"Shears" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first evening; for when he put on his grandfather's coat, his mother planned a long while to see if there was not some way by which she could make it look better. Once she took the shears and was going to cut off the tail, but Paul stopped her. "I don't want it ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... strewn with branches of rose vine, and the pruning shears lay open upon them, just as they had fallen from the old man's hand. The sun had passed several degrees below the meridian, and the shadows of the twisted iron columns were aslant eastward, but the glare of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... as she watched her brother's approach along the winding path. What a handsome young figure of manhood he made in his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, the close-fitting deerstalker cap showing the light chestnut hair, from which no barber's shears could succeed in banishing the natural kink and curl. No one would suspect, to look at him, that he cherished poetical ambitions! Margot was English enough to be thankful for this fact, illogical as it may appear. She was proud to realise that he ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... systematically and well arranged. Each shearer has a trap-door close to him, out of which he pushes his sheep as soon as the fleece is off, and there are little pens outside, so that the manager can notice whether the poor animal has been too much cut with the shears, or badly shorn in any other respect, and can tell exactly which shearer is to blame. Before this plan was adopted it was hopeless to try to find out who was the delinquent, for no one would acknowledge to the least ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little man with the big shears." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... narrowest conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in Great Britain, and recorded in Loudon's Encyclopedia of Agriculture, the Edinburg Encyclopedia, and other similar works, all, or nearly all, relied either upon scythes or cutters, with a rotary motion, or vibrating shears. And although there was "go ahead" about them in one sense of the term, as it was intended for the "cart to go before the horse," none of them appeared to have gained, or certainly not long retained, the confidence of the farmers; for at the exhibition of the "World's ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... this one a little. Remember this trunk must not go in the hold of the ship. Have it marked "Wanted" and "This end up." I will lie with my head this way. I'll put the shears in here, and I can cut another hole from the inside if ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... Sunday breeches of half the farmers who came to meeting used to be the product of her skilful labor. Thus for many years (refusing meanwhile several good offers of marriage) she continued to ply her needle and shears, working steadily and cheerfully in her vocation, earning good wages and spending but little, until the thrifty sempstress was counted well to do, and held in esteem according. Sometimes, when she got weary, and thought a change of labor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... directed the captain of the life saving crew, when the cart containing the gun, "shears" and other parts of the breeches buoy had been dragged farther along. "She'll strike about here, ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... across th' island. We had packed away all th' seal-skins snug in th' boat and pulled th' door up from th' bottom of th' chimney before th' gale started. When we were taking down the rope and tackle and th' shears, th' water began to come boiling up th' blow hole and sinking down again. There was a big rush of wind, first up and then down sucking you in like. It was a ticklish time, and just as we were going to lower th' shears, th' Port Albert man made ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... as well as men, I know of a case where some ruffians entered the house of a family at night, went into the bedroom of one of the girls, seized her violently, forced her on her knees, and held her in that position while one of the gang cut off her hair with shears, and then poured a quantity of hot tar on her head before entering the bedroom of her ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... a length sufficient to make a gun barrel is cut off by a pair of steam-moved shears, of which the lower jaw is stationary and the upper weighs a ton, of which plenty of examples may be seen in every steam ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... of the Ourcq and of Meaux and the army of Sezanne drew together like the blades of a pair of shears, the pivot of which was in the region of the Grand Morin. The German retreat was thus forced toward the east and it speedily ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... rob us of the favor Enjoyed by the farmer, 'midst fair Country scenes; What though 'tis confining to make up tins shining, There's naught in the trade which our conduct demeans, Then ply the shears, since it appears That our calling is honest and fair; Yet take good heed, lest, in our speed, We should send from ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... taylor, it is John Drakes' the shoemaker, who will have it made of the self-same fashion that yours is made of! 'Well!' said the knight, 'in good time be it! I will have mine made as full of cuts as thy shears can make it.' 'It shall be done!' said the taylor; whereupon, because the time drew near, he made haste to finish both their garments. John Drakes had no time to go to the taylor's till Christmas-day, for serving his customers, when he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Babe with quenchd orbs, an oldster bowd by burthening years, How scaped the skiff an hundred storms; how scaped the thread a thousand shears; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... He took the great shears from the work-basket, and sat down on a stool by the side of the table, on which burned a dim tallow candle, throwing an uncertain light through ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... who was about to pay out a part of the French subsidy in coin, wrote as follows: "I must trouble you for the necessary apparatus for clipping. 'Tis a shameful business and an unreasonable hardship on a public officer.... A pair of good shears, a couple of punches, and a leaden anvil of two or three pounds weight. Will you inquire how the goldsmiths put in their plugs?" The Confederation, upon Jefferson's report, July 6, 1785, adopted the dollar as its unit, and provided ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... the Peel; but after ye pass Pomoragrains at a muckle great saucer-headed cutlugged stane, that they ca' Charlie's Chuckie, there Dawston Cleugh and Charlies-hope they march. Now, I say, the march rins on the tap o' the hill where the wind and water shears; but Jock o' Dawston Cleugh again, he contravenes that, and says that it hauds down by the auld drove-road that gaes awa by the Knot o' the Gate ower to Keeldar-ward—and that makes an ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... measured with his stick, so that he knew just where the place was, and with a pair of tin shears he cut a section from the ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... he set off under the protection of a passport made out for an English merchant. First of all, however, with the view of adapting himself to the most Philistine culture, he had to submit his huge beard and bushy hair to the tender mercies of the razor and shears. As no barber was available, Rockel had to undertake the task. A small group of friends watched the operation, which had to be executed with a dull razor, causing no little pain, under which none but the victim himself remained passive. We bade farewell to Bakunin ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Clotho attended the Spread Board; the can-minders coiling away the sliver, stood for Lachesis; while in the spinners, who cut the thread when the bobbin was full, Estelle found Atropos, the goddess of the shears. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the plates of a boiler should have the holes for the rivets punched, and the edges cut straight, by means of self-acting machinery, in which a travelling table carries forward the plate with an equal progression every stroke of the punch or shears; and machinery of this kind is now extensively employed. The practice of forcing the parts of boilers together with violence, by means of screw-jacks, and drifts through the holes, should not be permitted; as a great strain may thus be thrown upon the rivets, even ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... his walk between the terrace and the drawing-room. He strode with long, even steps, holding his body erect, his chest flung out and his hands in the pockets of his jacket, a blue-drill gardening-jacket, with the point of a pruning-shears and the stem of a pipe sticking out of it. He was tall and broad-shouldered; and his fresh-coloured face seemed young still, in spite of the fringe of white beard in ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... features carefully retained. The old bushes were well trimmed, but as yet nothing live, except weeds, had been uprooted. The hedges and borders, of yew and holly and box, tall and broad, looked very bare and broken and patchy; but now that the shears had, after so long a season of neglect, removed the gathered shade, the naked stems and branches would again send out the young shoots of the spring, a new birth would begin everywhere, and the old garden would dawn anew. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... fifteen blows it is clean broken through Then Durendal he bares, his sabre good Spurs on his horse, is gone to strike Chemuble, The helmet breaks, where bright carbuncles grew, Slices the cap and shears the locks in two, Slices also the eyes and the features, The hauberk white, whose mail was close of woof, Down to the groin cuts all his body through To the saddle; with beaten gold 'twas tooled. Upon the horse that sword a moment stood, Then sliced its ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... Pinchin's father to have been a Tailor. There is no harm in the Craft, honestly exercised; but since the world first Began nine Tailors have made a Man; and you cannot well see a knight of the shears without asking in your own mind where he has left his Eight brethren. Bartholomew Pinchin looked like a Tailor, talked like a Tailor, and thought like a Tailor. Let it not, however, be surmised that I have any mind to Malign the Useful Churls ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... know why, but I felt that someone was there who wished to see the young monk's grave. For a moment I stood there. Then I went to the house where I kept my tools for my work in the cemetery, and got a shears which I used for lopping the cypress trees. I took a ladder quickly, set it against the wall, mounted it, and from the cypress I had seen moving I lopped some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As the boughs fell down from the tree I saw a woman's face, tear-stained, staring ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... broad field whereon he might well spread his fair hide. He came to a spot, in a fair field, he had obtained a hide to his need, of a wild bull that was wondrously strong. He had a wise man, who well knew of craft, who took this hide, and laid it on a board, and whet his shears, as if he would shear. Of the hide he carved a thong, very small and very long, the thong was not very broad, but as it were a thread of twine; when the thong was all slit, it was wondrously long, about therewith he encompassed a great deal of land. He ...
— Brut • Layamon
... a pair of shears, press out the blood, and spread 'em on wire netting to dry for three days; then sew 'em up in sacks, to be shipped to some glue-factory. Four pounds of 'em'll bring a dollar. These things and some others are the by-products of the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... his men were busy. They set up on the sand two stout wooden pieces, exactly like, a pair of enormous shears. The longer parts, corresponding to the blades, were nearest the ground, while what answered for the handles were several feet in the air, opened in ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... the scissors, said Remarkable, producing from beneath her petticoat of green moreen a pair of dull-looking shears; well, upon my say-so, you have sewed on the rags ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... brooms or whisks may be dipped into hot water and uneven edges trimmed off with shears. This will make the straw harder, and the trimming makes the broom almost ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... correct, Bill, me son," spoke up Lawson; "but y'r a dummy, and you can lay to that for another cold frozen fact. Takes a sea farmer to learn you landsmen things. Ever hear of a pair of shears? Then clap y'r ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... storehouse for the wool, was light and high in the water. The sawmill hulks were idle for want of lumber to be dressed. It was the slack time, they told us; the slack time before the rush of the wool-shearing. In a week, or a month at the most, the sheep would be ready for the shears. Then—ah, then!—Wully Ramsey (who had a head for figures) would be brought forward, and, while his wind held out, would hurl figures and figures at us, all proving that 'Little Scotland,' for its size, was a 'ferr wunner' ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... think otherwise." In turning, she had faced a young sugar-maple which he had aided her in planting early in the afternoon. Now she snipped at it nervously with her pruning- shears, for he would not budge, and she felt it scarcely polite ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... work went on briskly, and the bridge over the Tsavo rapidly neared completion. As the piers and abutments progressed in height, the question of how to lift the large stones into their positions had to be solved. We possessed no cranes for this purpose, so I set to work and improvised a shears made of a couple of thirty-foot rails. These were bolted together at the top, while the other ends were fixed at a distance of about ten feet apart in a large block of wood. This contrivance acted capitally, and by manipulation of ropes and pulleys the heavy stones were swung into position ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... have chosen to show it thus elaborately in the place of use he had in mind, or he may have designed a new counter or a new oil-cup or a new power transmission, or even a new motor, and have given his invention this elaborate setting. The shears, the counter, the oil-cup, the power transmission, and the motor are separately classifiable in widely separated classes. How shall the application be diagnosed for determining its place in the office classification? When the specification and drawing disclose (as most of ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... a dinghy astern and are ourselves towed by the silent yachtsman, you may call it a procession. She has been stripped, during the last two days, of sails, rigging, and all spars but the mainmast. Now we bring her alongside the town quay and beneath the shears—the abhorred shears—which lift this too out of its step, dislocated with a creak as poignant as the cry of Polydorus. We lower it, lay it along the deck, and resume our way; past quay doors and windows where already the townsfolk are beginning to light their lamps; and so by the jetties where ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... etc. If you have no wire-cutters, or large shears, you can cut large or small wires by hammering them against the sharp edge of another hammer, an anvil, or a piece of iron. Do not let the hammer itself hit upon the edge of the anvil. The above process will make a V-shaped dent on one ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... did to him was plenty," laughed Hendricks. "I guess that's one position we don't need to worry about any longer. And I'm feeling pretty good, too, about Trent and Henderson. They worked together at quarter and center like a pair of shears. Axtell tackled like a tiger, and if he keeps it up, we can count on him as a fixture. And Drake, too, did some dandy work at end. Did you see the way he got down under Wilson's punts? Johnny-on-the-spot, every time ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring down a pair of pinchers and a file,—and—stop—fetch a pair of shears, too; there's hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... teeming population will inhabit the land, and the Emerald Isle will once more become great, glorious, and free, Furst flower o' the airth, Furst gem o' the say. No longer will the gallant men of Connaught bow their meek heads to American shears, no longer present their well-developed jaws to Yankee razors; but, instead of this, flocking in their thousands on saints' days and market days to their respective county towns, and especially to Galway, will form en queue at the door of Mr. McCoy, to save the country ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... that country, and when the November winds are up among us it is lambing time there." I wish that my pupils had asked me to explain any other passage. [The FOOL comes in and stands at the door holding out his hat. He has a pair of shears in the other hand.] It sounds to me like foolishness; and yet that cannot be, for the writer of this book, where I have found so much knowledge, would not have set it by itself on this page, and surrounded it with so many images and so many deep colours and so ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... and languages, is not an affair of to-day or yesterday—it is of very ancient date, and was very properly exposed nearly three centuries ago by one Andrew Borde, who, under the picture of a "Naked man with a pair of shears in one hand, and a roll of cloth in the other," {313} inserted the following ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and haughty, King of village flowers! Each day is coronation time, You have no humble hours. I like to see you bring a troop To beat the blue-grass spears, To scorn the lawn-mower that would be Like fate's triumphant shears. Your yellow heads are cut away, It seems your reign is o'er. By noon you raise a sea of stars ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... With Bodkin, Shears and Thimble, He did no whit dissemble, I think his name was True; He said that he was like to choak, And he call'd so fast for Lap and Smoak, Until he had pawn'd the Vinegar ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... together through the key-hole of the closet one night, like Saul and the witch of Endor, turning the sieve and shears, and pricking your thumbs, to write poor innocent servants' names in blood, about a little nutmeg grater which she had forgot in the caudle-cup. Nay, I know something worse, if I would ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... than the population of Hartford; and as the Southern Confederacy, a Christian association, and conducting itself with many appeals to Christian principle, believes the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and so shears the Yankees as close as possible, these men had all been formally fleeced of such worldly gear as blankets, money, and extra clothing. Some further shearing there had been also, but irregular, depending chiefly on the temper of the captors,—stripping them sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Edith felt that never before had she looked upon a face so exquisitely beautiful. Her hair was of a reddish- yellow hue, and rippled in short silken rings all over her head, curling softly in her neck, but was not nearly as long as it had been in the picture. Alas, the murderous shears had more than once strayed roughly among those golden locks, to keep the little white, fat hands, now clasped so harmlessly together, from tearing them out with frantic violence. Edith thought of this and sighed, while her heart yearned toward the helpless ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the archery-test Oileus' son Stood forth with Teucer, they which in the race Erewhile contended. Far away from these Agamemnon, lord of spears, set up a helm Crested with plumes, and spake: "The master-shot Is that which shears the hair-crest clean away." Then straightway Aias shot his arrow first, And smote the helm-ridge: sharply rang the brass. Then Teucer second with most earnest heed Shot: the swift shaft hath shorn the plume away. Loud shouted all the people as they gazed, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... the detaining hand, and ran behind the counter. From a lower shelf he snatched a red bandanna kerchief. From another he dragged a rubber poncho, and buttoned it high about his throat. He picked up the steel shears which lay upon the counter, and snipping two holes in the red kerchief, stuck it under the brim of his sombrero. It fell before his face like a curtain. From his neck to his knees the poncho concealed his figure. All that was visible of him was his eyes, laughing ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... smile which now suddenly overspread the whole of the old man's face, and seemed to quickly stiffen the rugged and wrinkled fingers that had at first trembled in drawing a pair of shears from a ragged pocket, appeared to satisfy Paul's curiosity for the present. But after a few moments' silent snipping, during which he could detect in the mirror some traces of agitation still twitching the negro's face, he said with an ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they invited you to repose; tracts which rouged poor Christianity on the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set her to dancing a pas de zephyr in the pastoral ballet in which Saint-Simon pipes to the flock he shears; or having first laid it down as ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the office of the evening newspaper. He found a man in the counting-room, catching flies and trimming their wings with a large pair of office shears. He said, "Can you put an advertisement for me ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... shelf at the foot of the ladder, I discover'd a couple of loaves and some milk, and also, lying hard by, a pair of shepherd's shears, which I took also, having a purpose for them. By this time, being sick enough of the place, I was glad to make all speed ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... colt could not walk, its temperature was 105 deg., pulse was rapid and respiration was a little hurried. After advising the owner to put the poor animal out of its misery I left the place. Four days later the owner came to my office and asked if he could borrow some old shears to "trim off some loose hide from that colt." He left the colt in the pasture and all the care it received was the regular application of a proprietary dusting powder. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... saw or clippers, is necessary. A dehorning chute should be built of plank with a good frame well bolted together, with stanchion and nose block for confining the head. Most operators prefer a meat saw for cutting off the horns. It is preferable to dehorning shears, as there is danger of fracturing the frontal bone when removing the horns of mature cattle. The best form of dehorning shears have a wide ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... seeking parents. The nearest he came to mentioning the subject was after supper, when the baby was asleep and Bud trying to cut a small pair of overalls from a large piece of blue duck that Cash had brought. The shears were dull, and Lovin Child's little rompers were so patched and shapeless that they were not much of a guide, so Bud was ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... features, especially the eyes, small and close together. The short, bushy eyebrows met above a fine, clean-cut nose; the jaws were heavy and brutal; yet the menace of the face was not in these, but in the thin straight lips which closed like the shears of Fate. A cruel smile gathered about the lips as he answered the questions of the court. There was something peculiarly incongruous in the jovial, happy-go-lucky name to which ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the flat green basket, lifted the shears she found lying in it, and went hesitatingly up and down the borders. "What ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... with a buck or stand, if wood is burned), a hammer, a tack-hammer, a mallet, three or four gimlets and bradawls of different sizes, two screw-drivers, a chisel, a small plane, one or two jack-knives, a pair of large scissors or shears, and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... lives secure, Nor does th' affronts of palaces endure. Sometimes the beauteous marriageable vine He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join; Sometimes he lops the barren trees around, And grafts new life into the fruitful wound; Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. He sees his lowing herds walk o'er the plain, Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again. And when the season, rich as well as gay, All her autumnal ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... scene: A prison in Gaza. Samson, shorn of his flowing locks, which as a Nazarite he had vowed should never be touched by shears, labors at the mill. He has been robbed of his eyes and darkness has settled down upon him; darkness, too, upon the people whom his momentary weakness had given back ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad bad glad mad ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... kingly form, robed and crowned, yet standing with arms and hands filled, symbolizing someone with great plenty in foreign lands. At the feet, a severed circle, some disordered boxes, a pair of large, closed shears pointing toward another commanding form, though obstacles lie between them. Also a crouching form, in part human, with large eyes, and now, on his back a weighty something, facing the less pretentious forms, one of whom is bowed by some new disappointment, ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... about the garden snipping faded roses with Miss Emily's garden shears, when I saw Maggie coming swiftly toward me. When she caught my eye, she beckoned to me. "Walk quiet, Miss Agnes," she said, "and don't say I didn't warn ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is to him stark idiocy. Sheep-washing, for instance, is simply working a whole spring day in very chilly water, and sheep-shearing is a task at which he makes "ridgy" work and endures the horror of seeing the gentle, thin-skinned creatures bleed under his awkward shears. The boy cannot conceive what poetry there is about oxen. From the moment a calf hides in the hay with its mother's help, and makes believe there is no calf born yet, until it becomes an ox, it cannot for an instant be considered poetic by a boy. The calf is a creature that insists, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... wire with a pair of shears and it had still hung, unsupported, in the air, unchanging within the shimmer that constituted something no man ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... answered Mother, snipping around the edges of the court-plaster with the fascinating sharp shears Sunny Boy was forbidden to touch. "A drum, you know, isn't like a person's skin. It can't grow. But I think that if you remember to be careful the drum will last a long time. There you are. My goodness! it makes as much noise as ever, doesn't it?" and Mrs. Horton covered her ears and ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... "perpetual" flowering section has done blooming, cut back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be promptly removed; weeds ought not to be allowed to grow a second pair of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... ceremony was in the centre of an open space of grass, surrounded by town buildings of half Oriental and half Western design, and blocks of private flats, each flat with a deep verandah and all bedecked with flags, and gay figures on the roofs and in the verandahs. In the centre of the grass were shears with a stone hanging from them on block and tackle. To our left was a raised dais with red and yellow striped tent roof supported on pillars topped with spears and flags and the three golden feathers of the Prince of Wales. In front of the circle of chairs opposite this and to ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... shop, And learned bards salute, with cheers, The volumes of the Elzevirs, Till your renown fills earth and sky, Till men forget the Stephani, And all that Aldus wrought, and all Turnebus sold in shop or stall, While still may Fate's (and Binders') shears Respect, and spare, ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... house. The steps of the porch had been renewed with strong timber, the rotting siding had been replaced. Mrs. Newbolt's chair no longer drew squeaks and groans from the floor of the porch as she rocked, swaying gently as her quick shears shaped the board. New flooring had been laid there, and painted a handsome gray; the falling trellis between gate and door had been ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... about twenty years. The yearly cost of pruning was about four cents a rod for ten or twelve years, and since it has become larger and higher nearly double. For cutting back a stout hook with a handle two and a-half feet long or a stout scythe was used. Hedge shears are too slow except for ornamental hedges, and even for these ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... fingers ye forever ply, Life's nervous thread with care to twist, Till sound the clanging shears, and fruitlessly The tender web would ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the mistress of the house—an old woman, if the name woman can be given to a skeleton with bones scarcely hidden by a skin yellower and more transparent than wax. Like a spider ready to pounce upon its prey, the old woman, armed with a great pair of shears, peered at all the figures with a jealous eye, then suddenly fell upon the web and cut it at random, when, lo! a piercing wail rose from it that would have moved a heart of stone. The tears of children, the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... slices of bacon crosswise in narrow shreds, using shears for this purpose. Saute to a delicate brown. Add two cups hot, cooked, well-drained string beans and one-half tablespoonful grated onion or onion juice. Shake the frying pan to thoroughly mix the ingredients, season with salt and pepper. Turn ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... or two small scalpels, a kitchen paring-knife, an oil stone and can of oil, a hand drill, a fine fur-comb, one bone scraper, one small skin-scraper, one pair tinners' shears, one pair five and one-half inch diagonal wire cutters, one pair (same length) Bernard combination wire cutter and pliers, one pair small scissors, two or three assorted flat files, one hollow handle tool holder with tools and little ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... him to tell the truth. He says: "If you should take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should be powerless and in the hands of my enemies." Samson sleeps, and that she may not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the East have ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... through the instrumentality of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, at the request of General Francis E. Spinner, Treasurer of the United States. She was assigned to the duty of cutting and trimming treasury-notes, a task that had hitherto been performed with shears by men. General Spinner subsequently stated that her first day's work "settled the matter in her and in women's favor." James Madison Cutts, at one time Second Comptroller of the Treasury under Buchanan, married Ellen Elisabeth O'Neill, who, with her sister Rose, subsequently ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... for at least the next half-hour, when, the leaf-mould having been transported from the wood, he went round to the front of the house to trim the edges of the lawn. He was on his knees on the gravel path, busily engaged with a pair of shears, when he heard the amazing sound of the front door opening and shutting. He looked round over his shoulder, to see the same apparition that had appeared to him from the wood, walking calmly down the steps and in the direction of the drive. Apparently she was too engrossed ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... other's welfare kindly spiers; The social hours, swift-winged, unnotic'd fleet; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears: The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view; The mither, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Fate feeling for her shears, and peevish through want of sleep maybe, or mayhap irritated by their obstreperous behaviour, jerked the strings which bound those marionettes called humans to her ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... quiet between his feet, while the other men held theirs with difficulty and many struggles. The July sunshine seemed to hold the scene as it held the Marsh in a steep of shining stillness. The silence was broken by many small sounds—the clip of the shears, the panting of the waiting sheep and of the dogs that guarded them, and every now and then the sudden scraping scuttle of the released victim as it sprang up from the shearer's feet and dashed off to where the shorn sheep huddled naked ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... which swung from the masthead of Mediterranean craft. But we must not philosophise; we must enjoy. The fresh morning breeze runs merrily over the ripples and plucks off their crests; our vessel leans prettily, and you hear a tinkling hiss as she shears through the lovely green hillocks. Sometimes she thrusts away a burst of spray, and in the midst of the white spurt there shines a rainbow. It may happen that the rainbows come thickly for half an hour at a time, and then we seem to be passing through a fairy scene. Go under the main-yard and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... shall outline the triangles may be made from those old, black, silk-lisle hose you gave me, by cutting them round and round in one continuous strip. Heavy cloth should be cut in very narrow strips. Sibylla will do that nicely; her hands are more used to handling large, heavy shears than are yours. The linen-lawn skirt you may cut in strips about three-fourths of an inch in width, as that material is quite thin. I would sew rags of one color together like carpet rags, not lapping the ends more than necessary to hold them together. The rug will be reversible, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... once. She gived me five dollars and then ask what else. I look at her and say, 'Sam wants a spear or two of yer shinin' hair,' and Miss Mabel takes shears and cut a little curl. I'se got 'em now. I never spend the money," and from an old leathern wallet Sam drew a bill and a soft silken curl, which he laid across ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... we got a rusty pan without a handle, and cooked about a pint of fat yellow oak-grubs; and I was about to fall to when we were discovered, and the full weight of combined family influence was brought to bear on the situation. We had broken a new pair of shears digging out those grubs from under the bark of the she-oaks, and had each taken a blade as his own especial property, which we thought was the best thing to do under the circumstances. Uncle wanted those shears ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... the copyhold of rival states? He compared the reasonings of ministers to a man, who, full of his prerogative of dominion over a few beasts of the field, should assert his right to shear a wolf, because it had wool upon its back, without considering whether he had the power of using the shears, or whether the animal would submit to the operation of shearing. He remarked:—"Are we yet to be told of the rights for which we went to war? Oh, excellent rights! Oh, valuable rights! Valuable you should be, for we have paid dear at parting with you. Oh, valuable rights! that have cost Britain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... as objectionable now as they were three thousand years ago. If a sailor falls overboard, the Contiguous Shark considers it a casus belli, and immediately makes a pitch at the tar, with the intention of putting itself outside of him. Failing in that, it generally shears off a limb before it sheers away. Herds of sharks instinctively follow fever-ships, and when the dead are thrown into the sea, are seen by the seamen in the shrouds, ready to perform the office of Undertakers. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... do is to stop answering letters. Even the firm's most persistent customers will cease troubling you by and bye if you persist. Then, stop answering the telephone. A pair of office shears can sever a telephone wire much faster than any mechanician can keep it repaired. If the matter is really urgent, let the other people telegraph. While you are perfecting this scheme look about, in a dignified ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... well for me If that I might comfort thee, For the sorrow that I see Shears my heart in sunder; When that I see my master hang With bitter pains and strong; Was never wight with[360] wrong Wrought ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... it is. Besides, he looks like an Indian, and in his evening clothes would resemble a fiend. Be satisfied, Dorothy, now you have us for victims, and let the men stay at home." And Sally slashed a seam open with shears that clipped like ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... despatchful hand he took A weighty axe, and cleft the solid oak; This on the earth he piled; a boar full fed, Of five years' age, before the pile was led: The swain, whom acts of piety delight, Observant of the gods, begins the rite; First shears the forehead of the bristly boar, And suppliant stands, invoking every power To speed Ulysses to his native shore. A knotty stake then aiming at his head, Down dropped he groaning, and the spirit fled. The scorching flames climb round on every side; Then the singed members they with skill divide; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... of Canton flannel, and the shears, and put them into my hands, saying that I might make two pairs of night-trowsers for the baby. My heart sank within me in a moment. I made a desperate effort to collect myself, however, and quietly asked if she had a pattern. No, she had none. The child, she said, kicked the cover off ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... and on the soldier coming, he blurted out in scorn, "Here's this English captain can't go to supper without Voban's shears to snip him. Go fetch him, for I'd rather hear a calf in a barn-yard than this whing-whanging ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of truss, in which there is a pair of interior braces formed like shears, and secured to ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... them. In May, he wrote to his mother and myself conjointly, fearing his former communications might not have reached us, and briefly recapitulating their purport. I afterwards heard at Deniliquin that he had successfully performed a surgical operation. A shearer had run the point of his shears into the neck of a sheep, and opened the carotid artery. My son having a small pocket case of instruments, secured the vessel and saved the animal. I remember when it was considered a triumph in practice ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... more tender—two put their arms around me and pinioned me, while the other fifteen drew large shears from their pockets, and, under pretence of getting a lock of hair for each, they left me as bare as a goose-egg. Indians couldn't have scalped me closer. I made Samson-like my escape from these Delilahs by stratagem. I assured them that I was sickening for the measles, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... morning and asked for the editor. He was not in. Apparently nobody was. I wandered through room after room, all empty, till at last I came to one in which sat a man with a paste-pot and a pair of long shears. This must be the editor; he had the implements of his trade. I told him my errand ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... other's weelfare kindly speirs[6]: The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet; Each tells the uncos[7] that he sees or hears: The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view. The mother, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars[8] auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... full grown roc in the highest regions of the upper air. It was drawn by a horse, once white, but whose milky hue was tarnished through age with large and numerous red spots, and whose mane and tail did not appear to have suffered by the shears during the present reign. The being who alighted from this antiquated vehicle was tall and excessively thin, wore his own hair drawn over his almost naked head into a long thin queue, which reached half way down his back, closely cased ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... like the tines of a carving-fork, and tearing it away in great shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth that were still larger, but shorter and broader, and shaped more like notched knife-blades. Those of the lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears, and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks into pieces small enough to go down his throat. By the time he got through with a partridge there was not much left of it but a puddle of brown feathers. His claws, too, were very long and white, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... it is necessary to remove the hair. Be this, however, as it may, it is our duty to state here that the traffic we allude to was very general, and that many a lovely and luxuriant crop came under the shears of the pedlars who ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... step toward the positive metamorphosis indicated had been taken that very morning, when the Gallic beard of Monsieur Duchemin was erased by the razor of a New England barber, whose shears had likewise eradicated every trace of a Continental mode of hair-dressing. There remained about Lanyard little to remind of Andre Duchemin but his eyes; and the look of one's eyes, as every good actor knows, is something far more easy to disguise ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... say it was successful. Our friend the farmer discovered the presence of some insects in the wool, or rather in the body, of one of the yearlings. He proceeded, attended by us all, to extirpate this fatal enemy with his shears; and, having seized the sufferer, put its head between his knees, and proceeded to lay bare the hiding-place of the devouring grub. By some unlucky chance, the lamb got its head loose, pushed forward with two or three tremendous jumps, and the operator was thrown ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... too. The Nelson, a big boat from Pittsburg was there with a big cargo, mostly of hardware—nails pretty much. There were several steamers that had come from down the Ohio. When the ice shut in, it cut the "Arcola" in two just as if it was a pair of shears and she a paper boat. She sank at once. It shoved the "Falls of St. Anthony" a good sized steamer way out of the water on the niggerheads. The "Pioneer" sank. It broke the wheels of the "Nelson" and another boat and put them out of commission. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... "can it be that my poor children that he devoured for his evening meal are still alive?" And she sent the little kid back to the house for a pair of shears, and needle, and thread. Then she cut the wolf's body open, and no sooner had she made one snip than out came the head of one of the kids, and then another snip, and then one after the other of the six little kids all jumped out alive ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... in the ground. The cells, which were about three quarters of an inch long and half as far through, were made of sections cut from the leaf of the maple,— cut with the mandibles of the bee, which work precisely like shears. I have seen the bee at work cutting out these pieces. She moves through the leaf like the hand of the tailor through a piece of cloth. When the pattern is detached, she rolls it up, and, embracing it ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs |
