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Shaft   /ʃæft/   Listen
Shaft

verb
1.
Equip with a shaft.
2.
Defeat someone through trickery or deceit.  Synonyms: cheat, chicane, chouse, jockey, screw.



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"Shaft" Quotes from Famous Books



... instruments were rather hand-guns than heavy pieces, as has been supposed.(517) A "telere" or tiller was a common name for the stock of a cross-bow,(518) and the earliest hand-guns or fire-arms known consisted of a simple tube of metal with touch-hole, fixed on a straight stick or shaft, which when used was passed under the arm so as to afford a better ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... Hassan, who was still beside me, "there is the one who sent forth the deadly shaft!" I turned my gaze hastily in the direction which the Arab indicated, and saw Denviers struggling with a fierce Dhah from whose hands he was trying to wrest a bow, and who had hidden in the brushwood near him without being observed hitherto! They were seen in a moment ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

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

... him any orders about carrying his bones to a churchyard: Depones, That Macpherson said he had given no answer, and thereupon they agreed to bury him in that place; and accordingly they dug a hole in the moss, with the shaft of a shovel that Macpherson had, and buried the bones there, and laid a part of the blue cloth under the bones, and a part of it above it, and covered all with some turfs that they had tore up from ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott

... watering her chamber with her tears for the sad remembrance of her dead brother.' On hearing this, the duke exclaimed: 'O she that has a heart of this fine frame, to pay this debt of love to a dead brother, how will she love, when the rich golden shaft has touched her heart!' And then he said to Viola: 'You know, Cesario, I have told you all the secrets of my heart; therefore, good youth, go to Olivia's house. Be not denied access; stand at her doors, and tell her, there your fixed foot shall grow till you ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... many remembrances of the dead man. A beautiful memorial window, a sombre hatchment, and a monument of snow-white marble. It was very simple—it represented only a broken shaft, and beneath in gold letters ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... shaft of light upon its wings descended. And every golden feather gleamed therein." Ay! and their fate's inextricably blended; Let either faint or flag, they shall not win Athwart the aerial azure clear and thin. Brothered in use are they, in use and need. See how the Serpent's many-coloured ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various

... a design for the Nelson Testamonial, which would in all probability have been accepted, had not the decision been made in the usual preconcerted underhand manner. Following the columnar idea of Mr. Railton, our talented pupil had put forth a peculiarly appropriate idea: the shaft would have been formed by a sea-telescope of gigantic proportions, pulled out to its utmost extent. On the summit of this Nelson would have been seated, as on the maintop, smoking his pipe, from which real smoke would have issued. This would have been produced by a stove at the bottom of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the rocks on the upper surface, have come from depths which, although not accurately determined, must certainly be sixty times greater than those to which human labor has been enabled to penetrate. We are able to give in numbers the depth of the shaft where the strata of coal, after penetrating a certain way, rise again at a distance that admits of being accurately defined by measurements. These dips show that the carboniferous strata, together with the fossil organic remains which they contain, must lie, as, for instance, in Belgium, more than ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who remembered his Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at the signboard, on which through a gap in the branches of the pepper trees a shaft of brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... said not a word, being aware that gold, gold that they could see with their eyes in its raw condition, would tempt them more surely than all his eloquence. In the engine-house the three of them got into a box or truck that was suspended over the mouth of a deep shaft, and soon found themselves descending through the bowels of the earth. They went down about four hundred feet, and as they were reaching the bottom Crinkett remarked that it was 'a goodish deep hole all to belong to one man.' 'Yes,' ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... the blue; a tune caught in a hush, then whispering on; a new-born babe, half courage and half sleep. There is a hidden rhythm. Change. Quietude. Chance. Certainty. The One. The Many. Burn on—thou pretty flame, trying to eat the world! Thou shaft come to me at last, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... two or more jets out on the rim, to spin your rotating section. But to get up enough speed for the jets to be efficient, you'd have to whirl the disk mechanically before the take-off. Here's one way. You could have a square hole in the center; then the disk launching device would have a square shaft, rotated by an engine or a motor. As the speed built up, the cambered disk would ride up the shaft and free itself, rising vertically, with the jets taking over the job ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... short, but how infinite is its meaning; myriads of unfolding blossoms flash it back in vivid coloring; myriads of stalwart trees whisper it; myriads of breathing things revel in it; myriads of men thank God for it. So is it with the influence of a good mother. It is not given us to follow each tiny shaft of light in its endless searchings, neither do we note how the riot of the waste places within us is pruned by deft hands into a tenuous symmetry, nor how, in the midst of this life's growth, is laid the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... deep. The mountains crowd close to its edge, here wooded, there running off in long sweeps of rubbly waste, again starting sharply upward from the water. Close by the path, a tongue of rock runs out into the lake, and on this still stands the little shaft, enclosed with ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... Lord of mortal breath Decrees his bounty to resume, And points the silent shaft of death, Which speeds an ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... the 'father of modern Taoism,' was on Ho-ming Shan with his disciple Wang Ch'ang. "See," he said, "that shaft of white light on Yang Shan yonder! There are undoubtedly some bad spirits there. Let us go and bring them to reason." When they reached the foot of the mountain they met twelve women who had the appearance of evil spirits. Chang Tao-ling asked them ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... be the Devil's own!" declared the pastor, his eyes flashing with fury. "When one of Satan's imps hath been wounded by a shaft of truth, shot from the bow of God, the angels of darkness, verily, will hover over the suffering devil, and seek to undo what God hath done." He called on those suffering from the familiar spirits to behold one even now willing to soothe ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... restored, and reworked in the course of centuries, and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a guide. The columned porch, the galleries and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. Until the beginning of this century the vault had preserved its original ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... Fion to Grunne. 'Draw your bowstring to your ear. You will not miss: the spirit of the sleeper will guide your shaft.' ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac

... bow, The god of life, and poetry, and light, The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight. The shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might, And majesty flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... distinguished by the fact that the column is usually made seven times the diameter of the lower part of the shaft in height." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay

... his wife set out for Lavriki. She drove in front, in the carriage, with Ada and Justine; he came behind, in his tarantas. The pretty little girl never quitted the carriage-window during the whole journey; she was surprised at everything: at the peasants, the peasant women, the wells, the shaft-arches, the carriage-bells, at the multitude of jackdaws; Justine shared her surprise. Varvara Pavlovna laughed at their comments and exclamations.... She was in high spirits; before their departure from the town of O * * * she had had ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... conduct is as unblamable as innocence itself? I see envy is as malignant in a paltry waiting wench, as in the vainest or most ambitious lady of the court.—It is always an infallible mark of the basest nature; and merit in the lowest, as well as in the highest station, must feel the shaft of ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... shafts, he said, could be followed here and there for some little distance, and every now and again they would broaden out into chambers, in which people sometimes live, even now. It occurred to me that there might be some such shaft-opening among the gorse quite close to me; so I crept away from the cliff-brink, and began to search among the furze, till my skin was full of prickles. Though I searched diligently for an hour or two, I could find no hole big enough to be the mouth of a ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... kissed. As he did so, Margaret took him in her arms and held him close to her breast. Hadassah, who had brought him to administer to that very want—a woman's empty arms—went to the balcony and made a pretence of letting in some fresh air and excluding the shaft of sunlight which was coming from one of the small oriels that had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... they watched, a rift appeared in the clouds. It grew, expanded, and a shaft of sunlight pierced it, shimmering, glowing—touching the waste of world with a brilliance ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... lieth open on the grasse, or but shallowly couered. Hauing found any such, they coniecture by the sight of the ground, which way the floud came that brought it thither, and so giue a gesse at the place whence it was broken off. There they sincke a Shaft, or pit of five or six foote in length, two or three foote in breadth, and seuen or eight foote in depth, to proue whether they may so meete with the Load. By this Shaft, they also discerne which was the quicke ground (as they call ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... to me what the bowstring is to the shaft, Speeding my purpose aloft and aflame and afar, Through the thick of the fight, in your eyes' steady light my soul hath seen splendor, and laughed. Now, however I tend betwixt foeman and friend through the riddle ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... intention at a glance, the quick witted girl detached the string from the shaft without delay, and, throwing the latter out of the window lest it should betray the plan, drew in the twine, until she had some forty yards within the room, when it was checked from the other side, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... the form of crescent, Commodus often intercepted the rapid career, and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich. [33] A panther was let loose; and the archer waited till he had leaped upon a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they run raging round the Arena. Neither the huge bulk ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... her days fulfilled, Under a Palsa in the Palace-grounds, A stately trunk, straight as a temple-shaft, With crown of glossy leaves and fragrant blooms; And, knowing the time some—for all things knew— The conscious tree bent down its boughs to make A bower above Queen Maya's majesty, And Earth put forth a thousand sudden flowers To spread ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... this, her reply was, "The little things like it so much!" There was no use in telling her that the fifth comfit weighed a quarter of an ounce, and made every sale into a loss to her pocket. So I remembered the green tea, and winged my shaft with a feather out of her own plumage. I told her how unwholesome almond-comfits were, and how ill excess in them might make the little children. This argument produced some effect; for, henceforward, instead of the fifth ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Astro. He didn't have to be told to pull the rope with caution. He knew only too well that the slightest jar or bump against the side of the shaft might dislodge Roger's unconscious body from the tangle of line, causing him to fall to the bottom of the shaft. How far down the shaft went, none of the anxious spacemen around the hole in the splintered ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

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

... Sink thou a shaft into the mine of thought; Be patient, like the seekers after gold; Under the rocks and rubbish lieth what May bring ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... these people now ran downstairs to get as close to the stranded car as they could. They collected about the gate on the third floor, and many from the street, hearing that there had been an accident, crowded around the shaft on the second floor. They were advised that no one was hurt and what was needed was a way of ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... got up from under the wagon and stood in front of her with a look of inquiry, but she gave no heed to him; instead, after a moment's indecision, she walked swiftly to the hillside where a shaft of marble shone in the moonlight. The sheep dog was at her heels, and when she crawled beneath the wire that fenced the spot where Mormon Joe had turned to dust, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... bird of Paradise, to feed on dew and flower-fragrance, and never to alight on earth, till shot by death with pointless shaft; but a rose, to fix its roots in the genial earth, thence to suck up nutriment and bloom strong and healthy,—not to droop and fade amid sunshine and zephyrs on a soilless rock! Her marriage was no meagre prose comment on the glowing and gorgeous poetry of her wooing;—nor did the surly over-browing ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... perfectly flat and level. It was like dropping down at night upon a vast prairie. But the features of the landscape were indistinguishable in the gloom. Edmund boldly continued to approach until we were within a hundred feet of the shaft of light, which we could now perceive issued directly from the ground. Suddenly, with the slightest perceptible bump, we touched the soil, and the car came to rest. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... account of the depth below the surface of the ground where the work was to be done, and also on account of the hardness of the lava, that after a while it was abandoned. People, however, now go down sometimes through a shaft made near the well by which the first discovery was made, and ramble about, by the light of torches, which they carry with them, among the rubbish ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... Shann through a shaft among the rocks, striking his eyes. He moved, blinked blearily awake, unable for the first few seconds to understand why the smooth plasta wall of his bunk had become rough red stone. Then he remembered. He was alone and he threw himself frantically out of the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... island. And the Britons followed after them, with many kind of crafts, and surrounded them on each side; with ships and with boats they gan to smite and shoot. Oft was Hengest woe, and never worse than then; unless he did other counsel he should there be dead. He took a spear-shaft, that was long and very tough, and put on the end a fair mantle, and called to the Britons, and bade them abide; he would speak with them, and yearn the king's grace, and send Vortiger with peace to the ...
— Brut • Layamon

... heroes dare To die, to leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... derivative of caminus, an oven or furnace), in architecture, that portion of a building, rising above the roof, in which are the flues conveying the smoke to the outer air. Originally the term included the fireplace as well as the chimney shaft. At Rochester Castle (1130) and Heddington, Essex, there were no external chimney shafts, and the flue was carried through the wall at some height above the fireplace. In the early examples the chimney shaft was circular, with one flue only, and was terminated with a conical cap, the smoke ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... the transmission of motion for driving machinery, a disk, fitted with segmental brushes, is slid laterally along the shaft, so that the fibers come into contact with radial projections on a second disk; and, although the contact is made instantaneously, the action is exerted gradually, owing to the flexibility of the fibers. That is to say, the full power is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... water being raised in buckets, or by a water-wheel engine, or else by a drain having its outlet in some distant but lower spot, such as is found to have led from the Broad Moor Collieries to Cinderford, a mile and upwards in length. The shaft of the pit was made of a square form, in order that its otherwise insecure sides might be the better supported by suitable woodwork, which being constructed in successive stages was occasionally used as a ladder, the chief difficulty being found in keeping the workings ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... artifice which seemed so picturesque to our forerunners. The sedan chair, the blue china, the fan, farthingale, and powdered head dress have now got the "rime of age" and are seen in fascinating perspective, even as the mailed courser, the buff jerkin, the cowl, and the cloth-yard shaft were seen by ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... sign of assent, and a few minutes later they went down into the mine. The approach to it looked like a canal, and they descended the shallow shaft amid a thin cascade. The tunnel slanted, for the lode dipped, and the pale lights that twinkled here and there among the timbering showed shadowy, half-naked figures toiling in water which rose well up their boots. Further streams of it ran in from fissures; and Vane's face grew grave as he plodded ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

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

... was drawn up into the hole in the roof of the dome. Then a sound of voices came down the shaft, a confused sound; the anxious little party on the Lightning Loose could not make out any distinct words. They all stood staring up, expecting, waiting for the bucket to come ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... and Pie Face standing, with bridle reins dropped, across the street and in the broad shaft of light streaming from the open door of the pool-room, and went ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... Ephraim's dry answer. "I am one of those that do not polish well. Compliments are wasted on me—particularly when the shaft is pointed with poison for my friends. And as to seeing one's self better—I wish, Madam, we could all ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... to force Christianity and despotism on the Conservative and half-heathen party—the free bonders or yeoman-farmers of Norway. Thormod, his poet—the man, as his name means, of thunder mood—who has been standing in the ranks, at last has an arrow in his left side. He breaks off the shaft, and thus sore wounded goes up, when all is lost, to a farm where is a great barn full of wounded. One Kimbe comes, a man out of the opposite or bonder part. "There is great howling and screaming in there," he says. "King Olaf's men fought bravely enough: but it is a shame ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... point where, it may be to their astonishment, they often find themselves talking in a way which is suspiciously like that of the subjective idealist. They have made the useful discovery that if you sink your shaft deep enough in your search for reality you come upon Mind. Here they are in a somewhat unfamiliar region, in which they may possibly find that other instruments and other methods than those to which they have been accustomed are required. At any rate, they and the large public which hangs ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... the vaults and galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath the surface of the earth. The engineer was persuaded that far richer deposits of mineral wealth than had yet been detected, would be found in a new shaft that had been commenced under his operations. In piercing this shaft we came one day upon a chasm jagged and seemingly charred at the sides, as if burst asunder at some distant period by volcanic fires. Down this chasm my friend ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... it close to the eyepiece of the periscope, knowing that the light would go up the tube through the lenses and be visible to the fleet. And in a moment he heard faintly through the steel walls the sound transmitted by the sea of a bugle-call to quarters. He shut off the bulb, watched a wandering shaft of light from the flag-ship seeking him, then contracted his own invisible beam to a diameter of about three feet, to fall upon the flag-ship, and played it back and forth, seeking gun ports and apertures and groups of men, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... shelter. They were silent and seemed to be petrified in all the attitudes of despair. Just outside of the shed an old man, weeping, was seated on the trunk of a mahogany tree which was lying on the ground and looked like the shaft of a column. Another vainly sought to restrain a white woman who, wild with fright, was trying to flee, without knowing where she was going, through the crowd ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... came crawling past where Mrs. Duff and Con stood, a furious rush so tilted it over that the horse fell, breaking a shaft, and some of the topmost sacks tumbled off, dropping with dull thuds, like dead bodies, upon the damp cobblestone pavement. Con saw a little cloud of white dust rise up over each as it dumped down, and melt away on the air, making him wonder to himself: "Is it smokin' hot they ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... power which points the shaft, And forms the spirit to endure, Will, in its own peculiar way And ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams

... Bullingdon Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait, poised on her nether horn. Below her the morning sky waited, clean and virginal, letting her veil of mist slip lower and lower until it rested in folds upon Shotover. While it dropped a shaft of light tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high above Taffy's head, turning the dark side of the turrets to purple and casting lilac shadows on the surplices of the choir. For a moment the whole dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western sky, and melted and was gone as a flood ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... vast room; they were as dark as night, but the silver ornamented breastplate of a Reiter's corselet, that hung upon the wall, attracted a stray gleam to its dim abiding-place among the brown shadows; or a shaft of light shot across the carved and glistening surface of an antique sideboard covered with curious silver-plate, or struck out a line of glittering dots among the raised threads of the golden warp of some old brocaded curtains, where the lines ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac

... Three Raced for their Lives up the Shaft of the Radium Mine, for Behind Them Poured a Stream of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

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

... had bored strange caverns, resonant with perpetual roar of tortured billows. At one spot in this wilderness the ocean had penetrated the wall of rock for two hundred feet, and in stormy weather the salt spray rose through a perpendicular shaft more than five hundred feet deep. This place was called the Devil's Blow-hole. The upper drop of the earring was named Forrestier's Peninsula, and was joined to the mainland by another isthmus called East Bay Neck. Forrestier's Peninsula was ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... sealed under the opiate rays of the Luminary, had hitherto refused to ope their lids to the garish beams of his rival. Soon I heard beneath a rustling snap, as of a bow, and suddenly there sped forth the twanging shaft ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... dimly enough lit, for the windows looking out upon the street were high and heavily curtained, The man who sat at the desk was almost in the shadow. Yet every now and then a shaft of sunlight fell across his pale, worn face. A strange combination this of the worker, the idealist, the man of affairs. From outside came the hum of a great city. At times, too, there came to his ears as he sat here the roar of nations at ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the honor that she would not condescend to associate with servants not attached to the corps, was by Thomas, a wonderfully sagacious footman, discovered to be the writer of an highly scented missive, directed as an arrow at the heart of Bolt. That this little shaft of the tender passion contained some truly original lines the enlightened cannot doubt; and I think I may assert without fear of contradiction that Betty did in these lines, notwithstanding they ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... a tree, his eyes and ears straining. Some few yards away there was a shaft of moonlight stretching right across the path which Nevil must take, and on this ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... people, but he never doubted, when he had found what he wanted to do, that the gods would be on his side. He showed me how every arrow was a little different from the others in the way the blood drain was cut or the shaft feathered. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... animal life. We toil for bread, but we ignore the supply of oxygen. And why? Simply because oxygen is universally diffused everywhere. It costs nothing. Only in the Black Hole of Calcutta or in a broken tunnel shaft do men ever begin to find themselves practically short of that life-sustaining gas, and then they know the want of it far sooner and far more sharply than they know the want of food on a shipwreck raft, or the want of water in the thirsty desert. Yet antiquity never even heard ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... cloth is manufactured. The careless observer would enter the building and see the spindles, looms, and wheels operated by the hands, and go away satisfied that he has seen enough, seen all. But the more careful will look farther. He will trace each band and wheel, each cog and shaft, down by the balance power, to the water race and floom; or thro the complicated machinery of the steam engine to the piston, condenser, water, wood, and fire; marking a new, more secret, and yet more efficient cause at each advancing ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... of Ilion is rent By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow Through plains where Simois and Scamander went To war with Gods and heroes long ago. Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low In rich Mycenae, do the Fates relent: The bones of Agamemnon are a show, And ruined is ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang

... Indeed I believe Whitney's own gin and those of its kind known as saw gins are considered to do the most damage to the fiber. This sort of gin consists of a series of circular saws set into a revolving shaft in such a way that the cotton fed into the machine is separated from its seeds in an incredibly short space of time. Afterward a whirling brush cleans the saws of the fiber clinging to them. It is ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... and groove for the cross, and the cross itself, with its shaft broken, are the only remains of this venerable tomb, on which Risdon says there was an inscription, but now no traces of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... touched a small lever. Instantly a shaft of light cut down through the blackness. Far, far below it ended in a patch on the ground. Watson eagerly followed its movements as it searched from side to side, seeking he knew not what. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... applied in Canton and in many other places for operating small drills as well as in grinding and polishing appliances used in the manufacture of ornamental ware. The drill, as used for boring metal, is set in a straight shaft, often of bamboo, on the upper end of which is mounted a circular weight. The drill is driven by a pair of strings with one end attached just beneath the momentum weight and the other fastened at the ends of a cross hand-bar, having a hole ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... creek, the bottom being miry and several feet below the surface of the ground. There upon the bank stood the two friends who had so joyously bidden us goodby only a few hours before. The cart was a wreck, with one shaft and one spindle broken. It appeared that the donkey had got mired in crossing the creek and in floundering about had twisted off the shaft and broken one of the wheels. We left them there bewailing their misfortune and blaming each other for the carelessness which worked ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... knowledge to bear on the emergency. At his suggestion the work of digging the tunnel was at once begun—first at the east or Franklin Street end; then, after eight months' digging, at the west or Canal Street end. A shaft was actually sunk some thirty feet back of Mr. Purdy's building—between it and the river—while that gentleman watched with a quizzical gleam in his eye this defiant procedure. He was sure that when it came to the necessity of annexing his property the North and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

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

... umbrella, then?" queried the landlady, ignoring the Idiot's shaft at the size of her "elegant and airy apartments" with an ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... fool!" grunted Houten. An arrow stuck in his fat arm, pinching up an inch of his plenteous flesh. Coolly as he might pare his nails, he broke off the slender shaft, pulled out the head where it emerged from his skin, and held out his arm and handkerchief to Gordon, who expertly bound up the profusely bleeding but harmless flesh wound. Houten grumbled on: "All the time I schmell him—schmell dot stuff—und I know not enough to say it is oil! My own oil, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... fading, its glory changed, sometimes I rechristened it. Jupiter's Chariot, brazen wheeled, stood ready to roll into the clouds. Semiramis's Bed, all gold, shone from a tower of Babylon. Castor and Pollux clasped hands over a Stygian river. The Spur of Doom, a mountain shaft as red as hell, and inaccessible, insurmountable, lured with strange light. Dusk, a bold, black dome, was shrouded by the shadow of a giant mesa. The Star of Bethlehem glittered from the brow of Point Sublime. The Wraith, fleecy, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... brachii is the principal structure which fills the space between the posterior border of the scapula and the humerus. The several heads originate for the most part on the border of the scapula, the deltoid tuberosity of the humerus and the shaft of the humerus. Insertion of this large muscular mass is effected by means of several tendons to the olecranon. A synovial bursa is situated underneath the tendinous attachment of the posterior portion of the triceps brachii—the ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... "Whereas, The shaft of the Washington monument is approaching completion, and it is proper that it should be dedicated with appropriate ceremonies, calculated to perpetuate the fame of the illustrious man who was 'first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... even more obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day. But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Pure white and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose a hundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose was unguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetation about the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, the rocket-ship ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

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

... robbers saw him they longed to possess his noble steed, and conspired together to kill Iliya and seize the horse. So they fell upon Iliya of Murom, five-and-twenty men. But Iliya of Murom reined in his steed, drew an arrow from his quiver, laid it on his bow, and shot the shaft deep into the ground till it scattered the earth far and wide over three acres. When the robbers saw this, they were struck dumb with terror, fell on their knees, and said: "Our lord and father, dear good youth, we have done you ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... came a brilliant line, came a thin edge of intolerable effulgence that took a circular shape, became a bow, became a blazing sceptre, and hurled a shaft of heat at us as though it ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... sinking's very slow, And the yellow rods are bending in the water down below, And the tubes are always jamming and they can't be made to shift Till we nearly burst the engine with a forty horse-power lift. Sinking down, deeper down, Oh, we're going deeper down Though the shaft is always caving, and the tubes are always jamming, Yet we'll fight our way to water while the stubborn drill is ramming — While the stubborn ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... and they have lived in great peace and prosperity ever since, I suppose I ought not to complain. This swagger was employed in deepening our well, and Mary was always going to see how he was getting on, so he used to make love to her, looking up from the bottom of a deep shaft, and shouting compliments to her from a depth of sixty feet. What really won her Irish heart, though, was his calmly putting a rival, a shepherd, into a water-butt. She could not resist that, so they were ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

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

... learn more about the dark-eyed lady, all through the prayers and responses he was rapt as in some mystic spell. With the benedicite by the young abbe, a column of incense rose before the Calvary, a moving pearl-coloured shaft in the soft light, for the sun had set. And as the cantors and the pious folk at worship sang Tantum ergo the Host was borne out through the gate at the east end of the choir ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... the same clever creature as ever," she answered. "But I am beginning to believe you are in earnest. Is it possible that you are the Lord Brompton who told me once that fate's quiver held no shaft to terrify a philosopher? 'Dust to dust, and what matters it whether king or chaos rule?' Those were your words. I warned you then, but you laughed me ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... shaft to the north, Come ye three, come ye forth; A shaft to the east, Come three at the least; A shaft to the sky, Come swift, come anigh! Come one, one and one, And the tale ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... the meagre post-hole he had made once upon a time, as a starter for a mining-shaft, he looked at it ruefully. How horridly hard that rock appeared! What a wretched little scar it was he had made with all that labor he remembered so vividly! What was the good of digging ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... fell to the floor. With loud screams the girl staggered backward, groping her way blindly in the dark. There came the sound of feet hurrying down the hallway, and the door was thrown open by one of the men servants, revealing, by the shaft of light which came through it, the figure of Jack stretched on the floor, with the commissary kneeling upon him, engaged in binding his wrists with ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

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

... borders of blue mist, that hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... the two small single-light windows. These narrow and sharp-pointed windows are peculiar. The arch-moulds are different from the other work of the same date in the church. There is no sign of tracery in their design, and the jambs have a simple attached shaft in the outer reveal. The bases to these shafts are earlier than those of the shafts to the south aisle chapel windows, and the edge of the inner member of the window arch is merely cut off with a straight chamber. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... To an American horse accustomed to the prairies there is no spur like the yell of an Indian; for he knows that along with it usually comes the shock of a bullet, or the sting of a barbed shaft. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... left, for they jumped and climbed from rock to rock like mountain goats and then shot down their reed-arrows from above. Three or four touched me, and one pierced my hair and remained hanging in it with the feather at the end of the shaft. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

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

... lawn was as it were sown thick with spears, and these so buried in the earth that two-thirds of their length was concealed and a third only projected slantwise from the green and glittering sward. When the man with all his force, fury, and venom had discharged his last shaft and seen it, too, shoot screaming beneath the aerial feet of the hero, he roared so terribly that the shores and waters of the Boyne and the surrounding woods and groves returned a hollow moan, and, laying his right hand on the hand-grip of his sword, he rushed ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... the last, and although not the most empoisoned, still the surest shaft in the whole quiver of calumny. It does not exactly injure the character, but it induces others to avoid the acquaintance of the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... been pointed out, too, by Mr. De Lancey Gill, that a wounded animal, taking refuge in a cave and instinctively seeking its dark recesses, may carry in an arrow or spear whose point remains when the shaft has decayed. In the case of a large mammal, such as a bear or a panther, a number of arrow or spear heads might be carried in and be found close together long after the ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... I have been furnished by a resident in Macao with an answer, of which the following is the substance:—The cross is commonly used in China, and consists of any flat boards of sufficient size, the upright shaft being usually eight to ten feet high. The transverse bar is fixed by a single nail or rivet, and is therefore often loose, and may be made sometimes to traverse a complete circle. It is not so much ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... with women's screams. Then the riot quieted somewhat; there was a clapping of hands, and a violin began to squeak measures intended to be Oriental. The next moment the listener scrambled up one of the rotting piles and stood upon the veranda. A shaft of red light through a broken shutter struck across the figure above the shoulders, revealing a bloody handkerchief clumsily knotted about the head, and, beneath it, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... marvellous works they described. But when he came to practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always, to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. "Yes" was a mystery that could not at ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... the spring evening—the spring evening that, encouraged by God knows what brave illusion, had penetrated even these desperate fastnesses. A little breeze accompanied it and the dirty pieces of paper blew to and fro; then suddenly a shaft of light quivered upon the blackness, quivered and spread like a golden fan, then flooded the huge cave with trembling ripples of light. There was even, I dare swear, at this safe distance, a smell of ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... pushing north. We led our pack mules, and keeping the shelter of the timber started to cut them off in their course. When we first sighted them, they were just crossing a glade, and the last buck had just left the timber. He had in his mouth an arrow shaft, which he was turning between his teeth to remove the sap. All had guns. The first warning the Indians received of our presence was a shot made by one of the men at this rear Indian. He rolled off ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... all the morning down at the bottom of the shaft, and when I see by the sun it was getting along towards noon, I put in three good shots, tamped 'em down, lit the fusees, and started ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... spared Judas 'midst free brethren! Stretch not the hand of Cromwell for the prize Meant not for him, nor his! Thou growest old, The people are ever young! Like her i' the chase Who drave a dart into her lover, embowered, Piercing the incense-clouds, the popular shaft May slay thee in a random shot at Tyranny! Man, friend, remain a Cromwell! in thy name, Rule! and if thy son be worthy, he and his, So rule the rest for ages! be it grander thus To be a Cromwell than a Carolus. No lapdog combed ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... was the sign. It was hung to a nail beside the elevator shaft. And far beyond, down the corridor, was somebody in a blue dress and no cap. It might be ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

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

... years a member of the cathedral foundation, and lived just opposite the west front. He made a special study of the history and fabric of the cathedral. Hardly a year passed without something falling down; sometimes a piece of a pinnacle, sometimes a crocket or other ornament, sometimes a shaft. Old engravings of the spires show the pinnacles broken. Many of the shafts are wanting. Some have been replaced in wood. Many wholly new ones were put up by Dean Monk. And concerning the north arch, which was notoriously the most dangerous, Dean Patrick ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... there is an answer to it in lives to be, otherwhere if not here. Nay, speak not. I know your oath, nor would I tempt you to its breaking. But, Sir Godwin, a woman such as the lady Rosamund cannot love two men," and as she spoke Masouda strove to search his face while the shaft ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard



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