"Sharpen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... four or five-foot sprouts toppled down, he undoubtedly felt as great a satisfaction as Beaver Tooth felt when he sent a seventy-foot birch crashing into the edge of the pond. Baree could not understand the fun of all this. He could see some reason for nibbling at sticks—he liked to sharpen his teeth on sticks himself; but it puzzled him to explain why Umisk so painstakingly stripped the bark from the ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... wildernesse, And fals freres forboden the fayre ladis chaumbres; 16 For knewe lordes her craft treuly I trowe They shulden nought haunten her house so ho[m]ly[64] on nyghtes, Ne bedden swich brothels in so brode shetes, 20 But sheten her heved in the stre to sharpen her wittes. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... preparation of which constitutes a distinct industry, are either of larch, Spanish chestnut, ash, willow, birch, or beech—larch or chestnut being preferred. Women clear the poles of the bark, and men sharpen them at one end, which is dipped in creosote before being used. The ground is cleared, and the poles are stuck in against the old plants in ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... dull gray nothing! Something must have gone wrong with their assembly work. Ross touched Ashe's shoulder. But now there were shadows gathering on the plate, thickening, to sharpen into a distinct picture. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... Improved Tories," he wrote, "I think the scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits on other people's, and you keep in touch with all kinds of opinions. That's excellent! Your father, and you, too, used to say we were rather one-eyed in Dublin, and I think there's a good deal of truth in that, so I'm trying to get a group of people in Dublin to form a society ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the sense of taste, is sharpest when he is hungry, and I am convinced also that one sees and hears best when unclogged with food, undulled with drink, undrugged with smoke. For me, also, weariness, though not exhaustion, seems to sharpen all the senses. Keenness goes with leanness. When I have been working hard or tramping the country roads in the open air and come in weary and hungry at night and catch the fragrance of the evening ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... was not muttered; it was only thought, but the thought banished the smile of satisfaction from Ian's face. In a meditative mood he took up his gun, refreshed the priming and slightly chipped the flint, so as to sharpen its edge and make ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... dry beans, called ceci, and upon each of these to write one of the ninety numbers drawn in the lottery, with an ink made of pitch and lard, which would not be affected by water. They were then to sharpen a knife, taking care that he who did so should touch no one during the operation; and after a day of fasting, they were to dig up at night a body recently dead, and, having cut off the head and removed the brain, they were to count the beans ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... vowels, and afterwards divide them into semivowels and mutes; but because, to those who enter the interior parts of this temple of science, there will appear in many things a great subtilty, which is fit not only to sharpen the wits of youth, but also to exercise the loftiest erudition and science."—De Institutione Oratoria, Lib. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... have been proposed, and nearly everybody has his favourite. The following has always succeeded with me. First mark on the tube, by means of a little dead black spirit paint, exactly where the cut is to be. Then sharpen the glass knife and scratch a quite deep cut all round: there is no difficulty in making the cut one-twentieth of an inch deep. It will be proper to lubricate the knife with kerosene after the first mark is made. [Footnote: The edge of the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... of sauces of the fourteenth century, given by the "Menagier de Paris," is most complicated; but, on examining the receipts, it becomes clear that the variety of those preparations, intended to sharpen the appetite, resulted principally from the spicy ingredients with which they were flavoured; and it is here worthy of remark that pepper, in these days exclusively obtained from America, was known and generally used long before ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... is called the equal temperament system the attempt is made to divide the octave into twelve equal parts or semi-tones, thus rendering all keys alike. To do this it is necessary to slightly flatten all the fifths and sharpen the major thirds. The difference from just intonation is about one-fiftieth of a semi-tone. Although recommended and used by J. S. Bach, equal temperament was not introduced ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... past Sandy Hook with the Family and all the Maids on board, but Papa remained behind to sharpen his Tools and get ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... partly because their organisation was, by hereditary culture, much more ductile and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine. At this I secretly demurred; and having had in the course of a practical life, to sharpen my wits, whether at home or in travel, I could not allow that my cerebral organisation could possibly be duller than that of people who had lived all their lives by lamplight. However, while I was thus thinking, Zee quietly pointed her forefinger ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... considerable toughness: They are formed of different sizes; some, that are intended for felling, weigh from six to eight pounds; others, that are used for carving, not more than so many ounces; but it is necessary to sharpen both almost every minute; for which purpose, a stone and a cocoa-nut shell full of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the wing— But theyr peaceabler in pot-pies than any other thing: And it's when I git my shotgun drawed up in stiddy rest, She's as full of tribbelation as a yeller-jacket's nest; And a few shots before dinner, when the sun's a-shinin' right, Seems to kindo'-sorto' sharpen up a feller's appetite! ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... they were denied—by the decrees of stern poverty, or an all-wise Providence—those facilities and indulgences supposed to be so essentially necessary for the future success and prosperous career of young men, but acted as "whetstones" to sharpen and develop their true temper! The fact is very vivid in the early history of Andrew Jackson—a name that, like that of the great, godlike Washington, must survive the wreck of matter, the crush of worlds, and, passing down the vista of each ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... through the window they saw a great crowd of people come rushing into the courtyard of the building to sharpen weapons at a huge grindstone that stood there. They were going to murder the prisoners with which the jails were by ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... cheer their failing sight and drive away the horrible visions which haunt those who are perishing of hunger and thirst. He saw Ned's stalwart form grow gaunt and lean, and Sibylla's rounded outlines sharpen and waste away under the fierce fires of hunger; and his soul sickened within him as their moans of anguish smote upon his ear. And at last he heard Sibylla, in her agony and despair, entreat Ned to take away ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... quite a subject of conversation between the two children, Bija sitting demurely threading beads and inventing new methods of just punishment, and the Heir-to-Empire lolling on the floor pretending to sharpen his tinfoil sword, and interposing objections such as, "But you couldn't do that, Bija, you're not strong enough," or "That wouldn't be fair, Bija, for he only hurt you a little, you know." For Akbar was born with a ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... supper. Then he leaned back for five minutes' rest before beginning his work again, and laid his head against the rock. He had not kept the position for one minute before he heard something which made him sharpen his ears. It sounded like a voice inside the rock. After a while he heard it again. It was a goblin voice—there could be no doubt about that—and this time he could make ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... The twirling-stick, spindle, or fire-drill should be a little over half an inch in diameter and sixteen inches long. Its sides may be rounded or bevelled in six or seven flat spaces like a lead-pencil, as shown in Fig. 76. Cut the top end to a blunt point and sharpen the bottom end as you would a lead-pencil, leaving the lead blunt. To hold the spindle you must have something to protect your hand. A piece of soapstone or a piece of very hard wood will answer. This is called the socket-block. In the wood or stone make a hole for a socket that will hold the ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... cannot do it," said Rabbit. "Your teeth are too blunt to bite anything. Let me sharpen them for you so they are like mine. My teeth are so sharp I can cut through a stick ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... himself softly backward and forward. It seemed to me that he was debating how to act, and I believe that I learned then, peeping through the glass, to what extent guilt and the desire for secrecy will sharpen ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the renegade, with a blasphemous oath, as he came upon the detachment. "Up, warriors! and sharpen your wits to invent the most damnable tortures that the mind of man can conceive!" and at the sound of his voice, which was loud and hoarse, each Indian sprung to his feet, with an ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional "religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough to sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... so obstinate a pertinacity. And though there was not the smallest evidence of such utter abandonment of honour, though it was probably but a calumnious whisper, yet the mere suspicion of such practices served to sharpen the aversion of his enemies, and justify the disgust ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... battlements. The mote in their neighbor's eyes—so small that it takes a microscope to find it—gives them more trouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With air sometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and always blasphemous, they take the razor of the divine judgment and sharpen it on the hone of their own hard hearts, and then go to work on men sprawled out at full length under disaster, cutting mercilessly. They begin by soft expressions of sympathy and pity and half praise, and, lather the victim all over before ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... view'd th' interminable host, The prospect seem'd at last in dimness lost: But still the wish remain'd their doom to know, As, watchful, I survey'd the passing show. As each majestic form emerged to light, Thither, intent, I turn'd my sharpen'd sight; And soon a noble pair my notice drew, That, hand in hand approaching, met my view. In gentle parley, and communion sweet— With looks of love, they seem'd mine eyes to meet; Yet strange was their ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... groaned. Seeing that in his present state he could say nothing, I went across to the table and mixed him a glass of grog. When I gave it to him he drank it eagerly. It seemed to sharpen his wits, for he ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... had lacked anything to sharpen my suspicion of those fork-bearded professors who derived our prose from the stucco of Anglo-Saxon prose, it would have been their foolish deliberate practice of composing whole pages of English prose without using one word derivative from Latin or ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Nature's made you a bit of a judge of men, and what you've got to do is to sharpen up that faculty, as people call it. I'm not bragging, but I've got it a little, and I've polished and polished it for twenty years, till I'm not such a very bad judge of convicts. You give me a gang, and in a week's time, if there's an innocent man, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... spirit is sometimes necessary in the treatment of disease. This opinion has slain its thousands and its tens of thousands, and multitudes of dram-drinkers daily shelter themselves under its delusive mask. One takes a little to raise his desponding spirits, or to drown his sorrow; another, to sharpen his appetite, or relieve his dyspepsia: one, to ease his gouty pains; another, to supple his stiffened limbs, or calm his quivering muscles. One drinks to overcome the heat; another, to ward off the cold; and all this as a medicine. Appeal, then, to the medical profession, and they will tell ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Rule; in such occasions, we may therefore very well say, that all that pleases is good, because that which is Good doth please, or that which is Evil never fails to displease; for neither the Passions, nor Ignorance dull the Senses, on the contrary they sharpen them. 'Tis not so in Things which spring from Reason; Passion and Ignorance act very strongly on it, and oftentimes choak it, this is the Reason, why we ordinarily judge so ill, and differently concerning ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... Third, we must sharpen our political and diplomatic tools—the means of cooperation and agreement on which an enforceable world ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sometimes full both of what are metrical irregularities according to modern standards, and of coarse images and similes. To reduce the metrical irregularities, by such arbitrary methods as Duhm's, may occasionally enhance the music and sharpen the edge of an Oracle yet oftener dulls the melody and weakens the emphasis.(54) The figures again are always simple and homely, but sometimes even ugly, as is not infrequent in the rural poetries of all peoples. Even the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... surface of the paper becomes roughened, so that it will soil easier and be harder to clean. In order to produce fine pencil lines without requiring a very frequent sharpening of the pencil it is best to sharpen the pencil as in Figures 7 and 8, so that the edge shall be long in the direction in which it is moved, which is denoted by the arrow in Figure 7. But when very fine work is to be done, as in the case ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... influence to the electors: on the contrary, it renders it much more necessary to them, if they seek to have a majority in parliament, to increase the means of that influence, and redouble their diligence, and to sharpen dexterity in the application. The whole effect of the bill is therefore the removing the application of some part of the influence from the elected to the electors, and further to strengthen and extend a court interest already great and powerful in boroughs; ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... her anyhow, but still she did n't come out,—jus' stuck to her stickin' there in the window. I can't well see why he looked for her to come out because my view would be as if you did n't want a man aroun', the more ropes an' hatchets he was inclined to the more I 'd let him tie 'n' sharpen, but old Mrs. Ely was always another parts o' speech from me. She never could eat her own chickens, they say, nor sausage her own pigs, 'n' I s'pose he knowed her tender spots aforehand 'n' was layin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... for having sent me this young man, as a whetstone on which to sharpen my patience and ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... generally accompanied with a peculiar fineness of sensibility; of genius this is the most essential constituent; and life in any shape has sorrows enough for hearts so formed. The employments of literature sharpen this natural tendency; the vexations that accompany them frequently exasperate it into morbid soreness. The cares and toils of literature are the business of life; its delights are too ethereal and too transient to furnish that perennial flow of satisfaction, coarse but plenteous and substantial, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Arizona. Uncle Pompey took his text 'bout Paul and Silas layin' in jail and dat it was not 'ternally against a church member to go to jail. Him dwell on de life of labor and bravery, in tacklin' kickin' hosses and mules. How him sharpen de dull plow points and make de corn and cotton grow, to feed and clothe de hungry and naked. He look up thru de pine tree tops and say: 'I see Jacob's ladder. Brother Wash is climbin' dat ladder. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... Who will sharpen my quill and poison my inkstand, that I may put to confusion the horrible brood of red-tape that ruled on Ballaarat at the time. To administer justice in the sacred name of Her Most Gracious Majesty, they ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... aggressive than any before known in the promulgation of its opinions, taking the lead in the teaching and defence of these opinions in a city to which the Jews of all nationalities resorted periodically to keep the great feasts. If the holding of any position would sharpen a man's natural intellect and give him a power over words, and a mental grasp of ideas to which in youth he had been a stranger, that position would be the leading one he held in the Church of such a ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... the abominable practice of killing fish by means of dynamite. It is very well to say that the law forbids it; but the administrators of the law are not always a terror to evil-doers, and perhaps the timely present of a dish of fine trout does not sharpen the energies of the officials. Another mode of destroying fish is practised by the Wallacks. There grows in this locality a poisonous plant, of which they make a decoction and throw it into the river, thereby killing great numbers of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... the point perceived. She had never to fight a daily and exhausting battle for her private opinions as talkative people have, simply because she rarely if ever expressed an opinion; but her father stood ready always, a post of resistance to innovation, upon which she could sharpen the claws of her conclusion silently whenever ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... confronts the disgrace almost face to face, how changed is the hideous aspect of his deed, from that fair face of promise with which it tempted him! Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, and his children's beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... dormant amidst the commerce of the world;' and it aims at the 'revival of those purer and more enthusiastic feelings which are associated with the earlier and least selfish period of our existence. Immersed in business, which, if it sharpen the edge of intellect, leaves the heart barren; toiling after material wealth or power, and struggling with fortune for existence; seeing selfishness reflected all around us from the hard and glittering surface of society as from a cold and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... sooner. In fact, I have had nothing worth writing about, and I know your time is too valuable to be intrenched upon by letters of mere gossip. I have not of course had time to peruse any portion of the monograph, but I have turned over the pages and seen quite enough to sharpen my appetite for the glorious scientific feast you have so liberally provided. And now that the weight is off your mind, I hope shortly to hear that you are about to fulfill this year the promise you made of returning ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... there is nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the sale of his goods,—much to educate him in all manner of expedients to baffle the inquiries of customers who would be offended, if they could discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... needed," and after them more "boys" for more things; and then other "boys" for other things, until travellers must have thought the camp blacks had entered into a walking competition. When everything necessary was ordered, "all hands" were put on to sharpen saws and tools, and the homestead shrieked and groaned all day with harsh, discordant raspings. Then a camp was pitched in the forest, a mile or so from the homestead; a sawpit dug, a platform erected, and before a week had passed an invitation ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... sent thee a subject, wherein, without derogating from thy rank, (since the honours of the Avenel family are beyond dispute,) thou mayest find a whetstone for thy witty compliments, a strop whereon to sharpen thine acute engine, a butt whereat to shoot the arrows of thy gallantry. For even as a Bilboa blade, the more it is rubbed, the brighter and the sharper will it prove, so—But what need I waste my stock ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... prayed that so I might reduce this grosser material frame, and sharpen and quicken every nerve, and stimulate every fibre of the brain. So alone could I most nearly approach to the commune of spirits. Thus had those saints and prophets of old done when they had entered upon the search after ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... there church—see, now, I'd have the wards of the big key in wax, ah! this weary arternoon. If you says to me, says you, Jim, go and cut that there parson's throat, I've got a old knife in my pocket as I wouldn't want to sharpen afore the job was done, and the parson too, for ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... that—a furlong on—why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's too!, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... but Joe. HE was curious to know if the cow was in milk. Dad noticed him; sprang upon him; seized him by the shirt collar and swung him round and trailed him through the yard, saying: "Find me th' knife; d' y' HEAR?" It seemed to sharpen Joe's memory, for he suddenly remembered having stuck it in ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... you mean when you say Betty," declared Elizabeth, and leapt forward so far that the other two had to sharpen their ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... the wilderness, where the struggle against savage and beast of prey sharpen the wits and teach the pioneer the need for rapid decisions, lost no time in executing his commission. As soon as word could reach Lyon, he informed his old comrade of the work he had in mind for him. The next post ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... mellow hour; Fill your pipe, and taste the wine— Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it— I have eager ears to lend, Tom Van ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... have I not? Now I must disturb some document-dust, and sharpen my pen afresh to the police-official style, for the president of the provincial court and the government. Could I but enclose myself herewith, or go along in a salmon-basket as mail-matter! Till we meet ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... upon. But beneath all this wordy pretension and economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious dramatization of human society into the "class conflict." Nothing was overlooked that might sharpen and accentuate this "conflict." Marx depicted a great melodramatic conflict, in which all the virtues were embodied in the proletariat and all the villainies in the capitalist. In the end, as always in such dramas, virtue was to be ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Rembrandt's mature graphic work."[33] After etching his skeletal design on the plate, he went to work with his drypoint needles—long, stiff, iron instruments—sharpened to a fine point. An artist generally has several available, so that he does not have to stop and re-sharpen in the course of his work. Rembrandt evidently went even further and deliberately used dull needles to ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse
... and worked many claims in Leavenworth and other gulches. Sometimes he had streaks of luck and often the reverse. When lucky he would hire men to help him, when "broke" he would put more patches on his clothes, sharpen his own tools, borrow a sack of flour and work away. Some years later he discovered a really rich gold mine, then worked a silver mine in Utah and became a millionaire. During the spring of 1861 and the winter previous, he prospected in several of his claims, but fortune was against him. ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... the use of talking?" she exclaimed in reproof to herself. "I never said so much before, believe me! The tables will be turned yet!" she added after a pause. "As you so wisely say, let us sharpen our teeth, and pull down all ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Marzio, leaning back to sharpen his pencil, and staring at the wall. "You change every day. You are not at all what you used to be, and you know it. You are going back to the priests. You fawn on my ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... only at it about a quarter of an hour, at a time. My wrists and arms and shoulders are aching, as if I had been beaten with sticks. Tomorrow I will take up a good supply of firewood. The chisels got blunted before we had worked an hour; and we should get on a deal faster, if we could sharpen ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... Elias had suspected in his own mind that there existed a creature, somewhat like a mouse, somewhat like a red flower-pot, which glided around during the night-watches to sharpen slate-pencils, smooth out dog-ears from school-books, erase lead-pencil marks, polish up marbles, straighten kite strings, put the "suck" into brick-suckers, and otherwise make itself useful. If there were not such a creature, there ought to be, and Elias became daily ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Venus, and she resolved to cast down her earthly rival. One day, therefore, she called hither her son, Love (Cupid, some name him), and bade him sharpen his weapons. He is an archer more to be dreaded than Apollo, for Apollo's arrows take life, but Love's bring joy or sorrow ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the crew must row whole days together to reach moorings. [3] Now note the difference. Here you may find a captain [4] able by dint of speech and conduct to whet the souls of those he leads, and sharpen them to voluntary toils; and there another so dull of wit and destitute of feeling that it will take his crew just twice the time to finish the same voyage. See them step on shore. The first ship's company are drenched in sweat; but listen, they are loud in praise of one another, the captain ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... class exercises the Oyler boys are privileged to make anything which appeals to them and for which they can supply the material. The school machines are theirs, subject to their use at any time. Taking advantage of this, the boys sharpen the home knives and hatchets, make axe handles, umbrella racks, hall stands, stools, sleds, cane chairs, and repair or make any product which fancy or home necessity ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... about one inch thick, from half as large as the hand to four times that size. Sharpen a stick or branch of convenient length—say, from two to four feet long—and weave the point of the stick through the steak several times, so that it may be readily turned over a few brisk coals or on the windward side of a small fire. Allow to brown nicely, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... with the ease he instantly felt. "I'm in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on his knee, and began to sharpen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... cases support the theories that birds sharpen their faculties by the exercise of defensive and offensive tactics, and also that they do indulge in ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... pilgrimage for heaven, and fall upon the building of tabernacles in this mount. For certainly the soul would conclude it good to be here, and could not so earnestly long for the city and country of heaven, if they had any more but some tastes of that joy to sharpen their desires after the full measure of it. It is a fixed and unchangeable statute of heaven, that we should here live by faith, and not by sense. And indeed, the following of God fully, in the ways of obedience, upon the dim apprehensions ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... receive have pushed aside your false nose; it is in vain that you decree, that you rob, that you incarcerate; you are too grotesque to be terrible. Even if you carried the parody out to the end, and thought fit to erect a guillotine and sharpen the knife, we should even then decline to look seriously upon you, and were we to see one by one five hundred heads fell into the basket, we should still persist in thinking that your axe was of wood, and your guillotine ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... pause. Studying her, he takes from a pocket of his jacket a formidable- looking clasp-knife, unclasps it, and tests the blade casually with his fingers. He glances at the mantelpiece, crosses to it, takes down a stick, and begins to sharpen the end of it. OLIVIA watches him. A pause. OLIVIA: ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... Revolution, and they answer that the division of labour must be maintained; that if you sharpened pins before the Revolution you must go on sharpening them after. True, you will not have to work more than five hours a day, but you will have to sharpen pins all your life, while others will make designs for machines that will enable you to sharpen hundreds of millions of pins during your life-time; and others again will be specialists in the higher branches of literature, science, and art, etc. You were born to sharpen pins while Pasteur ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... will burst! (Sings) We'll smite the grafters; smite them hip and thigh; Our motto shall be ever, "Do or die." We've got 'em on the run, And with every rising sun, We'll oil the new machine; Its blade we'll sharpen keen. Revenge shall fill the goblet to the brim, And "Pleasure saturnine" shall be our hymn. Francos, applauding: 'Twere well, sweet Quezox! Thou in happy tone Hast voiced a noble sentiment in rhyme. But lurking in my mem'ry it doth seem That I recall in part those words so apt. (Francos ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... always a bad drop in you that attached to you out of the grandfather. What did your languages do for you but to sharpen your tongue, till the scrape of it would take the skin off, the same as a cat! My blessing on you, Conan, but my ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... custom alone which varnishes wrong with a shiny coat of respectability, and glorifies selfishness with the aureole of sacrifice. It sets down all collisions as foreordained, and never observes that they occur because people will not smooth off their angles, but sharpen them, and not only sharpen them, but run them into you. It forgets that the Lord made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions. It attributes all the confusion and inaptitude which it finds to the nature of things, and never suspects that the Devil goes around in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... want me butting in. Nonsense! What's the use of having a grandson if a fellow doesn't hustle up something for the boy to sharpen his teeth on when he grows up? Here I've been living from day to day, just marking time on the road to eternity and figuring life wasn't worth while because the stock was going to die out with me. Up until recently I was content with a little ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... policy of the throne had always opposed this steadily increasing tide of thought which refused to run in the well-worn channels, but, as usual, the opposition and hindrances only served to {267} deepen personal conviction, to sharpen the edge of conscience, to nourish great and daring spirits, to formulate the battle-ideas and to win popular support. The inner life and the varied tendencies of the Commonwealth are too rich and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... them out instantly—and hark thee, if a byzant or two will sharpen their memory, let ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... sharpen our wits up with passions for hones, Melt down loadstars for magnets, use women for whetstones, Learn to bear with dead calms by remembering cyclones, Snap strings short with sharp thumbnails, till silence ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... once more tasting bread and butter! The very thought of the treat in store served to sharpen my appetite, and render the long fast more irksome. I could now fully realise all Mrs. Bowdich's longings for English bread and butter, after her three years' travel through the burning African deserts, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... addicted to deep potations. Whitecraft, it is true, drank more deeply still than he did; but, by some idiosyncrasy of stomach or constitution, it had no more effect upon him than it had upon the cask from which it had been drawn, unless, indeed, to reduce him to greater sobriety and sharpen his prejudices. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... himself, a mighty hero, On the forest-fields surrounding; With his head the clouds he pierces, To his knees his beard extending, And his locks fall to his ankles; Far apart appear his eyeballs, Far apart his feet are stationed. Farther still his mighty shoulders. Now begins his axe to sharpen, Quickly to an edge he whets it, Using six hard blocks of sandstone, And of softer whetstones, seven. Straightway to the oak-tree turning, Thither stalks the mighty giant, In his raiment long and roomy, Flapping in the winds of heaven; With his second step he totters On ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... meaning of the school, old notions of its purpose still survive. Probably no one is so benighted to-day as to imagine that the chief function of the school is to fill the mind with information; but there are many who still hold to the tradition that the chief purpose of education is to sharpen the intellectual tools of the individual for the sake of his personal success. This notion is a misleading survival, for tools are of value only in terms of the character using them. The same equipment may serve, equally, ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... said of himself: "I am like a hone, I sharpen a number of blades, but I wear myself ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... There were classic faces, and romantic faces, and faces that were realistic, but each and all blank of the consciousness of a crisis. The talk was of everything save art and literature. The critics did not even sharpen their pencils. They looked bored to a man. In vain my eye roved the arm-chairs in search of a fighting figure. I could not even see the musical iconoclast who had carried his pepper-and-salt suit into the holy of holies of the Italian opera. My heart sank within me. When the orchestra ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... uncle one rainy Saturday morning, a week later, "it's such a bad day we can't do anything outdoors, so we'd better sharpen up the tools; there's a lot of them ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... his head positively. "I try him once- -cookin' for gang of rough-neck'—but I mak' joke an' I'm fire'. Dem feller kick 'bout my grub an' it mak' me mad, so one day I sharpen all de table-knife. I put keen edge on dem—lak razor." The speaker showed his white teeth in a flashing smile. "Dat's meanes' trick ever I play. Sapre! Dem feller cut deir mouth so fast dey mos' die of bleedin'. No, I ain't hired man for ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... outwardly bent reed by suction (as in the American organ; see HARMONIUM) when the bellows are expanded. The pitch of the note is determined by the length and thickness of the reeds, reduction of the length tending to sharpen the note, while reduction of the thickness lowers it. The right hand plays the melody on the keyboard, while the left works the bellows and manipulates the two or three bass harmony keys, which sound the simple chords of the tonic and dominant. The archetype of the accordion is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is an article on Mrs. Browning's letters which begins with some remarks about style. "It is recorded," says the writer, "of Plato, that in a rough draft of one of his Dialogues, found after his death, the first paragraph was written in seventy different forms. Wordsworth spared no pains to sharpen and polish to the utmost the gifts with which nature had endowed him; and Cardinal Newman, one of the greatest masters of English style, has related in an amusing essay the pains he ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... may be found necessary for the regulation, after the war, of International Finance, it remains to consider what can be done to amend the evils from which it suffers, and likewise what, if anything, can be done to strengthen our financial weapon, and sharpen its edge to help us in the difficult fight that will follow the present war, ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... men to the shipyards and the mines to meet the submarine danger; the heavy fighting in the Salient and at Cambrai in the latter half of 1917; the lack of time for training new levies, owing to our depleted line and reserves:—all these causes contributed to sharpen the peril in which England stood.[5] But it is in such straits as these that our race shows ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have it; one days conquest hath undone them. And sold them to their vassalage; for what Have I else toyl'd my brains, profusely emptied My moneys, but to make them slaves to Venice, That so in case the sword did lose his edge, Then art might sharpen hers? ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... having followed the course of the river for some distance on foot, struck into the woods, sought for and found the track of the bear, and, looking carefully to the priming of his gun, and knocking the edge of the flint to sharpen it, pushed forward in pursuit with the ardour of a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... reason in a healthy mind ought to be inseparable. We need not be passionless because we reason correctly. Strange to say, one's feelings will often sharpen one's knowledge of the truth, as they do ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... remarkable, that although we found no kind of metal in any of these islands, yet, the inhabitants of all of them, the moment they got a piece of iron in their possession, began to sharpen it, but made no such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... right!" Leenoo was saying. "That she should for once get the worst of it, and be disbelieved to sharpen ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... still he devises fire To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire. With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here, Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher: Tribes who better than we deal with the gods their lords, For they pleasantly sin, yet the gods sharpen and drive ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... came hither this morning to get old Gaffer Pinniewinks, the trier of witches, to go with him to the Vale of Whitehorse to comprehend Wayland Smith, and put him to his probation. I helped Pinniewinks to sharpen his pincers and his poking-awl, and I saw the warrant ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... does well to carry in his pocket a small flat file with which to sharpen his broad-heads before shooting them. They should have a serrated, meat-cutting edge. Even carrying arrows in a quiver tends to dull them, because they chafe each other while in motion. From time to time ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... and concocts various seeming artless and innocent remarks and allusions, which in reality are diabolically artful, and would deceive the very elect. All this, I say, must be conceded; but it is not unfair; the very object, ostensibly, of the riddle story is to prompt you to sharpen your wits; and as you are yourself the real detective in the case, so you must regard your author as the real criminal whom you are to detect. Credit no statement of his save as supported by the clearest ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... said Tito. "Remember, I don't sharpen my wits, as you do, by driving hard bargains for iron rings: you must ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... up. Mr. Buxton stopped abruptly, and the two men drew themselves up and seemed to stiffen, ever so slightly. A shade of aggressive contempt came on Hubert's keen brown face that towered up so near the low oak ceiling; while Mr. Buxton's eyelids just drooped, and his features seemed to sharpen. There was an unpleasant silence: Isabel ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... on a rising ground, above the ring, The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey He well observ'd the chief who led the way, And heard from far his animating cries, And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes. POPE, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... under the pretext of picking up a case knife to sharpen her pencil. Now though her lids were lowered as she hacked at the stubby point, she was perfectly aware of the hopeful curiosity in the freshman's side glance at her. Lila despised the habit of side glances. For the past few days she had felt increasing scorn ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... wrote so furiously that he broke his pencil, and had, as you observe, to sharpen it again. This is of interest, Watson. The pencil was not an ordinary one. It was above the usual size, with a soft lead; the outer colour was dark blue, the maker's name was printed in silver lettering, and the piece remaining is only about ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... think I 've hit on a plan," said Adah, and she produced a Mme. Demorest pattern of a sleeve, upon which, with infinite pains, she had traced certain lines with the wreck of a pencil which little Josephine had tried to sharpen with the scissors. ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... ingenuity and extravagance of illustration, to make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatize it by name, to grapple with it in thought—in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend with, and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... stream, he splashed his face and neck in the clear cold water, and the brisk rubbing which followed seemed to clear his thought as well as sharpen his appetite. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... astounding. Up one street, down another, round a corner, along a narrow lane—on he rushes as if bent upon rivalling that indefatigable giant who "walked round the world every morning before breakfast to sharpen his appetite." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Frogs," the former is censured, not for too rude a neglect, but for too elaborate a cultivation, of theatrical craft—such as introducing his principal characters, his Niobe and Achilles [30], with their faces hid, and preserving long and obstinate silence, in order by that suspense to sharpen the expectation of the audience. Aeschylus, in fact, contrary to the general criticism, was as earnest and thoughtful an artist as Sophocles himself. There was this difference, it is true; one invented the art and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exposure of the moving forces that stimulate our political energies, occupies long sections into which the human relations of Remington (the form is again that of an autobiography) hardly enter, except in an occasional conversation to sharpen up a criticism. This comment on politics (regarded in his own constituency, Remington says, not as a "great constructive process" but as a "kind of dog-fight") is the chief theme; subsidiary to it is the comment on a society that could waste so valuable a life as Remington's ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... aside. Close your eyes. Reproduce the picture mentally in detail. Then repose your mind on the same image to the exclusion of all other thoughts. This is a more fixed and meditative method and will sharpen the mind wonderfully. It will also develop the power of conscious Mental Imagery. The key to Objective Concentration ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... stones, but something longer than a man's leg and narrower than his hand, was lying there like a great flattened snake. When Loz looked at its thin edges and saw that it ran to a point, he picked up stones to chip it and make it sharp. It was the instinct of Loz to sharpen things. When he found that it could not be chipped his wonderment increased. It was many hours before he discovered that he could sharpen the edges by rubbing them with a stone; but at last the point was sharp, and all one side of it except near the end, where Loz held it in his hand. And ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... too delightfully innocent altogether," laughed the Pencil, rubbing its leaden head rapidly on a piece of paper, to sharpen its point. "A regular sitting! What do you think? No, sir, no, emphatically never. Such an operation would be fatal to the delicate constitution of a caricature, and the result would not be worth the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... arrangement for Henry Crawford, who was close to Fanny, and with his hands full of business, having two persons' cards to manage as well as his own; for though it was impossible for Fanny not to feel herself mistress of the rules of the game in three minutes, he had yet to inspirit her play, sharpen her avarice, and harden her heart, which, especially in any competition with William, was a work of some difficulty; and as for Lady Bertram, he must continue in charge of all her fame and fortune through the whole evening; and if quick enough to keep her from looking at her cards when the deal ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... possessing in a peculiar degree the art of pleasing; and these qualities will give them creditable positions in the business interests of the country in a few years. But they must have time to collect their wits, to sharpen their intelligence, to train their moral sense and the feeling of social responsibility, to fully comprehend all that the change from chattel slavery to absolute freedom implies. Men cannot awaken from ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... some such decisive taste, there is no room for hesitation: follow your bent. And observe (lest I should too much discourage you) that the disposition does not usually burn so brightly at the first, or rather not so constantly. Habit and practice sharpen gifts; the necessity of toil grows less disgusting, grows even welcome, in the course of years; a small taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with indulgence into an exclusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and a bore, but I wished him no harm. I was sorry as any one when I heard of his death, and I offered a good reward for the catching of the mean skunk that killed him. If I had done so myself I wouldn't have been such a fool as to sharpen the scent of the hounds on ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... few weeks, Victor Emmanuel lost his brother, his mother, and his wife. The King, who felt keenly when he did feel, was driven distraught with grief; no circumstance was wanting which could sharpen the edge of his sorrow. The two Queens, both Austrian princesses, had never interfered in foreign politics; what they suffered they suffered in silence. But they were greatly influenced by the ministers of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... guides on the Gussie took their machetes to a grindstone on the hurricane-deck. Our soldiers gathered around to see them sharpen their long knives, but only one could be induced to test the edge of these barbarous instruments ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... revealed). Now, when I saw him and felt his hand once more in the grasp of comradeship, I was with him heart and soul, and scoundrel though he might be, a lineal descendant of old Bluebeard, perhaps, I stood ready to sharpen and pass his knives to him and assist in any humble way a willing and obliging servant could to make the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... that my father he's try to buy Fortune so to marry her. An' by that he had a quarrel with one of those young Lefevre', who said pretty much like his mother, only in another manner, pretty insulting. And, same old story, they fought, like we say, 'under those oak,' Metairie Ridge, with sharpen' foil'. And my father he got a bad wound. And he had to be nurse' long time, and biccause all those shop' got to be keep she nurse' ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... the freedom of the kingdom of heaven. There is the other young man in a show window a bit further on who all day long gashes blocks of wood with a magic razor, only to sharpen it to greater keenness, so that before you he continually cuts with it the finest hairs. There is the young woman garbed as a nurse who treats the corns on a gigantic plaster foot. In show windows cooks are cooking appetising dishes; damsels are combing magnificent, patent-medicine ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... desert; all those months of the slow journeying northward; all the fought battles with memory, when he thought that he had won—all gone for nothing, their slow anodyne serving but to sharpen now the bite of merciless remembering. His hand shook upon his knee. Small beads of moisture oozed out upon his forehead. He sat stunned before the amazing revelation of how little time and distance had done to heal ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... much skill can be attained in their use. Any boy with a little mechanical ingenuity can make a pair of skis (pronounced skees). They can be made from two barrel staves. Select staves of straight grained wood. Sharpen the ends of each and score each end by cutting grooves in the wood, as shown in the cut, Fig. 7. A pocket knife or small gouge will suffice for this work. Then smear the end of the staves with oil and hold them close to a hot fire until they can ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... of mud, stirred up and exhaling a perturbing odour, and suddenly fomenting all that emotion, fear, and anger in the Chamber, was after all but an opportunity for political strife, a field on which the voracious appetites of the various "groups" would take exercise and sharpen; and, at bottom, the sole question was that of overthrowing the ministry and replacing it by another. Only, behind all that lust of power, that continuous onslaught of ambition, what a distressful prey was stirring—the whole people ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it isn't so long ago since we were in it," nodded Jane. "Tommy was the last to be in it. Please pass the potatoes. This life at sea does sharpen one's appetite. It wouldn't do for me to go to sea really. I'd get so hungry between meals that I'd gnaw the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... not to think of his mother, and he found that, for the first time in his life, he could do nothing else but think of her. During the morning he sat very silently over his lessons, did all that he was told, did not once kick Mary under the table, nor ask Miss Jones to sharpen his pencil, nor make faces at Hamlet. Once or twice, in a way that he had, he leaned his head on his hand as though he were an ancient professor with a whole library of great works behind him, and when Miss Jones asked him whether he had a headache ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... truths, unless we add to this the pride of science, that he has by his own skill and application purchased for himself the discernment which places him in so painful a preeminence. The great triumph of man is in the power of education, to improve his intellect, to sharpen his perceptions, and to regulate and modify his moral qualities. But craniology reduces this to almost nothing, and exhibits us for the most part as the helpless victims of ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... so close to the big blood-vessel that you could see it beat under its film of tissue—the only thing between him and death. I thought of it a day or two later when I was reading a book about the Austrian army officer's life, written by an English lady, and came across the phrase: '"Sharpen sabres!' ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... presently he would die almost a painless death from loss of blood, slain in spite of his great size by just two strokes of a sword! Then at the nearest village there would be great rejoicing. The young girls would clap their hands and praise the courage of the brothers; all the older people would sharpen their knives and prepare to go to market, for even one elephant could not be carried home in a basket. It would provide steaks and roasts enough for a whole village; while the four brothers would carefully cut out the great tusks of gleaming white ivory,—each ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... would come into play. The sheep, left to himself, would still give a practical illustration of the doctrine of Malthus. If, as evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf tends to improve the breed of sheep, to encourage him to think more and to sharpen his wits, the sheep may be, on the whole, the better for the wolf, in this sense at least: that the sheep of a wolfless region might lead a more wretched existence, and be less capable animals and more subject ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... great fancy to it, and he begged and prayed her for it again and again, until at last she gave it to him. Now, when Wednesday thought that all the people were asleep, he went out into the courtyard to sharpen his sabre. Then the foal said, "Oh, my dear little master, come here, come here!" He came, and the foal said to him, "Take off the night-dresses of the forty sleeping bridegrooms and put them on the forty sleeping brides, and put the night-dresses of the brides on the bridegrooms, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous |
