"Pried" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shift—"into the room above. Just over the alcove library is a small sittin'-room. The—a bedroom opens off it—but has nothing to do with the case. It's one of those new-fangled bare floor rooms. Right over the cabinet space was a big rug. I pulled it aside and pried around with a hair pin until I found a ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... It is unmistakably spring, because the pewit bushes are budding and on yonder aspen we can hear a forsythia bursting into song. It is spring, when the feet of the floorwalker pain him and smoking-car windows have to be pried open with chisels. We skip lightheartedly round the house to see if those bobolink bulbs we planted are showing any signs yet, and discover the whisk brush that fell out of the window last November. And then the newsboy comes along the street and sees us prancing about and we feel sheepish and ashamed ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... he had crept about his own house, had taken up the whole of the front staircase carpet, and had with trouble pried off one board of the stair in which the letters were hid. There had been a spring, he found, but it was rusted and would not yield. He had carefully replaced the carpet, carried the letters into the library, and come for ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... felt, very naturally, and would openly declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into; but so powerful was the invisible, magnetic current of family gossip, that for the life of them they could not help knowing all about everything. It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The lads pried the boulder away, blocking it so that it could not crash down the slope and so warn the men inside of the approach of the boys. Then Will crept cautiously into ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... corroded sometimes nearly past deciphering, yet never quite gone. The red letters were indelible on every piece, from the gross of antique candle-moulds (against the kerosene's giving out) to an ancient coffin-plate, far oxidized, and engraved "Jones," which, the old man said, as he pried it off the side of the barn, "might come ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... He pried into every nook and corner of her being with that ingenious and tireless persistence human beings reserve for searches for what they do not wish to find. At last he contrived to find, or to imagine he had found, something that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the door and showed Miss Sally over the place. Miss Sally poked and pried and sniffed and wrinkled her forehead, and finally stood on the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I pried out of the face of the cliff a piece of stone about the size and shape of the palm of my hand, and aiming carefully I threw it at the bear. It struck him on the very point of his nose—a tender spot—and ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... Much she cared if I was at the bottom of the sea! She had pried out where I was, and that was her subtle way of advertising it to the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... of the keepers seemed stimulated. It was, of course, to be expected that they would be suspicious (especially after the lesson they had received), but these creatures evinced suspicion, not as I had been accustomed to see men show it—they stole and pried about, eaves-dropping, creeping upon and glaring at us (when they thought they could do so undetected) like cellar-bred, yellow-eyed, garbage-fed curs. Their manner gave one an impression of cold cruelty and slinking treachery that is indescribable, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... pried my crushing hands off her arms. Juli rubbed the bruises mechanically, not knowing she was doing it. Mack said, "You can't do it, Cargill. You wouldn't get as far as Daillon. You haven't been out of the zone in ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... it none," Blackie admitted. "Von Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so t' live, about two, three years ago. He don't approve of me. Pried into my private life, old Von Gerhard did, somethin' scand'lous. I had sort of went to pieces about that time, and I went t' him to be patched up. He thumps me fore 'an' aft, firing a volley of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... was a watch—all covered with mold and mildewed. I pried it open. It's got Larsen's ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... impassable; but when they ascertained of what it was composed, they piled up timber at its base, and set it on fire. When the glass was hot, they dashed upon the heated mass cold water, which broke it into fragments. Then with huge levers, picks, and shovels, they pushed and pried the shining pieces down into the lake, and opened thus a wagon-road a ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he pried with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked tranquilly meditative, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... yet he hated those men at mealtime. He was haunted by a fear that the food would not last. He inquired of the cook, the cabin-boy, the captain, concerning the food stores. They reassured him countless times; but he could not believe them, and pried cunningly about the lazarette to see with his ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... it was all planned beforehand," he said. "An outside thief would have had a skeleton key, or simply pried it open with a jimmy. But somebody has taken a wax impression of the lock and had a ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... home; and this little—episode—this evening, which she cannot understand as we do, has so unstrung her that Mrs. Foster offered to send them over home in her sleigh. The side door had been barred, but Mr. Horton pried it open for them, so they had no need to come this way, and ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... the windows should fit properly, and be perfectly hung and balanced, so that the sash will come down at a finger's touch, stay exactly where it is put, and go up again like a feather, instead of having to be pried loose, wrested open, held in place with a stick, and shoved up, or down again, only ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... table in his room he pried loose one of the corner braces. At night he scraped away at this with his bit of glass until the wood began to take the shape of a revolver. This he carefully blacked with the ink brought him by his guard. To the end of his weapon he fitted an iron washer taken from ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... of the most ponderous kind, and was fastened with a lock and key. The key, of course, was missing, but Dick soon pried open ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... conference room or something of the sort, and originally it had been paneled, but the paneling had long ago vanished. Holes had been dug here and there in the walls, and he remembered having noticed that the door was gone and the metal groove in which it had slid had been pried out. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... vnconscionable quirk some haue of late time pried into, viz. in a ioynt-lease to three intended by the taker and payer, to descend successiuely and intirely, one of them passeth ouer his interest to a stranger, who by rigour of law shall hold it during the ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... he started to go out again when he stubbed his toe on the same floor board. That set him thinking. Examining the board more closely, Kiki found it had been pried up and then nailed down again in such a manner that it was a little higher than the other boards. But why had his father taken up the board? Had he hidden some of his magic ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... confining lessons I was wild with surplus spirits, and found joyous relief in running loose in the open again. Many a summer afternoon a party of four or five of my playmates roamed over the hills with me. We each carried a light sharpened rod about four feet long, with which we pried up certain sweet roots. When we had eaten all the choice roots we chanced upon, we shouldered our rods and strayed off into patches of a stalky plant under whose yellow blossoms we found little crystal drops of gum. Drop by drop we gathered this nature's rock-candy, ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... are married! Sir, I'll have you know There's an ogre to be tamed, a gem to be pried From out a dragon's forehead, and three riddles To be solved, each tighter than the last, before ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... pried the offensive strip loose, tore it across thrice, and scattered the pieces ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that night. The mountain shook and groans and hisses were heard in the air as he pried up the stone that lay across the pit-mouth. When he had lifted it off a light poured from it and streamed into the heaven like a crimson comet or a spear of the northern aurora. It was the flash of the great carbuncle, and the stars seen through it were as if ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Opera House ballet to the vaults of the Vienna Deposit and Storage Company and just to show her how much he thought of her, when she said, 'My, ain't that a gorgeous stone!' he has said, 'Do you really like it?' and pried it right out of its ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... received part credit for the extremely vigorous campaign which the health authorities, under Dr. Merritt, set on foot at once. Using the "Clarion" exposure as a lever, the health officer pried open the Council-guarded city tills for an initial appropriation of ten thousand dollars, got a hasty ordinance passed penalizing, not the diagnosing of typhus, but failure to diagnose and report it,—not a man from ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... He pried open the eating orifice and inspected it carefully. Ah! The creature was omnivorous, judging by its teeth. There were both rending and grinding teeth. That certainly argued for intelligence, since it showed that the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... scent of a greyhound, pried about until he discovered that the count had given his mistress a legal document, assigning to her a valuable piece of property which, in the ordinary course of law, should be entailed on the boy, Paul. The countess at once hastened to the place, broke into her husband's room, and secured ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... which he has gone—the past, and that point of time in which he is now living—the present. He may know experience and he may grasp opportunity, but he can know nothing of futurity. The future is a riddle, an unexplored continent, a terra incognita into which no human eyes have ever pried or ever may pry, sealed as it is by the counsel of God against the curious vision of His children. And to some extent I think we all must admit that this popular notion holds true. There are those to whom the future must be a blank, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... the tree to see what it meant. His suspicions were aroused. There was some design in that suspended meat, evidently. It was a trap to catch him. He surveyed it from every near branch. He peeked and pried, and was bent on penetrating the mystery. He flew to the ground, and walked about and surveyed it from all sides. Then he took a long walk down about the vineyard as if in hope of hitting upon some clew. Then ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... and poked at it. The sharp tip penetrated for a fraction of an inch, then stopped. It was either rock or metal, and judging from the shape, it was unlikely that it was rock. He put his knife under it and pried, and the thing ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... two inches but remain hard to find. Their turtleback shells, covered with moss, look just like rocks, and they stick so tightly to the big stones that—even when they are seen—they can scarcely be pried loose. ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... heartily responded the lad. "When we get this cover pried off, we'll hand you a bucket or so ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Gathered to wonder or deride, And paid the house a visit; Horses were to his pine-trees tied, Mourners in every corner sighed, Widows brought children there that cried. Swarms of lean Seekers, eager-eyed, (People Knott never could abide,) Into each hole and cranny pried 480 With strings of questions cut and dried From the Devout Inquirer's Guide, For the wise spirits to decide— As, for example, is it True that the damned are fried or boiled? Was the Earth's axis greased or oiled? Who cleaned the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... pulled me out of the crotch of a basswood tree with a "tackle and fall," I remember I told them I didn't yearn for any more atmospheric phenomena. The old desire for a hurricane that would blow a cow through a penitentiary was satiated. I remember when the doctor pried the bones of my leg together, in order to kind of draw my attention away from the limb, he asked me how I liked the fall style of Zephyr ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... set there a good while, thinking and thinking to hisself; and then he got the frog out and pried his mouth open, and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail-shot—filled him pretty near up to his chin—and set him on the floor. Smiley, he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the chisel between the stones and pried and pressed—here and there, and at the other end—till the stone moved forward a little at a time, and they were able to get hold of it, and drag it out. Behind was darkness, a hollow—Dickie plunged his ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... hunger and vowed to make a raid on the kitchen or die. The kitchen in question was in the deep basement of the main building, lit up by small windows fully six feet above the floor. When the cooks had retired, Billy and Paul made their way to one of these windows. They pried it open. Paul persuaded his companion to crawl into the window head first, while he lowered him by holding on to his legs and feet. He instructed Billy that when the floor was reached he could with the aid of a chair easily pass out the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... of delight rose from all. The men joined Drew, and helped him clear away the earth. The chest soon stood revealed. Then by using their spades as levers, they pried it loose and by their united efforts dragged it over to the shade at the jungle's edge. They sat beside it there, panting, almost too exhausted from the excitement and their tremendous efforts to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... had learned late in the summer of his first year, became a passion with him. He climbed the elms and the maples along the road and the fruit trees in the orchard. In the barn, too, he clambered about on the scaffolds and pried into all the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... that he snatched out of a cleat he pried loose a tiny plug in one of the bottom boards that had been replaced so carefully that it ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... way went gently upwards again, and to left and right the woods disappeared, yielding place to vine-clad hills stretching along the pathway; while on either side stood fruit-trees in blossom, filled with the hum of the bees as they busily pried into the blossoms. A tall man wearing a brown overcoat advanced to meet the traveller. When he had almost come up to him, he waved his cap and cried out in ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... over the crowns of plants, which the frozen ground underneath does not allow to go down. I have seen roots of shallow-rooted plants, Lobelia cardinalis for instance, growing in clayey soil, lying on the surface of the ground in spring—pried out by soil expansion. Part of the covering may be removed quite early but enough should ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... their devastation everywhere. Not content with stealing many unequalled works of art, they often wantonly destroyed what they could not conveniently take away with them. In the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Grenada, they pried open the royal coffins, in search of treasure; at Seville they broke open the coffin of Murillo, and scattered his ashes to the wind; Marshal Soult treated the ashes of Cervantes in a similar manner. War desecrates all things, human and divine, but sometimes becomes a Nemesis (goddess ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... breakfast table; and Fleda would let no hands but hers do it this morning; she was curious about the setting of tables. How she remembered or divined where everything had been stowed; how quietly and efficiently her little fingers unfastened hampers and pried into baskets, without making any noise; till all the breakfast paraphernalia of silver, china, and table-linen was found, gathered from various receptacles, and laid in most exquisite order on the table. State street never saw better. Fleda stood and looked at it then, in immense satisfaction, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... that it stood for. The sight of a clergyman with his vestments and his benedictions would make her fairly bristle with hostility. They talked to her about her sins, and she did not know what they meant; they pried into the state of her soul, and she shrunk from them as if they had been hairy spiders. Here, too, they taught her to sing—droning hymns that were a mockery of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... pried off pretty lately. There was a lot of broken bottles around everywheres, inside ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... some young radical, as complete as if she had known the man or woman all her life. Peter took her ideas to McGivney, and then to Guffey, and the result was that her talents were recognized, and by the lever of a generous salary she was pried loose from the manicure parlor. Guffey sent her to make the acquaintance of the servants in the household of a certain rich man who was continually making contributions to the Direct Primary Association and other semi-Red organizations, and who was believed ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... They pried into everything with religious exactitude. Mrs. Polly watched them with beseeming awe and deference, but it was a great trial to her, and she grew very nervous over it. It seemed dreadful to have all her husband's little personal ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... went over again this afternoon, on the 'May Queen' here, an'—an' Gran'father went too, an' while Mr. Snider was doin' the 'speriment Orlando Noyes an' two other fellers pried up a place on the wharf with a crow-bar, an' they found the P'fessor down there,—he was up to some monkey business, an' they say the whole thing is a fake! Gee! An' that aint all, neither. They've ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... makes me weak to think about it now so that I shake all over. As the instruments pried and pulled and injected the aseptic solutions I held his hand tight and talked as hard as I could. At the worst places I told the most awful lies about how horrible it looked and placed all the frightful symptoms of every disease I had read to him, right in his eyes. ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... was from suffocation; to meet this Mrs. Dalton and her companion pried open the door as far as the fallen trunk would allow, and kept it in position by means of a large chip which they found in the pit. This gave them sufficient air through a chink three inches in width; and they next looked about them for means of egress. After trying in vain ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Ross's introduction to the base, and after his arrival his view of the installation was extremely limited. One day was spent in undergoing the most searching physical he had ever experienced. And after the doctors had poked and pried he was faced by a series of other tests no one bothered to explain. Thereafter he was introduced to solitary, that is, confined to his own company in a cell-like room with a bunk that was more comfortable than ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... heat in the stove. I ran and brought in a bucket of water. I pried open the red-hot door of the stove with a stick that almost caught flame as ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... plans, Carl ran to the back of the building, shinned up a water-spout (humming "Just Before the Battle, Mother"), pried open a class-room window with his large jack-knife, of the variety technically known as a "toad-stabber" (changing his tune to "Onward, Christian Soldiers"), climbed in, tiptoed through the room, stopping often to listen, felt along the plaster walls ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... he entered it were but a poor compliment to his host. Not until he had poked and pried into every corner did he close the door. Then, not content with locking it, he tilted a chair beneath the handle, and placing his pistol beneath his pillow, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... I saw Mr. Hunt and Mr. Kendall chuckling together over a book. I divined a secret. Now, I was a very honourable boy, and never pried into secrets, but where a quaint old book was concerned I had no more conscience than a pirate. And seeing Mr. Hunt put the book into his desk, I abode my time till he had gone forth, when I raised the lid, and . ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... service, but long experience had taught him the wisdom of prompt observance of any suggestion that came from his wife. Dropping his napkin, and the thread of his tale, he rose to his feet. Blushing furiously, Doyle bent, and with vigorous effort pried off a circular, perforated top, revealing a dark, cylindrical space beneath, from the depths of which he lifted a dripping bucket of galvanized iron, and sped, thus laden, away to the kitchen, to the music of Mrs. Archer's ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... should be informed that every one of these unities has been violently attacked and proclaimed to be a sheer phantasm. Chiefly in Germany has the assault taken place. What we have above considered as the joints in the organism of the poem, have been cut into, pried apart, and declared to make so many separate poems or passages, which different authors have written. Thus the one great Homer vanishes into many little Homers, and this is claimed to be the only ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... owls together sat, Conferring thus in solemn chat: 'How is the modern taste decayed! Where's the respect to wisdom paid? Our worth the Grecian sages knew; They gave our sires the honour due; They weighed the dignity of fowls, And pried into the depth of owls. Athens, the seat of learned fame, With general voice revered our name; 10 On merit, title was conferred, And all adored the Athenian bird.' 'Brother, you reason well,' replies The solemn mate, with half-shut eyes; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the safe open, disclosing several compartments and a small, inside safe. He worked away at the second combination lock, and presently exposed the interior of the little safe. It was filled with a great roll of bills. He pried this out, brought it over to the desk and began wrapping it up. "I want you to take this with you when you go," said he. "I've made several big killings lately, and I'm going to get you ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... for this particular evening, however. Jennie Stone was pried out of the snowdrift last of all, and they all went to the bottom of the hill where Bob Steele sat with his back against a tree trunk, waiting, as he said, for the "world to stop turning around so fast." His swift ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... sun beating on the wall and sloping in through the one window. Complete silence from the rooms on either side reassured him, and in the scorching stillness he worked with a noiseless, capable speed. In one corner under the bed he pulled up the carpet and pried loose the boards. Some of the money went there, some below the pipes in the cupboard under the stationary washstand, the rest behind a piece of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... rotten luck!" groaned Thad; "after all that beautiful strategy we've fallen down flat. No use talking, Hugh. Jim, that fellow is a sticker, and it begins to look as if he couldn't be budged or pried loose with a crowbar. But I'm not the one to give a thing up because I've failed once or twice; just wait till I get my third wind, and I'll settle Brother Lu's ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... the joyful curiosity of an overgrown boy, he pried off the boards with the corner of his fireshovel. The case was stuffed full of excelsior. On the top lay an envelope addressed to him in Trina's handwriting. He opened it and read, "For my dear Mac's birthday, from Trina;" and below, in a kind of post-script, "The man will ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... pried open a window, unlocked the mail bag that was ready for Jim Bennett to carry to the morning train at Chargrove and from it abstracted a number of letters which he unsealed and read with great care. They had all been written and ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... out of sight of the house, two happy little darkeys played all the afternoon. They beat the ground with the stout clubs they carried. They pried up logs in search of snakes. They whooped, they sang, they whistled. They rolled over and over each other, giggling as they wrestled, in the sheer delight of being alive on such a day. When they finally killed a harmless little chicken-snake, no prince of the royal ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... relation, so efficient was the service rendered, that its readers could not be pried loose from it; where women were willing and ready, when the domestic pinch came, to let go of other reading matter, they explained to their husbands or fathers that The Ladies' Home Journal was a necessity—they did not feel that ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... enough," Johnny admitted, then he paused, frowning, for he couldn't open his bait box; he banged it on a stone, pried his knife under the lid, swore at it—and turned very red. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... by ten. But there might be a prowling servant—the kitchen-maid might have come down to let in her Italian. I had to risk that, of course. I crept around by the back door and hid in the shrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed over to the house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap I groped my way to the ice-box, opened it—and there was the little French melon ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the golden knot in her fingers, and pried into its intricacies as sharply as she could. Almost without intending it, or quite knowing what she was about, she was soon busily engaged in attempting to undo it. Meanwhile, the bright sunshine came through the open window; as did likewise the merry voices of the children, playing ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... God, speaks with some bitterness of "medical men who are called anatomists," and who "with a cruel zeal for science have dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes of sick persons, who have died under their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body to learn the nature of disease and its exact seat, and how it might be cured." [22] During the early Middle Ages the Greek medical knowledge practically disappeared, and in its place came the Christian theories of satanic influence, diabolic ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... apparatus over along this wall," one of the Space Force officers commented. "Ten or twelve electric outlets." He brushed the dusty wall with his glove, then scraped on the floor with his foot. "I can see where things were pried loose." ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... back-parlours, a trifle ominously grey and grim from their north light, at watering-places prevailingly homes of humbug, or even when they wore some aspect still less, if not perhaps still more, insidious. He had been everywhere, pried and prowled everywhere, going, on occasion, so far as to risk, he believed, life, health and the very bloom of honour; but where, while precious things, extracted one by one from thrice-locked yet ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... threads; moonlight somewhere back of it made a queer, gray, glimmering world around us. We circled the garden by the path, passing a sort of gardener's tool shed where Hughes left the ladder, and from which I judged Worth had brought the bar he pried the door planks off with, to find a gap in a hedge between ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... replaced it. In a twinkling the virago's hard teeth closed over his fingers. Two ran from the oars to him. But the woman, conscious that she fought for life or death, held fast. Curses, blows, even a dagger pried betwixt her lips—all bootless. She seemed as a thing possessed. And all the time the Etruscan howled ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a length, the mobs on the house-tops and in the windows cheering like mad. The ends of the heavy chains resting on the strip of dirt were now caught up and hauled along the cobbles to be intertwined with the squared timber; anchors weighing tons were pried up and dragged across the tracks by lines of men urged on by gray-haired old merchants in Quaker-cut dress coats, many of them bare-headed, who had yielded to the sudden unaccountable delirium that had seized upon ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tools, Billie," said Chet jubilantly, as he pried away at the lock. "You could do just about anything with them—anything from making a house, to breaking into one. I say," he added, stopping work to look at her entreatingly, "don't you remember mother saying that Aunt Beatrice left you ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... cross fence. Jump over fence give 'em last chop! Patroll jess like road men now! (Stella! That man ain't coming! I got to go! Got to cook my supper. Cook dem crab—) Blood! Christ! Yes, man. Listen me. Lemme tell you what I see wid my eye now! (here he pried both eyes wide with his ten fingers) If I much of age reckon they have to kill me! I see gash SO LONG (measuring on fore-finger) in my Mama—my own Mama! (aside to Lillie) I shame fore Miss Jinny! If one them driver want you (want big frame ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and knew how to be cool and decided in the presence of danger. He had his knife and drinking-cup beside him, and his horn slung over his shoulder. In a moment he had made Nan stand still while he milked her, and then he pried open the stiff lips of the lad, and forced the warm liquid within. As he did so, the child revived and swallowed, for he had not been long unconscious. Then putting him on Jan's back, and driving Nan before him, Franz made his way ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... with his boot heel and pried with his knife; Billy hammered with his rifle-butt; and when they knocked off even a chip, it showed traces of gold. Why, wherever the rock stuck up, making little humps and furrows, it seemed to be the one ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... succeeding section differs from the one described only in the details of the yoke construction. In place of the struts between the wooden heads of the yoke a cleat is nailed across the projecting ends which has to be pried loose every time the yoke is removed and nailed into place again every time the yoke is put onto another form; these repeated nailings soon destroy the yoke heads. This form as constructed requires about 8 ft. B. M. of lumber per foot length of 12-in. column, which is 3 ft. B. M. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... pried the boat loose, jumped in as she swung clear, and pulled with all my might, headed toward the centre of the river. I was almost clear when I was drawn over a dip, bow first, and struck a glancing blow against another rock ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... exhaustion and fright, was unceremoniously thrust, after which the sack was tied and flung into the wagon. This formidable obstacle overcome and the Roneys still slumbering peacefully, the rest was easy. The granary door was pried open and the wheat shovelled hurriedly in upon the empty floor. Charlie then crept up to the house and slipped his ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... scheme of existence. Unwelcome thoughts of this sort had come of late, and would not be banished. Once she had made a pet of a magpie, but the bird's habits had forced her to dispose of it. She remembered the way it forever pried into things; how nothing was safe from that sharp beak and inquisitive eye. Its waking hours had been busied in a tireless, furtive search for forbidden objects. Now she could not help likening her mother ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... in the stream, but there was some. He dug and pried and washed the scanty soil until he was sure that no more was there, and then toward evening of the next day started home to the Abbey. When he reached the gate it was dark, and the porter was ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... over him, but Scott took no further notice of his presence. He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on one side, and was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other side. This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully, loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while Matt, a bit at a time, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... to undertake the labor. Never did beagle pursue the chase with more steady foot than did this eager and laudable champion of the ancient fame of the State his chosen duty. He rummaged old cuddies, closets, vaults, and cocklofts, and pried into every recess of the Chancery, the Land Office, the Committee-Rooms, and the Council-Chamber, searching up-stairs and down-stairs, wherever a truant paper was supposed to lurk. Groping with lantern in hand and body bent, he made his way through narrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... she went on, observing what he had written, "and this mammoth blue-white diamond in the ring is as blue as the famous Hope diamond that has brought misfortune through half the world. This stone, they say, was pried from the mouth of a dying negro in South Africa. He had tried to smuggle it from the mine, and when he was caught cursed the gem and every one who ever should own it. One owner in Amsterdam failed; another in Antwerp committed suicide; ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... the turf, at close quarters, with your eyes on the blades of grass? Whilst I was waiting for Babet, I pried indiscreetly into a tuft which was really a whole world. In my bunch of grass there were streets, cross roads, public squares, entire cities. At the bottom of it, I distinguished a great dark patch where the shoots of the previous spring were decaying sadly, then slender stalks were ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... in the middle with you? He couldn't be pried loose from that wheel now. Besides, I haven't driven this car yet, and she's too different in her steering from my old one. I shouldn't like to try with this ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... do the Professor's bidding. Tad and Ned ranged themselves on either side of the patient, while Chunky sat on the guide's feet. Almost before he was aware of their purpose the boys had pried his jaws open and into the opening thus made professor Zepplin dropped the concoction he ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... Once having pried his mind away from the trout, Jonathan was as keen for arbutus as I could wish, and soon I heard an exclamation, and saw him kneel. "Oh, come over!" he called; "you really ought to see ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... bombasted and large apparell, were in deede but very weakelinges and shrimpes; which, when he had shewed unto his souldiers, they were ashamed of themselves that ever they had bene afraied of suche wretches. So when wee shall have looked and narrowly pried into the Spanishe forces in America, wee shalbe doubtles ashamed of ourselves, that wee have all this while bene afraied of those dissemblinge and feble ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... the nuthatches, and it is a marvel how the very thin legs, with their tiny sliver of bone and thread of tendon, can hold the body of the bird in almost any position, while the vainly hidden clusters of insect eggs are pried into. Without ceasing a moment in their busy search for food, the fluffy feathered members of the flock call to each other, "Chick-a-chick-a-dee-dee!" but now and then the heart of some little fellow bubbles over, and he rests an ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... men had in the meantime pried the battens from the hatch and thrown it open. The hold was about half full of cotton bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward bulkhead. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... to where Mellon lay and took his stethoscope out of his little black bag. He listened to Mellon's chest for a few seconds. Then he pried open an eyelid and looked closely at an eye. "What happened to him?" he asked, without ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... did not satisfy Paul. And in a moment he had an inspiration. At once he began trying to tip back the great hogsheads at one side of the vault. The third yielded easily, and he immediately pried off ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... fortresses for righteousness to capture. Have you not noticed that God harnesses men, bad men, and accomplishes good through them? Witness Cyrus, witness Nebuchadnezzar, witness the fact that the Bastile of oppression was pried open by the bayonets of a bad man. Recently there came to me the fact that a college had been built at the Far West for infidel purposes. There was to be no nonsense of chapel prayers, no Bible reading there. All the professors ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended total ignorance ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Bateato had at last pried into a cabinet that contained a decanter of brandy and strange looking Moorish goblets, and from some curtained enclosure he obtained cold water from a faucet. A sip of the potent brandy and draught of water brought the color back to the girl's cheeks and the light to her eyes. The change ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... there were "pockets" of rain-water in the rocks. The next day our course was laid up Kanab Canyon through thick willows that pulled the packs loose. One horse fell upside down in a gully, but he was not hurt and we pried him out and went on, camping near a large pool of intensely alkaline water. On the 8th going up a branch on the left called Pipe Spring Wash we came out on the surface, very much as one might reach a second floor ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... tenderness for the handsome Noel), obtained large grants for its maintenance. Madame d'Arnaye, also, it is gratifying to record, appears to have lived in tolerable amity with Sieur Noel, and neither of them pried too ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... and feasting, in the festivals of the Court or in the scarcely veiled debauchery of its devotees. Baron Loewenstern, who moved in its higher ranks, tells of cases of a license almost incredible to those who have not pried among the garbage of the Court of Catharine II. This recklessness, resulting from the tendency of the Muscovite nature, as of the Muscovite climate, to indulge in extremes, begot an imperious need of large supplies of money; ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Bones, "are meant to be pried into, dear old thing. An examination of jolly old motives is essential to scientific progress. I feel I am doing a public duty," he went on virtuously, "exposing the naughty, chastising the sinful, and ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... round, fired every cartridge they had upon their persons; they said every improper thing they could remember or invent; they yelled until their eyes were starting from their sockets; they glued that band of sheep so tight together that dynamite could scarcely have pried them apart. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... church below, two of these soldiers came in on their way down, and one of them, looking around to see that no one was present but a stranger, whipped the bayonet he wore out of its sheath, forced the point into the mosaic close behind as well as above us, pried out one of the square pieces of agate or some such stone of which that mosaic is composed, put it in his pocket and made off. I had no idea that he would deface the edifice until the moment he did it, and then ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... for the cephalopod, allowing it to wrap some of the tentacles about him, then pried its grasp from the boat with the handle of the gaff. He made no attempt to free himself from the squid, but as he stood still for a minute or two, the creature voluntarily released its hold, falling to the bottom ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Fanny had devised was a very simple one. The slope of the land on the island was about four feet to a rod. The bateau was to be rolled up the acclivity about thirty feet, and turned bottom upward. The lower end was then to be gradually pried up until it was level with the upper end, leaving a space of four feet under the higher part. Stakes were to be set in the ground under the gunwale to support the boat, and form the sides of the house. The smaller branches of the tree were to be interlaced in the stakes, beginning at the ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... because he pried Willard Jackson and others loose from that concern. Probably they want him to use the same method to get those people away from us and back in ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... jauntings we shall pass a town where she visits a good deal—the home of an ancient aunt. It's a jolly old place, big grounds, with elms and maples all round, and there's a tea house with a tile floor, and there's a particular blue tile under a bench that can be pried out with a pen knife. That's our post-office, and much safer than registered mail. Of course my business correspondence is a different matter. I pick that up in countless places between here and California—reports of the boys, their hopes and ambitions and hints of schemes for acquiring sudden ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... after, some of the people belonging to the Ascension came to me, whom I could have wished to have behaved themselves better, as their conduct was much pried into by the king.[192] In all this time I had been unable to recover the debt due me by Mucrob Khan. At length he was sent for by the king, to answer for many faults laid to his charge, and much injustice and tyranny he had been guilty of to the people under his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not compass in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her drawers and boxes, and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of a mutual distrust, the throng drew quickly apart, each eyeing his neighbor warily, and scattered into the woods. Only the two grim bird-lizards remained, seeming to have a sort of understanding or partnership, or possibly being a mated pair. They pried into the cartilages and between the joints of the skeletons with the iron wedges of their beaks, till there was not another tit-bit to be enjoyed. Then, hooting once more with satisfaction, they spread their batlike vanes and flapped darkly off again to their ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... were pried open, and the applications put onto large platforms, where they were shuffled and mixed—symbolically enough with rakes and hoes—for it was quarter-sections of land they ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... shovelled the fresh earth from the grave, and then lighted his lantern. Its yellow light lit up but a single point. Forcing two long crowbars between the joints, he loosened one brick, and then another. At last the coffin was uncovered. He inserted his pick under the lid, and pried it off and laid it on one side. The corpse was ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... hoodwinked him into givin' you the money an' the idol so's you an' Taggart could divvy up after you put me out of the runnin'. Goin' to reform me! I reckon if I was an angel I'd have to have a recommendation from the Lord before you'd agree that I'd reformed. You couldn't be pried loose from that ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... cutter—a reg'lar gent's cutter and fitter. He'd 'a' had you all over the floor in another minute; if I hadn't pried you apart they'd 'a' sewed sawdust up inside of you like you was a doll. He had the old bone-handled skinner in his mit; that's why I let go of him. Laughing Bill! Take it from me, boys, you better walk around him like he was a ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... of it. Rascal remained the first of my servants, but Bendel was my friend and my confidant. The latter was accustomed to regard my wealth as inexhaustible, and he pried not after its sources; entering into my humor, he assisted me rather to discover opportunities to exercise it, and to spend my gold. Of that unknown one, that pale sneak, he knew only this, that I could ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the questioner leaned forward breathlessly and then pushed into the ring. Without a word he stood near Westerfelt, unpinned the sheet that was round him, and slowly took off his mask. Then he put a long forefinger into his mouth, pried a wad of cotton out of each cheek, and ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... say, is a great mystery, and deserves to be pried into by all the godly, both because much of the wisdom of heaven is discovered in it, and because the best saint is, or may be, concerned with it. Nor must we by any means let this truth be lost, because it is the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
