"Block" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once more the train bearing Sam was again on its way downtown. Cuffer was about a block away, running past Cooper Institute in the direction ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... time she would indeed attract attention. So, while her cheeks flamed hot at the meanness, the miserable ridiculousness of the imposture, she assumed a brisk, determined gait, as though she knew just where she were going, and, turning out of the square down a by-street, walked around the block, even stopping once or twice before a store, pretending an interest in the display. It seemed to her that by now everybody in the streets must have noted that there was something wrong with her. Twice as a passer-by brushed past her she looked back to see if he was watching her. How to live ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... here be added: but our errand is accomplished, if any stumbling-block had been thus easily removed from some erring thinker's path. Surely, we have given him some reason for faith's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 32 Chestnut street had his entire family with him, as he hurried to the eight o'clock Mass. Mrs. O'Brien was already tired, though she had gone only a block from the house; for Elenora, who always was tardy, had to be dressed in a hurry. Then Tom had come down stairs with an elegant part to that portion of his hair which was right above his forehead, but the back ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... very pyrotechnically out on the sidewalk. A laugh ran up and down the avenue for the half of a block. ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... dominant political party or faction. This has not yet, however, been translated into any considerable number of Republican votes, except in North Carolina. In the other States, the votes of the factory operatives seem to be cast in something of a block, in the primary elections. The demagogic Blease is said to have found much of his support in South Carolina in the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... which stands like a fortress or ruined castle on the summit of the hill. When the shower was nearly over I heard the wing-beats and low guttural voice of a cuckoo; he did not see my crouching form in the hollow and settled on a projecting block of stone close to me—not three yards from my head. Presently he began to call, and it struck me as very curious that his voice did not sound louder or different in quality than when heard at a distance of forty or fifty yards. When ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... for whom she had a friendly feeling; but all that had changed in the last few weeks, when she had been allowed to take a hand in the Boyntons' affairs. As to this newest development in the life of their household, she had once been young herself, and the veriest block of stone would have become human when the two lovers drove up to the door and told ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... farthest radiation of her vision she sensed the approach of a man. Gray-haired, gray-bearded, gray-suited, grayly dogmatic as a block of granite, the Senior Surgeon loomed up at last ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... upheaval of the period is summed up in the terrible struggle between the king and Parliament, which resulted in the death of Charles at the block and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell. For centuries the English people had been wonderfully loyal to their sovereigns; but deeper than their loyalty to kings was the old Saxon love for personal liberty. At times, as in the days of Alfred and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... case of a town settlement of three hundred and twenty acres; as well as that of a farm site of one hundred and sixty acres, all which can be lawfully requisite to communicate to the occupants the right of preemption to the block of land, including every one of its quarter quarter-sections,— is improvement, or indication of the improvement of the entire block,— acts of possession or use regarding it, consonant with the nature of the thing. That, in a farm, will be the erection of a house and ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... he said at last, pointing with a slow and grave gesture at a tall roadside cross mounted on a block of stone and stretching its arms of forged stone all black against the darkening red band in the sky. "God knows! If it were not for this emblem, which I remember seeing in this spot as a child, I would ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... must be made to the women voters in the nine suffrage states to withhold their support from the Democrats nationally, until the national Democratic Party ceases to block the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... with its curiosity sated, the public will turn upon the poet, and throw into his face, on his own authority, that he is but as they are, that his airs of inspiration and divine right are humbug. And in that day the poet will block his silk hat, will shave away the silken moustache, will get him a bottle of Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer, and betake himself to the sombrero of his ancestors—but it will be all too late. The cat will have been irrecoverably let out of the bag, the mystery of the poet ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... noticed before. His eye seems shifty; he avoids all the family. If I didn't know him so well, I should think he was a criminal. Leaving out the fact that I don't love him, and that the very thought of his ever touching me makes me shudder, this distrust of him would be enough to block any such arrangements. Why"—and her lip curled scornfully—"I would marry Bud Larkin a hundred times rather than Mike ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... great scheme. The only weak point that I can see is that an Excise officer who has held up one of the trips might visit the works and look at the certificate block before Archer gets ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... objects are used. The "form board" is a good example. Blocks of various simple shapes are to be fitted into corresponding holes in a board; the time of performance is measured, and the errors (consisting in trying to put a block into a differently shaped hole) are also counted. To the normal adult, this task seems too simple {276} to serve as a test for intelligence, but the young child finds it difficult, and the mentally deficient adult goes at it in the same haphazard way as a young child, trying to force the square ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... his door on a block, eating his supper by the light of the high-mounting flames of his cabin-fire, Little Lizay came out and sat on her doorsill. Her cabin stood opposite his. He recognized her, and when he had finished his supper he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... words," said Montague, "you are a dummy. You are willing to sell your name and your character for a block of stock. You take a position of ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... during the day, and at night there are mounted and foot patrols carrying muskets with fixed bayonets. Every block and sometimes every house has its private watchman, and at regular intervals during the night you may hear these guardians thumping their long staves on the pavement to assure themselves and others that they are awake. The fire ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... There is not another like it in the country, perhaps in the world. The next time his majesty, the Tsar, requests my presence, I shall inform him that the violin is here in his fortress, stolen by a slovenly, insolent official, who doesn't know a violin from a block of wood, or a note from a pin head." His eyes drooped again. The Cossack examined ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... probabilities a moment, then turned to the fruit woman. She bought a cake of gingerbread and an orange and an apple; had to wait what seemed a long time to receive her change; then rushed across the block to where she had left Sarah, stopped only to put the things in her hands, and rushed back again; not in time to catch her car, which was going on merrily out of her hail. But the next one was not far ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... to be a favourite subject for scholastic disputation: WHETHER HERCULES IS IN THE MARBLE. The image is that of the sculptor, who sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the marble block, and whose duty is so to carve it, neither cutting too deep or too shallow, so that the perfect form is revealed. The idea of the disputation is the root-idea of idealistic philosophy. That each man is, as it were, a block of marble in ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was made and lye caught in wooden troughs. This was then boiled down and made into soap. My mother let me help stir it many a time. Then the big kettle would be lifted from the fire and left until cold. My mother would then block it off, and put on a wooden plank to dry out until ready ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Last, England's lonely prison-block, Grim fragment 'neath a tropic sky, Where, like Prometheus on his rock, The captive ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible fire from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Curlypate, or the conductor will carry us by. I didn't know you were acquainted with the Sherrars, Abigail. Frances is a student at the University; you will probably be in some of her classes. Give me your hand, Hope. There, mother, all our family are off. Right about face! One block west, and—here we are. Welcome home, my children! Peace, how do you like ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... treason!" 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 ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... doctrine of the sacraments, which Protestants are compelled to acknowledge to have been taught as fully in the early Church as it is now taught by the Roman Catholics, has long been the stumbling-block to modern thought. It was the very essence of the original creed. Unless the body could be purified, the soul could not be saved; because from the beginning, soul and flesh were one man and inseparable. Without his flesh, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... ruined, the brightest and most admired brought down to shame and death, men struck down with all the forms of law, whom the age honoured as its noblest ornaments. They had seen the flames of martyr or heretic, heads which had worn a crown laid one after another on the block, controversies, not merely between rivals for power, but between the deepest principles and the most rooted creeds, settled on the scaffold. Such a time of surprise,—of hope and anxiety, of horror and anguish to-day, of relief and exultation to-morrow,—had hardly ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... by a great pinafore covered with clay. At a table where the light was clearest, sat a frail-looking girl, with a thin face, big eyes, and pale hair, a dreamy, absorbed little person, who bent over a block, skillfully ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... next case the duties of the Cavalry are merely defensive. All that then matters is to rob small bodies of the enemy of their opportunities, to block the traffic across the frontier, and to work round their patrols with our own forces; but in no case are they to attempt to obtain positive advantages by force, or to hazard important decisions against a superior enemy. Wherever possible ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... parts of Germany Yule log customs can be traced. In Hesse and Westphalia, for instance, it was the custom on Christmas Eve or Day to lay a large block of wood on the fire and, as soon as it was charred a little, to take it off and preserve it. When a storm threatened, it was kindled again as a protection against lightning. It was called the Christbrand.{17} In Thuringia a Christklotz (Christ log) ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... vengeful talons seize on Laud. From meaner minds though smaller fines content, The plunder'd palace, or sequester'd rent, 170 Mark'd out by dangerous parts he meets the shock, And fatal Learning leads him to the block: Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep, But hear his death, ye blockheads! ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... it then but they were avoiding Red Square. They circled it, one block away, and pulled onto Gorky Street and before a Victorian ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... home was his chief stumbling-block. He loved his father and mother with almost passionate devotion; he clung to his home with an intensity of concentrated love. He really had tried to please them, and to do his best; but yet they didn't seem to give him credit for ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the boys were drawn up in two lines and snowballing as if it was all in dead earnest. And this was the rambling old house with its big porch and stepping block, and its delightful welcome. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... was a happy man, for he found his very troublesome: considering their probable number, this was not unlikely. Pipes and coffee were in the mean-time served. The pipe presented to the Vizier was at least twelve feet long; the mouth-piece was formed of a single block of amber, about the size of an ordinary cucumber, and fastened to the shaft by a broad hoop of gold, decorated with jewels. While the pipes and coffee were distributing, a musical clock, which stood in a niche, began to play, and continued doing so ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... were not a very prepossessing group of men,—at least, Joe did not think so,—for their faces bore a savage seriousness which almost made him shiver. The captain of the Dazzler buckled on his pistol-belt, and placed a rifle and a stout double-block tackle in the boat. Then he poured out wine all around, and, standing in the darkness of the little cabin, they pledged success to the expedition. Red Nelson was also armed, while his men wore at their hips the customary ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... cold, stormy and snowy night, when few men, and as few beasts, would willingly or without pressing occasion, expose themselves to the pitiless storm. The old captain had been in town all day, with "Bonny Doon" hitched to the horse block, and being full of "distempering draughts," as Shakspeare modestly terms it, and malicious bravery in the midst of the great storm, late in the evening he mounted his half-starved and as near frozen ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... as he saw himself thus swayed between forces he could not control. The ordinary day's task was neglected, and he impatiently waited for the hour when he could be sure of finding Ida at home. The address was at Fulham, and, on reaching it, he found a large new block of the kind known as model lodging-houses. Ida's number was up at the very top. When he knocked, the door opened immediately, and she stood there, holding out her hand ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... its power for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulae that, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient, or even true, and have become a clog and a stumbling block. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... asserts that General Chaffee, commander of a brigade in General Lawton's division, anticipated precisely this situation, and predicted, five days before the battle, that if our men marched down this trail into the open country they would be "piled up so high that they would block the road." He thought that it would be much better to keep away from the road altogether; cut trails parallel with the entire front of the forest and hidden by it, with innumerable little trails leading into the open; and then ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... entertainment to a houseful of metropolitan first-nighters, with attendant critics from the newspapers to display their erudition next morning in cold type and hot words. He already considered Daisey as a chip of the old block. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... chocks and all—the swell will wash them in. As the keel grates on the pebbles, the men jump into the water from the high stern and catch the drifting wood. Some plant the capstan, others pass the long hemp cable and reeve it through the fiddle block. A hand forward to slack out the cable as the heavy boat slowly creeps up out of the water. The men from other craft, already beached, lend a hand too and a score of stout fellows breast the long oars which serve for capstan bars. A little higher still. Now prop her securely and make all snug ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... stretched them so as to counterfeit an upright standing position; so that in their death they might menace in seeming those whom their life had harmed in truth; and that, terrible even after their decease, they might block the road in effigy as much as they had once in deed. Whence it appears that in slaying the robbers he took thought for himself and not for Sweden: for he betokened by so singular an act how great a hatred ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... for 10 minutes 2 cups water and 1 cup sugar. Add 1 pint can grated pineapple and Juice of 3 lemons. To 1 cup of mixture add 1/3 cup ice water and freeze until firm. Cool remainder and strain over block of ice. Add just before serving 1 1/2 pints ginger ale and serve in tall glasses with a Ball of the pineapple sherbet in each glass. Garnish with sprigs of ...
— For Luncheon and Supper Guests • Alice Bradley
... whip. It used to be a wonderful sight to see him taking a pair of young horses down Ludgate Hill on a greasy day at noon, with the whole road chock-a-block with traffic, lighting a pipe with a wooden match with one hand, carrying on an animated conversation with the other with a fare on the front seat, dropping white-hot satire on the heads of drivers less efficient than himself, ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the stepping-stones close by she could, by a short cut, reach the house, and return with my pencils and block-book in a quarter of an hour. Away then, with many a jump and fling, scampered Milly's queer white stockings and navvy boots across the irregular and precarious stepping-stones, over which I dared not follow her; so I was fain to return to the stone so 'pure and flat,' on which I sat, enjoying ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... and irregularity. I passed places where I could zig out to take cover in front of telephone poles, and other places where I could zag in to take cover beyond front steps and the like. I let my perception run up the block and by the time I got to the end of my range, I knew that block just as well as if I'd made a ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... time that I need to dip my pen. We have a huge fire, but cannot raise the temperature above 20 degrees. Ever since I returned the lake has been hard enough to bear a wagon, but to-day it is difficult to keep the water hole open by the constant use of the axe. The snow may either melt or block us in. Our only anxiety is about the supplies. We have tea and coffee enough to last over to-morrow, the sugar is just done, and the flour is getting low. It is really serious that we have "another mouth to feed," and the newcomer is a ravenous creature, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the first thing needed about a camp. The axe, when not in use, should always be stuck in that particular block, where one can find it when wanted, and where it will not injure men ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... that when he awoke it was to find that the clasp still held. It was a long time before he realized that what to him were whimsical pranks, were in the nature of tragedies to his parents. If he put a stumbling-block in one of their paths, it upset the whole fabric of their daily life, made them feel, I suppose, that they were losing such faculties as they possessed: memory and the sense of touch—and they would be obliged either to walk with infinite slowness, or actually to crawl. And it was long ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... party, the dominant one, was held in Oakland. The Suffrage State Central Committee opened headquarters at the Hotel Metropole simultaneously with the Republicans, much to their chagrin. Rooms were also opened in the Bacon Block, financed by the Oakland Amendment League, who were coming to lobby. Three hundred women marched in the first suffrage parade in the State behind a yellow silk suffrage banner, with the State coat of arms richly embroidered on it by Mrs. Theodore Pinther, who carried ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... when he left her for a minute before they finally went away. Her heart was very full. This was Karl! This the real meaning of Karl's work! To think she had looked at it in that small, paltry way—that even in her thoughts she had put the slightest stumbling block in his path. This very afternoon had come new inspiration and she had resented it, had said small, mean things in her heart because he stayed to work out his precious thoughts. Why, it would have been fairly criminal for Karl to run away from that ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then! 'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the more terrifying was the appearance of the gigantic creatures who were riding upon the little world before us like castaway sailors upon a block of ice. Like men, and yet not like men, combining the human and the beast in their appearance, it required a steady nerve to look at them. If we had not known their malignity and their power to work evil, it would have been ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... in a position on James river to prevent his escape into North Carolina, and the combined army was hastening southward to attack him. In order to cooperate against Cornwallis De Grasse detached four ships-of-the-line and some frigates to block up the entrance of York river, and to carry the land forces which he had brought with him, under the Marquis de St. Simon, to Lafayette's camp. The rest of his fleet remained at the entrance ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and show the complete separation of each set of apartments from the others, each one opening by a single door upon the common stairs or passage. Their relation is scarcely closer than that of separate houses in a common continuous block. Each tenement, it will be observed, consists of a living-room, and two or three sleeping-rooms, according to the space, a wash-room, with sink and cupboards, and a water-closet. The stories are eight feet and six inches in height, which is ample for the necessities of ventilation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... had taken away the ladder leading to the garret and used it as a foot-bridge. After crossing to the next block of buildings, all he had to do was to look through the windows until he found an empty attic, enter one of the houses in the Rue de la Glaciere and walk out quietly with his hands in his pockets. In this way his flight, duly prepared beforehand, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the inspiration of the Scriptures has done, in my judgment, great harm. The Bible has been the breastwork for nearly everything wrong. The defenders of slavery relied on the Bible. The Bible was the real auction block on which every negro stood when he was sold. I never knew a minister to preach in favor of slavery that did not take his text from the Bible. The Bible teaches persecution for opinion's sake. The Bible—that is ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... have to go into the other world, just because the hole was there. He could block it off, seal it up with timbers and ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... overtaken and brought to battle nearer than the line of the Meuse; but on the morning of the 16th the cavalry-detachments which had pushed farthest to the north-west discovered that the heads of the French columns had still not passed Mars-la-Tour. An effort was instantly made to seize the road and block the way before the enemy. The struggle, begun by a handful of combatants on each side, drew to it regiment after regiment as the French battalions close at hand came into action, and the Prussians hurried up in wild haste to support ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... wonder the driver was not arrested within a block; but it was nothing less than a miracle that he reached the hotel without loss of life. A louis d'or is a great deal of money, but these Americans are all mad. When Marie followed her mistress from the ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... in advance of their times, proclaim God's truth with the enthusiasm begotten of religion, grub-worms that rule the great status quo sting the prophets with all the virus of their nature, and render each step forward as difficult as was once the passage of the Simplon. There is no stumbling-block like that of ignorance, and he who would remove it must wear the holy crown of thorns. We speak of the horrors of the Inquisition as things of the past. Are we so sure of this? Has not prejudice invented most exquisite tortures for reformers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to change the fashion of the head-dress, for, like a poor periwig-maker, I am obliged to mount several patterns on the same block. ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... started the storm was over. The sun burned down, melting the hailstones and sending curls of steam up from the wet street. Jason sweated inside his armored clothing. Yet before they had gone a block it was raining again and he shook ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... method of printing is by the use of stencils. It is the method employed by the Japanese and Chinese. Next came block printing, which is still extensively used in Europe. The pattern is raised in felt on wooden blocks, the color taken up from pads, one block for each color. The results are good, but the work is very slow. Most silk goods are to-day machine printed. The design is engraved or etched ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... herself upon a block of wood outside the kitchen door, and was sobbing silently. In the meantime, Ephraim, unable to find a word of solace for his sister, went and stood at the street door, so that no unbidden guest should come to disturb ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... than this fronting us, or Inshallah! a breach whereby we can enter." Accordingly he mounted his beast, taking water and victuals with him, and rode round the city two days and two nights, without drawing rein to rest, but found the wall thereof as it were one block, without breach or way of ingress; and on the third day, he came again in sight of his companions, dazed and amazed at what he had seen of the extent and loftiness of the place, and said, "O Emir, the easiest place of access is this where ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... backward, slip off the road. The calf of your leg begins to ache from the pressure on the foot-brake, and with an unsuccessful effort to be courteous you bellow at the passenger, who has been standing beside the car looking deprecatory, "Will you please block the back wheels with a ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... proved to be nothing more singular than a square block of stone placed under an old chair. And yet as the guide continued to speak, they felt that he had ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... to the Lake City to lay the foundation of my fortune by buying town lots. I laid the foundation on a five-acre block in West Joliet, but had to borrow seven dollars from my nearest friend to pay the first deposit. Chicago was then a small but busy wooden town, with slushy streets, plank sidewalks, verandahs full of rats, and bedrooms humming with mosquitoes. I left it penniless but proud, an owner ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... enough as Mr. Bultitude took it in his hand; there was no kindly hand to hold him back, no warning voice to hint that there might possibly be sleeping within that small marble block the pent-up energy of long-forgotten Eastern necromancy, just as ready as ever to awake into action at the first words which ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... March 9, 1888, we read of a block of limestone, said to have fallen near Middleburg, Florida. It was exhibited at the Sub-tropical Exposition, at Jacksonville. The writer, in Science, denies that it fell from ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... expend itself in respectful but unsubstantial mourning emblems; and while a great multiture, from five o'clock in the afternoon to a late hour in the night, were slowly and sadly passing through the room in Montgomery Block in which their friend lay cold in death, taking a last look at that face long so familiar upon the streets, but soon to be seen no more on earth; a Committee was appointed by the citizens, consisting of Messrs Macondry, Park and Patterson, to receive subscriptions for the benefit of the widow and ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... off shore," announced Dampier. "If it had been clear enough we'd have seen the top of the big range quite a way further out to sea. Now, it's drift ice ahead of us, but it's quite likely there's a solid block along the beach. Winter holds on a long while in this country. I guess you're for pushing on as ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... encloses the zinc tube. The outer frame is constructed in the same way, is about 2-1/2 feet in diameter, and bound with strong wooden and iron hoops. The mashed grapes are poured into the frame, a close-fitting cover is put on, which is held down by a strong block, and the power is applied by an iron nut just on the top of the screw, with holes in each end to apply strong wooden levers. The apparatus is strong, simple, and convenient, and presses remarkably fast ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... is the interest displayed, that after the fourth or fifth game, every child can correctly classify the blocks, by quickly placing them in the groups to which they belong. They rapidly learn to call the name at sight, which is printed on any block they may happen to pick up. Those who have not learned to read by playing word-building games with the alphabet blocks, only need to have an unfamiliar name, repeated to them three or four times by the director, and it is fixed. Size, shape and color of block, with length ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... naturally democratic. To ride a block in a carriage was to him a waste of time. And he rather liked to shoulder into a press. With the aid of his cane and a frequent push of the elbow he worked his way to the gates. And close by the sentry-box he saw Gretchen and her vintner. Carmichael could not ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... of the Birnes Detective Agency—appeared from the hallway of a building adjoining the H. Latham Company, and moved along behind Mr. Wynne, some thirty feet in the rear; the third—Jerry Malone—was half a block away, up Fifth Avenue, coming slowly ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... who wore girls' jewelry, who wrote and received what were called "mash notes," and who flaunted these sentimentalities openly. He knew such incomprehensible males did exist. There were three on his block and he had thrashed them all soundly and been thrashed for having thrashed them, which of course convinced him in his biblical estimate that women were created for ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... expression, so far as his face could be seen, of earnest, concentrated endeavor to go the right way. Now and then he would half turn, as if impelled in one direction, and then hesitate, turn and march off the other way. One time, indeed, he went nearly half a block in a wrong street. Then he paused, groped, stumbled a little, and gradually returned to the vicinity of Mortimer, who had stood still at the corner. Apparently, Hanlon had no idea of his detour, for he went on in the right direction, and Mortimer, ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... a massacre rather than a fight, and my brother was in despair and misery at not having been there—as if his single arm could have retrieved the day!—thinking shame of himself for resting at home while sword and block were busy with our friends, and no one knew where the King was. I know not whether it were the daunting of his hopes or the first beginning of the winter cold; but from that time he began to decline from the strength he had gained while I had him to myself ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... us glorified saints. We are predestinated "to be conformed to the image of his Son." Nor are we to wait for death to transform us; the work should begin at once. We have a responsibility, too, in this work. The sculptor takes the blackened marble block and hews it into a form of beauty. The marble is passive in his hands, and does nothing but submit to be cut and hewn and polished as he will. But we are not insensate marble; we have a part in the fashioning of our lives into spiritual ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... cruisers, the use of leather was to be restricted to the following: the leathering of the main pendants, runners in the wake of the boats when in tackles, the collar of the mainstay, the nip of the main-sheet block strops, leathering the bowsprint traveller, the spanshackle for the bowsprit, topmast iron, the four reef-earings three feet from the knot. All old copper, copper-sheathing, nails, lead, iron and other old materials which were of any value, were to be collected and allowed for by the tradesmen ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... machines it is not easy to ascertain from the descriptions of ancient authors. Polybius gives the following description of them: "They erected on the prow of their vessels a round piece of timber, about one foot and a half in diameter, and about twelve feet long, on the top of which a block or pully was fastened. Round this piece of timber a stage or platform was constructed, four feet broad, and about eighteen feet long, which was strongly fastened with iron. The entrance was lengthways, and it could ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block. Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation, and converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy, second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... two of them, and one gets my collar and one gets the seat of my pants, and they drug me off'n him. Hank, he gets up, and then he sets down sudden on a horse block and wipes his face on his sleeve, which they was considerable blood ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the deck. Presently a shot coming in through the ship's side ranged aft on the quarter-deck towards the admiral and Captain Hardy, between whom it passed. On its way it struck the fore-brace bitts—a heavy block of timber—carrying thence a shower of splinters, one of which bruised Hardy's foot. The two officers, who were walking together, stopped, and looked inquiringly at each other. Seeing that no harm was done, Nelson smiled, but said, "This ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... preaching evolution, but they have preached it in such a way as to make it almost as much of a stumbling-block as of an assistance. For though the fact that animals and plants are descended from a common stock is accepted by the greater and more reasonable part of mankind, these same people feel that the evidence in favour of design in the universe ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... of Alexandria, Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, and is an agreement between the emperor and the bishops who countersigned it, that neither party should ever mention the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, which were the great stumbling-block with the Egyptians. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... evening of this day, about half-past eight o'clock, he emerged from his mother's house, light overcoat over his arm in deference to his evening clothes, and started briskly down the street. On the second block, as luck had it, he overtook Tommy Semple walking the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... intervals at Berlin tea-tables, consent to talk on equal terms with their women, and to listen to them, their growth will be accelerated and be shapelier. Comedy, or in any form the Comic spirit, will then come to them to cut some figures out of the block, show them the mirror, enliven and irradiate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... called it the parlor. Smart wimmen they was, and saved 'is life for 'im more 'n once. 'E 'd get a couple of chiefs on board by deceiving 'em with rum, and hold 'em until 'is bloomin' schooner was chock-a-block with copra. The 'ole island would be working itself to death to free the chiefs. Then when 'e 'ad got the copra, 'e 'd steal a 'undred or two Kanakas and sell 'em ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... impressively. "I wasn't three feet from him. And what did he do? Did he shout, or jump, or even look aloft to see if the yard wasn't coming down too about our ears in a dozen pieces? It's a marvel it didn't. No, he just stopped short—no wonder; he must have felt the wind of that iron gin-block on his face—looked down at it, there, lying close to his foot—and went on again. I believe he didn't even blink. It isn't natural. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... by the rear door and started briskly for her home. She had gone but a block when she heard a wagon rumbling behind her ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... They entered a spacious hall paved with white and black flagstones, furnished with old sideboards and choir-stalls and adorned with a carved escutcheon which displayed the remains of armorial bearings, representing an eagle standing on a block of stone, all half-hidden behind a veil of cobwebs which hung down ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... haf a great favor to ask of you," began the Professor, after a moist promenade of half a block. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... door in two parts, the upper part like a shutter, and used for the exposition of finished work as a sign of the craft; and I saw upon it the same finished work of the same shape as in the bas-relief—a spade and a hoe."] For subtlety of execution, note the texture of wooden block under anvil, and of its ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... was on Walnut street, one block west of the theatre, and looked toward the river. On the opposite side of the street stood a two-story brick house, always closed except when a negress opened and dusted the rooms. I never saw sadness or sorrow until ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... said supper was ready. The master rose to leave. 'Nay, thee must break bread with us; thee art a stranger in a strange land,' said the wife, as she took hold of his arm. The evening passed too quickly, for the master enjoyed his company. On rising to go, the Quaker told him he had a block of land he had taken for a bad debt. 'And what is the price you put on it?' asked the master. 'I do not sell in that way. Thou must see the land and if it suits thee, come back, and I will tell thee ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... crumbling stone, which would neither bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without filling it with sand: so, after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet; and then, with the help of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... instinctively directed to this mysterious chest. Could any means be devised for effecting an entrance? was the natural question. We all proceeded to reconnoitre; we attempted to move it, but in vain: we made some feeble efforts to force the lid; it was firm as a block of marble. At length, one daring urchin brought, from the fire-place, a red-hot poker, and began to bore through its sides. A universal shout was given. Other pokers were brought, and to work they went. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... war. When one hates he is attached to the hated object in a fashion just the reverse of the attachment of love; joy, anger, fear and sorrow arise under exactly the opposite circumstances, and the aim and end of hate is to block, thwart and destroy the hated one. The earlier history of man lays emphasis on the activities of hate,—war, feats of arms, individual feuds. Hate, unlike love, needs no moral code or teaching to bring it into activity; it springs into being and constantly needs repression. Unlikeness alone ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... "Anyhow, their house is charming. It's way out beyond the end of Amberson Boulevard; it's quite near that big white house with a gray-green roof somebody built out there a year or so ago. There are any number of houses going up, out that way; and the trolley-line runs within a block of them now, on the next street, and the traction people are laying tracks more than three miles beyond. I suppose you'll be driving out to see ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Park Hall, spent his substance during the Wars of the Roses, and was finally brought to the block (30 Henry VI.,[63] 1452). His son Walter was restored by Edward IV., but he would probably be encumbered by debts and "waste"; at least, he had but small portions to leave to his family when he made ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... different in circumstances, but of the same nature. Nevertheless Catiline, who had a spirit equal to any of these in his intended mischief, could never bring the like to pass in Rome. The head of a small commonwealth, such a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo, is easily brought to the block; but that a populous nation, such as Rome, had not such a one, was the grief of Nero. If Sylvia or Caesar attained to be princes, it was by civil war, and such civil war as yielded rich spoils, there being a vast nobility to be confiscated; which also ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the city, and the fourth opened upon a street of the town. This side of the square was densely filled with citizens, while the men-at-arms of the baron and a large number of knights were gathered behind a scaffold erected in the centre. Upon this was a block, and by the side stood a headsman. As Cuthbert was led forward a thrill of pleasure ran through him at perceiving no signs of his followers, who he greatly feared might have been captured in the night, and brought there to ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... in this stumbling-block. Pursued by the avenging punishment of his vice, chance carried him to the grave of his child—unhappy fruit of his violence. Under any other circumstances, Jacques Ferrand would have trampled on this sepulcher ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... applies, almost without variation, to all the others which we visited in the immediate neighborhood. Food was furnished on order, intoxicating drinks, and opium. At the second place, on the opposite corner of the same block, the men told us that the place was used for the same purposes. We asked where the women were, and they answered that it was too late to see them, but if we would come earlier we would find them. When asked where the women came from, they pointed down ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... distinct from the Petit-Pre, a green space in the centre of the town where three streets met) and which, monotonous and grey, with the three high steps of stone before almost every one of its doors, seemed like a deep furrow cut by some sculptor of gothic images in the very block of stone out of which he had fashioned a Calvary or a Crib. My aunt's life was now practically confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she would rest in the afternoon while they, aired the other. They were rooms of that country ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... institution," and find it to have been that—not of a high-minded statesman and true philanthropist—but of a trimming, time-serving partisan. He has been a main pillar of slavery; and as the idol of the Whig party, a great stumbling-block in the way of those who sought the overthrow of that system. The man of whom I have thus freely, yet conscientiously expressed myself, is nevertheless thus spoken of in the New Englander, a quarterly review ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... was no sense in getting more soaked than was necessary, so I began to hunt around for some sort of temporary shelter. I found it at last in the shape of a huge block of granite, half hidden by the brambles and stunted trees which had grown up round it. Parting the undergrowth and crawling carefully in, I discovered at the base a kind of hollow crevice just long enough to lie down ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... merely, but nearly all the great libraries of the city are grouped within a block or two of Astor Place, making that short thoroughfare the scholarly centre of the town. In its immediate vicinity, on the corner of Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, stands the fire-proof building of the New York Historical Society, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various |
