"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day Gawayne starts with a guide, and reaches the Green Chapel; the Green Giant is there, ready to give him back the blow received a year before. Gawayne stoops his head under the dreadful axe, and just as it falls cannot help bending his shoulders a little. You are not that Gawayne, says the giant, held in such high esteem. At this, Arthur's knight straightens himself; the giant lifts his axe again and strikes, but only inflicts ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... which it was the scene belongs to a profoundly dark period, ere the gray dawn of Scottish history began. As shown by the remains of ancient art occasionally dug up on the moor, it was a conflict of the times of the stone battle-axe, the flint arrow-head, and the unglazed sepulchral urn, unindebted for aught of its symmetry to the turning-lathe,—times when there were heroes in abundance, but no scribes. And the cairn, about a hundred feet in length and breadth, by about ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... errand that I traverse these wilds amidst dangers of every kind; while I am useful for my master's service, they shall not prevail against me, and when, like the barren fig-tree, I can no longer produce fruit, what imports it when or by whom the axe is ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... its eclectic work on Revelation, chooses the good, rejects the evil. This is very good, but it destroys Revelation as a basis. Christians have outgrown the lower part of their Revelation, and do not realise that in striving to explain it away they put the axe to ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... joint of the leg in a river, and some mariners, imagining the water was not deep, were hastening to bathe, when a voice from heaven said—"Step not in there, for seven years ago there a carpenter dropped his axe, and it hath ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Oh, I don't say that if somebody had an axe handy and chopped your arm off at the shoulder an instant after you were struck on the hand, you mightn't have a chance to live; but it would take mighty quick work, and even then, it would be nip and tuck. Freylinghuisen thinks it is a new discovery. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... nothing till after supper, when he sent Dan and Manuel out to buoy the We're Here's cable and announced his intention of turning in with the broad-axe. Dan naturally repeated these remarks to the dory from the Carrie, who wanted to know why they were buoying their cable, since they ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... been beheaded with the axe of Tenes," mythical founder and legislator of Tenedos, whose laws were of Draconian severity. A legatio from Tenedos, heard as usual in February, had asked that Tenedos might be ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... canines in his upper jaw, which, next to the elephant's tusks, are the largest we have yet met with. They are sometimes as much as two feet long, and incline downwards with a curve, like the two bars of a pick- axe. They would play the walrus the same trick that the incisors of rodents are apt to do when they have not work enough to wear them down; that is, stop up the entrance of its mouth, were it not that the lower jaw is contracted in front, in order to fit into the space between the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... not look, will you?—it is because they have had the axe, with which criminals are executed, brought and placed there on the table. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... new face upon the productions of nature. By labour man has subjugated the world, reduced it to his dominion, and clothed the earth with a new garment. The first rude plough that man thrust into the soil, the first rude axe of stone with which he felled the pine, the first rude canoe scooped by him from its trunk to cross the river and reach the greener fields beyond, were each the outcome of a human faculty which brought within his reach some physical comfort ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... JOHN WELLINGTON WELLS - I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses, And ever-filled purses, In prophecies, witches, and knells! If you want a proud foe to "make tracks" - If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax - You've but to look in On our resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe. ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... of our daughter, Empress Turandot, on the following conditions:—The Princess shall propound three riddles to any suitor proposing himself as her husband; should he be unable to unravel them, his head shall be struck off with an axe, and exposed on the city-gate of Peking; should he unravel them, the Empress Turandot shall become his lawful bride, and together they shall inherit the throne of the celestial empire. We swear it by our ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... were accused And other eke that loued secretly And of her lady durst axe no mercy Lest that she wolde of hym haue despyte And so[m]e also that putten right grete wite Ou double louers that loue thinges newe Thurg[h] whos falsenes hyndred be the trewe And so[m] there were as hit is ofte ...
— The Temple of Glass • John Lydgate
... which has filled German history of the Middle Ages till the destruction of the German Empire, and which found its conclusion when the last representative of the glorious Swabian dynasty died on the scaffold, under the axe of a French conqueror who stood in alliance with the Pope.[12] We are not far from an analogous solution of the situation, always translated into ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... horse, and the noble animal, bleeding from a severe wound across the back, outstripped all his pursuers except one, who stayed him by seizing the bridle. It would have gone hard with Gonzalo, but, grasping a light battle-axe, which hung by his side, he dealt such a blow on the head of his enemy's horse that he plunged violently, and compelled his rider to release his hold. A number of arquebusiers, in the mean time, seeing Pizarro's distress, sprang forward to his rescue, slew ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... unexpected attack of weakness in which all his energy collapsed. His human feelings were taking their revenge now that his rival was no longer there to see him. He staggered like an old tree smitten with the axe, and sank upon a chair, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... among them, were at work in the thicket opposite, cutting brush. We saw many large trees which had been cut down by them. The stumps looked as though some boy had chopped them down with a dull axe. It is surprising to reflect upon the pertinacity of these creatures which enables them to gnaw down such immense trees, and the wisdom with which they calculate the direction in which ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... he urged his horse forward and his attendants followed him. The Czech with a crossbow and an axe on his shoulder, followed them, shielding himself with a shaggy bison skin, because a sharp wind carrying flakes of snow, began to blow. The storm grew worse and worse. The Turks, although dressed in sheepskin ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as well as of spiritual life, was ruined. The monasteries were in ashes. The monks of St. Cuthbert were wandering from place to place, with the relics of the great northern Saint. The worship of Woden seemed on the point of returning. The clergy had exchanged the missal and censer for the battle-axe, and had become secularized and brutalized by the conflict. The learning of the Order was dead. The Latin language, the tongue of the Church, of literature, of education, was almost extinct. Alfred himself says that he could not recollect a priest, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... his thousand warriors fled— Their low-born valour quail'd and gone— He—the meek leader of that band— Remained, and fought alone. He stood; fierce foemen throng'd around; The hollow death-groans of despair. The clashing sword, the cleaving axe, The murd'rous dirk were there. Valour more stark, or hands more strong, Ne'er urged the brand or launch'd the spear But what were these to that old man! God was ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... playing field between writers and trolls. When Amazon kicked off, many writers got their knickers in a tight and powerful knot at the idea that axe-grinding yahoos were filling the Amazon message-boards with ill-considered slams at their work — for, if a personal recommendation is the best way to sell a book, then certainly a personal condemnation is the best ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... gravel brought down by melting snow. Without despairing, and being in that frame of mind prepared to incur danger to a reasonable extent for the sake of knowledge, we climbed several hundred feet over the snow and ice, having to cut steps with an axe that we had brought along, before reaching the top. The latter stage of this proceeding was like scrambling over the dome of the Washington Capitol with a great yawning cliff below, and was well calculated to try the nerve of any one ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... Bones left at the "Admiral Benbow," with the knife that Wicks drove through his own hand and the table. There is always in his work a certain clean-cut angularity which makes us remember that he was fond of cutting wood with an axe. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... from the coming wrath? (8)Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance; (9)and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father; for I say to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. (10)And already the axe is laid to the root of the trees; therefore every tree that brings not forth good fruit is cut down, and cast into the fire. (11)I indeed immerse you in water unto repentance; but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... bullets, and with a broken leg and arm. The Indians, surrounding the house, now with frightful yells rushed to the door. The mother, frantic with terror, her children screaming around her, and her husband groaning and weltering in his blood, barred the door and seized an axe. The savages, with their hatchets, soon cut a hole through the door, and one of them crowded in. The heroic mother, with one blow of the axe, cleft his head to the shoulder, and he dropped dead upon the floor. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the rocks of your native land—waters which a Pagan would have worshiped in their purity, and you only worship with pollution. You cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church altars of yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven—the mountains that sustain your island throne,—mountains on which a Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven rest in every wreathed cloud—remain for you without inscription; ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... make other people happy, stands out in fine contrast with the blunt, straightforward, and truthful New Englander; and their conversation reminds one of the old story of Coeur-de-Lion with his curtal-axe and Saladin with the blade that cut the silken cushion. Adams felt sure that the fellow was either saint or devil, but could not quite tell which. The envoy's love for mankind was so great that he could ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... cool proposition who has Axe-cess to the best families, makes his Weigh in every home and can take his Pick in the kitchen, if he leaves his Chips in the street. "How'd You Like ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... along the journey of prehistoric man's life, though the being and his bones have been mostly obliterated; we see close to his bony remains the stone axe, the flint-dart. We find acres of ground in many places close to mounds and caves, with countless millions of slivers that have been scaled from flints and formed to suit war purposes; while the many bones that ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... believe that if they cut with an axe near a fire, or stick a knife into a burning stick, or touch the fire with a knife, they will "cut the top off the fire." The Sioux Indians will not stick an awl or a needle into a stick of wood on the fire, or chop on it with ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... against the heathen in Africa, and now they practise on poor harmless English folk the devil's tricks which they have picked up amongst the savages. The Lord help Monmouth's men should they be beaten! These vermin are more to be feared than hangman's cord or headsman's axe.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sledge with meat, we went to the butcher's shop in the market-place. Day was beginning to dawn. One after another the cooks came with baskets and old women in mantles. With an axe in his hand, wearing a white, blood-stained apron, Prokofyi swore terrifically and crossed himself, turning toward the church, and shouted so loud that he could be heard all over the market, avowing that he sold his meat at cost ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... or whether through going to sleep in the middle of the road and being run over by a train of waggons. Again, I see the name, 'Probka Stepan, carpenter, very sober.' That must be the hero of whom the Guards would have been so glad to get hold. How well I can imagine him tramping the country with an axe in his belt and his boots on his shoulder, and living on a few groats'-worth of bread and dried fish per day, and taking home a couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into his breeches, or stuffing them into his boots! In what manner came you by your end, Probka ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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 ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a long coat reaching to the calves of his legs, with a number of gathers fastened together at the waist by a strap, in which he tucks his gloves, his whip or his axe. His shirt of checked linen, not often washed, and his neck entirely bare, with the lower garment consisting of wide linen trousers. With the use of stockings he appears totally unacquainted, wrapping his feet in linen rags. His shoes are a sort of sandal made ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... entered the 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 during ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... 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 have been to many men a reason ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and setting them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile. There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered under the weight of his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an hour high and, on the spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and set to work with his axe on a sapling close ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... house, Hark went to the door with an axe, for the purpose of breaking it open, as we knew we were strong enough to murder the family should they be awakened by the noise; but, reflecting that it might create an alarm in the neighborhood, we determined to enter the house secretly, and murder them whilst ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... a great, hulking, wild-maned, brute-faced fellow, capped by an iron helmet and wrapped in a mantle of coarse gray, from whose folds the handle of a battle-axe looked out suggestively; but the boy was of the handsomest Saxon type. Though barely seventeen, he was man-grown, and lithe and well-shaped; and he carried himself nobly, despite his clumsy garments of white wool. His gold-brown hair had been ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... changes have passed before their eyes. Year, as it succeeds year, sees them driven farther west, as their hunting-grounds are absorbed by the insatiate white races. The twang of the Indian bow, and the sharp report of the Indian rifle, are exchanged for the clink of the lumberer's axe and the "g'lang" of the sturdy settler. The corn waves in luxuriant crops over land once covered with the forest haunts of the moose, and the waters of the lakes over which the red man paddled in his bark canoe are now ploughed by crowded steamers. Where the bark dwellings of his fathers stood, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... fevers, and the wars— Doom'd to Achilles' sword: our public vows Made Caesar guiltless; but sent him to lose His head at Nile: this curse Cethegus miss'd: This Lentulus, and this made him resist That mangled by no lictor's axe, fell dead Entirely Catiline, and sav'd his head. The anxious matrons, with their foolish zeal, Are the last votaries, and their appeal Is all for beauty; with soft speech, and slow, They pray for sons, but with a louder vow Commend a female feature: all that ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... cast down, no violent changes of property to encounter. In the American Revolution, no man sought or wished for more than to defend and enjoy his own. None hoped for plunder or for spoil. Rapacity was unknown to it; the axe was not among the instruments of its accomplishment; and we all know that it could not have lived a single day under any well-founded imputation of possessing a tendency adverse to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Bristol by a branch of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1975. The town, with its Perpendicular church and its picturesque market-cross, lies below the south-western face of the Mendip Hills, which rise sharply from 600 to 800 ft. To the west stretches the valley of the river Axe, broad, low and flat. A fine gorge opening from the hills immediately upon the site of the town is known as Cheddar cliffs from the sheer walls which flank it; the contrast of its rocks and rich vegetation, and the falls of a small ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... that Calais had been lost by Philip's English wife. He was always ready to give his successor advice, and became more and more intolerant in religious questions. "Tell the Grand Inquisitor from me," he wrote, "to be at his post and lay the axe to the root of the tree before it spreads further. I rely on your zeal for bringing the guilty to punishment and for having them punished without favour to anyone, with all the severity which their crimes demand." After this impressive exhortation to Philip, he ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... savage animals, who turned their rage against them at once. They had fired two or three arrows apiece, as they approached, into them; and now throwing down their bows, the archers betook themselves to their swords, while Cuthbert with his heavy battle-axe hewed and cut at the wolves as they sprang toward him. In a minute they had cleared their way to the figure, which was that of a knight in complete armor. He leaned against the rock completely exhausted, could only mutter a word of thanks through ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Barry went about his task, swinging the axe awkwardly, but whistling with the joy of work. Nor did he pause to diagnose his light-heartedness. He only knew that he was in the hills; that the streets and offices and people of the cities, and the memories that they carried, had been left behind for ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the important sea-ports and fortified towns of Flushing, Brielle, Rammekens, and other strong places, still existed. The possession of those places by England was a constant danger and irritation to the States. It was an axe perpetually held over their heads. It threatened their sovereignty, their very existence. On more than one occasion, in foreign courts, the representatives of the Netherlands had been exposed to the taunt that the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bought some at a price, a very small price indeed, and I for one enjoyed seeing them in their green fresh state; when we got home to our railway carriages, that had come on for us from Mysore to Seringapatam, we had their tops slashed off with an axe: then put a long tumbler, mouth down over the hole and upset the two, and so got the tumbler filled with the water from the inside and drank it. We'd have drunk anything we were so thirsty: so I will not offer an opinion as to its quality, more than that it was ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... wene ye that every wrecche woot 890 The parfit blisse of love? Why, nay, y-wis; They wenen al be love, if oon be hoot; Do wey, do wey, they woot no-thing of this! Men mosten axe at seyntes if it is Aught fair in hevene; Why? For they conne telle; 895 And axen fendes, is it foul ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... human maggots, struggling with one another for scraps of food. Pious fraud is an attempt to pervert that precious and sacred thing the child's conscience into an instrument of our own convenience, and to use that wonderful and terrible power called Shame to grind our own axe. It is the sin of stealing fire from the altar: a sin so impudently practised by popes, parents, and pedagogues, that one can hardly expect the nurserymaids to see any harm in stealing a few cinders when they ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Englishman struck another blow; but the Normans who saw the stroke were astonished and about to abandon the assault, when Roger de Montgomeri came galloping up, with his lance set, and, heeding not the long-handled axe which the Englishman wielded aloft, struck him down and left him stretched on the ground. Then Roger cried out, 'Frenchmen, strike! the day is ours!' And again a fierce melee was to be seen, with many a blow of lance and sword; the English still defending themselves, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... put, and if they say that the reason why I desire to keep possession of Goa is because it was I who took it, Your Lordship may rest assured that if I were a Portuguese of such a character as they are, I would be the first, if you ordered me to destroy it, to put the pick axe into the walls, and to fire the barrel of gunpowder under the Castle, if only for the pleasure of seeing the cards of the game of India shuffled for a new deal; but as long as I live, and while it remains my duty ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... along with an axe on his shoulder, and Mr. Stewart asked him about the road. "Yes," he said, "you are off the main road, but on a better. You'll cross the same stream you were going to camp on, right at my ranch. It is just a little way across here and it's almost ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the time under the stroke of the headsman's axe. Lastly, it would be an act of injustice to Mr. Selby to pass his Spooney Negus over in silence. PUNCH has too brotherly an affection for his fellow-actors, to hide their faults; in the hope that, by shewing them veluti in speculum, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... our oar, and had barely reached it when the wave fell on the deck with a crash like thunder. At the same moment the ship struck, the foremast broke off close to the deck and went over the side, carrying the boat and men along with it. Our oar got entangled with the wreck, and Jack seized an axe to cut it free, but, owing to the motion of the ship, he missed the cordage and struck the axe deep into the oar. Another wave, however, washed it clear of the wreck. We all seized hold of it, and the next instant we were struggling in the wild sea. The last thing I saw was the boat whirling ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a War the Parliament would squeeze, And fix to the revenue such a sum Should Goodricke silence and make Paston dumb. ... Meantime through all the yards their orders were To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun. The timber rots, the useless axe does rust, The unpractised saw lies buried in the dust, The busy ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... that lays our errors bare, and leaves us without excuse in our own eyes. It suddenly struck him that the possession of power, no matter how enormous, did not bring with it the knowledge how to use it. The sceptre is a plaything for a child, an axe for a Richelieu, and for a Napoleon a lever by which to move the world. Power leaves us just as it finds us; only great natures grow greater by its means. Raphael had had everything in his power, and he ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... took an axe with him. "How shall I kill myself?" said he. So he climbed up a tree and sat out on a long branch, and began cutting off the branch between himself and the tree on which he was sitting. "What are you doing up there?" ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... A deeper twilight on the lawn; A print of a vermilion foot; A purple finger on the slope; A flippant fly upon the pane; A spider at his trade again; An added strut in chanticleer; A flower expected everywhere; An axe shrill singing in the woods; Fern-odors on untravelled roads, — All this, and more I cannot tell, A furtive look you know as well, And Nicodemus' mystery ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... having made his hole close to the porch of a cottage, inflicted a mortal bite on the Cottager's infant son. Grieving over his loss, the Father resolved to kill the Snake. The next day, when it came out of its hole for food, he took up his axe, but by swinging too hastily, missed its head and cut off only the end of its tail. After some time the Cottager, afraid that the Snake would bite him also, endeavored to make peace, and placed some bread and salt in the hole. The Snake, slightly ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... anybody to read them, but promising to those who do, that they will find a commentary upon life as it passes, either because it may be useful or because it may have been earned. I hope I have neither prejudice nor afterthought; I know that I have, as we say now, neither axe to grind nor log to roll. Politics! None. I want people to be happy; and whether Mr. George make them so, or the Trade Unions, whether Christ or Sir Conan Doyle, it's all one to me. I have my pet nostrums, of course. I believe in Poverty, Love, and England, and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... killed or wounded. This was, however, the first and last of the cannonading. As many of Romero's vessels as could be grappled within the narrow estuary found themselves locked in close embrace with their enemies. A murderous hand-to-hand conflict succeeded. Battle-axe, boarding-pike, pistol, and dagger were the weapons. Every man who yielded himself a prisoner was instantly stabbed and tossed into the sea by the remorseless Zealanders. Fighting only to kill, and not to plunder, they did not even stop to take the gold chains which many Spaniards wore on ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... patches, some about his head, some around his jaws, some under his chin in a half moon,—a good deal on the back of his hands and on his chest. Nature had hewn him in the rough and had left him with every axe ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... good fortune to be acquitted; the mother of Colonel Fitzpatric was burnt; Lord Mayo, colonels Tool, Bagnal, and about two hundred more, suffered death by the axe or by the halter. It was, however, remarkable, that the greatest deficiency of proof occurred in the province where the principal massacres were said to have been committed. Of the men of Ulster, Sir Phelim O'Neil is the only one whose conviction, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... it was no outrecuidance brought me here this morning. There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my course has been offensive to you—your nephew proved me that. I know also that you do not care to meddle with me openly. At least, you have not meddled. Whether you will change your method—but I venture to believe not. I am popular just now in Paris. I had more cheers as I came ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them, and the laboured commentaries that have been ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... necessary, indeed, and therefore justifiable, for the propagation of the species, and to free men from great evils; but still as a condition of degradation from which all who aspired to real sanctity could fly. To 'cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage' was, in the energetic language of St. Jerome, the end of the saint; and if he consented to praise marriage it was merely because ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... have been in use very much as in the West. The founder of the Chou dynasty marched to the conquest of China carrying, or having carried for him, a yellow axe in the left, and a white flag in the right hand. In 660 one of the minor federal princes was crushed because he did not lower his standard in time; nearly a century later, this precedent was quoted to another federal prince when hard-pressed, in consequence ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... tall, strong, gloomy-looking woman; her fair hair, which had begun to turn grey on the temples, hung down in a short plait. She was sentenced to hard labour in Siberia because she had killed her husband with an axe for making up to their daughter. She was at the head of the women in the cell, and found means of carrying on a trade in spirits with them. Beside her sat another woman sewing a coarse canvas sack. This was the wife of a ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... me when I was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword. There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building materials which came down from a hill of their own accord, because one of the builders ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... work enough—all the more as in our part of the world few indeed have any mercy upon the one thing necessary for decent life in a town, its trees; till we have come to this, that one trembles at the very sound of an axe as one sits at one's work at home. However, uphill work or not, the town garden must not be neglected if we are to be in earnest in making the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... excavation, known as Excavation Q, yielded at a depth of three feet six inches to four feet six inches, ten flint axes, one sandstone axe, nine edged flint hammer-stones, four rounded flint hammer-stones, ten Sarsen hammers, and seven mauls, weighing from thirty-six to fifty-eight and a half pounds. Large numbers of deer's horn splinters ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... night was held by a hundred men of the body called the Marquis his Halberdiers, a corps of antique heroes whose weapon for ordinary was a long axe, a pretty instrument on a parade of state, but small use, even at close quarters, with an enemy. They had skill of artillery, however, and few of them but had a Highlander's training in the use of the broadsword. Besides two culverins mounted on the less precipitous ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... joy of a vulture as he gloats over, and rends in pieces, his carrion prey. While reading or listening to the raging denunciations of such persons, one is painfully reminded of the spirit that a few generations ago armed itself with the fagot and the axe in order to destroy those who held opinions in opposition to the dominant power. The axe and the fagot have disappeared; but, alas for human nature! the spirit that delighted in their use has hot wholly passed away; the flame and sword it uses now are those of malignity and hatred; ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... felt as though a peal of bells were ringing in each ear. The blood whistled in his temples as he committed the theft; cold as the weather was, his shirt was wet on his back; his legs gave way under him and he fell into a chair in the salon as if an axe had fallen on ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... and mother went together to her father. When they complained of his daughter to the king, he was much worried. He could fight strong men with his club and spear, and even giants with his sword and battle-axe; but how to correct his little daughter, whom he loved as his own eyes, was too much for him. He had no son and the princess was his only child, and the hopes of the family all rested on her. The king wondered how she would govern ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... banner, torn, but flying, Streams like the thunder-storm AGAINST the wind; Thy trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying, The loudest still the tempest leaves behind; Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, But the sap lasts,—and still the seed we find Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North; So shall a better spring less bitter fruit ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men, In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den? Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made; Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away, Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play; And then to your ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... towards us at a fearful rate. I want you and Frank to go as quickly as you can across the river and rouse up every soul in the village. Get every team and plough in Wakulla, and bring them over, together with every man and boy who can handle an axe." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... word for another. One can read 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
... morning of December 10 Sir Griffin Markham was conducted to the scaffold, which had been erected in the Castle yard. He had said adieu to his friends, prayed, and was awaiting the axe. Suddenly the spectators in the Castle yard saw the Sheriff, Sir Benjamin Tichborne, stay the executioner. John Gibb, a Scotch groom of the royal bedchamber, had arrived, almost too late, at the edge of the crowd. He was the bearer of a reprieve. James himself, on ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... travelling through a wood, one of them took up an axe which he saw lying upon the ground. "Look here," said he to his companion, "I ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... tablecloth, the long board table was roomy and fairly groaned under the good things heaped upon it. The ball of mud, all hard and red now and cracked like a badly burned brick, was rolled out upon the hearth and Enoch broke it with one blow of the axe. The hard shell fell apart and to the burned clay adhered every feather and pin-quill of the great gobbler which would not have weighed an ounce less than twenty-five pounds. And the flesh was ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... 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 quarter-deck, which we cut away as we required them. The old harpooner and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... swift to learn and when he went abroad with hunting parties or to swing the axe in the clearings, his stern and exacting task-masters found no fault with his strength ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the village-bells—these were the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... absolute pain I suffered sprang from a bewildering incapacity to conjure up a vision of Ottilia free of the glittering accessories of her high birth; and that was the pain of shame; but it came only at intervals, when pride stood too loftily and the shadow of possible mischance threatened it with the axe. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink'd doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot—but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho' if it was too young, and the oration as long as Tully's second Philippick—it must ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... mackerel," laughed Ned. "Give him the axe, Tom. I don't like the looks of those fish, either. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... Notwithstanding his age, infirmities, and the recollection of his conscience, which was supposed to be not altogether void of offence, he died like an old Roman, exclaiming, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." He surveyed the crowd with attention, examined the axe, jested with the executioner, and laid his head upon the block with the utmost indifference. From this last scene of his life, one would have concluded that he had approved himself a patriot from his youth, and never deviated from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... When the branches of the primitive oak- trees shut out the light of the sun from the Northland, Pikku-Mies (the Pygmy) emerged from the sea in a suit of copper, with a copper hatchet in his belt, and having grown to a giant's stature felled the huge oak with the third stroke of his axe. Wirokannas is 'The Green-robed Priest of the Forest,' and Tapio, who has a coat of tree-moss and a high-crowned hat of fir-leaves, is 'The Gracious God of the Woodlands.' Otso, the bear, is the 'Honey-Paw of the Mountains,' the 'Fur-robed ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... knows," she said, "we might allow ourselves a little more elaboration in our preparations. There is an Elizabethan axe at the Ambermere Arms which I might borrow for Peppino. Then about the Brunnhilde tableau. It is dawn, is it not? We might have the stage quite dark when the curtain goes up, and turn up a lamp very slowly ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... briefly; and then, unlocking the ponderous padlock that protected their cabin from hungry sheepmen, he went in and fetched out the axe. "Guess I'll cut a tree for that ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the rifle, the axe, and the Bible, symbolizing music, prowess, labor, and free religion, the four grand forces of our civilization, were the trusty friends and faithful allies of our pioneer ancestry in subduing the wilderness ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the shafts are still hurtling through the gray gloom. Arrows rip against the skin shields. Running fugitives fall pierced. Men rush from their lodges in the daze of sleep and fight barehanded against musket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and scalps steaming from the belts of conquerors. Women fall to the feet of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the mercy is a spear-thrust ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and beef; hops, pickles, vinegar, maple sugar and molasses; rolls of fresh butter, cheese, and eggs; cake, bread, and pies, without end. Mr. Penny, the storekeeper, sent a box of tea. Mr. Winegar, the carpenter, a new ox-sled. Earl Douglass brought a handsome axe-helve of his own fashioning; his wife a quantity of rolls of wool. Zan Finn carted a load of wood into the wood-shed, and Squire Thornton another. Home-made candles, custards, preserves, and smoked liver, came in a batch from ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... of these meadows were yellow with corn—some a dull red with sorrel, others left in their natural condition of bright green grass—while here and there stood up, white and ghost- like, the stumps of old trees, the last remnants of the forests, which were slowly retreating before the axe of the settler. These fields, which had rather a harlequin aspect with their varied colours, all melted together in the far distance into an indescribable neutral tint, and ended in the dark haze of the bush, which grew over all ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... of Mr. Besant, nor do they people the romances of Mr. Black. Mr. Kipling does not deal in them, nor Mr. George Meredith much; Mr. Haggard hardly gets beyond a baronet, and he wears chain mail in Central Africa, and tools with an axe. Mrs. Oliphant has a Scotch peer, but he is less interesting and prominent than his family ghost. No, we have only Ouida left, and Mr. Norris—who writes about people of fashion, indeed, but who has nothing in him of the old ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... exclaimed the miserable King. "Brandanes, your noble Prince—" Here his grief and agitation interrupted for a moment the fatal information it was his object to convey. At length he resumed his broken speech: "An axe and a block instantly into the courtyard! Arrest—" ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... are neither jealous nor fearful; jealousy is doubt, fear is meanness. Unlimited belief is the principal attribute of a great man. If he is deceived (for strength as well as weakness may make a man a dupe) his contempt will serve him as an axe with which to cut through all. This greatness, however, is the exception. Which of us has not known what it is to be abandoned by the spirit which sustains our frail machine, and to hearken to that mysterious Voice denying all? Paul, his mind going over ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... desperate resolve: they would build a ship and sail home. Nothing could have seemed wilder. Not one of them had any experience of ship-building. But they went to work with a will. They had a forge, tools, and some iron. Soon the forest rang with the sound of the axe and with the crash of falling trees. They laid the keel and pushed the work with amazing energy and ingenuity, caulked the seams with long moss gathered from the neighboring trees and smeared the bottoms and sides with pitch from the pines. The {74} Indians showed them how to make a kind of cordage, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... live at peace with all the world? Then practise the maxims of an influential man, who, when asked, after the Revolution, how he managed to escape the executioner's axe, replied, "I made myself of ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... the lilac bush, lost in memories of a stout, rosy lass who had followed a stalwart husband up a broad river into the wilderness some seventy years agone in Indian days—Weathersfield Massacre days. That lass was Aunt Lucy herself, and in just such a May had Timothy's axe rung through the Coniston forest and reared the log cabin, where six of her children were born. Likewise in review passed the lonely months when Timothy was fighting behind his rugged General Stark for that privilege more desirable to his kind than life—self government. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... much about dogs as he felt he could bear for that day, he felt free to go down to the dockyard and go on learning how ships were built. Sebastian looked up at the voice and ceased the blows with which his axe was smoothing a great tree trunk that was to be a mast, and smiled ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... creature. You are even innocent, like all insignificant persons. And if I mean to kill you, there is no reason to be proud of it. Don't think you are an object specially worthy of my indignation. No, it would merely make matters a little easier for me. When I was chopping wood, and the axe in my raised arm struck the threshold instead of the log of wood, the jar was not so hard as if someone had arrested the motion of my arm. A raised ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... 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, my Aunt Kezia wanted to know what the open space was; ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... Take a special care you don't let e're a Soul come within the doors; and that they mightn't pretend an Excuse to borrow Fire, I'll ha' ye put it all out: If there be any now, out with't in an instant. If they want Water, tell 'em the Pump is dry; if they wou'd borrow a Knife, an Axe, a Mortar, or a Pestil, as Neighbours us'd to do, tell 'em the House was robb'd, and they're all stolen. 'Sbud, I'll ha' no body set a step within my House when I'm gone; therefore if Good-luck her self shou'd come, I charge ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... right as the heir of Edward the Fourth. The only way to dispose of him was by making him realise that the crown was beyond his grasp; and that if he persevered, he would find the scaffold and the axe within it. This was accordingly done so effectually that weak, impulsive Basset quailed before the storm, and fled to France to save his own life. He survived the accession of James the First for seventeen years at least [Note 3]; but no more ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... according to his reckoning. He knew that the freight would have to come out of this, which he believed would not be over one dollar at the most. Thus he would have about seven dollars to spend upon his suit, billy-can, axe, haversack, knife, and several other things he saw in the scout list which had been sent from the store in the city where the supplies ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... blinked at him with his eyes, and went on chopping in the shed. If they came and told him he was not wanted and must go—why, thank heaven, he was stone deaf, as everyone knew. Thud, thud, went his axe in the shed; and the others about the place were so used to it that they heeded it no more than the ticking of a clock ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... stone to the club in order that a more effective blow might be struck. The vegetable kingdom furnishes natural cords, flat stones with more or less cutting edges could be chosen and bound to the end of the club, and the earliest form of the battle-axe would be produced. With its formation the man-ape made another important step of progress and added greatly to his powers of offence. Stage by stage he was bringing his animal ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, even the handle marked with bloody spots, the axe was theirs. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 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 |
