"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that these two gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had dropped from their royal hands—that these heirs of the ages should be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and should enjoy themselves "like babies" when they were invited to the ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... spring up with them upon the fruitful earth, beautiful, flourishing trees, towering high upon the lofty mountains (and men call them holy places of the immortals, and never mortal lops them with the axe); but when the fate of death is near at hand, first those lovely trees wither where they stand, and the bark shrivels away about them, and the twigs fall down, and at last the life of the Nymph and of the tree leave the light of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... think o'er all his woes. To joy a stranger, since his hapless birth, What poorer wretch upon this rolling earth? No bread sometimes, and ne'er a moment's rest; Wife, children, soldiers, landlords, public tax, All wait the swinging of his old, worn axe, And paint the veriest picture of a man unblest. On Death he calls. Forthwith that monarch grim Appears, and asks what he should do for him. "Not much, indeed; a little help I lack— To put these ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... The bliong is indeed a most useful implement and can perform wonders in the hands of a Malay. It is in the shape of a small adze, but according to the way it is fitted into the handle it can be used either as an axe or adze. The Malays with this instrument can make planks and posts as smooth as a European carpenter is able to ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... buglers, in gorgeous clothing of pink and yellow hue, accordingly gladdened the eyes of the Abertaffians as they paraded the streets and hung about the court-house. Each man of the rank and file carried a weapon the like of which had not often been looked upon. It resembled an axe with an exaggerated handle, only the back of the blade was prolonged into a formidable spike, while the handle extended beyond into a species of spear-point. Armed with these truly terrific weapons, Mr. Reynolds's faithful henchmen might well strike awe into the heart of the boldest boy ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... full of noises; heavy footsteps tramping up and down the stairs, furniture turned over, curtains torn from their poles, doors and windows battered in. And through it all the ceaseless hammering of pick and axe, attacking these stately walls which had withstood the wars ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... flung his knife and fork at it, having forgotten to drop those light weapons when he leaped up. The major hurled after it a heavy mass of firewood. Hardy and Hicks flung the huge marrow bones with which they happened to be engaged at the time. Tom Brown swung a large axe after it, and Wilkins, in desperation, shied his cap at it! But all missed their mark, and the panther would certainly have carried off his prize had not a very tall and powerfully-built Caffre, named Mafuta, darted at it an assegai, or long native spear, ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... evils of democracy; those in England who clamoured for a "numerical" rather than a class representation should take warning from the American experiment. Occasionally, though rarely, there appeared the impressions of some British traveller who had no political axe to grind[1327], but from 1850 to 1860, as in every previous decade, British writing on America was coloured by the author's attitude on political institutions at home. The "example" of America was constantly on ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... tyrant's caprice to depend on, and knew how a moment's whim might end all. Surely his way of bearing that suspense was very noteworthy and noble. It is difficult to keep a calm heart, and still more difficult to keep on steadily at work, when any moment might bring the victor's axe. Suspense almost enforces idleness, but Paul crowded these moments of his prison time with letters, and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are the fruits for which we are indebted to a period which would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the leader of the invaders, did no shouting, but reserved his breath for other purposes. He spurred his horse among them, and his foes went down around him as a thicket melts away before the well-swung axe of a stalwart woodman. The Saracens had little fear of death, but mutilation was another thing, for they knew that they would spend eternity in Paradise, shaped as they had left this earth, and while ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... fist? If ever I hit anybody with that fist, they'll have to have it dug out of 'em. I don't row often, but when I does—oh, lordy! lordy! I jest raves and caves. I was home on a visit onct, and my old-maid aunt gits a notion of pickin' on me. Say, I ups and runs her all over the house with an axe! I'm more er less a dang'rous character when I'm on the peck. Is that feelin' workin off of you ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... watched the expert choppers swinging their bright axes in steady rhythm, and adding wound to wound in the gaping trunk so skilfully that the defenceless monster fell just where they wished, his heart thrilled with pride at man's easy victory over nature, and he longed to seize an axe himself and attack the forest on ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... Foltlebar and Feradach, and that they were the sons of the king of Innia, and each possessed an art, and that as they walked they had disputed whose art was the greater. "And my art," said Feradach, "is this. If at any time a company of warriors need a ship, give me only my joiner's axe and my crann-tavall[2], and I am able to provide a ship without delay. The only thing I ask them to do is this—to cover their heads close and keep them covered, while I give the crann-tavall three blows of my axe. Then I tell them to uncover ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... steady buzz of a saw and later the ringing strokes of an axe. The men had departed three hours before to be gone for a week on the horse round-up but she had not yet issued from her own quarters. The music of axe and saw was ample evidence that her new and undesired partner was making valuable use of ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... long, but threw her black cloak around her shoulders, placed a dagger and a sword at her belt, and looked for a strong axe: "It will be convenient," she thought, "to break through the heavy walls." She lighted her lantern, and stole out ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... Father brought his axe from York State; it weighed seven pounds; he gave me a smaller one. He laid the trees right and left until we could see the sun from ten o'clock in the morning till between one and two in the afternoon, when it mostly disappeared back of Mr. ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... with Mr Dugald Strong's aid, had partly dragged into the well of the cutter, now crawled out from his retreat; and keeping over well to leeward on the other side of the boom, proceeded to the locker in the stern-sheets, from whence he took out a small axe and handed it ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... you were wanting," repeated Charles. "No," replied the duke. It was probably at these words that, the lookers-on also waxing wroth, Tanneguy Duchatel told the duke that the time had come for expiating the murder of the Duke of Orleans, which none of them had forgotten, and raised his battle-axe to strike the duke. Sire de Navailles, who happened to be at his master's side, arrested the weapon; but, on the other hand, the Viscount of Narbonne raised his over Navailles, saying, "Whoever stirs ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "Short axe, in case of close work, and rifle each. You'll be more than a match for six Greeks. Besides," he added, with a significant smile, "I shall ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... present. Caranby added that Mallow had resumed his visits to the "Shrine of the Muses," but that Mrs. Octagon still continued hostile. Basil, however, was more friendly. "I daresay," commented Jennings, on reading this last sentence, "he has his own axe to ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... and down the glen, And far away to the level West, Hosts of dauntless, unwearied men Onward ever with firm foot pressed; The blue axe gleamed in the wintry light, And forests melted like mist away, Through virgin soils went the ploughshare bright. And harvests brightened ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye! Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the hands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here! Seven times have ye put my life in peril, three fair sons have you swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns; and ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... the sylvans groan: the wood Must make the gamester's losses good. The antique oaks, the stately elms, One common ruin overwhelms. The brawny arms of boor and clown Cast with the axe their honours down, With Echo's repetitive sounds Complaining of ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... as Frank had stated, almost in the centre of the ship; for two bulkheads had to be battered down and the main deck cut through, before the source of it could be reached. However, by dint of arduously plying the axe and crowbar, an opening was at length made whence the fire could be got at. Flames immediately burst forth the moment air was admitted into the hold, but these were pressed down with wet blankets, and, the fire-hose being carried down and the pumps manned by the watch on deck, a copious ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... there was nothing hasty about this excellent creature. "I could forgive you being sick," he said at last, as a portion of the wall fell out, "but I cannot bear your being such a fool." And with that he heaved up his fireman's axe, for he was eminently just, and clove the sick man to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dost not know who I am, I fancy? I strike bad people's heads off; and I hear that my axe rings!" ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... the city raged a terrific battle. The fair-skinned warriors, armed only with their long bows and a kind of short-handled war-axe, were almost helpless beneath the savage mounted green men at close quarters; but at a distance their sharp arrows did fully as much execution as the radium projectiles ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... little, save the singing of the Marseillaise, (the Marseillaise of Slavery!) and the striking down of the Federal colors before the flag of the pelican and the rattlesnake. A great many blue ribbons and Colt's revolvers are sold; and busts of Calhoun, the first theorist of secession, axe carried about ostentatiously. Next, to present a good mien to the eyes of Europe, a Constitution is voted in haste, a government is formed, an army is decreed; but the revolutionary basis is remaining, and we perceive but too quickly ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... at the age of forty-six, a rather expert woodsman. A good deal of tree-felling was necessary, both in the interest of the trees and for the improvement of the views from the house and its immediate neighbourhood. My father had a Canadian axe, given to him by Frederick Gibbs, of which he was extremely fond, and with which he did a great deal of work. He was never reduced to cutting down a tree merely for exercise, but always first satisfied himself with much ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... on the university grounds there was simply a wooden column, bearing a bell of moderate size, which was rung at every lecture-hour by the principal janitor. One cold winter night those of us living in the immediate neighborhood heard the sound of axe-strokes. Presently there came a crash, and all was still. Next morning, at the hour for chapel, no bell was rung; it was found that the column had been cut down and the bell carried off. A president of less shrewdness would have declaimed to the students on the enormity of such a procedure, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the breadth of two fingers above water, and threatened every moment to upset. We succeeded, however, in crossing over, and had then to make our way through bushes by an untrodden path, going from one newly marked tree to another. These marks are merely a piece cut out of the bark with an axe, about the height of a man's eyes from the ground; and by means of them the commonest roads are designated through all New Netherland and Maryland; but in consequence of the great number of roads so marked, and ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... was the hearty response of Mike. "I got it that time where the chicken got the axe—which the same is in the neck. It was a fair hit and I desarved more, though no one could give ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... adversaries, the address with which he soothed the passions and guided the judgments of his colleagues, it is impossible to find a single fault. If he had a fault, says his biographer, it was that of using the razor when he would have done better with the axe. But the axe is not a diplomatic weapon. The simulation of temper may serve an occasional purpose, but temper itself is a mistake; and to Mr. Gallatin's credit be it said, it was a mistake never committed by him in the course ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... my childhood and youth, not as I have told it to you, judged from a distance, but in the language of a young man whose wounds are still bleeding. My voice was like the axe of a woodsman in the forest. At every word the dead years fell with echoing sound, bristling with their anguish like branches robbed of their foliage. I described to her in feverish language many cruel details which I have ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... S—- had emigrated to Canada while quite a youth, and was thoroughly acquainted with the backwoods, and with the use of the felling-axe, which he wielded with all the ease and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... marked in his "Old Fable" (which always means the newest) of "The Peasant and the Forest." It is thus given: "A peasant once went into an old forest of shady oaks, and humbly entreated the same to grant him a small branch to make a handle for his axe, and thereby enable him to pursue his labours at home. The forest very graciously acceded to his request, and the peasant soon formed the required handle; but presently he began to lay about him in every direction, using the very substance with which the forest had furnished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... sickly, feeble sort of woman, but such a sight was enough to give her the strength and courage of a man. She ran and caught up an axe. Luckily she had a big dog. They two ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... familiarity with the movements of this stupendous enginery of death enabled her to calculate to a nicety when the crash would come. She lay like the bound victim under the guillotine, watching fer the axe to descend. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... is that and nothing else. In the chickens and the sparrows that come to steal their food, and the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky-birds, you may see it in its simplicity. The size and shape may vary, as a Canadian axe differs from a Scotch axe; some are short and stout and have a sharp edge for shelling seeds; some are longer and fine-pointed, for picking worms and caterpillars out of their hiding-places; some a little hooked at their points, and one, that of the crossbill, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Yet so he rul'd and such a prince he was As he stood by whilst I, his forlorn duchess, Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock To every idle rascal follower. But be thou mild and blush not at my shame, Nor stir at nothing till the axe of death Hang over thee, as, sure, it shortly will; For Suffolk, he that can do all in all With her that hateth thee and hates us all, And York, and impious Beaufort, that false priest, Have all lim'd bushes to betray ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... through the Tower, we came to the axe which beheaded my Lady Jane Grey, she showed no lack of interest in that. And the next day, when my Uncle Charles said he would show us some of the fine things in the City, and we were driving in Grandmamma's coach towards Newgate, ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... fault that you cannot love her, and perhaps it is not her misfortune. There is no need for panic. Of two persons, one loving and one loath, the indifferent one is in the right. Can a tree defend itself from the hewer's axe? What would avail it, then, to feel pain at the blows? It is beyond our control to love or not to love, and no effort that we may put forth can draw love to us when it is denied. It does not avail us to ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... contrary, Doctor Axe (rather a suggestive name for an advocate of docking) thought the practice improved the looks of a horse, thus rendering it more salable. His sentimentality did not allow him to argue this question of increased ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... used to build in it, the blue raven and even the black stork! It was early in the year; some of the nests were full of eggs, while in others the young ones were just hatched. What a flying and screaming was there! Then came the sound of the axe, blow upon blow; the forest was to be felled. Waldemar Daa was about to build a costly ship, a three-decked man-of-war, which it was expected the king would buy. So the wood fell, the ancient landmark of the seaman, the home ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... forests." The Earl answered, "You are welcome to load your ship with timber, and I will give it you. For I think it no every-day occurrence when such men as you come from Iceland to visit me." At parting the Earl gave him a gold-inlaid axe, and the best of keepsakes it was; and therewith they parted in the greatest friendship. [Sidenote: Giermund goes with Olaf] Giermund in the meantime set stewards over his estates secretly, and made up his mind to go to Iceland in the summer in Olaf's ship. He kept this secret from every ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... meridian-room by 10 P.M., and watched for the comet to cross. As it approached the meridian, I saw that it would go behind a scraggy apple-tree. I sent for the watchman, Mr. Crumb, to come with a saw, and cut off the upper limbs. He came back with an axe, and chopped away vigorously; but as one limb after another fell, and I said, 'I need more, cut away,' he said, 'I think I must cut down the whole tree.' I said, 'Cut it down.' I felt the barbarism of it, but I felt more that a bird might have a ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... celebrated by the commander of the Knights of St. John on St. John's Day: the right of hunting was accorded to him; and soldiers might not be quartered in his house. At Marseilles also on this day one of the guilds chose a king of the badache or double axe; but it does not appear that he kindled the bonfire, which is said to have been lighted with great ceremony by ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... that every sturdy Supralapsarian bullock whom he tries to sacrifice to the Genius of Orthodoxy will not kick, and push, and toss; that he will not, if he can, shake the axe from his neck, and hurl his mitred butcher into the air? We know these men fully as well as the Bishop; he has not a chance of success against them. They will ravage, roar, and rush till the very chaplains, and the Masters and Misses Peterborough, request ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... her with infinite contempt, though without anger, and pushing her away with his foot said: "Out of my sight, you dog of a woman! Blood like yours would soil the executioner's axe. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and even to stones and mineral substances. If an animal or a plant die, its soul immediately goes to Bolotoo; if a stone or any other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward; nay, artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and yams. If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the service of the gods. If a house is taken down, or any way destroyed, its immortal part will find a situation on the plains of Bolotoo; and, to confirm this doctrine, the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural well, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... suffer, the results of (previous) action? If man, O Bharata, does all acts, good or bad, being urged thereto by the Supreme Being, then the fruits of those acts should attach to the Supreme being himself. If a person cuts down, with an axe, a tree in forest, it is the person that incurs the sin and not the axe by any means. Or, if it be said that, the axe being only the material cause, the consequence of the act (of cutting) should attach to the animate agent (and not to the inanimate tool), ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... thing! Our good Muff was all right. A neighbor, who had come to borrow our axe, had left the back-door open; and a hungry old stray cat had suddenly made her appearance. Muff saw that Cherry was in danger, and seized him so that the strange cat should ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... is a law, (but let the reader remark, that it prevails but in one of the colonies), against mutilation. It took its rise from the frequency of the inhuman practice. But though a master cannot there chop off the limb of a slave with an axe, he may yet work, starve, and beat him to ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... and this is what it showed her:—A lonely woodman's hut in the forest upon the bank of a great blue river; in the hut a solitary man, pale and thin, worn out with sickness and sorrow stretched upon a bed; not a living thing about the house; the axe lying rusty from disuse by the trunk of a fallen tree; one little bed deserted in the other corner of the room, toward which the sick man is turned with longing look, while his lips move but refuse to ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... as fast as you can," cried Harry, "and I'll run down to your house and get your axe to cut a ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... while the former might be tidy at nine, and yet by 10 o'clock lumps of cotton waste might be blowing all over the place, tins and bonnet covers once more in untidy heaps. I often "did the boiler," but I simply hated chopping the sticks. One day the axe was firmly fixed in a piece of hard wood and I was vainly hitting it against the block, with eyes tight shut, when I heard a chuckle from the top of the steps. I looked up and there was a Tommy looking down into the hole, watching the proceedings. Where he'd come from I don't know. "Call those ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... horse. The moment he fell another Highlander, who, if the crown witness at Carlisle may be credited, (as I know not why he should not, though the unhappy creature died denying it,) was one M'Naught, who was executed about a year after, gave him a stroke either with a broadsword or a Lochaber axe, (for my informant could not exactly distinguish,) on the hinder part of his head, which was the mortal blow. All that his faithful attendant saw further at this time was, that as his hat had fallen off, he took it in his left hand, and waved ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... returned Jean. Then to Tom: "Hav' you not then the axe, to chop him into splinter'? This very queer way to fin' you, M'sieu' Tom. But now we not stop to ask question, we 'urry, get you out. Go 'way an' then talk. It is to see that you are ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... for instant use there lies a sharp axe at the bottom of the well, by which any rope may be cut, and a blow may be given to the forelock of an anchor or other refractory point needing instant correction, and near this again is the sounding lead, with its line wound on a stick like ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the Old Eng. adesa, of which the origin is unknown), a tool used for cutting and planing. It is somewhat like an axe reversed, the edge or the blade curving inward and placed at right angles to the handle. This shape is most suitable for planing uneven timber, as inequalities are "hooked off'' by the curved blade. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from my pledge," he repeated, entreatingly, "and tell me who thou art. Mahommed is my pupil; he rides, carries shield, lays lance, draws arrow, and strikes with sword and axe as I have taught him. Thou canst not name a quality characteristic of heroes he does not possess. Doth Allah permit me safe return from the Hajj, he will be first to meet me at his father's gate. Think what happiness I should have in saluting him there ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the enemy's decks, set it ablaze, begin to fall upon "the Pope's" vessel. The rigging begins to burn, the upper works shiver, and like demons Riquer and his men spring aboard among the flames, pistol in one hand, boarding axe in the other. The deck flows with blood, the corpses roll into the sea with broken heads. They find "the Pope" hiding, half dead with fear, in a locker in ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... four he was aware of a rustling train's rush down the steps, and now was like a man with his neck on the block, awaiting the axe. A moment afterwards she was before him, and two moments afterwards he was collected and hot, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... as possible of the crew were set to work with axe and saw, and in the course of a few hours the Fram had got a new deck. This consisted of loose pieces of decking, which could easily be raised and removed for flushing and cleaning. This false deck rested on three-inch planks nailed to the ship's deck; between the latter and the loose deck ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... a return of our complaints, and having no other resource, we were forced by imperious hunger to make our repasts from one of the bodies of our dead shipmates. They were so hard, that it was with difficulty that we could separate a portion with an axe, and the flesh broke off in fragments, as if we had been splitting a piece of granite; but it thawed before the fire, which we had contrived to keep alight, by supplying it from the bulwarks of the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... advanced, the mellow sound of chimes floated out on the stillness, calling Dinwiddians to worship, as it had called their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers before them. The Sabbath calm, so heavy that an axe could hardly have dispelled it, filled the curving streets and the square gardens like an invisible fog—a fog that dulled the brain and weighed down the eyelids and made the grim walls of the Treadwell tobacco factory look as if they were rising out of a dream. Into this ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... his place, if not out of his mind, at certain moments, and having upon one occasion smashed a basin by throwing it in the face of the cook, and upon another occasion narrowly escaped homicide, by throwing an axe at a man's head, which missed by an inch, he became a notorious ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... and tessellated branches, sawn into symmetrical cylinders, lay beside the stumps, and lent themselves to the illusion. But the freshly-cut chips, so damp that they still clung in layers to each other as they had fallen from the axe, and the stumps themselves, still wet and viscous from their drained life-blood, were redolent of an odor of youth ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... expatriated by a man with an axe. The man and the axe were alike visionary and unreal, though it needed a very considerable effort of the will to hold them at mental arm's length. I had work on hand which imperatively demanded to be finished, and I was so broken down by a long course of labour that it was a matter ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... not to interrupt?" said the doctor. "Here, hi, Nic, my boy. Tell Samson to give you a sack and an axe. You can throw the sack ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... enjoying the coolness of the evening air. The fatigues of the last month and of the rapid journey from Varna had told upon his strength, as the fearful anxiety he had endured had wearied his brain. He felt, as he walked, how delicious it would be to forget all the past, to shoulder a broad axe, and to plunge forever into the silent forest; to lead the life of one of those rude woodmen, without a thought at night save of the trees to be felled to-morrow; to rise in the morning with no care save to accomplish the daily task before night; to sleep in summer on the carpet ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... this island by the Poui. He will make a stage round it, some eight feet high, and cut it above the spurs. It will take his convict gang (for convicts are turned to some real use in Trinidad) several days to get it down, and many more days to square it with the axe. A trace must be made to it through the wood, clearing away vegetation for which an European millionaire, could he keep it in his park, would gladly pay a hundred pounds a yard. The cleared stems, especially those of the palms, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... or heathen rule in Arthur's realm? Flash brand and lance, fall battle-axe upon helm, Fall battle-axe, and flash brand! ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... for an outburst of wrath. He stormed at Brougham; he declared that it was an act of high-treason to call out the Life Guards without the express authority of the King, and he raged in a manner which seemed to imply that only the mercy of the sovereign could save Grey and Brougham from the axe on Tower Hill. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... When she came near the place where her father worked, she heard his strokes felling timber, and smelt smoke. She saw presently a large fire and two human heads roasting at it. Turning from the fire, she went in the direction of the axe-strokes, and ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... his commands for her normal daily life, and everything seemed to go splendidly. But I am afraid the thing must have passed through too many hands before it reached its destination; for Suzanne, after many cheerful nods, suddenly broke off and turned on her heel. Then she secured an axe, which was lying against the bothy door, and walked with a steady and fixed purpose, never turning her head, out into the lane, through the gate and up the hill. We watched her spellbound till she reached the horizon, and there saw her pause, roll up her sleeves and furiously ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... admirers before ever I picked up Jack Rann at a masquerade. Why, there was a Templar, with two thousand a year, who gave me a carriage and servants while I still lived at the dressmaker's in Oxford Street, and I was not out of my teens when the old Jew in St. Mary Axe took me into keeping. But when Jack was by, I had no chance of admiration. All the eyes were glued upon him, and his poor doxy had to be content with a furtive look thrown over a stranger's shoulder. At Barnet races, the year before they sent me across the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... twenty-five years ago there was produced a very large fine sweet nut which was sought by all the children in the neighborhood. This tree, however, has passed away with hundreds of others, either by the hickory bark beetle or the axe. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the soil, shall spring, is springing, a shapely tree—symmetric in all its parts—under whose sheltering boughs this nation shall have the new birth of freedom Lincoln promised it, and mankind the refuge which was sought by the forefathers when they fled from oppression. Thank God, the axe, the gibbet, and the stake have had their day. They have gone, let us hope, to keep company with the lost arts. It has been demonstrated that great wrongs may be redressed and great reforms be achieved without ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... I felt in this adventure, for we should encounter, I inferred, people of the hardy pioneer stock that has pushed the American civilization, such as it is, ever westward. I pictured the stalwart woodsman, axe in hand, braving the forest to fell trees for his rustic home, while at night the red savages prowled about to scalp any who might stray from the blazing campfire. On the day of our landing I had read something of this—of depredations committed by ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... it is sufficiently burnt, they extinguish the fire, not with water, but with a hurdle covered with turf and earth. As it grows cold, it becomes hard and shining, so that you cannot take it out of the pits, but by cutting it with an axe. ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the rocks. My share of the work was to save two large casks which were near the shore. While I was up to my knees in the sea I heard a shrill cry, which I knew to come from Jack. I got out at once, took up an axe, and ran to his help. I found him with his legs in a rock pool, where a large crab held him by his toes. It soon made off as I came near; but I struck at it with the axe, and brought it out of the pool. Jack then took it up, though it gave him a pinch or two ere ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... and looking after the affairs of the printing-house. He said not a word to David. While youth bears a child's heart, it is capable of sublime reticence. Perhaps, too, Lucien began to dread the Phocion's axe which David could wield when he chose, perhaps he was afraid to meet those clear-sighted eyes that read the depths of his soul. But when he read Chenier's poems with David, his secret rose from his heart to his lips at the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... brought an axe with him. With this he cut some long, straight poles which, he explained, were intended for pike poles such as woodsmen use to roll logs. This done, he began industriously chopping at the tree after deciding upon the exact position in which ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... in Livy that Hannibal overcame the Alps by means of vinegar. No elephant ever uttered such a stupidity. Livy? Not at all. Livy was not a beast; it is you who are, foolish instructor of credulous youth! Livy did not say aceto which means vinegar, but aceta which means axe." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... remained sitting in the house; no human power was able to move it. So hard was the stone, that hammer and axe flew in pieces without making the slightest impression upon it. The giant sat there till a holy man came to the island, who with one single word removed him back to his former station, where he stands to this hour. The copper kettle, which the underground people ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... than that will be necessary, because the ground is frozen. Look around for an axe; we shall be obliged to work our way through the ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... the axe of the woodcutter may betimes be heard. With (snow) covered contours, a thousand peaks their ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... stage, with a plank bench at either end. At the center of the porch three steps leading from street. Rear of porch, center, door to the store. On either side are single windows on which signs, at left, "POST OFFICE", and at right, "GENERAL STORE" are painted. Soap boxes, axe handles, small kegs, etc., on porch on which townspeople sit and lounge during action. Above the roof of the porch the "false front", or imitation second story of the shop is seen with large sign painted across it "JOE CLARK'S ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... into the thoughts of John Ardayre, this is the prayer she would have heard, as he knelt there beside her at the altar rails: "Oh, God, keep the axe from falling yet, give ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... that pistol, Toby," said Salina. "You can use Cudjo's axe, if we are attacked. Place it where you can reach it, and then return to your lookout. Don't be deceived; but warn us at once if ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... and sent 'em on," he said. "The Siwashes will take care of them, but it ain't right. What the cussed idiots mean by setting out on such a journey I can't understand. Why, one tramp came in here early in the spring who couldn't speak English, and who left Quesnelle without even a blanket or an axe. Fact! And yet the Lord seems to take care of these fools. You wouldn't believe it, but that fellow picked up an axe and a blanket the first day out. But he'd a died only for the Indians. They won't let even a white man starve to death. I helped him out with some flour and he went on. They ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... her head might be smitten off with an axe upon a block for the love of our Lord Jesu. Then said our Lord Jesu in her mind: "I thank thee, daughter, that thou wouldest die for My love; for as often as thou thinkest so, thou shalt have the same meed in heaven, as if thou suffredest the same death, ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... driving the Truth into them as if by a charge of a powerful explosive. He told them that the spiritual grain was to be gathered into the garners, while the chaff was to be consumed as if by a fiery furnace; that the axe was to be laid to the root of the trees which brought not forth good fruit. Verily, the "Day of Jehovah," long promised by the prophets, was near to hand to ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... physique was as grotesque as his attire; which consisted of a white oilskin blouse, gayly bordered with the national colors, trousers of the most aggressive blue, and a helmet-shaped hat, adorned by a miniature battle-axe, while a tiny broom was strapped upon ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... takes up the eternal renewing, the palace of the moon- god is being renewed with the jewelled axe, and this ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... hand," you say? Hum! History tells us that William the Conqueror wooed his lady with a club, or a battle-axe, or something of the sort, and she consequently liked him the better for it; which was all very natural, and proper of course, in her case, seeing that hers was the day of battle-axes, and things. But then, as I said before, sir,—the ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Thomas, my deere Lord, my life, my Glouster, One Violl full of Edwards Sacred blood, One flourishing branch of his most Royall roote Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt; Is hackt downe, and his summer leafes all vaded By Enuies hand, and Murders bloody Axe. Ah Gaunt! His blood was thine, that bed, that wombe, That mettle, that selfe-mould that fashion'd thee, Made him a man: and though thou liu'st, and breath'st, Yet art thou slaine in him: thou dost consent In some large measure to thy Fathers death, In that thou seest thy wretched ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... but dreams not that they are to another the pillars of a temple, whose worshipper is on earth though its divinity is in heaven. I still visit them once or twice each spring, on the anniversaries of these walks; and when the axe lays one low, it seems to me as though it falls upon myself, and carries away a ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest morsels,—and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in the woods,—the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his easy triumph over the cold, his coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost, and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the storm, to restore the lost track ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... and strictly exceptional cases. And the Knight, to whom distinction was as the breath of his nostrils, as he closed his vizor trusted confidently to his heraldic insignia to distinguish him, while, in the fore-front of the fray, with sword and lance and axe he would strive manfully to distinguish himself. This implies that Heraldry, besides assigning to different families their own distinct insignia, should possess the faculty of distinguishing the several members, and also the ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... in the Methodist Church choir and they say he can throw his voice anywhere. I wish he'd throw it in the ash barrel, I know that. He always wears his belt-axe to troop meetings, in case the Germans should invade Bridgeboro, I suppose. He's the troop mascot and if you walk around him three times and ruffle up his beautiful curly hair, you can change ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... their first acquaintance with the metals, were intimately acquainted with at least the mechanical properties of the chalk-flint, and knew where in Scotland it was to be found. They were mineralogists enough, too, as their stone battle-axes testify, to know that the best tool-making rock is the axe-stone of Werner; and in some localities they must have brought their supply of this rather rare mineral from great distances. A history of those arts of savage life, as shown in the relics of our earlier antiquities, which the course of discovery sereved thoroughly to supplant, but which could ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and his comrade finished all the chopping which one householder had; then they sought other work, but found none; his comrade had parted from him, and for two weeks he himself had been struggling along; he had spent all his money, he had no saw, and no axe, and no money to buy anything. I gave him money for a saw, and told him of a place where he could find work. I had already made arrangements with Piotr and Semyon, that they should take an assistant, and they looked up a ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... cottage, with his axe in his hand; he listened to his wife's lamentations, while the two Children told the story of their adventures over again and asked him what he had done ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... pioneers came hither, Other white men sought the woodland, When the red man fled to westward, From the scenes so fierce and gory, Where the tomahawk uplifted Wrought such strife and havoc deadly. And once more the axe is lifted, And the monarchs of the forest, Of the forest bought with bloodshed, Fell with echoes loud and startling, 'Mid the lonely hills and valleys. And the white man built a city, In the woodland once so peaceful, In the woodland once so warlike, Built a fair ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... clothes and white shirt-sleeves, the Rector was hewing with an axe at the boarding of a cowhouse, the door end of which was already in flames, and his voice could be heard above the tumult shouting directions to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... axe and some of the buckets," called Dick finally, as he, at the head of a shift, reached and located the spring. The water was, of course, covered with a thick armor of ice. Greg moved into position with the axe, striking fast and hard. Dave and Tom, with the snow shovels, moved ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... sciences and events; artistic, but not artist; spiritual, but not spiritualist.—I join Napoleon with him, as being both representatives of the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions,—two stern realists, who, with their scholars, have severally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant and seeming, for this time and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... at an end. The news of the battle of the Bad Axe, where the regulars, the militia, and the steamboat Warrior combined, had made a final end of the remaining handful of Sauks, had reached us and restored tranquillity to the hearts and homes of the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... he shouted again and ran the faster; but even therewith, whether she heard and saw him, and hoped for timely help, or whether she felt her legs failing her, she turned on the bear, and Ralph saw that she had a little axe in her hand wherewith she smote hardily at the beast; but he, after the fashion of his kind, having risen to his hind legs, fenced with his great paws like a boxer, and smote the axe out of her hand, and she cried out bitterly and swerved from ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... (see Note 25) was fixed by law for Denmark and Norway. In February, 1814, a decree of Prince Regent Christian Frederik made Norway's flag to be the Dannebrog with Norway's arms (a crowned lion bearing an axe) in the upper square nearest the staff. Article 11 of the Constitution of 1814 declared: Norway shall have its own merchant-flag; its war-flag shall be a union-flag. Because of the Barbary Coast pirates, however, the Swedish ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... his eyes, he could not at first remember what he was awakened for, nor how he came to be upon the floor. 'Come,' said Mazzuolo, 'come, she's fast asleep; I have just been to her room to look at her. You must step down now to the carriage and bring up the axe I left ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... fathers, husbands, and brothers to protect them; and well they might, for a bolder set of stalwart men than these backwoodsmen never trod the wilderness. Each had been trained to the use of the rifle and the axe from infancy, and many of them had spent so much of their lives in the woods that they were more than a match for the Indian in his own peculiar pursuits of hunting and war. When the squatters first issued from the woods bordering the valley, an ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... an officer of the towne, Hys axe out hys hand he wronge, On eche syde he smote them downe, Hym thought he ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick |
