"Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... zigzag border of yellow, about her neck, and snatching a small pair of scissors from the dressing table, removed the heavy belt, and proceeded to bore a tongue hole at the point she had marked with her finger nail. So engrossed she became in the work, that she failed to hear the approach of horses' feet, and started violently at the sound of a voice from the doorway. "Permit me." The six shooter thudded to the floor, and sweeping the hat from his head, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... drank for an hour. We had few dishes, except tin cups and tin plates, but it was a banquet all right. The first course was soup, served in cans, each man having a can of soup with a hole in the top, made by driving a nail through the tin, and we sucked the soup through the hole. The next course was fish, each man having a can of sardines, and we ate them with hard tack. Then we had a game course, consisting of fried elk, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... possibilities in the way of aches undreamed of before, the conviction is gradually forced on the wayfarer that every ounce counts, and next time many of the "necessities" are left behind. A light suit of pajamas, a pair of extra sox and a thin rubber cape are greatly to be desired. A wash rag, nail brush and small piece of soap, tooth brush, comb and shaving outfit, extra eye glasses, small corkscrew and court plaster—all these can be carried in a "tourist's bag" slung from one shoulder, and these are enough, with a bit of talcum ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... obliged to confine his energy to the building-yard, where there were plenty of hiding-places, and where the Consul was seldom seen of an afternoon. The ship on the stocks was at once his joy and his pride; he crept all over her, inside and out, above and below, scrutinizing every plank and every nail. At length he had begun to have quite a knowledge of the art of ship-building, and had gained the friendship of Tom Robson, Anders Begmand, and the other shipwrights. The ship was to be the finest the town had yet produced, and when ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... phenomena that cannot otherwise be labeled, and ascribe such demonstrations of power as cannot thus be explained to trickery, to black silk threads and folding rods, to slates with false sides and a medium with chalk on his finger nail. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to bury them ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... charmed boundary, and rejoin other human beings. And if at times the neighing of his steed reminded him of former feats of chivalry, and seemed to ask for more; if his coat of arms, embroidered on the saddle and trappings, caught his eye; or if his good sword fell from the nail on which he had hung it and slipped out of its scabbard, he would silence the misgivings that arose, by thinking, Undine is not a fisherman's daughter, but most likely sprung from some highly noble family in distant lands. The only thing that ever ruffled ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... heads, and bosses of foliage, ornament the junction of these mouldings. Above these the cornice and parapet rest upon blocks bearing the nail-head ornament. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... one is ignorant of the fact that the great body of members of Parliament refrain altogether from weighing individually the opposing arguments in the several questions, and trust implicitly to their leaders. This, however, is merely another nail in the coffin of the debating system. The theory of independent and intelligent consideration, by each member, of every measure that comes up, is the one most favourable to the present plan, while, even on that theory, its efficiency ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... reached me from Division yet," said the colonel, shaving as he talked, his pocket mirror precariously poised on a six-inch nail stuck in one of the props that held up the roof of his cart-shed boudoir. "And I'm still waiting for reports from A and D that they've arrived at the positions I gave them on the orders sent out last ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... bound to tell me,' Dora asserted presently, in reply to my statement that the mare had somehow picked up a nail in the stable, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Molly made a deep mark in the paper under them with her nail; so deep as to signify that she meant to have them for present study or future reference or both. Then, as Molly seemed to have said her say, Daisy said no more ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... what it is to be a bishop in any church! The moment a man becomes a bishop, he fastens tooth and nail upon luxury, as if a mitre was a dispensation for enjoying the world that they have sworn to renounce. Dionysius, look about you! Isn't this worth ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... readily pass down through such stiff blue clay. The specimen was taken about three feet below the surface, and on a level with a brook which runs through this clay soil. I filled a one hundred-pound nail-keg with clay taken from the same place. It was so wet, that by shaking, it came to a level, and water rose to the top of the clay. I had made holes in the bottom of the keg, and set it up on blocks. After twenty-four hours I came almost to the conclusion Mr. Johnston ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... think that poor old creetur that wanted me to kill her is straighter in her brains than any body I seen on the lot. I couldn't live there a week, an' if I was a hopeless case, an' know'd it, I'd hang myself on a nail." ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... so happy that I could not speak. I took off my cloak, which I hung upon a nail on the wall, with my mittens; I took off Monsieur Goulden's great shoes, and ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... to slip back into it a bundle of letters her mother had written to Mr. Carwell years before. Then Viola became aware of something else in the drawer. It was something that caught on the end of her finger nail, and she was stung by a little prick-like that ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... she cried. "See." And she showed them nail-marks on her naked flesh. "Last night my father's ghostly hands dragged me ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... across the stream like a dyke, running nearly north and south with a westerly dip of about 60 degrees. Elsewhere, along the shores of Coral Haven, this mica-slate is of a leaden hue and glistening lustre, yielding to the nail, with a slight greasy feel, especially in some pieces of a shining ash-grey, acted upon by salt-water. From hand specimens alone it is difficult to assign a name to this rock, as it partakes more or less of the characters ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... didn't seem to mean anything to him any more. From the perfect worker he had evolved into the perfect machine. When his work went wrong, it was with him as with the machine, due to faulty material. It would have been as possible for a perfect nail-die to cut imperfect nails as for him to ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... one of his manuscript Diaries, there is the following entry, which marks his curious minute attention: 'July 26, 1768. I shaved my nail by accident in whetting the knife, about an eighth of an inch from the bottom, and about a fourth from the top. This I measure that I may know the growth of nails; the whole is about five ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... up" every dish and spoon, as Mrs. Markham said. Tim had come after his mother and sister, and as he had a good deal to say, the clock struck eleven before the guests departed, and Andy buttoned the door of the woodshed and put the nail over the window by the sink. Mrs. Markham had no suspicion of the trial in store for her, but for some cause she felt restless and nervous, and even scary, as she expressed it herself. "Worked too hard, I guess," she thought, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... kingdom outside of herself, and it does this unconditionally and (by auxiliary force of Laws already quoted) irrevocably. Still, she is not quite satisfied. Something might happen, she doesn't know what. Therefore she drives in one more nail, to make sure, and drives ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all too true. A large nail had passed straight through one of the front tires. He stripped off his ulster, and the coat of his dress-suit, and turned up his ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... his fist. "I'm glad you said that," he cried triumphantly. "There's a lie in that, and I want to nail it. The man gives only his money, you say. Do you understand what that means where a hard-working devil is concerned? What has he got besides the few pennies he earns? When he gives his money, isn't he giving his strength and his youth? Isn't he giving his manhood? Isn't he giving ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Brehgert to abandon his intention,—and if this were so, there could be no reason why she should endure the misery of having the Jew thrown in her face. Among them all they had made her think that she would never become Mrs Brehgert. She certainly was not prepared to nail her colours upon the mast and to live and die for Brehgert. She was almost sick of the thing herself. But she could not back out of it so as to obliterate all traces of the disgrace. Even if she should not ultimately marry the Jew, it would be known that she had been engaged to a Jew,—and then it ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... early in February a large flat box was brought to the store. Mr. Ludolph examined its marks, smiled, and told Dennis to open it with great care, cutting every nail with a chisel. There was little need of cautioning him, for he would have bruised his right hand rather than mar ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... about shame-facedly clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose resistance I should care to overcome, not one who could drag you down to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because we have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune are all reduced to one level; we all have taken to the uniform black coat by way ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... very scrupulous veracity about numbers, didn't like to say—but there they stood, all huddled together in the most desolate condition imaginable. The doors had been torn from their hinges and removed; the linings had been stripped off, only a shred hanging here and there by a rusty nail; the lamps were gone, the poles had long since vanished, the ironwork was rusty, the paint was worn away; the wind whistled through the chinks in the bare woodwork; and the rain, which had collected on the roofs, fell, drop by drop, into ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... broke in. He spoke with a kind of nervous jauntiness. "I'll tell you, by Jove! We had a row. I called him a cad. I called him a damned cad. There was a damned cad present on that occasion—only—I didn't hit the right nail on the head. But that's not what I'm coming to. He struck me. He struck me right in the teeth, by Jove! And when a man strikes you, it's an insult that can only be wiped out by blood. Very well; he's offered it—his ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... broke out in the Cabinet with a letter from Lord Hartington advising the withdrawal of Forster's Irish Land Bill. [Footnote: The Compensation for Disturbance measure.] ... I placed my conditional resignation in Chamberlain's hands, and he his and mine in Forster's, in case the latter was inclined to nail his colours to the mast. I noted in my diary: "I do not care in the least about the Bill, but I must either go out with these men or climb into the Cabinet over their bodies, to either become a Whig or to eventually ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.... If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have been for a picture, it must have been for a miniature—the miniature of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have chosen ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the people in the Endeavour, it was generally done in a private manner, and the men did not seem to interest themselves much in it. But now, I was told, they were the chief promoters of a shameful traffic, and that for a spike-nail, or any other thing they value, they would oblige the women to prostitute themselves, whether they would or no; and even without any regard to that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... dear, be so good as to remember what a hang-nail is like? or a grain of dust in your eye? or a blister on your heel? or a corn on your toe? and then reflect what the word "torture" implies, when it meant all that the most devilish cruelty could invent. Savonarola! good gracious ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... that the nail was driven home, he would clinch it on the other side and make it stay forever. He moved a reconsideration of the vote by which the bill had passed. The motion was lost, of course, and the great Industrial University act ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... clean the skin as well as he was able; then procured from the nail-chest some long flat-headed nails, and inserted them closely through the long pieces of skin he had cut for collars; he then cut some sailcloth, and made a double lining over the heads of the nails; and finished by giving me the delicate ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... tobacco I sold that evening. Men who usually bought tobies bought the best cigars, and when Mr. Jennings came up, scowling, and I handed him the brand he'd smoked for years, she took one, clipped the end of it as neat as a finger nail and gave it to him, ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... them, were pushing their way through the crust! Margery knew what she had put there: it was the radish-row; these must be radish leaves. She examined them very closely, so that she might know a radish next time. The little leaves, no bigger than half your little-finger nail, grew in twos,—two on each tiny stem; ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... hunting, and as he plunged his sharp black hunting-knife into the throat of the last stag, he thought of the sword of magic temper that hung idle by his side in the City of Youth, or rested from its golden nail in his bed-chamber, and he said to Niam, "Has thy father never a foe to tame, never a wrong to avenge? Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt." Niam looked on ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... backed up by the maid-of-all-work, who was evidently convinced that the main duty and occupation of such functionaries is to upset everything; to clatter up and down the rooms in hob-nail boots; to flourish her mop in her master's and mistress's faces, and otherwise assert her noble independence of the ordinary laws governing domestic servants. In these ambitions she succeeded to a moral; and when, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... would be about twenty-four hours if you don't keep quiet. Why didn't he put up his hands when I hollered? He starts to wrastle and pull gun, and I had to nail him." McKee shuddered ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... not forget, and the following day Maisie was supplied with a hammer, and began her work with great zeal, but alas! two minutes had not passed before the heavy hammer came crashing down on her chubby fingers instead of on the nail she was holding. It was a dreadful moment, not only because of the pain, which was severe, but because she felt that it stamped her inferiority as a girl for ever. She looked piteously up at Dennis with her fingers in her mouth, and her ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... of marking. The pottery is of a coarse sort, seemingly made by hand and not upon a wheel, and then baked. The markings were made upon the soft clay, evidently with a sharp instrument, or sometimes with the finger nail. Some pieces are found hard and well preserved; others are rapidly disintegrating. As stated already, in the grand mound, a vessel some five inches in diameter was dug up by one of the workers, filled with earth, which though we tried earnestly to save it, yet went to pieces in our hands. The ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... dumb—with nail and thumb—they struggled and they thrust, The blood ran red from Dollar's side, like rain, upon the dust; He nerved his might for one last spring, and as he sank and died, Reft of an eye, his enemy ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... he took down the great key which hung on a nail at the head of his bed, and went off with the soldiers to arouse young Weymes, who seemed quite as surprised as Sir John at ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... tired. We will go to St. Bertin at once, and you shall be feasted royally. Hearken, villains!" shouted he to the peasants. "This ship belongs to the fair sir here,—my guest and friend; and if any man dares to steal from her a stave or a nail, I will have ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... life. I been here in Biscoe fifty-eight years. I worked for Richardson, Biscoe, Peeples, Nail. I owned a home, paid $150 for it. I made it in three years ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... set forth to visit his friend. On reaching the house, he learnt that Mr. Gunnery had suffered an accident which threatened serious results. Walking barefoot in his bedroom the night before, he had stepped upon the point of a large nail, and was now prostrate, enduring much pain. Two days elapsed before Godwin could be admitted; he then found the old man a mere shadow of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the lightning, and the rolling of the thunder shuts out everything else and holds our entire attention. It is only when the storm is over and the calm has come, that we can look out again upon the broad and peaceful landscape. There are other trials that remind one of a nail in one's shoe: everywhere one goes, it is present, irritating, annoying, torturing. It hinders and detracts from all the common pleasures ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... upon the square of Lower Provins the front of the building which Brigaut had been examining; also the interior arrangements of the house and its handsome furniture. The contractor did not drive a nail without consulting the owners, without requiring them to sign the plans and specifications, without explaining to them at full length and in every detail the nature of each article under discussion, where it was manufactured, and what ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... the mouth, and examine what hinders your Cocks, Hen, or Chicks feeding, and you'll find a white thin Scale on the Tip of the Tongue, which pull off with your Nail, and rubbing the Tongue with Salt, will ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... and to the Thanksgiving Day [251] which we saw to perfection, and enjoyed enormously; and last night to a very large gathering at Lady Margaret Beaumont's... Everybody was there and it gave me an opportunity of saying 'How d'ye do?' to the world after my return from Syria... I am working tooth and nail at the Bird's [252] case, and have got our ambassador (Elliott) to see me at twelve next Saturday." At this time everyone was talking about Livingstone, the story of the meeting of him and Stanley being still fresh in men's minds. It was thought ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Terry McGurk hurled as a matter of principle through Froelich's window produced almost as momentous consequences as the want of the horseshoe nail did in Franklin's famous maxim. It is the unknown element in every transaction that ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Amy, there's no think like breakin' off short, there's nothink like turnin' the corner sharp, and fightin' the devil tooth and nail. It's an awful tussle at first, an' I thought I was goin' to knuckle under more'n once. So I would ef it hadn't 'a ben fer you, but you give me this little ban', Miss Amy, an' looked at me as if I wa'n't ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... hit him on a place or twain, That on his arms the red blood trickled down, And yet himself untouched did remain, No nail was broke, no plume cut from his crown; Argantes raging spent his strength in vain, Waste were his strokes, his thrusts were idle thrown, Yet pressed he on, and doubled still his blows, And where he hits he neither cares ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... register, which he makes them sign; then he makes them forswear cream and baptism, makes them renounce Jesus Christ and his church; and, to give them a distinctive character and make them known for his own, he imprints on their bodies a certain mark with the nail of the little finger of one of his hands; this mark, or character, thus impressed, renders the part insensible to pain. They even pretend that he impresses this character in three different parts of the body, and at three ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... pattern of the first implement invented by man for this purpose. The peasant set no value upon it; I could have had it for a trifle—even for nothing, had I been so minded; but whatever liking I may have for antiquities, it did not gird me up to the task of carrying a millstone back to Vers. The nail could not be found, so I was obliged to leave without a souvenir of the Celtic city. Not far from this spot I found another millstone that would have fitted the one I had left and made a complete ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... with the sergeant, who proved a hard-headed, practical man, and we decided upon an upstairs room, over the kitchen, which had only one small window, through which a man of ordinary size could hardly crawl. I went up to examine this more carefully, and to nail down the window frame. As I came out into the hall again, rather dreading the impending interview in the parlor, I saw her coming alone up the broad stairway. She did not see me until her foot was upon the last step, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "A Thumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr. Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a few years earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life by Conybeare and Howson, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... is a British gazetteer," he said, turning to the index of the work before him. "We'll test the ancient Sparsfield's memory with every Cross in the three Ridings, and if the faintest echo of the name we want still lingers in his feeble old brain, we'll awaken it." My patron ran his finger-nail along one of the columns of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Without cowardice one might dislike the thought of having one's throat cut while one's hands were bound and one watched the blood gushing into an old army-ration tin. Perhaps there would be none to gush—and a good job too. Serve them right. Could he cut his wrists on a nail or a splinter or with the cords, and cheat them, if there were any blood in him now. He would try. Yes, an unpleasant death. No one, no true Somali, that is, objected to a prod in the heart with a shovel-headed spear, a thwack in the head with a hammered slug, a sweep ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... agreed the President. "Fight us tooth and nail though you may, we intend to have you married. You have happened upon us by chance, and you shall have no reason to repent of it. We are in earnest ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that it became me as a man of fair dealing, to back out. This does not, however, appear to have been your wish, but on the contrary that we may still make a joint work of it by-and-by, when we have leisure, both of us, to engage in it heartily—tooth and nail. I shall therefore keep it in my thoughts, and endeavour to shape my future plans so as to meet this view, and, should I see occasion, I can write to you about it. My present notion is, that if ever we do set about ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... composition, "Genius without labor, we all know, will not keep the pot boiling. But I doubt whether one may not put too much labor into his work as well as too little, and spend too much time in polishing. Rough vigor often hits the nail better than the most studied and polished sentences. It doesn't do to write above the heads or the tastes of the people. I make it a rule to put a little good and a little bad into every page I write, and in that way I am likely to suit the taste of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... are usually held by the high court of the assembled Lamas, the Tibetans on the third occasion producing for the oracle's decision a piece wrenched from a finger-nail. The Lama who performed this last operation examined my hands and spread my fingers apart, expressing intense astonishment. In a moment all the Lamas and soldiers came round and examined my hands—a repetition of my experience at the Tucker ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... He looked at the little man for about ten seconds, then, crossing to the wall, wrenched the sign away, nail and all. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... number—of solid masonry, padded over that with a great many feet of earth, containing a fabulous amount of powder—tons and tons of it. Saw also the slippers which the worshippers of Mars put upon their martial feet when they enter into his temple—slippers without a suspicion of shod, hob nail or sparable, with which the heels of the worshippers of Ceres in this country are armed. If any one of these intruded on this domain sacred to Mars, he would in his indignation gift them with the feathered heels of Mercury and send them off with an abrupt message ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... time, there came to us the man of the Sultan's guards, [who had accompanied the Jew, when he came to complain of the loss of the money,] and said, "The Sultan biddeth you nail up[FN143] the Jew and bring the money, for that there is no way by which five thousand dinars can be lost." Wherefore we knew that our device sufficed not. So I went forth and finding a young man, a Haurani,[FN144] passing the road, laid hands on him and stripped ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... at the door. You see it's strengthened, at each corner, with a triangular slab of iron; and the slabs are fixed with big nails. Take the left-hand bottom slab and work the nail in the corner: I'll lay ten to one we've hit ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... accounts are given. Those who attribute to the consul the honour of taking Nola, add, that Atina and Calatia were also taken by him, and that Poetelius was created dictator in consequence of a pestilence breaking out, merely for the purpose of driving the nail. The colonies of Suessa and Pontiae were established in this year. Suessa had belonged to the Auruncians: the Volscians had occupied Pontiae, an island lying within sight of their shore. A decree of the senate was also passed for conducting colonies to Interamna ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... let the soapy water out of the basin and fill again with a clear rinsing bath. When drying be sure that the towel is not coarse or rough, and that it absorbs every particle of moisture. Very gently press back the cuticle around the nail. A little orange-wood stick or a piece of ivory will assist you when the skin is inclined to stick close to the nail. Let the hands have their most cleansing bath just before you go to bed, and then is the time to apply your cold cream ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... and the external organs of generation of a female. A little over three inches from the anus was a rudimentary limb with a movable articulation; it measured five inches in length and tapered to a fine point, being furnished with a distinct nail, and it contracted strongly to irritation. Marie, the left child, was of fair complexion and more strongly developed than Rosa. The sensations of hunger and thirst were not experienced at the same time, and one might be asleep while the other was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... to be overcome are various and perhaps insuperable, and indeed could the powers of the lever be employed on such exquisitely sensitive parts as the bare jaws, when within this iron vice, perhaps no hand could be found sufficiently delicate to use them. By pressing your finger-nail against your own gums, you may form some idea of the agony such an implement would have the power of giving to a horse; anything approaching to harsh, hard, handling with it would drive him desperate, and force ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... platinum wire, the electric arc between two carbons, an electric machine spark, an induction coil spark, and a vacuum tube glow. Also a large nail was magnetized by being wrapped in the current, and two helices were suspended and seen to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... owes its existence to the act of 1802 may be illustrated by the history of the Worcestershire small holdings. The inception of the scheme was due to the decline of the nail-making business, which caused a number of the inhabitants to be without occupation. Two candidates for election to the county council looking out for a popular cry found it in the demand for land. They promised ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... whatsoever he doth, it shall not prosper!" I rarely hit where I aim, and if I want anything, I am almost sure never to find it where I seek it. For instance, if my penknife is needed, I pull out twenty things—a plough-wedge, a horse nail, an old letter, or a tattered rhyme, in short, everything but my penknife; and that, at last, after a painful, fruitless search, will be found in the unsuspected corner of an unsuspected pocket, as if on purpose thrust ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... said. You may kiss my thumb-nail with the white spot in it for luck. No, sir. That is presuming. Now I am snug, and you ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... person,—His face, His wounds. The scars where the thorns tore His great, patient face; the grief-whitened hair, draped above those deep, tender, unspeakable eyes; that strangely rough place in the palm so lovingly outstretched; the spear-scar, the nail-marks in those feet coming over to you,—these grip you. Their meaning begins to come. There's cleansing; yes, blessed fact! there's cleansing from this horrid impurity whose stain you are so conscious of. Yet, what it cost Him! What my impurity forced upon Him! Yes, cleansed; blessed ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... mirror, for instance, in the corner; and beneath the mirror a cheap table in whose open drawer appeared a tumble of papers. Donnegan dropped the heavy sack of Godwin's winnings to the floor, and while George hung the lantern on a nail on the wall, Donnegan crossed to the table and appeared ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... peculiar close odour which had always been present when the room was occupied by the immaculate Ellen and her predecessors. Now there was only the fresh feeling of salt air, mingled with a very faint fragrance of violets which came either from the soap or from the powder on the toilet table. A nail-polisher lay on the looking-glass, hastily thrown down; and that also witnessed to that bodily self-respect which Caroline shared with nearly all those other girls in Thorhaven who would have been ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... moochin' days of me giddy youth, When I kidded meself a treat, I'd have pass him one ez a gooey. 'Strewth On the track iv Huns, he's a eight-day sleuth, 'N' at tearin' into 'em nail 'n' tooth He's got Julius ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... two pun ten's my price. He's not got his fellow that monkey ain't, nor yet his match, not this side of the equator, which he comes from. And the only one ever seen in London. Ought to be in the Zoo. Two pun ten, down on the nail, or hout ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... felt himself. Now, he said he knew all about it. I am not very familiar with the writer of the Odyssey (who, by the way, I suspect strongly of having been a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right nail on the head when he epitomised his typical wise man as knowing "the ways and farings of many men." What culture is comparable to this? What a lie, what a sickly debilitating debauch did not Ernest's school and university career now seem to him, in comparison with his life in prison and as a ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... they will gain a quickened sympathy with the people and an appreciation of their power. They may, perhaps, make something to merely illustrate Norse work; for instance, a carved ship's-head, or a copper shield, or a wrought door-nail. But, better, they may apply Norse ideas of form and decoration and Norse processes in making some modern thing that they can actually use; for instance, a carved wood pin-tray or a copper match holder. This work should lead ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... before this you will have dipped the end of your magnet among iron filings, and observed how they cling to it; or into a nail-box, and found how it drags the nails after it. I know very well that if you are not the slaves of routine, you will have by this time done many things that I have not told you to do, and thus multiplied your experience beyond what I have indicated. You are almost sure to have ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... amazement; that sannyasi leaped upon him, with a yell, and seized him, and threw him suddenly on his back. And he knelt on his throat, like a very mountain, and taking from his waist a knife, he plunged it, with blows like those of a carpenter that hammers in a nail, over and over ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... was met by the eight-armed god Shiva grinning at me, the ox's head of Vishnu, the long-tongued goddess Kalli. The amulets contained, most probably, some of the ashes of one of their martyrs who had been burned, or a nail, a fragment of skin, a hair of a saint, a splinter from the bone of a ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... spreading them out to the rising heat. She had barely arranged them when there was again the sound of approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not stumble. They were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... many thousands of pheasants, partridges and woodcocks. His stable-doors are patched with noses that belonged to foxes of the Knight's own hunting down. Sir ROGER shewed me one of them, that for distinction sake has a brass nail struck through it, which cost him about fifteen hours riding, carried him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of geldings, and lost above half his dogs. This the knight looks upon as one of the greatest exploits ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... ground, and nailed on to a wall-plate. You will first plant large posts at each of the corners, and one at either side every door, and four for the chimney. At the top of these you will set your wall- plates; to the wall-plates you will nail your slabs; on the inside of the slabs you will nail light rods of wood, and plaster them over with mud, having first, however, put up the roof and thatched it. Three or four men will have split the stuff and put up the hut in a fortnight. We will suppose it to ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... that still felt his life in every limb, a boy devoured with fantastic ambitions. He had a genius within that smothered and struggled till it all but perished unexpressed. It lived only enough to be an anguish. It hurt him like a hidden, unmentioned ingrowing toe nail that cuts and bleeds and excruciates the fleet member ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... reached the raft just in time to save Binney, who he thought was Winn, from being dropped overboard by Plater, the "river-trader." The old negro attacked the big man so furiously with tooth and nail that the latter gave the lad in his arms a fling to one side, sending him crashing with stunning force against the "shanty," and devoted his entire attention to this new assailant. He had just stretched ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... dealing with men in preference to measures—and only the most conspicuous, the most interesting men.... Of these outstanding figures there are full length portraits—biographies, indeed, in ample detail strung on a long thread of politics, while very many minor characters have thumb-nail sketches. Few of the good anecdotes available, it would seem, have escaped Mr. Alexander, and good stories do not suffer at his ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... think it is!" he said vehemently, though still in lowered tones. "I want two hundred a year—it's little enough: or two or three thousand on the nail. Give me that, and I'll not trouble you or ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Quest continued, frowning, "I hate to leave the city without having found that girl; but I am not sure that the quickest way to set things right would not be to go down, arrest these men and bring them back here, clear myself, and then go tooth and nail ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stranger was disconcerted. He remained silent for a moment, wearing a look of impatient embarrassment. He still extended the piece, turning it over and over with his thumb-nail as ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the Siyatelstvo," he whispered, as he kissed Paul's hand. And then in perfect silence they began to ascend a path. Presently it stopped abruptly. They had come up perhaps not fifty feet, when their way was barred by a great nail-studded door. ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... thy merry mates below;—go there, and wag thy saucy tail; or I will nail it to our bow, till ye roar for liberation. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... that in the past the edicts of the Emperor in this matter of faith had been despised, scorned, ridiculed, and derided by the Lutherans. (Foerstemann, 2, 190.) Such were the miserable arguments with which the Romanists defended their treachery. Luther certainly hit the nail on the head when he wrote that the Romanists refused to deliver the Confutation "because their consciences felt very well that it was a corrupt, futile, and frigid affair, of which they would have to be ashamed in case it should become public and show ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... would only care to treat about such trifles as monks' cowls, priests' tonsures, rules of diet, and so forth; whereupon the legate turned to one of his attendants, who was sitting by, with the words 'he has hit the right nail on the head.' Luther went on to assert that they, the Evangelicals, had no need of a Council, being already fully assured about their own doctrine, though other poor souls might need one, who were led astray by the tyranny of the Popedom. Nevertheless he promised to attend the proposed Council, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... just) reprehension, maketh—let be St. Michael smite the serpent with sword or spear and St. George the dragon, whereas it pleaseth them—but Adam male and Eve female and affixeth to the cross, whiles with one nail and whiles with two, the feet of Him Himself who willed for the salvation of the human race to die upon the rood. Moreover, it is eath enough to see that these things are spoken, not in the church, of the affairs whereof it behoveth to speak ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... me as when I rested in the narrow valley grooved out in prehistoric times. Burning on steadfast, and ever present as my thought. Lighting the broad river, the broad walls; lighting the least speck of dust; lighting the great heaven; gleaming on my finger-nail. The fixed point of day—the sun. I was intensely conscious of it; I felt it; I felt the presence of the immense powers of the universe; I felt out into the depths of the ether. So intensely conscious of the sun, the sky, the limitless space, I felt too in the midst of eternity then, in the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... seamen to a brave enemy, although a pirate. The colours from the pirates' fort had been twice shot away, when, to the surprise of the boat squadron, a native was seen to ascend, without regard to our fire, and nail the colours to the flagstaff. Instead of taking aim at him, he was enthusiastically cheered by the seamen; and, as if with one consent, the muskets were all dropped, and the firing discontinued until he had again got down under cover, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... of war: Beneath him coils a monster welling blood, Whose severed heads stretch round in scattered gleam Of mitre jewelled, coronet and crown. Sharp cut on gem, set in a thick gold ring, The size and roundness of a lady's nail, Love bleeding on the dart himself doth point; Who thus had died, had not with tenderest touch Immortal Psyche held the anguished heart Fast to her own, and purified the pain, And fanned him with her wings. And now, as then, Along those hushed rich corridors ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... forgot to tell you they missed one frying-pan," remarked Billy, exultantly; "it chanced to be hanging from a nail I drove in a tree, and they couldn't have seen it. By making relays we can do our ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... his head, and old Booby saw him. Well, the way he dropped his tools and put for the door was a caution. We thought we could get down before he reached the gallery stairs, but I caught my pants on a nail, and Squashnose got his foot wedged in between two benches, and, by the time we got loose, we heard old Booby comin' poundin' up the stairs like all possessed. There wa'n't nothin' to do then but cut and run up the belfry ladder. We slipped off our ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... outside of the oyster shells by scrubbing each in turn with liquid soap and nail brush under a tap of running water. Then, holding an oyster shell in a pair of sterile forceps wash every part of the outside of the shell with a stream of sterile water running from an aspirator jar; deposit the oyster inside the sterile glass dish. Repeat the process ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the right nail on the head this time: thanx to luck—the crooked one, to be sure, but then it had the GOOLD NOBB, which was the part Deuceace most valued, as well he should; being a connyshure as to the relletiff valyou of pretious metals, and much preferring virging goold like ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and, when well mixed, add 1 gallon of hot water. Use when cool enough to bear your hand in it. Any insecticide containing sulphur is useful. The walls should be well washed with some insecticide of this kind. Old walls in which the pointing is bad and the bricks full of nail holes, etc., are very difficult to keep free from red spider. They should be painted over with a strong solution of soot water mixed with clay to form a paint. To a gallon of this paint add 1 lb. of flowers of sulphur and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... during the first night, listening and watching for the most of the time; but he caught naps the second, and on the third was sleeping comfortably at about two in the morning, when he was suddenly set upon, tooth and nail, by what he believed, on first waking, to be a whole family of bears. One had him by the leg, through the bag, shaking him. Another was dragging at the back of the bag, while the teeth of a third were snapping at his face. Still ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... suddenly, blowing 30 to 40 miles an hour. It increased during the night, and the next day was blowing over 75 miles an hour. In order to save the tar-paper roof, we decided it would be necessary to get out in this wind and nail down more securely certain parts that were especially exposed. When I ascended the ladder and reached the edge of the roof, the wind caught under my large coat, blew it up around my head and bound my arms till I was perfectly helpless. Wilbur came to ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger that their heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of the highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail on the large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as unclouded skies—the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree—what need, in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though, from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... think, if we shall tempt them to pride, that may do something; and if we tempt them to wantonness, that may help. But, in my mind, if we could drive them into desperation, that would knock the nail on the head; for then we should have them, in the first place, question the truth of the love of the heart of their Prince towards them, and that will disgust him much. This, if it works well, will make them leave off quickly their way of sending petitions to him; then farewell earnest solicitations ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... Read the uncreate, Unspeakable, diffused Throughout the heavenly sphere, Shamefully abused, Transpierced with nail and spear! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the spark drawn from the electrical machine, another accident occurred which led directly to the discovery of the galvanic battery. Having skinned a frog, he chanced to hang it by a copper hook upon an iron nail; and thus, without knowing it, he brought together the elements of a battery,—two metals and a wet frog. His object in hanging up this frog was to see if the electricity of the atmosphere would produce any effects, however slight, similar to those produced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... snatched her child, and wrapped him in the blanket where he lay; her shawl was on the chair she had slept in, her hood upon a nail by the door, and flinging both on, with the child in her arms, she followed her husband down-stairs, across the back-yard, hitting her feet against stones and logs in the darkness, stumbling often, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to his feet; at once she put into his hand a revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but loaded this time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in the light. He wondered what he could ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... face and a greasy, red moustache that seemed out of character with his rather perfunctory livery; though this was mere prejudice. He wore a wig, too—not that there was anything discreditable in that—and the thumb-nail of the hand that held his hat bore disfiguring traces of some injury—which, again, though unsightly, in no wise reflected on his moral character. Lastly, he watched me keenly with a mixture of anxiety and sly complacency that I found distinctly unpleasant. In a general way, he impressed me ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... seventh, after considerable excitement, the two rival nines found themselves just where they had started in the beginning of the game, for they were tied, eight to eight, and both fighting tooth and nail to keep the other from adding to the score, while also endeavoring to secure a few runs on their own account. Both pitchers had warmed to their work, however, and runs were likely to be a scarce article from ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... I forbade him to touch the horse," replied the wily Willan. "He did lame a good mare for me once, driving a nail into the quick. I thought the horse would be better to walk this far and get thy more skilful handling. There is not a man in this country, they tell me, can shoe a horse so well as thou. Dost thou not know some secret of healing," he continued, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to him, Nora; it's on a nail by the white boards. I hung it up this morning, for the pig with the black feet ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... the map, his black-rimmed nail tracing a route down one of the fiords, slanting out to indicate a lace of islands extending in a beaded line across ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... directions, been slightly flattened with an axe. At each end a forked branch had been set upright in the ground, with a green limb laid between them. From this limb hung "cooking hooks," consisting of green branches with hooked ends at one extremity to hang over the long timber, and a nail driven in the other from ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... minutes passed. Smoke centered his soul on the dull hurt of a hang-nail on one of his fingers. He should have clipped it away that morning—it was hurting then—he decided; and he resolved, once clear of the crevasse, that it should immediately be clipped. Then, with short focus, he ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... subtle, veiled, and unassailable forces of Destiny. The poet's region is there: he is born, if not to set right the times which are out of joint, at least to read to the world the high and often terrible lesson of the ages. But it vulgarizes his work when he is seen, tooth and nail, in violent personal conflict with foemen unworthy of his steel, embalming in poetry the trivial or the uncompleted incidents of contemporary warfare. It becomes almost ludicrous, indeed, when we find him pouring forth page after page of vehement and burning complaint in respect ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... fittings from a dressing-bag, the best, no doubt, that poor bombarded Bar-le-Duc could produce in war time. There were ivory-backed hair and clothes brushes; a comb; bottles filled with white face-wash and perfume; a manicure-set, with pink salve and nail-powder; a tray decked out with every size of hairpin; a cushion bristling with pins of many-coloured heads; boxes of rouge, a hare's-foot to put it on with; face-powder in several tints; swan's-down puffs; black pencils for ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you will find the money for all that elegance,' Maude said, as she held one end of a board for Harold to nail. 'We are cutting our garment according to the cloth, and if you don't like it you'd better go away. We do not want any drones in the hive, do ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... from table linen?" demanded Nelly, in apparent indignation. "Now, damn the girl! Just hear her! From what else, in God's name, hussy, should we eat? From a trough? And mind you, if there is a spot on it as large as my smallest finger nail, I'll tear it to shreds!" She winked to Frances, perhaps to show Betty that she was only chaffing, for in all the world there was no kinder ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly. One of them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear. He had left the tool below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two sharp blows of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran through my being—I had ceased to live. The nails then entered in rapid succession with a rhythmical cadence. It was as if some packers had been closing a case of dried fruit with easy dexterity. After that such sounds as reached me were deadened and strangely prolonged, as if the deal ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... garden boy was pumping in the scullery. He kept his tools in the stable, and it was his duty to lock it up and hang the key on the nail ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... a species of slugs covered with shell, and which are very destructive to wall fruit. To prevent their ascending the standard trees, tie a coarse horse-hair rope about them, two or three feet from the ground; and to secure the wall trees, nail a narrow slip of horse-hair cloth against the wall, about half an inch from the ground, underneath the branches of the tree. In the winter time the snails may be found in the holes of walls, under thorns, behind old trees or close hedges, and might be taken and destroyed. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... good deal of time for the Burrow, but it was long before he brought himself to make any for Eudoxia Pence. He came to see a great deal of the Bunnies; in a month or two he quite had the run of the place. There were friendly fellows who heaved big lumps of clay upon huge nail-studded scantlings, and nice little girls who designed book-plates, and more mature ones who painted miniatures, and many earnest, earnest persons of both sexes who were hurrying, hurrying ahead on their wet canvases ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which is alone enough to strike an awe into the beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose; his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... had time to recover, the three survivors were upon him tooth and nail; at the same moment the door opened again, and Rollitt, of all persons, stood in ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... be no rest to send the minister's wife off with thirteen childern, 'n' I spoke up pretty sharp 'n' asked what kind of a rest the town 'd get if them thirteen childern was left behind. I c'd see 't I'd hit the nail on the head then, jus' by the way 't they all waited to get a drink ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... ye? Why, you're wet as sops. Draw up to the stove. I made a fire, hot as it was, thinkin' I wanted somethin' warm for my supper, bein' kind o' lonesome without mother. She's settin' up with Seth Strout to-night. There, we'll hang your soppy hat on the nail, put your jacket over the chair rail, an' then you turn your back to the stove an' ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... behind me. Almost in my footsteps, and at my pace. Ah! of course, echo. But why wasn't there an echo when I shouted?... I will go on quicker. I'm not a bit nervous, only the sooner I'm out of this, the better. At last a door. Thick, solid, iron-barred, and nail-studded door. Where's the handle? None. Yes, an iron knob. It won't be turned. It won't be twisted. It's locked; or, if not, fastened somehow. No; a faint light is admitted through the keyhole, and by putting my eye to it, I can see a stone passage on the other side. Perhaps the old ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... freeze the very marrow in her bones. "You know a secret about the Lady of Beaumanoir, Fanchon, and one about me too! If you ever speak of either to man or woman, or even to yourself, I will cut the tongue out of your mouth and nail it to that door-post! Mind my words, Fanchon! I never fail to do ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... designed to force an early growth of plants. It is done by the use of solar heat, and that arising from fermenting manures, combined. The following directions for constructing and managing hotbeds will enable every one to be successful. Nail boards on pieces of scantling placed in the inside corners, in the form of a box, sixteen feet long and six feet wide; make it three and a half feet high on the back-side, and two feet high in front, facing the sun; nail a piece of board across the middle, let in at the ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... changed his mind, he took off his extra clothes, walked a mile and a half at the first try, gave up his constipation, and went back to work. Later on I had a letter from him saying that his favorite seat was an overturned nail-keg in the garden and that he was thinking of sawing ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... along the upper rim of his left ear, sprang up, stooped to take her hand, glared into her eyes till she shrank—and then a nail-cleaner, a common, ten-cent file, fell out of his inner pocket and clinked on the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... urgent a necessity to them. But sailors are not easily disheartened, and they forthwith set to work to manufacture a new line out of the rope which they still had in the boat; Tom carefully unlaying the strands and jointing the yarns, whilst George tried his best to manufacture a hook out of a nail drawn from the gunwale of the boat. This task occupied them for the remainder of the day, and when it was completed the hook and line together constituted such a very make-shift, hopeless-looking affair that George, in spite of his hunger, could not repress ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... before closing this chapter. One was the peculiar skin of the whale. It was a bluish-black, and as thin as gold-beater's skin. So thin, indeed, and tender, that it was easily scraped off with the finger-nail. Immediately beneath it, upon the surface of the blubber, was a layer or coating of what for want of a better simile I must call fine short fur, although unlike fur it had no roots or apparently any hold upon the blubber. Neither was it attached to the skin which covered it; ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... second comer, after taking off his greatcoat and hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling beams as if he had been specially invited to put it there, advanced, and sat down at the table. This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all available room to the dancers, that its inner ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... the help of the LORD against the mighty. Blessed above women Shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, Blessed shall she be above women in the tent! He asked water, and she gave him milk; She brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, And her right hand to the workmen's hammer; And with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, When she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: At her feet he bowed, he fell: Where he bowed, there he fell down dead. The mother of Sisera ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... by the fire to see if anything has boiled over which he may dispose of. He picks up gratefully the crumbs you scatter at your feet. He trusts you.—See! he rests a moment on the finger you extend, looks curiously at the nail, and sounds it with his bill to see if it shelters any harmful insect. Then he goes back to ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... feats, were told that there were upwards of fifty persons in the same company who could do the same thing; that there was not one who could not 'plug nineteen bullets out of twenty,' as they termed it, within an inch of the head of a ten-penny nail. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sophistry in Consuelo, admitting there is no more, in the end destroys all that the book contains of the beautiful and true. Said a lady in conversing on this subject: "I always find that people who read such books remember only what is bad in them." Her plain common sense hit the nail on the head, while transcendental folly hammered all around it in vain. We have spoken of Consuelo thus particularly because it is the best of its class: and of that enervating fiction we here record our deliberate opinion, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance, 'pon my word—dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it on ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... a most extraordinary young man," said Derrick; "and your candour is somewhat overwhelming. But you have hit the nail on the head; and I may as well confess that I am particularly anxious to meet Miss Grant as soon as possible, and that I accept your proffered aid. As you have divined, I do not want to go to the Hall, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... employ was determined by law in each locality; or how, under the guild system, in which the different trades were distinguished by law from one another in the most exact manner, and each master could carry on only one of them—so that, for instance, the tailors and the nail-makers of Paris for centuries had lawsuits with the menders of clothes and the locksmiths, in order to draw lines between their respective trades—how, under such a guild system, could production be possible with a system of machines which requires the union of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... female. All wore the preoccupied air that patients are apt to assume while awaiting their turn to be called by the doctor. One amongst the number made an effort at indifference by drawing out and pushing back a nail in the flooring with the sole of her pretty shoe. It may have been intended for coquetry, and at another time might have bewitched me; now it seemed strangely out of place. The man who was to all appearance counting the flies in the web of an industrious spider ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... of the neatest and most exact multiple injuries. Thus in a patient who was crawling up a kopje on all fours, the flexed middle digit of the hand was struck. The bullet entered at the base of the nail, first emerged at the distal interphalangeal flexor fold, re-entered the metacarpo-phalangeal fold, and finally emerged from the back of the hand between the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... a great head on you, old chap," he said, affectionately. "It certainly seems as though you have hit the nail on the head this time. I understand, now, why their leader was so anxious to have us move away. They expect to encounter the Indians somewhere in this neighborhood and they do not want any witnesses. What ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... these islands were excellent carpenters and ship-builders. "They make many very light vessels, which they take through the vicinity for sale in a very curious manner. They build a large vessel, undecked, without iron nail or any fastening. Then, according to the measure of its hull, they make another vessel that fits into it. Within that they put a second and a third. Thus a large biroco contains ten or twelve vessels, called ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... in all this to apply for treatment to Charcot or to anybody else. Neither suggestion nor bromide would have been effective in working our cure. The needful thing was an examination of the origin of the evil. It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you see the nail, you see that which is irregular in your life, and you avoid it. Then the pain stops, without any necessity of stifling it. Our pain arose from the irregularity of our life, and also my jealousy, my irritability, and the necessity of keeping ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... that your feet offend not, nor lightly lift your head, Tread softly on the sunlit roads the bright dust of the dead. Let your own feet be shod with peace; be lowly all your lives. But if they touch the Charter, ye shall nail it with your knives. And the bill-blades of the commons drive in all as dense array As once a crash of arrows came, upon St. ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... to explain, I suppose, that each individual grimalkin in the outfit, with that readiness of resource which distinguishes the species, had grappled with tooth and nail as many others as it could hook on to. This preserved the formation. It made the column so stiff that when the ship rolled (and the Mary Jane was a devil to roll) it swayed from side to side like a mast, and the Mate said if it grew much taller he would have to order it cut away ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... don't it, to see nearly every gate-post and dyke-bridge made of old ships' timber? Easy enough to tell that, from its bend, and the tree-nail holes. Ours is a bad coast, you see; not rocky, but with long sloping sands; and when the sea's high, and there's a gale on shore, a vessel strikes, and there she lies, with the waves lifting her bodily, and then letting her fall again ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... wig of short, coarse, red hair, which he took off with his hat, and hung upon a nail. Having adopted in its place a dirty cotton nightcap, and groped about in the dark till he found a remnant of candle, he knocked at the partition which divided the two garrets, and inquired, in a loud voice, whether ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... to see Mr. Mason now. He's all lathered up and frothin' at the mouth. But in an hour or so he'll be calmed down, maybe before. I tell you what; you stroll out and take in the store windows for a spell and then drift back later. Come up here if you like, or you can wait in the arcade and nail him as he comes ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford |
