what to do with you yet, Nancarrow," said Pringle. "You see, you are too good a man for a private—beside, you want to go straight to the front. Naturally, too, at such times as these we can't do everything by cast-iron rule. Exceptional cases demand exceptional treatment. I can't say any more than that until I see my Colonel. You will go with me to see him this evening. As you will see, I'm not treating you quite ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... Co. of Oxford Street, London, which have never become in the slightest degree deranged during the rough work of wild hunting. Mr. Reilly was most successful in the manufacture of explosive shells from my design; these were cast-iron coated with lead, and ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... large scroll at either end, were the words "THE TERRACE," moulded out of the stucco; up to each door was a flight of stone steps; before each front window on the dining-room floor and the floor above was a balcony protected by cast-iron filigree work, and between each house and the road was a little piece of garden surrounded by dwarf wall and arrow-head railings. Mrs. Furze's old furniture had, nearly all, been discarded or sold, and two new carpets had been bought. The one in the dining-room was yellow ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... home—toward the land wherein Man enjoys larger opportunities than elsewhere to develop the better and the worse aspects of his nature, and where Evil and Good have a freer course, a wider arena for their inevitable struggles, than is allowed them among the heavy fetters and cast-iron forms of this rigid and wrinkled Old World. Doubtless, those struggles will long be arduous and trying: doubtless, the dictates of Duty will there often bear sternly away from the halcyon bowers of Popularity; doubtless, he who would be ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... XV-inch canister, of two thicknesses of oak, ash, or beech, crossing each other; put together with wrought-iron nails, clinched; spindle riveting on the bottom through a 3 inches square plate, 1/4 thick; cast-iron hexagonal nut, ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... day, as our luck ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them with hard-tack crumbs and whale-oil. They fell to dancing, and we to laughing,—they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest woman tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash right on the little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened binnacle and compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and such a mess together as I remember now. We had to apologize; the doctor set her head as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread from the cabin, to console ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... sunny, sultry afternoon late in the month of August, Mr. Benjamin Staff sat at table in the dining-room of the Authors' Club, moodily munching a morsel of cheese and a segment of cast-iron biscuit and wondering what he must do to be saved from the death-in-life of ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... corner of a settle, and a multitude of the large beads with which this infernal industry is carried on I gathered from all parts of the compass, coming forth at length (quadrupedally) with a double handful of the treasure-trove and a very lively appreciation of the resistant qualities of a cast-iron table-stand when ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... additions; every addition or growth was an imperfection, an excrescence, a deformity. Progress was unnecessary and undesired. The Church had a rigid system of dogma which must be accepted in its entirety on pain of being treated as a heretic. Philosophers had a cast-iron system of truth to match—a system founded upon Aristotle—and so interwoven with the great theological dogmas that to question one was almost equivalent to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... cast-iron plates for roofing of buildings, says the Philadelphia Ledger, has been exhibited at the Exchange, in Philadelphia, by the inventor and patentee, Mr. Wm. Beach. The plates are about a foot square, and are made to fit one into another so as ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... It will be found full of suggestions of practical value to teachers who are carrying the miscellaneous work of ungraded schools, and who have the unspeakable privilege of dealing with their pupils untrammelled by cast-iron ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... girls who had graduated at Smith College; then at Peoria, Illinois; welcomed there by a dear friend from Brooklyn, New York, wife of a business man of that city. I knew of Peoria only as a great place for the manufacture of whisky, and for its cast-iron stoves, but found it a city, magnificently situated on a series of bold bluffs. And when I reached my friend's house, a class of ladies, who had been easily chatting in German, wanted to stay and ask me a few questions. These showed deep thought, wide reading, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet—that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat fell off ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... the grim hypocrisy of brandishing the catchwords of new-fangled reforms; they served to spice a breath that was strong with the praise of the "superior liberties of Europe,"—those old, cast-iron tyrannies to get rid of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... and found the place in possession of a crowd of monkeys of all sorts and sizes, taking an early breakfast. Here, chicken and eggs being again written in our destiny, we halted for an hour or two, and at eleven again took the road with our cast-iron bearers, and hurried along in the noonday sun, up hill and down dale, through Kussowlie, and on and on till we were once more fairly deposited at the feet of "Mrs. Charybdis." A slight dinner here, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... production of petroleum has resulted from the application of cast-iron tubes to the wells instead of barrels; the oil is thus carried over the various inequalities of surface for three or four miles to the tanks on the railroads, and forced into them by steam-engines. The price of transport ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... children; he had, however, the right to make particular legacies, probably up to one-half of the property. Deneus considers that the penchant of the Athenians for equality was not favourable to a cast-iron system of primogeniture, although the father may have been able to favour his oldest child to the extent of one-half of his possessions. In ancient Rome (215. 4-16), at first, a will was an exception, made valid only by the vote of a lex curiata; but afterwards the absolute freedom of testamentary ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... hearth, Mr. Lichtenstein caused the ornamental cast-iron back of the fireplace to swing outward upon a hinge. Reaching a long arm into the disclosed opening, he unfastened and pushed ajar the iron back of a ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... by horse-power, not employing steam till 1815. Whitney's cotton-gin had been invented in 1793. Terry, of Plymouth, Conn., was making clocks. There were in the land two insurance companies, possibly more. Cast-iron ploughs, of home make, were displacing the old ones of wood. Morse's "Geography" and Webster's "Spelling-book" were on ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... load upstairs to our lodging, and was admitted by the landlady in a tall white nightcap and with an expression singularly grim. She lighted us into the sitting-room; where, when I had seated Rowley in a chair, she dropped me a cast-iron curtsy. I smelt gunpowder on the woman. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... departments, a woodmill, a machine-shop with a floor space of 13,000 sq. ft., and cabinet, upholstering, brass and plating shops. The truck shop covers 1,800 sq. ft., and is used for building and general repairs of trucks of wood, built-up steel, and cast-iron. From the tin and pipe shop is supplied all the light metal ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... After one sharp look at Amelius, he ran into a back parlour, and returned with a glass of spirits. "Drink this, sir," he said—"unless you want to find yourself on the floor in a fainting fit. And don't presume again on your youth and strength to treat your heart as if it was made of cast-iron." He signed to Amelius to sit down and rest himself, and turned to the woman to hear what was wanted of him. After a few questions, he said she might go; promising to follow her in a few minutes, when the gentleman would be sufficiently ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... impracticable. For the purpose of making railways solid and level, and preventing jerks at the junction of the rails, he took out a patent for an improved rail and chair, and recommended the employment of heavier rails, and the substitution of wrought for cast-iron. In connection with these improvements he added considerably to the lightness and strength of the locomotive, simplified the construction of the working parts, and substituted steel springs for the small cylinder, on which the boiler had at ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... of them were forty feet in height; and their thick angular branches, and terminal fascicles of rigid leaves, outlined against the sky, formed a singular, almost an unearthly spectacle. It was unlike any other vegetation upon earth, more resembling a grove of cast-iron than a wood ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... whizzing by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down train; they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness: through awful pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?—he might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his mechanics to work and built a great man out of cast-iron, with machinery inside of him. When he was wound up the Cast-iron Man could roar, and roll his eyes, and gnash his teeth and march across the Valley, crushing trees and houses to the earth as he went. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... little, as if to give herself time. "But I mean that you shall. If I were a man I suppose I couldn't, because a man's code of honour is such a clumsy cast-iron thing. But a woman's, luckily, can be cut over—if she's clever—to fit any new occasion; and in this case I should be willing to reduce ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... no doubt the German army is the greatest fighting machine in Europe. We might dislike some of their methods, their cast-iron system and all that—oh, I know what the Times man said about their last manoeuvres—but they have been preparing for this war for years, and their organization is all cut and dried. How about the French? Yes, they have plenty of pluck, and I've seen something of their gunners—quite ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... plates covering the bearings were removed, and the caked rust pried out from between the rollers, for the stone had been mounted on small cast-iron wheels or rollers, but the wheels had been allowed to become rusted and finally had ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... comforts back," he vowed sullenly. "The Beach hain't what it used ter be. Goin' on a picnic with Abe Rose is like settin' yer teeth into a cast-iron stove lid covered with a thin layer o' puddin'. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... cylinder filled with cast-iron shot. When the gun is fired, the cylinder bursts and scatters the shot over a wide surface ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... seeks to animate artificial things," Huysmans writes in La-bas, "it is compelled to reproduce the movements of animals in the act of propagation. Look at machines, at the play of pistons in the cylinders; they are Romeos of steel in Juliets of cast-iron." And not only in the work of man's hands but throughout Nature we find sexual symbols which are the less deniable since, for the most part, they make not the slightest appeal to even the most morbid human imagination. Language is full of metaphorical symbols of sex which constantly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... expectation of a junction with himself. Then, on the 22d of July, he received two letters dated the 14th, and couched in tones so peremptory as to suggest a suspicion that no milder words would enforce obedience—that his Commander-in-chief feared that nothing short of cast-iron orders would drag him away from the Neapolitan Court. "Your Lordship is hereby required and directed to repair to Minorca, with the whole, or the greater part, of the force under your Lordship's command, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... "Hereth a knocker—thuch a one, too!" The rush was instantaneous; and in the space of a moment one feeling seemed to have taken possession of the whole pack. A more splendid struggle was never witnessed by the oldest knocker-hunter! A more pertinacious piece of cast-iron never contended against the prowess of the Corinthian! After a gallant pull of an hour and a half, "the affair came off," and now graces the club-room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... fire-proof, because there is no probability that the furniture and flooring in any one room, would make fire enough to communicate to another. But suppose a warehouse equal to twenty such houses, with floors completely open, supported by cast-iron pillars, and each floor communicating with the others by open staircases and wells; suppose, further, that it is half filled with combustible goods, and perhaps the walls and ceilings lined with timber. Now, ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... smile was a capitalistic acquirement, and some of his fellow-townsmen described it as "cast-iron." But for his daughter it ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... steamboats no more on the Thames shall be going, And a cast-iron bridge reach Vauxhall from the Nore, And the Grand Junction waterworks cease to be flowing, Oh, then, Mollidusta, I'll love thee ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... the cast-iron mould of Irish Protestantism, to which, being of a sober and devout turn of mind, he had readily submitted, he had been tossed, as a youthful student, into the freebooting Edinburgh of the forties. Edinburgh was alive ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... getting it into the freight car designed to carry it to Southampton, but did not require him to stay there and see that all was put on board. When the cases reached Southampton it was found that one was missing. It was one of the heaviest of the lot, containing the cast-iron pier on which the photoheliograph was to be mounted. While it was possible to replace this by something else, such a course would have been inconvenient and perhaps prejudicial. The steamer was about to sail, but ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... of a people, and in more than one old-fashioned farm-house, and among the haymakers in more than one sunny meadow, may be heard the witty expressions and strong metaphors which led Dickens to say, "In shrewdness of remark and a certain cast-iron quaintness the Yankee people ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various

... occasional lead joints to admit of slight movements in the pipe.[4] The pipe was coated by placing each joint in a bath of boiling tar and asphaltum; to insure the most thorough coating, it is necessary to keep the pipe for ten or fifteen minutes in the boiling mixture. A cast-iron stop-gate is placed at the lower end of the main, and also one at each of the branches. Cast-iron man-holes are attached to the main, which, although they have given no trouble in this particular case, are very objectionable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... to get a lighthouse built on the rock. He shortly afterwards became a shipowner and merchant in Liverpool; and, being successful in business, he forthwith put his intention into execution. His first plan was to fit long cast-iron pillars deep into the rock, and to place upon them a circular room, as the habitation of the light-keepers, with a lantern at the top. He had already raised the pillars to a considerable height, when a heavy gale ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... both wood and iron, the most satisfactory for speed, strength, and durability are steel-bar carpenter clamps, Fig. 176. They vary in length from 1-1/2 ft. to 8 ft. The separate parts are the steel bar A, the cast-iron frame B, the tip C into which fits the screw D, on the other end of which is the crank E, and the slide F with its dog G, which engages in the notches on the bar. Any part, if broken, can be ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... which the cumbrous machinery was heard rumbling away in the distance—while the moving parts were dimly seen through the murky atmosphere, mixed with the sounds of escaping steam and rushes of water; with the half-naked men darting about with masses of red-hot iron and ladles full of molten cast-iron—it made a powerful impression upon ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... in use. The writer has found that a boy who has learned to do nothing but screw-pipe work is absolutely lost and cannot perform the duties of a plumber, other than screw-pipe work. It must be borne in mind that lead pipe and cast-iron pipe work are being used today in all parts of the country and in some parts more than in others. Therefore, the boy must grasp all branches of the trade that he has chosen to follow and not be a one-sided man. Joint wiping belongs to the plumber ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... mysteriously compounded that they turned to granite in her hands. If she had been consulted, it would have been all the same. She would never have accepted John's charm of personality at the expense of being saddled with his weaknesses, and he would not have taken her cast-iron virtues at ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... minerals, that they cannot smelt lead: the fact of their beating cannon-balls into shape proves their incapacity to cast iron, unless it results from a peculiarity of the ore, so frequent in India, which, instead of yielding cast-iron at once when reduced in the usual way, gives wootz—a condition of iron closely allied to steel, ductile but not fusible. Of this I had no ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... two grains, and two of one grain each,—ought to be the models of the several parts of the said pound, and to be used for sizing or adjusting weights for the future. That all weights exceeding a pound should be of brass, copper, bell-metal, or cast-iron; and all those of cast-iron should be made in the form, and with a handle of hammered iron, such as the pattern herewith produced, having the mark of the weight cast in the iron; and all the weights of a pound, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... parties and turned into a ram on speculation. An arched roof of 5-inch timber was thrown over her deck, and this covered with a layer of old-fashioned railroad iron, from three-fourths to one inch thick, laid lengthways. At the time of this attack she had a cast-iron prow under water, and carried a IX-inch gun, pointing straight ahead through a slot in the roof forward; but as this for some reason could not be used, it was lashed in its place. Her dimensions were: ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... manufacturing or commercial establishment. It would absolutely require ascertained knowledge and fitness in the lowest grades, and would give promotion for good service from first to last. Yet it would not be a cast-iron system: a certain number of men who had shown decided fitness in various high public offices, or in important branches of public or private business, could be appointed, whenever the public interest should ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... his stairway, crossed Main Street, and strode up the shady Court House walk. On the left side of the walk, a-tiptoe in an arid fountain, was poised a gracious nymph of cast-iron, so chastely garbed as to bring to the cheek of elderly innocence no faintest flush. On the walk's right side stood a rigid statue, suggesting tetanus in the model, of the city's founder, Col. Davy West, wearing a coonskin ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... quite grand and villa-like. The fountain had been taken away, because it made the house damp; and there was such a broad carriage-drive from the gate to the house! The gate was no longer the modest green wooden gate, ever ajar with its easy latch; but a tall, cast-iron, well-locked gate, between two pillars to match the porch. And on one of the gates was a brass plate, on which was graven, "Hobbs' Lodge—Ring the bell." The lesser Hobbses and the bigger Hobbses were all on the lawn—many of them fresh from school—for it was the half-holiday of a Saturday ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... car waiting," said Marigold. "Now, sir." He lifted me with his usual cast-iron tenderness into bed and pulled the coverings over me. "It's a funny time to talk about house repairs at eleven o'clock, at ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... they'll say. It will be the old, old song, 'Whom God hath joined together.' That's what this old Church of ours has been saying for centuries to poor women with broken hearts. Has the Church itself got a heart to break? No—nothing but its cast-iron laws which have been broken a thousand times and nobody a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... European. The furniture—which is often of mahogany,—the mirrors, the cast-iron stoves, every thing, in short, come from Copenhagen. Beautiful carpets lie spread before the sofas; neat curtains shade the windows; English prints ornament the whitewashed walls; porcelain, plate, cut-glass, &c., are displayed on chests and on tables; and flower-pots ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... doorways of the lodging-houses will generally be four feet and a half wide, in the clear. The posts are rounded, to prevent the hounds from being injured when they rush out. The benches may be made of cast-iron or wood; those composed of iron being most durable, but the hounds are more frequently lamed in getting to them. The wooden benches must be bound with iron, or the hounds will gnaw or destroy them. A question has arisen, whether the benches should be placed round the kennel, or be in the centre ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... f'om 'em like dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn't like none of 'm. What he like, dass his daddy. He jus' married to his daddy." The father dropped his hand, smilingly, upon his son's shoulder with a weight that would have crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... human streak in him, Piddie has, if you know where to strike it. The cast-iron effect comes out of his shoulders, the wooden look from his face. He ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... Athaenaeum, will form an entrance to the new square opposite Waterloo-Place. The taste of the sword and pen does not, however, agree, and their buildings are dissimilar. In the United Service Club are two rooms of 150 feet by 50, the floors of which are constructed of cast-iron girders. At the back of these club-houses will be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... occupied for years. It was scantily furnished and smelled damp and musty. At one side a big stone fireplace looked as dead as a tomb. He pushed through a door into the kitchen which led off this. The cast-iron stove was rusted and the covers cracked. He glanced into it. It was free of ashes and ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... the villagers draw a bucket up from a well. The iron handle goes at the shoulder into a small iron box at the top of the post; and inside that box the resistance to the turner is regulated by the manufacturer, who states the value of the resistance outside in cast-iron letters. Thus: ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... so as to bring out anything of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius. He is like a lump of coal rich with gas, which lies expending itself in puffs and {p.282} gleams, unless some shrewd body will clap it into a cast-iron box, and compel the compressed element to do itself justice. His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will.[117] I don't now expect a great original poem from ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... a head of cast-iron—It seems that these gentlemen have abused the liberty permitted in the country. From what Justine tells me, things have taken place which would have been more appropriate at ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... Holmes, the annalist, says, that tea began to be used in New England in 1720. Small quantities, must, however, have been made many years before, as small copper tea-kettles were in use in Plymouth, in 1702. The first cast-iron tea-kettles were made in Plympton, (now Carver,) Mass., between 1760 and 1765. When ladies went to visiting parties, each one carried her tea-cup, saucer, and spoon. The cups were of the best china, very small, containing about as much as a ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... lakes. The girl grows up in ignorance of her family history, but when the inevitable young man appears complications begin. As it happens, Sir George, the father of the lover, holds the old-fashioned cast-iron doctrine of heredity, and the story shows the conflict between his pedantry and the compulsion of fact. It is a book full of serious interest for all readers, and gives us in addition a charming love story. Mrs. Clifford has drawn many delightful women, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... like a vast natural formation. The warm, simple interior, too, of these castles and palaces, the honest oak without paint or varnish, the rich wood carvings, the ripe human tone and atmosphere,—how it all contrasts, for instance, with the showy, gilded, cast-iron interior of our commercial or political palaces, where everything that smacks of life or nature is studiously excluded under the necessity ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... the singing committee,—a good, well-meaning man, who was very zealous for maintaining what he considered to be the faith once delivered to the saints. He carried on an iron foundery, and people sometimes called him a cast-iron man. He believed, that it was the duty of everybody to do exactly right; if they did wrong, or if they were suspected of doing wrong, they must take the consequences. Miss Dobb told him that Paul ought to be pitched out of the choir. "I think so too, Miss Dobb," said the Deacon, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... tidying up a flower-bed as he reached the lawn, and, to Dexter's astonishment, he nodded and gave him another of his cast-iron smiles. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... the necessary fall in all the directions in which it is to be conducted. The pipe used for each cow-box or manger connects each with the cistern, and the distributing end of it rests upon, or is suspended over, the trough assigned to each animal. About one-third of this trough, which was here a cast-iron box, about twelve inches deep and wide, protrudes through the boarding of the stable. In this outside compartment is placed a hollow copper ball attached to a lever, which turns the axle or pivot of the cock. Now, this little buoy, of course, rises and falls with the water in ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... has pretty tiled buildings at the sides, with its rectangular reservoir full of swans, and bordered by trees, is probably the most impressive part of the Palace. Fountains play in the centre, the spouts being cast-iron women's heads of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... have been domiciled in these districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-glass windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels. There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals, courts, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... hope Master Burton will be regular with his payments; for if not, there's Jail and Ruin for him written in capital letters on yon fellow's cast-iron ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... to see," his visitor proceeded, "that you are a man of superior physique to mine. I am here to make you an offer which you may consider an insult. If you are a narrow, ordinary Englishman, obstinate, with cast-iron principles and the usual prejudices, you will probably try to throw me down-stairs. It is part of my living to run the risk of being ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... five minutes devoted to a parade of all my sins I began to try to extract my personality from my coat, but when I pushed my arm up in the air to get the sleeve loose my knuckles struck the hard-wood finish and I fell backward on the cast-iron pillow, breathing hoarsely like a ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh

... a flicker round his lips. It wasn't everybody who could crawl on his belly for nearly a quarter of a mile with a bullet through his leg, and come up smiling at the end of it. A cast-iron constitution! If he had only known it fifteen, even ten years ago, what a different life he might have led. The great disgrace would never have ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... think so! And here's a hatstand—you could almost swear it was carved wood of some sort, but it's only cast-iron painted; indestructible, you see; they told me that was the latest dodge—wonderful how cheaply they ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... of the tunnel where sand-walls were built, a hollow tile drain was built into the foundation, as shown in Fig. 13, A and B, along the foot of the water-proofing and connected at intervals with the drains by 4-in. cast-iron pipes. When the sand-walls and water-proofing were not built, however, the concrete of the foundations was sloped from the neat line back to the rock, as shown by Fig. 13, C3, so that in case any water found its way down through the rock packing, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis

... be spared from the wagons came to help us, and the citizens helped out the Circassian beauties who were praying to Allah, and wringing out their clothes, and I crawled up on the neck of a cast-iron swan in the fountain. Pa yelled and talked profane, and told 'em to bring a cannon and kill the elephant, which kept ducking him with his trunk, and swabbing out the bottom of the fountain basin with pa. It seemed as though he never would get through using pa for ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... you are like her, 'the crazy woman' "—that was what he used to call his dead wife, Alyosha's mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the "crazy woman's" grave to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote corner a cast-iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were inscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and below a four-lined verse, such as are commonly used on old-fashioned middle-class ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Csar; and the best soldiers, sea-captains, and railway men have a gentleness, when off duty; a good-natured admission that there are illusions, and who shall say that he is not their sport? We stigmatize the cast-iron fellows, who cannot so detach themselves, as "dragon-ridden," "thunder-stricken," and fools of fate, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... artists in number; and the hint on retouching should not be lost sight of, either, at a period when the tendency is to stereotype every one in marble-like texture, or rather lack of texture, as if the face were devoid of all fleshiness and as hard and rigid as cast-iron. It might be wise to weigh this point carefully, and act upon it, before the enlightened public have raised a cry against the pernicious practice and made photographers smart for their want of applying timely remedial ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... the hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... drugged brain fell asleep as it wrestled with its fears. Her body protested at its couch. All her limbs like separate serpents tried to find resting-places. They could not stretch themselves out on the bench. Fiends had placed cast-iron braces at intervals to prevent people from doing just that. Kedzie did not know that it is against the law of New York, if not of Nature, to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... narrated his career, in fact, from the beginning, through all its variations, and whenever his companion's credulity, or his habits of gentility, appeared to protest, it amused him to heighten the color of the episode. Newman had sat with Western humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves, and seen "tall" stories grow taller without toppling over, and his own imagination had learned the trick of piling up consistent wonders. Bellegarde's regular attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense; to maintain his ...
— The American • Henry James

... were, cannot be denied," argued Brendon, a little aggrieved. "They are cast-iron. My eyes and observation are trained to be exact and jealous of facts. No amount of synthesis can prevent two and one ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... effort to save this man," they told de Leval at the American Embassy, later. "We've got a cast-iron case against him, with witnesses to back ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... a Riehle 100,000-lb. machine in the Experimental Engineering Laboratory of Tulane University of Louisiana. The machine is provided with a cast-iron beam for cross-bending tests. The distance between supports was 12 ft. The method of support was as follows: Each end of the beam was provided with a steel roller which rested on the cast-iron beam of the testing ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Tests of Creosoted Timber, Paper No. 1168 • W. B. Gregory

... to haul a lot of cast-iron boilers along the dunes,' I said. 'If these birds come when the carcass floats in, and if they seem disposed to trouble us, we could crawl into the boilers and ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... travel on, and my arm so much better that the sling supporting it was worn rather for ornament than use, there was nothing except that promise not to run away immediately to detain me longer in the pleasant retreat of the Casa Blanca; nothing, that is, had I been a man of gutta-percha or cast-iron; being only a creature of clay—very impressionable clay as it happened—I could not persuade myself that I was quite well enough to start on that long ride over a disturbed country. Besides, my absence from Montevideo had already lasted so long that a few days more could not make ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... nature had not dealt so charily with him concerning the rules of prosody as the rules of arithmetic; and he lost no time in applying them in a poem of his own. The afternoon air was heavy with the heat that quivered visibly above the great cast-iron wood stove in the centre of the schoolroom; the boys drowsed in their seats, or hummed sleepily over their lessons; the chilblains gnawed away at the poet's feet, but heaven had opened to him, and he was rapt far from all the world of ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... country: a single room, spreading over nearly two acres, and holding more than two thousand work-people. The roof of groined arches, lighted by ventilating domes at the height of eighteen feet, was supported by hollow cast-iron columns, through which the drainage of the roof was effected. The height of the ordinary rooms in which the work-people in manufactories are engaged is not more than from nine to eleven feet; and these are built in stories, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... in letters of cast-iron. That same afternoon Goethe went himself to the library and expressed his satisfaction with all ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby

... smaller houses across the way. It might well be satisfied with itself, for it had three more pinnacles than any of its neighbours, and the work of the scroll-saw was looped and festooned all around the eaves and porticoes and bay-windows in amazing richness. Moreover, in the front yard were cast-iron images painted white: a stag reposing on a door-mat; Diana properly dressed and returning from the chase; a small iron boy holding over his head a parasol from the ferrule of which a fountain squirted. The paths were of asphalt, gray and gritty in ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... Treatise on Locomotion, by Mr Alexander Gordon, a civil engineer of eminence, we find an account given of the trial of power alluded to by Mr Gurney. A pair of three feet wheels were used on the hind axle, and the engine drew with ease a large waggon loaded with cast-iron. After going about a mile and a quarter, a cart also loaded with cast-iron was attached to the waggon. The engine started with these loaded carriages, and returned to Gloucester. The additional weight made so little apparent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... house, and, at the risk of appearing paradoxical, this was before the house had been built. One day, while they still occupied their first home (in Port Agnew), a house with a mansard roof, two towers, jig-saw and scroll-work galore, and the usual cast-iron mastiffs and deer on the front lawn, The Laird had come gleefully home from a trip to Seattle and proudly exhibited the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm, such sour-faced-humor, such close-fisted-generosity. This new Graeculus esuriens will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... an enormously large head, a broad, bold forehead, large, aquiline nose, huge mouth, and broad, heavy chin. His eyes were small, but very brilliant, and, when under excitement, flashed like fire, although his demeanor was like that of a cast-iron man. ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... ornaments; it is clean and neat, properly levelled, nicely green- swarded, and well-cared for. The first person interred in the ground was the wife of the first incumbent—the Rev. T. Clark. Outside and in front of the building there is a large blue-featured clock with a cast-iron inside. It was fixed in 1857, and there was considerable newspaper discussion at the time as to what it would do. Time has proved how well it can keep time. It is looked after by a gentleman learned in the deep mysteries of horology, who won't allow its fingers ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Figs. 5 and 6, is a plain cylindrical chamber, A, about 4 ft. diameter inside and 41/2 ft. high, lined with firebrick, in the center of which is fixed the upright cast-iron cylinder or retort, C, of 1 ft. diameter, closed at top and open at bottom. The furnace top is closed by a cast-iron lid, which is lifted off for charging the fuel. Round the top of the furnace is a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... torpor which had begun to oppress his brain, he ordered the submarine to be swerved from her course. The ball moved away, but another appeared on the right. There was another change of direction. And now everywhere in the midst of the greenish twilight cast-iron shells lay in wait. The Kate was in the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... wind pressure, into the footings, these again distributing the loads on the soil. The aim is to have an equal pressure per square foot of soil at the same time, for all footings, thus insuring an even settlement. The skeleton construction now almost wholly consists of wrought steel. At first cast-iron and wrought-iron were used but it was found ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... turned to regard the two-story brick house and the square of lawn with a concrete deer on one side of the walk, balanced by a concrete deer on the other. Before the gate was the cast-iron effigy of a small Negro in fantastic uniform, holding an iron ring aloft. The Gashwiler carriage horse had been tethered to this in the days before the Gashwiler ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... the order for the attack, and his thousand knights and esquires charged down upon the camp. When they were well within range of Bureau's artillery, the 'three hundred cast-iron pieces mounted on wheels, which they called bombardes,' [Footnote: Chroniques de Jean Tarde.] broke into a roar, and the stone balls worked terrible havoc upon horses and riders. The ground was quickly ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... listened obediently and promised attention. Although in matters to which she attached slight importance, such as the proportions of a prescription, her memory was liable to betray her, in other affairs, it had the cast-iron accuracy of the peasant, and without having been privileged with the Doctor's full confidence, she was probably deeper in ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... crutch, and it will have no tendency to wobble about, as it would be apt to do, if it was fixed by a screw. As the screws of the leaping heads of cheap saddles are almost always made of annealed iron, which is a form of cast-iron, it is not an uncommon occurrence for the screw of one of these saddles to break, which is more apt to occur at a critical moment, as for instance when the horse is jumping or "playing up," than when he is going quietly. On the only occasion I ever rode over a fence in one of these cheap ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... begun in 1864, and completed about six years later. The wall is of brick, faced with granite and founded in Portland cement; it looks solid enough to withstand the tides of many a hundred years. The parapet is of granite, decorated by cast-iron standard lamps. St Stephen's Club is on the Embankment, close by Westminster Bridge Station. Further on is the huge building of the Police Commissioners, known as New Scotland Yard, built in 1890 from designs of Norman Shaw, R.A. It is ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant



Words linked to "Cast-iron" :   iron, robust, cast-iron plant



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com