"Bodkin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sodomites. We love it for its own sake, but more for the pain it gives the other fellow. We like to see him squirm, and we have many a joyous hour over our friends' misfortunes. Turn yourself into a mental bodkin, and you will find favor among us, for it is better to be feared than loved in our ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... a barber; and there went Beneath my hand, oh! manes extravagant. Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask Of many a pleasant girl. It was my task To gild their hair, carefully, strand by strand; To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand; To draw a bodkin, from a vase of kohl, Through the closed lashes; pencils from a bowl Of sepia to paint them underneath; To blow upon their eyes with a soft breath. They lay them back and watched the ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... may be, but if you do, mind what I tell you—do not say any thing to anybody, but—put an end to me! it does not matter how; smother me with bolsters; run your bodkin up to its ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... description of the Christian manner in which the hero, Mr. Aubrey, bore his misfortunes. After making a display of the most florid and grandiloquent resignation, and quitting his country mansion, the writer supposes Aubrey to come to town in a post-chaise and pair, sitting bodkin probably between his wife and sister. It is about seven o'clock, carriages are rattling about, knockers are thundering, and tears bedim the fine eyes of Kate and Mrs. Aubrey as they think that in happier times at this hour—their Aubrey used formerly ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mamma, it's just like you. And here's a thimble fits me exactly! and an emery-bag! how pretty! and a bodkin! this is a great nicer than yours, Mamma yours is decidedly the worse for wear; and what's this? oh, to make eyelet-holes with, I know. And oh, Mamma! here is almost everything, I think here are tapes, and buttons, and hooks and eyes, and darning-cotton, and silk- winders, and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... well be absent on an occasion which assembled all three together, had seated himself on the board behind the carriage, "just to be in the way in case they wanted a touch before the gentlemen sat down to dinner." Between the two massive figures of Monkbarns and the clergyman was stuck, by way of bodkin, the slim form of Mary M'Intyre, her aunt having preferred a visit to the manse, and a social chat with Miss Beckie Blattergowl, to investigating the ruins of the priory of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... brace of good pistols, which I was fully determined to use against any person who should presume to lay violent hands upon me, except my lord, for whom a less mortal weapon would have sufficed, such as a bodkin or a tinder-box. Nothing could be farther from my intention than the desire of hurting any living creature, much less my husband: my design was only to defend myself from cruelty and oppression, which I knew, by fatal experience, would infallibly be ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... impotence, long absence, and monastic profession were allowed to rescind the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed the permission of the law was subject to various and heavy penalties. The woman was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his bed, her fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island or imprisonment in a monastery; the injured party ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... velvet, a velvet hood lined with white satin, a girdle of gold and pearls, crimson stockings, white satin slippers, a lace rebato, and a pearl necklace. Oh, how charming you would look! You would not know yourself. Then I should put a gold bodkin in your hair, and a head-drop of pearls set round a diamond, and bracelets instead of these lawn cuffs, and a fan; and wash your face in distilled waters, and odoriferous oils ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... on Paper, for of that they have little or none; but on a Talli-pot leaf with an Iron Bodkin, which makes an impression. This leaf thus written on, is not folded, but rolled up like Ribbond, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... now to find fault with my face; for I'll swear your impudence has put me out of countenance. But look you here now, where did you lose this gold bodkin? ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... have done it with her bodkin," said the soldier. "Milksop! that sickens at sight of a scratch ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... 'Jonathan,' says he to me, 'when ye gang to drive hame the herd, I shall go wi' thee, for the sake of a bout with the bold, bragging Cunningham, of Simprin—for I will lay thee my sword 'gainst a tailor's bodkin, it is him ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... good old times, he calculates "the coste of the embrouding or embroidering; endenting or barring; ounding or wavy; paling or imitating pales; and winding or bending; the costlewe furring in the gounes; so much pounsoning of chesel to maken holes (that is, punched with a bodkin); so moche dagging of sheres (cutting into slips); with the superfluitee in length of the gounes trailing in the dong and in the myre, on horse and eke on foot, as wel of man as of woman—that all thilke trailing," ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... men most beset me, most hang about my garments, and sigh most for my smiles. The rich man would have me build monuments to his memory; the ambitious poor man repines when I forget him. Novel-writing damsels, their eyes bedimmed with bodkin shaped tears, and their fingers steeled with envious pens it seems their love to dip in gall, cast longing looks at me. Peter Parley, and other poets, have laid their offerings low at my feet. I have crowned kings and emperors; and I have cast a favor ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... bodkin"—broke in the excited girl. "Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat beneath a weary life, but that the thought of something after death—the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns—puzzles ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... he exhorted them to imitate their great progenitor in his glorious career of beneficence to mankind. The novices then drew near, and, kneeling one by one before the Inca, he pierced their ears with a golden bodkin; and this was suffered to remain there till an opening had been made large enough for the enormous pendants which were peculiar to their order, and which gave them, with the Spaniards, the name of orejones. *29 This ornament was so massy in the ears of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband's awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... they were under the world yet, with only the yellow haze shining through the door. This was the acre of ghosts. Tale after tale I had heard, sitting on the knee of the old grey negro Clabe, about the horrors of this haunted "bend" in the Gauley. There, when I was a child, had lived old Bodkin in a stone house, now a ruin, by the river,—a crooked, mean old devil with a great hump, and eyes like a toad. He came to own the land through some suspicious will about which there clung the atmosphere of crime, as men said. When I saw him first, I was riding ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... this flesh, which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin[1] Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell, King!" [Footnote 1: In Hamlet's famous soliloquy the pin is a "bodkin."] ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... week after Mr Bodkin & Co, the agent, had that glass of wine in the pantry, that he came in all of a bustle, as he always was, just as if he must get everything done before dark, and says he has let the house, if Sir ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiseover'd country, from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... best attire, and wearing a good many ornaments; such as gold or coral beads and necklaces, combs of silver or gold, heavy ear-rings, curiously wrought brooches, perhaps cameos or mosaics, though I think they prefer purely metallic work to these. One ornament very common among them is a large bodkin, which they stick through their hair. It is usually of silver, but sometimes it looks like steel, and is made in the shape of a sword,—a long Spanish thrusting sword, for example. Dr. Franco told us a story of a woman of Trastevere, who was addressed rudely at the Carnival by ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ball will be repelled to the distance of four or five inches, more or less, according to the quantity of electricity. When in this state, if you present to the shot the point of a long, slender shaft-bodkin, at six or eight inches distance, the repellency is instantly destroyed, and the cork flies to the shot. A blunt body must be brought within an inch, and draw a spark, to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... First my bodkin I must place With my needles in their case; I like to put them by with care, And then I always ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... sailed. Spirits being in circulation after her arrival, he went to the 'Grog-shop' as long as he had money; but, finding that he had no credit, he could no longer endure the loss of character which he thought attached to it; and though he did not 'make his quietus with a bare bodkin,' yet he found a convenient rope that put ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Scandinavian names which passed into Normandy, contained very much the same elements as our own native names, but underwent a different phonetic development. Thus I would rather explain Bawden, Bowden, Boulders, Boden, and the dims. Body and Bodkin, as Old French variants from the Old Ger. Baldawin than as coming directly from Anglo-Saxon. Boyden undoubtedly goes back ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... ornamental: the dress of both sexes is a close jacket, reaching to their knees, with spatterdashes, all of coarse blue cloth, shoes of deer-skin, embroidered with porcupine quills, and sometimes with silver spangles; and a blanket thrown across their shoulders, and fastened before with a kind of bodkin, with necklaces, and other ornaments of beads ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... should do; and, to speak truth, they are but barely decent. And so, if Rose will turn herself, and put her horse out of my way," continued the tire- woman, "I will put your dress in better order in the sticking in of a bodkin, than any Fleming of them all could do in ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Kubbeling had answered me no, Uhlwurm said once more, or ever his master had done speaking, "Gone!" in his deep, mournful voice, and again swept away crumbs, as it might be, in the air. Hereupon so great a fear fell upon me that meseemed a sharp steel bodkin was being thrust into my heart; but Kubbeling had seen me turn pale, and he turned upon Uhlwurm in high wrath, and to the end that I might take courage he cried: "No, no, I say no. What does the old fool ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you; then slightly bend the finger, this will draw down the lower lid of the eye, and you will probably be able to remove the dirt; but if this will not enable you to get at it, repeat this operation while you have a netting-needle or bodkin placed over the eyelid; this will turn it inside out, and enable you to remove the sand, or eyelash, &c., with the corner of a fine silk handkerchief. As soon as the substance is removed, bathe the eye ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... star seen in winter dawns shivering on the cold forehead of the morning? And is there not a Messalina, who would receive embraces in a bath of blood? Is there not a Fulvia, who takes the head of the murdered Cicero in her hands, and tears his dumb tongue with her bodkin? And are there not a Saint Elizabeth and a Lady Godiva, capable of supernal deeds of self-denial and heroism for the sake of blessing the poor? The personality of any one of the best representatives of ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... next day news came to the castle that Sir Rowland had been hanged by robbers in the wood. And at night she took another doll, and drove her bodkin right into ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... skins as soon as we get enough," said Hector.—"Louis, I think you can manufacture a bone needle; we can pierce the hole with the strong thorns, or a little round bone bodkin ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... what were the manners to which a great Roman lady had descended in those days in which the Republic was brought to an end. On the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the people, while Fulvia specially avenged herself by piercing the tongue with her bodkin. That is the story of Cicero's death as it ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... marasmar (?) which so consumed him that he became quite a skeleton, notwithstanding every remedy which he had tried. At length he tried a sympathetic remedy: he took an egg, and having boiled it hard in his own urine, he then with a bodkin perforated the shell in different parts, and then buried it in an ant-hill. As the ants wasted the egg he found his strength increase, and he soon was completely cured. A daughter of a French officer was so tormented by a paronychia (?) for four days together, that ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... masters, servants throw them down. What a happiness it is when people can send their servants on errands by coaches or railways, instead of being kept on the fidget all day, lest a fifty-pound horse should be the price of a bodkin ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... stone No. 2 the tailor's tools—shears, goose, and bodkin—are clear enough, and I was told that the figures on the stone in the lower left-hand corner (No. 3) are locally recognized as the shuttle and some other requisite of the weaver's trade. Inverness had spinning and weaving for its staple ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. Antonyms: imperforation, closure. Associated words: auger, drill, gimlet, bodkin, bore, bit, puncture, perforate, pink, awl, stylet, imperforable, imperforate, punch, wimble, pierce, eyeleteer, dibble, plug, spigot, spile, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... genius, inspired by the diplomacy inherent in a sex whose chief concern has been the making of matches, she transfixed his imagination as skilfully as she might have impaled a butterfly on a bodkin. While he stared at her she could almost see the iridescent wings of his fancy whirling madly around the idea by which she had arrested their flight. Trifle with Virginia! Trifle with that radiant vision of girlhood! All the chivalry of youth revolted ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... is very rough, when there are steps to climb, a crowd to be piloted through, or a street crossing to effect. In any one of these emergencies suggest, "I think you will find it better to take my arm." A man never walks bodkin—that is, ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... particularly pleased with Jack, and grandma continued to grumble over his misdemeanors, especially when he would rummage in her work-basket, and carry off her silver thimble or bright steel bodkin. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... he shines in. 'Sir! do you think Alexander looked o' this fashion in his lifetime, or was perfumed so? Had Julius Caesar such a nose? or wore his frill as you do? You have slain I don't know how many heroes "with a bare bodkin," the gold pin in your shirt, and spoiled all the fine love speeches you will ever make by picking your teeth ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... brought dolls, puzzle blocks, a wooden tea-service, a green leather case with Necessaire written on it in gold letters. Aunt Emma had once given it to Anthea, and it had then contained scissors, penknife, bodkin, stiletto, thimble, corkscrew, and glove-buttoner. The scissors, knife, and thimble, and penknife were, of course, lost, but the other things were there and as good as new. Cyril contributed lead soldiers, a cannon, a catapult, a tin-opener, a tie-clip, and a tennis ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... go down the same afternoon to dine with my Lord Duke, no less. I convinced him, that if I was to sit up all night, he could get them by five next morning, if that would do, as I would also keep my laddie, Tammy Bodkin, out of his bed; but no—I thought he would have jumped out of his seven senses. "Just look," he said, turning up the inside seam of the leg—"just see—can any gentleman make a visit in such things as these? they are as full of holes as a coal-sieve. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... brightly polished daggers and swords," we read in the Irish Tain Bo Cuailgne of the Badhbh or Banshee who appeared to Meidhbh, "together with seven braids for the dead, of bright gold, in her right hand; a speckled garment of green ground, fastened by a bodkin at the breast under her fair, ruddy countenance, enveloped her form; her teeth were so new and bright that they appeared like pearls artistically set in her gums; like the ripe berry of the mountain ash were her lips; sweeter was her voice ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... essay was the activity at that time of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, founded in 1818, of which a Mr. W.H. Bodkin was the Hon. Secretary. The Society's motto was "Benefacta male collocata, malefacta existima;" and it attempted much the same work now performed by the Charity Organisation Society. Perhaps the delight expressed in its annual reports in the exposure of impostors was a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... by skilful blows the edges of flint knives, the fingers and thumb being placed in the two opposite depressions during the operation. Among the bone instruments were arrows without barbs, and other tools made of reindeer horn, and a bodkin formed out of the more compact horn of the roedeer. This instrument was well shaped, and sharply pointed, and in so good a state of preservation that it might still be used for piercing the tough skins ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... with the quills, as they could not possibly thread them through the eye of a needle; but her nurse told her that when they want to work any pattern in birch-bark, they trace it with some sharp-pointed instrument, such as a nail, or bodkin, or even a sharp thorn; with which they pierce holes close together round the edge of the leaf, or blade, or bird they have drawn out on the birch-bark; into these holes they insert one end of the quill, the other end is then drawn through the opposite hole, pulled tight, ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... Dillon, Archbishop of Tuam, wrote in September, 1799, that he had had an opportunity during his recent visitation "of acquiring the strongest conviction that this measure alone can restore harmony and happiness to our unhappy country." His neighbour, Dr. Bodkin, Bishop Galway, wrote that the Union was the only measure to save "poor infatuated Ireland" from "ruin and destruction." Dr. Moylan, Bishop of Cork, was equally emphatic. "I am perfectly satisfied," he says, "that it is impossible to extinguish the feuds and animosities which disgrace this Kingdom, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... mind, whenever you search for anything, that it may be under your nose. That is the place to look, not off at the clouds—and nothing is too insignificant to escape investigation. For see: I can write on a very thin piece of paper, roll it into a string, thread it into a bodkin, and weave it into a rug, curtain, quilt, and so forth; or press it lengthwise into a crack in the floor. A favorite way is to tie it to a real piece of string, and throw them carelessly into a wastebasket, thus ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... my lady, a, tailor!' Maria repeated, and the Countess, agreeing with her scorn as she did, could have killed her. At least she would have liked to run a bodkin into her, and make her scream. In her position she could not always be Charity itself: nor is this the required character for a high-born dame: so she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ways of men and treating all life as an ugly jest; some refuse to think at all, and drag themselves into oblivion; while some take one frantic sudden step and leave the world altogether by help of bullet or bare bodkin. A man of light mind who endeavoured to reconcile all the things suggested to him by the coming of Christmas would probably become demented if he bent his entire intellect to solve the puzzles. Thousands—millions—of books ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... cheers from Ministerialists, who rise to their feet, and wildly wave their hats as PREMIER passes to table. Been some effective speaking on this last night of Debate. CHAMBERLAIN, BLAKE, and JOHN MORLEY, each excellent in varied way. Only few Members present to hear BODKIN insert maiden speech in dinner-hour. A remarkable effort, distinguished, among other things, by necessity of SPEAKER twice interposing, second time with ominous threat that BODKIN could not be tolerated much longer. BODKIN, resuming thread of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain drew a seat nigh the cockswain; and, with a familiarity and kindness infinitely condescending, when the difference in their several conditions is considered, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and prick them full of holes with a bodkin, & lay them in sweet wort three or four dayes, then lay them on a sieves bottom, till they be dry in an Oven, but a drying heat. This you may do to any ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... this mine heart is throbbing, and man saith, 'Be still!' How can I be still, unless I were still in death? And man reckoneth I shall be a-paid for my lost sword with a needle, and for my broken sceptre he offereth me a bodkin!" ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... pay, as "Stonewall" of Company C argued, but for the "freedom of our kin." Nobly did they do this, not only at Wagner, as we have seen, but in the battles on James Island, Honey Hill, Olustee and at Bodkin's Mill. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... is little larger than a pin hole," he said. He took from his pocket a general utility knife and slipped out a thin steel needle. "Pipe cleaners may be very useful," he said, and pressed the long slender bodkin into the aperture. Instantly, and without sound, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... bitterly that nothing on earth, no protestation, no swearing by the gods, would make it believed as being what it was. He chuckled once, picturing the face of the immaculate Elizabeth while she thrust into him a bodkin of moral autopsy, should she come ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... had not time to examine the sunshine, or see whether it might not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know, men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit—such is your cleverness—all things in heaven and earth, from Jove's thunderbolts down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... fervent adjuration.) Oh! Louisa! Louisa! Fallen, perhaps already lost, daughter! Treasure in thy heart the solemn counsels of a father! I cannot eternally watch over thee! I may snatch the dagger from thy hands; but thou canst let out life with a bodkin. I may remove poison from thy reach; but thou canst strangle thyself with a necklace. Louisa! Louisa! I can only warn thee. Wilt thou rush boldly forward till the perfidious phantom which lured thee on vanishes at the awful brink ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a long bodkin Frae out her gay head-gear, And strake Fair Annet unto the heart, That word ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... of wine and a glass. She started as the sound struck on her delicate nerves; and, looking at young Thorpe directly, signed that she did not wish for any wine. The sudden movement of her body thus occasioned, shook off her lap a little mother-of-pearl bodkin case, which lay more than half out of one of the pockets of her apron. The bodkin case rolled under the stool, without her seeing it, for she was looking towards the supper-table: without being observed by Mat, for his eyes were following the direction ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... you may put in about an Inch and a half of dry Powder for the Bounce, but if you are to place the fore-mention'd things on the Head of a great Rocket, you must close down the Paper or Paste-board very hard, and prick two or three holes with a Bodkin, that it may give fire to them when it Expires, placing a large Cartoush or Paste-board on the head of the Rocket, into which you must put the Stars or small Rockets, Paper-Serpents, or Quill-Serpents; of which I shall speak ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... not able to carry home the money. It was difficult, indeed, for the poor tailor to bear what he felt; it is true he bore it as long as he could; but at length he became suicidal, and often had thoughts of "making his own quietus with his bare bodkin." After many deliberations and afflictions, he ultimately made the attempt; but, alas! he found that the blood of the Malones refused to flow upon so ignominious an occasion. So HE solved the phenomenon; although the truth was that his blood was not "i' the vein" for it; none was to ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... this window, and that made me think that you must have spoken, especially as I saw Lady—well, never mind names— examining something she had drawn out of the bosom of her dress. She slipped it back as soon as she saw me, but I feel certain that it was a sort of bodkin or stiletto. 'That's meant for poor Frank,' I said to myself; for, you know, in history women have often done work of that kind. But, there, you don't seem to have any holes in you; so I suppose you are ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... thought they would sit or fall down:—but no; with Mrs. H.'s hand on his shoulder, "'Quam familiariter'"[2] (as Terence said, when I was at school,) they walked about a minute, and then at it again, like two cock-chafers spitted on the same bodkin. I asked what all this meant, when, with a loud laugh, a child no older than our Wilhelmina (a name I never heard but in the 'Vicar of Wakefield', though her mother would call her after the Princess of Swappenbach,) said, "L—d! Mr. Hornem, can't you ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... careless of his charge, His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large, Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins, 125 Be stopp'd in vials, or transfix'd with pins; Or plung'd in lakes of bitter washes lie, Or wedg'd whole ages in a bodkin's eye: Gums and Pomatums shall his flight restrain, While clogg'd he beats his silken wings in vain; 130 Or Alum styptics with contracting pow'r Shrink his thin essence like a rivel'd flow'r: Or, as Ixion fix'd, the wretch shall ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... wife, instead of using her hand as everybody does, pulled a little case out of her pocket, and took out of it a kind of bodkin, with which she picked up the rice, and put it into her ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around;—the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... been, the ultimate product of the Destinies, and English man of men, arrived at last in the fulness of time, is—who think you? Ye worlds, the Ithuriel javelin by which, with all these heroisms and accumulated energies old and new, the English People means to smite and pierce, is this poor tailor's-bodkin, hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole, who now has the honor to"—Good Heavens, if it were not that men generally are very much of the canary-bird, here, are reflections sufficient to annihilate any man, almost ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... said,—"right there to that tree under which you are sitting, Jacky Bonhomme." Jacques incontinently shifted his position. "He chains him there, with one chain around his neck, one around his waist, and one around his ankles. Then he sticks me a bodkin through his tongue." A groan of admiration from his audience. "Then they dig, before his very eyes, a grave,—shallow enough they make it, too,—and they put into it, uncoffined, with only a long white shroud upon him, the man he murdered. Then they cover the grave. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... little parcel eagerly. It contained a small shagreen case, which in its turn proved to contain a pair of scissors of antique and curious form, an ivory tablet, yellow with age, a silver bodkin, and a silver fruit-knife, all fitting neatly in their places; the whole case closing with a spring. "It is the prettiest thing I ever saw!" cried Hildegarde. "See, Cousin Wealthy, isn't it delightful to think of that poor old dear—But what have you, Rose-red? ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... taken againe were putt to sundry deathes as by hanginge, shooting and breaking uppon the wheele and others were forced by famine to filch for their bellies, of whom one for steelinge of 2 or 3 pints of oatmeale had a bodkin thrust through his tounge and was tyed with a chain to a tree untill he starved, if a man through his sicknes had not been able to worke, he had noe allowance at all, and soe consequently perished. Many through ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... broche, a pointed instrument, Med. Lat. brocca, cf. the Latin adjective brochus or broccus, projecting, used of teeth), a word, of which the doublet "brooch" (q.v.) has a special meaning, for many forms of pointed instruments, such as a bodkin, a wooden needle used in tapestry-making, a spit for roasting meat, and a tool, also called a "rimer," used with a wrench for enlarging or smoothing holes (see TOOL). From the use of a similar instrument to tap casks, comes "to broach" or "tap" a cask. A particular use in architecture is that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... thou shalt have thy story. Only let us be sure first that all is done which need be. Cast a few more chips on the fire, and light another pine-torch; that is burnt nigh out. And see thy bodkin on the ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... when she heard me say, I was afraid and shockd at so loathsome a Spectacle. She stepped back, swollen with Rage, to see if I had the Insolence to repeat it. I did, with this Addition, that her ill-timed Passion had increased her Ugliness. Enraged, inflamed, distracted, she snatched a Bodkin, and with all her Force stabbed me to the Heart. Dying, I preserv'd my Sincerity, and expressed the Truth, tho' in broken Words; and by reproachful Grimaces to the last I mimick'd the Deformity ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Mademoiselle Henriette managed to go sometimes - aided by a little patent medicine, and when it was too hot for the chauffrette. If she was unable, a friend in the neighbourhood was offered a seat; and I had to sit bodkin, or on Mademoiselle Aglae's lap. I hated the 'friend'; for, secretly, I felt the carriage was mine, though of course I never had the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... from his nose in his doubt and wonder, but he answered at once. "Well, the first question, you know, is why a man should kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill with a bodkin?" ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a Warsash crab with a bodkin,' said he. 'Thanks to good Sir Jacob Clancing, once of Snellaby Hall and now of Salisbury Plain, their rapiers did no more than scratch my plate of proof. But how is ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... towards the window, and what should he see sitting on the sill outside but a little woman tapping the pane with a golden bodkin. ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... romantic Ashbourne, glides The Derby Dilly, carrying three insides; One in each corner sits and lolls at ease, With folded arms, propt back and outstretched knees; While the pressed bodkin, pinched and squeezed to death, Sweats in the midmost place and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... three artists mounted up the rocks overhanging the cistern, and looked down on the heads of the people. They saw a thousand or two female heads, mostly with light hair, all pulled directly back from the forehead, twisted into a knot behind, and tied with a piece of string, while a silver bodkin a foot in length, run in sideways, held it tight. The heads of these silver hair-pins indicated the married or unmarried state of the wearers; the former were fashioned as acorns or flower-buds, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with peasants (nine, perhaps, ranged three abreast)—treason to the gallant animal that, tossing its little head, bravely struggles with the cruel load. A priest is stuck in bodkin among his flock—a priest who leers and jests between pinches of snuff, and who, save for his seedy black coat, knee-breeches, worsted stockings, shoe-buckles, clerical hat, and smoothly-shaven chin, is rougher ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... to be well pleased with Mr. Bodkin, the Secretary for the Society for the Suppression ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... He walked to the cases one by one and sounded them. Their lids were screwed on but the screws were dummies. He found in the side of each a minute hole under the cover of the lid and, taking out his knife, he pressed in the bodkin with which the knife was equipped and with a click the lid flew open. The box was empty. The second one answered the same test and was also empty. The third gave no better result. He flashed his lamp on the bottom of the box, but there ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... world was round because of its rotation. One may put a lump of heated sealing wax upon a bodkin and twirl it; and the wax will cool into roundness, bulging at the equator from centrifugal force, and flattening at ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... with compartments and secretary; carved mother-of-pearl paper-knife, gold seal, gold pencil, case full of fancy writing paper; made in Paris 1 bula work-box, elegant; inlaid 125 with silver and lined with ci-satin, fitted with gold thimble, needle, scissors, pen-knife, gold bodkin, cotton winders; outside to match French piano 1 long knitting-case to match the 40 above, fitted with needles, beads and silk of every description 1 papier-mache work-box, and 5 fitted up 1 morocco work-bag, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... days of his country's history were dear, made more familiar by many an antique relic which hung around his own room in his father's house. Celt and sword, and spear-head of Phoenician bronze, and golden gorget, and silver bodkin, and ancient harp, and studded crosier, were there; and these time-worn evidences of arts, and arms, and letters flattered the affection with which he looked back on the ancient history of Ireland, and kept alive the ardent ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,[13] The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,[14] The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make[15] With a bare bodkin?[16] Who would fardels bear,[17] To groan and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn[18] No traveller returns,[19] puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... returned. She had covered her white dress with a mantle of brown linen and over her head she wore a wimple of the same material. Her hair had been coiled and secured with a bodkin. When she put her hand under the wimple and drew it across her mouth, only her fair skin and blue eyes distinguished her from any other Egyptian lady dressed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... pantomime! The way in which that Calverley talks slang, is quite disgusting. I hate chaff in a woman. And old Colchicum! that old Col, coming down here in his brougham, with his coronet on it, and sitting bodkin between Mademoiselle Coralie and her mother! It's too bad. An English peer, and a horse-rider of Franconi's! It won't do; by Jove, it won't do. I ain't proud; ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Commandments," one of the rules laid down was that when the seconds disagreed and resolved to exchange shots, they should stand at right angles with the principals and all fire together. A duel of this nature took place near Glinsk, the seat of Sir J. Bourke, between that gentleman and a Mr. Bodkin, when the old family steward and other servants brought out the son, then a child, and held him on men's shoulders to see papa fight! Professed duelists were called "fire-eaters," and the first two questions always asked as to a young gentleman's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... which ascends with a plate, and collect the soot. This I saw applied. A girl, sitting cross-legged as usual on a sofa, and closing one of her eyes, took the two lashes between the forefinger and thumb of her left hand, pulled them forward, and then, thrusting in at the external corner a sort of bodkin or probe which had been immersed in the soot, and withdrawing it, the particles previously adhering to the probe remained within the eyelashes."—CHANDLER'S Travels ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... tender elocution Hispal used, That e'en to marble, 'Twould have warmth infused; While fair Alaciel, on the bark of trees, With bodkin wrote, apparently at ease. But Cupid drew her thoughts to higher things, Than merely graving what from fancy springs. Her lover and the place, at once assured, That such a secret would be well secured; ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... instrument made of thick and strong silver wire, wound up like a hollow bottom or screw, with both the ends pointing one way, and at a distance, so that a man might easily put his forefinger between the two points, and the screw fills the ball of his hand. One of the points was the point of a bodkin, which was to write on waxed tables; the other point was made very artificially, like the head and upper beak of a cock and the point divided in two, just like our steel pens, from whence undoubtedly the moderns had their patterns; which are now made ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... promising his men that, if it should be taken, he would divide its treasures equally among them. After this, he bethought him of his brother and wept sore; and his tears ceased not to flow, till his body was wasted with grief, as it were a bodkin. But the Vizier Dendan came in to him and said, "Take comfort and be consoled; thy brother died not but because his hour was come, and there is no profit in this mourning. How well ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... from various of the older girls. The immemorial trifles that women exchange. A bottle of eau de cologne. The inevitable six handkerchiefs. A silver bodkin for running ribbon through lingerie. And from the booking department, a silk umbrella suitably engraved. She ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was a tailor, With his bodkin, shears, and thimble, He swore he would be nimble Among the jovial crew: They sat and they called for ale so stout, Till the poor tailor was almost broke, And was forced to go and pawn his coat, While ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Seal to know his own by; which is like a Flea Bite or blew Spot, or sometimes resembles a little Teat, and the Part so stamped doth ever after remain insensible, and doth not bleed, tho' never so much nipped or pricked by thrusting a Pin, Awl or Bodkin into it; but if the Covenanter be of better Rank, the Devil only draws Blood of the Party, or touches him or her in some Part of the Body without any visible ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... moment I had but one idea of avoiding my fate, and that was to kill myself. 'Twas to this end I had borrow'd the bodkin of the maid. Afterward I had a notion of flinging myself from the window as they came for me. But now, as I look'd down on that coil of rope lying directly below, a prettier scheme struck me. I sat down on the floor of my cell and pull'd off ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Christians for no cause: and they allowed vs but halfe a pound of bread a man in a day without any other kinde of sustenance, water excepted. And when we came to the place whereas wee saw the Carmosell, we were not suffered to haue neither needle, bodkin, knife, or any other weapon about vs, nor at any other time in the night, vpon paine of one hundred bastonadoes: wee were then also cruelly manackled in such sort, that we could not put our handes the length of one foote asunder the one from the other, and euery night they searched ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels[136-1] bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the honest shoemaker, ignorant of his daughter's talent, bade her take service at a respectable saddler's, and thus suppress the frowardness of her passion. Her rebellion was instant. Never would she abandon the sword and the wrestling-booth for the harmless bodkin and the hearthstone of domesticity. Being absolute in refusal, she was kidnapped by her friends and sent on board a ship, bound for Virginia and slavery. There, in the dearth of womankind, even so sturdy a wench as Moll might have found a husband; but the enterprise was little to her taste, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... what would happen. I had not long to wait. Clarimonde entered as soon as she had convinced herself that I slept. She uncovered my arm and drew from her hair a little gold pin; then she murmured under her breath, "Only one drop, one little crimson drop, one ruby just to tip the bodkin! As you love me still I must not die. Ah, poor love! I am going to drink his blood, his beautiful blood, so bright and so purple. Sleep, my only treasure; sleep, my darling, my deity; I will do you no harm; I will only take so much of your life as I need to save my ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... place, and, as far as he could see, there was not a place where he could have hidden away a bodkin, let alone the weapon in ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... To-night I go to the governor's; such a lark - no dress clothes - twenty-four hours' notice - able-bodied Polish tailor - suit made for a man with the figure of a puncheon - same hastily altered for self with the figure of a bodkin - sight inconceivable. Never mind; dress clothes, 'which nobody can deny'; and the officials have been all so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti. Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... France, when I came from that famous assembly of the Estates at Blois, I had a little before seen a maid in Picardy, who to manifest the ardour of her promises, as also her constancy, give herself, with a bodkin she wore in her hair, four or five good lusty stabs in the arm, till the blood gushed out to some purpose. The Turks give themselves great scars in honour of their mistresses, and to the end they may the longer remain, they presently clap fire to the wound, where they hold it an incredible time ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Mr. Miles Bodkin, whose grandfather would have been a lord if Cromwell had not hanged him one fine morning. Then Mrs. Mosey Blake's first husband was promised the title of Kilmacud if it was ever restored; whereas Mrs. French ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... chooses to swear at a lady of my years in that ojous vulgar way—in that ojous vulgar way I repeat—I don't see why my friends should be inconvenienced for him. Let him sit on the dicky if he likes, or come in and ride bodkin." It was quite clear that my Lady Drum hated her grandson-in-law heartily; and I've remarked somehow in families that this kind of hatred is ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my work done against the next Sabbath. Whether from my hurry, or my grief for poor Mungo, or maybe from both, I found on the Saturday night, when the clothes were sent home on the arm of Tammie Bodkin, whom I was obliged to hire by way of foresman, that some awful mistake had occurred—the dress of the one having been made for the back of the other, the one being long and tall, the other thick and short; ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... springs again lively as ever. Among the lowest orders of animals you shall find a creature that, if you cut it in two, straightway duplicates its existence and floats away twice as happy as before; but of the prick of a bodkin or the sting of a bee the noblest of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... entrance into it, which may be dilated and shut together like a purse; for though in the act of copulation it is big enough to receive the glans of the yard, yet after conception, it is so close and shut, that it will not admit the point of a bodkin to enter; and yet again, at the time of a woman's delivery, it is opened to such an extraordinary degree, that the child passeth through it into the world; at which time this orifice wholly disappears, and the womb seems to have but one great cavity from the bottom to the entrance of the neck. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... form; its long, loose folds detracting naught from the graceful ease of her carriage. Her thick, glossy hair, vying in its rich blackness with the raven's wing, was laid in smooth bands upon her stately brow, and gathered up behind in a careless knot, confined with a bodkin of massive gold. The hood or coif, formed of curiously twisted black and golden threads, which she wore in compliance with the Scottish custom, that thus made the distinction between the matron and the maiden, took not from the peculiarly graceful form of the head, nor in any ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... said. "Perhaps you've heard of them at St. James's Hall last night? Platform stormed; Chairman driven off at point of bodkin; Reporters' table crumpled up; party of the name of BURROWS seized by the throat and laid on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... on the 12th instant, Dionysius Haggarty, Esq., of H.M. 120th Foot, to Jemima Amelia Wilhelmina Molloy, daughter of the late Major Lancelot Gam, R.M., and granddaughter of the late, and niece of the present Burke Bodkin Blake Molloy, Esq., Molloyville, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely, The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay, The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthy takes, When he himselfe might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will, And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue, Then flye to others that we know not of. Thus ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... head, and to increase the quantity, they use oils, and other preparations of various kinds. Of this ornament Nature has been very liberal; it is universally black, and is formed into a kind of circular wreath upon the top of the head, where it is fastened with a bodkin, in a taste which we thought inexpressibly elegant: The wreath of hair is surrounded by another of flowers, in which the Arabian jessamine is beautifully intermixed with the golden stars ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... gift till lately: it has disappeared; no one guesses who took it, but whoever he was, as my guide observed, he must have been a thief for thieving's sake truly, as he durst no more exhibit his autograph than tip himself a bare bodkin. Sad, infamous tourist, indeed! Although I saw abundance of comfortable-looking desks and arm chairs, yet this room seemed rather too large and fine for work, and I found accordingly, after passing a double pair of doors, that there was a sanctum within and beyond this library. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... control your tongue, Betty," said Moppet primly, with a roguish twinkle of her eyes upward. "Miss Bidwell says mine is an unruly member, and told me a most dire tale of a little girl whose mother for punishment pricked her tongue with a hot bodkin." ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... a case, of doubtful origin. This became in English etwee, or twee, e.g., Cotgrave explains estui (etui) as "a sheath, case, or box to put things in; and (more particularly) a case of little instruments, as sizzars, bodkin, penknife, etc., now commonly termed an ettwee." Such a case generally opens book-fashion, each half being fitted with instruments. Accordingly we find it called a surgeon's "pair of twees," or simply tweese, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... with two great moppets of hair on either side her brow, (as in the old engravings of Louis Philippe's good queen Amelia,) very resolute, very learned in the boundaries of all Christian and heathen countries, patient to a fault, with a marvellous capacity for pointing out with her bodkin every letter to some wee thing at its first stage of spelling, and yet keeping an eye upon all the school-room; reading a chapter from the Bible, and saying a prayer each morning upon her bended knees,—the little ones all kneeling in concert,—with an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... patient merit of the unworthy takes; When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin. Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death— The undiscovered country, from whose bourne No traveler returns—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... there, but neither took much note of me—Monsieur Doltaire not at all. Those two either hate each other lovingly, or love hatefully, I know not which, they are so biting, yet so friendly to each other's cleverness, though their style of word-play is so different: Monsieur Doltaire's like a bodkin-point, Captain Moray's like a musket-stock a-clubbing. Be not surprised to see the British at our gates any day. Though we shall beat them back, I shall feel no less easy because I have a friend in the enemy's camp. You may guess who. Do not smile. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dispute the generally conceded fact that the "scratching" instrument was the first one used. Its most popular form seems to have been the stylus or bodkin, which was made of a variety of materials, such as iron, ivory, bone, minerals or any other hard substance, which could be sufficiently sharpened at one end to indent the various materials employed in connection with ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... deposit M. Lartet picked up many human implements, such as bone knives, flattened circular stones supposed to have been used for sharpening flint knives, perforated sling-stones, many arrow-heads and spear-heads, flint knives, a bodkin made of a roebuck's horn, various implements of reindeers' horn, and teeth beads, from the teeth of the great fossil bear (Ursus spelaeus). Remains were also found of nine different species of carnivora, such as the fossil bear, the hyena, cat, wolf, fox, and others, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... her bodkin from the knot of her hair, and having traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt end of it, upon one side of her upper lip, put in into La Rebours' hand—La ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... which he had in his hand. It was a species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin, saying, "The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a match," and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the word "Republic." Then turning over the leaves, he said, "Look ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... bonds of iniquity on the soul of my child?' Postage-stamps and postmarks and an old envelope! The triviality of the things as compared with the importance of everlasting life made her feel that they were unworthy to be even noticed. It did not occur to her that the presence of a bodkin might be ample evidence of murder. Post-marks indeed,—when her daughter's everlasting life was the matter in question! Then they told her of Dick Shand. She, too, had heard of Dick Shand. He had been a gambler. So she said,—without much truth. He was known for a drunkard, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... scarf-end illustrated on page 97, and as represented, the corner is only one-half its actual size. The kerchief itself is about twenty-two inches square and is very dainty in effect. The stars which fill in the central portion are very simple to make, and the eyelets in each are punched with a bodkin and then worked once around in point de Bruxelles or button-hole stitch. The kerchief is made of fine Brussels net and the darning is ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... having feloniously aided and abetted Victorine de Villeroi, (late Montespan,) in wilfully and maliciously causing the death of her late liege husband, Herbert de Montespan, by thrusting a long pin, or bodkin of gold into his right ear, well knowing that the same entering into his brain, would cause his instantaneous dissolution. Master Nicolais, it appeared, in sawing open the skull of the deceased with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... having the patient before you; then slightly bend the finger, this will draw down the lower lid of the eye, and you will probably be able to remove the dirt; but if this will not enable you to get at it, repeat this operation while you have a knitting-needle or bodkin placed over the eyelid; this will turn it inside out, and enable you to remove the sand, or eyelash, etc., with the corner of a fine silk handkerchief. As soon as the substance is removed, bathe the eye with cold water, and exclude the light for a day. If the inflammation is severe, let the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... their hair long, and either kept it well combed and hanging loose over the shoulders, or plaited it and bedaubed it with brown earth so as to make it quite impervious to the comb. Those who adopted this fashion had to carry a bone bodkin about with them to ease the frequent irritation which arose from the excessive abundance of vermin ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... his letter just as he was about to leave Castle Morony for the meet at Ballytowngal, the seat, as everybody knows, of Sir Nicholas Bodkin. Ballytowngal is about two miles from Claregalway, on the road to Oranmore. Sir Nicholas is known all through the West of Ireland, as a sporting man, and is held in high esteem. But there is, I think, something different ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... White Lady spoke or chanted these last words, she undid from her locks a silver bodkin around which they were twisted, and gave it to Halbert Glendinning; then shaking her dishevelled hair till it fell like a veil around her, the outlines of her form gradually became as diffuse as her flowing tresses, her countenance grew pale as the moon in her first quarter, her features became ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... but I won't tell you—partikerly him," said M'liss, indicating the parson with a bodkin-like dart of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... he may do as he pleases with that possession. But it is a possession of which, unfortunately, he cannot rid himself when he finds that there is nothing advantageous to be done with it. Doubtless there is a way of riddance. There is the bare bodkin. Or a man may fall overboard between Holyhead and Kingston in the dark, and may do it in such a cunning fashion that his friends shall think that it was an accident. But against these modes of riddance there is a canon set, which some men still fear ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... you lived," replied Cedric; "wretch! was there no poniard—no knife—no bodkin!—Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... suffered to cool without nealing them in the Oven over the Furnace, do thereby (being made of white Glass, which cools much quicker then green Glass, and is thereby made much brittler) acquire a very porous and very brittle texture: so that if with the point of a Needle or Bodkin, the inside of any of them be rubbed prety hard, and then laid on a Table, it will, within a very little while, break into many pieces with a brisk noise, and throw the parts above a span asunder on the Table: ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... said the terrible old woman, suddenly thrusting a golden bodkin into his hand, "is the very dagger which your mother the Countess gave me in order that with it I might ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and blossom with a bodkin; make a syrup with half their weight of sugar; put in the apples, and keep them under the syrup with a spoon, and they will be done in ten minutes over a slow fire. When cold, tie them down ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... dawning perception of the possibilities of this kind of reasoning chilled the enthusiasm of the Aryan-hunters a good deal; it was the bare bodkin that did quietus make for much philological pother and rout. No; if you are to prove racial superiority or exclusiveness, you had much better avail yourself of the simplicity of a stout bludgeon, than rely upon the subtleties ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue elsewhere of this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By and by, however, he is at his ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... rods, splints, yarn, twine and sennit or braid. All textile work was done by hand; the only devices known were the bark peeler and beater, the shredder, the flint-knife, the spindle, the rope-twister, the bodkin, the warp- beam and the most primitive harness. The processes involved were gathering the raw material, shredding, splitting, gauging, wrapping, twining, spinning and braiding. Twining and spinning were done with the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... nature were the trio occupied. For several minutes no one spoke. Mr. Allison leaned against the table, his right arm extended along its side, playing with a bodkin that lay within reach; the sergeant sat in silence, watching the face of his entertainer; while Marjorie lolled in her great chair, her eyes downcast, heavy, like two great weights. At length Sergeant Griffin ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and 'Jonathan,' says he to me, 'when ye gang to drive hame the herd, I shall go wi' thee, for the sake of a bout with the bold, bragging Cunningham, of Simprin—for I will lay thee my sword 'gainst a tailor's bodkin, it is ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... artificial, the fond is sadness, as appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and people." Even in "Charles O'Malley," what a true, dark picture that is of the duel beside the broad, angry river on the level waste under the wide grey sky! Charles has shot his opponent, Bodkin, and with Considine, his second, is making his escape. "Considine cried out suddenly, 'Too infamous, by Jove: ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... lb. of tea, 2 pen-wipers, some little playthings, 2 combs, some slate pencils, 3 chimney ornaments, 4 paintings, 3 books, 16 pamphlets, a fan, a little box, 13 chemises, 2 shirts, a frock and cape, a shawl border, 3 bodkin cases, 2 1/2 yards of print, a gown, and a few other little things.—Great indeed was my joy in receiving this box, for it was a fresh proof to me, in this our present great poverty, that the Lord hears our prayers ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... be verily evil work in the cape, and a witch's bodkin hath pierced these cunning eyelets. It goeth so fast now that erelong every guileless, senseless thing in our houses, down to the tinder-box and the candle-stick, will find hinges and turn into a gate, whereby witchcraft ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... judge, "I am going to hold the bodkin, of which the eye is sufficiently large, to put this thread into it without trouble. If you do put it in, I will take up your case, and will make Monseigneur ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... permeation; infiltration. [interposition by one person in another's affairs, at the intervenor's initiative] intervention, interference; intrusion, obtrusion; insinuation. insertion &c 300; dovetailing; embolism. intermediary, intermedium^; go between, bodkin^, intruder, interloper; parenthesis, episode, flyleaf. partition, septum, diaphragm; midriff; dissepiment^; party wall, panel, room divider. halfway house. V. lie between, come between, get between; intervene, slide in, interpenetrate, permeate. put between, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget |
