"Grindstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hor's words, 'The Germans are curious folk,' and he was ready to learn from them a little. Thanks to his exceptional position, his practical independence, Hor told me a great deal which you could not screw or—as the peasants say—grind with a grindstone, out of any other man. He did, in fact, understand his position. Talking with Hor, I for the first time listened to the simple, wise discourse of the Russian peasant. His acquirements were, in his own opinion, wide enough; but he could not read, though Kalinitch could. 'That ne'er-do-weel ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... occasionally happen where large grindstones are being driven at a high speed. The velocity of rotation becomes too great for the tenacity of the stone to withstand the stress; a rupture takes place, the stone flies in pieces, and huge fragments are hurled around. For each particular grindstone there is a certain special velocity depending upon its actual materials and character, at which it would inevitably fly in pieces. I have once before likened our earth to a wheel; now let me liken it to a grindstone. There is therefore ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... with the Ioynstooles, remoue the Courtcubbord, looke to the Plate: good thou, saue mee a piece of Marchpane, and as thou louest me, let the Porter let in Susan Grindstone, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Dorothy was tired. But where in that wide and not over-clean place should she find anything fitter than a grindstone to sit upon? Never yet, through all her acquaintance with the workshop, had she once seated herself in it. Looking about, however, she soon espied, almost hidden in the corner of a recess behind the furnace, what seemed an ordinary chair, such ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... groping crusts in the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too—things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Felix cordially. "And it will not be very long either, Father. And now I must say good night. It has been a real pleasure to meet you. You have been a most kindly grindstone to a very dull and useless knife, and I am greatly sharpened up. After all, I think we both agree that it is rather difficult to keep anything bright very long unless you rub it against something still brighter and keener. Thank you again, Father," and with a pat of his fingers on ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lady, "don't bubble and boil. I have a great regard for you, and care a great deal more for you than I do for her, and it is only people that I care a great deal for that I stir up. Go back to your grindstone, or whatever you were at work at, and do not worry your mind about your little Cicely. It may be that I shall like her enough to wish that I had made ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a few other articles, but there was nothing eatable to be seen in it. If there was any flour, tea, or sugar left, it was carefully concealed from any of the famishing settlers who might by chance peep in ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... it up till an officer had called him twice, and take as much time to put things in order again. Marline-spikes were not to be found; knives wanted a prodigious deal of sharpening, and, generally, three or four were waiting round the grindstone at a time. When a man got to the mast-head, he would come slowly down again to get something which he had forgotten; and after the tackles were got up, six men would pull less than three who pulled "with a will." When the mate ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it does not content them to have a conception; they must wrestle with it until it takes a form in which others can see it. They doom the artistic impulse to toil with its nose to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed in a book or a statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... become a grinder like me; to this trade nothing peculiar belongs but a grindstone; the other necessaries find themselves. Here is one which is a little worn, certainly, and so I will not ask anything more for it than your goose; ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... room adjoining this one was where Montesquieu's secretary worked. He was the drudge of a literary man, who was probably not exempt from the constitutional irritability of those who carry a whirling grindstone within their brains for the sharpening and polishing of thought. The unremembered scribe may have done good service to literature while undergoing his ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... have a snug little sum in a separate bank as a reserve sufficient to withstand any attacks on your business, your step will be more elastic, you will have more confidence in yourself, you will have less worry than if you are keeping your nose to the grindstone ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... its scabbard in front of Fort Fisher, has fallen from the grasp of the "bottled" chieftain, whether from an invincible repugnance to warlike deeds, like that which pervaded the valiant soul of the renowned Falstaff, or because an axe on the public grindstone is a more congenial weapon in the itching palm of a Knight of Spoons, has not yet been ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin
... visiting a patient at night, in a distant village, were suddenly called to a case of extensive laceration of the leg, with profuse hemorrhage. The case was urgent, and the patient was sinking. No instruments were at hand. He called for a carving-knife, which he sharpened on a grindstone and finished on a razor-strap, filed a hand-saw, amputated the limb, dressed the stump, left the patient in safety, and drove home with his father to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... sign had been only a few minutes in the wild waters of the Atbara, when, bob! and away it went! I had a very large reel, with nearly three hundred yards of line that had been specially made for monsters; down went the top of my rod, as though a grindstone was suspended on it, and, as I recovered its position, away went the line, and the reel revolved, not with the sudden dash of a spirited fish, but with the steady determined pull of a trotting horse. What on earth have I got hold of? In ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil's procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... those trees which bear cones, such as the spruce, fir, balsam, and pine are used. There are two methods of manufacturing wood pulp; the mechanical, by grinding up the wood, and the chemical, by treating it chemically. By the mechanical method the wood is pressed against a large grindstone which revolves at a high speed. As fast as the wood is ground off, it is washed away by a current of water, and strained through a shaking sieve and a revolving screen which drives out part of the water by centrifugal force. In a ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... holdings, Mrs. Pence had forty-five shares in the Grindstone National. This was her favourite bank. Her accounts with the great retail houses along Broad Street were always settled by checks on the Grindstone, as well as her obligations to the insatiable cormorants that trafficked ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... wouldst do but for rain? What's a fair house without water coming to it! Let me see how a smith can work, if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife? the grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps, sets a point upon it, and scours it as bright as the firmament. So I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle; it grinds out ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... ought to see for one's self, and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many acquaintances. In short, I held my nose to the grindstone. The upshot of it all is that I have got rid of a superstition. We have so many, that one the less— perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real difference in one's comfort. The superstition in question—of course you have it—is that there is no salvation but through Europe. ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... that ever was. Only needs a horse round somewhere to be complete," answered Ben, as the long well-sweep came up with a dripping bucket at one end, an old grindstone ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... garb of proverbial truisms. On the subject of frugality we cannot do better than take the worthy Mentor for our text, and from it address our remarks. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, "keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like and profitable. They were rarely unpleasant in any feature; but this particular morning—two ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... wages. They hoped that by yielding, before they were driven quite to the last extremity, by the tide of public sentiment in England, they should escape from all philanthropic interference and surveillance, and be able to bring the faces of their unyoked peasantry to the grindstone of inadequate wages. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... required Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... family, had tied up every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie, in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her, scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon the grindstone of his matrimonial settlement, as though the future bread of his, Gazebee's, own children were dependent on the validity of his legal workmanship. And for this he was not to receive a penny, or gain any advantage, immediate or ulterior. It came from his zeal,—his zeal ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the school in winter he shovels paths; in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots of wintergreens and sweet flags, but instead of going for them, he is to stay indoors and pare apples, and stone raisins, and pound something in a mortar. And yet, with his ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... white; the horn of Bran Galed, where one found whatever liquor one desired; the chariot of Morgan, which directed itself to the place to which one wished to go; the pot of Tyrnog, which would not cook when meat for a coward was put into it; the grindstone of Tudwal, which would only sharpen brave men's swords; the coat of Padarn, which none save a noble could don; and the mantle of Tegan, which no woman could put upon herself were she not above reproach. [Footnote: Here may be recognised the origin of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... thwarted; and therefore told herself that she could best farther the girl's interests by tormenting her. It was not meditated revenge, but that revenge which springs up without any meditation, and is often therefore the most bitter. "I must bring her nose to the grindstone," was the manner in which she would have probably expressed her thoughts to herself. Consequently Florence's nose was brought to the grindstone, and the operation made her miserable. She would not, however, complain when she had discovered what her mother was doing. She asked such questions ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... leakage on an estate, and not an inconsiderable one, arises from tools not being sharpened over night, or by some one before the arrival of the people, and nothing is more common than to see a group of coolies hanging round the grindstone in the morning waiting to have their axes or knives sharpened. Ten minutes may here easily be lost, and on six men this leads to the loss of one hour's work. Then time by a slow manager is often lost in getting his gangs under weigh and setting them to work. Where the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I'm a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I have remarked before about one thousand times the coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one another; for we are all beggars, each in his own way. One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... world: ennui trying to live, and some Englishmen who said: "I do this or that, and so I amuse myself. I have spent so many sovereigns, and have procured so much pleasure." And thus they wear out their life on that grindstone. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I can't help that! I'm giving it to you straight. We've got body-snatchers for a State Committee. They'd rather see the Democrat the next Governor than you. That's how mad they are. That's how sure they are that you propose to put their noses to the grindstone. That's how rotten politics is in this State. The Democrat won't give us reform. They know it. They'd rather see the State officers go by the board than have the kind of reform you've promised 'em. They can get ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and therefore more divine! He could hardly recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance—pure joy. He saw her anew; he loved ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... spark-producing "electrical machine" of our youthful days, in which a glass cylinder or disk was rotated by a handle while a rubber of silk pressed against it, has nothing in common with the dynamo-electric generator, except that in both something turns upon an axis as a grindstone or the barrel of a barrel-organ may do. In the modern "dynamo" we cannot help having friction at the bearings and contact pieces, it is true, but there should be no other friction. The moving coils of wire or "armatures" should rotate freely without touching the iron pole-pieces of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... is just the man," he exclaims. "He is honest and firm to a thread, and keen enough to see through a grindstone if you turn fast or slow. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hardening, than carbon steels of a lower grade. For forging it should be heated slowly and uniformly to a bright red and only light blows used as the heat dies out. Do not hammer at all at a black heat. Reheat slowly to a dark red for hardening and quench in warm water. Grind on a wet grindstone. ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... deck until far into the night while the sparks flew from cutlass blades pressed to the whirling grindstone. Tubs were filled with hand-grenades and fire-pots, the deck strewn with sand, the magazine opened and powder passed up. Stede Bonnet was careful to see for himself that all things were in order. At such times he was a ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... corn-sheller, look at the old cider mill, look at the junk (all the time puttin' in the awfulest profanity). Here he's over at Springfield, and me runnin' the paper and tryin' to print a paper on a grindstone like this. I'm goin' to quit—I've had enough of this (more ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... frescoed work upon it showing that it was held sacred by the early Christians. Then the "rolling stone" and the groove in which it was placed is very interesting. This was something like a gigantic grindstone which rolled in the groove and was large enough to cover the opening when the tomb ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... merely because it was large and solid and difficult to storm, and therefore symbolic of the mighty monarchical machinery of which it had been but the shed. The English rioters laboriously broke in pieces a parish grindstone, merely because it was large and solid and difficult to break, and therefore symbolic of the mighty oligarchical machinery which perpetually ground the faces of the poor. They also put the oppressive agent of some landlord in a cart and ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Catwhisker was several miles beyond Grindstone Island and was winding its way through a labyrinthine group to the north of Grandview. The scenery here was so enchanting that Cub and his father speedily agreed that the first convenient, unclaimed natural ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... much. 'Look out for the millennium, Mr. Man—still, as a great favor, I'll charge you a fat fee if I ever find that fellow and can get anything out of him. But that's like promising to give you half of the first dollar I find floating up the Sangamon on a grindstone, isn't it? I'll take a big slice, though, out of the grindstone itself, if you say so,' and the tall attorney went out with the peculiar laugh ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... thus upon my favour, You know his temper, tye him to the grindstone, The next rebellion I'le be rid of him, I'le have no needy Rascals I tye to me, Dispute my life: come in and see ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... considerably more than she would have believed herself capable of doing a few days earlier. She had travelled far in search of something new, and this was the first time she had tasted the biting green tea with the reek of the smoke about it from a blackened pannikin. Grindstone bread baked in a hole in the ground was also a novelty, and the crumbling flakes of salmon smoked by some Siwash Indian a delicacy, while she wondered if it was only the keen mountain air which ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... of mine does its duty, we'll thrash the Mounseers, and gain the King his own again," exclaimed Dick, as he applied his weapon to the grindstone, feeling that he was a host in himself; and so he was, provided no treacherous bullet found its way through his sturdy frame, when, alas, Dick's strength and courage ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... do as he pleased, he might manage to live here for a few years very comfortably; but we have to associate with some rough characters there in the barracks, and the officers hold us with our noses close to the grindstone all the time. They look upon a private as little better than a dog, and they'll slap him into the guard-house on the slightest provocation. Now, this is one of the stables; it will accommodate seventy horses. Those you see in here are blooded animals, and they belong to the officers. ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... task very well. It borders somewhat on hero worship, however, as is evident from the use of the following language: "If one could see a mystical presentation of the epoch, one would see Garrison as a Titan, turning a giant grindstone or electrical power-wheel, from which radiated vibrations in larger and in ever larger, more communicative circles and spheres of agitation, till there was not a man, woman, or child in America who was not a tremble." He says further: "We know, of course, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... wrathful; "what's age got to do with it, I wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very grindstone 'ull go on turning a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... hanging down inside of them, then the boy rebels and refuses to go anywhere. If he goes he takes his road through Stone's Woods, and comes home the back way by the wagon-house. The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and buys him a sleek, shiny black suit—the coat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... opposition of the old woman to a marriage between Junius and Miss March; and saw, as plainly as she saw the lamp on the table, that Roberta had been brought here on purpose to be sacrificed to Mr Croft. Everything had been made ready, the altar cleared, and, as well as the old lady's grindstone would act, the knife sharpened. "But," said Miss Annie to herself, "she needn't suppose that I am going to sit quiet and see all this going on, with Junius away off there in Washington, knowing nothing about any ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... merchandise broker of the three in town. Now Dallam Wybrant was youngish and newly widowed—bereft but rallying fast from the grief of losing a wife who had been his senior by several years. Knowing people—persons who could look through a grindstone as far as the next one, and maybe farther—smiled with meaning when they considered the prospect. A good-looking, shrewd girl, always smart and trig and crisp, always with an eye open for the main chance, sitting hour by hour and day by day in the same office with a lonely, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the boy babies. There's luck in it." In those days there were great hopes, and prophecies had not ceased. Many a sweet sleep did I have under the elm tree's shade later on; and many a tiresome hour turning the grindstone for the long bladed sythes. In the trunk of the tree were stuck many worn out blades, their points imbedded by the tree's growth from year to year. Thus they became tallies marking the past seasons of haying. Under the tree ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... fire-mist is simply a very big machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... elderly man, whose nose had been too close to the grindstone to permit of dalliance, and who now, monied and retired, found himself terribly alone in the pale sun of St. Martin's Summer, and to the little charming woman of forty, led back to life by an ardent and impetuous girl, this quite ordinary everyday incident, which seemed to them to be touched ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... allegory seems to me to play, in Mr. Meyer's theories, a somewhat excessive part; Arthur and his Twelve (?) Knights of the Round Table signifying solely the year with its twelve months; Percival and the Miller signifying solely steel and the grindstone; Stonehenge and the Gododin put to purely calendarial purposes; the Nibelungen, the Mahabharata, and the Iliad, finally following the fate of the Gododin; all this appears to me, I will confess, a little prematurely grasped, a little unsubstantial. But that any one who knows ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... Now the water on its surface, covering about three-fourths of it, and being more mobile than the solid earth, is, by centrifugal force, made to roll around the earth, the same as the water is made to move around the grindstone when in motion, a thing familiar to every body that uses that instrument. In the Southern Ocean this motion of the water is so well known to mariners who double Cape Horn in sailing from San Francisco to New York, that ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... then the piano and when he realized she was a genius he most went off his head with pride. Why that man—the selfishest, laziest creature by nature—worked himself to skin and bone so that she should have the best lessons and everything she needed. We both held our noses to the grindstone just as tight as ever we could, and Mercedes was brought up ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... an axe. In the workshop on the farm was a fairly good grindstone; only the treadle was broken and Hiram had to repair this before he could make much headway in grinding the axe. Henry Pollock lived too far away to be called upon in ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... comrades," he said gently, "it'll be all the same in a thousand years!" The axe was blunt. He took it to the grindstone—a new patent, with a bicycle seat on it, and there he sat puffing and grinding until a neighbour's cow broke into our corn. He dropped the axe and went after ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Floridablanca, secretly worked in unison to prevent England's recognition of the new republic; and Floridablanca in 1782 even offered to assist England if she would make further efforts to subdue her "rebel subjects." Both Latin powers had their own axes to grind, and America was to tend the grindstone. France looked for recovery of her old prestige in Europe and expected to supersede England in commerce. She would do this, in the beginning, chiefly through control of America and of America's commerce. Vergennes therefore ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... hearty dinner, the cabin tables and chairs, all their clothes, some boxes of candles, two bags of coffee, two of rice, two more of biscuits, several pieces of beef and pork and bags of flour, some more water, the grindstone, and Mrs Seagrave's medicine-chest were landed. When Ready came off again, he said, "Our poor boat is getting very leaky, and will not take much more on shore without being repaired; and Juno has not been able to get half ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... taken back the crying child, and had watched the little girl, who now darned away as skilfully as ever, the Ogress took down a huge knife from the wall, and began to sharpen it on a grindstone in a corner of the kitchen. As she sharpened the knife, she glanced from time to time at the little maid, and soon perceived that she had once ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... regions of life in which all men must act alike, be they saints or sinners, be they believers, Agnostics, Mohammedans, Turks, Jews, or anything else. There are two ways of doing the same thing. If two women were sitting at a grindstone, one of them a Christian and the other not, the one that pushed her handle half round the circle for Christ's sake would do it in a different fashion from the other one who took it from her hand and brought it round to the other side of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... were sharp from the grindstone, Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us. * * * * * Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf Fell on the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... by the suddenness of this catastrophe. She stood with her feet rooted to the earth for several minutes and then walked slowly away out of sight of the house. There was a chair beside the grindstone under the Porter apple tree and she sank into it, crossed her arms on the back, and bowing her head on them, burst into a fit of weeping as tempestuous and passionate as it was silent, for although her body fairly shook with sobs ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... march of those who combat hunger with delicate hands: at the pen's point, or from behind the breastwork of a counter, or trusting to bare wits pressed daily on the grindstone. Their chief advantage over the sinewy class beneath them lay in the privilege of spending more than they could afford on house and clothing; with rare exceptions they had no hope, no chance, of reaching independence; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the tool chest sat Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o' Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Menominee and Winnebago tribes occasionally visited us at our cabin to get a piece of bread or some matches, or to sharpen their knives on our grindstone, and we boys watched them closely to see that they didn't steal Jack. We wondered at their knowledge of animals when we saw them go direct to trees on our farm, chop holes in them with their tomahawks ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... stood on the bank, watched them push it in place, and then the sawmill was started. The process of turning out lumber with the saw was marvelous. Every part of the shop was filled, as the boys set the grindstone, the lathe, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... great swivel piece which had "made the thunder" among so many savage tribes. Also there were stored here the spring's collection of animals and minerals, certain books and maps not needed, and the great grindstone which had come all the way from Harper's Ferry. They were ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... to receive so much mail that it would be necessary to use a grindstone in order to open the letters as fast as they come in. This is the way Mrs. C. B. M. opens her mail. She gets tons of mail, and to save time has the letters opened by a large grindstone, which occupies a conspicuous ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... whisky bottle to the ugly mouth of their dam I hoped would soon reduce her to a like state. Judge of my astonishment, reader, when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large carving-knife and go to the grindstone to whet its edge. I saw her pour the water on the turning machine, and watched her working away with the dangerous instrument, until the cold sweat covered every part of my body, in spite of my determination to defend myself to the last. Her task finished, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for since the Grand River (Government) Boarding School has demonstrated in their midst what faithful teachers can do for the children, the whole community are ready to show their appreciation, from good old Chief Grindstone to the wee little folk who carry flowers to their white friends in the school; and every little circle ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... none, sir. Shall I call at the factory and explain your wishes about the grindstone? I will tell them I was mistaken, and that they had better have one of ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... I came to that conclusion, in regard to myself, long and long ago. Sick wife, hungry children, and four or five backs to cover; no wonder a poor man's nose is ever on the grindstone. For my part, I am sick of it. When I was a single man, I could go where I pleased, and do what I pleased; and I always had money in my pocket. Now I am tied down to one place, and grumbled at eternally; and if you were to shake me from here to the Navy Yard, you wouldn't ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... afternoon a slashing spring rain set in, and Mr. Stanley, who was a forehanded worker, found a job for all of us in the barn. Ben, the younger son, and I sharpened mower-blades and a scythe or so, Ben turning the grindstone and I holding the blades and telling him stories into the bargain. Mr. Stanley and his stout older son overhauled the work-harness and tinkered the corn-planter. The doors at both ends of the barn ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... down he would have been all right. But his stubborn character was displayed to the full by his still gripping the unwieldy thing and, like "Old Grindstone George," hanging on to the handle. He staggered to his feet, the umbrella quite hiding the coming freight train from his view, and stumbled a pace forward, directly toward the ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... whether he was really as mad as he sounded, or whether he was some impudent charlatan who had an axe of his own to grind, and thought that he had found in me a grindstone, he had vanished from the room. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... to laye me on the bones. Eula. were thou not redye to ron in at the bench hole. xanti. Nay mary I warrant the. I gat me a thre foted stole in hand, & he had but ones layd his littell finger on me, he shulde not haue founde me lame. I woulde haue holden his nose to the grindstone Eulalia. A newe found shelde, ye wanted but youre dystaffe to haue made you a speare. xantip. And he shoulde not greatlye a laughed at his parte. Eulali. Ah my frynde. xantyppa. that way is neither good nor godly, xantippa what is neither good nor godly. yf he wyll not vse ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... publication, alas, Sir! you might as well think to cheapen a little honesty at the sign of an advocate's wig, or humility under the Geneva band. I am a miserable hurried devil, worn to the marrow in the friction of holding the noses of the poor publicans to the grindstone of the excise! and, like Milton's Satan, for private ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... take that as a compliment," replied Ann. "Anyway"—mimicking him—"I don't really think you have very much to complain of at any time. You're one of the idle rich, you know. How would you like it if you were obliged to keep your nose to the grindstone—like Robin and me?" ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... with an air-pump, or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to his ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... (perforator) 262; belduque^, bowie knife^, paring knife; bushwhacker [U.S.]; drawing knife, drawing shave; microtome [Micro.]; chisel, screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite^; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate^, set, strop, grind; chip (flint). cut &c (sunder) 44. Adj. sharp, keen; acute; acicular, aciform^; aculeated^, acuminated^; pointed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... himself of having a low, servile nature. One day, when he ran up and down in the snow, he worked himself into such a fury that he resolved to rid himself of these two wicked brothers were it at the risk of his own life. He ran to the stables where the grindstone stood, thawed the frozen water in the tub, and sharpened his pocket-knife till it cut a piece of the thinnest tissue-paper. But when, on the following Monday, he was again thrashed, he had not the courage to draw it from his pocket, and had once more to reproach himself with cowardice. He put ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... at Catharine) in such a presence," answered the armourer: "I make swords, indeed, but I leave it to other people to use them. No—no, seldom have I a naked sword in my fist, save when I am turning them on the anvil or grindstone; and they slandered me to your daughter Catharine, that led her to suspect the quietest burgess in Perth of being a brawler. I wish the best of them would dare say such a word at the Hill of Kinnoul, and never a man on the green but he ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... fault. Nor could he recover if the accident were due to the carelessness of a fellow workman. There was always a natural presumption that he could better guard against such carelessness than could the probably absent employer. If he were turning a grindstone and his awkward fellow workman so held the scythe as to cut him, if he were in the forest and his fellow workman gave no notice of the falling tree, it was natural to presume that the carelessness was shared between the two, and the law would neither attribute blame to the employer nor levy the damage ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... man? Yes. He hasn't any more heart than a grindstone," said Eben, bitterly. "What do you think ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a grinder, like me. All you want is a grindstone: the rest comes of itself. I have one which is a little damaged indeed, but for which I would ask nothing more than your goose; would ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... cutting, flat, and round. In selecting brushes, you will have to be very particular and secure the open and straight bristle brushes, which are also hard to find these latter years. Take all the coarser brushes and hold them on a coarse grindstone, running them whole length, both ways; this takes off the new rough end of the bristles before using first time. Then there are punches, broaches, drills, calipers, countersinks, files, etc., etc. Besides this, I have adopted the plan of making any tool I happen to need for any special purpose, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... then that on board the "Startler" there was no little excitement. The grindstone was in full use to sharpen cutlasses, and in addition there was a great demand made on the armourer for files to give to the lethal weapons a keener edge, one which was tried over and over again, as various messmates consulted together ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... parents allowed my constitutional inertness to have full play, has hitherto prevented me from forming any regular habit of labor. I am now thirty-eight. Would you suppose that if I kept my nose to the grindstone for one, two or three years, I might yet hope to work with some ease and regularity? That is, if I compelled myself to write a certain number of hours every day as a discipline, regardless of the quality of matter I produce, is there any probability that I might ultimately overcome the fearful ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... walls, but these corbels are carved into many fantastic devices: among them we find the very common forms of evil spirits and lost souls driven away from the sacred building. A legend is connected with a corbel stone near the west end of the north aisle. It is fashioned into the likeness of a grindstone and it is handed down by tradition that once upon a time towards the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth a nobleman ran away with a blacksmith's wife, but afterwards repented of his sin and had imposed on him as penance the completion of the west end ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... the milk, and that night, when it was Louis's watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge's vegetable knife. It was rusty and dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge. I slept more soundly ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... I pictured in my dreams and projected in my hopes came to me at last. It arrived with my marriage. Then children to bless it. But it was not made complete and final—a veritable Kentucky home—until the all-round, all-night work which had kept my nose to the grindstone had been shifted to younger shoulders I was able to buy a few acres of arable land far out in the county—the County of Jefferson!—and some ancient brick walls, which the feminine genius to which I owe so much could convert to itself and tear apart and make over again. Here ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... is weak, and opportunity is afforded to observe this action, and see its character exhibited. A common example of weak centripetal force is the adhesion of water to the face of a revolving grindstone. Here we see the deflecting force to become insufficient to compel the drops of water longer to leave their direct paths, and so these do not longer leave their direct paths, but move on in those paths, with the velocity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... its edge was ever over-keen," replied Lambourne. "When I was a youth, I had some few whimsies; but I rubbed them partly out of my recollection on the rough grindstone of the wars, and what remained I washed out in the broad waves ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sometimes she was proud that none had such call as herself to grieve for him. Only Annie seemed to go softly in and out, and cry, with nobody along of her, chiefly in the corner where the bees are and the grindstone. But somehow she would never let anybody behold her; being set, as you may say, to think it over by herself, and season it with weeping. Many times I caught her, and many times she turned upon me, and then I could not look at her, but asked ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... and four legs of its own Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone To get it anywhere that I can see. These hands have helped it go and even race; Not all the motion, though, they ever lent, Not all the miles it may have thought it went, Have got it one step from the starting place. It stands beside the same old apple tree. ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... various reasons, a memorable one, though some of the guests appeared distinctly puzzled by the sequence of viands and liquors. Still, even those who, appreciating the change from leathery venison and grindstone bread, had eaten too much at the first course, struggled manfully with the succeeding, and good fellowship reigned until the cloth was removed, and the party ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... factor in their mutual affairs. "I have to protest against this mortgage, John. We ought to keep a small home free at least, and instead of putting more on this eighty we ought to sell enough of the stuff to pay off on this part. Every farmer in this country has his nose on the interest grindstone, and my life has been spoiled with it ever since I can remember. Please, dear, let's not put a second mortgage on ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... and vibratory movements are opposed by the same property. A grindstone, a tuning-fork, and an atom of hydrogen require, to move them in their appropriate ways, an amount of energy proportionate to their mass or inertia, which energy is again transformed through friction ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... afford to set up one," he confided. "And anyway, I haven't much leisure. Of course, when a good fellow like you comes along I can take a day off, once in a way. But generally my nose is down to the grindstone." ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... knife-grinders, with a young Dervish from Eastern Asia. The Dervish wore long hair, and was dressed in a garment entirely made up of patches of cloth of various colours. These people had travelled with our caravan for two days, each carrying the heavy grindstone in turns. It had often much amused us to watch the care of the young Dervish, despite his fatigue, not to part with his alms bag, attached to the end of a long staff, when taking the stone ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... I had found the case in the library, and had restored it to him five minutes before, his ejaculation was not in the best of taste. His lordship, however, must whet his point upon the grindstone of insult. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... yellow, blue and black clay very solid and greasy, and should be suitable for many purposes; earth for bricks and for tiles, mountain-chrystal, glass like that of Muscovy, green serpentine stone in great abundance, blue limestone, slate, red grindstone, flint, paving stone, large quantities of all varieties of quarry stone suitable for hewing mill-stones and for building all kinds of walls, asbestos and very many other kinds applicable to the use of man. There are different paints, but the Christians are not skilled in them. They are seen ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... little accidents next day, and went straight to the carpenter, bullied him again, and after bearing it for awhile Chips's adze would become so blunt that he was obliged to go off to the grindstone, where he would stop for a couple of hours, a good deal of which time was spent in oiling the ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... Lem. "The more that her mother jest loves society and fine doin's and pines after 'em, so that Edna, who loves both father and mother, is caught betwixt the upper and nether grindstone, as the old sayin' is, and has the life about squoze out ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... main lateral moraines that extend from the mouth of the canyon are continued in straggling masses along the walls. Tracing the streams back to the highest of its little lakes, I noticed a deposit of fine gray mud, something like the mud corn from a grindstone. This suggested its glacial origin, for the stream that was carrying it issued from a raw-looking moraine that seemed to be in process of formation. It is from sixty to over a hundred feet high in front, with a slope of about thirty-eight degrees. Climbing ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... grinding a number of dull blades,—of whom it was remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grindstone,—he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... it was understood among the commonality that the French were determined to subdue and make a conquest of Britain, as they had done of all the rest of Europe, holding the noses of every continental king and potentate to the grindstone, there was a prodigious stir and motion in all the hearts and pulses of Scotland, and no where in a more vehement degree than in Gudetown. But, for some reason or an other which I could never dive into the bottom of, there ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... West," continued the doctor, "like either of the great wastes I mentioned before, were enough, alone, to have kept your noses to the grindstone forever; but I have still to speak of one other great cause of your poverty, and that was the idleness of a great part of your capital and labor. With us it is the business of the administration to keep in constant employment every ounce of available capital and labor in the country. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log, and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite side of the river. They were quite wild, regular ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... old gentleman was beside Johnnie, patting his shoulder and thrusting something into a riveted pocket. "There!" he half-whispered. "And tell your father to be sure to keep this nose away from the grindstone." ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... be right. Will I lose all the good we have gained for the sake o' bad temper? The end's in sight,—the blessed end o' the secrecy, an' the weary struggle o' keepin' me gineral's nose to the grindstone, and now to leave go? Not while Cleena Keegan draws a free breath, an' can handle a ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... to his work. But he got tired of the old knife—it was not tool enough, and had to fashion on the grindstone a screw-driver to a special implement. With that he got ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... barn. Some were three-cornered, and some were flat. I thought the flat would be the best shape, and I asked your father if he would give me one of them. He said he would; and so I ground the ends square, and the sides smooth, upon the grindstone. Then, when I went after the watch, the man rubbed it for me, and it makes a very ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... as I told you before I left, I intend to put my shoulder to the wheel and aim so high that you will have just cause to be proud of me when I become a Doctor of Medicine. I see that I shall have to cut out all idea of amusements and pleasure and put my nose to the grindstone. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... be home again," he breathed. "Now that I don't have to keep my nose to the grindstone I'm going to come home oftener. Things change so. We may never all be home ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... think," Amherst went on, "that anything can be said to convince me that I ought to alter my decision. These months of idleness have shown me that I'm one of the members of society who are a danger to the community if their noses are not kept to the grindstone——" ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... ruler, the pastor. Nor must it be supposed, because these towered above their fellow-actors, that the latter were puny men. Plenty of ability found its way to the Colony, and under the stress of its early troubles wits were sharpened and faculties brightened. There is nothing like the colonial grindstone for putting an edge on good steel. Grey, Selwyn, and Wakefield, as unlike morally as they were in manner, had this in common, that they were leaders of men, and that they had men to lead. That for thirty years the representatives ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... an answer to these questions was made by Thomas Wright, an instrument maker in London, in a book published in 1750. He supposed the stars of our sidereal system to be distributed in a vast stratum of inconsiderable thickness compared with its length and breadth. If we had a big grindstone made of glass, in which had become uniformly imbedded a vast quantity of grains of sand or similar minute particles, and if we were able to place our eye somewhere near the centre of this grindstone, it is easy to see that we should see very few particles near the direction of the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... I slept; only to awake to new horrors; for now I heard cautious footsteps and whispered voices, and outside the grindstone was at work making something very sharp. Then the door opened, and a smothered voice said, 'Mother, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, Seacoal, and various anonymous "clowns" and "fools." Shakespeare rarely gives names of this character to any but the lowly in life, altho perhaps we should cite as exceptions ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... grindstone ready. And Green, get the cutlasses up on deck and give them a thorough good sharpening. We may want them by ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Grindstone into a Farm Wagon if any one wanted to bet him the Segars, but every time he lifted an Ax, something caught him right in the Spine and he had to go into the House and lie down. So his Wife took Boarders and did ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... it was when I was a boy," quavered the old man, filling his pipe with trembling fingers. "I mind when the grindstone was stuck just outside the winder o' the forge instead o' being one side as it now is; and as for the shop winder—it's twice the size it was when I was a ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... inhabitants of Darrow had been long up and about, for the farm-yard was in order for the day, the carts gone a-field, and the cattle-sheds empty. George and Philip Burton were busily engaged near the barn door, the one in turning a grindstone, the other in sharpening an axe; and from the barn itself came the melodious voices of Lillie and her brother Jack. Presently they came out, she leading a long-legged horse which I immediately recognized as answering to the description ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and Ole were standing grinding chopping knives down in the lower yard. The trough leaked, and Pelle had to pour water on the grindstone out of an old kettle. His happiness could be ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... future success is only a kind of revenge. Less than thirty-five years old, he is already sick of the world, and believes in nothing. Under the appearance of universal benevolence he conceals universal scorn. His finesse, sharpened by the grindstone of adversity, has become mischievous. And, while he sees through all disguises worn by others, he hides his penetration carefully under a mask of cheerful good nature and jovialness. But he is kind, he loves his friends, and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... little boy we had a grindstone in our yard which was used by us and our few scattered neighbors. One night we were awakened by hearing the grindstone going, and father went to the door to see who was using it. A party of forty ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... The old grindstone reminded Harding of an incident, to the telling of which both contributed details. They told of swimming exploits; of how they helped lock the school teacher out of the little red building which seemed to them a prison; they told of blood-curdling feats of coasting and of skating on thin ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... earnest. You can't speak—you can't move. Your nose is held close to the grindstone all the time. He watches you every moment. If you drink a drop he says you are tipsy and makes no end ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... and the Lord knows what—a darned set of foreigners, foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone. I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... caves, remarked that human bones were mixed with those of animals, and that both showed traces of having been burnt. These bones date from the Neolithic period, and with them were picked up various objects of remarkable workmanship, including fragments of pottery, half a grindstone for crushing grain, and some admirably polished ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... through all the patter, smoke, and crash, through all the charging, cheering and volleying, while the ever-thinning, shortening gray lines were being crowded back from rise to rise—back, back through field, grove, hedge, worm-fence and farmyard, clear back to Grindstone Ford, Bayou Pierre, and with the cavalry, Harper's, cut off and driven up eastward through the town—the enraged old brigadier watched and saw. He saw far, saw close, with blasphemous exultation, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... domain but Benjamin Darling, after prolonged negotiation, obtained from the local chief possession of the island, the consideration offered and accepted being two bushels of corn, one barrel of flour, a grindstone, some powder and shot and sundry knives, hatchets and other implements. Darling built himself a comfortable log dwelling, the upper part of which served as a store-room for goods for the Indian trade. After ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... mode would be adopted now by those unacquainted with alphabetical writing. It was so with the merchant who could not write. He sold his neighbor a grindstone, on trust. Lest he should forget it—lest the idea of it should be obliterated from the mind—he, in the absence of his clerk, took his book and a pen and drew out a round picture to represent it. Some months after, he dunned his neighbor for his pay for a cheese. "I have bought no cheese ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... difficulty he had to make both ends meet. The Senator is a tall, lank, ungainly looking man; thin lipped, with mean, cunning eyes, strained ever for the main chance. A few tufts of reddish hair are flattened on either side of his cranium, and his nose and chin were sharpened on the grindstone of necessity and early hardship into twin beaks. Verily a vulture, battening now on the Trusts, and feared and hated by other birds of smaller body and weaker wing. With him, Selfishness is indeed the main-spring of Ambition! His features ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... see men throw away their tools the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure in their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much. The very grindstone 'll go on turning a bit ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... had to get out his handkerchief and wipe the gathering tears from his eyes. It wasn't long before he melted and gave his hand to his neighbor, and they had a regular love-feast. After a parting that would have softened the heart of a grindstone, Brown had about reached the room door, when the sick man rose up on his elbow and said, 'But, see here, Brown, if I should happen to get well, mind that old grudge stands!' So I thought if this nation should happen to get well, we might ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... was to read, books that Nancy looked at askance. They had their mornings for the museums, too. Mrs. MacGregor knew nothing of art, except that, as she said to Nancy, well-bred persons simply had to know something about it. After their walk came lessons, grueling, dry-as-dust, nose-to-the-grindstone lessons, during which Nancy's speech was vivisected. At two o'clock they lunched, and Nancy had further critical instructions. The dishes she had once been allowed to order were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such honest stuff as mutton chops and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... assured her chums. "Catch me swatting for the Senior Oxford like poor old Meta and Daphne. I tell you those girls will hardly enjoy a decent game of tennis this term. The Bumble Bee's got their wretched noses on the grindstone, and they'll have a blighting time till the affair's over. No, I'm a wary bird, and I'm not going to be decoyed into an intellectual trap and dished up for examination. Not even the Essay Prize shall tempt me! You may win it ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... through a grindstone that had a hole in its center. He knew very well that the shrewd farmer wanted to make use of them in order to protect his property; but it served Elmer's purpose just as well to ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas |
