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Batten   Listen
verb
Batten  v. t.  (past & past part. battened; pres. part. battening)  
1.
To make fat by plenteous feeding; to fatten. "Battening our flocks."
2.
To fertilize or enrich, as land.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books



... March sat reading newspapers. His healthy legs were crossed toward the flickering hearth, and his strong shoulders touched the centre-table lamp. The new batten shutters excluded the beautiful outer night. His mother, to whom the mail had brought nothing, was sitting in deep shadow, her limp form and her regular supply of disapproving questions alike exhausted. Her slender elbow slipped ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... I could. It seemed a rash thing to go down to the afterhold, where any one might batten me down. But, there being no help for it, I took the bucket and went. I filled it well up to the brim from the second cask, returned to deck, and handed it to the man who stood behind Martin. They took it, pretty respectfully, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... its old food-plants some years ago. Then perhaps a school or pack or flock of Octopus gigas would be found busy picking the sailors off a stranded ship, and then in the course of a few score years it might begin to stroll up the beaches and batten on excursionists. Soon it would be a common feature of the watering-places—possibly at last commoner than excursionists. Suppose such a creature were to appear—and it is, we repeat, a possibility, if perhaps a remote one—how could it be fought against? Something might be done by torpedoes; ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... detail of the great fight. And when they talked on military affairs, as Letchford and others did sometimes, it was difficult to keep from sending them all to the devil, for their amateur cocksureness would have riled Job. One had got to batten down the recollection of our fellows out there who were sweating blood to keep these fools snug. Yet I found it impossible to be angry with them for long, they were so babyishly innocent. Indeed, I couldn't help ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes ... ... ... ... What devil was't That thus cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... the first time that ever I did in my life Have been so long absent that I am ashamed to go I took occasion to be angry with him Justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors Lady Batten to give me a spoonful of honey for my cold My great expense at the Coronacion She hath got her teeth new done by La Roche That I might not seem to be afeared The monkey loose, which did anger me, and so ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... families which bore three Dane-axes or battle-axes in their coats armorial were very numerous in ancient times. It may chance to be of service to your Querist A.C. to be informed, that those of Devonshire which displayed these bearings were the following: Dennys, Batten, Gibbes, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... trousers hung limply, while Henrietta's scant wardrobe was ranged along the black-painted wall outside. The long, cobweb-hung windows, bare of blind or curtain, showed a black-mirrored surface against the batten shutters. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... their wheel's our meat, and anyone else who comes to take his place. Minus a steersman they're helpless; and then, Gates, if we can run alongside and batten down (is that what you call ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... corrupt when it comes to governing a city? The Mayor and all his appointees are simply wading through the vast quagmire of the common citizen's indifference, fought every step by the vile creatures who batten on the administration of the city's affairs. Do you suppose that if the schools laid tremendous stress on clean citizenship and began in the kindergarten to teach children how to govern in the most practical way, it would help? I believe it would. I'm going to tuck ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... Joe Batten was the youngest member of the Athletic team and at that time quite a promising young player. He did not last long with the Athletics, however, and after playing on one or two other league teams he dropped out sight. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... metal or wooden batten, sliding in two beckets attached to the outer or inner sides of each of the brackets of the carriage, retained in any position by a thumb-screw. This batten is graduated by experiment or calculation for either the parallel or converging ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... Anarchism, is that close relation of the ideal to the present sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers. It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism important, and it is this that makes them dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously upon the evils of our ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... Charles L. Batten, University of California, Los Angeles George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles Nancy M. Shea, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Thomas Wright, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... lessons from maid and nurse, A Governess help'd to make still worse, Giving an appetite so perverse Fresh diet whereon to batten— Beginning with A B C to hold Like a royal playbill printed in gold On a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... front And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans Feed and envenom, as the milky blood Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake. Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts, And batten on his poisons? Love forbid! Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love. O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image, The subject of thy ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they were apt to talk ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... to work. I've tried other things, but my thoughts always come back to the Hands. I'm proud of your success you know. I want to—to batten on it. And I want to carry it on. I have ideas ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... think, with the small spread of canvas that we are showing. But it will be bad enough when it comes, I doubt not; so go below and call Murdock, the cook, and the cabin boy, and say I want them to come on deck, as I am about to batten down the fore scuttle. And when eight bells comes, you will have to go aft and stretch yourselves out on the cabin lockers, for the forecastle will be closed until this ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... view of the bearer joint to front leg, and also the half-round seat battens resting on the bearer, also showing them with their edges planed. It is advisable to have a space between the edges of each batten, say about 1-8 in., to allow rainwater to drain. The ends of the seat battens are pared away to fit the transverse rails neatly as shown in Fig. 2. The struts for the post range in diameter from 1-1/2 in. to 2 in. The ends of the struts are pared ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... was drawing the batten blinds together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within; then the bolt was shot ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... the world, that could give an offence to any, and with the great honour he thought it would be to him. Being overtook by the brigantine, my Lord and we went out of our barge into it, and so went on board with Sir W. Batten, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... not, at the present day, Tory in political preferences, though there is still a large leaven of that feeling also. But very many persons who are political Liberals are social Tories: they venerate the aristocracy; they batten daily upon the "Court Circular"; they cling to class distinctions in theory, and still more in practice; they strain towards "good society" and social conformity; their ideal is "respectability." Indeed, it appears to me that comparatively very few English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... end of the fife to his mouth, blew out all the flour, and in this humble imitation of the smoke of a gun, poor puss was run up to the batten, where she hung till she was dead. I am ashamed to say I did not attempt to save the kitten's life, although I caused her foul murder to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... First he lifted out some soft padding. A small tin box honey-combed inside came to light. With infinite precaution Barnett picked out an object that looked like a 22- calibre short cartridge, wadded some cotton batten in his hand, set the thing in the wadding, laid it on the rock, carefully returned the small box to the large box and the large box to the boat, took up the cartridge again and waded back to the cliff. They watched ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which, locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and claimed the best offices ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... wind," replied Uncle Teddy, "but I would advise you all to batten down the hatches, I mean, tie your tent flaps." As he spoke a white towel came fluttering over the bluff from one of the tents above and went sailing off over the lake. At that they all scattered ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... that lady into the sea, living or dead," said Mr. Thompson, with an ominous lift of his eye, "you go with her, Mr. Batten. Remember who brought her here ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... let him send the news to the Mullahs in the Hills. I know that soft-handed brood with their well-fed bodies and their treacherous mouths. If only they would let me carry on the road!" he cried passionately, "I would drag them out of the houses where they batten on poor men's families and set them to work till the palms of their hands were honestly blistered. Let the Mullahs have a care, Safdar Khan. I go North to-morrow ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... the wreckers, whose lair is secure past compare, All who batten on bones with a maw debonair, And the carcase of Poverty torture and tear With historical ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various

... Batten is responsible for the illustration of so many important collections of fairy tales that it is vexing not to be able to reproduce a selection of his drawings, to show the fertility of his invention and his consistent improvement in technique. The series, "Fairy Tales of the British Empire," collected ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... look as if we would have to take up gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves. This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten than bant ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... told you, the convent isn't far from Monaco. I got off the Laconia there, to visit Esme, and when I came on board again, Monny and Mrs. East and Rachel came with me. They'd been in Italy and France, and had picked up Miss Guest, who was only too enchanted to batten on Monny's kindness and dollars. It was I who had engaged their staterooms, on a cable from Monny, long before. And if there were a spy anywhere, he might have the idea that I wanted to smuggle Esme out of her convent by ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... she was my little May—telling the fairy tales which the little boys and girls of England used to hear from their mummeys, who had heard them from their mummeys years and years and years before. My friend Mr. Batten made such pretty pictures for it—but of course you know the book—it has "Tom, Tit, Tot" and "The little old woman that went to market," and all those tales you like. Now I have been making a fairy-tale book ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... This was your husband.—Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, Blasting his wholesome brother.[124] Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor?[125] Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for, at your age The hey-day in the blood[126] is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: And what judgment Would step from ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... Wretch! I hurl back on you the denunciation with which, when we met three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your own perfidy. You shall tread the path of your ambition childless and objectless and hopeless. Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame. The worm shall batten upon your heart. You shall have honours and enjoy them not; you shall gain your ambition, and despair; you shall pine for your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the hour in ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... four or five hundred English adventurers who swarmed to Canada on the heels of the English army thought to batten on the sixty thousand defeated French inhabitants, far otherwise thought and decreed the English generals, Sir Jeffrey {277} Amherst, and Murray, who succeeded him. "You will observe that the French are British subjects as ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... amongst other things, that His Excellency should be allowed to choose his own advisers. By this Mr. Froude certainly does not mean that the advisers so chosen must be all pure-blooded Englishmen who have rushed from the destitution of home to batten on the cheaply obtained ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... laments, arouse thy soul To exultation. Sing hosanna, sing, And halleluiah, for the Lord is great, And full of mercy! He has thought of man; Yea, compass'd round with countless worlds, has thought Of us poor worms, that batten in the dews Of morn, and perish ere the noonday sun. Sing to the Lord, for he is merciful: He gave the Nubian lion but to live, To rage its hour, and perish; but on man He lavish'd immortality and Heaven. The eagle falls from her aerial tower, And mingles with irrevocable dust: But ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... triumphs, that adorn Fitliest our nature, and bespeak us born For loftiest action;—not to gaze and run From clime to clime; or batten in the sun, Dragging a drony flight from flower to flower, Like summer insects in a gaudy hour; Nor yet o'er lovesick tales with fancy range, And cry, ''Tis pitiful,'tis passing strange!' But on life's varied views to look around, And raise expiring sorrow from the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... and by reading the proofs, while to the Councils of the American and English Folk-Lore Societies I have again to repeat my thanks for permission to use materials which first appeared in their publications. Finally, I have had Mr. Batten with me once again—what should I or other English ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... on the schooner. I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about; and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I chose ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... never drove afield, and that they had no flocks to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is never sought, because it cannot be ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. "Come in, Pedro," he cried reassuringly, "come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro," he continued encouragingly, as ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... on farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two line-of-battle ships, with a commission from the rebel government of London, and flying the broad pennant of Admiral Batten, cruised between Jersey and Guernsey, never far from sight, although giving for the most part a wide berth to both the island castles, whose gunners watched ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... some of the features you see here never were common—locks seven inches across; several windows without sashes, but with sturdy iron gratings and solid iron shutters. On the fourth floor the doorway communicating with the main house is entirely closed twice over, by two pairs of full length batten shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks eighteen inches long, two to each shutter. And yet it was through this doorway that the ghosts—figuratively speaking, of course, for we are dealing with plain fact and history—got ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... thing that lives, if not by the sweat of its brow, at least by the suet of its boilers. The dead horses of the city car companies are the creature's normal food. Nor does it despise smaller venison, for it can batten upon dead kittens, too, and fatten upon asphyxiated pup. Carnivorous, decidedly, is the creature concreted by the New York Rendering Company, converting all that it touches into fat, and so, living literally upon the fat of the land. That the Company render other things besides fat, however, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... where now the most curiously exciting things are the Bridie Shops. I had to know what a 'bridie' meant, so we stopped to see; but it's only a rolled meat pasty they love in Forfarshire; and brides are supposed to batten on them at their weddings. To please me, Basil would have made a detour to see 'Thrums,' which is really Kerriemuir, you know. And we should have had to pass through Forfar—the 'Witches Har'—and go on the road that leads to mysterious, wonderful Glamis. I was longing to do ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... weeks of camp life proved to be monotonously dreary. Ivan was not of the type of man to press his popularity and batten upon it. Rather, flattery, and the inevitable toadyism of weaker natures, revolted him; and he began once more to retire into himself, and to live again with dreams, which now formed themselves round any one of three topics: first and highest, his music, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... non-payment, will desert her, and speak ill of her business. But she will be able to console herself for those and similar bitternesses by the knowledge that on the whole the world honours those who battle against ill-fortune without complaint far above the needy crowd of spongers who strive to batten without effort on the crumbs that fall from the tables of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various

... of those who batten on others' goods, the plunderers who know no rest till they have wrought the destruction of the worker, it would be difficult to find a better instance than the tribulations suffered by the Chalicodoma of the Walls. The Mason who builds on the pebbles may fairly boast of being ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... 1666, Pepys recorded the burying of his pet Parmesan, "as well as my wine and some other things," in a pit in Sir W. Batten's garden. And on the selfsame fourth of September, more than a century later, in 1784, Woodforde in his Diary of a ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... shots are aimed which seem so malignant. Him the gay manipulators propitiate who look at him through Literature and the Press, and across the pulpit-cushions, like airy Macheath at Society, as carrion to batten on. May plumpness be their portion, and they never hanged for it! But the flattering, tickling, pleasantly pinching of Bull is one of those offices which the simple starveling piper regards with afresh access of appetite ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Promessi Sposi in English, and I found and read it when I was a small girl. It was very long, and perhaps I should find it a little dull now though I hope not, for I loved it then, reading in delicious secrecy and stealth, because the Sisterhood doesn't allow youthful pupils to batten on love stories, no matter how old-fashioned. I hadn't thought of the book for years; but evidently its story had been lying all this time carefully put away in a parcel, gathering dust on some forgotten shelf in my brain, for down it tumbled at the mention of the name. As ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... It is most unreasonable to flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust steward. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... awful ring uprose That obscure heritage of foes, The exceeding bitter heritage Which still a jealous God bestows From inappellable age to age, The ghostly worms that softly move Through every grey old corse of love And creep across the coffined years To batten on our blood and tears; And there were hooded shapes of death Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind, Stealing softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, slowly ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... batten down the curtains on the weather side. But the boat rose gracefully on the billows, and did not scoop up any water in doing so. Boxes, barrels, and other movable articles were secured, and the captain was delighted with the ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... the skull, the weapon simply crashes through the bone, disintegrating it at the point of entrance, and cracking or splintering it for a variable, but limited, distance beyond. On the other hand, when the head is struck by a "blunt" object—for example, a batten falling from a height—the force is applied over a wider area and the elastic skull bends before it. If the limits of its elasticity are not exceeded, the bone recoils into its normal position when the force ceases to act; but if the bone is bent ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... "quarrels"), and were held in place by means of slotted lead strips (known as "cames"). The window frames used in a few of the Jamestown houses were handwrought iron casements. Most of the humbler dwellings had no glass panes in the windows. The window openings were closed by batten shutters, operated by hinges of wood and fitted ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... another day is dawning, Let her have a weaver's shuttle, 60 And a batten that shall suit it, And a loom of best construction, And a treadle of the finest. Make the weaver's chair all ready, For the damsel fix the treadle, Lay her hand upon the batten. Soon the shuttle shall be singing, And the treadle shall be thumping, Till the rattling fills the village, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... Clear weather. At 1/2 past 8 p.m. Anchored in the Entrance of Plymouth Sound in 9 fathoms water. At 4 a.m. weighed and worked into proper Anchoring ground, and Anchored in 6 fathoms, the Mewstone South-East, Mount Batten North-North-East 1/2 East, and Drake's Island North by West. Dispatched an Express to London for Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander to join the Ship, their Servants and Baggage being already on ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... together how the stage must be set and the side-scenes worked. Jean took measurements, drew up a plan, worked out an estimate. He manifested a passionate eagerness that was surprising, albeit the old priest took it all as a matter of course. A batten would come here, a practicable door there. The actor would ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... building simple rectangular board and batten houses in the 1890's. Most of the others continued to live in gal'sdan?l made of boards and scrap, begged, stolen, or purchased from the lumber mills which were quite numerous in the area at the beginning of the ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs

... through the unlatched wicket in some porte-cochere—red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... which brought tears. She was not going to allow the brazen little beast to know or see what her words meant to her; she was not going to tell her of Michael's disappointment. If she had betrayed him and robbed him of Akhnaton's treasure, she was not going to let her batten on the suffering she ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... and competent officer. They were seen to confer earnestly, as though the safety of the ship were uppermost in their minds. Soon the pirates of the prize crew were ordered to stow and secure all light sail and pass extra lashings about the boats and batten the hatches. They worked slowly, some of them shaking with fever, nor could kicks and curses and the sting of the whistling cat make them turn to smartly. The sailing-master signaled the Revenge to send off more hands but Blackbeard was either drunk or in one of his crack-brained ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... homeplace on de plantation down dar now. Lula a-washin' here, makes me study 'bout de old washplace on Marse Henry's plantation. Dere was a long bench full of old wood tubs, and a great big iron pot for bilin' de clothes, and de batten block and stick. Chillun beat de clothes wid de batten stick and kept up de fire 'round de pot whilst de 'omans leaned over de tubs washin' and a-singin' dem old songs. You could hear 'em 'most a mile away. Now and den one of de 'omans would stop singin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... congratulate myself an the co-operation of my friend Mr. J. D. Batten in giving beautiful or amusing form to the creations of the folk fancy of the Hindoos. It is no slight thing to embody, as he has done, the glamour and the humour both of the Celt and of the Hindoo. It is only a further proof that Fairy ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... prisoner, turning to Barnabas. "You hear that, sir, my unnatural father and uncle batten upon rounds of beef, and smoked tongues, while I sit here, my legs at a most uncomfortable angle, and my inner man as empty as a drum; oh, confound ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... the fork of a tree, alias a wheel-less water-trolly. The horse was hitched to the butt end, and a batten nailed across the prongs kept the cask from slipping off going uphill. Sandy led the way and carried the bucket; Dad went ahead to clear the track of stones; and Joe straddled the cask to ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... breed. Sometimes also the juices oozing from the putrid meat soak a small extent of the sandy floor. That is enough for the maggot's first establishment. These causes of failure are avoided with a layer of sand about an inch thick. Then the Bluebottle, the Flesh-fly, and other Flies whose grubs batten on dead bodies are kept at ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... the better of his passion, which latter, being deserted by his breath, began a little to retreat, the following accents, leapt over the hedge of his teeth, or rather the ditch of his gums, whence those hedgestakes had long since by a batten been displaced in battle ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... in. "Five thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, on salary, with ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in life had trembled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... her last voyage to Calabria, having taken macaroni from Amalfi and bringing back wine of Verbicaro. A fine boat, the Giovannina, able to carry twenty tons in any weather, and water-tight too, being decked with hatches over which you can stretch and batten down tarpaulin. A pretty sight as she ran up to the end of the breakwater, old Luigione standing at the stern with the tiller between his knees and the slack of the main-sheet in his hand. She was running wing and wing, with her bright new ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... "Batten me into the pantry!" said Napoleon. "I'll bet old Algy'd board the outlaw himself, fer you, Van, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... they never drove a-field and had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought, because it cannot be known when it ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... But this was long before you took your malaria of mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell to a vast smug redness—that physiological, or psychological, moment for which you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... A long black time within, thou shalt come out To front the sun; and Zeus's winged hound, The strong, carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down To meet thee—self-called to a daily feast— And set his fierce beak in thee, and tear off The long rags of thy flesh, and batten ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage—an order I belong to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of his nature, than if he belonged to ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... encouraged and justified. It is then that the diplomatists who lied and schemed to bring on the monstrous event, that all the politicians who exploit and foster the nation's madness and misery to enhance their own reputations, that those who batten on the slaughter, and that those who glorify the carnage at a safe distance and fight the enemy with their lying tongues, are justified. They all are justified. But if, instead of victory, there is defeat, then they tremble lest they should be disgraced ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... the blood and marrow and life of the struggling people, you heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy shops of a private country village, are each a scorpion curse to the people. Your very existence ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... John A. J. Brooks; Acting Ensign and Executive Officer, Milton Webster; Acting Master's Mates, Charles F. O'Neill and John Maddock; Acting Assistant Paymaster, J. Woodville Sands; Acting Assistant Surgeon, John M. Batten; Engineers—Second Assistant in charge, James M. Battin; Acting Third Assistant, John Minton; Acting Master and ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... owners of slum property, all the grasping shipowners, all those who batten and fatten on other people's welfare in a most favourable light. We have been thinking them almost criminals when they were in reality public benefactors. They lead to many improvements, and even though the improvements come too late to benefit those who suffer from the evils, yet they do come—sometimes. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... in beating the bookmakers; we have then an outer circle, composed partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... was placed the block and two sacks of sawdust, and on a bench two axes, two sharp knives, and a basket. The block was a long piece of timber supported at each end by pieces a foot high, and having a small batten nailed across the upper end for the neck to rest upon. The body of Brandreth was first taken down from the gallows, and placed face downwards on the block. The executioner, a muscular Derbyshire coal miner, selected by ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... steady, and remember there's no danger, for we can make land any time in the boats if worse comes to worse. Mr. Gibbs, have the men get their dunnage up out of the forecastle, and then close the hatch and batten it." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... these famous Oriental stories most acceptably, and Mr. Batten's remarkable illustrations are all that can be desired. His genii are genii indeed, and his fairy princesses ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... her to Fitz-James's side. 'See the gray pennons I prepare, To seek my true love through the air! I will not lend that savage groom, To break his fall, one downy plume! No!—deep amid disjointed stones, The wolves shall batten on his bones, And then shall his detested plaid, By bush and brier in mid-air stayed, Wave forth a banner fail and free, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... while she's melted that a-way, he pours it into these yere auger holes an' lets it cool. It gets good an' hard, this arsenic-tallow does, an' then Coyote drags the timber thus reg'lated out onto the plains to what he regyards as a elegible local'ty an' leaves it for the wolves to come an' batten on. Old Coyote will have as many as a dozen of these sticks of timber, all bored an' framed up with arsenic-tallow, scattered about. Each mornin' while he's wolfin', Coyote makes a round-up an' skins an' counts up his prey. An' son, you hear me! ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... has murdered her womanhood, that the red cross of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The man with whom she enters the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch, and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch continued to gulp the black food which the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... makes sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement, Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night. We eat our own and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of others' meat. We bless our fortunes when we see Our own beloved privacy; And like our living, where we're known To very few, or else ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... "Batten down the main hatch," called Gary, seeing Duff and Ralph. "Bludson is gone, but we can hold them ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... with red-ruled margins, and on the parchment were inscribed services and "verse-anthems" and "ffull-anthems," all in engrossing hand and the most uncompromising of black ink. Therein was a generous table of contents— Mr Batten and Mr Gibbons, Mr Mundy and Mr Tomkins, Doctor Bull and Doctor Giles, all neatly filed and paged; and Mr Bird would incite singers long since turned to churchyard mould to "bring forthe ye timbrell, ye pleasant harp and ye violl," and reinsist with six parts, and a red capital letter, "ye pleasant ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... is the general name for a curtain of canvas—painted to represent some scene and stretched on a batten—a long, thick strip of wood—pocketed in the lower end to give the canvas the required stability. Sets of lines are tied to the upper batten on which the drop is tied and thus the drop can be raised or lowered to its place on the stage. There are sets of lines ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... rediscussion of this question. A recent number (vol. iv., January, 1844) of MacClelland and Griffith's 'Calcutta Journal of Natural History' contains, however, a very remarkable and decisive notice of the determination of the snow-line in the Himalaya. Mr. Batten, of the Bengal service, writes as follows from Camp Semulka, on the Cosillah River, Kumaon: "In the July, 1843, No. 14 of your valuable Journal of Natural History, which I have only lately had the opportunity ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... "To batten the black-feathered wound-bird With the blade of my axe have I stricken Full thirty and five of my foemen; I am famed for the slaughter of warriors. May the fiends have my soul if I stain not My sharp-edged falchion once over! And then let the breaker of broadswords Be ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... Laud's Church, gew-gawish and idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church-of-England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... the frightful punishment of climbing that tower, of touching those skeletons, of undressing them and burying them. That will be enough. We will not ask for more. We will not give it to the public to batten on and create a scandal which would recoil upon M. d'Aigleroche's niece. No, let us leave this ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... be ready to take advantage of its success, Burgoyne moved down the east side of the Hudson, and threw a bridge of rafts over that river for the passage of his van, which took post at Saratoga. At the same time Lieutenant Colonel Brechman, with his corps, was advanced to Batten Hill, in order, if necessary, to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... step which no Manchu would be likely to take unless forcibly coerced into doing so. Any spirit of enterprise which might have been possessed by the founders of the dynasty had long since evaporated, and all that Manchu nobles asked was to be allowed to batten in peace upon ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... long-haired profession aboard, and a jolly, turbulent set they were. They decorated the ship from stem to gudgeon in all sorts of unexpected places, and almost disorganized my Lascars, snatching them off duty to pose as models. I had to threaten to driven 'em below at the rope's end, and batten down the hatches, to bring them to reason. But they made fun for us the whole voyage, and I was sorry to see the last of them ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... among the disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty. Mr. Sims in Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batten on the "white slave" traffic, after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced the adherence of our Government to the international agreement for the suppression ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... communication, it meant that we must act—that is to say, must make our escape—that same night, although the hatches were off, and all the boats were ashore. Of course the fact that the hatches were off was the merest trifle, for Gurney and I could soon clap them on and batten them down; but I did not at all like the idea of going to sea without even so much as a single boat on board; while, of all the boats belonging to the ship, I should most have preferred the longboat, because she was a fine, wholesome boat, and in the event ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... not displeased to keep the lad in low conversation. The song had let loose a flood of jest and anecdote which lost none of their ribaldry in the telling. They were ill suited for a boy to hear and batten on. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... selection which will be welcomed by readers of all ages.... The illustrations by Mr. Batten are often clever and irresistibly humorous. A delight alike to the young people ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... the anchor was raised, the cat falls manned, and we bade New York good-by once more. A brisk northeast breeze was blowing, kicking up an uncomfortable sea, and when Sandy Hook was passed it became necessary to close all ports and batten down hatches. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... conventuals in Latin countries, had deeply shocked him. The vows of a monastic poverty that was kept carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense of propriety. That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who wore coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich food and store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck him ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... a fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... was indifferent to one as to the other. He looked at their boots with professional disdain. For all men must look at the world from their own standpoint and consider mankind in the light of their own interests. Thus those who live on the greed or the vanity, or batten on the charity of their neighbour, learn to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... planks laid close together side by side, while I nailed a fifth athwartships on the deck at the point where I intended to rear my planks. The length of the battens being three inches more than the combined width of the three planks, the projecting ends of the top batten afforded me a very convenient shoulder for the support of my shrouds and stay, which I cut from ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... which I endure, When my coy-looking nymph, her grace envying, By fatal frowns my domage doth procure. It is not life which we for life approve, But that is life when on her wool-soft paps I seal sweet kisses which do batten love, And doubling them do treble my good haps. 'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother, Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is Which she in eye and I in heart do smother. Then muse not though I glory in my miss, Since she who holds my heart and me in ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... of their kind, and stand on shore in foul weather hoping the worst, instead of praying for the best: briefly, a wrecker. He and his comrade, Jacques Moinard, had heard the Agra's gun fired, and came down to batten on the wreck: but ho! at the turn of the tide, there were gensdarmes and soldiers lining the beach, and the Bayonet interposed between Theft and Misfortune. So now the desperate pair were prowling about like ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... degradation. Suffering brought him to himself. He, the son of honorable parentage, was feeding pigs and eating with them, while even the hired servants at home had good food in plenty and to spare. He realized not alone his abject foolishness in leaving his father's well-spread table to batten with hogs, but the unrighteousness of his selfish desertion; he was not only remorseful but repentant. He had sinned against his father and against God; he would return, confess his sin, and ask, not ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... the southern bank of the estuary extend the woods of Saltram, the seat of the Earl of Morley. Then we come to Catwater Haven, crowded with merchant-ships, and the older harbor of Sutton Pool. Mount Batten on one side and Citadel Point on the other guard the entrance to the haven. It was here that the English fleet awaited the Armada in 1588; that Essex gathered his expedition to conquer Cadiz in 1596; and from here sailed the Mayflower with ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... vision rarely greets me now. Probably the Free Libraries have supplanted the flickering shop lights; and every lad and lass can enter and call for Miss Braddon and batten thereon "in luxury's sofa-lap of leather''; and of course this boon is appreciated and profited by, and we shall see the divine results in a year or two. And yet sometimes, like the dear old Baron in the ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... of the demi-mondaine was having a hard time of it in Paris. There was no travelling public such as usually thronged Paris in search of pleasure and excitement and upon which she had been accustomed to batten. She was therefore forced to take up with an older and often inferior class of men which she would have scorned in times ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... lived And flourished. Heaven hath turned this turbulence To fall instead upon the harmless flock. Wherefore no strength of man shall once avail To encase his body with a seemly tomb, But outcast on the wide and watery sand, He'll feed the birds that batten on the shore. Nor let thy towering spirit therefore rise In threatening wrath. Wilt thou or not, our hand Shall rule him dead, howe'er he braved us living, And that by force; for never would he yield, Even while he lived, to words from me. And yet It shows base metal when ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... to a shrivelled rhizome—"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected." ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... remote; hast bid the bread-fruit shade Th' Hesperian regions, and has softened much With bland amelioration, and with charms Of social sweetness, the hard lot of man. 260 But weighed in truth's firm balance, ask, if all Be even. Do not crimes of ranker growth Batten amid thy cities, whose loud din, From flashing and contending cars, ascends, Till morn! Enchanting, as if aught so sweet Ne'er faded, do thy daughters wear the weeds Of calm domestic peace and wedded love; Or turn, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... apt to batten or fatten those that eat it. The cove has hushed the battner; i.e. has killed ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... scorned to use their wings, they preferred walking to flying; one might kill them in millions, yet other, and hungrier millions would still come on, rejoicing in the death of their predecessors, as they now had not only men's eyes and wounds to eat, but could batten upon the bodies of their slaughtered friends also. Strange to say, we were not troubled here with ants; had we been, we should only have required a few spears stuck into us to complete our happiness. A very pretty view was to be obtained from the summit of any of the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... wiring apartments for electric light or power. In use they are fastened to the wall, grooves inward, or else grooves outward, with the wires lying in the grooves and covered with the covering strip. For two wire work each batten contains two grooves; for the three wire system ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... would sooner put a bullet through their head than return to the filth and degradation of such a life. Ah, it is the hardness of the laws which drives men to be freebooters on the road! The rich may fatten and batten, rob, cheat, bleed their fellows to death; but let one of us lesser men dare to lay hands upon their fat purses, full of other men's gold, and we are branded as felons, and pay the ransom with our lives! That is not justice. That is not to be borne patiently. I tell you, Tom, that I have seen ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... of your country or mine I know not, but I fervently hope he belonged to neither. Oh, I have never slept sound since. The screams of the birds terrify me, and yet what do they do but follow the instincts of their nature? They batten on the dead, and if they do feed on the living, God has given them animated beings for their sustenance, as, he has the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, and the beasts of the field to us, but they feed not on each other. Man, man alone is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... from the intense light. Some hung motionless in the water; others nibbled daintily the green and lazy slime on the batten at the bilge, their gently waving shadows being barely perceptible, for their delicate, semi-transparent bodies absorbed but the merest particle of the brightness ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... or, indeed, a common thief Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef, Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford,— A cut above the diet in a common ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... I have it, leave me; y'are infectious, the plague and leprosie of your baseness spreading on all that do come near you; such as you render the Throne of Majesty, the Court, suspected and contemptible; you are Scarabee's that batten in her dung, and have no palats to taste her curious Viands; and like Owles, can only see her night deformities, but with the glorious splendor of her beauties, you are struck blind as Moles, that undermine the sumptuous Building that ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... of newspapers, but I shall write no more, and the father confessor will seal my last words with the seal of sanctity when his holy office is done. They of the outside world may send their creatures into wrecked homes and death-smitten firesides, and their newspapers will batten on blood and tears, but with me their spies must halt before the confessional. They know that Tessie is dead and that I am dying. They know how the people in the house, aroused by an infernal scream, rushed into my room and found one living and two dead, but ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... text reads "humilty" the fancy shops of Paree printed "Pare'" with accent on "e" tool-house, piggery, poultry-house, corn-crib text reads "con-crib" about the size of a common window button text unchanged: error for "batten"? to support the comb as it is built text reads "as t is" with blank space and why not hen's? apostrophe in original what she lays in winter must be subtracted text reads "substracted" should then be placed one inch below text reads "theu" the collections ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... in his pocket. "We will not batten on his charity," said he, and he cast three or four coppers into the silent street. They crashed, rolled and fell over with little chinks. Narcisse who had hitherto been asleep trotted out and sniffed at them. Paragot laughed; then checked himself, and holding up a long-nailed forefinger ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... hundred years: the Athenian populace knew little of her except that she had been great and that she had been unhappy; and the descendants of the men who had thronged the theatre to see the Oedipus of Sophokles, sickening with that strange disease which makes the soul crave to batten on the fruits that are its poison, found a rare feast furnished forth in the imaginary history of the one ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... Mr. Burns about this excessive care. I would have been well content to batten the hatch down and let ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... the world assurance of a man.[2] This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? [Sidenote: wholsome brother,] Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore?[3] Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day[4] in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Judgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? [A] What ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... dispatched, but it was no easy task to find the men. Four of the party were alive, one had died. The sick man had been dragged on the sledge thirty-nine days, and they had buried him after all in a solitary spot in the far north—"a paddle and a batten" made a rude cross, and the sketch shows it most effectively in Doctor Moss's book. Five only of the seventeen of the party came back in working condition, and they were ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... you, Anderson," said Lord Menteith; "I think this fellow Dalgetty is one of those horse-leeches, whose appetite for blood being only sharpened by what he has sucked in foreign countries, he is now returned to batten upon that of his own. Shame on the pack of these mercenary swordmen! they have made the name of Scot through all Europe equivalent to that of a pitiful mercenary, who knows neither honour nor principle but his month's pay, who transfers his ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... parts, and keeps fast hold of the smallest advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be indulged in a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for security and repose; Cobbett lets his pour out upon the plain like a flock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for those to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goes more into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal, is more desultory and various, and appears less to be driving at a present ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... Mr. J. D. Batten is due all the credit of the initial work. He began the search for a pure style of colour-printing, and most generously supported and encouraged my own experiments in the ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher

... load, with the bedding and blankets between the legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs—with apples painted on the hard board backs—that we used for the parlour; there was a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets, stuck about the load and hanging under the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... entered were caves, lighted only by the door, but deliciously cool, and quite clean; the floors of puddled clay or ants' nests, and very clean. On entering these cool retreats, the flies that had tormented them shirked the cool grot, and buzzed off to the nearest farm to batten on congenial foulness. On the fat, round, glossy babies, not a speck of dirt, whereas the little Boers were cakes thereof. The Kafir would meet them at the door, his clean black face all smiles and welcome. The women and grown girls would fling a spotless ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... for "the people" of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how needless it all was, and how easy, oh! how pitiably easy, it would be to remedy every such condition, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... PEOPLE, - Do you know who is my favourite author just now? How are the mighty fallen! Anthony Trollope. I batten on him; he is so nearly wearying you, and yet he never does; or rather, he never does, until he gets near the end, when he begins to wean you from him, so that you're as pleased to be done with him as you thought you would ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Thames from shore to shore;— For King or etiquette while nobles caring, To Buckingham-house by hundreds are repairing, With gorgeous Dames, to whom this day a bliss is; Accompanied by smiling lovely misses Of eager appetite, who long to gorge And batten on the favours of King George; While London's Mayor and Aldermen set out In Civic state, to grace the royal rout; While strut the Guards in black straps and white gaiters In honour of their Patron ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... sacrifices could not be carried on into his cult, if Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats. The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun) met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, such as the dead hand, carried about by the family, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... over the hatchway. Perhaps the crew were about to batten down the hatches. In vain I tried, while this was going forward, to strike the cask. I had not sufficient strength to do it. A fearful faintness was coming over me. Perhaps the movement of the ship contributed to this. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... Zoeth! I'll calm down. But as for swearin'—well, if you knew how full of cusswords I was there one spell you wouldn't find fault; you'd thank me for holdin' 'em in. I had to batten down my hatches to do it, though; I tell ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln



Words linked to "Batten" :   batten down, beef up, strip, batting, secure, stuffing, fortify



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