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Rafter   Listen
noun
Rafter  n.  (Arch.) Originally, any rough and somewhat heavy piece of timber. Now, commonly, one of the timbers of a roof which are put on sloping, according to the inclination of the roof. "(Courtesy) oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books



... my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace me— ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... sword dropped from its hook on a rafter, Jane danced in glee and declared "a ghost did it," although Dozia insisted she had cut a piece of cord on that very hook. Finally Jane was "canned," as Dozia described the state of being inside of tin things, and an attempt ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... kneeling or squatting position with her hands on a rope or bamboo rod, which is suspended from a rafter about the height of her shoulders. [53] She draws on this, while one or more old women, skilled in matters pertaining to childbirth, knead and press down on the abdomen, and finally remove the child. The naval cord is cut with a bamboo knife, [54] and is tied with bark cloth. Should ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... of a cross athwart the middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... of June 28th was attached to a rafter of the front verandah of a bungalow at Lahore. The owner of the house stated that the swallows in question had already reared one brood that year, and that the birds in question had nested in his verandah for ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... stockade gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ends and ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... thing!" Altamont raged. "'Wielding a gold-plated spade handled with oak from an original rafter of the Congressional Library, at three-fifteen one afternoon last week—' One afternoon last week!" He cursed luridly. "Why couldn't that blasted magazine say what afternoon? I've gone over a lot of twentieth century copies of that ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... spoke when, fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy wall climbed slowly after. The chimney widened and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... house there was left standing only a breadth of front wall between the places where windows had been. It rose in a ragged column to the line of the roof-rafters—only, of course, there was neither roof nor rafter now. On the face of the column, as though done in a spirit of bitter irony, was posted a proclamation, signed by the burgomaster and the military commandant, calling on the vanished dwellers of this place to preserve ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... screen, concealing the passages leading to the buttery and kitchens, in which the clerk of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In many ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... see, but I could hear those birds stirring and cheeping all around. I lay down and lifted my gun ready to take the first that came between me and the sky." His voice had fallen to an undernote, and his glance rested an absent moment on the circle of light on the rafter above an electric lamp. "When it did, and I blazed, the whole flock rose. I winged two. I had to grope for them in the reeds, but I found them, and I made a little fire and cooked one of them in a tin pail I carried in the canoe. But when I had finished that supper and pushed off— do you ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the kettle. The ticking of a huge, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... shank, leg, socle^, zocle^; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis^, trave^, corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; cantilever, modillion^; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... away from these two wanderers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and girls that steal From the shocking laughter Of the old, to kneel By a dripping rafter Under the discolored eaves, Out of trunks with hingeless covers Lifting tales of saints ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... the little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... Nelson to make plans and estimates for a large forage barn, 75 by 150 feet, 25 feet from floor to rafter plate, with a driving floor through the length of it and mows on either side. A granary, with a capacity of twenty thousand bushels, a large woodhouse, and a small house in the centre of this group where the fifteen horse-power engine could be installed, completed my commissions ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter. I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the inn door: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. Then I also ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which shelter ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their village shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes." Scarce had they spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose ev'ry beam and rafter; The heavy wall went clambering after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below: In vain; for a superior force Applied at ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... for that pack of churlish boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes.' They scarce had spoke when fair and soft The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climb'd slowly after; The chimney widen'd and grew higher. Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist; Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost Lost by disuse the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... a presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against something which fell over on the cobble-stones that paved the byre. He stopped and picked ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... sooner were they concealed than the old giant Hymir came in. When his wife told him that visitors had come, he frowned so portentously, and flashed such a wrathful look towards their hiding-place, that the rafter split and the kettles fell with a crash, and, except the largest, were all ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... inferior in all the true requisites of cheap and substantial building. Light sticks, uninjured by cutting mortices or tenons, a close basket-like manner of construction, short bearings, a continuous support for each piece of timber from foundation to rafter, and embracing and taking advantage of the practical fact, that the tensile and compressible strength of pine lumber is equal to one-fifth of that of wrought iron, constitute improvements introduced ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... mid-afternoon found us in the thick of a whirling storm, the grip of the cold relaxed, the woods abloom with the clinging snow. But the crop was nearly in. High and higher rose the cold blue cakes within the ice-house doors until they touched the rafter plate. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... throw apart. As our kuruma men knew the place, while we did not, we let them choose the inn. They pulled up at what caused me a shudder. I thought, if this was the best inn, what must the worst be like! However, I bowed my head to fate in the form of a rafter lintel, and passed in. A dim light, which came in part from a hole in the floor, and in part from an ineffective lamp, revealed a lofty, grotto-like interior. Over the hole hung a sort of witches' caldron, swung by a set of iron bars from ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... rude hut, while debating in his own mind whether it were not best to enlist in a crusade, when his attention was directed to a spider on the rafters overhead. He saw that the little spinner was trying to swing from one rafter to another, so as to fix his thread across the space. Time and again it tried and failed. Admiring the perseverance of the creature, Bruce began to count the number of times he tried. One, two, three, four, five, ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... in order to pierce wood and to bore its galleries in an old rafter, employs "the same utensils which in others are transformed into picks and mattocks to attack clay and gravel, and it is only a predisposition of talent that holds each ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... but one door, And in the dusk it seems that more and more The walls recede in space unlimited. At the far end there is a table spread That in the dreary void with splendor shines; For ceiling we behold but rafter lines. The table is arranged for one sole guest, A solitary chair doth near it rest, Throne-like, 'neath canopy that droopeth down From the black beams; upon the walls are shown The painted histories of the olden might, The King of the Wends Thassilo's stern fight On land with Nimrod, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... house of God!" thundered Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, with tones so resonant that they woke rafter echoes the organ itself had never roused. "Silence, and cease this sacrilegious brawling, or the consequences will be unutterably serious! Let those involved," he concluded more calmly, "appear before me in the vestry after divine service is ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... it, too, and sat bolt upright in bed, not knowing what had awakened her, but trembling like a leaf with nervous fear. A terrific gust of wind roared around the corner, shaking the little brown house from rafter to foundation; the great elm trees tossed and groaned in sympathy, and the leafless vines over the porch beat a mournful tattoo against ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... white, through which rays of light were caught and sent dancing. Along the wall on the left-hand side presses were overcharged with dusty tea-services. On the right were square grey windows, under which the convex sides of salad-bowls sparkled in the sun; and from rafter to rafter, in garlands and clusters like grapes, hung gilded mugs bearing devices suitable for children, and down the middle of the floor a terrace was built ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... Outlook, "I," traveler, teddy bear manufacturer, lecturer, interview giver, museum collector, "ME," Guildhall orator, dee-lighted, "MYSELF," mooser, hunter, band-wagon driver, band-wagon, Panama canal, rough rider, circus leader, circus, down-with-rafter, and a former retired and retiring president of the United States. When a young man he spent his father's money by going to college, shooting lions, and raising a large family. During the Spanish-American War ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... such things as were done here this night, whome onely I may call to witnesse for my innocency, render (I say) unto me some wholesome weapon to end my life, that am most willing to dye. And therewithal I pulled out a piece of the rope wherewith the bed was corded, and tyed one end thereof about a rafter by the window, and with the other end I made a sliding knot, and stood upon my bed, and so put my neck into it, and leaped from the bed, thinking to strangle my selfe and so dye, behold the rope beeing old ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned to Tentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely; and before they left the table ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... only a few months before. There were three more children, one Mungie, a lovable child of six, one a pretty three-year-old with a mop of beautiful curls, the youngest a baby just then asleep in its hammock; a little foot dangled out of the hammock, which was hung from a rafter in the verandah roof. We had come to talk to the grandmother and mother about the dear little six-year-old child, and hoped ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... life but to protect Ulysses and Telemachus, and keep them straight at any touch and turn of difficulty. If she has any other function, it is to be patroness of the arts and of all intellectual development. The Minerva of the Odyssey may indeed sit on a rafter like a swallow and hold up her aegis to strike panic into the suitors while Ulysses kills them; but she is a perfect lady, and would no more knock Mars and Venus down one after the other than she would stand ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... still more, yawning and passing a hand through his black hair. "Hang them, they might as well shut up their guests in the smoke-house with the bacons and hams! I feel as cured as a side of pig, ready to be hung to a dirty rafter." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... or eleventh century, that was restored in the fifteenth, when a graceful turret was added. The keep is planted on a precipitous rock, and rises to the overhanging roof of chalk that is pierced with rafter- holes for the reception of roof beams, and with openings only to be reached by ladders leading to caves that served as storehouses. At the junction of the Beune with the Vezere, a little further down is a rock standing by itself, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... after— No whimpering ghost remain, In wall, or beam, or rafter, Of any hate or pain. Cleanse and call home thy spirit, Deny her leave to cast, On aught thy heirs inherit, The shadow of her past. For think, in all thy sadness, What road our griefs may take; Whose brain reflect our madness, Or whom our terrors shake. For think, lest any languish By cause of ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... take good care to stop up the road. As to Parsley, it was, moreover, impossible for her to escape, as she had laid a spell upon her, so that unless she had in her hand the three gall-nuts which were in a rafter in the kitchen it would be labour lost to ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... in a rafter hung a rusty tin lantern, through the patterned holes of which a single candle had once sprinkled with light the progress of the farmer's evening chores. That, too, had belonged to the early time, and from a dim corner I drew another ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... stood a rude writing table on which were a few official papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering a tall, gaunt cadaverous frame was plainly ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... struggled upward. And now his right-hand was nearly on a level with the floor of the bridge, and he was stretching out his left hand to grasp one of the rails, when his foot suddenly slipping on a sloping rafter, he lost his hold altogether, and, to the horror of his companions, fell with a heavy thud on to the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... in dread of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven, The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven! Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bring To the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king! Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord is kindled amain, And strange is the Lord of Division, who cleaveth the birthright in twain,— ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... for't; none was to be had. What then was to be done? He resolved to get rid of life by some process; and the next that occurred to him was hanging. In a solemn spirit he prepared a selvage, and suspended himself from the rafter of his workshop; but here another disappintment awaited him—he would not hang. Such was his want of gravity, that his own weight proved insufficient to occasion his death by mere suspension. His third attempt was at drowning, but ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... without making the least noise. Holding the lighted candle out before her, she stared at a rafter from which hung a human figure dressed in woman's clothes. She wheeled about, uttering a stifled gurgle. A sort of drunkenness came over her; she was seized with a terrible desire to dance. She raised one ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... song and laughter. The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly: Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; Hey and hither, ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... that by means of some projections and crevices in the rocky wall he could reach the end of the ledge. Creeping along it he soon found himself close to the opening, surrounded by strong light, but effectually concealed from view by the ledge. It was as if he were on a natural rafter, peeping down on the floor below! As there was a multitude of such ledges around, which it would take several men many hours to examine, he began to breathe more freely, for, would the searchers not ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... Town-Major of some brick-dust, a rafter and two empty bully-beef tins—all of which in combination bore the name of a village. He assumed his duties with a bland Pickwickian zest, which did good to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... the door, and every bone of him broken. Next night Grettir sat up to watch; and when a third of the night was past, he heard a terrible din as of one riding the roof, and driving his heels against the thatch so that every rafter cracked again. He went to the door, and saw Glam, whose head, as it appeared to him, was monstrously big. Glam came slowly in and took hold of a bundle lying on the seat, but Grettir planted his foot against a beam, seized the bundle also, and pulled against Glam with such strength ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... the several chiefs and their dependants, the labour, though immense, was greatly facilitated by everyone's bringing his post, or his rafter, or his pole strung with thatching, ready for instant use. The materials thus prepared being afterwards secured together by thongs, there was literally "neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... at the corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... to herself that he should think so, as all traces of beam and rafter had long since disappeared from the priory and its dependencies. However she followed her conductor, who strode along among the ruins at a pace which it taxed her powers to keep up with. Presently he plunged down into a wilderness of bushes and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... the jocund cometh after, Month of all the Loves (and mine); Month of mock and cuckoo-laughter,— May the jocund cometh after. Beaks are gay on roof and rafter; ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... home by this time," responded the journeyman. The old gentleman did not repeat his question; he held fast to the rafter on which he was leaning. "He was already on his way home," continued the journeyman. "I came with him as far as the gate. Then he sent me to the tinner's to see if the tin was ready at last. Joerg told me that he had already brought it to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... Seas"—"Baherein." It is one hundred feet in length, and twenty feet high, with walls four feet thick, neatly plastered over with mud mortar. The great door is a marvel of carving-work for Unyanyembe artisans. Each rafter within is also carved with fine designs. Before the front of the house is a young plantation of pomegranate trees, which flourish here as if they were indigenous to the soil. A shadoof, such as may be seen on the Nile, serves to draw water ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... hid his precious pill under a rafter, lest anyone should steal it, and then began the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... gazed on each other, and then in consternation upon the burning building, every window of which was belching flame, while the sound of some falling rafter, or the explosion of some combustible substance, was continually heard! To venture into that blazing house, with its sinking roof and falling ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... 270 A valiant friend, and mindful of thy love. She spake; nor made she victory as yet Entire his own, proving the valour, first, Both of the sire and of his glorious son, But, springing in a swallow's form aloft, Perch'd on a rafter of the splendid roof. Then, Agelaues animated loud The suitors, whom Eurynomus also roused, Amphimedon, and Demoptolemus, And Polyctorides, Pisander named, 280 And Polybus the brave; for noblest far Of all the suitor-chiefs ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... the wreckage, borne onward by the tide, A loving mother with her babe close sheltered at her side; One hand has grasped a rafter, the other guards her child; Oh, how she pleads with God and man in accents loud and wild! Men hear but give no answer, no human hand can save; Her voice, alas, is hushed in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the courtyard. The vanquished, of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighboring wood. The victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, upon the flames, in which their own ranks and arms glanced dusky ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... shone into the loft revealed, to the boy's surprise and wonder, a coil of rope. He examined this, and found a stout clasp-hook at one end. The other end of the rope was made fast to a rafter. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... of gold ever had a room equal to that chamber? It had a row of barrels, behind which or in which you could safely hide. It had a ladder that would let you smartly bump your head against the highest rafter in the roof, a cross-beam, too, from which you could suspend a swing, and a window in the rear from which you could look upon the Missigatchee River (supposed to have been christened by the Indians). ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... gone. The stable burned to the ground, while the crowd cheered at every falling rafter, and the volunteer fire department sprayed it with a garden hose. And in the house Alex and Halsey searched every corner of the lower floor, ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... scale. The only obvious expedient consisted in simply spanning the width of the hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no tree, not even the lofty cedar of Lebanon or the tall cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in length, few even that. There was no getting over or around this necessity, and so the matter was settled for the artists quite aside from their own wishes. This also explains ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... up, and clung by his elbows. "No good," he whispered hoarsely. "The nearest rafter is a foot below. Let me have the coat. It will be safer than trusting to your hands. I might ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... as he thought to fight. But shortly for to speaken of this thing, With Creon, which that was of Thebes king, He fought, and slew him manly as a knight In plain bataille, and put his folk to flight: And by assault he won the city after, And rent adown both wall, and spar, and rafter; And to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their husbands that were slain, To do obsequies, as was then ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... in Austria. Here the voice of a spirit clamored aloud, "Ho! ho! Bishop Bruno, whither art thou travelling? But go thy ways, bishop Bruno, for thou shalt travel with me tonight." At night, while feasting with the emperor, a rafter fell on his head and killed him. Southey has a ballad called Bishop Bruno, but it deviates from the original legend given by Heywood in several particulars: It makes bishop Bruno hear the voice first on his way to the emperor, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... were laid by our sires so long ago that the unsubdued savage still roamed in the forest where its timbers were hewn, stand as firmly as when the master-builder dismissed the tired neighbors, who had heaved up the huge beams, and pinned the last rafter to its mate (for there were ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe—pardon, Hal—says I am the very image of a head for ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... follow more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... ocean came - Shoddy that can the eye bewilder And makes me blush to meet a builder! Had this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? Not so!' the ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... again: cut away one of those long dry ropes which in the garrets of many houses stretch from one rafter to another, tied to one end of it the weight of an old clock lying idle in the attic, and ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... miraculously preserved. Its glass, mugs, counters, chairs, and ornaments are all there, covered with white dust, exactly as they were left one night. You could put your hand through a window aperture and pick up a glass. Close by, the lovely rafter-work of an old house is exposed, and, within, a beam has fallen from the roof to the ground. This beam is burning. The flames are industriously eating away at it, like a tiger gnawing in tranquil content at its prey which it has dragged to a place ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... are door and portal, And all is hush'd and still; O'er ruin'd wall and rafter I clamber ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... of the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that it had been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ox, in ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... while the shoemaker still slept, the soldier was astir again. He shivered as he rose, and went to the window, where his clothes were hanging from a rafter. The water was still dripping from them. Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the open window to write while the morning air ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... informed on safe authority that the Indian Bottle-bird protects his nest at night by sticking several of these glow-beetles around the entrance by means of clay; and only a few days back an intimate friend of my own was watching three rats on a roof-rafter of his bungalow when a glow-fly lodged very close to them; the rats immediately scampered off."[115] These observations are confirmed by Captain Briant, as reported by Professor R. Dubois.[116] In tropical regions luminous insects give out ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... humanity is retrograding," murmured Capitan Basilio, thinking of the past. "The day after you left they found the senior sacristan dead, hanging from a rafter in his own house. Padre Salvi was greatly affected by his death and took possession of all his papers. Ah, yes, the old Sage, Tasio, also died and was buried in the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... she ain't much of a ranch now," admitted Jack Harpe. "But everything has to have a beginning. I'm figuring on a right smart growth for the Rafter H within the next ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... "L'Etat, c'est moi!" but this figure of speech becomes an empty, meaningless phrase beside what an army ant could boast,—"La maison, c'est moi!" Every rafter, beam, stringer, window-frame and door-frame, hall-way, room, ceiling, wall and floor, foundation, superstructure and roof, all were ants—living ants, distorted by stress, crowded into the dense walls, spread ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... ten freight cars, as was then the vicious custom of that road, passed me. But I held on, repeating to myself texts of Scripture to give me courage. As the last car passed, I was whirled into the air by the rebound of the rafter. "Heavens!" I said, "if my orbit is a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth." Hastily I estimated its ordinates, and calculated the curve. What bliss! It was a parabola! After a flight of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... lit, and then Manuel repeated his experiment by burning a piece, amid breathless excitement. No further doubt could exist, and then Manuel, taking a spring balance (weighing up to 50 lbs.) from the wall, hung it to a rafter, whilst the men put the lot into three separate bags and suspended them ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... lies the trail to Sunnydale, Amid the lure of laughter. Oh, how can we unhappy be Beneath its leafy rafter! Each perfect hour is like a flower, Each day is like a posy. How can you say the skies are grey? You're wrong, my friend, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... had finished his porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, for the corn and the chaff flew about together, and a cloud of dust arose over ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as usual, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... Fates alone can tell. An old demi-peak saddle, capped and tipped with brass, some rusty bits, and stray stirrup-irons lay here and there upon the floor; while upon a species of clothes-rack, attached to a rafter, hung a tarnished suit of postillion's livery, cap, jacket, leathers, and jack-boots, all ready for use; and evidently from their arrangement supposed by the owner to be a ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... the sky, and left them lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my dream till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. 'Be of good courage,' he said, 'daughter of Icarius; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... of Murom, at their invitation, turned to go into the palace, little anticipating the danger that awaited him, for the eldest daughter had drawn up by a chain a huge rafter to let fall and slay Iliya as he rode through the gate. But Iliya perceived her design, and slew her with his lance. Thereupon he rode on toward Kiev, and going straight to the palace, prayed to God and saluted the nobles. And the Prince of Kiev said to Iliya, "Tell me, ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... under the water as often as I was above it. I could hear my wife and children praying, although I could not see them. I did not pray. They were taken and I was left for some purpose, I suppose. My house finally landed up against the stone railway bridge. I was then pinned down to the floor by a heavy rafter or something. Somehow or other I was lifted from the floor and thrown almost out upon the bridge. Then some people got hold of me and pulled me out and took me over to a brickyard. My eyes and nose were full of cinders. After I reached ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... they climbed from storey to storey it is doubtful if the children caught their leader's words at all. There were no echoes—the spaces were too vast for that—and they swung away from spar to spar, and from rafter to rafter, as easily as acrobats on huge trapezes. Jimbo and Monkey shot upwards ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draft The great throat ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... half-mile lane, thick grown with bushes. Here, years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck, who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being haunted, and no one ever went near it after dark. ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... Dee river, fore I get big enough to make motion en talk what I know. Dat how-come it be dat Pa Cudjo raise me. You see, Pa Cudjo, he been work down to de swamp a heap of de time en been run boat en rafter up en down dat river all bout dere. Ma, she get word, one day, she better come cross de river to de Sand Hills to see bout grandmammy cause she been took down wid de fever en was bad off. Pa Cudjo tell her de river ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... nerves preyed upon by eerie tinklings, impossible to locate in the darkness; these are caused by two knives, hung from a nail fixed high up in the rafters. By jiggling a string, which is conducted over another rafter and down the wall to his pillow, the patient makes the knifeblades clash. Sometimes two strings, leading to different beds, complete this instrument of torture. After a determined search, nurse finds one string, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond widout ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman who wore a slop-shop blue suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily, then I realized that a sort ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... those canvas daubs, with which strolling showmen adorn their booths, hangs from a rafter, no doubt to prevent its being spoilt by too long rolling up. It bore the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ready ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... commenting on this creature when another prolonged shock of earthquake came. It was not a bump like the previous one, but a severe vibration which only served to shake the men in their chairs, but it shook the small monkey off the rafter, and the miserable little thing fell with a shriek and a flop into ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... boy wouldn't say his prayers—, An' when he went to bed at night, away up stairs, His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they found was thist his pants an' roundabout—: An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... to be had. What then was to be done? He resolved to get rid of life by some process, and the next that occurred to him was hanging. In a solemn spirit he prepared a selvage, and suspended himself from the rafter of his workshop. But here another disappointment awaited him, he would not hang. Such was his want of gravity that his own weight proved insufficient to occasion his death by mere suspension. His third attempt was at drowning; but he was too ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... in the street Branch rubbed his head and complained: "Bullets, you're strong! You nearly broke a rafter with my head. But I guess I got 'em ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... George and his communistic friends, they disbelieve entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted from the wooden beams they proceed ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... rang laughter So sweet in gladdened ears Through wall and floor and rafter As all this household hears And rings response thereafter ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... language of the country "Diablerets" close to a rapid mountain stream, which was of a greyish white, like bubbling soap suds. A smaller stream, rushes forth from the rocks on the other side of the river, passes through an enclosed, broad rafter-made-gutter and turns the large wheel of the mill. The gutter was so full of water, that it streamed over and offered a most slippery way, to one who had the idea of crossing more quickly to the mill; a young ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... of yellow silk, decorated with black dragons, with only one tear in its entire circumference, and that one Auntie Gossburger darned so skilfully that nobody noticed the hole. This, Felix, after much consideration, swung to the rafter immediately over the throne, so that its mellow light should fall directly on ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and often worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and rubbed with olive oil and butter to make it all the ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... Miss Goose ax Brer Rabbit w'at she gwine do, en Brer Rabbit he up en tell Miss Goose dat she mus' go home en tie up a bundle er de w'ite folks' cloze, en put um on de bed, en den she mus' fly up on a rafter, en let Brer Fox grab de cloze en run off ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... a kingly crown, Whilst crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast. All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale, But special burnishment adorned his mail And special terror weighed upon his frown; 20 His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture, that old Jewish scheme! What right ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... dents on the edge, sir, At Bronkhurst Spruit they were done; I was getting a door for a fire, For out of wood we had run. I was smiting hard at the door, sir, Or rafter, I'm not sure which, When I struck on an iron screw, sir, And the bay'nit ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... meanwhile, he took another and more exact survey of his already half-ruined house; and the result was so melancholy that he felt he must stake life itself for the chance of bettering his fortune. There was not a beam, a board, a rafter, a lath, in the whole house that was not ready, upon the slightest assault, to go to wreck. Of glass windows the rumour was long since extinct. All stood open; and had Klaus been a student of meteorology, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... during some boisterous night of winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the roof, and the rain beating on the casement, but when, in the calm within, the cheerful flame would roar in the chimney, and glance bright on rafter and wall, still impress me as if the recollection were in reality that of a scene witnessed, not of a mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on former occasions, have avoided going to school—that ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... Resolved thus, without delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of thieves, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... to his castle wall; The gate was burnt with fire; Roof and rafter were fallen down, The folk were strangers all in the town, And ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... the turkey in a gunny-sack which hung from a kitchen rafter. Should he leave it in the sack, hang it from a rafter of their veranda, out of reach of a chance bobcat or coyote, or—it would be much more of a real surprise to hang the big bird in front of their door ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... Sir Lopez!" then the jigging brass laughter From the yellow tost swing-boats swooping rafter to rafter. Then the blare of all organs, then the roar of all throats, And they shot past the side shows, the horses ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... later the hurricane struck the cabin with such force that every plank, rafter, beam, and log was first dislocated and then caught up in the whirlwind and scattered over the forest in the wake of the storm. As the roar of the blast died away the rain commenced pouring in torrents accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... fire in oxygen,' as Professor Faraday said, 'every iron bar, or rafter, or pillar, every nail and iron tool, and the fire-place itself; all the zinc and copper roofs, and leaden coverings, and gutters, and; pipes, would consume and burn, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... the phoebe, and the barn and eave swallows are masons. The robin moulds an inner layer of mud in his round nest and covers it with fine grasses. The phoebe uses a mixture of mud and moss in plastering his large nest on some beam or rafter. ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property. For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables, striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with fluttering ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... they now entered extended across the entire east end of the building, and had windows upon three sides. These were heavily curtained. The apartment was lighted by a small cresset hanging from a rafter near the center of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... wipe his mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... little boy wouldn't say his prayers, An' when he went to bed at night, away upstairs, His Mammy heered him holler, an' his daddy heered him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout, An' the gobble-uns'll git ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... messages intrusted to him," said Montacute, first in French, and then in English. "Set the fellow upon his feet, and bind fast his hands to yon rafter. If he will not speak the truth, it shall he flogged out ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... ends, and, being in blind gables, there was no suspicion aroused by the absence of windows. The entrance to these little attics was through small doors that were a part of the partition, and, as usual in country houses, the clothesline stretched across the end from rafter to rafter held enough old carpets and useless stuff to silence any question of secret doors. Several closets also were provided with false backs, where the surplus linen of the household found a ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various



Words linked to "Rafter" :   raft, baulk, furnish, raftman, balk, beam, traveller, render



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