"Cask" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worn out the shoulders of their coats. Their loads weighed from sixty to ninety pounds each, exclusive of their bedding and provisions, which at starting must have been at least as much more. We were much rejoiced at their arrival, and proceeded forthwith to pierce the spirit cask, and issue to each of the household the portion of rum which had been promised on the first day of the year. The spirits, which were proof, were frozen, but after standing at the fire for some time they flowed out of the consistency of honey. The temperature ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... Heidelberg Tun is the largest wine-cask in, the whole world. People say that it holds forty-nine thousand gallons. Just think of it! But it has not been filled for ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... Gold-button were soon on his track, calling him by the most tender epithets, and promising that he should have something nice for his supper, skim-milk, &c.; but the pig, with his painful experience, was not such a fool as to believe them; hidden behind an old cask, some faggots, or lying in a deep ditch, he remained silent as the grave, and kept himself close as long ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to the weather: these they rolled or carried into the cocoa-nut grove, so as to be sheltered from the sun; but there were so many things thrown on shore day after day, that they hardly knew what they had: but they secured case and cask one after another, waiting for a better opportunity to examine their contents. At last they collected a great many articles together, and, with their shovels, covered them over with sand, it being impossible to get them from the beach without more time ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... disposed of, no particular precautions were necessary, other than sending round PUBLICLY and at a CERTAIN HOUR the carts destined for those purposes. Upon that for collecting the soup, which was upon four wheels, was a large cask neatly painted with an inscription on each side in large letters, "for the "Poor." That for the meat held a large tub with a cover, painted with the same colours, and marked on both sides ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... outlining the entire plot of "Barnaby Rudge" when only a few of the first chapters had been published; if he wrote imaginatively of science, he in fact demonstrated in "Maelzel's Chess Player" that a pretended automaton was operated by a man. "Hop Frog" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are old-world stories of revenge. "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim" are landscape studies, the one of calm loveliness, the other of Oriental profusion and coloring. "Shadow" and "Silence" are commonly ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... this beast's eye, an inebriate roll in all his movements, that lead one mechanically to peer into the darkness of his den with the view of seeing what the Bar fixings are like. It would be a rare freak to treat the huge fellow to a cask of rum and sugar, and then stand by with a comic artist, and take down for PUNCHINELLO the traits of BRUIN the Grizzly on a "bender," and with all his repressed nature brought out by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... oversated; Like a merchant's vessel freighted To the water's edge, my crop Is laden to the gullet's top. 510 The fresh meadow grass of spring Tempts me forth thus wandering To my brothers on the mountains, Who shall share the wine's sweet fountains. Bring the cask, O ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... better. But he owed to ha' let me be. Theer was no credit to be got in hommerin' a man at my time o' life. All the same, mind ye, I thowt I should ha' trounced him. So I should if I could ha' got at him; but he fled hither an' he fled thither, and he was about me like a cooper a-walkin' round a cask. An' I was fule enough to lose temper, an' the crowd begun to laugh an' gibe at me, an' I took to raeacin' round after him, an' my wind went, an' wheer was I then? He knocked me down—fair an' square he did it. Th' on'y time it iver chanced to me. I put everythin' ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... him off, eh, General?" Saavedra asked, bending to stroke the terrible head. He and Vasco Nunez had been friends for years; in fact it was Saavedra who had managed the smuggling of Balboa on board the ship in a cask, to escape his creditors, when the expedition set out. They were intimate, as men are intimate who are different in character but alike in feeling and tradition. Pizarro was an ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... A cask climbed the crest of a wave, rolling down on the opposite side. The head of the blind swimmer came in its way.... A thudding crash. Padre San Vicente!... And Caragol disappeared with bleeding head and ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thousand antic shapes I take; The stoutest heart at my touch will quake. The miser dreams of a bag of gold, Or a ponderous chest on his bosom rolled. The drunkard groans 'neath a cask of wine; The reveller swelts 'neath a weighty chine. The recreant turns, by his foes assailed, To flee!—but his feet to the ground are nailed. The goatherd dreams of his mountain-tops, And, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ascertain the net weight of the provision liable to the said duties: for these reasons it was enacted, That from and after the twenty-fourth day of last December, and during the continuance of this act, a duty of three shillings and four-pence should be paid upon importation for every barrel or cask of salted beef or pork containing thirty-two gallons; and one shilling and three-pence for every hundred weight of salted beef called dried beef, dried neats-tongues, or dried hog-meat, and so in proportion for any greater ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... too tightly. Excitement burns the nerve as an electric current consumes a wire. During those days Beecher wore a garment whose warp and woof was fiery enthusiasm, and fierce flaming patriotism. The human body is like a cask of precious liquor. One way to drain off the treasure is to knock out the bung-hole, and in a few minutes drain the rich fountain dry; another way is to bore innumerable apertures, that drop by drop the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ringbolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... malt beer was not considered to yield an adhesive extract. In 1553, the lord mayor of London ordered a jury of five or six vintners to rack and draw off the suspected wine of another vintner, and to ascertain what drugs or ingredients they found in the said wine or cask to sophisticate the same. At another time eight pipes of wine were ordered to be destroyed because, on racking off, bundles of weeds, pieces of sulphur match, and "a kind of gravel mixture sticking to the casks'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Also, there must have been some good in the woman, to stand so unflinchingly by Stimcoe. Stimcoe's books had gone into storage at the pawnbroker's; but in his bare "study," where he heard our construing of Caesar and Homer, stood a screen, and behind it an eighteen-gallon cask. A green baize tablecloth covered the cask from sight, and partially muffled the sound of its running tap when Stimcoe withdrew behind the screen, to consult (as ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the labourer cannot drink more than a very limited amount of good liquor without getting tipsy. This is why he so speedily gets inebriated at the alehouse. While mowing and reaping many of them lay in a small cask. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... example, let us compare Poe's short-story, "The Cask of Amontillado," with Conan Doyle's "The New Catacomb." In both of these the theme is revenge, brought about by having the one seeking to entomb his enemy alive—the same theme, precisely, as Balzac had used earlier in "La Grande Breteche," and Edith Wharton ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... On his return journey to Vienna, Metternich stopped to rest himself a while at Johannisberg, the magnificent estate on the Rhine which the emperor had given him, near where he was born, and where he had stored away forty huge casks of his own vintage, worth six hundred ducats a cask, for the use of monarchs and great nobles alone. From thence he proceeded to Frankfort, a beautiful but to him a horrible town, I suppose, because it was partially free; and while there he took occasion to visit five universities, at all of which he was received as a sort of deity,—the students ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... fireplace they have a large iron pan on three legs, with holes or eyes in the sides, in order that the heat of the fire may be cast around. Instead of coals they use coke, which emits no flame and little smoke, and casts a considerable heat. Every tent has a pail or two, and perhaps a small cask or barrel, the proper name for which is bedra, though it is generally called pani-mengri, or thing for water. At the farther end of the tent is a mattress, with a green cloth, or perhaps a sheet spread upon it, forming a kind of couch, on which ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... the remnant of the Danish soldiers fled and took refuge in the monastery. Here they remained three weeks, and then escaped by boat to Stockholm. Gustavus, after the fight was over, entered the town and destroyed every wine-cask in the place. Though the town had fallen, the Castle of Vesteras still held out. Experience, however, had made clear that it could not be reduced except by siege. He therefore pitched his camp on the west side of ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... forward with a panikin from the cask, with which they regaled themselves, while Newton stood at the helm. In half an hour Newton called the boy aft to steer the vessel, and lifted the trunk into the cabin below, where he found that Thompson had finished the major part of the contents of the mug, and was lying ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... waiting here in the sun for hours," Burns whispered to me excitedly. "They have drank the water-cask dry. Don't you throw away your chances, sir. You ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... town, Peter had looked across the narrow harbor toward the level stretch of limestone rock that led to the prison gates, and had seen the petty criminals, in chains, splash through the pools left by the falling tide, had watched each pick up a cask of fresh water, and, guarded by the barefooted, red-capped soldiers, drag his chains back to the prison. Now, only the boat's-length from them, he saw the sheer face of the fortress, where it slipped to depths unknown into the sea. It impressed him most unpleasantly. It had the look ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... for that matter—of his beer would have been a crime to arouse to furious expression the popular sense of justice; when beer was on the master's table as well as in the servants' hall; when every cellar of the well-to-do held its great cask for family consumption, and no one had thought of attempting to convert the poor man from indulgence in his national beverage. It was the period when brewers made huge fortunes—and that in spite of the fact that they used good ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... for I had brought with me several pounds of coarse salt taken from our wrecked ship's harness cask and carefully dried in the sun, and a boiled crayfish or crab is ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the byre. But it had not been overlooked; arrangements had been made in its regard, should circumstances demand its more thorough concealment, otherwise it must not be disturbed. For—if the truth must be told—that particular cask contained the store of whiskey which Davie had been carefully preserving for his last act of hospitality; it was for the entertainment of those who would attend his funeral. Who, indeed, was able to provide refreshment for the crowd of mourners who would surely assemble ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... cried. "Don't smoke upon the powder-cask; wasting courage for nothing is like carrying water in a basket. Gerard," he added, in the ear of his adjutant, "get nearer, by degrees, to that fellow, and watch him; at the first suspicious action put your sword through him. As for me, I must take ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... edition of Nares (1859), this very passage is quoted to illustrate the meaning of the word, which is defined rather vaguely to be A CASK. Obviously the word signifies something of the kind, but the explanation does not at all satisfy me. I suspect that a flute OF CANARY was so called from the cask having several vent-holes, in the same way that the French call a lamprey FLEUTE D'ALEMAN from the fish having little holes ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... being sufficient of the latter to meet the increased demand, most of the wine vended as sherry is made from the inferior Madeira wines. Reader, if you have ever been in Spain, you may have seen the Xerez or sherry wine brought from the mountains to be put into the cask. A raw goat-skin, with the neck-part and the four legs sewed up, forms a leathern bag, containing perhaps from fifteen to twenty gallons. This is the load of one man, who brings it down on his shoulder exposed to the burning rays of the sun. When it arrives, it is ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... her, when I was so minded." Whereupon he fell to eating and drinking with great avidity, and finding the wine not much to his taste, he said:—"Now God do her a mischief! Why gave she not the priest of the wine that is in the cask by the wall?" When he had done eating, the monk laid hold of him again, and gave him another sound thrashing with the rod. Ferondo bellowed mightily, and then cried out:— "Alas! why servest thou me so?" "God," answered the monk, "has decreed that ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... said Pholus, "there is a cask in my cellar; but it belongs to all the Centaurs jointly, and I hesitate to open it because I know how little they ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... the shield, yet it assaulted the flank that lacked its protection. But a waiting-maid who happened to be standing near the hearth, saw that he was being roasted by the unbearable heat upon his ribs; so taking the stopper out of a cask, she spilt the liquid and quenched the flame, and by the timely kindness of the shower checked in its career the torturing blaze. Rolf was lauded for supreme endurance, and then came the request for Athisl's gifts. And they say that he showered treasures ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... bottling cider, it should always be examined, to see whether it is clear and sparkling. If not so, it should be clarified, and left for a fortnight. The night previous to bottling, the bung should be taken out of the cask, and the filled bottles should not be corked down until the day after; as, if this is done at once, many of the bottles will burst by keeping. The best corks should be used. Champagne bottles are the best for cider. When the cider is wanted for immediate use, or for consumption ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... is Williamson's place?-I cannot say; only saw the name on the cask. We got it from Mr. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... but could not get him any further than the edge of a gully a short way off. So they left him there and went home to report to the bondi what had happened. He asked what could have caused Glam's death. They said they had tracked him to a big place like a hole made by the bottom of a cask thrown down and dragged along up below the mountains which were at the top of the valley, and all along the track were great drops of blood. They concluded that the evil spirit which had been about before must have killed ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... useful as nine men in ten on board a vessel. It is true, he did not know when it became necessary to take in the last reef—had no notion of stowing a cargo so as to favour the vessel, or help her sailing; but he would break out a cask sooner than most men I ever met with. There was too much "nigger" in him for head-work of that sort, though he was ingenious and ready enough in his way. A sterling fellow was Neb, and I got in time to love him very much as I can conceive ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... not immediately mix with the water, but lies at the bottom in a round flat drop,) it is taken from the fire, and the foaming allowed to subside. A thick white scum, which is useable, is removed, and the sugar turned into a cask, placed on an inclined platform, and left undisturbed for six weeks or longer, when it should be tapped in the bottom and the molasses drawn off. It will drain perfectly ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... were talking together and lolling against the wall; and a short, elderly, clean-shaven man in corduroys, seated in the window, was conning a battered journal. The girl Megan seemed the only active creature-drawing cider and passing with the jugs from cask to table. Seeing them thus about to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... utricles. After its formation the zygospore still increases considerably in size, and acquires a diameter of more than one-fifth of a millimetre. Its form is generally spherical, and flattened on the faces which are united to the suspenders, or it resembles a slightly elongated cask. The membrane thickens considerably, and consists at the time of maturity of two superposed integuments; the exterior or epispore is solid, of a dark blackish-blue colour, smooth on the plane faces in contact with the suspenders, but covered ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... with a rumbling laugh, like wind in the bung-hole of an empty cask; "for I ain't got none. The family ends with me; which is a pity, for I'm a full-stop ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... line and a cask, and he fastened the end of the long line to the cask, and then threw the cask overboard. The other end of the line was kept on board the ship. The cask was tossed about upon the waves, every successive surge driving it ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... lined with cotton-wool to serve as beds for wounded insects, lest they should hurt one another or jostle out. The lower part was left free for any larger creatures which Nelly might find. Among her toys she had a tiny cask which only needed a peg to be water-tight; this was filled and fitted in before, because, as the small sufferers needed no seats, there was no place for it behind, and, as Nelly was both horse and driver, it was more convenient ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... for the finest swordsman in Graustark. He made a few desperate attempts to ward off his inevitable fate, calling loudly for his comrade to aid him. The latter was eager enough, but Baldos's strategic roll of the cask effectively prevented him from taking a hand. With a vicious thrust, the blade of the goat-hunter tore clean through the man's chest and touched the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... door opened, and two peasants brought in a table all laid, on which stood a smoking bowl of cabbage-soup and a piece of lard; an enormous pot of cider, just drawn from the cask, was foaming over the edges of the jug between two glasses. A few buckwheat cakes served as a desert to this modest repast. The ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... regular form. St. Sebastian stood upon a peninsula. In front of the neck of this peninsula was the hill of San Bartholomeo, on which stood the convent of that name. At the narrowest part of the neck stood a redoubt, which was called the Cask Redoubt, because it was constructed of casks filled with stand. Behind this came the horn-work and other fortifications. Then came the town, while at the end of the peninsula rose a steep rock, called Mount Orgullo, on which stood the citadel. Upon its left side this neck of land was separated ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... to take away the taste of the cabbages." So saying, she seized one of the wine barrels, and in the strength of terror she managed, with great difficulty, to push it up the cellar stairs, and roll it through the kitchen out to the well. Then she removed the spile and tilted the cask forward; when out streamed at least thirty gallons of the ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... Cask. You pul'd me by the cloake, would you speake with me? Bru. I Caska, tell vs what hath chanc'd to day ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... big wasps came out that day it is impossible to guess. There are at least fifty accounts of their apparition. There was one victim, a grocer, who discovered one of these monsters in a sugar-cask and very rashly attacked it with a spade as it rose. He struck it to the ground for a moment, and it stung him through the boot as he struck at it again and cut its body in half. He was first dead of ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... low, and gave the cask a blow, But his liquor would not flow through the pin. "Sure, 'tis sweet as honeysuckles!" so he rapped it with his knuckles, But a sound, as ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... to expose themselves; he was inclined to send them some ammunition, and as they had desired but one barrel of powder, he would send them two barrels, and shot, or lead and moulds to make shot, in proportion; and, to let them see that he was civiller to them than they deserved, he ordered a cask of arrack and a great bag of bread to be sent them for subsistence till they should be able ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... up, and Elsie, who seized the chance of snap-shotting the party, ran to the upper deck, so she did not overhear Courtenay's smothered ejaculation. He was scrutinizing the savages through his glasses, and he had distinctly seen the ship's name painted on a small water-cask on which the Indian had been sitting. Tollemache made the same ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Guard. My poor friend Fournier was killed, as was General Morland. It is said that Napoleon intended to have the body of General Morland interred in a mausoleum which he meant to have built in the centre of the Esplanade des Invalides, and that it was preserved in a cask of rum for that reason. But the mausoleum was never built, and it is alleged that the general's body was still in a room in the school of medicine when Napoleon lost his ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... would give tyncum, not tyncenum, the latter must come out of tyncen (query, tynkin or tunkin, a little tun, a barrel, or a cask?). Such was the form in which the question presented itself to my mind, upon my first examination of the passage three or four years ago, but which was given up without sufficient investigation, owing to an impression ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... determined to detain the Landers till he could extort a large sum for their ransom. He demanded the sum of twenty bars (each equal to one slave or a cask of palm oil). The travellers had the prospect of being detained for an indefinite period, had not King Boy of Brass-town, Obie's son-in-law, undertaken to pay the amount, and convey them to the coast, on condition of receiving a guarantee for thirty-five bars, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Chatelet; when, on April 18, information was received by the authorities which determined them to explore the wine-cellar in the Rue de la Mortellerie. Whether the woman who had let the cellar to Derues, or the creditor who had met him taking his cask of wine there, had informed the investigating magistrate, seems uncertain. In any case, the corpse of the unhappy lady was soon brought to light and Derues confronted with it. At first he said that he failed to recognise it as the remains of Mme. de Lamotte, but he soon abandoned ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... secrets, ma'am; not to be spoken of; except, as I may say, among the porochial officers, such as ourselves. This is the port wine, ma'am, that the board ordered for the infirmary; real, fresh, genuine port wine; only out of the cask this forenoon; clear as ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... (a) house is on fire. 2. Yes, I heard (the) shouts in the street. 3. About eight o'clock (the) guests began to come. 4. Yes, I heard (the) noises in the next room. 5. The (an) elephant stood on a cask, and the (a) clown sat on the elephant's back. 6. The President has appointed a commission to investigate the cause of (the) strikes. 7. Will he let us look at (the) stars through the (a) telescope? 8. (The) teacher and (the) pupil are interested in this question. ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... a beautiful picture," exclaimed the young lady, looking at her with the enthusiasm of an artist. "Do sit still on that cask for a time with a basket of fish at your feet. You must let me draw you thus. Remember, if you will not, I cannot promise to make a copy of your son's likeness ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... their stock of provisions the men and Bob brought down a large quantity of birds and also caught a lot of fish, and these were broiled and cooked, to keep them from spoiling. They also got what water they could and stored it in a cask, and Bob picked a ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... a round, full-eyed personage, whose cheek and nose displayed the result of many a libation to the jolly god. Short-legged, short-breathed, and full-paunched, he strode, quick and laborious, like a big-bellied cask set in motion, as if glad to escape, into a small back chamber, furnished with two stools, a desk, and sundry big books—implements in use only as touching his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... uttering in an audible voice the monosyllable 'Oh!' which was, as it were, sharply unscrewed and jerked out of him by very anguish. It happened then, and lastly, that Mr Pecksniff found himself immediately collared by something which smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of beer, a cask of warm brandy-and-water, and a small parlour-full of stale tobacco smoke, mixed; and was straightway led downstairs into the bar from which he had lately come, where he found himself standing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "domineering inventions" some which we may imagine never took place, till they were told by "the hollow cask" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... false bride, "than that she should be thrown into a cask stuck around with sharp nails, and that two white horses should be put to it, and should drag it from street to street till she ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... A Dutch Butter-ferkin, a Kilderkin. These terms are common abuse as applied to a corpulent person. A firkin (Mid. Dut., vierdekijn) a small cask for holding liquids or butter; originally half-a-kilderkin. Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1700) has 'Firkin of foul Stuff; a ... Coarse, Corpulent Woman'. cf. Dryden's Mac ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... cask was given to the dog as a place of retreat, to give him a chance to recover his breath. The dog, finding himself at liberty ran round his adversary, avoiding his blows, and threatening him on every side, till his strength was exhausted; then springing forward, he gripped him by the throat, threw ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... did or did not strike the cask, Diogenes would have closed his eyes equally. He would never have come forth and seen the truth, had it shone upon the world in that day. But, intractable as was this recluse, Epicurus, I fear, is quite as lamentable. What ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... back that never bent or leant for a second on rail or cushion, was straight as an arrow, as well as long. But Nelly, in her absurd, magnificent brocade, and her hoop, that made her small figure like a little russet cask, and with busk and breast-knot and top-knot, was admired, as odd people will choose what is irregular, strange, and racy, in preference to what is ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... like it in the gun-room, and got off a fresh cask or two this morning, while the court was sitting. So they tell me, sir, his lordship has put his name to it, and that this Frenchman is to swing from our fore-yard-arm some ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... false bride, "than that she should be thrown into a cask stuck round with sharp nails, and that two white horses should be put to it, and should drag it from street to street ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... Father Neptune came on board and those of the crew who had never crossed the Equator were hunted out of their hiding places, dragged on deck, lathered with a whitewash brush dipped in old grease, shaved with a lath-razor, and then tumbled unceremoniously backward into a cask ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... people were unquiet, That passengers would find it much amiss To lose their lives, as well as spoil their diet; That even the able seaman, deeming his Days nearly o'er, might be disposed to riot, As upon such occasions tars will ask For grog, and sometimes drink rum from the cask. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... boiler-sheeted prodigies from the vilest holes of the South Pacific to try and drink me under the table. I remember one, a calcined Scotchman from the New Hebrides. It was a great drinking. He died of it, and we laded him aboard ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own place. A sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up on the ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... of the party were in like straits; the immense armies had not only eaten up nearly everything in the country, but had drunk all the wells dry, too, and there seemed no relief for us till, luckily, a squad of soldiers came along the road with a small cask of wine in a cart. One of the staff-officers instantly appropriated the keg, and proceeded to share his prize most generously. Never had I tasted anything so refreshing and delicious, but as the wine was the ordinary sour stuff drunk by the peasantry of northern ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Steward's Office: A butt of sack, delivered without fee or gratuity, with an order for returning the cask for the use of the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... to stop him; for the skipper flung himself on the ground at a spot where, to their wonder, they now observed three skeletons sitting up and arranged in a circle; while in the centre of the terrible group of bony figures was a cask on end, whose odour ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the reformers, who, like all the eclectics, whose number is infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask and another to the hoop and do not deny—O, no!—the inconveniences and even the absurdities of the present ... but, not to compromise themselves too far, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minor ameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating the symptoms ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... States closed their ports to British shipping, Connecticut hastened to profit at their expense by throwing her ports wide open. New Jersey, with New York on one side and Pennsylvania on the other, was likened to a cask tapped at both ends. To find a historical parallel to the annals of this period, one must go back to the bickerings and jealousies of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... at a wretched little girl, who had dived her hand deeply into a box or cask of garbage, and brought it forth reeking with rotten apples, pork fat, and any liquid horror which the name suggests to you. She had her hand uplifted ready to throw, and was evidently intending to give the strange lady the benefit of what she had ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... have all the money," said the Bushman; "but I want the cask of brandy. I will set the roof alight in six places, for a Dutchman burnt my mother once alive in a ...
— Dream Life and Real Life • Olive Schreiner
... again, claiming with many mouths to explain, amuse, suggest, and controvert—to publish invention, and proscribe error. Truly, it were enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive; to be fitted with a colander-mind, like that penal cask which forty-nine Danaides might not keep from leaking; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, imagination, zeal, perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... very uneasy. But the last barrel finished him, and down he went like a log, whereupon the holy man put him into one of his own tubs and sent him to Rome to be dealt with properly. There was a tremendous row, it is said, when the cask was opened. In the confusion, Satan escaped; but in revenge for the trick that had been played on him, he put a blight on the vines of the Adda, and from that day to this never a liter of decent wine came out ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... married again before she had time to write the epitaph to the "dear departed?" On one of the walls is a tablet to the memory of that celebrated surgeon of St. Bartholomew's for forty-two years, Percival Pott, Esq., F.R.S., who died in 1788. Pott, according to a memoir written by Sir James Cask, succeeded to a good deal of the business of Sir Caesar Hawkins. Pott seems to have entertained a righteous ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the cylinder, or jacket, should be covered with several plies of felt, and then be cased in timber, which must be very narrow, the boards being first dried in a stove, and then bound round the cylinder with hoops, like the staves of a cask. In many of the Cornish engines the steam is let into casings formed in the cylinder cover and cylinder bottom, for the further economisation of the heat, and the cylinder stuffing box is made very deep, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... of their making out what we say. However, I'll try." Though Adair was lashed to the tree, his arms were left at liberty, and beckoning to the chief, he tried to make him signify what it was he wanted. At length he seemed to understand Adair's question, and, going through the action of rolling a cask down the beach, he put on an angry look, and then, holding his musket and a piece of cloth in his hand, he showed that he wanted those articles in payment for the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... pushing before him a bundle of rags and mud, which two policemen held on either side. And this bundle was the man, the hunted man, who had just been discovered in the coach-house, inside a staved cask, covered ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... resolved to return to the scene of action, and surprise their incautious enemy. Stealthily advancing, therefore, under the shadows of night, now falling thick around, they poured through the rocky defiles of the inclosure upon the astonished Spaniards. An unlucky explosion, at this crisis, of a cask of powder, into which a spark had accidentally fallen, threw a broad glare over the scene, and revealed for a moment the situation of the hostile parties;—the Spaniards in the utmost disorder, many of them without arms, and staggering under the weight of their ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... these provisions, so carefully prepared were not embarked either on the raft or in the boats; the precipitation with which we embarked was the cause of this negligence, so that some boats did not save above twenty-four pounds of biscuit, a small cask of water and very little wine: the rest was abandoned on the deck of the frigate or thrown into the sea during the tumult of the evacuation. The raft alone had a pretty large quantity of wine, but not a single barrel ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... rising so high that one runs to see the fight commence, and by the time one has crossed the room it has all subsided and everybody is walking off in good-humor. Meanwhile the grave little donkeys are constantly pattering by, sometimes in pairs or in fours with a cask slung between; and mingled with these, in the middle of the street, there is an endless stream of picturesque figures, everybody bearing something on the head,—girls, with high water-jars, each with a green ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... dirt, dogs and squalor of her tribe as soon as she reaches the reservation. There is a strain of the Huckleberry Finn in all natures that resents a too sudden metamorphosis and which will return to its rags, its back alley and empty cask. Charlatans of the law and of literature inculcate the idea that a change in conditions means the acquisition of unqualified bliss, and they assume that the poor are necessarily unhappy and endeavor to convince them—not a difficult ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the 13th of June, 1785. To his balloon, inflated with gas, he had suspended a mongolfier filled with warm air, undoubtedly to save the trouble of letting off gas, or throwing out ballast. It was like putting a chafing-dish beneath a powder-cask. The imprudent men rose to a height of four hundred metres, and encountered opposing winds, which drove them over the ocean. In order to descend, Pilatre attempted to open the valve of the aerostat; ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... word of consolation to some of the poor women. He now, however, undertook to superintend the distribution of the provisions. Some time was occupied in searching for them, as it was necessary to select such as did not require cooking. A keg of butter was first found, with a cask of biscuits, but the latter had suffered already from the salt water. As, however, they could be most easily got at, they were served round, and constituted the chief portion of the first meal taken on board. A few bottles of rum were next routed out from a case ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his granddaughter's,—his being drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from youth and innocence, and from the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly (I am very sure, no more than one,) in which he too much resembled ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... carefully stopped up the holes by which water is introduced into them, to prevent their sinking. These gourds, floating about on the water, inspire the birds with confidence; the hunter then covers his head with a sort of cask made of a gourd, one in which there are little holes for his eyes, like in a mask. He wades into the water up to his chin, for from their infancy they are all accustomed to swim, and do not fear to remain a long time in the water. As the birds find the gourd which conceals ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... had forced themselves out of irons, did not come up with the rest, but found their way into the hold, and armed themselves with knives from a cask, which had been opened for trade. One of them being called to in the African tongue by a black trader, who was then on board, came up, but with a knife in each hand; when one of the crew, supposing him yet hostile, shot him ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... of human nature! The latter, whose drunkenness had taken a Byronic and misanthropical turn, rejected with the basest ingratitude these delicate attentions. Do not think that my incarnated brandy-cask was the only one of the party who did unto others as he would they should do unto him, for the entire band were officiously tendering to one another the same good-Samaritan-like assistance. I was not astonished at the Virginia-fence-like style of their marching when I heard a ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... been trying to smuggle a fission bomb into the Palace in a wine cask, and before that, it was a booby trap in the elevator, and before that, somebody was planning to build a submachine gun into the viewscreen in the ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... him a little Cask of Vinegar; of which, as soon as the regiments get to Camp, he must give me reckoning, and I will then have him repaid. This Vinegar shall solely and exclusively be employed for this purpose, That in places where the water ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... going out, turned the key of the room we were in. I remarked this to the lieutenant, who, apprehending some treachery, ordered the men to force the door we had endeavoured to open. It soon gave way, when we suddenly came on four men dressed as coopers. Two of them were knocking a cask to pieces, the other two drawing off a liquid which had the appearance of rum. They did not desist from their occupation, nor were they surprised at our visit, but told us very coolly we had mistaken the house. So should we have thought had we not seen our copper-faced acquaintance ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... nay, I derive a far greater pleasure from the ingenious amendment of a perverted text, than from all the turn and thought of the sense itself: while I am straightening a crooked nail in the wine-cask, I suffer the wine to evaporate; but to this I am somewhat reconciled, when I reflect that it was also the misfortune of the great Porson, and the elaborate Parr, men with whom I blush to find myself included ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... supply, as at first run, with one water-cart to the whole Naval Brigade, was inadequate; but later on each unit with guns got, as they should have, their own water-cart, or else made them with a cask fixed upon axle wheels, which we were obliged to do for a long time. Transport for these was either mule or ox; the former, quickest and best. A field filter for each unit ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... curtain. Several cells were opened to us. In one there was a young, very pretty maiden; she had lain down in her berth, but sprang out when the door was opened, and her first movement disturbed the berth, which it unclasped and rolled together. Upon the little table stood the water cask, and near it lay the remains of hard black bread, farther off the Bible, and a few spiritual songs. In another cell sat an infanticide; I saw her only through the small glass of the door, she had heard our steps, and our talking, but she sat still, cowered together in the corner ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that the star on her forehead could turn night into day. The king listened silently, and when the boy had done, he said quietly: 'If I find that your story is not true I will have you thrown into a cask of pitch.' ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... haggard, woe-begone, half-starved stowaway, who looked as if he had not many ounces of life left in him. It was Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who had taken this way to join the expedition and escape from his creditors, since they would not have permitted him to go openly. The cask in which he snugly lay had been carried from his farm to the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... after sunset that evening when the war-party reached the camp site selected as suitable for the orgy in which they proposed to indulge. The canoe containing Donald and the cask of fire-water was among the last to make a landing. Already fires were lighted on the bank above, and the earlier arrivals were impatiently awaiting the liquor for which they had been willing to barter a ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... afternoon, when the insect peoples, frantic with drought, wander hither and thither, vainly seeking to quench their thirst at the faded, exhausted flowers, the Cigale makes light of the general aridity. With her rostrum, a delicate augur, she broaches a cask of her inexhaustible store. Crouching, always singing, on the twig of a suitable shrub or bush, she perforates the firm, glossy rind, distended by the sap which the sun has matured. Plunging her proboscis into the bung-hole, she drinks deliciously, motionless, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Bale, madam. I saw him in town, a week before I sailed, and told him I was likely to come on here, direct; and he sent off at once three cases of champagne, and six dozen of port, directed to you; and an eighteen gallon cask of ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... throne. God is a father seated in a bower, waiting for His children to come and climb on His knee, and get His kiss and His benediction. Prayer is the cup with which we go to the "fountain of living water," and dip up refreshment for our thirsty soul. Grace does not come to the heart as we set a cask at the corner of the house to catch the rain in the shower. It is a pulley fastened to the throne of God, which we pull, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Paris a well furnished sitting and bed room is 4l. a month; in other parts only half the price. Brandy and liqueurs are much cheaper than in England; beer from 2d. to 4d. a bottle, but taking a cask it comes cheaper. Best white sugar 10d. Tea from 4s. upwards, coffee 2s. to 3s. It must be remembered that the pound weight in France has two ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... used for lining the robes of mayors and other high officials. Guilder, a silver coin worth about 40 cents. Adept, one fully skilled in anything. Nunchion, the same as luncheon. Puncheon, a cask containing 84 gallons. Poke, pocket. Caliph, a Mohammedan ruler. Stiver, a Dutch coin worth about two cents. Burgher, a citizen of ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Cider, add one-fourth pound Tartaric Acid, four gallons of Spirits, three pounds Loaf Sugar. Let stand ten days, draw it off carefully. Fine it down, and again rack it in another cask. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... basket, pannier, buck-basket, hopper, maund|, creel, cran, crate, cradle, bassinet, wisket, whisket, jardiniere, corbeille, hamper, dosser, dorser, tray, hod, scuttle, utensil; brazier; cuspidor, spittoon. [For liquids] cistern &c. (store) 636; vat, caldron, barrel, cask, drum, puncheon, keg, rundlet, tun, butt, cag, firkin, kilderkin, carboy, amphora, bottle, jar, decanter, ewer, cruse, caraffe, crock, kit, canteen, flagon; demijohn; flask, flasket; stoup, noggin, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... anomalous. We can not get into a mind like his. Statesman he was not; for the nurture of national wealth, such as Cromwell and Caesar planned for, he was incapable of. His idea of statesmanship was that his kingdom was a cask, into which he should insert a spigot and draw. This was government of an ideal order, Philip being judge. The divine right of kings was a foregone conclusion, antagonism to which was heresy. Here let us not blame Philip; for this ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and princely about such a house, almost unknown in our businesses at home—from the portraits of the founders, from the caskmakers, at lunch-time, broiling their own fish over a huge fireplace and drawing wine from the common cask as they have done for generations; the stencils in the shipping-room—"Baltimore," "Bogota," "Buenos Aires," "Chicago," "Calcutta," "Christiania," "Caracas"—from things like these to the personality and point of view of the men who ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... in regard to other trades, but also in respect to the traffic in alcoholic drinks. As long ago as 1680, when the public attention was first directed to the evils of intemperance, a law was enacted prohibiting the sale of a less quantity than 'a quarter cask,' by unlicensed persons. It also prohibited all sales after nine o'clock in the evening, and sales at any time to known drunkards. By this law landlords were obliged to suppress excessive drinking on ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer |
