"Sledge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of wilderness stretching from sea to sea. I sniff the fragrant odors of snow-clad birch and pine, of marsh pools glimmering in the dying glow of a summer sun. I hear the splash of paddles and the glide of sledge-runners, the patter of flying moose and deer, and the scream of the hungry panther. I feel the weird, fascinating spell of the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... is sand and gravel with a high water table (the level of subterranean water), an excellent well can be had cheaply. The practice is either to bore through to the water table with a man-operated auger and then insert the pipe, or to drive the latter down with a heavy sledge hammer. In either case, water is but a few feet below ground and a shallow-well pump, which can raise water twenty-two feet by suction, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... and with him by coach to White Hall; In our way meeting Venner and Pritchard upon a sledge, who with two more Fifth Monarchy men were hanged to-day, and the two first drawn and quartered. [Thomas Venner, a cooper, and preacher to a conventicle in Coleman-street. He was a violent enthusiast and leader in the Insurrection on the ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... sledge-hammer tactics, and as carelessly as ever, too; for more than once I got in under his guard, and once, amid terrific plaudits, got "home"—so Flanagan called it—on his chin, in a manner which, I flattered ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... any other; that of Rollins was more calculated to conciliate and capture the votes of hesitating, or Border-State men; that of Garfield was perhaps the most scholarly and eloquent; while that of Stevens was remarkable for its sledge-hammer pungency ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... time, and from Ekaterinenburg, where the rail ended in those days, the journey would have to be performed by sledge. She, therefore, took with her only one servant and a courier, that she might travel as rapidly ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... figures which all night long had prevented his sleeping. Mechanically he got his luggage and took a cab. The cabman charged him one rouble and twenty-five copecks for driving him to Povarska Street, but he did not haggle and submissively took his seat in the sledge. He could still grasp the difference in numbers, but money had no ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... listened to what the dogs said, and he did as they told him. Soon the sledge which the dogs had drawn to the woods was piled high with ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammer shot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole smithy of sparks flashing and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... ancient walls, The silent Arab arched its mystic halls; In that fair niche, by countless billows laved, Trace the deep lines that Sydenham engraved; On yon broad front that breasts the changing swell, Mark where the ponderous sledge of Hunter fell; By that square buttress look where Louis stands, The stone yet warm from his uplifted hands; And say, O Science, shall thy life-blood freeze, When fluttering folly flaps on ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... woman, the eternal, predestined enemy of Rickman's genius. Therefore he had determined not to spare her, but to smite her with words like sledge-hammers. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... too deep in it. Of these sledges indeed there are many in our own country, for 'tis just such that are used in winter for carrying hay and straw when there have been heavy rains and the country is deep in mire. On such a sledge then they lay a bear-skin on which the courier sits, and the sledge is drawn by six of those big dogs that I spoke of. The dogs have no driver, but go straight for the next post-house, drawing the sledge ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... line had failed the sledge-hammer strategist, and nothing was left but to transfer his army to the south side of the James. Lingering with dogged pertinacity on his slow retreat—turning at every road leading to the prize he yearned for, only to be beaten back—Grant ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... despite his impaired health, physical weakness, and general unfitness for such a desperate journey; as always, he spared not himself when danger threatened. Ohlsen, being the clearest-headed of the sledgemen, was put in a sleeping-bag and dragged on a sledge ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... his arms. They were not formless as he brought them down with sledge-hammer force ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... and very small number, lest the rumbling of the Wheels should disturb the good thrifty Burghers at their Accompts. For most vehicles they have what they call a Sley, which is the body of a Coach fastened on to a Sledge with ropes, and drawn by one Horse. A Fellow walks by the side on't, and holds on with one hand to prevent its falling over, while with the other he manages the Reins. A most melancholy Machine this, moving at the rate of about Three miles an hour, and makes you think that you are in ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... on Lovell's grave countenance, and his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Jago," confided the second laborer to Barron, when his companion had turned aside to get some steel wedges and a sledge-hammer. "Er's well-knawn in these paarts—a reg'lar cure. Er used tu work up ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... by the arm, and followed by Evan Dhu and the priest, he moved down the stairs of the tower, the soldiers bringing up the rear. The court was occupied by a squadron of dragoons and a battalion of infantry, drawn up in hollow square. Within their ranks was the sledge, or hurdle, on which the prisoners were to be drawn to the place of execution, about a mile distant from Carlisle. It was painted black, and drawn by a white horse. At one end of the vehicle sat ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... once, after our night's rest, supplied with ammunition. I saw that my only chance of staying at the workshops of Metz would be after the campaign was over, for we were on the march the very next morning. Zebede was not always with me now, and my closest comrade was Jean Buche, the son of a sledge-maker at Harberg, who had never eaten anything better than potatoes before he became a conscript. Buche turned in his feet in walking, but he never seemed to know the meaning of being tired, and in his own fashion was a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... censure which Macpherson defied; when, with the steeps of Morven before his eyes, he could talk so familiarly of his Car-borne heroes;—of Morven, which, if one may judge from its appearance at the distance of a few miles, contains scarcely an acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a sledge to be trailed along its surface.—Mr. Malcolm Laing has ably shown that the diction of this pretended translation is a motley assemblage from all quarters; but he is so fond of making out parallel passages as to call ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... horizons of Camberwell. At the invitation of M. Benckhausen, Russian consul-general, Browning accompanied him, in the winter of 1833-34, on a special mission to St Petersburg. The journey left few apparent traces on his work. But he remembered the rush of the sledge through the forest when, half a century later, he told the thrilling tale of Ivan Ivanovitch. And even the modest intimacy with affairs of State obtainable in the office of a consul-general seems to have led his thoughts ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... who had prevented him up to now—Maisie with her laughter, her breezy arguments, her short views of life, her contempt for sentiment, her sledge-hammer motto, with which she shattered the past, "I never dig up my dead." She had made him hesitant about reopening the subject. Her sister was the most beautiful woman in England. A man never knows to what boundaries a woman's jealousy spreads. He feared lest, if he persisted, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... o'clock that night Bonner and the determined but trembling Bud came up the bank from the river and pitched a tent among the trees near the haunted house. From the sledge on the river below they trundled up their bedding and their stores. Bud had an old single-barrel shotgun, a knife and a pipe, which he was just learning to smoke; Bonner brought a Navajo blanket, a revolver and a heavy walking ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... one thing she wanted passionately to do just then, was to walk away herself out of that squalid horrible room; to soften her own defeat by evading the final sledge-hammer blow. What he had said to the duchess licensed her to do so. If there were no vacancies ... But she clenched her hands, set her teeth, pulled in a long breath, and somehow, set herself in motion. Not toward the door, but ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... contrivance, which was drawn by three strong carabaos (the whole body of men with evident delight and loud mirth wading knee-deep in the black mud and assisting by pushing behind) we succeeded, as if on a sledge, in getting over the obstacle into the river; which on my first visit overflowed the fields in many places, till the huts of the natives rose out of the water like so many ships: but now (in June) not one of its channels was full. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... indifference to the trivial divergences between themselves. "Even a one-eyed man," says the proverb, "is a king amongst the blind." Even the shepherd's sling may perchance smite down the Goliath of Gath. The rough sledge-hammer of a rustic preacher may strike home, where the most polished scholar would plead in vain. The calm judgment of the wise and good, or the silent example, or the understanding sympathy, or the wide survey of the whole field of the religions of mankind, may awaken convictions which ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... always, though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances — this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... sledge and hammer lie reclined; My bellows too have lost their wind; My fire extinct, my forge decay'd, And in the dust my vice is laid. My coal is spent, my iron's gone; My nails are drove, my worck ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... {329a} Again, in The Romany Rye, he makes the man in black say with reference to the Bible Society:- "There is one fellow amongst them for whom we entertain a particular aversion: a big, burly parson, with the face of a lion, the voice of a buffalo, and a fist like a sledge-hammer." {329b} Who these two worthies were it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Caroline Fox describes Andrew Brandram no further than that he "appeared before us once more with his shaggy ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... stones of which it had been once composed lay scattered around the floor. The large stone crucifix which occupied the niche behind the altar, and fronted the supplicant while he paid his devotion there, had been pulled down and dashed by its own weight into three fragments. There were marks of sledge-hammers on each of these; yet the image had been saved from utter demolition by the size and strength of the remaining fragments, which, though much injured, retained enough of the original sculpture to show what it had been intended ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... put it on a cart, but the rude carts used on the estate could not very well carry it, and a sledge was substituted. Several times, during the journey through the forest, the sledge had to be halted while the underwood was cut away to permit of its passing; and once a slough had to be filled up with branches hewn from fir trees, and bundles of fern. These delays ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... of Damascus, well balanced, slender, with deep blood-channels scored on each side to within four fingers of the thrice-hardened point, that could prick as delicately as a needle or pierce fine mail like a spike driven by a sledge-hammer. The tunic fell in folds to the knee, and the close- fitted cloth hose were of a rich dark brown. Sir Arnold wore short riding-boots of dark purple leather, having the tops worked round with a fine scarlet lacing; but the spur-leathers ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... from their very first Christmas up to their very last Christmas, where the Christmas presents come from. It is very easy to say that Santa Claus brought them. All well regulated people know that, of course; about the reindeer, and the sledge, and the pack crammed with toys, the chimney, and all the rest of it—that is all true, of course, and everybody knows about it; but that is not the question which puzzles. What children want to know ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... a bitter day that we worked only three hours and came back to the house and played Old Sledge by the fireside. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... prowler's shirt. Lennon took a quick step forward, clutched the back of Slade's neck as a guide for his blow, and struck him with the butt of the revolver under the right ear. The massive body of the trader slumped down as if hit by a sledge. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... well. Advancing into the interior parts of Russia, I found traveling on horseback rather unfashionable in winter; therefore I submitted, as I always do, to the custom of the country, took a single-horse sledge, and drove briskly towards St. Petersburg. I do not exactly recollect whether it was in Eastland or Jugemanland, but I remember that in the midst of a dreary forest, I spied a terrible wolf making after me, with all the speed of ravenous winter ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... asked leave to depart, but they would in nowise agree to let him go, except that he would promise to come again presently. Then Faustus, through his cunning, made a sledge, the which was drawn about the house with four fiery dragons. This was fearful for the students to behold, for they saw Faustus ride up and down, as though he would have fired and slain all them that were in the house. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... breaker rises right in the way. The monster, with you in it, works its way up and feels of it. It is packed like a ledge of marble. Three whistles! The machine backs away and keeps backing, as a gymnast runs astern to get sea room and momentum for a big jump; as a giant swings aloft a heavy sledge, that it may come down with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of the travellers now changed oxen and carts for pack-horses and travois, contrivances consisting of two poles, within which the horses were attached, and a rude sledge. A few continued with oxen, and these oxen were to save their ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... to secure good places near the front rank, where they kneeled on their handkerchiefs, and the crowd hemmed them in at the back. The drilling match was to determine which pair of contestants could in a given time, with sledge and drill, cut the deepest hole in a granite boulder. To one who stood apart, the sight must have been picturesque in the extreme. The white dust, stirred by restless feet, rose lazily across the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... as the carpenter has knocked together a few bars, to make a contrivance that I mean to be a hand-barrow for four or eight men when the ground is rough, and a sledge when it is smooth enough for them to ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... owing to an unfortunate similarity of sound, was seized upon by his opponents, and distorted into "Old Granny." He had been painted on many thousand yards of cotton sheeting, either with a terrific sledge-hammer, smashing the skulls (which figured as paving-stones) of his political opponents, or splitting by gigantic blows a huge rock typical of the opposing party. His opponents in their turn had paraded ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... You are scarcely as bland as DE BANVILLE. On the Knights of the Pump Your assertions come thump Like an old Cyclops' "sledge" on his anvil. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... course of destruction &c. n.; extinct. all-destroying, all-devouring, all-engulfing. destructive, subversive, ruinous, devastating; incendiary, deletory|; destroying &c. n. suicidal; deadly &c. (killing) 361. Adv. with crushing effect, with a sledge hammer. Phr. delenda est Carthago[Lat]; dum Roma deliberat Saguntum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... two weeks?" returned Karr; "if your Majesty commands it, I will seat myself this very hour upon a sledge, and in three days and nights I shall be in Bugulminszka. On the fourth day I shall arrange my cards, and on the fifth I shall send word to this dandy that I am the challenger. On the sixth day I shall give 'Volat' to the rascal, and the seventh and eighth days I shall have him as Pagato ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... with the moose of America. Hunting it in Sweden and Norway is a favourite sport, and its flesh is eaten, the nose and tongue being esteemed great delicacies, as they are in America. It is related that elks were formerly used in Sweden to draw the sledge; but, for certain reasons, this was ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... Meanwhile apples would serve her turn,—good alike to draw a weary mind out of its channel or teach the shape of spheres. And so, with two russets for balls and the clothes-slice for a mallet (the heavy sledge-hammer having failed), Della serenely, yet in triumph, played ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... the longest cue in British Columbia. The cue and the dog formed the combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance and tragedy burning. Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in the winter, and Tao alone pulled his sledge and outfit. It was no more than an ordinary task for the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tung subserviently but with hidden triumph passed outfit after outfit exhausted by the way. He had reached Copper Creek Camp, which was boiling and frothing with the excitement of gold-maddened ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... that last afternoon your boyish heart broke. The hot wind came down like a sledge-hammer stroke. The blood-sucking flies to a rare feast awoke. And they searched out your wounds, your death-warrant tracing. And the merciful men, their religion enhancing, Stopped the red reaper, to give you a chance. Then you died on the prairie, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... in every age and clime evidenced moral degeneration and mental decay. When people emasculate their minds, they redouble their corporeal devotion at the shrine of Priapus, for nature preserves the equipoise. Every writer of virility is now voted obscene, every man who strikes sledge-hammer blows at brutal wrong intrenched in prescriptive right is denounced as immoral. "Les Miserables" not fit for young ladies' reading!—and this the epocha of the New Woman, of the single standard ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to the wishes of her best and dearest friends, so she too advised delay for a "little time"; and Ruby was fain to content himself with bewailing his hard lot internally, and knocking Jamie Dove's bellows, anvils, and sledge-hammers about in a way that induced that son of Vulcan to believe ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... it in breathless silence, in which the clicking of the mechanism which kept the great telescope moving so as to exactly counteract the motion of the machinery of the Universe, sounded like the blows of a sledge-hammer on an anvil, Gilbert Lennard stood beside her, wondering if he should begin to tell her, and what he ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... Mahonri Young, Ogden, Utah; figures of domestic life and industries, making of glass, metal work, statuary, textiles. Figures at side, to left, woman with spindle; to right, man with sledge-hammer. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... Moon Man called his dog to life again, and made ready to leave that place. And he took his team and cast the dogs up into the air one by one, and they never came down again, and at last there was the whole team of sledge dogs hovering in ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... through Baffin's Bay. Narrowly, indeed, he escaped the fate of the man in the search for whom he had gained his first Arctic experience. His ship, beset by ice, and sorely wounded, remained fixed and immovable for two years. At first the beleaguered men made sledge journeys in every direction for exploratory purposes, but the second year they sought rather by determined, though futile dashes across the rugged surface of the frozen sea, to find some place of refuge, some hope of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... notorious murderer died yesterday under the torture. After the inanimate corpse of our friend was brought into this house, to be conveyed to the scene of its last horrors, by the assistance of the warden the malefactor's body was conveyed here also, and placed on the traitor's sledge, in the stead of his who was no traitor, and on that murderer most justly fell the rigor of so dreadful ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... straying, Showers of whirling snowflakes white, And the pallid moonbeams waning— Sad the heavens, sad the night! Further speeds the sledge, and further, Loud the sleighbell's melody, Grewsome, frightful 'tis becoming, 'Mid these snow fields now ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... with a smile, "but it was then. But I must get on with my story. One morning soon after Galitzin's departure, the horses attached to the royal sledge ran away just outside of Moscow. The princess was thrown out upon the hard ground, and badly dislocated her right wrist. By the time she had been taken back to the palace her arm and hand were dreadfully swollen, and ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... halting progress that led nowhere and was accomplished at the cost of tremendous exertion. Time after time Johnny broke trail, then returned and urged the huskies forward to the end of his tracks. When he lost the path he sought it out, laboriously hoisted the sledge back into place, and coaxed his four-footed helpers to renewed effort. He was drenched with perspiration, his inner garments were steaming, his outer ones were frozen into a coat of armor; when he paused he chilled rapidly. His vision was untrustworthy, also, and he felt snow blindness coming ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... her, and became the moon; but being unable to mount so high, he runs continually round the sun, in hopes of some time surprising her. When he is tired and hungry in his last quarter, he leaves his house on a sledge harnessed to four huge dogs, to hunt seals, and continues abroad for several days. He now fattens so prodigiously on the spoils of the chase, that he soon grows into the full moon. He rejoices on the death of women, and the sun has her revenge ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?" "Yes," the man replied. "Well," said the voice, "I'll aid thee now; Take up thy whip." "I have ... but, how? My cart glides on with ease! I thank ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... for further piling; the foundations are usually boulders and the hardest rocks, also of greater width. There are no walls of dressed stone, but the rocks are broken to a suitable size, as may be done with any stone maul or sledge, or even by smashing with the hand and another rock. In fact the whole stone-work must be termed, not masonry, but simply judicious and careful piling.[107] In performing it, great attention has been paid to having the vertical ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... you turn it away all day long. Look, Harry, if you were to go straight on in this direction, you would come to a Laplander, harnessing his broad-horned reindeer to his sledge. He's at it now, I daresay. If you were to go in this line exactly, you would go through the smoke and fire of a burning mountain in a land of ice. If you were to go this way, straight on, you would find yourself in the middle of a forest ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... love of battle was fed. The other man had fought stiffly erect, standing with feet braced to give the weight of his whole body to every punch; Harrigan raged back and forth like a panther, avoiding blows by the catlike agility of his movements, which left both hands free to strike sledge-hammer blows. Presently he heard a chuckling at his side. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the black-haired man come into the battle, straight and stiff as before, with long arms shooting out ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... is a vital question, and not knowing for what you may be called upon, makes the outfitting an art. I give the experience of years. The sledge should be eleven feet long. Its runners should be constructed of black spruce grown in the Far North where wood grows slowly and is very tough, and yet quite light. The runners should be an inch thick, eleven inches ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... that marked the expiring limit of the Puritan Sabbath, the landlord at last consented. By the time the falling snow had muffled the street from the indiscreet clamor of Sabbath-breaking hoofs, the landlord's noiseless sledge was at the door and Demorest ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... by Major Williams, of the Artillery. Iron shells of different sizes, from the thirteen-inch shell to the cohorn of four inches diameter, were nearly filled with water, and an iron plug was driven in at the fuse-hole by a sledge-hammer. It was found, however, that the plug could never be driven so firmly into the fuse-hole as to resist the expanding ice, which pushed it out with great force and velocity, and a bolt or cylinder of ice ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Island for luncheon, and on the way we stopped and coasted in a curious Russian sledge from the top of a high place, something like our toboggan-slides, only this sledge was guided from behind by a peasant ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... Bump! Hawkins's sledge-hammer right hand shot out, landing on that fellow's face. With a moan the fellow collapsed on the sidewalk, his ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... to cross the Delaware on a scow, or lay up in some inn over night. New Jerseymen, I hear, pray every morning for their daily stranger; Philadelphia has much sinned to entrap its daily customer. But Maillefert—by which name I designate the inevitable sledge which spares the grand and pulverizes the little—has built a road around the Quaker City. It is a very curious road, going by two hypothenuses of about fifteen miles to make a base of three or four, so that ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... until our host, his wife, their little son, and a dog, had turned in beside me, under cover of a fine warm skin, all naked except the lady, who, with the decorum natural to her sex, kept on a part of her clothes. At ten A.M. we started, and found the sledge on a beach near the southern ice. Four men were to accompany us on this vehicle, and the good-natured fellows volunteered to carry our luggage. A second sledge was under the charge of three boys who had eight dogs, while our team consisted of eleven. The weather was so thick that ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... opening of spring, Woloda had been inseparable from Dubkoff, while at the same time the pair of them had cooled greatly towards Dimitri. Their chief amusements (so I gathered from conversations overheard) were continual drinking of champagne, sledge-driving past the windows of a lady with whom both of them appeared to be in love, and dancing with her—not at children's parties, either, but at real balls! It was this last fact which, despite our love for one another, placed a ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... stepped back. She was cool, cool as Drummond, although she knew her heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. There was Kitty Carr, in a revulsion of feeling, her hands pressed tightly to her head again, as if it were bursting. She was swaying as if ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... as your highness must know, the wind was quite still, but it was bitterly cold; the ice lay over the water as far as one could see. All the people in the town were out on the ice; there was dancing, and music, and feasting, and sledge-racing, I fancy; I could hear something of it all as I lay in my poor little chamber. And when it was getting toward evening, the moon was up, but was not yet very bright; I looked from my bed through the window, and I ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... learned, he was not dull. Word by word he had drunk in the bitter truth that this big, dark, gruff, ill-mannered man was not to be put down with impunity. Call it bullying—any hard name you would, there was no evading the fact that it was power in sledge hammer strokes. "The professor" was just wise enough to see that there lay before him ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... and feed and clothe mankind;) The race whose rice-fields suck Savanna's urn, Whose verdant vines Oconee's bank adorn; Who freight the Delaware with golden grain, Who tame their steeds on Monmouth's flowery plain, From huge Toconnok hills who drag their ore, And sledge their corn to Hudson's quay-built shore. Who keel Connecticut's long meadowy tide, With patient plough his fallow plains divide, Spread their white flocks o'er Narraganset's vale, Or chase to each chill pole the monstrous whale; Whose venturous prows have borne their fame afar, Tamed ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... temples and the down on her upper lip were covered with silvery frost. She was holding my arm and we were standing on a high hill. From where we stood to the ground below there stretched a smooth sloping descent in which the sun was reflected as in a looking-glass. Beside us was a little sledge lined with bright ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and a naked forest; a furious bear endeavors to overthrow a tall and athletic man; a young woman, wearing a hunting costume, comes behind the bear and places a pistol at each ear. In the distance is a horse running away and dragging behind him an upset sledge. I asked an explanation of the picture, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... time appointed I went with a horse and sledge to the wood, but was much surprised to find that my master was not at the spot where he said he would be;—a surprise which was not a little increased by perceiving, from two or three felled sticks that lay around, that he had been there, but had done little—so little, that he could not have been ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... our cart wheels were not high enough to clear the big stones on the beach, so we took them off and replaced them by two runners so as to form a kind of sledge, which answered much better, although many pieces were jerked off en route, by reason of the rugged path and primitive construction of the sledge. As Alec remarked, they served as guide posts, so that there was no losing ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... Even though it was with his strength and prowess that the one had driven it down, with his might and doughtiness the other drew it out,—the battle-champion, the gap-breaker of hundreds, the crushing sledge, the stone-of-battle for enemies, the [W.777.] head of retainers, the foe of hosts, the hacking of masses, the flaming torch and the leader of mighty combat. He drew it up with the tip of one hand till it reached the slope of his shoulder, and he placed the fork in Ailill's hand. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Eve Santa Claus came in his sledge heaped high with presents, urging his team of reindeer across the field. He was on his way to the farmhouse where Betsey ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... addressed me, "talk sense. I'm in earnest. You know the Vesper Club is barred and barricaded like the National City Bank. It isn't one of those common gambling joints which depend for protection on what we call 'ice-box doors.' It's proof against all the old methods. Axes and sledge-hammers would ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... in snow, and evening. They drove in an open sledge over the snow: the train had been so hot and stifling. And the hotel, with the golden light glowing under the porch, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... sledge-hammer fists shot out, Brayley's eyes glowing redly behind them. Conniston knew that one more blow like the last one, full in the face, and again he would have been beaten by Brayley. He remembered—and, strangely enough, the remembrance came to him calmly even while ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the river ... formed the principal road through the country, and was the scene of all these amusements of skating and sledge races common to the north of Europe. They used in great parties to visit their friends at a distance, and having an excellent and hearty breed of horses, flew from place to place over the snow or ice in these sledges with incredible rapidity, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the hair on their bodies is short, but long on their handsome curling tails. They draw their masters in sledges, and are yoked in pairs. There are some large sledges, in which a man can lie down in comfort: to draw such a sledge twelve dogs are necessary; but there are small sledges in which a poor Ostyak can just manage to crouch, and two dogs can draw it. When the dogs are to be harnessed, they are not caught, as horses are, but only called. Yet they do not like work better than ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... one bigger still, but it was still the same story; and so the smith got wroth, and grasped his great sledge-hammer. ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... storms one side of each tree had become more or less plastered with snow, so that even their dark trunks flashed mysteriously into and out of view. In the entire world of the great white silence the only solid, enduring, palpable reality was the tiny sledge train crawling with infinite ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... striking transitions of his father from one mood to another frightened the child at first, but he soon became accustomed to all this, and when he noticed through the window that his father, on coming home, was hardly able to get out of the sledge, Foma said indifferently: ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... spectacle. For a few minutes Simpson acted strictly on the defensive, retreating before his antagonist and guarding himself from the sledge-hammer blows. I noticed that he was very smart on his feet always a good sign in a boxing-match and that he was cunningly drawing Wolff uphill after him. Wolff began to breathe hard and to perspire; I felt that the barrow might not be ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... The sight was maddening. From Nathaniel's throat there came a fierce cry and in a single leap he had cleared the distance to the guard and had driven his fist against the officer's head with the sickening force of a sledge-hammer. The man fell without a groan. In another flash he had drawn his knife and severed the thongs that held the man at the stake. For a moment his face was very near the girl's and he saw her lips form the glad cry which he did ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... said Rowlett who stood a few feet away and, as Maggard turned to look, the night stillness broke into a bellowing that echoed against the precipice and the newcomer lurched forward like an ox struck with a sledge. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... made a short cut from his village over fields and fences alike, marking out the new track with fir-branches stuck in the snow at intervals, so that by night or by day there is no fear of missing the impromptu highway. But it was hard work for all that. The rude sledge, which is little more than a couple of short wooden runners with boards nailed across them, and a short pole at each corner, plunges into the snow and then carries forward a mass of it until the obstruction becomes too ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... uses his whip, and generally only knocks with it upon the footboard of the sledge, by way of a gentle admonition to his steed, with whom, meanwhile, he keeps up a running colloquy, seldom giving him harder words than 'My brother—my friend—my little pigeon—my sweetheart.' 'Come, my pretty pigeon, make ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... office, in the State offices, behind the counters in stores, in attorneys' offices—and there is one woman who assists her husband at the blacksmith's trade, and she can strike as hard a blow with a sledge as the brawniest workman in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... used to good effect. In another moment the cruel jaws of the trap had been loosened and the foot was free, though Dave was unable to stand. Good woodsmen as they were, they were equal to the emergency. The axe again came into play, and on a rude sledge made of thick spruce boughs, the wounded man began the trip to the Hermit's cabin which was nearer than his own. Pal frisked joyously about, now at the head of the little procession, again bringing up the rear, growling deep in his throat at some imaginary enemy of the wonderful beings whom it ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... swung ponderously. Billy ducked, cutting his apology short, and as the sledge-like fist passed over his head, he drove his left to the other's jaw. The big Irishman toppled over sidewise and sprawled on the edge of the slope. Half-scrambled back to his feet and out of balance, he was caught by Bert's fist, and this time ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... sledge, and, travelling night and day, arrived incognito in the capital, which he was to have entered in triumph, and was driven to a distant suburb, to the house of one of his nieces, where he died of a broken heart fifteen ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dear Mrs. Godfrey," he said to himself. "She is more human; it is not her way to use a sledge-hammer when a lighter weapon will serve her purpose; and then she never forces confidence, she is the most tactful woman I know." Malcolm broke off abruptly here as Leah entered the room. She wore the same dark red dress she had worn ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to take up their milk porridge with in their young days, but in after years it will often transfix the solid dumplings that roll out of the silver spoon. So Velpeau found it. He had not what is called genius, he was far from prepossessing in aspect, looking as if he might have wielded the sledge-hammer (as I think he had done in early life) rather than the lancet, but he had industry, determination, intelligence, character, and he made his way to distinction and prosperity, as some of you sitting on these benches and wondering anxiously what is to become ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thought I was hit by a sledge hammer in the next scrimmage," said Donald after the game. "I remember charging, but that was all. I was down and out, but when I came to I somehow wabbled to my feet and went back against the Indian. I was so dazed I could just see the big fellow moving ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... charms of which I have been writing are combined in a sledge-drive. With an arrowy gliding motion one passes through the snow-world as through a dream. In the sunlight the snow surface sparkles with its myriad stars of crystals. In the shadow it ceases to glitter, and assumes a blueness scarcely less blue than the sky. So the journey is like sailing through ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and struck Ruddy and knocked him into a heap. This was the first time for Ruddy; and he got right up and as Jack came up, he just rained the blows on Jack until Jack began to wilt and finally he came up with a regular sledge hammer and Jack fell over on the sand flat on his back, and lay there, his big white chest just goin' up and down like a bellows. I forgot to say that Harold Carman was there; and every time one was knocked down, he began to count. Mitch said if they counted 25 and you didn't ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the sights and sounds of the little border hamlet were, no doubt, like those of any other rustic New England village at the end of a winter day,—an ox-sledge creaking on the frosty snow as it brought in the last load of firewood, boys in homespun snowballing one another in the village street, farmers feeding their horses and cattle in the barns, a matron drawing a pail of water with the help of one of those long well-sweeps still used ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... English nation has authorized, by a tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of those judgments as savours of torture and cruelty: a sledge or hurdle being usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn; and there being very few instances (and those accidental or by negligence) of any persons being embowelled or burned, till previously ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... fighter is the giraffe. He has neither claws nor sharp teeth with which to defend himself; so, if he gets angry with one of his kind, he deliberately uses his long neck like a pile driver would use a sledge hammer. Swinging it round and round, he lets his head descend upon his adversary like a heavy ax! The two animals use the same kind of tactics, and bracing themselves so as to stand the blows, they fight until one has to give in. Their heads are furnished with two small knob-like horns ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives, axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butchers' shops; a forest of iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches; tow smeared with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from fence ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Kolyada has come. We wandered about, we sought holy Kolyada in all the courtyards," commences one of these old songs, for many a year, no doubt, solemnly sung by the young people who used in olden times to escort from homestead to homestead a sledge in which sat a girl dressed in white, who represented the benignant goddess. Nowadays these songs have in many places fallen into disuse, or are kept up only by the children who go from house to house, to congratulate the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... thus: they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it to crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold water, and immediately give a smart knock with a smyth's sledge, and it will breake like the collets at the glasse-house. [This system of destruction is still adopted on the downs in the neighbourhood of Avebury. Many of the upright stones of the great Celtic Temple in that parish have been thus destroyed in ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... Franchard. The carriage glided over the grass like a sledge; pigeons which they could not see began cooing. Suddenly, the waiter of a cafe made his appearance, and they alighted before the railing of a garden in which a number of round tables were placed. Then, passing on the left by the walls of a ruined ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... a rare cold day when I struggled through the crowd out of the station in Moscow, and began fighting with the sledge-drivers who asked a hundred roubles to take me to the Metropole. I remembered coming here a year ago with Colonel Robins, when we made ten roubles a limit for the journey and often travelled for eight. To-day, after heated bargaining, I got ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... Russell shrieked through his swollen mouth at the anguish of it and dropped the rock. Pardee, hovering near, seeing all, picked it up and slipped it into his pocket as Mormon pinned down Russell's arm with his left knee and swung left and right in sledge-hammer blows to the jaw of the face that tried in vain to dodge the knockout. As if a galvanic current that had simulated life had suddenly been shut off, Roaring Russell's body lost all energy, it seemed to flatten, lay without ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... vast trackless forests of fir-trees, and moss-covered swamps in which in summertime a man would sink up to his neck. Now, in September, they were already frozen solid, and you travelled over them with a sledge and a team of reindeer, bundled up in furs and looking, except for the whiskers, like the pictures of Santa Claus you had seen when you were a kid. But most of the traffic of the army was upon the rivers which cut the forests and swamps, and the single railroad, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle drawn like a sledge by four Yahoos. There was in it an old steed, who seemed to be of quality; he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by accident got a hurt in his left fore-foot. He came to dine with our horse, who received him ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... cuit, (baked;) whence our own biscuit. Biscuit might do very well, could we be sure that it was cabin biscuit: but Salmasius argues—that in this case he takes it to mean "buccellatum, qui est panis nauticus;" that is, the ship company's biscuit, broken with a sledge-hammer. In Greek, for the benefit again of the learned reader, it is termed [Greek: dipuros], indicating that it has passed twice under the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... mathematics. Robust, rosy-cheeked, bearded, and taciturn, he produced a strange impression on his companions; they did not suspect that this austere man, who came so punctually to the lectures in a wide village sledge with a pair of horses, was inwardly almost a child. He appeared to them to be a queer kind of pedant; they did not care for him, and made no overtures to him, and he avoided them. During the first two years he spent in the university, he only made acquaintance with ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... of those which the rain had melted away. The decoys were to be rearranged, heading to windward, and at least half an hour was consumed in making these necessary arrangements. At last all was ready, the guns, ammunition, &c., were placed in the boat, and La Salle had gone to hide the sledge behind a neighboring hummock, when, turning his head, he saw Davies and Creamer running hastily to their box, and Kennedy frantically gesticulating and calling on ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... him, he stepped into the canoe, and quick as thought removed the paddles. Hurry was furious when he found that he was deprived of the means of proceeding. He first approached the Indian with loud menaces, and even Deerslayer stood aghast at the probable consequences. March shook his sledge-hammer fists and flourished his arms as he drew near the Indian, and all expected he would attempt to fell the Delaware to the earth; one of them, at least, was well aware that such an experiment would be followed by immediate bloodshed. But even Hurry was awed by the stern composure of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the woods. A sleighing party differs from a picnic. The people who want each other cannot go off together and lose themselves, leaving the bores to find only each other. You are in close company from early morn till late at night. We were to drive twenty miles, six in a sledge, dine together in a lonely Wirtschaft, dance and sing songs, and afterwards drive home by moonlight. Success depends on every member of the company fitting into his place and assisting in the general harmony. Our chieftainess was fixing the ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... enormous eyes glaring sullenly out from two immense cheek-like protuberances, giving to its head that singular sledge-hammer appearance whence it has its name, it advanced directly toward the slow-descending corpse, itself, however, moving so rapidly that the spectators above had scarce taken in the outlines of its horrid ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... and sweating over stiff canvas and stiffer ropes. The thud of big wooden sledge hammers driving in the tent stakes. The rumble of heavy wagons, and a cloud of dust where they were being shoved into ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... Sah-luma! what a brain box is thine! ... How full of dislocated word-puzzles and similes gone mad! Now, as I live, expect no mercy from me this time!".. and he shook his head threateningly,—"For if the public news sheet will serve me as mine anvil, I will so pound thee in pieces with the sledge-hammer of my criticism, that, by the Ship of the Sun! ... for once Al-Kyns shall be moved to laughter at thee! Mark me, good tuner-up of tinkling foolishness! ... I will so choose out and handle thy feeblest lines that ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... party-walls, and iron-grates—so that the party blundered on in the dark, uncertain whether they were not going farther from, rather than approaching, the extremity of the labyrinth. They were obliged to send for mechanics, with sledge-hammers and other instruments, to force one or two of those doors, which resisted all other means of undoing them. Labouring along in these dusky passages, where, from time to time, they were like to be choked by the dust which ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of any definite sign of repentance the critics of the Government threatened a division, which would have been awkward and might have been disastrous. In similar circumstances Mr. GLADSTONE used to "send for the sledge-hammer"—meaning Mr. ASQUITH. The present PRIME MINISTER, when hard pressed, sends for BONAR. Thus summoned to ride the whirlwind the COLONIAL SECRETARY executed a graceful volplane. In a few frank sentences he admitted that the Government were very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... every one of the miscreants, emboldened by his fall, wanted to fire his gun at him, or strike him with blows of the sledge-hammer, or stab him with a knife or swords, every one wanted to draw a drop of blood from the fallen hero, and tear off ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Nancy Ellen's cheeks. She had meant to be diplomatic, but diplomacy never worked well with Kate. As Nancy Ellen often said, Kate understood a sledge-hammer better. Nancy Ellen used the hammer. Her face flushed, her arms closed tightly. "Give me this ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... their race for a thousand years. Among all the story-tellers there is none like Urda, for she is the daughter and the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter of storytellers. It is given to her to talk, as it is given to John Thorlaksson to sing—he who sings so as his sledge flies over the snow at night, that the people come out in the bitter air from their doors to listen, and the dogs put up their noses and howl, not ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... exertion, perfectly sobered. "What, Blackmantle? and alive, old fellow? Well clone, my hearty; I saw you set to with that fresh water devil from Charwell, the old Bargee, and a pretty milling you gave him. I had intended to have seconded you, but just as I was making up, a son of Vulcan let fly his sledge-hammer slap at my smeller, and stopped up one of my oculars, so I was obliged to turn to and finish him off; and when I had completed the job, you had bolted; not, however, without leaving your marks behind ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... made against himself affecting his honour were baseless. This I said, emphasising much more strongly than was necessary the opinion which I had formed of his indiscretion,—as will so often be the case when a man has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer,—in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives. Of course there was offence,—and a breaking off of intercourse between loving friends,—and a ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... sledge-hammer," panted Kennedy, as he worked the little lever backward and forward more quickly—"a hydraulic ram. There is no swinging of axes or wielding of crowbars necessary in breaking down an obstruction like this, nowadays. Such things are obsolete. This little jimmy, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... the amusement it afforded the young people, as for the destruction of the deadly prowler. The mode of conducting it was this: Every two or three families who chanced to be intimate, when the ice was sufficiently strong and smooth for sledge-travelling, sent forth a party of young hunters, with their sisters and sweethearts, in a sledge covered at the one end, which was also well cushioned and gayly painted; the ladies in their best ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... sledge, en'e my fret sec'ond spread rec'og nize helm ten'der knelt len'i ty them ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... subject. But the sailor smoked on, stolidly heedless of a sudden lapse in the conversation, and the shipowner was compelled to start afresh. He was far too shrewd to go straight back to the topic burked by his own error. His sledge-hammer methods might be crude to the verge of brutality where Iris was concerned, but they were capable of nice adjustment in the case of wary old sea-dogs of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... think it matters," she said. "I never have thought such things mattered. What does matter, is to judge gently, and not to come down like a sledge-hammer on other people's failings. Who are we, any of us, that we should ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... cloths it was placed on a sort of sledge. This was drawn by six of the attendants of the temple; Ameres and Chebron followed behind, and after them came a procession of priests. When it arrived at the house, Amense and Mysa, with their hair unbound and falling around them, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... all my liquor at one sitting; and the Yyesnik Evropi went to the priest's daughters; as in the summer, especially at the haymaking, I did not succeed in getting to my bed at all, and slept in the sledge in the barn, or somewhere in the forester's lodge, what chance was there of reading? Little by little I moved downstairs, began dining in the servants' kitchen, and of my former luxury nothing is left but the servants ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... all laughed heartily over this very slight bon mot; but our Frenchman looked dreadfully puzzled and asked to have it explained to him. He proved even more difficult than Sydney Smith's Scotchman; or, as Walter expresses it, "It had to be driven in with a sledge hammer," and he warns Archie solemnly to attempt no more pleasantries in the presence of our Gallo-American, guide, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton |
