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More "Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Carney has not asked to [have] General Blunt removed, or interfered with, in his military operations. He has asked that he, the Governor, be allowed to commission officers for troops raised in Kansas, as other governors of loyal States do; and I think he is ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... started. The first thing the carver will require to do is to sharpen his tools. That is, if we may assume that they have just come from the manufacturer, ground but not yet brought to an edge. It will be seen that each has a long bevel ending in a blunt ridge where the cutting edge should be. We shall take the chisel No. 10 and sharpen that first, as it is the easiest to do, and so get a little practise before we try the gouges. The oilstone and oil have already been described. The first thing is to well oil the stone and lay it on the bench ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... on their way, crossing a field, they chanced Upon a spot where once had been a home, And roots of walls still peered out, grown with moss. 'Twas a dead cottage, mouldered quite, where yet Lay the old shadow of a vanished care; The little garden's blunt, half-blotted map Was yet discernible by thinner grass Upon the walks. There, in the midst of dry Bushes, dead flowers, rampant, uncomely weeds, A single snowdrop drooped its snowy drop, The lonely remnant of a family That in the garden dwelt about the home— Reviving with the ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the axe be blunt it demands more strength:[293] Only through intelligence doth exertion avail. 11. If the serpent bites before the spell, Then bootless ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... holotype.—Carapace circular, widest at region of bridge; margin entire; dorsal surface smooth; anterior margin of carapace lacking tubercles; blunt vertebral ridge evident anteriorly; maximum length, 53.1 mm; greatest width, 46.3 mm; ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... chance for humanity's sake, poor Nicuesa was hurried aboard a small, crazy bark, the weakest of the wretched brigantines in the harbor. This was a boat so carelessly constructed that the calking of the seams had been done with a blunt iron. With little or no provisions, Nicuesa and his faithful seventeen were forced to put to sea amid the jeers and mockery of the men on shore. The date was March 1, 1511. According to the chroniclers, the last words that those left on the island heard ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... poems grew larger and his flock smaller. Yvonne's nose and temper waxed sharp and her talk blunt. Her pans and kettles grew dull, but her eyes had caught their flash. She pointed out to the poet that his neglect was reducing the flock and bringing woe upon the household. David hired a boy to guard the sheep, locked himself ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Josiah interested in the welfare of George, that he had totally disregarded his own wet, miserable condition; and, thanking the blunt Irishman, he instantly retired ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... most carelessly used, and left about anyhow instead of being hung up. How much loss there is in a year in the careless use of knives and plate! Whenever possible both of these get into the hands of the cook. Her own tools from neglect or misuse have become blunt or worse, and she takes the best blade and the plated or silver spoon whenever she ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe, that the clerk in his office used a sort of ivory knife, with a blunt edge, to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only by requiring a steady hand; whereas, if he should make one of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it go often out of the crease, and ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... between forty and fifty years of age, a plain, blunt seaman, who was more ambitious of being considered an enterprising shipmaster than a Christian. His mate was not quite thirty, and was indebted to him for his promotion from before the mast to second mate, and then to that of chief mate; they had sailed ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... this kind had ceased to alarm Cytherea. Miss Aldclyffe's blunt mood was not her worst. Cytherea thought of another man, whose name, in spite of resolves, tears, renunciations and injured pride, lingered in her ears like an old familiar strain. That man was qualified for a stewardship under ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... found himself to his astonishment the recipient of a frank apology. Jackson's scruples carried him even further. Persons who interlarded their conversation with the unmeaning phrase "you know" were often astonished by the blunt interruption that he did NOT know; and when he was entreated at parties or receptions to break through his dietary rules, and for courtesy's sake to accept some delicacy, he would always refuse with the reply that he had "no ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... right. The blunt news was a blow. In one swift picture Helen saw herself trudging drearily along the dull, narrow road of genteel poverty to the end of her days, sacrificing every taste, and impulse, and instinct to the necessity of living, for more and more as she thought her freedom closer ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... tapping the table with the forefinger of his right hand. Prescott observed his thin, almost ascetic face, smooth-shaven and finely cut. Both General Wood and the Secretary were mountaineers, but the two faces were different; one represented blunt strength and courage; the other suppleness, dexterity, meditation, the power of silent combination. Had the two been blended here would have been one ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Francqui is blunt, silent, aggressive. When Belgium wants something done she instinctively turns to him. In 1920, after the delay in fixing the German reparation embarrassed the country, and liquid cash was imperative, he left Brussels on three days' notice and ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... panel, and saw that the man who questioned him was dressed in a brown uniform. He had an object on his waist which could be identified, after a moment, as a weapon. This man was undoubtedly a guard. He had a blunt, unreadable face. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the contrary, which softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly if we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We must not therefore be surprised, that the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope, ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of home and kitchen, and shop and street and trade, seems to them lacking in due reverence. Do they forget that this is the language of the common people? And of our good old Anglo-Saxon Bible? Has anybody ever yet used as blunt homely, talk as this old Book uses? And has any other book stuck into people's memories and hearts with such burr-like hold ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... and we bought some. They are of blue steel inlaid with strips of silver, and the rowel is a sort of cogged wheel, from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. (See page 220.) They look terrific instruments, but really the cogs or points of the rowels are quite blunt, and they keep the horse going less by hurting him than by their incessant jingling, which is increased by bits of steel put on for the purpose. Monstrous as the spurs now used are, they are small in comparison with those of a century or two ago. One reads of spurs, of gold and silver, with rowels ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... their doors but their mouths, to Meester Fleent. Uncouth fumbling men, slip-shod women, dirty-faced children, were never dumb and suspicious or wholly untruthful and evasive, where the Butterfly Man was concerned. He was one to whom might be told, without shame, fear, or compunction, the plain, blunt, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... thirty-eight. General Stuart is twenty-nine. On our side, General Stanley is thirty, General Pleasonton forty, and General Averell about thirty. General Phelps is fifty-one, General Polk fifty-eight, General S. Cooper sixty-eight, General J. Cooper fifty-four, and General Blunt thirty-eight. The list might be much extended, but very few young men would be found in it,—or very few old men, either. The best of our leaders are men who have either passed beyond middle life, or who may be said to be in the enjoyment of that stage of existence. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... so. Let a man have one of these blades, with a hand to wield it and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. He need not fear its holding, if he can but tell how to lay on. Its edges will never blunt. It will cut flesh and bones, and soul and spirit, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... every-day life once more, brusque, blunt and practical. As he turned away to put the glass back on the table, he was debating whether it would not be wise to call up Maria. A woman would understand better what to do for another woman. He knew that Arithelli would never ask for ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... was so busy with a rush of memories and plans, crowded together at will to shut out her fear, that she was unconscious of the little bustle about her, the blunt, crude details of preparation. ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... a blunt, clumsy weapon, the point being merely the wood of which it was formed, hardened by thrusting in the fire, but the hand which held it was powerful, and the prod received severe, though the skin was not pierced. Jack uttered no cry, neither did he shrink, but turned round so fiercely upon the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... on the edge of a chair, and thrust her narrow, gold-embroidered toes into the wide, blunt depths of her overshoes. "Forever and ever!" ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... he declared. "The knife was pretty blunt fortunately. How did it happen? It seems like ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... defeat the views of the enemy. Such was the leader under whom Eustace hoped to serve his king, and learn the art of war. His friend, Monthault, was a transcript of all Lord Goring's faults, to which he added the most cool and determined treachery, under the garb of blunt simplicity and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... small core of pith, and this notched stick is laid horizontally on a knife-blade on the ground; the operator squatting, places his great toes on each end to keep all steady, and taking the other wand which is of very hard wood cut to a blunt point, fits it into the notch at right angles; the upright wand is made to spin rapidly backwards and forwards between the palms of the hands, drill fashion, and at the same time is pressed downwards; the friction, in the course of a minute ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... came forward to meet Mark, and Mark saw a little reddish-haired and whiskered man, with quick eyes, and a curious perpendicular fold in the forehead above a short, blunt nose, a mobile mouth, and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... weighing several pounds each. These are often of steel inlaid with gold or silver, and are buckled upon the foot with an elaborate strap and embossed medallion. These spurs do not lacerate the horse, as their points are blunt. The effect of the whole dress is almost dazzling, but the big hat set over the tight trousers and short coat gives a somewhat ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... old woman pass by her dwelling, she bade her pause and tell what the gods were doing to provoke such great hilarity. The old woman was none other than Loki in disguise, and he answered Frigga that the gods were throwing stones and other missiles, blunt and sharp, at Balder, who stood smiling and unharmed in their midst, challenging ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" Alfred ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... to me as I thought they might be turned to practical account in play. Nor is the sense of touch so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man. If you will turn over your old memories, I think the sensations of this sort you remember will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more than a blunt, general sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of well-being in bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and the true commander of man's soul and body—alas! pain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other primitive words-their imitative character may be similarly resolved into the more general cause. Both those directly imitative, as splash, bang, whiz, roar, &c., and those analogically imitative, as rough, smooth, keen, blunt, thin, hard, crag, &c., have a greater or less likeness to the things symbolized; and by making on the senses impressions allied to the ideas to be called up, they save part of the effort needed to call up such ideas, and leave more ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... address with strangers; she seemed almost to be conferring a favor at the moment when she asked one, and she knew, in this business, that there was no such word as fail. After one or two false starts—some very stupid answers, and some very blunt refusals—she found her quarry at last, by as simple a process as walking into a Sunday-school of colored children, where she heard singing in the basement of a ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... on which to form the loops. A needle called a netting needle, formed into a kind of fork, with two prongs at each end. The ends of the prongs meet and form a blunt point, not fastened like the eye of a common needle, but left open, that the thread or twine may pass between them, and be wound upon the needle. The prongs are brought to a point, in order that the needle may pass through ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... alone can wake the dreamy "dolce far niente" of the Pacific. God's fairest realm invites the foot of man in vain. Here the yellow grains will be harvested, which buy the smiles of beauty, blunt the sword of justice, and tempt the wavering conscience of young and old. It will bring the human herd to one grovelling level—human swine rooting after the concrete token of power. Here, in later years, the wicked arm of power will be given golden ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... unfaithfulness to conviction and to Christ, are put by the Apostle here in a very blunt fashion—'For fear of the Jews.' That is not what we say to ourselves; some of us say, 'Oh! I have got beyond outward organisations. I find it enough to be united to Christ. The Christian communities are very imperfect. There is not any of them that I quite see eye to eye with. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Missouf was brought before him. Thou wilt doubtless be pleased to hear that the prince thought me beautiful; but thou wilt be sorry to be informed that he designed me for his seraglio. He told me, with a blunt and resolute air, that as soon as he had finished a military expedition, which he was just going to undertake, he would come to me. Judge how great must have been my grief. My ties with Moabdar were already dissolved; I might have been the wife of Zadig; ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... is enough; but English readers are not so easily satisfied. To quote myself, you will find, in comparing the Jackdaw with the original, that I was obliged to sharpen a point which, though smart enough in the Latin, would in English have appeared as plain and as blunt as the tag of a lace." —Letter to Unwin, May 23, 1781 (Southey's Cowper, ed. 1836, vol. iv. p. 97).] All translation, as has been pointed out over and over again, must proceed more or less on the principle of compensation; a translator ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... ride Mr. Doran's horses and shoot his birds. They are all old friends, and rather hard up, so Mr. Doran just keeps them. He—Mr. Doran—seems different after meals; from being as quiet as a lamb, he gets quite coarse and blunt. The rest of the party were just the kind of neighbours that always come to shoot. Mr. Roper told me they never have smart parties, with only the best shots, and heaps of beautiful ladies. Mr. Doran asks just any one he likes, or he happens to meet, and the shooting is some of the best ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... before I slept, I thought of that annotated Guide Book which is cried out for by all Europe, and which shall tell blunt truths. Look you out 'Garfagnana, district of, Valley of Serchio' in the index. You will be referred to p. 267. Turn to p. 267. You will find there ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... an ax had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery tips; Step and prop iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 5 Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thorough-brace, bison skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... ached heavily too; for Yann, his tall, handsome Yann, was his first-born, his favorite and his pride: but he did not despair yet. He comforted Gaud in his own blunt, affectionate way. To begin with, those who had last returned from Iceland spoke of the increasing dense fogs, which might well have delayed the vessel; and then too an idea struck him,—they might possibly have stopped at the distant ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... that I know more about the origin of Scarabei than you do. I have killed many an animal, not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has built up its form. But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become blunt rather than keen. I tell you that the beginning of things is not more attractive to contemplate than ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... adviser of the Queen—John Brown. He entered the Queen's service at Balmoral, became later a gillie to the Prince Consort, and in 1851 the Queen's personal outdoor attendant. He was a man of a very straightforward nature and blunt speech, and even his Royal Mistress was not safe at times from criticism. In spite of his rough manner, he possessed many admirable qualities, and on his death in 1883 the Queen caused a granite seat to be erected in the grounds of Osborne ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... ladies all! 740 Nor let on me your heavy anger fall: 'Tis truth I tell, though not in phrase refined; Though blunt my tale, yet honest is my mind. What feats the lady in the tree might do, I pass, as gambols never known to you; But sure it was a merrier fit, she swore, Than in her life she ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... forgot: 230 Or if remembered, marked it not; Thrice clapped his hands, and called his steed,[137] Resigned his gem-adorned chibouque,[138] And mounting featly for the mead, With Maugrabeel[139] and Mamaluke, His way amid his Delis took,[140] To witness many an active deed With sabre keen, or blunt jerreed. The Kislar only and his Moors[141] Watch well the Haram's massy ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... authority of the Senate; the man who adhered tenaciously to his friends though good and evil report, and the man whose friendships were such that evil report of personal dishonor never dared assail them; the man of little taste for letters, and the man of vast and varied learning; the man of blunt, plain ways, and the man of courtly manners; the man of few words, and the man who ever deemed himself sitting in a lofty pulpit with a mighty sounding board, with a whole widespread people for a congregation—how could they understand ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... foreman was of brief duration. He was a thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by telling Nance to report for work ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... these people are very bad, their swords being short and blunt at the points. They have arquebusses also, but they shoot very badly with them. The king keeps great state, sitting in public twice every day, having all his nobles, which they call shemines, sitting on each side at a good distance, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... aloud, "Sergeant O'Malley, 14th Hussars, get ready," and another fastened a red band to the Sergeant's arm as he stepped forward, clad in leather jacket and leg-guards and carrying the heavy iron-and-leather head-guard necessary in sabre combats, and the blunt-edged, blunt-pointed sabre. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... will ask you a blunt question. I receive letters regularly from my sister, but I cannot recall her ever having mentioned your name. Who and ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... very strong," pursued Mary, who had a blunt downright sort of manner; "I wonder if India will agree with you; I wonder if you will ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... school-house we were sure of a good time, for the teacher lent us an old blunt penknife, with pretty red stones on the back, the like of which was never seen before in this world. Nobody else ever asked for the knife but us two little tots, and we went up hand in hand; and I spoke the words, while Fel asked with her eyes. Miss ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... which Walker led them was plainly but neatly furnished and the windows looked out upon rolling pastures. The Governor abandoned his high-flown talk and asked blunt questions as to recent visitors, apparently referring to criminals who had lodged at the farm. They talked quite openly while Archie unpacked his bag. The restless activity of the folk of the underworld, their methods of communication and points of rendezvous seemed part of a vast system and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... he observed in his blunt fashion. "Are you going to take on this job? It's no light one but you'll probably do it better than any ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... aware that the labour is great and the glory moderate, and that the field is engrossed by clever specialists not too well disposed towards intruders. They see plainly there is no room for them here. The blunt uncompromising honesty of the scholars thus delivers them from undesirable company of a kind which the "historians" proper have still occasionally ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... took his stand on a rock of Parnassus, and drew from his quiver two arrows of different workmanship, one to excite love, the other to repel it. The former was of gold and sharp- pointed, the latter blunt and tipped with lead. With the leaden shaft he struck the nymph Daphne, the daughter of the river god Peneus, and with the golden one Apollo, through the heart. Forthwith the god was seized with love for the maiden, and she abhorred the thought of loving. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... devotes himself to his flowers, and leads a very quiet life. You may think him rather grave and blunt at first, but you'll soon find him out and get on comfortably, for he is a truly excellent fellow, and my right-hand man ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... and in a blunt way he plunged right into the business in hand. "We are very glad to see you; we have some grave ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... stood ajar, opened a little wider, and a dog's head appeared, followed by a tail, which waggled so beseechingly for leave to come farther that Clover, who liked dogs, put out her hand at once. He was not pretty, being of a pepper-and-salt color, with a blunt nose and no particular sort of a tail, but looked good-natured; and Clover fondled him cordially, while Mr. Eels took his cane out of his mouth to ask, "What kind of a ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... emergency she would give all to understand that "times were very critical and therefore no foolishness would be indulged in on the road." That several who were rather weak-kneed and faint-hearted were greatly invigorated by Harriet's blunt and positive manner and threat of extreme measures, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... provided itself with a moral basis. There is there a strong presumption that the Swallow-Tail is a frivolous person, who bestows on his tailoring, and his linen, and his bathing, and his manners the time and attention which the Short-Hair or "plain blunt man" reserves for reflection on the graver concerns of life, and especially on the elevation of his fellow-men, and this presumption even a career of philanthropy and the composition of the "Principia" would not in many minds suffice to overthrow. We believe ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... man can be exposed. The hurling of masses of highly trained athletes against one another with intent to overcome by mere weight or kicking or cuffing, without the possibility of the rigid superintendence which the referee exercises in the prize ring, cannot fail to blunt the sensibilities of young men, stimulate their bad passions, and drown their sense of fairness. When this is done in the sight of thousands, under the stimulation of their frantic cheers and encouragement, and in full view of the stretchers ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the table, opened the cigar box and took from it a Ramon Alones. A blunt ended weapon for the destruction of melancholy and unrest, six and a half inches long, and costing perhaps half-a-crown. A real Havana cigar. Now in London there are only four places where you can obtain a real and perfect Havana cigar. That is to say four shops. And at those ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... frankness and generosity. The field of victory was often the scene of their election; and even the armorer Marius, the most contemptible of all the candidates for the purple, was distinguished, however by intrepid courage, matchless strength, and blunt honesty. [160] His mean and recent trade cast, indeed, an air of ridicule on his elevation; [1601] but his birth could not be more obscure than was that of the greater part of his rivals, who were born of peasants, and enlisted in the army as private soldiers. In times of confusion, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... cannot come every day to woo. You knew my father: he is dead, and has left me heir to all his lands and goods. Then tell me, if I get your daughter's love, what dowry you will give with her.' Baptista thought his manner was somewhat blunt for a lover; but being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and Baptista went to apprise his shrewish daughter of her lover's addresses, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... you have lost, and which I wonder how you do without,—Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle. You are forced always to substitute the name. They are so mixed in all our forms that half of what we say would appear abrupt or blunt ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... slowly walked away to his hotel Mrs. Farrington's cordiality and Cicely's evident woe at his departure could not quite atone for the lack of a word and a glance of friendly good-bye from Phebe. One's liking is not altogether a matter of free will. In spite of himself, Gifford Barrett liked the blunt, outspoken, pugnacious Phebe far better than the girls whose honeyed words and ways he ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Anthony Ratcliffe, Steuen Some, and Robert Brooke Aldermen of the saide Citie of London, Simon Laurence, Iohn Wattes, Iohn Newton, Thomas Middleton, Robert Coxe, Iohn Blunt, Charles Faith, Thomas Barnes, Alexander Dansey, Richard Aldworth, Henry Cowlthirste, Caesar Doffie, Martine Bonde, Oliuer Stile and Nicholas Stile Marchants of London for their abilities and sufficiencies haue bene thought fit to be also of the sayd ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... safe, or something," Mallow declared. "Evidences of some blunt instrument, as the newspapers say; maybe a pair of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... by a girl, or the water that laves her limbs, or the string of pearls around her neck, he does not indicate the least desire to make her happy, but an eagerness to please himself by coming in contact with her. The daintiest poetic conceit cannot conceal this blunt fact. Even the most fanciful of all forms of amorous hyperbole—that in which the lover imagines that all nature smiles or weeps with him—what is it but the most colossal ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... poured them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunel's mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a celebrated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... claim, And with their deeds of valour deck her crown. Hers their bold port, and hers their martial frown, And hers their scorn of death in freedom's cause, Their eyes of azure, and their locks of brown, And the blunt speech that bursts without a pause, And free-born thoughts which league the Soldier with ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... off his coat I saw who it was. You couldn't open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing that face—the grey beard cut like a spade, the firm fighting mouth, the blunt square nose, and the keen blue eyes. I recognized the First Sea Lord, the man, they say, that made the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... yell which ended in a choking, gurgling sound as the blood spurted from his throat. Wetzel pulled the weapon from the body of his victim, and with the same motion he swung it around. This time the blunt end met the next Indian's head with a thud like that made by the butcher when he strikes the bullock to the ground. The Indian's rifle dropped, his tomahawk flew into the air, while his body rolled down the little embankment ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... in structure, combining features of the hog and the ruminants. Primitive deer and oxen begin in the Miocene, and seem to have an earlier representative in certain American animals (Protoceras), of which the male has a pair of blunt outgrowths between the ears. The first true deer are hornless (like the primitive muskdeer of Asia to-day), but by the middle of the Miocene the males have small two-pronged antlers, and as the period proceeds three or ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France. He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know it. Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by the lustre of a simple and blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive diet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... place which the other abandoned. Long have I cherished the thought, but never have dared to reveal it, Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for the most part. Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of Plymouth; Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of actions, Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this in short is my meaning; I am a maker of war, and not a maker ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... been even more struck with the look of the girls who followed Crick than abashed by Crick's blunt praise. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... palace, and rose in rebellion all over Judea, imagining that the prophesied time of deliverance was come, and that the warlike Messiah of their imagination was at hand. Nero was much enraged at the tidings, and sent an army, under a plain blunt general, named Vespasian, to punish the revolt. This army subdued Galilee and Samaria, and was already surrounding Jerusalem, when Vespasian heard that there had been a great rebellion at home, and that Nero had been killed. He therefore ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a few blunt words, unsoftened by excuse or justification, he told her, not the fact only, but his dread of its ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve to swell the band of choristers.' ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... some expression of sympathy would be graceful here, yet he divined that it must be very discreetly, almost delicately, worded. He could easily be too blunt. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... mishap, but I was too late to render any material assistance, Wilson having already disappeared, followed by the enemy. However, I at once sent out parties to gather information, and soon learned that Wilson had got safe across the Nottoway at Peter's bridge and was making for the army by way of Blunt's bridge, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... Jimmy!" Samson Hat remarked, coming out of the kitchen; "see whar de dagger struck him right over de heart! Dat made him howl and fall dead. His froat was not cut dat sudden; it's gashed as if wid somethin' blunt." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... against the partition; a man strangely improbable in appearance, with close-cropped grey hair, a young, fresh-coloured face, a bristling orange moustache, and a big, blunt nose. One could have believed him a soldier, a German, anything but what he was, a peasant from the furthest shores of Western Ireland, cut off from what we call civilisation by his ignorance of any language save his own ancient speech, wherein the ideas of to-day stand out in English ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the delicate part of a flirt and not marry again," the Duchess went on, with blunt good-nature; "well! my poor child, you, better than any woman, will know how to raise the storm-clouds and disperse them again. But, I beseech you, never make it your pleasure to disturb the peace of families, to destroy unions, and ruin the happiness of happy wives. I, my dear, have played ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... is inscribed a new name are rewarded the overcomer. The interpretations of this white stone have been various, but the difficulty seems to lie in determining which ancient custom is meant. The most satisfactory to my mind is that contained in the following account by Mr. Blunt: ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... thrifty, hardworking, law-loving people, fond of good cheer and strong drink, of shrewd, blunt speech, and a stubborn reticence, when speech would be useless or foolish; a people clean-living, faithful to friend and kinsman, truthful, hospitable, liking to make a fair show, but not vain or boastful; ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... arrived; Diotti told the story of the night. After the undertaker had taken charge of the body he found on the dead man's neck, just to the left of the chin, a dullish, black bruise which might have been caused by the pressing of some blunt instrument, or by a man's thumb. Considering it of much importance, he notified the coroner, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... tended to pour itself forth in dreams instead of action; vivid emotional sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best, tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short of his possibilities, though he was the greatest piano executant ever produced by our own country. He might ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... really, doesn't this shew that there's a lot of rot about modern science? Between ourselves, you know, it's horribly cruel: you must admit that it's a deuced nasty thing to go ripping up and crucifying camels and monkeys. It must blunt all the finer ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... practice then suppose—this brief will show it,— Me, Serjeant Woodward,—counsel for the poet. Used to the ground, I know 'tis hard to deal With this dread court, from whence there's no appeal; No tricking here, to blunt the edge of law, Or, damn'd in equity, escape by flaw: But judgment given, your sentence must remain; No writ of error lies—to Drury Lane: Yet when so kind you seem, 'tis past dispute We gain some favour, if not costs of suit. No spleen is here! ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... isn't it? That little bit of iron that sticks up at the pointed end!" cried Pixie suddenly. She was densely ignorant of all that concerns boats, and invariably alluded to the bow and the stern as the "blunt" and "pointed" ends, to the Captain's ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he has rather a blunt way of saying things, but that very bluntness often places thoughts much more distinctly before us—Paul was speaking of her; he did not suspect anything; if he had, he is good-natured, he would not have spoken ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... conqueror more regions than the sun surveys. But while your courage will be ever growing, our vigour is fast waning to its end. See how bloodless be our bodies, pierced with how many wounds and gashed with how many scars! Our weapons are blunt, our armour worn out! We have been driven to assume the Persian dress! Which of us has a horse? We have conquered all the world, but are ourselves destitute of ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... buffaloes—a Jat buffalo of no imagination and no sense. He is buffalo enough to love the British Raj and his squadron of Jat farmers with all his stupid Sikh heart! There could not be a better for the purpose than this Ranjoor Singh! He is stupid enough, and nearly blunt enough, to be an Englishman. He is just of the very caliber to fool a German! Trust me, sahib—I, who ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... and calling on her dear child, quite helpless at the moment, while Mary took the moaning child. Captain Carbonel, with his own knife (finding it more effective than the blunt old knife on the table), cut off the remains of the little garments which had become tinder, and then handed his wife the flour in a sort of scoop, and as she sprinkled it over the burnt surface, the shrieks and moans abated and gradually died away, the child muttered, "Nice, nice," and another ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... accustomed to the free play of her limbs; its colour harmonising worse with her dark skin. Forgetting the progress Pocahontas had made in English, he said with slight caution to Mistress Audley, in his blunt fashion, "You will spoil the little savage, Madam, if she is thus allowed to be made ridiculous by being habited in the dress of a civilised dame. I owe her a debt of gratitude for saving my life; but that does not blind me to her faults, and the ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... came to a small straight stem. "This will do, at all events," he thought, and he set to work with his knife to cut it down. As the knife was blunt, he made but slow progress. Even when it was down, he would have to pare off the lower part, so as to make it of the same size as the upper. At length by cutting round and round, he made a notch of sufficient depth to enable him to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... The excitement of her words sent a deep glow to her cheek, while her large black eyes sparkled with unusual brilliancy. She was going out with John Jr., who, just as she finished speaking, appeared in the doorway, and catching a glimpse of her face, exclaimed in his blunt, jocose way, "Upon my word, Meb, if you keep on, you'll get to be quite ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the "us" and the "we," it will be observed. It was a concession to blunt the sharpness of ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... attractive; nor deserving less A constant ear. For what are all the forms Educed by fancy from corporeal things, Greatness, or pomp, or symmetry of parts? Not tending to the heart, soon feeble grows, As the blunt arrow 'gainst the knotty trunk, Their impulse on the sense: while the pall'd eye Expects in vain its tribute; asks in vain, Where are the ornaments it once admired? Not so the moral species, nor the powers 20 Of Passion and of Thought. The ambitious mind ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... in the autumn 1756 when Teddy Maroon, smoking a little black pipe, sauntered towards the residence of old John Potter. On reaching the door he extinguished the little pipe by the summary process of thrusting the point of his blunt forefinger into the bowl, and deposited it hot in his vest pocket. His tap was answered by a small servant girl, with a very red and ragged head of hair, who ushered him into the presence of the aged couple. They were ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... sloped grayly to the edge of the lake, where a breakwater thrust its blunt nose out like a stranded hulk. The water was calm, lapping the sand so gently that it was hard to believe that so gentle a murmur could ever swell into the roar of a northeaster. A launch that was moored at ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... I lay on my back in the bottom of the tarry old fishing smack, blue sky above and no sound but the knock, knock of the waves, and the thud and curl of falling foam as the old boat's blunt nose breasted the coming sea. Then Daddy ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... the moon's last rim formed a golden sickle behind a blunt shoulder of rock; while over the eastward levels the topaz-yellow of an Indian dawn rushed at one stride to the zenith of heaven. In the clear light the girl's beauty took on a new distinctness, a new living charm. The upward-sweeping mass of her hair showed the softness of bronze, save where the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... her charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front shop—a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings—where her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... by the contact of two metals with the living fibre. It was in 1796 that his discovery was promulgated in the shape of the Metallic Tractors, two pieces of metal, one apparently iron and the other brass, about three inches long, blunt at one end and pointed at the other. These instruments were applied for the cure of different complaints, such as rheumatism, local pains, inflammations, and even tumors, by drawing them over the affected ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whom Eustace hoped to serve his king, and learn the art of war. His friend, Monthault, was a transcript of all Lord Goring's faults, to which he added the most cool and determined treachery, under the garb of blunt simplicity and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... not blunt?" responded Charles, but no one save the traveller at the small table caught the play on words, the Cockney cant term for money being unfamiliar to American ears. He smiled, and then studied the bond-servant with more interest ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... about the bush, dear Senor Caceres. It's a subject that calls for plain dealing; and I don't mind a blunt word or two. It saves such a lot of time! Come on. You want money, I suppose? Or, rather, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it"—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—"still ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... and gratitude; our benevolent friend was waiting in a hackney-coach to carry us away from prison. When I began to thank him, he stopped me with a blunt declaration that I was not a bit obliged to him; for that, if I had been a man of straw, he would have done just the same for the sake of my wife, whom he looked upon to be one or other the best woman he had ever seen, Mrs. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... in the logical sense. The stupid person, whether depicted in literature, proverb, or the ephemeral joke column, is always (and justly, it would seem) characterized by a huge tolerance for absurd contradictions and by a blunt sensitivity for the fine points of a joke. Intellectual discrimination and judgment are inferior. The ideas do not cross-light each other, but remain relatively isolated. Hence, the most absurd contradictions are swallowed, so to speak, without arousing ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... end of the day, Colihan worked laboriously with a blunt-pointed pencil. It took him fifteen minutes ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... through which to keep tab on the enemy, after which he rolled on his belly and began whittling in the hard clay, for Tom had the carving habit—like many a younger boy. Alfred carefully extracted a short pipe from beneath his chaparajos, pushed down with his blunt forefinger the charge with which it was already loaded, and struck a match. He poised this for a moment above the ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... ask how a person has to proceed to adopt a baby," was the blunt and surprising remark that came from the one who held the infant. Bansemer felt ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... blunt terms of a man whose life had been always on the border, and who has no nice shading in ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... depended upon. He was fond of his profession, and had acquired a considerable knowledge of its details; apart from it he had no very decided tastes; he lived a quiet, regular life, and dined out and went to dances in moderation; his manner, though he was nearly twenty-six, was still rather boyishly blunt. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... be put next in this pigs-in-clover railroad puzzle," was the blunt statement of the need. "Our freight contract with the Transcontinental is about to expire, and I'd like to get it renewed on ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... she said, "I've come to you and your daughter for a little help if you can give it." That seemed the best way to break down their reserve, an appeal rather than simply blunt questions—and what was it if not an appeal? "What I have to say is just among the three of us and I know it will go no farther. You're acquainted with my father; he's ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... 3, 1915.—A rather blunt note from the U.S.A. complaining that American merchant vessels have been stopped and searched by our warships without justification, that serious delays have been caused, and that American commercial interests have suffered. Specific instances quoted, and freedom of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... been filled out in either case. Maisie had been forced to ricordarsi del tempo felice through so many years of miseria. Phoebe's journey across the desert of Life had paused at many an oasis, and their images remained in her mind to blunt the tooth of Memory. The two ladies at least heard nothing in the old woman's voice that one does not hear in any human voice when it speaks ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... childhood which gave us "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss";—or once more, whether the crowded canvas injures the unity of the design, be these as they may, "Romola" strikes one as great in spots and as conveying a noble though somber truth, but does not carry us off our feet. That is the blunt truth about it, major work as it is, with only half a dozen of its kind to equal it in all English literature. It falls distinctly behind both "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Esmond." It is a book to admire, to praise in many particulars, to be impressed by: but ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... and poured them forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunel's mill, in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation of a celebrated passage in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... given up the fight, for she had bid on no work of any kind since the morning she had called upon Schwartz and told him, in her blunt, frank way, "Give the work to McGaw at me price. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... against, the Man of that century—a man in whom we recognise a union of Roman, Hebrew, and English qualities—the faith of the Jew, the firmness of the Roman, and the homespun simplicity of the Englishman of his own age—in purpose and in powers "an armed angel on a battle-day;" in manners a plain blunt corporal; and in language always a stammerer, and sometimes a buffoon; the middle-class man of his time, with the merits and the defects of his order, but touched with an inspiration as from heaven, lifting him far above all the aristocracy, and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... remark set Merle thinking, and she thought to some purpose. Her natural disposition was always to obtain results by blunt, matter-of- fact methods. In school her policy was, 'Come along with you now, I'm not going to have any nonsense!' Backed by her position, her strong personality, and her prowess at games it succeeded. But here in the hostel, if she wished to effect any improvements, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... "James" were Democrats. Swallow, the only lawyer the town possessed, was silent, which was felt as remarkable in a man who usually talked much more than occasion demanded and wore a habit-mask of good-fellowship, which had served to deceive many a blunt old farmer, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... coats, Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... head with a blunt knife, seized hold of it by the hair, and hastened out with the cry, "Long life to the King of Spain!" The populace stood there thunderstruck; no sound was heard, but none detained the murderers, who hurried off. They soon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... object near at hand on which he could place her while he fought the shark. Could he find a spar, he would push it in the shark's mouth as it swam towards him; he had likewise his clasp-knife hung round his neck, but the blade, he feared, was too blunt to be of much service; he opened it, however, and held it in his teeth ready to use. As he glanced round he saw the chest which he had observed when on the back of the whale, but it was too far off to be of any avail in the present emergency. ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... this gentle river, Blunt the axe and break the quiver, While, as leaves upon the spray, Peaceful flow ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... "That's a rather blunt word, I confess; but when you do some fine exploit, you wouldn't mind seeing it printed in full in the papers that the people at home read, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... and the contained air ejected forcibly through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the hussowahs, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... royal host was gathered together and entered the city. The bow was strung, the sword unsheathed. Thou didst blunt[1048] (?) the weapons of the soldiers, The servitors of Anu and Dagan. Their blood thou caused to flow like torrents of water through the city's highways. Thou didst tear open their intestines, and cause the stream ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... neglect of the person in whose charge it was left. It was a buck, weighing fifty pounds, of a cinnamon colour on the back and a dirty white on the belly; the hair was fine and long; the head of a peculiar shape, resembling a dog's, with a very blunt nose; the forearms were very short; the hind feet cushioned like those inhabiting rocky ground. The does appeared to be much lighter; but all were very wary and scarce. From the number of red sandhills, too, scattered over the island, they were difficult to be seen ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... Rev. J. H. Blunt, "has answered this question to a certain extent by the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (St. Luke 16:19-31). By that Parable He has taught us that the living souls of the departed live in a condition of happiness or misery suitable ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... the same with political rights. The foundation of the Salic Law was not any sentimental anxiety to guard female delicacy and domesticity; it was, as stated by Froissart, a blunt, hearty contempt: "The kingdom of France being too noble to be ruled by a woman." And the same principle was reaffirmed for our own institutions, in rather softened language, by Theophilus Parsons, in his famous defence of the rights of Massachusetts ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... shook, and his blunt finger traced the remainder of that text which he and Cad Sills together had unwittingly erased from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... original, lusty, tasting and seeing and feeling human being who took possession of the earth. And even in the case of comparatively rudimentary and somewhat stupid senses like these, the sense of motion, with the average civilised man, is so blunt that he needs to be rushed along at seventy miles an hour to have the feeling that he is moving, and his sense of mass is so degenerate that he needs to live with hundreds of thousands of people next door to know that he is not alone. He is seen in his most natural state,—this civilised being,—with ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... became acknowledged by the public, and even many of those critics who had hitherto been hostile, united in its praise. Yet scandal was not silent; for Moliere was loudly censured, as having, in the person of Alceste, ridiculed the Duke de Montausier, a man of honor and virtue, but of blunt, uncourteous manners. The duke, informed that he had been brought on the stage by Moliere, threatened vengeance; but being persuaded to see the play, he sought out the author instantly, embraced him repeatedly, and assured him that if he had really thought of him when composing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... machine, which gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle, which took apart for packing, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had not looked up from his interminable chess game with Xavier, paused with a beleaguered knight in one blunt ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... came to Sweden in 1521 to enlist under the banner of Gustavus. He writes like a blunt soldier who revels in the story of a battle. His Beraettelse seems to have been written for the king. It is chiefly a chronicle of Swedish wars, running from 1518 to 1536. The original MS. is in the University Library at Upsala, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... I can imagine the pursuer, the avenger, if a really virulent fellow, actually weeping tears of despite as he stands before his victim and marks the utter unconsciousness of any offence with which his eyes meet his own. Such a look would blunt the very stiletto of a Corsican. What sweetness would there be in vengeance if the avenger, as he plunged the dagger in his victim's bosom, might not hiss in his ear, 'Remember!' As well find satisfaction in torturing an idiot or mutilating a corpse. ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... differences of temperament, habits of life and education. While Washington the soldier recognized the sterling qualities of Old Put, the veteran fighter, yet Washington the aristocratic planter shrank from contact with Putnam the blunt, and at times perhaps uncouth-appearing, farmer. Writing about that time, a surgeon in the American army said: "This is my first interview with this celebrated hero, Putnam. In his person he is corpulent and clumsy, but carries a bold, undaunted front. He ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... right. You're all so queer that perhaps you're right. Only, do be careful, Richard. You must approach the matter very delicately,—indirectly, you know. Girls are different, remember, from young men, and you mustn't be blunt. Do maneuver a little, for once in ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Irish Parliamentary Party indeed represent Ireland in this, Mr. Wilfred Blunt's noble protest in his recent work, The Land War in Ireland, would stand for the contemptuous impeachment, not of a political party ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... able to concentrate on the astral plane as well. By the one who has mastered concentration, trances and abnormal psychic states will not be needed. The needle-pointed mind is able to pierce the astral veil at will, while the blunt-pointed mind is resisted and defeated by the astral envelope, which while thin is very ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... tell them they make me affected," exclaimed she. "If I like to be quiet and do things prettily, they teaze me for being affected, and I'm forced to be as plain and blunt as their are, and I don't like it! I wish I was grown up. I wish ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in his journeying passed with his people through a forest in Midernia, and he met therein certain slaves that were hewing wood; and these men were under the yoke of a hard and cruel master, named Tremeus; and they hewed the wood with blunt axes, nor had they whetstones nor had they any other means whereon to sharpen them. Wherefore their strength failed, their arms stiffened, and the flesh fell from their hands, and the naked sinews were seen, and the miserable men ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... was right. The blunt news was a blow. In one swift picture Helen saw herself trudging drearily along the dull, narrow road of genteel poverty to the end of her days, sacrificing every taste, and impulse, and instinct to the necessity of living, for more and more as ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... hopefully. He was only a Junior Navigating Lieutenant under eight years' standing. He might be kept in Simon's Bay for six months, and his ship at sea was his delight. The dream of his heart was to enliven her dismal official gray with a line of gold-leaf and perhaps a little scroll-work at her blunt barge-like bows. ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... blow!" he said, more sternly than before. "A blow from some blunt instrument! It was a savage blow, too, dealt with tremendous force. It may—may, I say—have killed this poor fellow on the spot—he may have been dead before ever he ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... a brief, blunt note from Amelia Ellen: "Dear Mis Raclift Ef yore a trainurse why don't yo cum an' take car o' my Mis Brownleigh She aint long fer heer an she's wearyin to see yo She as gotta hev one, a trainurse I mean Yors respectfooly Amelia ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... who does not want to see. But Miss Edwards appeared to be not easily depressed. She waved her hand in friendly thanks for the cigarette case which Francey tossed across to her, and, having selected her cigarette with blunt, viciously manicured fingers, poked Cosgrave ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... believe that both Jane and Mammy sincerely hoped to eradicate my besetting sin, by such blunt remarks as the former; but no course could have been less wise than the one which they took. I knew very well that I was neither a fright, an Indian, nor a cannibal; and the pains which they took to convince me to the contrary led me to give myself credit for much ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... under the alternative of being with him on decent and distant terms, or of breaking off with him altogether. The first of these courses might perhaps have been the wisest, but the other was the most congenial to the blunt and plain character of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... with the highest expectations to the completion of M. Renan's work, and though English readers will differ from many of the author's views, and feel offended now and then at his blunt and unguarded language, we doubt not that they will find his volumes both instructive and suggestive. They are written in that clear and brilliant style which has secured to M. Renan the rank of one of the best writers of French, and which throws its charm even ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... M. de Pontois, a professional diplomat—both of them very kind, but neither, as a result of their instability, having any real influence. Beside them two men of tenacity and steadfastness admirably personified two great powers. Lord Ponsonby, a tall, blunt, haughty, unsociable old man, represented British perseverance and Lord Palmerston's prejudices, while M. de Boutenieff, a charming, kindly, and witty man, liked by everybody and making game somewhat of all, stood for the great ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... rejoined, "The blunt weapon that I carry would surely not cost Caesar his life, even if he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and close as when the fight begun, Their huge unwieldy navy wastes away; So sicken waning moons too near the sun, And blunt their crescents on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... had gone I examined the thing. It was worth examination. It was a fine cocoon, thick and with blunt ends, very like a silkworm's cocoon, firm to the touch and of a tawny colour. A brief reference to the text-books almost convinced me that this was a cocoon of the Bombyx quercus.[4] If so, what a find! I could continue my inquiry and perhaps ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... military power of his Empire, there was little chance of freedom. He had himself no love of the West and the bold reforms {217} which might bring him enlightened and discontented subjects. He crushed into abject submission all opposed to his authority. The blunt soldier would cling obstinately to the ancient Muscovy of Peter. He shut his eyes to the passing of absolutism in Europe and died, as he had reigned, the protector of the Orthodox Church of Russia, the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... ready art, And had sae fortified the part That, when I looked to my dart, It was sae blunt, Fient haet o't wad hae pierc'd the heart [Devil a bit] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... east and west of the south pole, and are only occasionally brought into view by the moon's libration; even then they are seen in profile, and so situated that they cannot be measured with certainty. They are, however, so high that they blunt the southern cusp of the moon when it ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... said so, that alters the case. Phil is one of your blunt outspoken fellows, and always says what he means," said George Sheldon. And then he went downstairs, leaving Nancy to follow him at her leisure with the tray of jingling cups and glasses. He went down through the dusk, smiling to himself, as if he had ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Pompadour had a very high opinion of Madame de Choiseul. Madame said, "She always says the right thing in the right place." Madame de Grammont was not so agreeable to them; and I think that this was to be attributed, in part, to the sound of her voice, and to her blunt manner of speaking; for she was said to be a woman of great sense, and devotedly attached to the King and Madame de Pompadour. Some people pretended that she tried to captivate the King, and to supplant Madame: nothing ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... know who would be cheerful when his neck is in danger?" answered the cat. "Now that I am old my teeth are getting blunt, and I would rather sit by the oven and purr than run about after mice, and my mistress wanted to drown me; so I took myself off; but good advice is scarce, and I do not know what is to become ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... obsequious, and insinuating in manner, and usually betraying minute attention to externals. The American is always plain in dress—evincing no more taste in costume than in horticulture—steady, calm, and never lively in manner: blunt, straightforward, and independent in discourse. The one is amiable and submissive, the other choleric and rebellious. The Frenchman always recognises and bows before superior rank: the American acknowledges no superior, and bows to no man save in courtesy. The former is docile and easily governed: ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... priests, they excitedly appealed to the governor, saying: "Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written." Pilate's action in so wording the title, and his blunt refusal to permit an alteration, may have been an intended rebuff to the Jewish officials who had forced him against his judgment and will to condemn Jesus; possibly, however, the demeanor of the submissive Prisoner, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the unfortunate man did all in his power to escape from Kelso, and really made the attempt; but it was defeated, for he was ever an object of suspicion to the Earl of Derwentwater and Mr. Forster, whose watchfulness kept him among the rebel troops.[190] Party may do much to blunt the feelings; yet there was too much of what was good in the character of Lord Derwentwater for him, in the solitude of his own prison, not to remember in after days the heavy responsibilities which even by one act of this nature he had ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... which Wanda did not hear in full, but which reached her sufficiently to tell her that the two men were talking about some trifling matter of range management and that his theory had provoked Sledge Hume's blunt comment. The two men came on, Hume striding a couple of paces in front of Conway, until they caught sight of her. Conway lifted his hat, his sullen eyes brightening. Hume, staring at her with the keen eye ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... yet nevertheless their swords were cutting but ill, and he cried out loudly to them: 'Are ye wielding your swords carelessly since, as I see, they do not cut?' One of the men made answer: 'Our swords are blunt and very much notched.' Then went the King down into the fore-hold, and setting up the lid of the high-seat took from out of the chest beneath many sharp swords and gave them out to his men, and when he thrust down his right arm into ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... relaxing his face when he was fairly gone, 'is good practice. I HAVE some command of my features, beyond all doubt. He fully confirms what I suspected, though; and blunt tools are sometimes found of use, where sharper instruments would fail. I fear I may be obliged to make great havoc among these worthy people. A troublesome necessity! I quite ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... occasions great damage to my work as well by his impure French as the length of his details."—"We are afraid," said some of those visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."—"To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study, intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... leg, and its negative aige (802, 803), are also used to convert nouns into adjectives: the former follows the same rules as those before given for forming the plural: gizu sharpness, becomes either gizule sharp, or gizuge blunt, literally: sharpness-possessing, or, possessing not : from nuki water, we get the form nukile maram the well contains water, or, nukegi maram the well is dry: danagi blind, literally means, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... ancient descent, I expected he would give me some account of them. We were now arrived at the upper end of the gallery, when the knight faced towards one of the pictures, and as we stood before it he entered into the matter, after his blunt way of saying things as they occur to his imagination, without regular introduction, or care to preserve the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... small, but so they shall serve my purpose the better. Will each of you take one and retire from the table and write upon it the thing he most desires? Now, my dear friends, brevity is ever as the point of the lance. Wit is blunt and Truth half armed without it. I ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... the ropes wi' the old axe, an' it were blunt enough to make a job for him! Huzza for ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... wrinkle up on the knife and are directly transferred to the surface, for which they should be made to form a complete carpet, slightly overlapping the edges of the area and of one another; some blunt instrument is used to straighten out the strips, which are then subjected to firm pressure with a pad of gauze to express blood and air-bells and to ensure accurate contact, for this must be as close as that between a postage stamp and the paper to which ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... little table, and in a glass between him and the girl a white lily and a rose, freshly cut, were emitting a sweet perfume. He did not hurry unduly with his work; before he applied the knife he asked the girl several times whether she preferred to write with a soft or a hard point, fine or blunt, and whether he should make the quill short or leave it long. He plied her with numerous other questions of this kind, as thoroughly as if he were a writing-master producing a calligraphic work of art. To these detailed questions the girl, in a low voice, made many indefinite replies; now ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... There wasn't no threshin' around and flurryin', but the vicious brute acted just like some kind of a sea-snake. The fisherman brought down the boat-'ook with all 'is might, but the moray just twisted sidewise as the blow came down, and the blunt-pointed 'ead, with its rows of sharp teeth, darted forward ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... however," he went on, "that the skull was fractured in several places, as by blows of some blunt instrument; and that instrument itself—a pick-handle, still stained with blood— lay under ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... all times and places, under the strong influence of hopes and fears, true or false, by which he is carried forward in the changing scenes of war and peace. Kindness never fails to soften and meliorate his feelings, and harshness, injury, and contempt to harden and blunt them. Above all, it is shown that, in the recesses of the forest, he devotes a portion of his time to domestic and social enjoyment, in which the leading feature is the relation of traditionary legends and tales. Heroes and heroines, giants and dwarfs, spirits, Monetos ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... another. There was no sanctity of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. None of these things was the lot of Southern black women. Instead thereof, a gross barbarism which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... an expensive house to manage and the farm rents are low," Mordaunt answered in a thoughtful voice. "Have you any money? Perhaps I'm blunt, but I'm ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... sitting. Heaven bless thee again, and when the weather gets warmer, thou must come with thy kind looks, to make me feel at home again. At present the country wears a cheerless face, and everything about us is harsh and frosty, except the blunt, good-for-nothing heart of thine uncle, and that, winter or summer, is always ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out, man,' Julian cried, O'ermaster'd by the sudden smart;— And feigning wrath, sharp, blunt, and rude, 155 The knight his subtle shift pursued.— 'Scowl not at me; command my skill, To lure your hawk back, if you will, But not a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the merit of expressing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians. They never swerved from their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They preferred to gain their ends by treaty, and with the consent of the Indians; but if ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... not made any remark for the last five minutes, with the exception of abusive comments on the toughness of the meat which he was trying to carve with a blunt knife for the tent, asked for an explanation. "I mean about that row the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the humorous aspect of the fable, there is, certainly, a good deal of sound criticism in the piece. It may be brief, it may be inadequate, it may be blunt, but for all that it is truthful, and decidedly just, as far as it goes. Bryant, who was called cold, took umbrage at the portrait drawn of him. But his verse has all the cold glitter of the Greek bards, despite the fact that he is America's greatest poet of nature, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... bolts were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall figure of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon. The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose blunt at the bottom but refining upward to where it joined a pair of strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes surrounded with delicate markings, and the whole face based upon a thick white beard, boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was by the light of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... silence. Then with a few quick strides he advanced to the alcohol lamp. As he did so both Keenan and Frank noticed for the first time the blunt little gun-metal revolver he held in ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the traces of beauty which her mother's undoubtedly had. She saw the thin, futile frizzes which her aunt Maria affected; she saw the receding chin, indicative at once of degeneracy and obstinacy; she saw the blunt nose ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The blunt truth of actual events is that to-day a renascence has begun, not merely in melodic and dramatic lines; there is a new blending of the racial gift of song with a power of profound design.[A] Despite all historical philosophy, here is a new gushing ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Marcoussi, President Bellievre told the Keeper of the Seals in plain terms, that if he continued to treat me as he had done hitherto, he should be obliged in honour to give his testimony to the truth. To which the Keeper of the Seals returned this blunt answer: "The Princes are no longer in sight of Paris; the Coadjutor must not therefore ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the Peppermint, Though kindly at heart and good, Had a blunt, bluff way of a-gittin' 'is say That we all ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... frankly expressed envy, and his general capacity for blundering, owe something to Boswell's feeling that he was a rival near the throne, and sometimes poor Goldsmith's humorous self-assertion may have been taken too seriously by blunt English wits. One may doubt, for example, whether he was really jealous of a puppet tossing a pike, and unconscious of his absurdity in saying "Pshaw! I could do it better myself!" Boswell, however, was too good an observer to misrepresent at random, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... that I met Ethan while he was on a vacation from his work here, and roughing it. When I married him, I had hardly seen him in anything except his Navy flannel shirt, scrubby trousers, and funny blunt-toed shoes." ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... pilgrim's garments were. Even as a young man he had had the good sense to keep company with one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept true to Old Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped him over the river at last. In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy, cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have spared. Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... cares less for the mode of reception, when I take mine ease at mine inn, than I do, for old soldiers are not very fastidious, and old travellers still less so; but give me sturdy John Bull, with his blunt plainness and true independence, before the silly insolence of a fellow, who thinks he shows his equality, by lowering the character of a man to that of a brute, in coarse exhibitions of assumed importance, which his vocation of extracting money from ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state made him look as if he wore a ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... them, described them in a few pregnant sentences, and displayed his specimens of their growth, and manufacture. When he arrived at the dramatists of the Restoration, so far from being shocked, he was charmed with their pretty and unmoral ways; and what he says of them reminds us of blunt Captain Dampier, who, in his account of the island of Timor, remarks, as a matter of no consequence, that the natives "take as many wives as they can maintain, and as for religion, they ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... fought with long swift spasms of unearthly fury. Continually recurring, shock, mellay and rally overlapped, attack and repulse were inextricably mingled, the very lulls between the paroxysms were big with wrath. There was a point, too, where the river's bank became coastline, a blunt corner of land, which seemed to exasperate the sea out of all reason. A stiff breeze abetting them, the gigantic waves crashed upon it with a concussion that shook the air. All the royal rage of Ocean seemed to be concentrated on this little prominence. The latter's indifference appeared ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Master Lieutenant," St. Eval said, ere Herbert could reply; "my wits, though a landsman, are not quite so blunt as yours, and I guess better than you do. Is it possible no one here can tell? has my demure brother Herbert's secret never been suspected? Caroline, what has become of your penetration; and Emmeline, your romance? Ellen, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... we had met at Zib. The list of notables ends with the Sayyid Ibrahim El-Mara' and with the sturdy Abd el-Hakk, pearl and general merchant. All recognized our friend the Sayyid, whom even the "gutter-boys" saluted by name; and, although the Arab manner is blunt and independent, all showed perfect civility. It is needless to say that our late work, and our future plans, were known to everybody at El-Wijh as well as to ourselves; and that the tariffs of pay and ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... roused himself to talk briefly to her, and noticed then a blunt directness in her speech that would have appalled an ordinary hearer. It was her habit and choice to say nothing, but if pushed to the wall what was there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... should give me poison. They first went to Ercole and tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve to swell the band of choristers.' ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... that I had considerable difficulty in not laughing outright, for my superior officer was a man of imposing breadth, and I knew his one weakness was the love of a good meal. The contemplation of the loss of his Christmas dinner had made him forget his usual blunt, hopeful tone of speech, and adopt this ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... a moderate use of tobacco for a mature person is necessarily a sin, yet we do believe that it does blunt the moral sense, and soon leads to spiritual weakness and indifference, which are sins. To love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength, and one's neighbor as himself, means not only a denial of that which is questionable in morals, but a practice of that which is positively ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... a most blunt, pleasant creature, And slander itself must allow him good nature; He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper, Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... The head hunched right against the shoulders as if the neck were very short, or totally lacking, was pear-shaped, with the longer end to the back, and the sense organs of eyes and nose squeezed together on the lower quarter of the rounded portion, with a line of wide mouth to split the blunt round of the muzzle. Dark pits for eyes showed no pupil, iris, or cornea. The nose was a black, perfectly rounded tube jutting an inch or so beyond the cheek surface. Grotesque, alien and terrifying, it made no hostile move. And, since it had not turned its head, he could not be sure it had even ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... choose, Did I by night frequent the College groves And tributary walks; the last, and oft The only one, who had been lingering there Through hours of silence, till the porter's bell, 70 A punctual follower on the stroke of nine, Rang with its blunt unceremonious voice, Inexorable summons! Lofty elms, Inviting shades of opportune recess, Bestowed composure on a neighbourhood 75 Unpeaceful in itself. A single tree With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed, Grew there; [E] an ash which Winter for himself Decked out with pride, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... quantity of electricity. When in this state, if you present to the shot the point of a long, slender shaft-bodkin, at six or eight inches distance, the repellency is instantly destroyed, and the cork flies to the shot. A blunt body must be brought within an inch, and draw a spark, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... fellow, I do not know why thou shouldst care to speak, Seeing my axe is close upon thy neck, And words of thine will never blunt its edge. But if thou art so bent upon it, why Thou mightest plead unto the Churchman yonder: The common people call him kindly here, Indeed I know he has a ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... islands between and the open sea. On the former day we could not see the land, on account of thick mists and dark fogs, but this evening we espied an entrance into the land, by a river between the Grange Hills and a cape to the S.W. about 3 leagues from the ships. The top of this cape is blunt, but it ends towards the sea in a sharp point, on which account we named it Pointed Cape. On its north side there is a flat island. Meaning to examine if there were any good harbours at this entrance, we lay to for the night; but on the next day ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... qualities which were most offensive both to his personal preferences and his inherited standards of taste. The girl in her scarlet dress, with her dark bobbed hair curling in on her neck, her candid ivory forehead, her provoking blunt nose, her bright red lips, and the inquiring arch of her black eyebrows over her gray-green eyes, had appeared to him absurdly like a picture on the cover of some cheap magazine. He had heartily disapproved of her, but he couldn't help looking at her. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... his blunt way, had asked whether he was good for anything, anyhow. Martius had replied that he was considered more than a ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... A jay with skyblue shaft Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead. She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed Her warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch, Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves, Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared Leering about the hole of a young beech; And every time she ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... toast, to "The Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. I have noticed that the Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. It is odd, but you will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him about like a shadow, and Dan did not repulse him as rudely as he did others, but said, in his blunt way, "You are all right; don't worry about me. I can stand it better than ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... brevetted as such by the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way, Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly; and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled her to admire ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... presented by Sir Frederick Wigan, Bart., in memory of his brother-in-law, Arthur Cecil Blunt. It is a triplet, and displays in its central light an allegorical figure of "Poetry," supported by Shakespeare and Spenser in the lights on either hand. Above the Muse the sacred Dove is hovering, symbolical of the divine inspiration which we may presume guided the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... was very cheerful: my lord, at the head of the table, looked only like his lady in a riding-dress. However, he received one mortifying trial of his temper - he had sent to request sailing up the Tamer next day with Sir Richard Bickerton; and he had a blunt refusal, in a note, during our repast. Not an officer in the fleet would accommodate him; their resentment of the dinner slight is quite ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and wears away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things. I suppose that we shall never here bring these wills of ours into perfect correspondence with His, any more than we shall ever, with our shaking hands and blunt pencils, draw a perfectly straight line. But if will and heart are brought even to a rude approach to parallelism with His, if we accept His voice when He takes away, and obey it when He commands, we shall be quiet and peaceful. We shall be strong and unwearied, freed from corroding ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... does he expect it to be? would he have us represent it as beautiful and gratifying? The answer to this question, I fear, must be a blunt Yes; for it seems impossible to root out of an Englishman's mind the notion that vice is delightful, and that abstention from it is privation. At all events, as long as the tempting side of it is kept towards the public, and softened by plenty of sentiment and sympathy, it is welcomed by our ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... indulged in a new cypher. Walsh (his financial friend) is Legrand, Kennedy is Newton (as before), Dormer at Antwerp (his correspondent with England) is Mr. Blunt, 'Gorge in England' (Gorge!) is Mr. White, and so on. Owing to the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, there was a good deal of correspondence with 'Dixon' and 'Miss Fines'—certainly Lady Primrose—while Dixon may be James ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Chester, relaxing his face when he was fairly gone, 'is good practice. I HAVE some command of my features, beyond all doubt. He fully confirms what I suspected, though; and blunt tools are sometimes found of use, where sharper instruments would fail. I fear I may be obliged to make great havoc among these worthy people. A troublesome necessity! I ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that blocks certain categories of material deemed by the library board as unsuitable for use in their facilities. Indeed, 7% of American public libraries use blocking software for adults. Although such programs are somewhat effective in blocking large quantities of pornography, they are blunt instruments that not only "underblock," i.e., fail to block access to substantial amounts of content that the library boards wish to exclude, but also, central to this litigation, "overblock," i.e., block access to large quantities ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... waiting and at concealing Bismarck was past master. While usually figured as a blunt, bold, tyrannical man, there was also a side of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... the first wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace) and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (q.v.). On the death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half-brother by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... plaintive lament to Earl Grey, 'but I do not think I ever can!' There lives no record of reply. The last protest of the Duke of Wellington, delivered just before the measure became law, was characteristic in many respects, and not least in its blunt honesty. 'Reform, my lords, has triumphed, the barriers of the Constitution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop? who can ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... else he was, and as Grace said no more, he touched his cap, and passed on. The devoted admirer of Shuffles's nobleness and goodness was greatly disconcerted by the blunt statements of the second master, who had declared that the ship's company were almost in a state of mutiny against the captain. She continued her inquiries among other officers; but, though some of them thought it was ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... came when I remembered another friend with whom I had corresponded, and whose advice I thought I might now ask with some confidence. This was George Henry Lewes, to whom, when I was a boy in Glasgow, I had sent a bundle of manuscript, with the blunt question, "Am I, or am I not, a Poet?" To my delight he had replied to me with a qualified affirmative, saying that in the productions he had "discerned a real faculty, and perhaps a future poet. I say perhaps," he added, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... are not often those which most readily strike our blunt senses. We see the shell first. To the undeveloped mind the material is all there is. But looking deeper into life there comes an awakening to the fact and the significance of the spiritual, the feeling that the reason, the emotions, the joys and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... she thumbed the bank-notes. The dark brown corduroy was simply, if mannishly cut, and in a way it became her. Her small feet and rounded ankles would have appeared to better advantage in high-heeled shoes and silk stockings than those blunt-nosed boots and canvas leggings. And why in the name of common sense would any woman with hair like that want to keep it tucked away under a close-fitting cap? She would have been beautiful in—— He roused himself from his examination ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... These trees yield a profusion of thick red gum (not unlike the 'sanguis draconis') which is found serviceable in medicine, particularly in dysenteric complaints, where it has sometimes succeeded, when all other preparations have failed. To blunt its acrid qualities, it is usual to ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... 14. THE SOT.—A blunt term that needs no defining, for even the children comprehend the hopeless degradation it implies. Laws to restrain and punish him are framed; societies to protect and reform him are organized, and mostly in vain. He is prone in life's very gutter; bloated, reeking and polluted ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... preacher, Father MacDonald was rather solid than brilliant. In manner, he was somewhat blunt. He conversed pleasantly and sensibly; but people given to gossip or foolish talk soon learned to steer clear of him. Hospitality was with him a Christian duty. If he heard that some ecclesiastic was at the hotel—and he heard everything—he would at once go for him, and place ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... differently the forty-five years had been filled out in either case. Maisie had been forced to ricordarsi del tempo felice through so many years of miseria. Phoebe's journey across the desert of Life had paused at many an oasis, and their images remained in her mind to blunt the tooth of Memory. The two ladies at least heard nothing in the old woman's voice that one does not hear in any human voice when it speaks of events very ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... we should rather ask, Was this the life he meant to lead? Perhaps, when we take into account his faculty of self-deception,—it may be no greater than our own,—we should ask, Was this the life he believed he led? Have we any right to judge this man after our blunt English fashion, and condemn him, as we are wont to do, on the finding of a jury of average householders? Is French reality precisely our reality? Could we tolerate tragedy in rhymed alexandrines, instead of blank verse? The whole life of Rousseau is pitched ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... desert sands, with scornful drift, Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate; My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift, But epitaphed her own sepulchered state: Then I remembered whom I went to seek, And blessed blunt Winter for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... justice) he wished his wife to be quite free. It did not occur to him that he had done anything extraordinary, either in deserting his wife or in forwarding false news of his death. He had done the simple thing, the casual thing, the blunt thing, the thing that necessitated the minimum of talking. He did not intend to return ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... his hands and was a long minute making up his mind. But his refusal was blunt enough ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... critical scholarship have no seductions for them, for they are aware that the labour is great and the glory moderate, and that the field is engrossed by clever specialists not too well disposed towards intruders. They see plainly there is no room for them here. The blunt uncompromising honesty of the scholars thus delivers them from undesirable company of a kind which the "historians" proper have still occasionally to put ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... deep-udder'd kine, And all about the large lime feathers low, The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. [2] In that still place she, hoarded in herself, Grew, seldom seen: not less among us lived Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not heard Of Rose, the Gardener's daughter? Where was he, So blunt in memory, so old at heart, At such a distance from his youth in grief, That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And Beauty such a mistress of the world. And if I said that Fancy, led by Love, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... had been a pleasant murmur became at close quarters a menacing tumult. The air was full of bees—bees sallying forth for honey, bees returning with honey, bees trampling on each other's heels, bees pausing in mid-air to pass the time of day with rivals on competing lines of traffic. Blunt-bodied drones whizzed to and fro with a noise like miniature high-powered automobiles, as if anxious to convey the idea of being tremendously busy without going to the length of doing any actual work. One of these blundered into Lord Dawlish's face, and it ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... generally blunt process and usually not articulated at its base: in the plural refers to paired spiniform processes at or near the end ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... other words, but between her son and herself there was a gulf fixed, spanned by no bridge whatever; there was complete isolation; no boat plied between them at all. All the kindly human things which she loved were unintelligible to him, and his coarse pleasures or blunt evasions distressed and bewildered her. When she spoke to him he gaped or yawned; and yet she did not speak on weighty matters, just the necessary small-change of existence—somebody's cold, somebody's dress, somebody's marriage or death. When she addressed ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Taste being a violation of Good Taste, which in such matters practically means Hypocrisy. The Home Secretary and the judges who try the case are usually far more sceptical and blasphemous than the poor men whom they persecute; and their professions of horror at the blunt utterance of their own opinions are revolting to those behind the scenes who have any genuine religious sensibility; but the thing is done because the governing classes, provided only the law against blasphemy is not applied to ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... brave, blunt fellow, and he hated the ways of Loki, his lies and his deceit. He liked best the way of warriors—the thundering charge, the flash of weapons, and the heavy blow; but without the hammer he could not fight the giants hand to hand. Loki's advice seemed wise, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... which he has so suddenly seen fit to seek." Madame de St. Andre blushed and bit her lip. "'Tis the first time I have ever told a woman I loved her," said Calvert, "and I would rather tell her in my own blunt fashion. If she loves me, she will know the things my heart tells her, but which my lips are ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... expedition with a Canadian gentleman, when about ten miles from Montreal they halted at a farm with a good well-built house, named Sault St. Pierre, all looking prosperous and comfortable, and a young farmer, American in his ways—free-spoken, familiar, and blunt—but very kindly and friendly, was at work there with ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... projections, made of steel, at the heel of a horse-shoe, to give the horse a firm footing. They are made quite sharp in the winter season, when there is ice and snow upon the ground, but they are generally more blunt in the summer. This prevented the ankle's being cut as badly as it would have been, if the corks had been sharper. Forester looked at the ankle, and found that nothing had been done for it. It was inflamed and painful. He got the woman to give him a basin of warm water, ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... merry when his neck is in danger?" answered the cat. "Because I am advanced in years, and my teeth are blunt, and I like sitting before the fire and purring better than chasing the mice about, my mistress wanted to drown me. I have managed to escape, but good advice is scarce; tell me where ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... matchless as an orator, obviously the prophet and inspirer rather than the executive type; Skobelev, blunt, direct, and practical, a man little given to romantic illusions. It was Skobelev who made the announcement to the crowd outside the Taurida Palace that the old system was ended forever and that the Duma would ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... welfare. He suspected shrewdly that she was thinking what she would have done in Manley's place, and was trying to reconcile Mrs. Hawley's assurances that Manley was not actually sick or disabled with the blunt fact that he had stayed in town and permitted others to come out to see if ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it down on his snout. Then—Pouf!—-the false flint falls all to flinders, and you are left with the hammer-handle ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery gods at the back." Puffed up with this delightful chatter. "Come now, confess, won't you," I queried, "is this lady who loves me yourself?" The waiting maid smiled broadly at this blunt speech. "Don't have such a high opinion of yourself," said she, "I've never given in to any servant yet; the gods forbid that I should ever throw my arms around a gallows-bird. Let the married women see to that and kiss the marks of the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... might have enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... hard the rock of Sardonix; The steel but grinds, it breaks not, nor grows blunt; Then seeing that he cannot break his sword, Thus to himself he mourns for Durendal: "O good my sword, how bright and pure! Against The sun what flashing light thy blade reflects! When Carle passed through the valley of Moriane, The God of Heaven by his Angel sent Command that he should ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... showed the astonishment that thrilled him at this blunt question. "I hardly know ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... formidable weapon, which might have suited the fist of Goliath, and was well fitted for the brawny arm that had waved it aloft many a time in the smoke and din of battle. It was blunt and hacked on both edges with frequent use, but its owner would not have it sharpened on any account, asserting that a stout arm did not ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... if I could have done so, I would not have recalled what I had just said; but still, I trembled in spite of myself as I expressed in plain, blunt words what I had only rapturously thought over, or delicately hinted at to Margaret, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... people, the American Government, and natural laws, and the relation each holds to the other—not so well as I should like to know them, but as well as any member of the "Standard Oil," of the "System," or any one of their hirelings knows them. You have been brutally blunt in putting your questions, so don't accuse me of egotism if I bluntly answer: I know them all, top, sides, and bottom, from thirty-six years' book study of them and thirty-six years' actual experience in the nine-pin alleys where they ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... under way with a speech that held them spellbound. It would have held any audience spellbound by its sheer, stark manliness. It was straighter from the shoulder than Yasmini's eloquence, and left absolutely nothing to imagination. Blunt, honest downrightness, that was the key of it, and it took away the breath of all those women used to the devious necessities ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... not seem to believe the old soldier's assertion, and, giving his blunt sword a whirl through ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Justice to the woolsack, long before the vacancy occurred. "If you take my Lord Coke," said he, "this will follow: first, your Majesty shall put an overruling nature into an overruling place, which may breed an extreme; next, you shall blunt his industries in the matter of your finances, which seemeth to aim at another place (the office of Lord Treasurer); and, lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." His Majesty, easily ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two hours) by rail from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and on the apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two feet high stands up; in some cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a toothpick. The passion for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... speaks with as accurate an accent as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,—the "chaff,"—with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental bizarrerie fails to thoroughly amuse him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... rose-leaf is stiff-edged and harsh in comparison. Nothing else has that definite indefiniteness, that melting permanence, that evanescing changelessness. [I did not know that I was using his terms.] Clouds in vain strive to imitate it; they are made of slighter stuff; they can be blunt or ragged, but they cannot have that solid positiveness. Even in its cloudy, distant fairness, there is a concise, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... cazique, and those whom he permitted to inspect it. Gold and silver and copper they knew, and also tin, which they used for hardening the copper. But this new metal was altogether strange to them. It enormously exceeded copper in strength and hardness. Its edge did not, like that of their own weapons, blunt with usage, and they could well understand that, if armor could be formed of it, it ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... and the efforts of the police augumented by private search parties, the car was found in a thicket at the edge of a crossroad some four miles back from the river, and, a little way from the car, the body of Roessle, dead, the man's head crushed in where it had been fiendishly battered by some blunt, heavy object. There was no clew—no one could be found who had seen the car on the crossroad—the murderer, or murderers, and the twenty-odd thousand dollars in cash had disappeared leaving no ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... my proffered friendship with a blunt proposal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later contrived to alleviate the snub. For, as we entered the smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in 1909, when a small airship fitted with two 12 horse-power motors and named the 'Baby' was turned out from the balloon factory. This was almost egg-shaped, the blunt end being forward, and three inflated fins being placed at the tail as control members. A long car with rudder and elevator at its rear-end carried the engines and crew; the 'Baby' made some fairly successful ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature, And slander itself must allow him good nature; He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper, Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser; I answer ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... a minute while I look it up," I begged. Feverishly I turned over the leaves of the telephone directory and, cutting with a blunt finger the page containing the small advertisement that keeps my name before the public eye, at last found and transmitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in all to Heaven's will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He, the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself more completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean, covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... and altitude, he could see the pock-marks of open-pit mines and the glint of sunlight on bright metal and armor-glass roofs, the blunt conical stacks of nuclear furnaces and the twisted slag-flows, like the ancient lava-flows of Barathrum. And, he reflected, he was an influential non-office-holding stockholder in every bit of it, as soon as they could screen Storisende and get ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... cannot raise her head. What are you doing?—if I may ask so blunt a question upon so short ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... helplessness, and he would hold the cage, believing that he was thus redeeming his pledge, that Peter should be a trouble to no one. Libbie proceeded to arrange the bundle containing their dinner, as a support in the corner of the coach. The neighbours came out with many blunt speeches, and more kindly wishes, and one or two of them would have relieved Margaret of her burden, if she would have allowed it. The presence of that little crippled fellow seemed to obliterate all the angry feelings which had existed between his mother and her neighbours, and which ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... wrought the miracle. The mark is longer than any mortal foot, as if caused by sliding along the stone, rather than sinking into it; and it might be supposed to have been made by a pointed shoe, being blunt at the heel, and decreasing towards the toe. The blood-stained version of the story is more consistent with the appearance of the mark than the imprint would be; for if the martyr's blood oozed out through his shoe and stocking, it might ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are a blunt and rough people. They are not like the Chinese and the Hindoos, ready to pay compliments to strangers. When a Burmese has finished a visit, he says, "I am going," and his friend replies, "Go." This is ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... J. H. Blunt, in his "Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, etc.," defines Pantheists as "those who hold that God is ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... to say whether Jerome or Paula presided, the aesthetic mission of woman was seen fully,—perhaps for the first time,—which is never recognized when love of admiration, or intellectual hardihood, or frivolous employments, or usurped prerogatives blunt original sensibilities and sap the elements of inward life. Sentiment proved its superiority over all the claims of intellect,—as when Flora Macdonald effected the escape of Charles Stuart after the fatal battle of Culloden, or when Mary poured the spikenard on Jesus' head, and wiped his feet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... collected from the account of Tacitus. We expect that they will be as brave; but ruder. Still, the details which we get from the life of Agricola are few. They fought from chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt. As the swords of the Bronze period were thin and pointed, this is an argument in favour of iron having become the usual material for warlike weapons as far north as the Grampians. The historical testimony to the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... thick of neck, brutal of jaw, low-browed, red of face, blunt of speech, the finest, most unmerciful tackler on the football team, stepped up to Stephen and said a few words in a low tone. Courtland could not hear what they were save that they ended with an oath, the choicest of Pat ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... it's partly your fault, and that it wouldn't have happened if you had spent more time keeping your weather eye open, and not so much making love?" Miss Georgie could be very blunt, as well as keen. "Well, I don't see how you could prevent it, or what you could have done—unless you had kicked old Baumberger into the Snake. He's the god in this machine. I'd ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... through the laurel and rhododendron, so had he won his way to the forefront of the younger generation of his profession until, at the age of thirty-five, he had become recognized as one of the most able children's specialists in America. A "man's man," blunt of speech to the point of often offending at first the cultured women with whom his labors brought him into contact, he was worshipped in hundreds of homes as an angel of mercy in strange guise, and was the idol of hundreds of little ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... never replace the familiar one that is gone. There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady—blind, deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but she was not mournful, any more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to let one be ready to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... keep company with one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept true to Old Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped him over the river at last. In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy, cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have spared. Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every good and ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... men with those bare hands of his. I can see 'em clear—great, blunt-fingered hands, Anthony. He's coming around the side of the house. I'll go ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... of feeling which has gracefully left the performance of this simple act to his own discretion. Yes, it is in this fine instance of steady principle that we see a discrimination of politeness exquisitely ingenious and beautiful. The English have the reputation of being a blunt, downright people; and their practice of shutting the door after them makes it certain they are so. When they draw to the door, turn the handle, and hear the latch click, they as good as say: 'There, the door is shut; the thing is done. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... at his elbow a mere lad, Of a high spirit evidently, though At present weigh'd down by a doom which had O'erthrown even men, he soon began to show A kind of blunt compassion for the sad Lot of so young a partner in the woe, Which for himself he seem'd to deem no worse Than any other scrape, a thing ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best, tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short of his possibilities, though he was the greatest piano executant ever produced by our own ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... to hunt hares. To go against nature and inclination is to row against wind and tide. They say you may praise a fool till you make him useful. I don't know so much about that, but I do know that if I get a bad knife I generally cut my finger, and a blunt axe is more trouble than profit. No, let me shave with a razor if I shave at all, and do my work with the best ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... The standing barefooted on a board studded with nails and on broken glass are common tricks which can be seen performed by negroes at country fairs. I felt the points of the nails and found they had been filed down and were blunt. Mr. Marriott sat on the nails to the amusement of the audience while Yoga Rama had gone off the stage to remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half a minute. He then proceeded to break some ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... mouth shut. Legs and head and neck are next filled with sawdust, tamped in with a blunt piece of rod or wire or piece of wood shaped for the purpose. Fill in the front legs and head first and stuff some tow behind them to hold the sawdust in place when the specimen is reversed to fill hind legs. After these are filled, stuff ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... view of Tegucigalpa is had from Picacho, a long ridge from back in the mountains, ending in a blunt nose almost sheer above the city. Whoever climbs it recognises the reason for the native saying, "He who holds Picacho sleeps in the palace." Its town-side face is almost precipitous, and on every hand spread rolling, half-bare upland mountains. All but sheer ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... surprised Padre, with perhaps a tone of disappointment in his voice. "But no Americans who are yet come this way have been—have been"—he veiled the too-blunt expression of his thought—"have been familiar with The Huguenots," he finished, making ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... They, being plain, blunt men, unaccustomed to the amenities of election time, and not knowing how to skilfully approach a subject of this kind, simply announced that they ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... me poison. They first went to Ercole and tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve to swell the band of choristers.' ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... his abilities—that this was refused. He then applied himself to the study of the law; and whatever his real ability, the jealousy of the Cecils no doubt prompted the opinion of the queen, that he was not very profound in the branch he had chosen, an opinion which was fully shared by the blunt and outspoken Lord Coke, who was his rival in love, law, and preferment. Prompted no doubt by the coldness of Burleigh, he joined the opposition headed by the Earl of Essex, and he found in that nobleman a powerful ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the ring and voiced in no uncertain tones what its editor thought, thinking men and women stopped and listened. Editors of magazines refused my manuscript because they said it was too plain, too blunt, sometimes indelicate—it would give offense, subscribers would cancel, et cetera. To get my thoughts published I had to publish them myself; and people bought for the very reason for which the editors said they would cancel. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... and affairs of gallantry. He was a great refiner of sensual pleasures, had a passion for magnificence and display, and a real genius for court entertainments. He could eat and drink with the gayest courtiers, sing merry songs, and join in the dance. He was blunt and frank in his manners; but these only concealed craft and cunning. "It is art to conceal art," and Wolsey was a master of all the tricks of dissimulation. He rose rapidly after he had once gained the heart of the king. He became successively dean of York, papal ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... observed Mr. Heron's sensitiveness more closely and clearly than Heron fancied, and was talking on only to give him time to recover his composure. Certainly he talked much more volubly and continuously than appeared at first to be his way. After a while he said, in his usual style of blunt but ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Buchanan never allows that any fulness of inward life can dispense with the duties of every-day life, with mercy, truth, industry, generosity, self-control. The unworthy man who is excluded from the kingdom is not the man of blunt, homely feeling, incapable of ecstatic rapture and exalted emotion, but the man who locks up for himself the gold God gave him for the general good, who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor, who entrenches ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... which were of an azure color, some opaque, and as it were in collision together. They were streaked with translucent irradiations of light, which at one time appeared sharp like the points of swords, at another, blunt like broken swords. The streaks sometimes darted out forwards, at others they drew themselves in again, exactly like combatants; thus those different colored lesser clouds appeared to be at war together; but it was only their manner of sporting ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... was his blunt, honest, bull-dog Englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to English painting. Though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character won for him the daughter of Sir James Thornhill in marriage ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel— That blue blade that the king's son bears,—but this Blunt thing—!" he snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... said carelessly. "A man has to defend himself, and even with blunt swords he will get awkward cracks if he cannot protect his head. Besides, in the arena a man's life depends upon his skill, and the conquered is sure to have no mercy shown him unless he has borne himself well. Therefore, each man is anxious to learn. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... grayly to the edge of the lake, where a breakwater thrust its blunt nose out like a stranded hulk. The water was calm, lapping the sand so gently that it was hard to believe that so gentle a murmur could ever swell into the roar of a northeaster. A launch that was moored ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... This blunt speech moved me, the more especially as the man was French. I could not allow him to point the way of ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... If the axe be blunt it demands more strength:[293] Only through intelligence doth exertion avail. 11. If the serpent bites before the spell, Then bootless is the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to-day and whatever his feelings, he had so far been outwardly the beneficiary of Tollman's hospitality. Nothing was to be gained, except a sort of churlish satisfaction, by assuming at the eleventh hour a blunt and open hostility ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... that other eye? Bill," asked the blunt young gentleman, whose head was still running on ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... and at last upset his master and himself into the ditch at the road-side. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might have perished there, had not some carters, bringing up whisky casks from the Ferry, seen the catastrophe, and rushed up, raising him, and dichtin' him, with much commiseration and blunt speech—"Puir auld man, what brocht ye here in sic a day?" There they were, a rough crew, surrounding the saintly man, some putting on his hat, sorting and cheering him, and others knocking the balls off the pony's feet, and stuffing them with grease. He was most polite and grateful, and one of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 8, 1915, Austria-Hungary was notified that Dr. Konstantin Theodor Dumba was no longer acceptable as that country's envoy in Washington. The American note dispatched to Ambassador Penfield at Vienna for transmission to the Austrian Foreign Minister was blunt and direct. After informing Baron Burian that Dr. Dumba had admitted improper conduct in proposing to his Government plans to instigate strikes in American manufacturing plants, the United States thus ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... this room Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn Perched on a view-commanding eminence; —Inn which may be a veritable house Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste Till tourists found his coign of vantage out, And fingered blunt the individual mark And vulgarized things comfortably smooth. On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag; His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds; They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World. Grim o'er the mirror ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... took his leave of Thomasin, prayed that she might be supported in her tribulation, and so departing met Amos Bartlett who was standing outside the cottage awaiting him. The man gave a forcible and blunt description of his morning's work which brought many tears to Uncle Chirgwin's eyes; then, together, they walked to Penzance, there to chronicle the sudden death of Joan Tregenza and arrange for those necessary formalities which must ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... dextrous dishonesty, to whig impolicy and free trade. These calamities, which were chiefly caused by delaying free trade too long, he ascribed to that measure. The perverted ingenuity thus displayed did not serve his party or convince his opponents. He was opposed in a blunt and candid speech by Mr. Hume, and in one of the happiest orations ever delivered by Sir Robert Peel. Lord John Russell also made an effective reply. Mr. Disraeli received small support from his followers. If the chief was not equal to the exigencies of the party, neither was the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Camville, Nichola de. "Candlemas, The Burnt,". Canfranc, treaty of. Canons, Austin, annals by. Canterbury; cathedral; hall, Oxford; register. Canterbury, Archbishops of. See Langton, Stephen; Grand, Richard le; Neville, Ralph, and Blunt, John (archbishops elect); Rich, Edmund; Boniface of Savoy; Kilwardby, Robert; Peckham, John; Winchelsea, Robert; Cobham, Thomas (archbishop elect); Reynolds, Walter; Meopham, Simon; Stratford, John; Bradwardine, Thomas; Islip, Simon; Langham, Simon; ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Then a small blunt skiff—manned by two rowers came by under the wall, with the thudding and the creak ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... quietly maturing plan. He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude. Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all that, and it was not very likely she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... large grinders, or true molars, in each jaw—making thirty-two in all. The internal incisors are larger than the external pair, in the upper jaw, smaller than the external pair, in the lower jaw. The crowns of the upper molars exhibit four cusps, or blunt-pointed elevations, and a ridge crosses the crown obliquely, from the inner, anterior cusp to the outer, posterior cusp (Figure 17 m2). The anterior lower molars have five cusps, three external and two internal. The premolars have two cusps, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... had made one step forward. Kaffar was alive. The blunt Yorkshireman's description of him tallied exactly with the real appearance of the Egyptian. Of course I was not sure, but this was strongly in favour of his being alive. There was something tangible for which to work now, and my heart ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... their adopted Mother, I loathe and spit upon. I have taken the police oath of obedience to my superiors, and I have kept it, but I have never sworn allegiance to His Majesty your King, whom I pray that God may preserve though I am his enemy. To your blunt English mind, untrained in logic, my sentiments and actions may lack consistency. But no. Those agents whom we have run down, you and I, were traitors—traitors to England. Of all traitors for whom Hell is hungry the German-born traitor ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... is well with your dad at last. I'm a poor hand to talk and a poorer to write, for my finger is crooked to hold a trigger, not a pen. But he gave me it to do. Don't take it too hard that a man with only plain words is blunt. Your ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the principal manufacturers of armaments was held in Whitehall with the object of persuading them to pool their trade secrets. For a long time this meeting was nothing more than a succession of blunt speeches on the part of provincial manufacturers, showing with an unanswerable commercial logic that the suggestion of revealing these secrets on which their fortunes depended was beyond the bounds of reason. All the interjected arguments of the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... saw him get licked. I could feel it way down in my fingers, kind of—the madness. That's why he went to live at Schmitt's after my father got so he couldn't work much. They always had lots to eat at Schmitt's. I didn't ever work there myself," he added with his customary blunt honesty, "because ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already before this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against him, to blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether prove a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him. And so Pericles, at that time more than at any other, let loose ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Plantagenet by the King, makes a thoroughly natural jibe at his former name, Philip, to which he had just shown such breezy indifference. The jest could not have been made to Lady Falconbridge without a direct insult to her, which would have been alien to the natural, blunt, and easygoing fondness of the relation which Shakespeare establishes between the Bastard and his mother. So Gurney is quite casually brought in to receive it. But this is not enough ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... which in all good nature sways backward and forward, is an indispensable condition of the national life. Combativeness and the lust of vituperation are in the blood of the Bavarian people; it is all one, whether we look for them in a riotous kirmess or in blunt ridicule, in the poetic improvisations of which the quick-witted peasants, being especially gifted in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... very blond, clean-shaved, with gray eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... you proposed, of serving us as a valet,' said I, 'it is not to be thought of. We are, in spite of my friend's waggishness, but two plain blunt countrymen, and have no more need of a valet than one of those poets which you have spoken of. On the other hand, if you should care to attach yourself to our party, we shall take you where you will see service which shall be more to your taste ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... compliments, we shall talk all night, and never get to the gist of the matter after all. Here is what I want to say. It seems to me that your attentions to our poor Mary are somewhat more than cousinly, and it behoves me to remind you that she is still a married woman. Is that too blunt? Have I ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... at ease, and for the most part left the matter to me. It was well that he did; for as it was, by his untimely straight-forwardness, he once or twice came near spoiling every thing. Indeed, on one occasion he was so unseasonably blunt, that curiously enough, I had almost suspected him of taking that odd sort of interest in one's welfare, which leads a philanthropist, all other methods failing, to frustrate a project deemed bad; by pretending clumsily to favor it. But no inuendoes; Jarl ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... gladly have given Appenzelder also some token of her favour, but she could not have used any of his compositions—the most famous of which was a dirge—upon this occasion, and the blunt long-beard frankly admitted this, and declared unasked that he desired nothing better than to offer his Majesty, with the Benedictio, the first ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Agricola then encouraged three Batavian and two Tungrian [121] cohorts to fall in and come to close quarters; a method of fighting familiar to these veteran soldiers, but embarrassing to the enemy from the nature of their armor; for the enormous British swords, blunt at the point, are unfit for close grappling, and engaging in a confined space. When the Batavians; therefore, began to redouble their blows, to strike with the bosses of their shields, and mangle the faces of the enemy; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... had time to rally his followers and stay the progress of the enemy. It was a terrible battle. The Archbishop Andreas Sunesen with his priests mounted the hill to lay the sword of prayer in the scales of battle; the Danes rallied, and their swords were not blunt when they turned upon their enemies. Whilst the Archbishop and others prayed, the Danes were triumphant; but when his arms fell to his side through sheer weariness, the heathens prevailed. Then the priests supported the aged man's arms, who, like Moses of old, supplicated for his people ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... intelligent man," grunted Andy Sudds, in his blunt way. "What are you doing up here in this ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... easy manner and an easy chair. He was a middle-sized man, possessed of a very round head, bald at the crown, but having still a lock of dark hair on the summit of his round forehead; very round eyes set far back in smooth holes, showing little lid; a nose blunt and thick over lips that might have been coarse, but were controlled, and betrayed a lurking humour at the corners, to which the upstanding moustaches seemed to add point. For all his peculiarity of aspect, he was a man who left an impression on the memory of something pleasing ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... in different groups. Thus, although isogamy consists in typical cases of a union of naked motile gametes by a fusion which begins at the beaked ends, and results in the formation of an immotile spherical zygote surrounded by a cell-wall, in Leptosira it is noticeable that the fusion begins at the blunt end; in a species of Chlamydomonas the two gametes are each included in a cell-wall before fusion; and in many cases the zygote retains for some time its motility with the double number of cilia. Again, in oogamous reproduction, while in general only one oosphere ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the Microcosm. In the year 1820 W. Mackworth Praed set on foot a manuscript journal, entitled Apis Matina. This was in turn succeeded by the Etonian, to which Praed contributed some of his most brilliant productions. John Moultrie, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Walter Blunt, and Chauncy Hare Townshend were also among the writers for its papers, who helped to make it of exceptional excellence. Its articles are of no ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up. Had you and I been at Goethe's elbow when, in the October of 1786, he entered Rome and was received by the excited Tischbein, no doubt we should have whispered in his ear, 'Beware of that man! He ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... "sky-scrapers"—an army of giants—down to the water's edge. And, among all the rose and gold and white, the ocean-liner, a glittering immensity of helpless strength, was being hauled and butted into her dock, like some harpooned sea-monster, by a swarm of blunt-nosed, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Bearn, young Conde, and all our leaders, though making use of less blunt speech, were of the same opinion, but the Admiral cared little for his own safety, when there was a chance of benefiting ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... and will forgive a soldier's blunt speech. I beg you, Sire, to consider the services and the sorrows of Bienville's people, the loyal le Moynes. Where rests his father? Where his valiant brothers, Ste. Helene and Mericourt? Dead, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... and moral training of children rests squarely upon those who have assumed the responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it cannot be rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of parents that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been so careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... instances; as the genius of the Italians, which is so much addicted to music and ceremony, has moulded all their words and phrases to those particular uses. The stateliness and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language; and the blunt, honest humour of the Germans sounds better in the roughness of the High-Dutch than it would in ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... from one of the tilts, tied an end of this to one end of the connected ropes. She now proceeded to coil the twine carefully upon a smooth flat rock at her feet, after which she drew from her quiver a long, blunt-nosed arrow, and directly above the feathered end of the arrow attached the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... as the mast of a huge trading bark, Impell'd by twenty rowers o'er the Deep. Such seem'd its length to us, and such its bulk. Part amputating, (an whole fathom's length) I gave my men that portion, with command To shave it smooth. They smooth'd it, and myself, Shaping its blunt extremity to a point, Season'd it in the fire; then cov'ring close 380 The weapon, hid it under litter'd straw, For much lay scatter'd on the cavern-floor. And now I bade my people cast the lot Who of us all should take the pointed brand, And grind it in his eye when ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... took office. It began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and continues our historic bipartisan American policy. Franklin Roosevelt said we "are determined to do everything possible to maintain peace on this hemisphere." President Truman was very blunt: "International communism seeks to crush and undermine and destroy the independence of the Americas. We cannot let that happen here." And John F. Kennedy made clear that "Communist domination in this hemisphere ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... him send me a few corporations, but as that was unlikely, I pinned my faith in The Wand. It was a seven-column, four-page paper which carried staunchly a strange load of problems and responsibilities. In spite of the New York broker's blunt disbelief in the possibilities of a frontier newspaper, I had become more and more convinced during those weeks that only through some such medium could the homesteaders express their own needs, in their ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Let a man have one of these blades, with a hand to wield it and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. He need not fear its holding, if he can but tell how to lay on. Its edges will never blunt. It will cut flesh and bones, and soul and spirit, and all (Eph. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... forget his slender, stooping figure; his bright bald crown, curtained with locks that pended snowy over his coat collar; his weeping, watchful eye; his tottering mien; his high and furrowed brow, lengthening a sharp, corrugated face; his blunt, warty nose, made more striking by a sunken mouth and the working motion of his lower jaw; and his crutch, for he was a cripple. They left a deep impression on my mind. I speak of him as he was in the dawn of his eightieth summer—when ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... in Saxony by A. Breithaupt in 1817, and named by him from the Greek amblus, blunt, and gouia, angle, because of the obtuse angle between the cleavages. Later it was found at Montebras, dep. Creuse, France, and at Hebron in Maine; and on account of slight differences in optical character and chemical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... foulness where others suspected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking in darkness unpenetrated by mortal sight. And all that pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow, and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death had 'made the sacrifice complete,' and He 'bore our griefs and carried our sorrows' through many a weary hour before He 'bare them in His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... tapering, sub-erect (? sub-lyrated) horns, having a slight concave arctuation forwards, and blunt annulations (prominently ridged on the frontal surface), except near the tips; a double coat throughout, greyish blue internally, but superficially fawn-coloured above, and white below, a black forehead, and stripes down the legs; ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... elbow a mere lad, Of a high spirit evidently, though At present weigh'd down by a doom which had O'erthrown even men, he soon began to show A kind of blunt compassion for the sad Lot of so young a partner in the woe, Which for himself he seem'd to deem no worse Than any other scrape, a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... on these occasions carried long lances, blunt, indeed, at the end, so that they could not penetrate the armor of the antagonist at which they were aimed, but yet of such weight that the momentum of the blow was sometimes sufficient to unhorse him. The great object of every combatant was, accordingly, ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the blunt thegn from Saxon Kent; "it is plain that neither King nor Witan can replace thee in thine earldom. Tell us not farther of these atrocities; or by're Lady, if the Northumbrians had chased thee not, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for three years. So obscure was his existence that on the death of an aunt, who left him a small farm in Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise that "If John Jones Tibbets, Esq., would apply to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, Lothbury, between the hours of ten and four, he would hear of something to his advantage." But even as a conjurer declares that he will call the ace of spades, and the ace of spades, that you thought you had safely under your foot, turns up on the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strong," pursued Mary, who had a blunt downright sort of manner; "I wonder if India will agree with you; I wonder if you will ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... But it is usually introduced as a special weapon of a special hero, who fashions a gold-headed club to slay one that steel cannot touch, or who tears up a tree, like the Spanish knight in the ballad, or who uses a club to counteract spells that blunt steel. The bat-shapen archaic rudder of a ship is used as a club in the story of the Sons ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... abide by the decision of any other judge than my own conscience. Much humor—less wit—has been expended upon the Emperor of Germany's supposed carefulness to reject arbitration because an infringement of his divine rights; a phrase which may well be no more than a blunt expression of the sense that no third party can relieve a man from the obligations of the position to which he is called by God, and that for the duties of that position the man can confidently expect divine guidance and help. Be that as it may, the divine right of conscience ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... or bolts. These were made of various sorts of wood; about a dozen trees were used for the purpose, but ash-wood was thought to be the best. Generally the arrows had a tip of iron, shaped like a pyramid, pointed, though for shooting at birds the top was sometimes blunt, so that a bird might be struck down without being badly wounded. One old writer says that a great difference between the long-bow and the crossbow was, that success did not depend upon who pulled ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... be inflicted with a blunt instrument, there is produced a bruise, or ecchymosis, of which it is unnecessary here to describe the appearance and progress. A bruise may be distinguished from a post-mortem stain by the cuticle in the former often being abraded and raised. When an ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... for ten and the other two for nine days. The bits of bone were surrounded all the time by acid secretion. When examined under a weak power, they were found quite softened, so that they were readily penetrated by a blunt needle, torn into fibres, or compressed. Dr. Klein was so kind as to make sections of both bones and examine them. He informs me that both presented the normal appearance of decalcified bone, with traces of ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... expected as he gazed at the flaming water. He had seen the others of his own party approaching, and he walked quickly across the clear space to Persimmon Sneed. He was a little, slim, wiry man, with light, sleek hair, pink cheeks, high cheek-bones, and a bony but blunt nose. He had a light eye, gray, shallow, but inscrutable, and there was something feline in his aspect and glance, at once smooth and caressing and of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... I divested maimed and sightless Musidora of her flannel mufflings and dressed her in a clean night-gown. Without saying what I meant to do with it I had begged a square of white cambric from Mam' Chloe, and set about notching it with a pair of blunt scissors. Mariposa had described a winding-sheet minutely to me, and I meant that my dead doll-baby should be decently laid out. The notching took a tedious time, and the bows of the blunt scissors left purple furrows upon thumb and fingers. Uncle Ike had given me an empty raisin ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Abolitionists full thirty years to convince the American people, the ministry of Christ included, that slavery was, pure and simple, a "Covenant with death and an agreement with hell;" and then, sad to say, they were convinced against their wills. Their sense of justice had become so obtuse as to wholly blunt the sense of reason, the brotherly sympathy of a common race-feeling, and the broad, liberal and just inculcations of Jesus Christ. The nation was sunk to the moral turpitude of Constantinople; and not even a John crying ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... on himself; and his lasting impression of any object depends less on the object itself than on the point of view from which he regards it. Thus by a sparing use of examples, lessons, and pictures, you may blunt the sting of sense and delay nature while following her ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... word, but its incomparable hardness enables it, unlike ordinary stones, to retain very acute angles. When every other stone is pounded, that extreme sharpness of edge is lost; their fragments becoming blunt and rounded. The diamond alone preserves its trenchant qualities; wherefore, if it chances to enter the stomach together with food, the peristaltic motion [2] needful to digestion brings it into ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... affairs, meditating (if he chose) on the vanity of all things human. At one time they must have been full of good old slow West Indiamen of the square-stern type, that took their captivity, one imagines, as stolidly as they had faced the buffeting of the waves with their blunt, honest bows, and disgorged sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, or logwood sedately with their own winch and tackle. But when I knew them, of exports there was never a sign that one could detect; and all the imports I have ever seen were some rare cargoes ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... reads a little of everything," he returned with a reassuring commonplaceness of manner. He was thunderstruck at his outburst. Never had he had occasion to talk in that vein. He remembered how blunt he had been with the older Rose twenty years before—how he had jumped to the point at the start and landed safely; clinched his wooing, as he had since realized, by calling her his Rose of Sharon, and now he was saying the ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wondrous long!"[3] their power is wondrous great, But not to them 'tis given to stem the rushing tide of fate. A king may man a gallant fleet, an island fair may give, But can he blunt the sword's sharp edge, or bid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Gen. Blunt in a letter to a friend speaks of the valor of Colored Troops at the battle of Honey ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... a scientific fact that that which is sharp is penetrating and moves quickly; that which is blunt is non-penetrating and of necessity moves slowly. The needle darts through the cloth more quickly than the bodkin. The greyhound is swifter than the bulldog. The stiletto does quicker work than the bludgeon. This, of course, is only a symbolism which may make vivid the truth that the convex man ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Breede. The little hair left him was an atrocious foggy gray; never in order, never combed, Bean thought. The brows were heavy, and still curiously dark, which made them look threatening. The eyes were the coldest of gray, a match for the hair in colour, and set far back in caverns. The nose was blunt, the chin a mere knobby challenge, and between them was the unloveliest moustache Bean had ever been compelled to observe; short, ragged, faded in streaks. And wrinkles—wrinkles wheresoever there was room for them: across the forehead that lost itself ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the place of execution upon a sledge, with two robbers, who were executed with him. After Eagles had mounted the ladder, and been turned off a short time, he was cut down, before he was at all insensible; a bailiff, named Wm. Swallow, then dragged him to the sledge, and with a common blunt cleaver, hacked off the head: in a manner equally clumsy and cruel, he opened his body and tore ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... seriously to rubbing rosin over the bow. There was scant music in his face—a square physiognomy, with thick features, and a shock of hay-colored hair striped somewhat with an effect of darker shades like a weathering stack. He handled the bow with a blunt, clumsy hand that augured little of delicate skill, and he seemed from his diligence to think that rosin is what makes a fiddle play. He was evidently one of those unhappy creatures furnished with some vague inner attraction to the charms of music, with no gift, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of domestic hells? Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal's tints With all the kind mendacity of hints, While mingling truth with falsehood—sneers with smiles— A thread of candour with a web of wiles;[sg] A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming, To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming; 60 A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal, And, without feeling, mock at all who feel: With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,— ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... occur a Liberal Government can look only to the people. We count on you, and we shall come to you. If you sustain us we shall take effectual steps to prevent such a deadlock ever occurring again. That is the whole policy of his Majesty's Government—blunt, sober, obvious, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... thou unpolished shaft, why leave the quiver? O thou blunt axe, what forests canst thou hew? Untempered sword, canst thou the oppressed deliver? Go back to thine own ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... "To put it selfishly blunt, then, since you insist, I think you ought to for my sake. If an income you can depend upon means nothing in particular to you you might consider what it would mean ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... canoes, but in scows, to-day. The scow has even taken the place of the old York boat. That was the boat which they formerly used on the Saskatchewan and some of these rivers for their up-stream work. It's a good deal like a Mackinaw boat. You'll see here, too, one or two scows with blunt ends, such as they call the 'sturgeon' nose. They tow a little easier than the square-ended scow. But these new square-facers are the best things in the world for going down-stream ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... Dr. Dumba had just reached the German Foreign Office at the moment when the American Ambassador arrived to inform the Under Secretary of State, Zimmermann, in his customary blunt and abrupt manner, that Germany must yield to America's demands or war would inevitably follow. Zimmermann thereupon, with the object of causing Mr. Gerard to moderate his tone, showed him Dumba's wire, which pointed to the inference that the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... his little accidents next day, and went straight to the carpenter, bullied him again, and after bearing it for awhile Chips's adze would become so blunt that he was obliged to go off to the grindstone, where he would stop for a couple of hours, a good deal of which time was spent in oiling the spindle before ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... which Mr. Nott was beginning to regard his own mal a propos presence, arrested the young man's attention. "What's the reason you didn't sell this old ship long ago, take a decent house in the town, and bring up your daughter like a lady?" he asked, with a sudden blunt good-humor. But even this implied blasphemy against the habitation he worshiped did not prevent Mr. Nott from his usual ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... meanes that I bid you do: Let the blunt King tempt you againe to bed, [Sidenote: the blowt King] Pinch Wanton on your cheeke, call you his Mouse, And let him for a paire of reechie[9] kisses, Or padling in your necke with his damn'd Fingers, Make you to rauell all this matter out, [Sidenote: rouell] [Sidenote: 60, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... master, took his captivity exceedingly to heart, and fell into bitter grief and boundless rage when he heard that he had been tried in Nottingham and sentenced to die. Alice Gamwell, at Little John's request, wrote three letters of one tenour; and Little John, having attached them to three blunt arrows, saddled the fleetest steed in old Sir Guy of Gamwell's stables, mounted, and rode first to Arlingford Castle, where he shot one of the three arrows over the battlements; then to Rubygill Abbey, where he shot the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... smoke-smudged coats, Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay The Fort lay green, for it was springtime ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... I've seen you fellers some place before," said the rancher, staring hard at the boys. "Say," and his face cleared, "wasn't you along this way a few days ago with Barzy Blunt an' some more, runnin' some ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... thrown into the street, as well as apple-parings and cabbage-stalks, were voraciously devoured. But hunger did not confine itself within these disgusting limits. More than twenty eye-witnesses can attest that wounded French soldiers crawled to the already putrid carcasses of horses, with some blunt knife or other contrived with their feeble hands to cut the flesh from the haunches, and greedily regaled themselves with the carrion. They were glad to appease their hunger with what the raven and the kite never feed on but in cases of necessity. They even tore ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... trunk, on which the dry skin stretched so thin that Rynason could see the solid bone of the chest wall. Two squat arms hung from the shoulders, terminating in four-digited hands on which two sets of blunt fingers were opposed; Horng kept moving them constantly, in what Rynason automatically interpreted as a nervous habit. The lower body was composed of two heavily-muscled legs jointed so that they could move either forward ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... I hope?" he said cordially, and yet in a tone of more respect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... necessary to say, however," he went on, "that the skull was fractured in several places, as by blows of some blunt instrument; and that instrument itself—a pick-handle, still stained with blood— lay ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... might not long encumber the soldier, or blunt his ardour for farther enterprise, the usual means of dissipating military spoils were already at hand. Courtezans, mimes, jugglers, minstrels, and tale-tellers of every description, had accompanied the night-march; and, secure in the military reputation ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... letters and numbers which proclaimed her proper business. She was a trawler. In peace times she cast nets for fish in the North Sea. Now she flew the white ensign and on her fore-deck, above the high blunt bows, she carried ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... unfolded the situation. At the mention of Grimsby, Holloway grunted with disgust—it may have been a variety of professional jealousy. Who knows? However, the problem fascinated the mysterious young woman, who blushed, in spite of herself, when Shirley put his blunt question to her. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... fluid which must often be yellow and sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (The Greek water of aspersion, according to Theocritus, was mixed with salt, as is sometimes the modern Italian holy water. J.J. Blunt, Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, p. 173.) Among the Hottentots, as Kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a successful young warrior was sprinkled in the same way. Mungo Park mentions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... thinking, and she thought to some purpose. Her natural disposition was always to obtain results by blunt, matter-of- fact methods. In school her policy was, 'Come along with you now, I'm not going to have any nonsense!' Backed by her position, her strong personality, and her prowess at games it succeeded. But here in the hostel, if she wished to effect ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... lower outline of our illustration. This curve should also be marked out with chalk, and should commence a little nearer the end of the log than the curve on the upper side. Shave off the wood to a blunt edge on this curve, at both bow and stern. The rough form of the canoe is now obtained, and by the aid of the draw-knife, or shaving-knife, it can ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Mazatlan, and he had brought wine of the finest and cigars such as Arizona never had known, and Sancho was manifestly disconcerted at the regrets or refusals, coldly courteous on the part of Loring, blunt and brusque on the part of Blake. The veterans, however, saw no harm in going and were sumptuously entertained by mine host in the best room of the ranch. Blake caused a strong guard to be posted at camp, a most unusual thing, and one instantly ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... more. A jay with skyblue shaft Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead. She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed Her warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch, Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves, Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... is receptive to the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward human ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... in the act of dressing when a knock sounded at the outer door; Hinge marched off to answer it, returning with a large visiting-card edged with a line of mourning. He presented this to me, and I read the words "Count Ruffiano," printed very badly in blunt script type. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... thank you for the box of magnets which I found here. Though I do not know certainly, by, or from whom they come, I presume they came by Colonel Smith, who was here in my absence, and from Messrs. Nairne and Blunt, through your good offices. I think your letter of February the 16th, flatters me with the expectation of another, with observations, on the hygrometers I had proposed. I value what comes from you too much, not to remind ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... aisle toward Senator Morton. The Senator from Indiana retreating, Mr. Conkling exclaimed, in the most dramatic tone, "I see that the Senator retreats before what I say!" "Yes," replied Senator Morton, in his blunt way, "I retreated as far as I could from the false doctrine taught by the gentleman from New York." "Mr. President," said Senator Conkling, evidently disconcerted, "the honorable Senator observes that ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... in his voice her eyes, while his own still strayed away, just fixed him. "Don't you think it's really rather exciting? Everything's ready, the feast all spread, and with nothing to blunt our curiosity but the general knowledge that there will be people and things—with nothing but that we comfortably take our places." He answered nothing, though her picture apparently reached him. "There ARE ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... that time my body was distempered, and very likely my mind also.... I know nothing of coming to town; I only know that when I do I shall not be sorry to see you; and this is knowing a great deal; for I shall not be glad to come, and shall only come if it be unavoidable: this is the blunt truth. I own it would look less like indifference if I had written some ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... Imperial Government. In the midst of this entanglement, Slidell lost his head, for hope deferred when apparently within reach of its end is a dangerous councilor of state. In his extreme anxiety, Slidell sent to the Emperor a note the blunt rashness of which the writer could not have appreciated. Saying that he feared the Emperor's subordinates might play into the hands of Washington, he threw his fat in the fire by speaking of the ships as "now being constructed at Bordeaux and Nantes ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the cavity was thickly lined with fur from some small animal, such as a hare or rat. I found my second nest close to my tent in a cleft of a pine, quite low down, only 3 feet from the ground. I cut it out and it contained five eggs of the usual type—broad, blunt little ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... new colony, where he had arrived in April, after the admiral had sailed to explore Cuba. Don Bartholomew was a discreet man, as skilful in sea affairs as his brother, and had many commendable qualities; he was besides very brave and resolute but of a blunt manner, and somewhat harsh in his temper, by which he incurred the hatred of some persons of the colony. As the admiral hoped to derive much assistance from Don Bartholomew, he gave him the title of adelantado, or lieutenant-governor of the Indies; at which their Catholic ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the ocean. Great changes have therefore taken place since these barks were launched upon the waves.[78] Their mode of construction is an excellent indication of the date to which they belong. Some which are hollowed out of the trunks of oaks by the help of fire, or with a blunt tool, are supposed by Lyell to date from the Stone age. Others have clean-cut notches, evidently made with metal implements. Some are made of planks joined together with wooden pegs, and one canoe found in County Galway even contained copper nails. Most of the boats from the bed of the Clyde ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... about you," he observed in his blunt fashion. "Are you going to take on this job? It's no light one but you'll probably do it better than ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... into the round grotto, there to fast and to pray for the safe maturity of the scanty crops. But Tyope is not among them. His accomplice, the Naua, has forsaken him. He, too, has become convinced that everything is lost for them, and he has thrown away Tyope like a blunt and useless tool. Hereafter the Naua attends strictly to his official duties, and to nothing beyond his duties. For the Shkuy Chayan is dead, the Shikama Chayan has no love for him, and the old Hishtanyi, who has seen more of the real nature of events than any on the Rito, went ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... must have speedily become a prey to the opposition. The right of ejection was retained; but what they chiefly needed was the glitter of the naked blade—the edge of it, which they feared, they took care to blunt. Besides the check involved in the nature of the office—under which the lists of the members of the aristocratic corporations were liable to revision only at intervals of five years —and besides the limitations resulting from the right ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... have senses keen as that, and a dog tracing his master's steps over the city pavement is supposed to be a feat no other animal can equal. No doubt the artificial life a horse lives in England, giving so little play to many of his most important faculties, has served to blunt them. He is a splendid creature; but the noble bearing, the dash and reckless courage that distinguish him from the modest horse of the desert, have not been acquired without a corresponding loss in other things. When ridden by night the Indian horse—and sometimes the same habit is found ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... taking a short stroll just before sundown. As they were about to return they espied the largest and strangest lizard they ever saw. It was nearly two feet long, with a perfectly round body, a broad, flat head, short legs and a short, blunt tail. It was a chunky little animal, all covered with a rough skin like an alligator and dotted with square warts. It seemed very tame and followed Mary into the tent where she made a warm nest for it in the corner near her bunk. It was very ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... She believed in his protestations of friendship, and in his blunt sincerity. She allowed him to conduct her to his wife, the queen, and was received by her and Madame Adelaide with the same cordiality the king had shown. Once only in the course of the conversation did Madame Adelaide forget her cordial disposition. She asked the duchess ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... pass'd away, and every day The lovers still were wont To meet together, and their shame At meeting had grown blunt; For they were of an age when sin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... unshaven, and his clothing was precisely what he had worn all yesterday at the counter. The girl's eyes passed observantly over him now and then; she was critical of appearances, no doubt. That his aspect and demeanour might be in keeping, he bore himself somewhat bluffly, threw out brief, blunt phrases, and met Miss Elvan's glance with a confident smile. No resentment of this behaviour appeared in her look or speech; as the meal went on, she talked more freely, and something of frank curiosity began to reveal itself in her countenance ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... great part of Zealand was at that time in Subjection to that Dukedom. The Prince himself was a Person of singular Humanity and Justice. Rhynsault, with no other real Quality than Courage, had Dissimulation enough to pass upon his generous and unsuspicious Master for a Person of blunt Honesty and Fidelity, without any Vice that could bias him from the Execution of Justice. His Highness prepossessed to his Advantage, upon the Decease of the Governour of his chief Town of Zealand, gave Rhynsault that Command. He was not long ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... became friends on the spot; Nurse, who might have proved a problem, took an instant fancy to delicate Win and started on a course of coddling that luckily amused Win quite as much as it satisfied Nurse. Blunt, downright Roger appealed especially to Estelle, who also ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... to the grotesque—would it not have been agreeable to hear something more than two lines from the lips of a lover so stout-hearted, yet so ardent, in his own rough, blunt way, as he who ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... indescribable relief to us. The skull of our poor Oscar was not injured. There was concussion of the brain, and there was a scalp-wound—inflicted evidently with a blunt instrument. As to the wound, I had done all that was necessary in the doctor's absence. As to the injury to the brain, time and care would put everything right again. "Make your minds easy, ladies," said this angel of a man. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... thing after another.—You have been as noted, all round our town, for being a kind man, as being a blunt one. ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... than the interview of John Adams with an envoy from Tripoli in London. The oily-tongued barbarian, with his soft voice and his bland smile, asseverating that his only interest in life was to do good and make other people happy, stands out in fine contrast with the blunt, straightforward, and truthful New Englander; and their conversation reminds one of the old story of Coeur-de-Lion with his curtal-axe and Saladin with the blade that cut the silken cushion. Adams felt sure that the fellow was ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... as the country is, with the wheat green over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... fallen in love with a pretty girl, and thought it his duty to become a "regular," and thus have the chance of seeing her every three months in London. He had conceived a liking for me, reciprocated on my part; the more so, because I knew that behind his blunt exterior there was a warm and manly heart. When he left me I went to my cabin and prepared for dinner, laughing as I did so at his keen, uncompromising criticism, which I knew was correct enough; for of all official ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... frankly, after their blunt nature, call the place Landudno, but the Welsh call it, according to one superstition of their double l and their French u, Thlandidno. According to another, we cannot spell it in English at all; but it does not much matter, for the last superstition is the ever-delightful but ever-doubtful ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... concerns. There is always a tendency and a readiness to inveigh against cliques, especially family cliques. And at one time there was certainly a disposition in some quarters to keep a jealous eye upon Joseph and his brethren, lest they should acquire an undue amount of influence and power. One blunt, outspoken Scotchman, I remember, expressed this feeling in his own characteristic way by saying, "If we don't mind we shall be having too ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... might be turned to practical account in play. Nor is the sense of touch so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man. If you will turn over your old memories, I think the sensations of this sort you remember will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more than a blunt, general sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of well-being in bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and the true commander of man's soul and body—alas! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which Charley, who now seemed lost, gladly steered. Our sudden appearance so early that gray morning had evidently alarmed our neighbors, for as soon as we were within hailing distance an Indian with his face blackened fired a shot over our heads, and in a blunt, bellowing voice roared, "Who ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... their full meaning. He had not a feeling that they were free, but that something awful at the same time had happened which filled him with uneasiness and weighed upon his bosom like a heavy stone. Finally his thoughts began to grow blunt. For a long time he gazed at the big moths hovering above the flame and in the end he nodded and dozed. Kali also dozed, but awoke every little while and threw twigs into ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Unciform bone of the wrist. V was the Vein which a blunt lancet miss'd. W was Wax, from a syringe that flow'd. X, the Xaminers, who may be blow'd! Fol de rol ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "she is very little the worse. The teeth of the trap had grown blunt, although they were strong enough to ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... remarkable in beasts, whose souls are void of reason. But the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of the bodies; and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle indeed, says, that all men of great genius are melancholy; so that I should not have been displeased to have been somewhat duller than I am. He instances many, and, as if it were matter of fact, brings his reasons for it: but if ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... seen him. Undoubtedly some of the stories of his childlike vanity, his frankly expressed envy, and his general capacity for blundering, owe something to Boswell's feeling that he was a rival near the throne, and sometimes poor Goldsmith's humorous self-assertion may have been taken too seriously by blunt English wits. One may doubt, for example, whether he was really jealous of a puppet tossing a pike, and unconscious of his absurdity in saying "Pshaw! I could do it better myself!" Boswell, however, was too good an observer to misrepresent at ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... touch of the spear, one of the collies turned round sharply, and barked; then the other received a prod—from the blunt end in both cases—and the bark uttered was exactly ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... more widely appreciated, or more frequently drawn upon. "Sumner, Trumbull, and Wade," says McClure, speaking from personal acquaintance, "had intellectual force, but Trumbull was a judge rather than a politician, Wade was oppressively blunt, and Sumner cultivated an ideal statesmanship that placed him outside the line of practical politics. Fessenden was more nearly a copy of Seward in temperament and discretion, but readily conceded the masterly ability of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a mean soul disguised by a bluff, hearty exterior, and the mask is much the more difficult to penetrate. It is said of such an one—"He says hard things, but you always see the worst of him, for he puts his worst side out." Shakespeare's rogue, honest Jack Falstaff, was brusk and blunt, but he carried a rascal's heart, and there are many now living who are just as great blusterers, and are equally as cowardly ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... still called the Squire "James" were Democrats. Swallow, the only lawyer the town possessed, was silent, which was felt as remarkable in a man who usually talked much more than occasion demanded and wore a habit-mask of good-fellowship, which had served to deceive many a blunt old farmer, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... education: to know the essential things that made daily intercourse possible between people of culture. She had been accustomed to look on it as affectation. Now she realised that it was as natural to those who had acquired the masonry of gentle people as her soft brogue and odd, blunt, outspoken ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... no sanctity of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. Few of these things were the lot of the Southern black woman. Instead, thereof, a gross barbarism, which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding these terrible ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... such a blunt way of putting it? She may be exchanging her earthly garb for a celestial one—but die! We do not acknowledge death in the Church of the New Faith." He paused and blandly stroked his huge left hand, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... he, "I am a blunt man, not a very good doctor maybe, and perhaps not much of a gentleman, I don't know—never stopped to ask myself about it. But now, anyhow, I don't know how you happened to be here, or who you are, or when you are going away, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... sphere. Thus fired with the thoughts of accomplishment, I returned to my task, but I cannot say it went easily. I remembered many great writers indulged in stimulants in the throes of composition, but I decided such a course might blunt the keen edge of my mind and afterall there was no better stimulant than plain oldfashioned perseverance. I picked up the pencil again and doggedly went on to the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... mother's friends at Chamonix, only to find herself helpless amongst a worse gang in her father's house. Very well. She must be released. He had proposed to take her away then and there. She had refused. Well, he had been blunt. He would go about the business in the future in a more delicate way. And so he came again and again to the little house under the hill where the stream babbled through the garden, and every day the apples ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... other's character thoroughly, because they are so closely alike." Michie went on to say that "when either a Russian or a Chinese meets a European, say an Englishman, he instinctively recoils from the blunt, straightforward, up-and-down manner of coming to business at once, and the Asiatic either declines a contest which he cannot fight with his own weapons, or, seizing the weak point of his antagonist, he angles for him until he wearies him into acquiescence. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of Bearn, young Conde, and all our leaders, though making use of less blunt speech, were of the same opinion, but the Admiral cared little for his own safety, when there was a chance ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... full trade of Hermes' own Cheapside, Nor gold itself, nor all the Ganges laves, Or shrouds, well shrouded in his sacred waves; Nor gorgeous vessels deck'd in trim array, Which the more noble Thames bears far away; Let those whose nod makes sooty subjects flee? Hack with blunt steel the savory callipee; Let those whose ill-used wealth their country fly, Virtue-scorn'd wines from hostile France to buy; Favour'd by Fate, let such in joy appear, Their smuggled cargoes landed thrice a year; Disdaining ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... moment, Malipieri might have doubted the logic of the last statement; but at the present moment he was not very calm, and he turned a pencil nervously in his fingers, standing it alternately on its point and its blunt end, upon the blotting-paper beside him, and looking at ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... I know of," was the blunt answer; and, at the same instant, Mr. Ogilvie arrived. He was a pleasant, high-bred looking gentleman, brown-complexioned, and dark-eyed, with a brisk and resolute cast of countenance, that, Ethel thought, might have suited the Norman of Glenbracken, who died on the ruddy Lion of Scotland, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the office with his first feeling of suspicion and repulsion for his Chief. He didn't like the blunt, brutal way this Southern Democrat talked. He couldn't believe in his honesty. Beneath those bushy eyebrows burned a wolf's hunger for office and power. On the surface he was loyal to the Union. He wondered ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... honorable! What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it! They are wise and honorable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But as you all know me, a plain, blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him. For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood:—I only speak right on; I tell you that which ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... get a sharp or blunt letter asking for a settlement, go to your creditor face to face, set a date when you will make a ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... long time Dona Isabel had been sure in her own mind that Pancho Cueto, her administrador, was robbing her, she had never mustered courage to call him to a reckoning. And there was a reason for her cowardice. Nevertheless, De Castano's blunt accusation, coupled with her own urgent needs, served to fix her resolution, and on the day after the merchant's visit she sent for the overseer, who at the time was living on one ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... exceed belief. These trees yield a profusion of thick red gum (not unlike the 'sanguis draconis') which is found serviceable in medicine, particularly in dysenteric complaints, where it has sometimes succeeded, when all other preparations have failed. To blunt its acrid qualities, it is usual to combine it ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... Gentleman who does not a little value himself upon his ancient Descent, I expected he would give me some Account of them. We were now arrived at the upper End of the Gallery, when the Knight faced towards one of the Pictures, and as we stood before it, he entered into the Matter, after his blunt way of saying Things, as they occur to his Imagination, without regular Introduction, or Care to preserve the Appearance of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... yet the only girl out of all her set who had never had any especial attention. Perhaps it was because she was no flirt. Bell Masters said no girl could get along who did not flirt. Perhaps because in her excessive truthfulness she was sometimes blunt and almost brusque; it is dreadfully out of place not to be able to lie a little at times. Even Mrs. Upjohn, the female lay-head of the Presbyterians, who was a walking Decalogue, her every sentence being a law beginning with Thou shalt not, admitted ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... thoroughly moved than his daughter expected; and in all probability his nephew's bold defence of his religious and political opinions rather pacified than aggravated his displeasure. Although sufficiently impatient of contradiction, still evasion and subterfuge were more alien to the blunt old Ranger's nature than manly vindication and direct opposition; and he was wont to say, that he ever loved the buck best who stood boldest at bay. He graced his nephew's departure, however, with a quotation from Shakspeare, whom, as many others do, he was wont ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Rube said in his ordinary cheerful tone; 'except that I feel as if a fellow was sawing away at my ankles and wrists with a blunt knife.' ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... waterfalls. A tree that stands all along the banks here must be very fond of water; its roots lie close-packed down the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to make often a corrugated walk, each root ending in a blunt tuft of filaments, plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small tributaries from the left or western side - the whole plateau having a smartish inclination to the east; one of the tributaries in a handsome little web of silver hanging in ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a different fashion, the qualities which were most offensive both to his personal preferences and his inherited standards of taste. The girl in her scarlet dress, with her dark bobbed hair curling in on her neck, her candid ivory forehead, her provoking blunt nose, her bright red lips, and the inquiring arch of her black eyebrows over her gray-green eyes, had appeared to him absurdly like a picture on the cover of some cheap magazine. He had heartily disapproved of her, but he couldn't help looking at her. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... it from pimento wood on Juan Fernandez; but, in fact, I believe the art is confined to savages. I never met a civilized man who could do it, and I have questioned scores of voyagers. As for my weapons, they consist of a boat-hook and an ax; no gun, no harpoon, no bow, no lance. My tools are a blunt saw, a blunter ax, a wooden spade, two great augers, that I believe had a hand in bringing us here, but have not been any use to us since, a center-bit, two planes, a hammer, a pair of pincers, two brad-awls, three gimlets, two scrapers, a plumb-lead and line, a large pair of scissors, and you have ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... study of the law; and whatever his real ability, the jealousy of the Cecils no doubt prompted the opinion of the queen, that he was not very profound in the branch he had chosen, an opinion which was fully shared by the blunt and outspoken Lord Coke, who was his rival in love, law, and preferment. Prompted no doubt by the coldness of Burleigh, he joined the opposition headed by the Earl of Essex, and he found in that nobleman a powerful friend and generous patron, who used his utmost endeavors to have Bacon appointed ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... an end, and so, little by little the blunt bow crept nearer until it was in the very shade of my tree. Grasping the branch, I let myself swing at arm's length; and then I found that I was at least a foot too near the bank. Edging my way, therefore, still further ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... that the said Richard Gaylord came to his death in Luray Cavern on the 19th day of May, by cerebral hemorrhage, the result of a wound inflicted by some blunt weapon in the hands of a person or persons unknown. We recommend that Radnor Fanshaw Gaylord be held for ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Sir Charles surprised by this blunt reference to a subject they had never before discussed. "He does not intend to propose to ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... carelessly. "A man has to defend himself, and even with blunt swords he will get awkward cracks if he cannot protect his head. Besides, in the arena a man's life depends upon his skill, and the conquered is sure to have no mercy shown him unless he has borne himself well. Therefore, each man ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Augustus Grant are constantly staying here; they help to ride Mr. Doran's horses and shoot his birds. They are all old friends, and rather hard up, so Mr. Doran just keeps them. He—Mr. Doran—seems different after meals; from being as quiet as a lamb, he gets quite coarse and blunt. The rest of the party were just the kind of neighbours that always come to shoot. Mr. Roper told me they never have smart parties, with only the best shots, and heaps of beautiful ladies. Mr. Doran asks just any one he likes, or he happens to meet, and the shooting is some ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... outside, has a small core of pith, and this notched stick is laid horizontally on a knife-blade on the ground; the operator squatting, places his great toes on each end to keep all steady, and taking the other wand which is of very hard wood cut to a blunt point, fits it into the notch at right angles; the upright wand is made to spin rapidly backwards and forwards between the palms of the hands, drill fashion, and at the same time is pressed downwards; the friction, in the course of a minute or so, ignites ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... gang of natives, who had been stealing horses. The savages of this part of California are represented as extremely poor, and armed only with stone-pointed arrows; it being the wise policy of the Spaniards not to furnish them with firearms. As they find it difficult, with their blunt shafts, to kill the wild game of the mountains, they occasionally supply themselves with food, by entrapping the Spanish horses. Driving them stealthily into fastnesses and ravines, they slaughter them without difficulty, and dry their flesh ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... ought surely to be qualified by the implied condition that such consent must not be unreasonably withheld. In the private law of England equity has long since grafted this implication upon prohibitions against assignment. If, however, the Government had been content with a blunt non possumus, a case could no doubt have been made out for insisting upon their pound of flesh. They chose, however, to do the one thing which was neither dignified nor defensible: they offered to assent to an assignment on condition that Mr Reid surrendered ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... driven through with scarcely a quiver, the big ship trembled with the buffets and suction of a wintry blast that drove dry snow like sand across the lookout glasses. The twelve thousand level was an unbroken cloud of snow—a gray smother where the red ship's blunt and rusty bow ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... forty feet long, and twenty feet round at the thickest part. Its head, which seemed to me a great, blunt, shapeless thing, like a clumsy old boat, was eight feet long from the tip to the blowholes or nostrils; and these holes were situated on the back of the head, which at that part was nearly four feet broad. The entire head measured about twenty-one feet round. Its ears were two small holes, ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... Peel in the House of Commons, and on whom the destiny of the country perhaps depends? There he was, as if he had no thoughts but for the turf, full of the horses, interest in the lottery, eager, blunt, noisy, good-humoured, 'has meditans nugas et totus in illis;' at night equally devoted to the play, as if his fortune depended on it. Thus can a man relax whose existence is devoted to great objects and serious thoughts. I had considerable hopes of winning the Derby, but was beaten easily, my ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... lord, and back'd With circumstances of a stronger nature. It now appears, his secretary, Cuff, With Blunt and Lee, were deep concern'd in this Destructive scheme contrived to raise this lord, And ruin Cecil. Oh, it is a subtile, A deep-laid mischief, by the earl contrived In hour malignant, to o'erturn the state, And, horror to conceive! ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... We had left the business of cutting my bonds almost too late. In the darkness of the bush the strips of hide could only be felt for, and my Kaffir had a woefully blunt knife. Reims are always tough to sever, and mine had to be sawn through. Soon my arms were free, and I was plucking at my other bonds. The worst were those on my ankles below the horse's belly. The Kaffir fumbled away in the dark, and pricked my beast so that he reared and ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... criminal law in the state's attorney's office, have characterized the state's attorney himself as a "damned gallery-playing mountebank," nor have described the professions and the misdeeds of some of the persons he prosecuted in blunt Anglo-Saxon terms she had never heard used ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... secretary. Besides, she neglected no opportunity of inculcating precepts of sound morality. Thus the child, being surprised at seeing her one evening press a kiss upon the forehead of her secretary, cried out, with the blunt candor of ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... and head monitor at Saint Dominic's—far too blunt and honest ever to be an object of anything but dislike and uneasiness to Loman. Now the uneasiness was the more prominent of the two. Loman replied, confused and reddening, "Oh, that boy? Why—oh, he's a shop-boy from the town, come up about an ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Pretence in Nature but that (as her silly Phrase is) no one can say Black is her Eye. She has no Secrets, forsooth, which should make her afraid to speak her Mind, and therefore she is impertinently Blunt to all her Acquaintance, and unseasonably Imperious to all her Family. Dear Sir, be pleased to put such Books in our Hands, as may make our Virtue more inward, and convince some of us that in a Mind truly virtuous the Scorn of Vice ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he began again, "the whole thing resolves itself into a matter of discretion. But now—if you'll pardon me for asking anything so blunt—how am I to know that you would ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... instance, he learned that a sailing craft had the right of way over a power craft, something he had not known previously, and observed that a large proportion of them used that right to its limit. He got quite incensed with a small, blunt-nosed schooner which insisted on crossing the Adventurer's course just as they were passing Fort Hamilton. Steve had to slow down rather hurriedly to avoid a collision and Perry viewed the two occupants of the schooner's deck with a scowl ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of it; it was horrible. And perhaps, after all, he was mistaken; perhaps his dislike of the work had got upon his nerves, and showed him everything in the darkest colours. It could scarcely be as bad as he thought, or human society would be impossible. But argument could not blunt the poignancy of his feelings; he preferred, therefore, to leave them inarticulate, striving to forget. In any case, the ordeal would soon be over; it had to be endured for a few hours more, and then he would ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... of the General Staff's Operations Division, Lt. Gen. John E. Hull, dismissed the Gillem report with several blunt statements: black enlisted men should be assigned to black units capable of operational use within white units at the rate of one black battalion per division; a single standard of professional proficiency should be followed ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... appeared, plain, blunt, critical. His teaching was in effect an appeal to men to reflect: to turn their attention away from the world which they were supposed to be explaining to the contemplation of their own Minds by which the explanation was furnished. ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... great roll of evil smelling grayish unbleached calico from the schoolroom cupboard and heaved it on to the table. It was very heavy. The scissors were blunt and left deep red-blue indentations on finger and thumb. She was rather pleased that ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... a week, visiting back and forth in amity, as I must say. I grew to like well enough those blunt young fellows of the Navy. With young Lieutenant Peel especially I struck up something of a friendship. If he remained hopelessly British, at least I presume I remained quite as hopelessly American; so that we came to set aside the topic of conversation ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Zib. The list of notables ends with the Sayyid Ibrahim El-Mara' and with the sturdy Abd el-Hakk, pearl and general merchant. All recognized our friend the Sayyid, whom even the "gutter-boys" saluted by name; and, although the Arab manner is blunt and independent, all showed perfect civility. It is needless to say that our late work, and our future plans, were known to everybody at El-Wijh as well as to ourselves; and that the tariffs of pay and hire, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... crowded canvas injures the unity of the design, be these as they may, "Romola" strikes one as great in spots and as conveying a noble though somber truth, but does not carry us off our feet. That is the blunt truth about it, major work as it is, with only half a dozen of its kind to equal it in all English literature. It falls distinctly behind both "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Esmond." It is a book to admire, to praise in many particulars, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... cautious use thereof. When sarcastic twitches are needful to pierce the thick skins of men, to correct their lethargic stupidity, to rouse them out of their drowsy negligence, then may they well be applied when plain declarations will not enlighten people to discern the truth and weight of things, and blunt arguments will not penetrate to convince or persuade them to their duty, then doth reason freely resign its place to wit, allowing it to undertake its work ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... weasel. The trees over our head abounded with birds of various kinds, among which were many of exquisite beauty, particularly loriquets and cockatoos, which flew in flocks of several scores together. We found some wood which had been felled by the natives with a blunt instrument, and some that had been barked. The trees were not of many species; among others there was a large one which yielded a gum not unlike the Sanguis draconis; and in some of them steps that had been cut at about three feet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... A prince's banner 5 Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel— That blue blade that the king's son bears,—but this Blunt thing!" He snapped and flung it from his hand, 10 And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, And ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Walter Blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... hither to wait upon the Queen of England and our Lady of Normandy, for such is your well-born Majesty to your loyal Jersiais." And thereupon he plunged into an impeachment of De Carteret of St. Ouen's, and stumbled through a blunt broken story of the wrongs and the sorrows of Michel and Angele and the doings ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was calm and almost smiling as he answered. Behind him the shrill voices of the crowd sounded, like a background, to the blunt ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... at concealing Bismarck was past master. While usually figured as a blunt, bold, tyrannical man, there was also a ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... great wattles, the Barb with its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short-faced Tumbler {212} with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well-feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with its hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... little, for such courtesy is not usual in mills, where kind hearts are hidden under rough exteriors and blunt speech; but though the 'hands' smiled, they said to each other, after the uncle and nephew had passed by, that 'he was a gentleman was young Clay, and took after his uncle Howroyd more'n ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... his feet, a man of different type, blunt of speech, rugged, the typical working-man's champion except for his voice, which was of ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trod into the bloody mud, scarcely legible, and Sturk's cocked hat, the leaf and crown cut through with a blow of some blunt instrument. His sword they had found by ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Custom and habit probably blunt one's sensibilities in time, but this constant annoyance by peddlers detracts much from the pleasure of any stroll through Cairo streets. To the new arrival everything is novel and attractive. The main avenues are wide, well paved and lined with spacious sidewalks, but here the European ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... were emitting a sweet perfume. He did not hurry unduly with his work; before he applied the knife he asked the girl several times whether she preferred to write with a soft or a hard point, fine or blunt, and whether he should make the quill short or leave it long. He plied her with numerous other questions of this kind, as thoroughly as if he were a writing-master producing a calligraphic work of art. To these ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... breeding I have been deeply interested in for forty years past. Let me quote to the reader from one of many letters I have received from Sir Wilfrid Seawen Blunt during the past seven years. His practical knowledge of the English thoroughbred race horse and his blood cause, the Arabian, is the equal if not superior to any other one man of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... "The head master told me she will make a good scholar, and dear a me! she does nothing but read books from mornin' till night." While Hetty and her mother removed the dishes we drew our chairs about the fire, and Mr. Chaffin, a blunt, simple-minded man, entertained me with sage observations regarding politics and the weather. He spoke rather loudly, and in a key which, as I learned afterward, he only employed on very special occasions. Presently the youngest lad in the family, who sat ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie, twelfth Earl of Dreever ("Spennie" to his relatives and intimates), a light-haired young gentleman of twenty-four, but in reality the possession of his uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Julia Blunt. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... had been stealing horses. The savages of this part of California are represented as extremely poor, and armed only with stone-pointed arrows; it being the wise policy of the Spaniards not to furnish them with firearms. As they find it difficult, with their blunt shafts, to kill the wild game of the mountains, they occasionally supply themselves with food, by entrapping the Spanish horses. Driving them stealthily into fastnesses and ravines, they slaughter ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... a Christmas charity at Millbrook, Southampton, the Rev. A. C. Blunt stated that one of the recipients had nearly reached her 102nd year. She was born in Hampshire, and down to a very recent period had been able to ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... knew of no moral principle by which he was bound to refuse a fee from their adversaries."[57] So, too, the conciliatory words, which, after the trial, he tried to speak to the indignant plaintiff, and which the latter has reported in the blunt form corresponding to his own angry interpretation of them, after all may have borne the better meaning given to them by Bishop Meade, who says that Patrick Henry, in his apology to Maury, "pleaded ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... unfortunate veteran was suffering was found to be a jagged cut some two inches long at the back part of his head, which had evidently been caused by a violent blow from a blunt weapon. Nor was it difficult to guess what that weapon may have been. Upon the floor, close to the body, was lying a singular club of hard carved wood with a bone handle. The Colonel possessed a varied collection of weapons brought ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... not speak, but with a grave nod of his head rode slowly out of the camp. Little Bill regarded him for a moment. He had his bow and a blunt-headed arrow in his hand at the time. Fitting the latter hastily to the bow he took a rapid shot at the retreating horseman. The arrow sped well. It descended on the flank of the horse with considerable force, and, bounding off, fell to the ground. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills,—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare's and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... converted the well-known farce of "Box and Cox" into an operetta of the most ludicrous description. This was the opening piece—the forerunner of "Pinafore," "Pirates," "Patience," and other triumphs. Arthur Sullivan himself conducted, and the players were Mr. Du Maurier, Mr. Quinton, and Mr. Arthur Blunt. Then followed "A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing," in which Mesdames Kate Terry, Florence Terry, Mrs. Stoker, Mrs. Watts (the present Ellen Terry), and Messrs. Mark Lemon, Tom Taylor, Tenniel, Burnand, Silver, Pritchett, and Horace Mayhew took part. This ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... childhood had passed away, and empty praise was all that he could, for the most part, earn. After lingering, in the sickness of hope deferred, at several of the German courts, his destination was at last fixed for Paris. His chance of success as a courtier was probably diminished by the blunt though kindly frankness of his opinions, and by his inability to stoop to unworthy means of rising. He had also many rivals to encounter, particularly those of the more slender school of Italian melody; and few of the public had knowledge or independence enough to forsake ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... professional classifiers, no one would dare to. The Cerceris, more perspicacious, knows each of them for a Weevil, a quarry with a concentrated nervous system, lending itself to the surgical feat of her single stroke of the lancet. After obtaining an abundant booty at the cost of the blunt-mouthed insect, with which she sometimes stuffs her cellars to the exclusion of any other fare, according to the hazards of the chase, she now suddenly sees before her the creature with the extravagant proboscis. Accustomed ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... politeness. You know the man who is awkward, shy, clumsy, but who, nevertheless, impresses you with a sense of dignity and force. Why? Because mingled with that awkwardness and so forth *is* dignity. You know the blunt, rough fellow whom you instinctively guess to be affectionate— because there is "something in his tone" or "something in his eyes." In every instance the demeanour, while perhaps seeming to be contrary to the character, is really in accord with it. The ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... Indians are very expert in the use of a long bow, with wooden arrows, rather heavy and blunt at the end. Maquin said he could shoot ducks and small birds with his arrows; but I should think they were not calculated to reach objects at any great distance, as they appeared ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... which fall. The condensation of steam is a more delicate test for dust than is a beam of light. A curious illustration of the action of nuclei in condensing moisture has just occurred to me, in the experiment—well known to children—of writing on a reasonably clean window-pane with, say, a blunt wooden point, and then breathing on the glass; the condensation of the breath renders the writing legible. No doubt the nuclei are partially wiped away by the writing, and the moisture will condense into larger drops ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... your pardon fer blunt talk, Miss Withersteen, Dyer was on his knees an' not prayin'. You remember his big, broad hands? You've seen 'em raised in blessin' over old gray men an' little curly-headed children like—like Fay Larkin! Come to think of thet, I disremember ever hearin' of his liftin' his big hands in blessin' ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... returned. I avail myself of the earliest moment to acknowledge its receipt, and to thank you for the box of magnets which I found here. Though I do not know certainly by or from whom they come, I presume they came by Colonel Smith, who was here in my absence, and from Messrs. Nairne and Blunt, through your good offices. I think your letter of February the 16th flatters me with the expectation of another, with observations on the hygrometers I had proposed. I value what comes from you too much, not to remind you of it. Your favor by Mr. Garnett also came during ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... just a bit drowsy. I managed to make away with the second without inhaling much of the smoke, for my head was in a whirl by this time. It wasn't so much that I was afraid I couldn't take care of myself as it was that I was afraid that it would blunt the keenness of my observation and ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... But, when Anderson took hold of him and placed the wounded finger on a block, and Dad faced him with the hammer and a blunt, rusty old chisel, he ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... from damp, they should be held near the fire for a few minutes, and restored to their natural state by the hand or a soft brush, or re-curled with a blunt knife, dipped in very hot water. Furs and feathers not in constant use should be wrapped up in linen washed in lye. From May to September they are subject to being made ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... homes of anchorites. To fit themselves for life, and with a special eye to acquire the art of smoking, it was even common for the boys to harbor there; and you might have seen a single penny pickwick, honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, bestrew the glen with these apprentices. Again, you might join our fishing parties, where we sat perched as thick as solan geese, a covey of little anglers, boy and girl, angling over each other's head, to the much entanglement of lines and loss of podleys ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... recommended to the commons the consideration of proper means for lessening the national debt, was a prelude to the famous South-Sea act, which became productive of so much mischief and infatuation The scheme was projected by sir John Blunt, who had been bred a scrivener, and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility, and boldness requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan to Mr. Aislaby, the chancellor of the exchequer, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... twenty-four hours with a thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle, which took apart for packing, and was put together ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Blunt the passions, the feelings and the emotions by over-indulgence, by vice and dissipation, and the royal guests desert the banquet hall, the doors of the soul creak on their hinges; and in place of the "music of the spheres" you have ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... the rolling flood, Where hardy warriors stain'd with blood Drop their blunt arms, and join the dead, Grey billows curling o'er their head: Mangled with wounds, and vainly brave, At once they sink ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... Susan Bailey, a gentle, frail little body also joined our circle, adding one more pair of eyes to those whose scrutiny must have been somewhat trying to the bride. To meet these blunt, forthright folk at such a table without betraying amusement or surprise, required tact, but the New Daughter succeeded in winning them all, even Mary, the cook, who ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of which show the same sensitive apprehension of unusual cases and delicate relations, and reveal a truth which would be hidden from the hasty or blunt observer."—Boston Transcript. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... grew up behind low palisades. Tall roods, and holy images, to which we owe the names of existing thoroughfares (Rood-lane and Lady-lane [38]), where the ways crossed, attracted the curious and detained the pious. Spires there were not then, but blunt, cone-headed turrets, pyramidal, denoting the Houses of God, rose often from the low, thatched, and reeded roofs. But every now and then, a scholar's, if not an ordinary, eye could behold the relics of Roman splendour, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visited every spot associated with Trennahan,—not once, but many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinct that the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third day she had ordered the earlier associations on duty, and managed to confuse them somewhat with those which had held possession for so brief a time. She was determined to succeed. She had no right to love the husband ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... robbery at the bank today." The sheriff could be pretty blunt, and he shot the charge straight, ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... Fleda of the Druses sometimes," she said, and she laid a hand upon the woman's breast. "Lady love—lady love," said the blunt woman with the pockmarked face, "you've had the worst fright to-night that you'll ever have." She caught Fleda's hand and peered into it. "Yes, it's happiness for you now, and on and on," she added exultingly, and with the fortune-teller's air. "You've passed the danger place, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... There was never a hint of hostility, never a trace of resentment or envy. And always, too, Sears emerged from one of those encounters with a feeling that he had had a little the worst of it, that his seafaring manners and blunt habit of speech made him appear at a marked disadvantage in comparison with this easy, suave, gracefully elegant personage. And so many of those meetings took place in the presence of ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... them he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and drove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard to Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, and you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, long upper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong; with respect you beheld him put on the rest of his uniform as ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... common piece of red earthenware. And how had the potter made that peculiar marking under the surface of the glaze? I touched it with my stick, when the pot-handle drew itself out of loop shape and slowly disappeared under some dead furze, showing the blunt tail of a blindworm. I have heard people say that the red ones are venomous, but the grey harmless. The red are spiteful, and if you see them in the road you should always kill them. It is curious that in places where blindworms are often ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... revengeful; the lady gay is simply gay, a mere insipid character, and introduced by the poet, no doubt, as a contrast to the turbulent and busy character of the other lady. The boisterous captain is a well-drawn and a well-supported character. He is rugged, honest, blunt, illiterate, and gallant. But it is the character of the hero Taylor which is drawn and sustained with the most art and nature. In the first place he is brave, although some have contradicted this, by saying that he ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Wright soothingly. "I agreed to that only if there'd been something wrong. I'm not satisfied yet." He turned to Susan, said in his gruff, blunt way: ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... a brave, blunt fellow, and he hated the ways of Loki, his lies and his deceit. He liked best the way of warriors—the thundering charge, the flash of weapons, and the heavy blow; but without the hammer he could not fight the giants hand to hand. Loki's advice seemed wise, and he decided ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... didn't care for you, and I wasn't hypocrite enough to pretend I did. That's blunt, but you used to admire ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... hanged before I do," was Dennis's blunt response, and with an "Oh, very well," Bob Dashwood grabbed the leather sling, and, lowering himself to the ground, was caught by Tiddler in ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... no such meaning. On his behalf it must be acknowledged that he had no meaning whatever when he came again and again to Ardkill. Had he examined himself in the matter he would have declared that he liked the mother quite as well as the daughter. When Lady Mary Quin had thrown at him her very blunt arrow he had defended himself on that plea. Accident, and the spirit of adventure, had thrust these ladies in his path, and no doubt he liked them the better because they did not live as other people lived. Their solitude, the close vicinity of the ocean, the feeling that in meeting them ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... fell, they two leaned on St. Michel's bridge of the River Lys. Just under the loiterers, canals that wound their way from inland cities to the sea were dark and noiseless, as if sleep held them. The blunt-nosed boats of wide girth that trafficked down those calm reaches were as motionless as the waters that floated them. Out of the upper air, bells from high towers dropped their carillon on a population making ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... natural pause in the termination of its own pursuits? May the business of civil society be accomplished, and may the occasion of farther exertion be removed? Do continued disappointments reduce sanguine hopes, and familiarity with objects blunt the edge of novelty? Does experience itself cool the ardour of the mind? May the society be again compared to the individual? And may it be suspected, although the vigour of a nation, like that of a natural body, does ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... extreme parsimony, was obliged to consent, but as the point of the pencil was very blunt, desired the boy to get her a knife that she might cut it. He obeyed, but said "Pray Miss, take care it ben't known, for master don't do such a thing once in a year, and if he know'd I'd got you the knife, he'd go nigh to give me a good ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... time every person in the rendezvous had come up, and waited with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then I was out ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... found them, during my stay at Duelmen, the straightest people I ever had anything to do with. They think the same of us. Feldwebels and others who have had to do with us both assured me that they much preferred the British to any other class of prisoner, because we are blunt and true, say what we mean, and stick to what we say. Certainly the Germans are the most English of the great peoples on ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... should go on unbroken. He was rather glad, on the whole, not to hear that she had declared herself willing to regard him as a brother. Those dreadful old phrases only make the refusal ten times worse. Probably the most wholesome way in which a refusal could be put to a sensitive young man is the blunt, point-blank declaration that never, under any circumstances, could there be a thought of the girl's loving him and having him for her husband. Then a young man who is worth his salt is thrown back upon his own mettle, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Clean wax tablets.—Ver. 521. Before the tablet was written upon, the wax was 'vacua,' empty; or, as we say of writing-paper, 'clean.' There was a blunt end to the upper part of the 'stylus,' or iron pen, with which the wax was smoothed down when ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... matters of a totally different nature, with which Sir Terence must proceed to deal at once; but their gravity was completely outweighed in the adjutant's mind by this deplorable affair of Lieutenant Butler's. Without wishing to convey an impression that the blunt and downright O'Moy was gifted with any undue measure of shrewdness, it must nevertheless be said that he was quick to perceive what fresh thorns the occurrence was likely to throw in a path that was already thorny enough ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... sharpening the pen which is to slay Christianity. But Christianity will escape Mr. Poole's pen. It, has outlived many such attacks in the past. We shall see, however, what kind of nib he uses, fine or blunt?' The journalist followed the butler down the long library overlooking green sward to a quiet nook, if he might venture to speak of Mr. Walter Poole's study as a quiet nook. It seemed to surprise him that Mr. Walter Poole should rise from his writing-table ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... house seemed irksome to him now, and he preferred to submit to a hard but short exertion which soon permitted him to follow his former occupation of herding the cattle, although it was beginning to be unsuitable for his age and at times drew upon him ridicule. That he silenced, however, by a few blunt reprimands with his fist. So people grew accustomed to seeing him, now dressed up and jolly as a recognized village beau and leader of the young folks, and again as a ragged boy slinking along, lonely and dreamily, behind his cows, or lying in a forest clearing, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... ... "that she was the wife of an injured friend! a friend who passionately loved her, and had tenderly obliged him, rather heightened his desires" (i., 200; ii., 54, 83). The mistress is said to be Mrs. Blunt, daughter of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... offered us for credence, we are apt to inquire of the teller if he "sees any green" in our optics, accompanying the query by an elevation of the right eyelid with the forefinger. Now, regarding this merely as a "fast" custom, I marvelled greatly at finding a similar action noted by worthy Master Blunt, as conveying to his mind an analogous meaning. I can scarcely credit its antiquity; but what other meaning can I understand from the episode he {363} relates? He had been trying to pass himself off as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... two or three times daily. If the swelling is extreme between the jaws, so as to interfere with the animal's breathing, it is well to lance the abscess if a soft spot can be found. Just cut through the skin with a knife; then use a clean blunt instrument to locate the pus cavity. Otherwise, severe ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... opened, and Thrasea appeared alone upon the threshold, with a mysterious expression on his blunt features. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of travel, one returns to England one can taste, smell, feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral—the curious, damp, blunt, good-humored, happy-go-lucky, old-established, slow-seeming formlessness of everything. You hail a porter, you tell him you have plenty of time; he muddles your things amiably, with an air of "It'll be all right," ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... end of it all! Then there is shaving. I have to get shaved because Euphemia hates me with a blue jowl, and I will admit I hate myself. Yet, if I were left alone, I do not think my personal taste would affect my decision; I will say that for myself. Either I hack about with a blunt razor—my razors are always blunt—until I am a kind of Whitechapel Horror, and with hair in tufts upon my chin like the top of a Bosjesman's head, or else I have to spend all the morning being dabbed about the face by a barber with damp ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus. And the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already before this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against him, to blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether prove a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him; who, indeed, though less skilled ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... with it; for it was courteous, and yet forcible; pleasant, yet overwhelming; facetious, yet austere; sententious, and yet vehement: like Socrates, in the description of Plato, who seemed outwardly to those about him to be but a simple, talkative, blunt fellow; whilst at the bottom he was full of such gravity and matter, as would even move tears, and touch the very hearts of his auditors. And, therefore, I know not what has persuaded some to say, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... grasped his half-sword in both hands, so as to put his whole weight behind it, and made a lunge in the direction of a muttered curse. The curse gave way to a roar of pain and rage, and Colden's second follower dropped, spurting blood in the darkness, his shoulder gashed horribly by the blunt end of Peyton's imperfect weapon. Harry now ran back to the parlor, to deal with Colden in the light, the latter's greater length of weapon giving a greater searching-power in the darkness. In the parlor Elizabeth stood waiting in suspense. Sam was sitting ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "Blunt enough," admitted Mr. Hammond, but without excitement. "Let's see: You have a paper of some kind, I ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... out of England before, seemed strange and glamorous. The chalets, with their long wide burnt-brown wooden balconies and low-hanging eaves jutting far beyond the walls; these bright dresses of the peasant women; the friendly little cream-coloured cows, with blunt, smoke-grey muzzles. Even the feel in the air was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth that lay so lightly as it were on the surface of frozen stillness; and the special sweetness of all places at the foot of mountains—scent of pine-gum, burning larch-wood, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Pandulfo, "I had almost forgot to tell thee, that the crowd would have poured themselves hither, so impatient were they to see thee; but I bade Cecco del Vecchio mount the rostrum, and tell them, in his blunt way, that it would be unseemly at the present time, when thou wert engaged in the Capitol on civil and holy affairs, to rush in so great a body into thy presence. Did I ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... own hands and dismissed them with great rapidity. He knew what they wanted; he knew what recommendations were strong and what were weak; who was to be treated with deference and who was to be sent away abruptly; where a blunt refusal was safe, and where a pledge was allowable. The President even trusted him with the unfinished manuscript of the Inaugural Address, which Ratcliffe returned to him the next day with such notes and suggestions ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... had been obliged to exert an influence on his behalf, which he feared might make him obnoxious to the accusation of partiality. He considered that the lad had worth, substance, and promise far beyond his fellows; but his blunt, haughty manners, impatience of rough jokes, and rude avoidance of the unrefined, made him the object of their dislike, so that it was probable that he would thrive much better abroad and in authority; and at his age, he was more likely to adapt ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... desire that his handmaiden should be blunt? Well, I know that there is no truth in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it is true, she gave a somewhat less blunt, but nevertheless a decided negative reply, although it was gilded over ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... jet, and while it was moving forward at the lowest possible rate of speed. When that goal was achieved, they flopped solidly flat, slid a few feet on their metal bellies, and lay still. Some hit hard and tried to dig into the earth with their blunt noses. Joe finally saw one touch with no forward speed at all. It seemed to try to settle down vertically, as a rocket takes off. That one fell over backward and wallowed with its belly plates in the air before it rolled over on ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... on matters of business, with either of these individuals, for whom I entertained the most sincere attachment. They, like myself, were not in the good graces of Marshal Davoust, who could not pardon the one for his incontestable superiority of talent, and the other for his blunt honesty. On the receipt of M. Bouvier's letter I carried it to the Due de Rovigo, whose situation made him perfectly aware of the intrigues which had been carried on against me since I had left Hamburg ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... have something to say to that, Madame," was the Commodore's blunt reply, "and Mr. Attorney-General, here," he added, "ought to arrest you for wishing to consort with seditious agitators ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... or cut off bottles, lamp chimneys, etc., first make a scratch as before; then heat the handle of a file, or a blunt iron—in a blast-lamp flame by preference—till it is red-hot, and at once press it against the scratch till the glass begins to crack. The fracture can be led in any direction by keeping the iron just in front of it. Re-heat the iron as often ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... the alternative of being with him on decent and distant terms, or of breaking off with him altogether. The first of these courses might perhaps have been the wisest, but the other was the most congenial to the blunt and plain character of Hartley, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... elements in human nature, on which a social system could be safely founded, were its worst propensities. They had been taught and believed that greed and self-seeking were all that held mankind together, and that all human associations would fall to pieces if anything were done to blunt the edge of these motives or curb their operation. In a word, they believed—even those who longed to believe otherwise—the exact reverse of what seems to us self-evident; they believed, that is, that the anti-social ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than Goldsmith's. There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good enough—I don't say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation—"days in which (said the Squire in his own blunt way), as I have never in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry mine into the family pew. He shan't be growling out hypocritical responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." So the Squire and his demon stayed at ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... joint committee of Congress on the Conduct of the Present War;[70] but at least one piece of evidence was not, at that time, forthcoming, a piece that, in a certain sense, might be taken to exonerate the whites. It came to the knowledge of General Blunt during the summer and was the Indians' own confession. It bore only indirectly upon the actual atrocities but showed that the red men were quite equal to making their own plans in fighting and were not to be relied upon to do things decently ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... go into the icy water again, enfeebled by fasts as he was, might perhaps carry the guilt of suicide, he scourged himself till the blood ran, and so lay down smarting. And when exhaustion began to blunt the smart down to a throb, that moment the present was away, and the past came smiling back. He sat with Margaret at the duke's feast, the minstrels played divinely, and the purple fountains gushed. Youth and love reigned in each heart, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... seen M. Lescarbault,' says Moigno, 'so small, so simple, so modest, and so timid, in order to understand the emotion with which he was seized, when Leverrier, from his great height, and with that blunt intonation which he can command, thus addressed him: "It is then you, sir, who pretend to have observed the intra-mercurial planet, and who have committed the grave offence of keeping your observation secret for nine months. I warn you that I have come here with the intention of doing justice ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... are you? Sir Walter Blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and saw it disappear in the haze round the end of the mountain. From this I got my first clear impression of the topography of the country surrounding our objective point. Buckskin mountain ran its blunt end eastward to the Canyon—in fact, formed a hundred miles of the north rim. As it was nine thousand feet high it still held the snow, which had occasioned our lengthy desert ride to get back of the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... with considerable attention, and it occasioned me many reflections. To my way of thinking it contained a very interesting picture of a blunt, downright, honest mind. "It is a melancholy consideration," said I to myself; "but such is man! To have judged from appearances one would have said, this is a fellow to have taken fortune's buffets and rewards with an incorruptible mind. And ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... faint curling at the corners of his lips, they were all too dull to wonder at it. As for me, the boy, I took the changing phenomena of life pretty well for granted, and wasted little of my golden time speculating about such things. But as I look back now on the blunt end of those Urkey days, I seem to see Minister Malden growing smaller as he comes nearer, and Mate Snow growing larger—Mate Snow browbeating the congregation with a more and more menacing righteousness—Minister Malden, in his protecting shadow, leaner, grayer, his eyes burning with an ever fiercer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had a decidedly inharmonious one early in January of 184-, and Deacon Callendar had spoken his mind with his usual blunt directness. He had been a good deal nettled at the minister's attitude, for, instead of seconding his propositions, Dr. Morrison had sat with a faraway, indifferent look, as if the pending discussion was entirely out of his range of interest. John ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... mind he sought his uncle, and by him was again led before the Archbishop. His reticence and timidity dispersed by his great sorrow, the distraught boy faced the high ecclesiastic with questions terribly blunt. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... very easy for a man in his sermon to learn [teach] his parishioners how to dissolve gold, of what, and how the stuff is made. Now, to ring the bells and call the people on purpose together, would be but a blunt business; but to do it neatly, and when nobody looked for it, that is the rarity and art ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... the house well, for it is distinguished from all others in Prague, both by its shape and its oddly ornamented, unnaturally narrow front. It is built in the figure of an irregular triangle, the blunt apex of one angle facing the little square, the sides being erected on the one hand along the Karlsgasse and on the other upon a narrow alley which leads away towards the Jews' quarter. Overhanging passages are built out over this dim lane, as though to facilitate the interior communications ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... instruction given consisted in oratorical jousts; the masters disputed among themselves, and the pupils did likewise. In a time when paper was scarce and parchment precious, disputes replaced our written exercises. The weapons employed in these jousts were blunt ones; but as in real tournaments where "armes courtoises" were used, disputants were sometimes carried away by passion, and the result was a true battle: "They scream themselves hoarse, they lavish unmannerly expressions, abuse, threats, upon each other. They ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... not speak of her griefs to Harry Esmond, my lord was by no means reserved when in his cups, and spoke his mind very freely, bidding Harry in his coarse way, and with his blunt language, beware of all women as cheats, jades, jilts, and using other unmistakable monosyllables in speaking of them. Indeed, 'twas the fashion of the day as I must own; and there's not a writer of my time of any note, with the exception of poor ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forward beside her. His curious eyes at once perceived the hideous, thickset lizard that lay flattened upon the shadowed sand as if in a torpor. The reptile's dirty orange-mottled black body was as loathsome as its venomous blunt-nosed head. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... home with but one thought in my mind. The Archduchess had put into words—very plain, blunt words—what as yet I had scarcely dared harbour in my mind as a fugitive idea. She had done me in that respect good service. She had brought to a sudden crisis an issue which it was folly any longer to evade. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... flight. He had led all Venice to believe this wonderful new singer favoured his addresses. Some, indeed, maintained for a time that, jealous of his treasure, the count had hidden her in one of his country houses. But when they heard Porpora say, with a blunt openness which could never deceive, that he had advised his pupil to go to Germany and wait for him, there was nothing left but to try and find out the motives for this ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... forward, seized it by the throat. The creature made little or no resistance; and having dragged it up to the fire, we saw that it was a capybara, or water-hog. The doctor remarked that it was the largest of all living rodents, being upwards of three feet in length, and enormously fat. It had a blunt muzzle, with the eyes set high in the head; was destitute of a tail; and its toes were so united as to enable it to swim with ease. It was of a blackish grey hue, with rather long hairs, of a yellow tinge, falling thickly over ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... into the silver cup in which she had mixed the powder—it was empty! "The God of Righteousness hath punished him!" exclaimed Amine; "but O! that this man should have been my father! Yes! it is plain. Frightened at his own wicked, damned intentions, he poured out more wine from the flagon, to blunt his feelings of remorse, and not knowing that the powder was still in the cup, he filled it up and drank himself—the death he meant for another! For another!—and for whom? one wedded to his own daughter!—Philip! my husband! Wert thou not my ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... The words were blunt, perhaps all the more so for the unwonted touch of fiery feeling which Olga was quick to detect in their utterance. They moved her strangely. It was almost as if he had flung open his soul to her, challenging her to enter and satisfy herself. And ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Pioneer there were now so many workers that it seemed they must forever be in one another's way. But the work was progressing with extreme rapidity. Already there projected from her blunt nose a slender rod of shining metal which was the projector of one of the destructive rays whose generator and auxiliaries were being installed under the supervision of the government experts. The force had been trebled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, and many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer—it don't take a rover who has knocked ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... person towards the fortune of an essay than the writer. Even 'the prosperity of a jest,' as Shakespeare tells us, lies less in its own merit than 'in the ear of him that hears it.' If he should happen to be unusually obtuse, the wittiest jest perishes—the most pointed is found blunt. So, with regard to books, should the reader on whom we build prove a sandy and treacherous foundation, the whole edifice, 'temple and tower,' must come to the ground. Should it happen, for instance, that the reader, inflicted upon ourselves for our sins, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Winfield Scott had many severe critics and not a few personal enemies. By these, he was said to be arrogant, blunt in manners, opinionated, and also a military martinet with terribly unvolunteer ideas relating to the rigid discipline required for success in war. He had seen, however, a deal of hard service in the war of 1812 and otherwise, and his military record was without ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... was taxed to its utmost, but he fully realized how deeply his old friend was wounded; and the knowledge that his own interest in Allen was in reality a genuine service to Sanford himself served to blunt ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Even the blunt Duke of Wellington wrote as follows to the Count d'Orsay under date of April 9, 1849: "I rejoice at the prosperity of France and of the success of the president of the Republic. Every thing tends towards ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and thinks the articles collected may have been made rather for sale than otherwise. Of the boys, Mr. Murdoch says: "As soon as a boy is able to walk, his father makes him a little bow suited to his strength, with blunt arrows, with which he plays with the other boys, shooting at marks—for instance the fetal reindeer brought home from the spring hunt—till he is old enough to shoot small birds ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... consider maturely in what manner he should address the Dwarf, in order to extract from him the knowledge which he supposed him to be in possession of concerning the authors of his misfortunes. Hobbie, though blunt, plain of speech, and hot of disposition, like most of his countrymen, was by no means deficient in the shrewdness which is also their characteristic. He reflected, that from what he had observed on the memorable night when the Dwarf was ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... ready for immediate planting: this concession once belonged to Dr. Ross, of Axim. Opposite it the mining-ground has been leased for prospecting by Messieurs Gillett and Selby. The notable feature of the river is now the prawn-basket, a long cone closed at the blunt apex: the Ancobra is a 'Camarones,' supplying a first-rate article for curries. This is the work of the uninteresting little villages, scatters of mere crates built in holes worn in the bush; all disappear during the floods, and are rebuilt ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Zabara's method that makes it open to doubt, whether the additional stories referred to as printed with the Constantinople edition did really emanate from our author's pen. These additions are sharply misogynist; the poet does not even attempt to blunt their point. They include "The Widow's Vow" (the widow, protesting undying constancy to her first love, eagerly weds another) and "Woman's Contentions." In the latter, a wicked woman is denounced with the wildest invective. She has demoniac traits; her touch is fatal. A condemned criminal is offered ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... widest at region of bridge; margin entire; dorsal surface smooth; anterior margin of carapace lacking tubercles; blunt vertebral ridge evident anteriorly; maximum length, 53.1 mm; greatest width, 46.3 mm; ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... group of the younger school, d'Indy, Charpentier and their set, were gathered together to prepare a festival for Prince Gregoriev, showering on him attentions of every kind; and laboring tirelessly to convince him of their admiration and their "sympathetic appreciation." No blunt comment or criticism here! All was smoothly, exquisitely polished: urbanely, beautifully French. But within a week or two Kashkine noted that Ivan was turning inward again towards himself and his habitual solitude. And he knew that presently these complacent fellows ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... thirty or forty cubic feet, with pools and waterfalls. A tree that stands all along the banks here must be very fond of water; its roots lie close-packed down the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to make often a corrugated walk, each root ending in a blunt tuft of filaments, plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small tributaries from the left or western side—the whole plateau having a smartish inclination to the east; one of the tributaries in a handsome ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was too much in earnest to resent my blunt speech. "Look here, Bev, is that magic seed? And did you get ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not essentially require any current of the medium in which the brush appears: the current almost always occurs, but is a consequence of the brush, and will be considered hereafter (1562-1610.). On holding a blunt point positively charged towards uninsulated water, a star or glow appeared on the point, a current of air passed from it, and the surface of the water was depressed; but on bringing the point so near that sonorous brushes passed, then the current of air instantly ceased, and ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... Jane and Mammy sincerely hoped to eradicate my besetting sin, by such blunt remarks as the former; but no course could have been less wise than the one which they took. I knew very well that I was neither a fright, an Indian, nor a cannibal; and the pains which they took to convince me to the contrary led me to give myself credit for much more beauty ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... had no other arms than his regulation sword; and his aide-de-camp, my redoubtable self; no other weapon of offence than a little crooked dirk, so considerably curved, that it would not answer the purpose of a dagger to stab with, and so blunt, that I am sure, though it might separate, it could not cut through a plum-pudding. Though I was approaching pari passu with my commander to a parapet, where there there was no "imminent deadly breach," I was so much ashamed of my side-arms, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet:[9.B.] Woe to the man that walks in public view Without of loyalty this token true: Sharp is the knife, and sudden is the stroke; And sorely would the Gallic foeman rue, If subtle poniards, wrapt beneath the cloke, Could blunt the sabre's edge, or clear ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... dog's head appeared, followed by a tail, which waggled so beseechingly for leave to come farther that Clover, who liked dogs, put out her hand at once. He was not pretty, being of a pepper-and-salt color, with a blunt nose and no particular sort of a tail, but looked good-natured; and Clover fondled him cordially, while Mr. Eels took his cane out of his mouth to ask, "What kind of a dog is that, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... this." And the impatient man touched his forehead and his lips. "And who is there more competent than my disciple? There is the champion of our cause, a second cap of Hor, that overthrew the evil one with winged sunbeams, and you come and would clip his wings and blunt his claws! Alas, alas, my lords! will you never understand that a lion roars louder than a cat, and the sun shines brighter than an oil-lamp? Let Pentuar alone, I say; or you will do as the man ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Then, as Danny approached his ninth birthday, the old man had said, "They're teaching you too much at school, son. Too many wrong things, too many highfalutin' notions, too much just plain old hogwash. Why don't you kind of make yourself scarce for a few years?" It had been blunt and to the point. It had made Danny cry. He hadn't thought of what had happened that last day he'd seen his grand-uncle for years, but ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... deepened suddenly, as has been said, where the current had scoured the bank. With the nose of the little boat pulled well up in the mud, the stern sloped almost level with the surface of the stream. The blunt, slanting bow of the pirogue banged into the plank gunwale and slid over it. The force of the blow dragged the cock-boat to one side and wrenched it free of the shore. It floated at the end of a tether but the bow of the canoe pressed the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... as he spoke, and had he been wise he had better served his cause by talking in another vein. But love and jealousy had so addled what poor brains the Lord had bestowed upon him, that he floundered on, unmindful of any warning that took not the blunt shape of words. At length, however, she stemmed the flow of invective that ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... nature. I don't know just exactly how to put it. You may have noticed that I am rather awkward when it comes to saying the right thing at the right time. I have not been much accustomed to society, and I am rather a blunt man." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... touch to deepen scandal's tints With all the kind mendacity of hints, While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles, A thread of candour with a web of wiles; A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming, To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming; A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal, And without feeling mock at all who feel; With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,— A cheek ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the agent failed to detect it, the watchful eyes of Bat missed nothing. To him the danger signal lay in the curious flicker of his friend's eyelids. The sight impelled him. He jumped in and took up the challenge in the blunt fashion he ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... time I was again in my uniform, and I sat down, and smoked, and looked at Hungerford. His long gossip had been more or less detached, and I had said nothing. I understood that he was trying, in his blunt, honest way, to turn my thoughts definitely from Mrs. Falchion to Belle Treherne; and he never seemed to me such a good fellow as at that moment. I replied at last: "All right, Hungerford; I'll be your deputation, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that stick as though it were a club, swinging it like a baseball bat. That would be as silly as using an overhand stab with a dagger. He used it the way a fencer would use a foil, and the hard, blunt end of it sank into the first thug's solar plexus with all the drive of the Duke's right arm and shoulder behind it. The thug gave a hoarse scream as all the air was driven from his lungs, and ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... richest and most generous natures have been wanting in the graces of courtesy and politeness. As a rough rind sometimes covers the sweetest fruit, so a rough exterior often conceals a kindly and hearty nature. The blunt man may seem even rude in manner, and yet, at heart, be honest, kind, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... moon's last rim formed a golden sickle behind a blunt shoulder of rock; while over the eastward levels the topaz-yellow of an Indian dawn rushed at one stride to the zenith of heaven. In the clear light the girl's beauty took on a new distinctness, a new living ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... involved in your disgrace: she is received with blunt No's and Yes's, as dry as Brussells rusks, which she swallows with a slanting glance at you. "Monsieur's always ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was an affair ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Captain Major-General Arthur Major Sullivan Bellew, Dr. Benares, Maharaja of Bentinck, Lord William Bernard, Sir Charles Bertrand, Father Bhartpur, Raja of Bhopal, Begum of Biddulph, Brigadier-General M. Biddulph, Colonel Birbul Birsing, Sepoy Blackwood, Major Blanc, Dr. Blunt, Colonel Bogle, Captain Booth, Lieutenant Bourchier, General Sir George, K.C.B. Bowring, Mr. Lewin Brabazon, Lieutenant Brackenbury, General Bradshaw, Dr. Brasyer, Colonel Bridge, Captain Bright, John, The Right Hon. General ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... did not comprehend their full meaning. He had not a feeling that they were free, but that something awful at the same time had happened which filled him with uneasiness and weighed upon his bosom like a heavy stone. Finally his thoughts began to grow blunt. For a long time he gazed at the big moths hovering above the flame and in the end he nodded and dozed. Kali also dozed, but awoke every little while and threw twigs ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 'to the temple of the King of Hell and burn incense. We can then tell the King our grudge and ask him how it was that, when he bade us receive life and become human beings, he only conferred a glib tongue on that vixen and that we were only allotted such blunt mouths?' The eight listened to her plan, and were quite enraptured with it. 'This proposal is faultless!' they assented. On the next day, they sped in a body to the temple of the God of Hell, and after burning ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... years, however it hold in youth. I swear by truth and knighthood that I gave No cause, not willingly, for such a love: To this I call my friends in testimony, Her brethren, and her father, who himself Besought me to be plain and blunt, and use, To break her passion, some discourtesy Against my nature: what I could, I did. I left her and I bade her no farewell; Tho', had I dreamt the damsel would have died, I might have put my wits to some rough use, And help'd her from herself.'" ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... and seemed to decide instantly upon the course of action she should pursue, or, rather, the course which she had previously proposed to herself. She saw clearly, and had long known that in the tactics and stratagems of life, her blunt but honest father was no match at all for the deep hypocrisy and deceitful plausibility of Sir Robert Whitecraft, the consequence was, that she allowed her father to take his own way, without either remonstrance or contradiction. She knew very well ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... addressed loved not the shuttlecock, thought one woman but falser than another, and made parade of blunt speech. Now a shrug of the shoulder accompanied his answer. "The Star went down months ago, off the Grand Canary, in ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... them being shot through the head, could no longer plunge under water, but began to beat about furiously on the surface, and tinged the sea with its blood. It seemed to be about three yards long, and was slender and blunt-headed, from whence our sailors called it the Bottle-nose, a name which Dale applies to a very different fish, the beaked whale, of which the beak or nose resembles the neck of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... merit criticism must place the whole of the banquet scene. The intoxicated vanity of Alexander—his soft and puerile susceptibility of gross and fulsome adulation, his idle contest with the blunt old Clytus, his fury and cruel murder of that brave old soldier, and his outrageous grief and self reproach for that murder, in all of which the fiery brain of the poet has urged the passions to the utmost verge of nature, Mr. Cooper was all for which the most sanguine ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
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