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More "Tinder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each letter in small pieces, placed the whole in the grate where dead cinders still remained, and with a vesta set a light to them. For a few moments they blazed fiercely up the chimney, then died out, leaving only black tinder. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in the furnace did the rest. What with the bundles of dried herbs which burnt like so much tinder and the woodwork, the panelled walls and furniture, nothing could save ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... busy in preparing the boats for active work. In each boat were stowed two lines, two hundred fathoms in length, coiled away in their respective tubs ready for use; four harpoons, and as many lances; a keg, containing several articles, among which were a lantern and tinder-box; three small flags, denominated whifts, for the purpose of inserting into a dead whale, when the boats might have to leave it in chase of others; and two cirougues— pieces of board of a square form with a handle in the centre, so that they could ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the door, they would force their way in immediately; upon which the Collier turned round and said, as if speaking to his wife, "Come, dame, you must get up and strike a light, and we will let the gentlemen in presently." There was then some pretended delay in finding the tinder-box, and at length the Collier began striking the steel with the flint, and, after bestowing a few curses on the dampness of the tinder, intentionally struck down the tinderbox, tinder and all, upon which he said, "There, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... necessary to form a syndicate. Three hundred thousand dollars came into the club's account at the first appeal. The work began under the superintendence of the most celebrated aeronaut of the United States, Harry W. Tinder, immortalized by three of his ascents out of a thousand, one in which he rose to a height of twelve thousand yards, higher than Gay Lussac, Coxwell, Sivet, Croce-Spinelli, Tissandier, Glaisher; another in which he had crossed America ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche, the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the dike. Now what had reached being must ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... brain, If thou wouldst have me burn and weep for thee! If it be true thou livest alone, Amor, On the sweet-bitter tears of human hearts, In an old man thou canst not wake desire; Souls that have almost reached the other shore Of a diviner love should feel the darts, And be as tinder ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... half-lunatic Nigger, who was not in my reckoning, nor in Swope's, who put the match to the tinder and upset such carefully laid plans. As I feared, the revolt of the crew blazed up immediately. My shipmates were eager, too eager. As it turned out, their precipitancy was to cost them their chance of victory, for they began to riot while the three ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... captaincy of the boat crew, on which I pulled stroke, and I'm still hitting the water when she gives the word, though it now looks as if we are both adrift on the high and uncharted seas—or sitting on the lid of a tinder-box, juggling lighted torches. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... deck again twilight had fallen, but far back on the horizon was a tiny blur—the Silver Star. As Jack gazed back at her, she vanished below the horizon as suddenly as an extinguished spark in a piece of tinder. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... as he calmly lighted his pipe by means of a German tinder-box, and replied, 'This is my carriage. When things are flat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy myself. I am ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... MOTHER OR SISTER.—Young men, it can never tinder any circumstances be right for you to do to a woman that, which, if another man did to your mother or sister, you could never forgive! The very thought is revolting. Let us suppose a man guilty of this shameful sin, and I apprehend that each of us would feel ready to shoot the villain. We are not ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the right side, with holes and pools of the sweetest water. Here "green grow the rushes," especially the big-headed Kasb (Arundo donax); the yellow-tipped Namas or flags (Scirpus holoschnus) form a dense thicket; the Ushr, with its cork-like bark which makes the best tinder, is a tree, not a shrub; and there are large natural plantations of the saffron-flowered, tobacco-like Verbascum, the Arab's Uzn el-Humr ("Donkey's Ear"). Add scattered clusters of date-trees, domineering over clumps of fan-palm; and, lastly, marvellous to relate, a few hundred feet of greensward, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... then been concerned with the outward manifestation of war—cannon, cholera, shell, and the green glittering trees of the forest itself. But the war had made progress since then. It had advanced out of material things into the very souls of men. It was no longer the forest of bark and tinder with which the chiefs of this world had to deal, but, to adapt the Russian proverb itself, "with the dark forest of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... they are the firemen of the islands and by their effective work have repeatedly checked conflagrations, which are of frequent occurrence and tend to be very destructive in this country, where most of the houses are built of bamboo and nipa palm, and where roofs become dry as tinder during the long period when there is little or no rain. They have aided in combating pests of locusts, and, in short, have been ready to meet almost any kind of an emergency which ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... easy. Everything had been soaked by the rain of the previous night, and a bit of dry grass could scarcely be found. At length he procured a little; and by rubbing it in the damp gunpowder which he had extracted from his pistol, and drying it in the sun, he formed a sort of tinder that caught fire after ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... difficulty attendant upon flint and steel and burnt rag, they had to be kept alight from morning till night and from night till morning. If a fire went out it was a woful business to start it again with the reluctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an easier way, of going round to a neighbor and borrowing a shovelful of hot embers wherewith to kindle the blackened hearth. But in villages built for the most part of wood this might well be regarded as a dangerous process. So the law did regard it, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the fire. Nearly all families had some form of a flint and steel,—a method of obtaining fire which has been used from time immemorial by both civilized and uncivilized nations. This always required a flint, a steel, and a tinder of some vegetable matter to catch the spark struck by the concussion of flint and steel. This spark was then blown into a flame. Among the colonists scorched linen was a favorite tinder to catch the spark of fire; ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... is so bad, the ships that are driven about on the sea (death is unwelcome, men love to live) look about them and see this fish; they ween it is an island. They are very glad of it, and with all their might they draw towards it, make the ships fast, and all go ashore. With stone and steel and tinder they make a good fire on this monster, and warm themselves well, and eat and drink; the whale feels the fire and makes them sink, for he quickly dives to the bottom, he kills them ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... This Doubleday allowed, posting himself as watchmen at the door. No sooner was Fawkes alone than he took the opportunity to rid himself of the chief evidences against him, by flinging the match and tinder out of his window, which overlooked the river. In another minute Sir Thomas Knevet and his men entered ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... cabin to strike a light, which he obtained by a piece of iron and flint, with some fine dry moss for tinder. While he was so employed, my eyes were fixed on the vessel, wondering what it could be. It moved through the water, turned this way and that. "It must be alive," thought I; "is it a fish or a bird?" As I watched the vessel, the sun was going down, and there ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... only allude to amadou, or German tinder, which is prepared in Northern Europe from Polyporus fomentarius, Fr., cut in slices, dried, and beaten until it is soft. This substance, besides being used as tinder, is made into warm caps, chest protectors, and other articles. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... elldr, fire: hence we have "At sla elld ur tinnu," to strike fire from flint; which approaches very near to a tinder-box. Ling, Icel., the heath or heather plant: ljung I take to be the same word. Gat, Icel. for way or opening; hence strand-gata, the opening of the strand or creek. Tjarn, tiorn, Icel., well exemplified in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... often a great dissimilitude between his fair captivator, as she appeared to others and as she seemed when invested with the attributes he gave her." "My heart," he himself, speaking of those days, observes, "was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other." Yet, it must be acknowledged that sufficient room exists for believing that Burns and his brethren of the West had very different notions of the captivating and the beautiful; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... so I knew that there was nothing for it but to gallop hard and try my luck elsewhere. I rode round the English picket, and then, as I heard nothing more of them, I concluded rightly that I had at last come through their defences. For five miles I rode south, striking a tinder from time to time to look at my pocket compass. And then in an instant—I feel the pang once more as my memory brings back the moment—my horse, without a sob or stagger, fell stone ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... occurred during our stay, by the thatch having, through long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder. The roofs became ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze. There is not a single inscription ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... piece of flint as we came along this morning," Will said, "and by means of one of these chisels we ought to be able to strike a light; a few dead leaves, finely crumbled up, should do instead of tinder." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... good supper at a cook-shop, sauntered about the streets for awhile, then sauntered slowly home, after buying a tinder box, with which to light my candies. I found my ladder dangling unnoticed, so I nimbly climbed to my room, pulling it up after me, like the savages in Polynesia. I lit my candles, intending to read; but I found that I was far too well inclined to mischief to pay much heed ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... ways, William, although, in most of them, tinder is necessary. The savages can produce fire by rubbing a soft piece of wood against a hard one. But we have gunpowder; and we have two ways of igniting gunpowder - one is by a flint and steel, and the other is by collecting the sun's rays into one ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... madman's cunning; for at a sudden thought he stopped, and the cursing tongue was silent. Five minutes later he left the place, closing the door carefully behind him; but before that time a red jet of flame, like the ravenous tongue of a famished beast, was lapping at a hastily assembled pile of tinder-dry furniture in one corner of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the cool judgment of Bob Quirk, violence would have resulted. The primitive mind is slow to resent an affront, and while the chief deputy had couched his last remarks in well-chosen language, his intimation that I was a fugitive from justice, and an outlaw in resisting arrest, was tinder to stubble. Knowing the metal of my outfit, I curbed the tempest within me, and relying on a brother whom I would gladly follow to death if need be, I waved hands off to my boys. "Now, men," said Bob to the deputies, "the easiest way out of this matter is the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... tinder grew dull and went out. For a long while I lay there, thinking, awed by the ways of God—so certain, so inscrutable. And understood how at the last all things must be revealed—even the momentary and lightest impulse, and every deepest and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... population had no food but this root. The food supply of a whole nation seemed on the point of being cut off. A loud demand was made for "the opening of the ports." By existing laws the ports admitted foreign grain tinder import duties varying in severity inversely with the fluctuating price of home-grown grain; thus a certain high level in the cost of corn was artificially maintained. These regulations, though framed for the protection of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... lane that bordered the big wheat-field. On this side was fallow ground for half the length of the section, and the other half was ripe barley, dry as tinder, and beyond that, in line with the burning fields, a quarter-section of blasted wheat. The men were there. Kurt saw at once that other men with horses and machines were also there. Then he recognized Olsen and ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... little girl is the subject. Of course that was ever so long ago, when there were no lucifer matches, and steel and tinder were used to light fires; when soda and saleratus had never been heard of, but people made their pearl ash by soaking burnt crackers in water; when the dressmaker and the tailor and the shoemaker went from house to house twice a year ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... be more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are afraid that she will catch fire by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... before nightfall from the village and sit down in a row, one behind the other, on the path. The man in front has a leaf-mat drawn like a hood over his head and back in order that the ghost may not touch him from behind unawares. In his hand he holds a glowing coal and some tinder, and as he puts the one to the other he calls to the ghost, "Come, take, take, take; come, take, take, take," and so on. Meantime his mates behind him are reckoning up the names of all the men near and far who are suspected ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... half-past eight, having completed the fixing of the smith's forge, his vice, and a wooden board or bench, which were also batted to a ledge of the rock, to the great joy of all, under a salute of three hearty cheers. From an oversight on the part of the smith, who had neglected to bring his tinder-box and matches from the vessel, the work was prevented from being continued for at least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Of bark, will make cloth; Its wood, boats and houses;— Its leaves are not loath To be used for a towel, A table-cloth, napkin; Its juice will make bird-lime, And tinder, its catkin. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... monument," ordered Garry, thus proving himself to be a real woodsman and Ranger, never forgetting that a stray spark or ember may smoulder for some little time and perhaps start a fire that would sweep through the forests as though they were so much tinder. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... collected at the end of the groove farthest from that part of the board on which he was kneeling. He then continued his operation; and in a short time the wood began to smoke, the sides of the groove becoming completely charred. On this he stopped and gathered the tinder over that part of the groove which appeared to be most strongly heated. After a few moments, it became manifest that the sawdust or tinder was ignited; and a gentle application of the breath now drew forth a flame which rose to the height of several inches. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man's heart as a match to tinder. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... fair amount of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my room reading, writing, or drawing. This room of mine soon became ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... wonder and alarm. All his instincts warned him that a new danger was at hand. The breath of the wind suddenly grew hot, and sparks carried by it blew past him. He knew, in an instant, that the forest was on fire behind him and that tinder dry, it would burn fast and furious. Changing from a walk to a run, he sped forward as swiftly as he could, while the flames suddenly sprang high, waved and leaped ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the life which Spinoza and the stoics reprove, and which is the exact opposite of that serene and contemplative life, always equable like the starlight, in which man lives at peace, and sees everything tinder its eternal aspect; the opposite also of the life of conscience, in which God alone speaks, and all self-will surrenders itself ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... normal and healthy boy, but the discussions, the debates, and the passions sweeping over the Union throughout the year had sifted into Pendleton also. The news today had merely struck fire to tinder prepared already, and, infused with the spirit of youth, he felt much excitement but no depression. Making a careful toilet he descended to the drawing room a little before the regular time. Although he was ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the darkness. He wanted to shout 'This way, Anne! I am here!' but he couldn't. At the horror of this chase, more ghastly in his imagination than if he could have seen it, the perspiration broke out on his forehead, while his throat was as dry as tinder. A last supreme scream was cut ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... roaring, a swishing; the storm, a shower which died away, leaving changing patches of blue in the lumpy sky, and all nature calm and pleased, but oh, so wet! Of course the fire was out in the lodge and nearly all the wood was wet. Now Quonab drew from a small cave some dry cedar and got down his tinder-box with flint and steel to light up; but a serious difficulty appeared at once—the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a morning of felicitous hopes. Shallow-brained cheerfulness, foolish dreams, unfounded hopes, you would say; and I will not venture to deny it: suspicions to that effect arose too frequently in my own mind. But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... to teach himself the mysteries of his new trade. While living in this solitary way he is detected by Mrs. Herne, an old gypsy woman, "one of the hairy ones," as she terms herself, who carried "a good deal of devil's tinder" about with her, and had a bitter grudge against the word- master. She hated him for having wormed himself, as she fancied, into the confidence of the gypsies and learned their language. She regarded him further, as the cause of differences between herself ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the other priest, "that at twenty you must indeed have been excitable, a veritable tinder-box, to have retained so much energy! Come, monsieur, try to calm yourself and have patience: you yourself admit it can only be ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... When all your alchemy, and your algebra, Your minerals, vegetals, and animals, Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades, Could not relieve your corps with so much linen Would make you tinder, but to see a fire; I gave you countenance, credit for your coals, Your stills, your glasses, your materials; Built you a furnace, drew you customers, Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside, A house to ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... man Tom stumble down the ladder, heard the sound of flint and steel, saw their two evil heads outlined against the glow of the tinder as they blew and, leaping upon them, I smote with my heavy ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... skins about her and had swept her into his arms. With her face crushed against his breast he lowered his head and dashed back into the fiery holocaust of the outer room. The cabin, with its pitch-filled logs, was like a box made of tinder, and a score of men could not have beat out the fire that was raging now. The wind beating from the west had kept it from reaching the door opening into the corral, but the pitch was hissing and smoking at the threshold ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... a whole candle, that I might not find myself in the dark when I rose, and exhausted in body and mind, was soon fast asleep. I must have slept many hours, for when I awoke I was in darkness—the candle had burnt out. I groped for the basket, and examined the contents with my hands, and found a tinder-box. I struck a light, and then feeling hungry and weak, refreshed myself with the eatables it contained, which were excellent, as well as the wine. I had replaced the remainder, when the key again turned in the door, and Melchior ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... settlement, where the deceased (Cox) and he were worked together in the same gang. Cox constantly entreated him to run away with him from that settlement, which he refused to do for a length of time. Cox having procured fishhooks, a knife, and some burnt rag for tinder, he at last agreed to go with him, to which he was powerfully induced by the apprehension of corporal punishment, for the loss of a shirt that had been stolen from him. For the first and second day they strayed through the forest; on the third made the beach, and travelled ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... forgotten now, so many extravagancies tread upon one another's heels, and hustle each its predecessor off the stage. Spirit-rapping is the last, and is spreading like wildfire throughout the land: some characters have so much tinder in their composition, that they catch in a moment. But it will soon go out—'tis like the crackling of thorns under the pot—a quick blaze for a moment, and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... appears, did actually burst forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... to her without being discovered. There was no time to be lost. I opened the door with the greatest facility and gained the opening into the back path. I locked the door after me, and brought the key with me for a short distance, then placed all the keys tinder a rock. I had no hat but only a black veil. I threw that over my head after the fashion of Italy and gained the outer gate. There were masons at work near the gate which was open and I passed through into the street without being questioned by ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... Old Heck flung at him. "Steer for steer, cow for cow, hoof for hoof—I'll put Quarter Circle KT critters against every brute you own that th' Ramblin' Kid lands his horse tinder the wire ahead ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... folded his epistle until it could be crumpled into an envelope. Riles sealed, stamped, and addressed it, and a moment later the dust was rising down the trail as the cowboy bore the fatal missive to town. The die was cast; the match had been set to the tinder, and the fire must now burn through to a finish, let ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... smudge, flames break from the wettest timber, and green moss blazes with a furious heat. You hastily gather handfuls of seemingly incombustible material and throw it on the fire, but the conflagration increases. Grass and green leaves hesitate for an instant and then flash up like tinder. The more you put on, the more your smudge rebels against its proper task of smudging. It makes a pleasant warmth, to encourage the black-flies; and bright light to attract and cheer the mosquitoes. Your effort ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... he, glancin' keen at me from Tinder his bushy eyebrows, "this Mrs. Bagstock seems to think we are using her badly. As a matter of fact, those Inter-Lake shareholders were lucky. We might have frozen them out altogether. You ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... they are identical in all points. I readily grant that Father Alexis uses his thumbs better; I admit, too, that he has a grain or two more of phosphorus in his brain, for you know the savants of to-day, at their own risk and peril, have discovered that the human mind is nothing but a phosphoric tinder-box." ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the world like the broken spout of an oil- can with a couple of pieces of nutmeg-grater soldered on, as strainers, at the lower end; nor the string of sapless charque beef, nor the pouchful of villanous tobacco, nor the paper for manufacturing it into cigarritos, nor the cow's-horn filled with tinder, and the flint and steel attached. Thus mounted, clothed, and equipped, he is ready for a gallop ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... fire were very far from ended. We had no difficulty in getting another spark to catch in another piece of this strange sort of tinder, of which we found great plenty near at hand. But it would not blaze. With the slightest breath it vanished almost as a flash of powder; and it was long before we hit upon anything that would do us any further good. ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... got to stop this clatter somehow. The stones are hot now. The whole thing'll burn up like tinder if we can't chock ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Pan-at-lee found this ancient cave homelike and familiar. There was less litter within than she had found without and what there was was mostly an accumulation of dust. Beside the doorway was the niche in which wood and tinder were kept, but there remained nothing now other than mere dust. She had however saved a little pile of twigs from the debris on the porch. In a short time she had made a light by firing a bundle of twigs and lighting others from ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not required to strain right against justice and honesty. What is the offence? How is our Lord the King or his subjects aggrieved? Those rags!—I know not what the splendid household of the Duke may require for matches and tinder; for this is all the value that can be attached to them. Shall we call for them back again, lest the Duke and the Duchess should lose their recovered treasure? I am not disposed to dispute their right; for even if they were the perquisite of the housekeeper, I am convinced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Salvador, tinder the title of the Greater Republic of Central America, when apparently on the threshold of a complete federal organization by the adoption of a constitution and the formation of a national legislature, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... heap of black tinder where some papers had been burnt weeks or perhaps months ago. There were cigar-ends lying about, showing that whoever had been ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... The powder is very inflammable, and when propelled in a hollow cone against lighted spirit of wine on tow at the other end by a sudden jerk, its flash serves to imitate lightning for stage purposes. It was formerly used as tinder for lighting fires with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... "Pennsylvania oil" at the grocer's for eight skilling, as a doubtful domestic experiment. Steel pens had not crowded out the old-fashioned goose-quill, and pen-knives meant just what their name implies. Matches were yet of the future. We carried tinder-boxes to strike fire with. People shook their heads at the telegraph. The day of the stage-coach was not yet past. Steamboat and railroad had not come within forty miles of the town, and only one steam factory—a cotton mill that ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the ditch, on Ainsley's directions, each man tied his own lot in one bundle, bringing the ends of the fuses together and tying them securely with their ends as nearly as possible level, so that they could be lit at the same time. Each man had with him one of those tinder pipe-lighters which are ignited by the sparks of a little twirled wheel. When Ainsley had placed the men on the edge of the crater, he gave the word, and each man lit his tinder, holding it so as to be sheltered from sight from the German trench, behind the flap of his mackintosh. Then each ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground ant the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... had come to think that the man was innately a libertine, awaiting but the right one to strike the hidden flint and set the tinder aglow—the tinder that would burn, and consume, and destroy. He had known of men like that—of men who went the even pathway of their lives until there crossed it another who tore them from it; and that one they followed, leaving soul and morals and decency and cleanliness forever behind ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... black-snakes, lions, leopards, bears, wolves, and wild cats. However this did not dishearten our hero, for he was resolved to attempt regaining his liberty, let the consequence be what it would. The captains then gave him a pocket-compass to steer by, a steel and tinder-box, a bag of cakes, a cheese, and some rum, telling him, he must leave the three-notched road a little way off, and steer to his left hand; (in Maryland they distinguish the roads by letters or notches cut on ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... held, caught in some draught, went out, and we were in darkness. Amante proposed that we should carry the letters back to my salon, collecting them as well as we could in the dark, and returning all but the expected one for me; but I begged her to return to my room, where I kept tinder and flint, and to strike a fresh light; and so she went, and I remained alone in the room, of which I could only just distinguish the size, and the principal articles of furniture: a large table, with a deep, overhanging cloth, in the middle, escritoires and other heavy articles against the walls; ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... population, and extent. It was at first resorted to by a party of Fellatas, who named it Alorie, and encouraged all the slaves in the country to fly from the oppression of their masters, and join their standard. They reminded the slaves of the constraint tinder which they laboured; and tempted them by an offer of freedom and protection, and other promises of the most extravagant nature, to declare themselves independent of Yarriba. Accordingly, the discontented; many miles round, eagerly flocked to Alorie in considerable numbers, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... shall catch the seven o'clock back, I should think. Oh, my blessed heart, the fuss and commotion he'll make! And those granite setts at Tinder Hill—he might well call them kidney pebbles—they'll jolt him almost to bits. I wonder why they can't mend them, the state they're in, an' all the men as go across in that ambulance. You'd think they'd ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... handful or two of the crumbling wood, broke it up into dust, then struck a spark on to the tinder, touched it with a slow match and inserted this into the little pile of wood; a minute's blowing and the flames sprang up. He drew out the slow match and putting his foot upon it placed it in his wallet, then he broke off some more wood and ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... vessel in which he sailed, and was invested with discretionary powers to cruise in the South Seas for any cargo which might come most readily to hand. He had on board, as usual in such voyages, beads, looking-glasses, tinder-works, axes, hatchets, saws, adzes, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, files, spokeshaves, rasps, hammers, nails, knives, scissors, razors, needles, thread, crockery-ware, calico, trinkets, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and Jeanne, entering the kitchen-garden, sat down tinder an olive tree, reflecting that Noemi could easily learn from the door-keeper where to find her. The old gardener, whose curiosity was aroused, asked, with many apologies, if she was a ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... and rain, but could hardly be trusted in a high wind. All these men were inveterate smokers, and carried their pipes and tobacco pouches at their waists. Most had sheath knives attached to belts, and some carried flint, steel, and tinder. They formed picturesque groups, some talking with purchasers and others collected around fires or near their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... fight for it, that's evident; and the boats of a fleet could hardly make their way in here. We had best get the three craft moored with their broadsides to the entrance. We will blow the boats to tinder if they try to come in, and then we can load up with all the most valuable goods and slip out at night-time. That is ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... of the men to another who was smoking a pipe, "if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you'll have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it." And Mrs. Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels of paper and rubbish ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the Pueblos, say that at one time all the nations, Navajos, Pueblos, Coyoteros, and white people, lived together tinder ground, in the heart of a mountain, near the river San Juan. Their food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all kinds of game were closed up with them in their cave; but their light was dim, and only endured ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... — N. fuel, firing, combustible. [solid fuels] coal, wallsend[obs3], anthracite, culm[obs3], coke, carbon, charcoal, bituminous coal, tar shale; turf, peat, firewood, bobbing, faggot, log; cinder &c. (products of combustion) 384; ingle, tinder, touchwood; sulphur, brimstone; incense; port-fire; fire-barrel, fireball, brand; amadou[obs3], bavin[obs3]; blind coal, glance coal; German tinder, pyrotechnic sponge, punk, smudge [U. S.]; solid fueled rocket. [fuels for candles and lamps] wax, paraffin wax, paraffin oil; lamp oil, whale ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... bed-tick covers—to be afterwards filled with the down they should procure from the sea birds. He bought, too, a strong lamp, with a supply of paraffin oil, and several dozen boxes of matches; so that he and Eric should not have to adopt the tinder and flint business, or be obliged to rub two pieces of dry stick together, in the primitive fashion of the Australian aborigines, when ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with asphaltum. She was making one of these water bottles. She heated small round stones in the fire and put them in the asphaltum, and then lined the bottle, making it tight. She had no matches, of course, nor even a tinder-box, but started fire by rubbing two ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... another mass of matter, as when a bullet strikes a target and becomes heated; or it may be friction, as when a car-axle heats when run without proper oiling to reduce friction; or it may be condensation, as when tinder is ignited by condensing the air about it; or chemical reactions, when molecular structure is changed as in combustion, or an electrical current, which implies a dynamo and steam-engine or water-power. If light appears, its antecedent has been ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free herself,—that this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... cans mixed up with packing boxes and kindling wood in the front yards, after the happy-go-lucky housekeeping methods followed by Plummers Lane housekeepers, I should say three blocks would go like tinder. Bill McCormack was down to see us, just as we were knocking off, and he was pleased as Punch at what ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... They're like tinder; Don't blow on them, Mother! I bet they'll burn faster Than you find the victuals ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... light their guide could well enough tell how to miss those ways that led wrong, yet in the dark he was put to a stand; but he had in his pocket a map of all ways leading to or from the celestial city; wherefore he struck a light—for he never goes without his tinder-box also—and takes a view of his book or map, which bids him be careful in that place to turn to the right hand.. And had he not been careful to look in his map, they had in all probability been smothered in the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the roof, branches of pine had been spread over the timber, and the branches in turn covered with a thick layer of straw to prevent the earth from filtering between the logs. This material was as dry as tinder, and held the fire. ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... and a few moments after the cry of "fire" added to the terrors of the storm. A barn belonging to a neighbor who lived a mile distant from us, had been struck by that flash, and was soon wrapped in flames. It was a large building, with timbers and boards like tinder, and was filled with hay, and it was well-nigh consumed before assistance could reach the spot, and it was with much difficulty that the flames could be kept from the other buildings on the premises, indeed several of the neighbours were ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... of Nature, measure time by the lapse of ages, and that a thousand years will often pass between the convulsions of the internal fires which find an outlet through the earth's craters. The smoke and heat of the mountain, however, reminded me of my tinder-box, and I gathered some flints, of which there were a number lying round, before returning to my dwelling in the native town. I had kept my ability to make fire, so far, secret, but if my life was threatened I resolved ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... and another took out tinder and flint, and soon they had a big fire roaring, and my grandfather could see Patrick plainly enough. If he had kept still before, he kept stiller now. Soon they had four poles up and a pole across, right over ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... that dismal barrack! All that the Jew used to spend on decorating the street, he is saving up now in his money chest!" The words were like a spark among tinder and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal. . . . On the whole, then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the Phoenicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder box were all that they contained, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subjected to pressure, so warm vapor becomes hot when forced into less bulk, but in neither case does the quantity of moisture or the quantity of heat sustain any alteration. Common air becomes so hot by compression that tinder may be inflamed by it, as is seen in the instrument for producing instantaneous light by suddenly forcing air ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... transportation, and munitions, and even axes, picks, and shovels, so much in use later in the war, evidenced the forethought that governed this force. The boats, from their open lower deck construction, proved admirable for transports, but their tinder-box construction made fire-traps of them, requiring unremitting vigilance. These points were well understood, and the readiness with which the troops adapted themselves to circumstances was a constant source ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... remembered what they did; a moment more and Rose lay panting in her father's arms, enveloped in a thick blanket which he had thrown around her burning night-dress. The fire was extinguished, the babe lay unawakened, and only the dark flecks of tinder scattered over the bed, and the trampled mass on the floor, told what had been. But Rose had breathed the hot breath of the flame, deadly to human life, and no water could quench ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... he replied, and began: 'Now, listen attentively. There was once a box of matches which lay between a tinder-box and an old iron pot, and they told the ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... at an end. The last spark had died out of the paper in the grate and left only black tinder; the table was left bare, the golden plates and richly embroidered napkins, and the garlands were transformed again into old handkerchiefs, scraps of red and white paper, and discarded artificial flowers all scattered on the floor; the minstrels ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to light it?" one of them exclaimed in a tone of consternation. "I don't suppose we have got flint and steel or tinder box ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... or dig the ditch, To lop or fell the tree, To lay the swarth on the sultry field, Or plough the stubborn lea; The harvest stack to bind, The wheaten rick to thatch, And never fear in my pouch to find The tinder ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. The sight of the flame seemed to wake up Arthur with a shock from the lethargy that was stealing over his faculties. Mr. Holt had chosen a good site for his fire in the lee of a great body of pines, whose massive stems broke the wind; so the blaze quickened and prospered, till ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... grass-thatched and like tinder, were wrapped in flames. Grief emerged from the kitchen, carrying a naked black child by the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord, fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled top-knot, is a blue cotton rag—not handkerchief, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... ne'er-do-well, notorious all down Cheapside for his relentless dalliance with the fair, placed in intimate proximity with one of England's most glorious specimens of ripening womanhood. It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the meeting of flint and tinder—these two so widely different in the essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable, from the first they loved—he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake, she with the sweet, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Harry W. Tinder, whose name we mentioned at the beginning of this story, had been engaged as aeronaut. He had no assistant, and the only passengers were to be the president and ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... don't get my hosses, Saddle Zeb and lead old Si, And we'll search the wind-swept prairie Till we find that girl, or die! Who'd a thought a man's whole future Could get twisted up like this? All his plans burn up like tinder In the fire of one sweet kiss! "Zeb, come here, and good old Simon— Listen while I talk to you; Put your noses on my shoulder While I tell you what we'll do. Your fool master's deep in trouble, Can't explain to you just how, But until ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his tinder-box, an' lit a can'le, an' made three steps o't ower to Janet's door. It was on the hasp, an' he pushed it open, an' keekit bauldly in. It was a big room, as big as the minister's ain, an' plenished wi' grand, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fire,—but such a fire as they Upon the moment could contrive with such Materials as were cast up round the bay,— Some broken planks, and oars, that to the touch Were nearly tinder, since, so long they lay, A mast was almost crumbled to a crutch; But, by God's grace, here wrecks were in such plenty, That there was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... few paces when they met Registrator Heerbrand, who companionably joined them. At the Gate, they filled their pipes, which they had about them; Registrator Heerbrand complained that he had left his tinder-box behind, and could not strike fire. "Fire!" cried Archivarius Lindhorst, scornfully; "here is fire enough, and to spare!" And with this he snapped his fingers, out of which came streams of sparks and directly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Moscow burnt itself out, employed himself in endeavouring to buy some warm garments. Money was plentiful, for there had been no means of spending it since they entered Russia, and he was fortunate in being able to buy some very warm tinder-garments that had been looted by the plunderers on the night of their first arrival before Moscow. He also purchased a peasant's sheep-skin caftan with a hood, and sewed this into his military cloak so as to form a lining, the hood being for the time turned ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... as a week might pass without the shelter of so much as a hut, it was necessary to take tents and bearskin beds for the Chamberlain, his Cossack guard, valet-de-chambre, cook and other servants, one set of fine blankets and linen, cooking utensils, axes, arms, tinder-boxes, provisions for the entire trip, besides a great quantity of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... some of the possibilities of kinematic synthesis were recognized in the United States, a few perceptive teachers fanned the tinder into an ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... as tinder and they crackle with the heat, And the sparks, like merry children, come a-dancing round my feet, In the cold, long nights of autumn I can sit before the blaze And watch a panorama born of all my yesterdays. I can leave the present burdens ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... am!' replied the Witch. 'Not a single farthing will I take! For me you shall bring nothing but an old tinder-box which my grandmother forgot last time ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... monsieur; I asked for a bell, which was given me, then I saved some oil from my breakfasts and dinners, till I had a bottle full; I made wicks by unraveling one of my handkerchiefs; I picked up a pebble when I was walking in the yard; I made some tinder with burned linen; I stole some matches when I dined at the governor's: then I struck a light with a knife, which I possess; and with the aid of which I made the ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... sleep soundly, old fellow!' he said. 'How about that!' and he shook him heartily by the shoulder. The instant he let go the figure collapsed. In order to get a closer view Hartnoll then struck a light with the tinder box. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... But men are men. Very few men spare a woman when the mad fit is on her. A little woman-pretty little woman!—wife to Jacob Blathenoy! She mustn't at her age have any close choosing—under her hand. And Dartrey's just the figure to strike a spark in a tinder-box head.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... could give a meaning to what my eyes told it, the water that had brought down the house had lifted me off my feet and flung me among waves. That would have been the last of the dominie had I not struck against a chest, then half-way on its voyage to the sea. I think the lid gave way tinder me; but that is surmise, for from the time the house fell till I was on the river in a kist that was like to be my coffin, is almost a blank. After what may have been but a short journey, though I had time in it to say my prayers twice, we stopped, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... into the little pile of splinters, and holding the edge of another shell against a corner of the rock, tapped the cap with a stone. At the fifth stroke the cap exploded. The loosened powder of the cartridge flared out into the powder-sprinkled tinder. Soon a fire of the dry, half-rotted driftwood was blazing bright and almost smokeless in ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... an excellent protection against sun and rain, but could hardly be trusted in a high wind. All these men were inveterate smokers, and carried their pipes and tobacco pouches at their waists. Most had sheath knives attached to belts, and some carried flint, steel, and tinder. They formed picturesque groups, some talking with purchasers and others collected around fires or near their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... still see the boat, mother—I can still see the boat!" cried Margery, when Mrs Askew, pale and trembling, had resigned the telescope to her daughter, unable longer to discern the boat, and tinder the belief that it had been overwhelmed by the seas. "She floats—she floats; but she is still a long ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... will serve my turn,' said the hunter applying to his gun. 'But stay—I do not care to see any more fire to-day than is necessary.'—And drawing his work off to a safe place, he went on to kindle tinder and make a nice little fire.—'Haven't you learned how to make ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... of this terrible strain made us drop again for rest. Another hour, and before noon, hot and jaded, we came out upon a low bluff overhanging the river, and stopped for lunch. The guide, apparently fresh and unwearied, cut a sheet of birch bark for tinder, lit a fire as defence against mosquitos, and in sixty seconds was snoring. We were not slow in following his example, and the sun was dropping over into the west when we awoke. The guide examined the river, and informed us that our wading ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to kindle the fire was such a long time about it, owing to the damp tinder, that Dame Zudar impatiently snatched the flint and steel out of his hands, struck away at it till she had ignited the tinder, then thrust it with her own hand in the midst of the straw surrounding the faggots, fanned ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... he burst out. "Was it puma we had betune the teeth? And what's puma but an almighty cat? Sure, though, it wint as tinder as pullets, for all that—but I wish you hadn't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... clarified by reading the opinions mirrored by the press. One cannot praise too highly the wisdom and discretion of our newspapers during the perilous days of war when a word from them might have been as a match to tinder, and when they held many important secrets in their keeping. The great dailies were loyal to the last degree and the confidence that was placed in them was never betrayed. It was unavoidable that they should possess knowledge that the rest of us did not; but ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... could think of a good excuse to knock on her door. It 'ud be a stunt, wouldn't it, to raise an alarm of fire in this old tinder-box. Say, if there's ever a fire I bags the new roomer to save—that is until I get a look at her. If it's over a hundred and fifty, I'll give ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... and as carefully extinguished his match. They were in a forest where the decaying vegetation was as dry as tinder. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... vernal unto the autumnal light. In The Deserted Village, from its whole reflective vein, at a glance we must perceive that long these loved and loving thoughts had lingered in the mind and the heart of the poet. Sparks from Heaven fell upon the tinder of the yearnings of the lowly heart. At last the glow was seen, and grew a light distinct. There is a moulding, moving music of the mind. Swiftly, in time, line after line found its place within the common ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... but one who was keeping watch on deck took pity on me and gave me a couple of biscuits and a swig of water. He was more or less talkative, besides, and from him I learned that Daggs planned to start about midnight for your side of the island, carrying buckets of pitch and tinder, so as to roast ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... that he was a-going out. But, lord, sir, folk in these parts do lie that uncommon, 'taint as it be when I was a boy. As like as no, he's no more dying than you are. Anyhow, sir, it all burned like tinder, and the only thing, so I'm told, as was saved was a naked stone statty of a girl with a chain round her wrists, as Jim Blakes, our constable, being in liquor, brought out in his arms, thinking how as it was alive, and tried to rewive it ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... they say 'tis going like tinder, and he's half crazed," came back to them as the ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... (Miss GALLAGHER writhes in agony.) Why, what makes you stand twisting there like an eel or an ape, child?—What, in the name of the ould one, is it you're afeard on?—Was the chist full now of love-letter scrawls from the grand signior or the pope himself, you could not be more tinder ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... brushwood, and another took out tinder and flint, and soon they had a big fire roaring, and my grandfather could see Patrick plainly enough. If he had kept still before, he kept stiller now. Soon they had four poles up and a pole across, right over the fire, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... plenty of blaze, too," added Tom. "See the flames eating away! This stuff is as dry as tinder for there hasn't been any rain ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... the woods, says this gentleman, should always carry with him a flint, steel, tinder, and matches; a few biscuits, a half-pint vial of spirits, a tin cup, and a large knife or tomahawk; then, with his two blankets, and his great coat and umbrella, he need not be uneasy, should any unforeseen delay require his sleeping ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... the decks of the fated vessels left behind, went off as if lit simultaneously by the rocket. One of the ship-houses contained the old 'New York,' a ship thirty years on the stocks, and yet unfinished; the other was vacant. But both houses, and the old 'New York,' burned like tinder. The vessels fired were the 'Pennsylvania,' the 'Merrimac,' the 'Germantown,' the 'Plymouth,' the 'Raritan,' the 'Columbia,' and the 'Dolphin.' The old 'Delaware' and 'Columbus," worn-out and disabled seventy-fours, were scuttled, and sunk at ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... one build a fire in my woods in July when we're needing rain so badly and every stick is like tinder," said Grandpa sturdily. "And we won't leave a messy picnic ground, even if it is our own, ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... water to allow us to get in, just as a big shark, impatient of delay, made a dart at the mate's leg—for he was the last in—and very nearly caught his foot. We quickly had the boat to rights, but we found that we had lost two very valuable articles—our tinder-box and compass; so that we could neither make a signal to the ship nor tell in what direction to steer should thick or cloudy weather come on. We had, however, no time to meditate on our misfortune, for scarcely were we once more seated on the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... examined their feet. They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a quarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker than ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... burned out. Again Gratton searched his pockets; he found more matches and some scraps of paper. It was Gloria's hands which started the fire and placed the bits of dry wood upon it. The flames crackled; the wood caught like tinder; the flickering light retrieved much of the cavern about them ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... there, we must not forget that the roots of sin are also still there. Our Church does not teach with Rome that "sin (original) is destroyed in baptism, so that it no longer exists." Hollazius says: "The guilt and dominion of sin is taken away by baptism, but not the root or tinder of sin." Luther also writes that "Baptism takes away the guilt of sin, although the material, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... breast rose, his fists clinched, his mouth was dragged sidewise and his underlip shook. A damned soul, looking up with wild eyes into his, was all he saw—the very off scouring and filth of human nature—hell tinder, to touch which in kindness was ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... alongside, the smoke increased in denseness, and presently burst up above the hatchway, while we could see the red glare through the ports. The ship having been in the West Indies for some time, her woodwork was like tinder, and the flames rapidly gained the mastery. Now forked tongues of fire burst out from the midship ports, gradually working their way forward and aft. At length all attempts to save the ship were abandoned. The crew were seen descending ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... with his knife and a stone, while Amyas watched, a little puzzled and startled, as Yeo's fiery reputation came into his mind. Was he really a salamander-sprite, and going to warm his inside by a meal of burning tinder? But now Yeo, in his solemn methodical way, pulled out of his bosom a brown leaf, and began rolling a piece of it up neatly to the size of his little finger; and then, putting the one end into his mouth and the other on the tinder, sucked at it till it was a-light; and drinking down the smoke, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... priest, "that at twenty you must indeed have been excitable, a veritable tinder-box, to have retained so much energy! Come, monsieur, try to calm yourself and have patience: you yourself admit it can only be a few ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in the materials then to help her. The letter paper was coarse; envelopes were unknown. She would have to bring a candle into the room in order to seal it; and a candle could only be lit by striking a spark from the flint upon the tinder, and then igniting a brimstone match from it,—unless she lit it at the kindled fire, which would subject her to questions and remonstrances. Also, the quill pens must be mended, and the ink renewed. But all these difficulties were overcome, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... had pondered what he should say to Tom by way of parting advice—something that the boy could keep in his head ready for use. By way of assisting meditation, he had even gone the length of taking out his flint and steel and tinder, and hammering away for a quarter of an hour till he had manufactured a light for a long Trichinopoli cheroot, which he silently puffed, to the no small wonder of coachee, who was an old friend, and an institution on the Bath road, and who always ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... prefer expedients to principles; men who deem themselves politicians because they are not moralists; to whom the centuries behind have conveyed no results, and who cannot see how the present time is always full of the future. "Everything," says the lively Burnet, "must be brought to the nature of tinder or gunpowder, ready for a spark to set it on fire," before they discover it. The man of letters indeed is accused of a cold indifference to the interests which divide society; he is rarely observed as the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... little while Simon returned with the candles, a tinder-box, and a parcel of bread and meat, for which be gloomily but persistently refused payment. Last of all he produced a small, brass-bound pistol, which ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... moss blazes with a furious heat. You hastily gather handfuls of seemingly incombustible material and throw it on the fire, but the conflagration increases. Grass and green leaves hesitate for an instant and then flash up like tinder. The more you put on, the more your smudge rebels against its proper task of smudging. It makes a pleasant warmth, to encourage the black-flies; and bright light to attract and cheer the mosquitoes. Your effort is ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... dragged on with its one little glimmer of light and its big black clouds of disappointment, and it was Christmas-time when the spark came to the waiting tinder. What a bloody bill could the holidays and holy days of the world tot up! On the Sunday night before Christmas a British subject named Tom Jackson Edgar was shot dead in his own house by a Boer policeman. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... table a copy of the minutes of the Board of Education of January 9, 1895, in which is underscored a report on a primary school in the Bronx. "It is a wooden shanty," is the inspector's account, "heated by stoves, and is a regular tinder box; cellar wet, and under one classroom only. This building was erected in order, I believe, to determine whether or not there was a school population in the neighborhood to warrant the purchase of property to erect a ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... face by that box for tinder, Glowing forth in fits from the dark, And fading again, as the linten cinder Kindles to red at the flinty ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... 'O, William Connor dear!' 'Twas what she said day by day, an' the heart uv me loike Phararyoh's. Thrue it is, Coolin, that the hand uv mortial man has an ugly way uv squazin' a woman's heart dry whin, at last, to his coaxin' she lays it tinder an' onsuspectin' on the inside ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it was of no use to say anything. Our failure has had a strange effect upon the poor fellow, and a word would act upon him like fire upon tinder." ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... I'm afraid. I should have most faith in putting a pound of powder and laying a train ready, so that one could light a bit of touch-tinder and get away to a safe distance. When that went off with a good explosion, I should think the rattlers would ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... spoke his companion re-entered the apartment, with Connor's Sunday coat in his hand, from the pocket of which he drew a steel and tinder-box. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... packed in closely together were like so much tinder wood. Those who had escaped drowning died in their prisons a ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Witch, "not a single shilling will I have. You shall only bring me an old Tinder-box which my grandmother forgot when she ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... the late trial, I think it necessary to adduce them here, to convince the world of the wretched state this Town had been in; the reason they had to apprehend, while such blood-thirsty inmates were quarter'd among them ; and the necessity they were tinder, constantly to be on their guard, while there were even such exultations at the ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... ye have now. Ye look like a tinder grane onion sproutin' out of the garden in the spring. Luk out as ye go over th' fince, me la-a-ad, for if that ormadhoun of a goat sees ye, he'll ate ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... substance, which, scattered long trains of light through the air, fell on the roofs of the buildings, and speedily set them on fire.9 These roofs, even of the better sort of edifices, were uniformly of thatch, and were ignited as easily as tinder. In a moment the flames burst forth from the most opposite quarters of the city. They quickly communicated to the wood-work in the interior of the buildings, and broad sheets of flame mingled with smoke rose ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... built up his heap of tinder wood, somewhat behind the mouth of the hollow, and, kneeling down, he used flint and steel with amazing rapidity and power. The sparks leaped forth in a shower, the dry wood ignited, and up came little flames which swiftly ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wouldn't wish anything better to meself, if I could ha' helped it. If meself had been in the box, I couldn't ha' taken it more tinder, till we began to go, and then, plase yer honour, I hadn't no hoult of ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... clink of the tinder-box; a light was struck; it spread over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the window-curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood a moment or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, to the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hill-side growing by themselves, and then it was most beautiful to see them burn. Even before the flames reached them their long delicate leaves felt the wind of the fire and shivered piteously; then the dry old ones at the base of the stem caught the first spark like tinder, and in a second the whole palm was in a blaze, making a sort of heart to the furnace, as it had so much more substance than the grass. For a moment or two the poor palm would bend and sway, tossing its leaves like fiery plumes in the air, and then it was reduced to a black stump, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... home-sick. When he strolled tinder the shady trees of the Janiculum or Sallust's gardens, he already said to himself what he would repeat later to his listeners at Hippo: "Take an African, put him in a place cool and green, and he won't stay there. He will feel he must go away and come back to his blazing ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... pail of water on the spot that had been burning, then found that I could place my hand on it. We had been just in time, for there was light woodwork near that communicated with the floor, and the attic was full of dry lumber, and herbs hanging here and there, that would have burned like tinder. Had these been burning we could not have entered the garret, and as it was we breathed with great difficulty. The roof still resounded to the fall of such torrents that I felt that the dwelling was safe, unless it had become ignited in the lower stories, and it was obviously our next ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... fool as I was, I needs must give them a startler—the whoop of an owl, done so exactly, as John Fry had taught me, and echoed by the roof so fearfully, that one of them dropped the tinder box; and the other caught up his gun and cocked it, at least as I judged by the sounds they made. And then, too late, I knew my madness, for if either of them had fired, no doubt but what all the village would have risen and rushed ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... said nothing of the simple composition of our meals, nor of our manner of preparing them. Our rice and palms required to be cooked, an operation which might seem rather embarrassing, for we had with us no large kitchen articles: we sometimes wanted a fire-box and tinder. But the bamboo supplied all these. The bamboo is one of the three tropical plants which Nature, in her beneficence and care, seems to have given to man to supply most of his wants. And here I cannot ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... control of a subsidized press; what with Rhodes and Jameson dreaming of a solid British South Africa and fanatical Doppers dreaming of the day when the last rooinek would be shipped from Table Bay, and with the Kaiser in a telegraphing mood—there was no lack of tinder for a conflagration. Even so, the war might have been averted, for there were signs of growth among the Boers of a more reasonable party under Joubert and Botha. But, whatever might have been, Paul Kruger's obstinacy and Joseph Chamberlain's ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... I made the customary motions of undressing, so that I might time myself; and when the cycle was complete, set my tinder-box ready, and blew out my taper. The matter of an hour afterward I made a light again, put on my shoes of list that I had worn by my lord's sick-bed, and set forth into the house to call the voyagers. All ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his own obstinacy, and he continued his racket so successfully that at last I lost my temper. I foresaw that I should spoil the whole business by an unseemly outburst of passion. I determined on another course. I got up quietly, went to the tinder box, but could not find it; I asked him for it, and he gave it me, delighted to have won the victory over me. I struck a light, lighted the candle, took my young gentleman by the hand and led him quietly into an adjoining dressing-room with the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the mole took a piece of tinder-wood in his mouth and led the way. The tinder-wood shone like a ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... leathern case, containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands, and also the white floss of the seed of the ground-willow, to serve as tinder. The sparks are struck from two lumps of iron pyrites; and as soon as the tinder has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... work of another minute to light a lucifer-match, and set fire to the long strips of tinder rag that hung ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... take a nourishment suitable to the meat on which we feed; so our souls do as insensibly take in vice by the example or conversation with wicked company:" and would therefore as often say, "That ignorance of vice was the best preservation of virtue; and that the very knowledge of wickedness was as tinder to inflame and kindle sin and keep it burning." For these reasons she endeared him to her own company, and continued with him in Oxford four years; in which time her great and harmless wit, her cheerful gravity, and her obliging behaviour, gained her an acquaintance and friendship with ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Fire, which are said to fly to a flaming Body, like Vultures or Eagles to a putrifying Carcass, and there to make a very great pudder. Since we have nothing more difficult in this Hypothesis to conceive, first, as to the kindling of Tinder, then how a large Iron-bullet, let fall red or glowing hot upon a heap of Small-coal, should set fire to those that are next to it first: Nor secondly, is this last more difficult to be explicated, then that a Body, as Silver ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... a foot under water already, and the volume was increasing every moment. Fogg piled on the coal, which seemed to burn like tinder. Twice a great jar sent him sprawling back among the coal of the tender. The shocks were caused by great cakes of ice or stray timbers shooting down stream with the gathering flood, and ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... no questions at all, but fetched his greatcoat, tobacco-pouch, tinder-box, and case of instruments, and walked with them to the hill over Chyandour, where he found the trap waiting, with a boy at the horse's head. Tummels dismissed the boy, and in they all climbed; but before they had driven half a mile the doctor was asked very politely ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whole of the lowland seemed filled with stifling clouds of smoke. Yet, from a dozen places along the foot of the hill, yellow flames were starting up, kindling higher, and devouring as fast as might be the leaves and tinder left from the wrack ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... then," cried the pirate, foaming with rage; "bind him to the mainmast; unbandage his eyes; let us have plenty of tinder; lay a train of powder, and to the ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... surprising that I was generally a welcome guest where I visited, or any great wonder that always, where two or three met together, there was I among them. But far beyond all other impulses of my heart was a leaning toward the adorable half of humankind. My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... pussy here that Juechziger has many a time threatened to kill,' sobbed the blind woman, 'I would rather die—die by some Swedish bullet! Why should I wish to live? When your father comes home he beats me if he finds the room cold, and do what I will I can't make the fire burn in the stove. The tinder will not light, though I have often struck the flint and steel together till I made my poor hands quite sore. No one lives in the house but ourselves, so I cannot get my lamp lighted, and if I take it across the street to a neighbour's, the wind blows it out ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... enough now," said he, pulling out a pocket tinder-box: "and while I'm about it we'd better light the lamps." He slipped them from their sockets and lit the pair cleverly from the same brimstone match. "The Highflier's due about this time," he explained; "and Russell's Wagon 's another nasty thing to hit in the dark. We're on the main road, you ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though ingenious, is not correct, my dear," said Mrs. Ward, "there is a certain yellow fungus which grows on the hazel tree that supplies tinder to the Indian, who is never without flint and steel; and he has a very expert method of rapidly whirling moss and dry leaves and bark in his hands, so as to cause a draught, and in a wonderfully short time he succeeds in making a ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... came out on deck again twilight had fallen, but far back on the horizon was a tiny blur—the Silver Star. As Jack gazed back at her, she vanished below the horizon as suddenly as an extinguished spark in a piece of tinder. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... windows, until presently that building, too, contained fuel enough to decompose the stone. And over the whole of it, here, there and everywhere, men were pouring cans and cans of kerosene, while other men were setting dry tinder in strategic places. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come; they will throw off their mask and their yoke at the same instant, and 200,000 Dutch heroes will trample you tinder foot. We can afford to tell you the truth now, and in this letter you ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... bishops, and opaque saints completely filling the dusky-bordered windows with the dead hues of a Persian rug; the panes absorbed the sun's rays, refracting none, arrested the powdered gold of the sunbeams in the dull violet of purple egg-fruit, the tawny browns of tinder or tan, the too-blue greens, and the wine-coloured red stained with soot, like the thick juice ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... all The town turned out to fight for me—that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood— Of something more than tinder-grass and weed— That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the space That I spread coal-black over in the time It took me. Neighbors ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... terrors of the storm. A barn belonging to a neighbor who lived a mile distant from us, had been struck by that flash, and was soon wrapped in flames. It was a large building, with timbers and boards like tinder, and was filled with hay, and it was well-nigh consumed before assistance could reach the spot, and it was with much difficulty that the flames could be kept from the other buildings on the premises, indeed several of the neighbours were obliged to remain on the spot most of ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... but as shure as there is a God in heav'n, if you don't get Squire to consint to let me go back, there'll be mischief. There now, Miss Nora, I've spoken. You're purty, and you're swate, and 'tis you has got a tinder heart; but that won't do you no good, for I'm mad with misery. It's me bit of a cabin I want to die in, and nothing less will contint me. You may go back now, for I've said what I come to say; but it's to-morrow night I'll be here waiting for ye, and I warn ye to bring me the consint that I crave, ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... still a virgin spinster; but it had never yielded in this way at the first assault. She had intended to bring together a middle-aged studious clergyman, and a discreet matron who might possibly be induced to marry again; and in doing she had thrown fire among tinder. Well, it was all as it should be, but she did feel perhaps a little put out by the precipitancy of her own success; and perhaps a little vexed at the readiness of Mrs ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... demands on him. She was living in the two-family house on Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children and feeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yard for Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, and where, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed with color and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (which was heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to help Mrs. Hayes wash and dress ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... place," old Mr. Peckham told them flatly. "The well's low and everything is dry as tinder. Better start carrying things out, girls, because the best we men-folks can do is to keep the roofs wet down and try to save ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... of sand and shell in a lonely ocean, some three leagues from the mainland of Accomac, and upon it neither food nor water. We had the clothes upon our backs, and my lord and I had kept our swords. I had a knife, and Diccon too was probably armed. The flint and steel and tinder box within my ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Jack Jeens close at hand, always watching him anxiously and ready to make a sign to him from time to time—a sign which meant "More powder," and sent him running to the hatch-way and down to the magazine, from which he soon returned, heedless of the fact that if he stopped near a patch of burning tinder or wood the bag of flannel which he carried might explode in ...
— The Powder Monkey • George Manville Fenn
... painters, which heretofore were us'd by the most famous artists, especially the curious pieces of Raphael, Durer, and Holbin, and before that of canvass, and much more lasting: To these add the galls, misletoe, polypod, agaric (us'd in antidotes) uvae, fungus's to make tinder, and many other useful excrescencies, to the number of above twenty, which doubtless discover the variety of transudations, percolations and contextures of this admirable tree; but of the several fruits, and animals generated of them, and other trees, Francisco Redi promises ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... was a journalist's bivouac, filled with odds and ends of no value, and the most curiously bare apartment imaginable. A scarlet tinder-box glowed among a pile of books on the nightstand. A brace of pistols, a box of cigars, and a stray razor lay upon the mantel-shelf; a pair of foils, crossed under a wire mask, hung against a panel. Three chairs and a couple of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... home was chief of a city Fire Department, "but I would give a ten dollar gold piece if I could see how the fire department of this old city manages to control or extinguish a conflagration after it has gained headway among these tinder boxes. The watchmen on the watch towers surely cannot locate a fire and give the alarm until they see a ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... proposed a second journey to France, where he should be able to discover other more material circumstances; and the duke of Queensberry procured a pass for him to go to Holland from the earl of Nottingham, though it was expedited tinder a borrowed name. The duke had communicated his discovery to the queen without disclosing his name, which he desired might be concealed: her majesty believed the particulars, which were confirmed by her spies at Paris, as well as by the evidence of sir John Maclean, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... crass! they'll lose no time—ye may depind on that same. There's not an ounce av tinder mercy in their black hearts; yez may swear till that, from the way ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... arrange all that my own self, and now just see what you have done to me and a whole lot of other women, besides making me miserable all summer," and crowded so close under his chin that he couldn't see my face, I told him all about the tinder-box Jane had loaded and then set me on the lid to see ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... now broken out among the Indians. They could be plainly seen in the red glare thrown by the burning cabin. It had been a very dry season, the rough shingles were like tinder, and the inflammable material burst quickly into great flames, lighting up the valley as far as the edge of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring and a horrible spectacle. Columns of yellow and black smoke ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the farther side of it that went in further, but was so low that it required me to creep upon my hands and knees to go into it, and whither it went I knew not: so having no candle, I gave it over for that time; but resolved to come again the next day, provided with candles and a tinder-box, which I had made of the lock of one of the muskets, with some ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... the previous night, and a bit of dry grass could scarcely be found. At length he procured a little; and by rubbing it in the damp gunpowder which he had extracted from his pistol, and drying it in the sun, he formed a sort of tinder that caught fire after much ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... train. Each day added to their numbers, until one fourth of all the oxen were being driven loose at the rear of the caravan. One day a boy blindfolded a cripple ox, which took fright and charged among his fellows, bellowing with fear. It was tinder to powder! The loose oxen broke from the herders, tore past the column of wagons, frenzied in voice and action. The drivers lost control of their teams, bedlam reigned, and the entire wagon train joined in the general stampede. Wagons were overturned and reduced to kindling ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... cotton string which has been soaked in a solution of nitre and then thoroughly dried. This string, when once lighted, burns very slowly and a piece one inch long is sufficient for the purpose. Some performers prefer a small piece of punk, as it requires no preparation. Still others use tinder made by burning linen rags, as our forefathers used to do. This will not flame, but merely smoulders until the breath blows it into a glow. The tinder is made by charring linen rags, that is, burning them to a crisp, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... matches were as wet as those of the hermit. So were those of the professor. Luckily Moses carried the old-fashioned flint and steel, with which, and a small piece of tinder, spark was at last kindled, but as they were about to apply it to a handful of dry bamboo scrapings, an extra spurt of rain extinguished it. For an hour and more they made ineffectual attempts to strike a light. Even the cessation of the rain was of ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... which the successive rings of the tunnel were made. As I sat there waiting for Kennedy, I absently reached into my pocket and pulled out a cigarette and lighted it. It burned amazingly fast, as if it were made of tinder, the reason being the excess of oxygen in the compressed air. I was looking at it in astonishment, when suddenly I felt a blow on my ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... contents of the next compartment puzzled him. There were some odd lengths of knotted string, and a coil of yellow tubular fabric, about the thickness of his little finger, some inches in length. Colwyn recognized it at once. It was the wick of a tinder-lighter, then being sold by thousands by English tobacconists to replace a war-time scarcity of matches, and ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... They amuse themselves with the light of the beautiful candle, fluttering about, on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, burnt up and reduced to tinder by the consuming fire of matrimony. Happy marriages, men say, are made in heaven, and I believe it. Most marriages are fairly happy, in spite of Sir Cresswell Cresswell; and yet how little care is taken on earth towards ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... trouble. I was no longer cold and hungry. I was allowed a fair amount of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my room reading, writing, or drawing. This room of mine soon became ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... north of the Pueblos, say that at one time all the nations, Navajos, Pueblos, Coyoteros, and white people, lived together tinder ground, in the heart of a mountain, near the river San Juan. Their food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all kinds of game were closed up with them in their cave; but their light was dim, and only endured for a few hours each day. There were, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... when a little girl is the subject. Of course that was ever so long ago, when there were no lucifer matches, and steel and tinder were used to light fires; when soda and saleratus had never been heard of, but people made their pearl ash by soaking burnt crackers in water; when the dressmaker and the tailor and the shoemaker went from ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... their cooking arrangements were very primitive. In the first place, they were compelled to make a fire by the method in use among the savages, of rubbing two sticks smartly together, and catching the flame in a little prepared tinder. The fish were baked over the fire thus kindled. Though the outside was smoked, the inside was sweet and palatable, and neither was disposed to be fastidious. The preparation of the meal took considerable time, but ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... order to prevent the gas from escaping; but I shall take out the stopper, and put in the cork, to which the wire hangs. —Now I mean to burn this wire in the oxygen gas, but I must fix a small piece of lighted tinder to the extremity of it, in order to give the first impulse to combustion; for, however powerful oxygen is in promoting combustion, you must recollect that it cannot take place without some elevation of temperature. I shall now introduce the wire into the receiver, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... really light a candle without a tinder-box," said Eugene. "His landlady told Palmer so; and Palmer says the Devil flew away with Friar Bacon; but my book says he burnt all his books and gave himself to the study of divinity, and dug his ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... aine mama unn ain papa edam (wesen). unn (unt) diesa abn wais (twai) kinna (tinder) ghatf (dehappt). unn die kinna sint (dsint) in den walt tegang (gangen). unn-daben (habn) holz (olz) geh[o]l (ohlt). dann sint (dsint) sie an ain utsom-haendom (zuke-haeussn) zezan (gangn). unn (unt) habn (abn) ge ... (dessen). dann hatt die hetse ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... almost the first of any efficient aid, striving to make his way up the smoke-filled stairs, but this was impossible. The house was one of those ancient ones, piled story upon story; so old that it was almost tinder. But those on the opposite side were so close that not unfrequently a plank or two flung across from opposite windows made a bridge for the benefit of ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... all the bulky herd of nature breaks. The vigorous young world was ignorant Of these restrictions; 'tis decrepit now; Not more devout, but more decayed, and cold.— All this is impious, therefore we must part; For, gazing thus, I kindle at thy sight, And, once burnt down to tinder, light again ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... to smoke a pipe with ol' Jeff," Solomon answered. "They ain't no nonsense 'bout him. I learnt him how to talk Injun an' read rapids an' build a fire with tinder an' elbow grease. He knows me plenty. He staked his life on me a dozen ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... cooked and uncooked, two calabashes full of water, bows and arrows, three spears, a tomahawk, three fishing-lines and hooks, and some little gourds full of black, white, and red paint; and what we prized more than all, some flints and a large rusty nail, with rotten wood to serve as tinder. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... timber." My husband recommended to me to walk about until a fire should be made, which was soon accomplished by our active and experienced woodsmen, to whom the felling of a large tree was the work of a very few minutes. The dry grass around furnished an excellent tinder, which, ignited by the sparks from the flint (there were no loco-focos in those days), and aided by the broken branches and bits of light-wood, soon produced a cheering flame. "The bourgeois," in the mean time, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... a bundle three or four times as big as I want," Giuseppi said, "and then half of them will be dry. I can put my clothes on them and the tinder. I will answer for the fire, but I would rather have been ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... kindly, but in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my aunt's stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... klini—igi, duonlevi. Tilt (an awning) kovrilego. Timber ligno, lignajxo. Time tempo. Timely gxustatempa. Timepiece horlogxo. Timid timema. Timidity timeco. Timorous timema. Tin stani. Tin stano. Tinder fajrfungo. Tinfoil hidrargajxo. Tinge koloretigi. Tingle vibreti, soneti. Tinkle tinti. Tint koloretigi. Tiny malgrandeta. Tip pinto. Tip (gratuity) trinkmono. Tippet manteleto. Tipple drinki. Tippler drinkemulo. Tipsy ebria. Tirade denuncado, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... with a sigh, and stepped back to the table for the tinder-box, that for the eleventh time he might relight his pipe. He sat down, blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling, and considered. His nature triumphed now over his recent preoccupation; the matter of the ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... a green little bush about the size of common heath, which has the useful property of burning while fresh and green. It was very surprising to see the Gauchos, in the midst of rain and everything soaking wet, with nothing more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the letter in the fire, and stood watching it as it blazed up till the flame drew near the great red wax seal bearing his father's crest. This melted till the crest was blurred out, the wax ran and blazed, and in a few moments there was only a black, crumpled patch of tinder, over and about which a host of tiny sparks seemed to be chasing each other till all ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... replied drowsily, as I sat up on the cartel and began to feel about for my boots. "Find the tinder box, Jan, and light ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... made its way through the long coarse grass, which had sprung up under the fierce heat of summer, and was already as parched and dry as tinder. They had intended to seize the cat before Monty had become aware of their presence; and they were somewhat disconcerted when Monty, with the cat clasped tightly in his arms, came running towards them. "There's Injuns just over there in the woods," ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... and rabbit, side by side, all personal feuds forgotten in the great common danger. Many perished, overtaken by the flames which, fanned by a brisk wind from the north, traveled with lightning-like rapidity. It had been weeks since rain had fallen upon the forest and the underbrush was like tinder. Great trees became in an instant towers of flame as the fire roared onward like a living thing. The animals, their fur singed by sparks and their eyes red and smarting with smoke, sought the water ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... reviving interest in religion, especially in Connecticut. Interest over the revival of 1735 had centred on that colony the eyes of the whole non-liturgical English-speaking world. Whitefield's preaching was to this awakening religious enthusiasm as match to tinder. ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... up a piece of flint as we came along this morning," Will said, "and by means of one of these chisels we ought to be able to strike a light; a few dead leaves, finely crumbled up, should do instead of tinder." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... success—varying, indeed, but on the whole gratifying. But the problem was, how to fan the flame to reach and take hold of more seasoned timber?—opulent citizens, county magnates; men who, once committed, would not retract; ponderable subscribers to the Guarantee Fund; neither tinder nor brushwood, but logs to receive the fire and retain it in a solid core. For weeks, for a couple of months, the flame took no hold of these: it reached them only to die ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "A regular tinder box!" muttered the officer who had told Joe the origin of the blaze. "Place ought to have been pulled down long ago. Git back there youse!" he yelled to some venturesome lads. "Want ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... I rode down through the forest, crossing half a dozen swift little streams of amber water, where a year before all had been dry as tinder. We found Haught's camp in a grove of yellowing aspens. Haught was there to meet us. He had not changed any more than the rugged pine tree under which a year past we had made our agreement. He wore the same blue shirt and the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... he sprang towards the King-God elect and anointed his breast and shoulders with a pungent compound, and leaped away into another dance, while Mungongo plied the two fire sticks. When the spark was blown upon the dry tinder and the first flame flickered Bakahenzie dropped flat before the gate as from the wizards went up the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... had expended in defending it against "savages and foreigners," and said it was "like giving up life now, to surrender the patent and privileges so dearly bought and so long enjoyed." Suddenly, while he was speaking, all the candles went out. There was a moment of confusion; then some one brought a tinder-box and flint and the candles were relighted. The room was unchanged; the same number of people were there; but the table where the charter had lain was empty, for in that moment of darkness ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
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