"Cutting off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... canvas she had spread. To add to my difficulties, also, in getting forwards, the sheets of foam and spindrift were carried along by the fierce gusts— which came now and again between the lulls, when it blew more steadily, cutting off the tops of the billows and hurling the spray over the mainyard—drenched me almost to the skin before I arrived within hail of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was he that gave away Belgrade to the Turks (so interpreting his orders), and the Grand Vizier, calling him Dog of a Giaour: spat in his face, not far from hanging him; and the Kaiser and Vienna people, on his coming home, threw him into prison, and were near cutting off his head. And again, after such sleety marchings through the Mountains, he has had to dissolve at Mollwitz; float away in military deluge in the manner we saw. And now, next winter, here is he lodged among the upland ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... learned later, it had been the private home of a family of the name of Boone, and in its early days the estate had been considerable. But the progress of the years had brought changes to the Boones. Money losses had necessitated the sale of land. New roads had come into being, cutting off portions of the estate from their centre. New facilities for travel had drawn members of the family away from home. The old fixed life of the country had changed, and in the end the latest Boone had come to the conclusion ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... for his life." These riches and advantages and pleasures that men spend their labour for, all these they part with in such a hazard. The covetous man, he will cast his coffers overboard ere he will lose his life; the voluptuous man, he will suffer pain and torment in cutting off a member, ere he die. But if men knew their souls, and what an immortality and eternity expects them, they would not only give skin for skin, and all that they have, for their soul, but their life also. Ye would choose to die a thousand deaths to escape this eternal ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... not, however, quite so desperate as they imagined, for Francisco Pizarro when attacked in the City of the Kings had sallied forth and inflicted such a severe chastisement upon the Peruvians that they afterwards kept their distance from him, contenting themselves with cutting off his communication with the interior. Several detachments of soldiers whom he sent to the relief of his brothers in Cuzco were, however, enticed by the natives into the mountain passes and there slain, as also were some solitary settlers on ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... he perceived her peril the captain had, with an almost lightning like movement, stooped over his child and dragged her backward. Barely in time; Chester's skate just grazed her fingers, cutting off the tip of her mitten. There were drops of blood on the ice, and for a moment her father thought ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Darwin's conclusion was based consisted simply in cutting off the tip, and then comparing the behaviour of roots so treated with that of normal specimens. An uninjured root when placed horizontally regains the vertical by means of a sharp downward curve; not so a decapitated root which continues to grow more or less horizontally. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... She was silent when Vida raved that though America hated war as much as ever, we must invade Germany and wipe out every man, because it was now proven that there was no soldier in the German army who was not crucifying prisoners and cutting off babies' hands. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to miss fire, then emitted a final groan as Remedios closed the throttle, cutting off the flow of gas, and stopped. Remedios threw the clutch into neutral, applied the brake, and climbed out. Raising the cover of the hood, he peered within. Then ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... the hand Burns stopped his engine, now running quietly, and stood up straight. He threw out one bare arm, grimy and oily with his labours. "Two hours ago," said he in a voice now controlled and solemn, "if by cutting off that right arm at the shoulder I could have saved a human life I'd have ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... light-minded widows— of course he meant me as well as the rest, for I had my plaits on, for if one is getting old, one doesn't want to look as ugly as the Befana, [Note 1]—us widows rushing up to the corpse, like bare-pated vultures as we were, and cutting off its young dead hair to deck our old heads with. Oh, the dreams I had after that! And then he cried, and wrung his hands at us, and I cried too. And to go home, and to take off my jewels, this very clasp, and everything, and to make them into a packet, fu tutt'uno; ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... actually came out of his way to tell Sir Philip what he had heard from the Imperial ambassador of young Archfield's distinguished services at the battle of Salankamen, only regretting that he was not fighting under King William's colours. Little Philip pranced about cutting off Turks' heads in the form of poppies, 'like papa,' for whose safety Anne taught him ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as bases they swept the surrounding waters for mines, with such success that during the whole siege but one vessel of their fleet was injured by a mine. On the 2d of September they landed troops at the northern base of the peninsula upon which Tsing-tau was situated, with the object of cutting off ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... lodges for, anyway, when they are liable to croak?" said the boy, as he passed the ingredients for a fumigation to the uncle. "Don't you think there ought to be laws against initiating, the same as clipping horses and cutting their tails off, or cutting off clogs' tails and ears? What do the lodges have those funny ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... 'with you to lie on the cushioned seat, a nice little carriage, and four yellow mastiffs, would be perfection; but as to comparing what I love—to wit, you, Sandy!—with what I want—to wit, four yellow mastiffs and a great many other things besides—I should as soon think of cutting off your tail to dust the dolls' house with.' Alas! Sandy Tom was at home; I could only imagine the gentle rub of the head with which he would have assented. Meanwhile, I made up my mind firmly on one ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... millstone about his neck; and when he is cast upon the sea of opportunity he is reproached with everlasting inferiority because he does not swim an equal race with those who are not thus fettered. We are reminded of the barbarous Teutons in Titus Andronicus who, after pulling out the tongue and cutting off the hands of the lovely Lavinia, upbraid her for not calling for sweet water with which to wash her ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... did not dare to fight Hannibal in the open field, but tried to wear him out by cutting off all small bodies of his troops and by making it difficult for him to get food for his army. They carried the war into Spain and finally into Africa, and when, with a weakened army, Hannibal faced them there, they defeated him. His defeat was the ruin of Carthage, for the unhappy city was compelled ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... themselves with moss, and hold branches of trees in their hands, which they shake in a manner so natural, that they have the appearance of real trees: they then allow the enemy to pass, assassinate him by coming up behind him, and, cutting off his head, carry it away as a trophy. These murderers are received by the people of the village with all the honors of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... mountains, so that his army arrived at Chester in a miserable state. He had many unfortunate hostages in his hands, the children of the noblest families, and on these he wreaked a cowardly vengeance, cutting off the noses and ears of the maidens, and putting out ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... amiable character of the Khan could be supposed to approve. But in this, as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 25 malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating fury of the Tartars discharged itself upon their own habitations. But this, as cutting off all infirm looking backward from the hardships of their march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all 30 the chieftains that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act by his own example. He seized a torch previously prepared with materials ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... protected by strong fortifications mounting upwards of fifty guns, with an unlimited supply of artillery and munitions of war, and that with their vast numbers they had ample opportunities of harassing our right flank and rear and cutting off communications up-country. ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... said Snow-White. "I will try to think." She clapped her hands as if she had discovered a remedy, took out her scissors, and in a moment set the dwarf free by cutting off ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... passed unweariedly, cutting off portions of torn flesh, extracting bullets, setting broken bones, taking up and tying severed arteries, sewing together the edges of gaping wounds, and completing the amputation of limbs, in regard to which the operation had been ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... rage, the policeman dashed toward the porte-cochere, while I ducked back into the room, rapidly revolving my chances of cutting off the man's retreat below. If the system of numbering was the same on every floor, my thief must, of course, emerge from Room 303. But this similarity was problematical, and to invade apartments at random, disturbing women at their opera toilets ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... to their camp. But Ginkell was not content with the advantage which he had gained. He was bent on cutting off all communication between Limerick and the county of Clare. In a few days, therefore, he again crossed the river at the head of several regiments, and attacked the fort which protected the Thomond ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... radical evolution both of character and dress. In many ways, if only from the viewpoint of the patient, thrifty store-keeper he is a most powerful factor in the East, and is becoming more so. In many cases he imitates the white nations by cutting off his queue and altering his dress. In some mysterious correlated way his diet seems simultaneously affected, and while for untold generations rice and fish has satisfied all his gastronomic desires, a new craving, that for meat, has come to him. The result ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... mouth; his ears were muffled as if he were under water, but he came to his feet with a leg of the broken table in his hand. Swan threw the fork at him as he rose from his knees; it struck the lantern, breaking the globe, cutting off more than half the dim light in which the undetermined ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... to hold the Yssel, the course of which river led directly through the United Netherlands, quite to the Zuyder Zee, cutting off Friesland, Groningen, and Gelderland from their sister provinces of Holland and Zeeland. And here again the keys to this river had been lost by English treason. The fort of Zutphen and the city of Deventer had been transferred to the Spaniard by Roland York and Sir William Stanley, in whose ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... so absorbed in translating and enjoying the intellectual tangles, that Solomon had scarce more to do than to play the part of chorus. He was fortunate in that his father could not afford to send him to a Chedar, an insanitary institution that made Jacob a dull boy by cutting off his play-time and his oxygen, and delivering him over to the leathery mercies of an unintelligently ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... organization." Then it became a battle betwixt organized capital and organized labor. When the workers went out on strike in one shop or factory, depending upon their brother unionists employed in other shops or factories, the employers of these latter locked them out, thus cutting off the financial support of the strikers. In other cases, when the workers in one place went out on strike, the employer got his work done through other employers, by the very fellow-members upon whom the strikers were depending for support. Thus the workers ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Bitumen mines was not the most desirable position, cutting off, as it did, the man and his family from all congenial companionship. The salary attached was fairly good, quite sufficient to provide a comfortable, if not luxurious, living. The present incumbent had begun his profession ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... glad at the little upper window that night. She had hated cutting off their friendship. The days had been dull and dragging without even a telephone chat with him; and though she still told herself it was chiefly because of the shock of Dudley's engagement, she knew it was a little ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... members.[1] Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure the perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... companions, the seamen made another dash at the enemy. The treatment which the dead bodies of their comrades met with showed them that they had death alone to expect, unless they gained the victory. The moment the bodies were left the Chinese rushed forward, and cutting off their heads, stuck them on the ends of their ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... has come up by our windows, And into our palaces, Cutting off from the streets the children, The youths from the places. And fallen are the corpses of men Like dung on the field, Or sheaves left after the reaper, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... a question with moralists, whether or not, good and evil bring their rewards and punishments in this state of being. While it might be dangerous to infer the affirmative of this mooted point, as it would be cutting off the future and its consequences from those whose real hopes and fears ought to be mainly concentrated in the life that is to come, it would seem to be presuming to suppose that principles like these ever can be nugatory in the control even of ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... think you'd better turn in now, Emmie?" he said hastily, cutting off the remainder of the Bangs query. "It's after eight, and when I was little ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... siege to the city; but after their return they constructed a wall across the intervening space, cutting off the Sun's rays from the Moon. This wall was double, and built of clouds; the consequence was total eclipse of the Moon, which experienced a continuous night. This severity forced Endymion to negotiate. He entreated that the wall might be taken down, and his kingdom released from this ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the officer, "one must look after the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes to cutting off a leg or an arm ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... invitation, with the design of assailing the Romans, unawares. Placidus, who was on his guard, feigned a retreat. The Itabyrians boldly pursued on to the plain; when the Roman horse, wheeling round, dashed among them, inflicting terrible slaughter and cutting off their retreat towards the city. Those who escaped the ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... which is that, whether he approves or condemns, you are determined to carry out this new plan? Take care, Beulah; remember the old adage about 'cutting off your ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the Relief before the besiegers, undertook to scout for Young Eybel in the direction of Diamond Town, and ingeniously warned Colonel Cullings of a Boer plan for cutting off the Flying Column on the scorching western plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads of burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers—a most satisfying haul. He placed before the leader of the British ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... its owner. It is an ash-plant, with a face cut on its knob; or a thick hazel, which a woodbine has grown tightly round, and raised on it a spiral, serpentine swelling; or it is a switch, that is famous for cutting off the heads of thistles, docks, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... was, on the whole, favorable to America. In 1807 Russia had formed an alliance with France and had accepted the Continental System, thus cutting off American trade; but in 1808 the French lost ground in Spain, and the Spanish and Portuguese ports were thus opened to American commerce. Nevertheless a hundred and eight merchantmen were captured by ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... sent it back again to the island, and soon the wounded stranger was lying on a rude, but welcome bed. Here the first thing to be done was to divest him of his coat and such other clothing as hid the wound. Having performed this duty, which was done by cutting off the coat and tearing the under garments, the next care of the old man was, in the best manner in his power, to apply bandages to stop the blood, which trickled from the right side and shoulder. This was done with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... one seat. You may also have a great fire in your room, burn juniper in the four corners, surround yourself with imperial vinegar, with rue and wormwood. If you can feel yourself safe under these conditions, without my cutting off my hair, I swear to you to execute them religiously; and if you want examples to fortify you, I can tell you that the Queen consented to see M. Chaudebonne, when he had come directly from Mme. de Bourbon's room, and that Mme. d'Aiguillon, who ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the shelf-ice for six and three quarter miles, we sighted a Weddell seal sleeping on a drift of snow. Killing the animal, cutting off the meat and burying it in the drift delayed us for about one hour. Continuing our journey under a fine bluff, over floe-ice much cracked by tide-pressure, we crossed a small bay cutting wedge-like into the glacier and camped on ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Noel Vanstone became like wax in Mrs. Lecount's hands. He at once agreed to draw up a new will at her dictation, completely cutting off his wife. He bequeathed Mrs. Lecount L5,000, and declared that he wished to leave the remainder to his cousin, George Bartram. Such an arrangement, however, Mrs. Lecount foresaw, might be fraught with those very dangers which she wished to avoid. George ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... it called an operation, Uncle," Lizzie said demurely; "but I now understand the meaning of the phrase of a man's undergoing a painful operation. I used to think it meant cutting off a leg, or something of that sort, but I see ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... ancient Celtic villages and caves, which seem to have been placed under the protection of these primitive strongholds. Many of the cliffs in Cornwall are fortified towards the land by walls and ditches, thus cutting off these extreme promontories from communication with the land, as they are by nature inaccessible from the sea. Some antiquarians ascribed these castles to the Danes, the very last people, one would think, to shut themselves up in such hopeless ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... mildly, "you know I have always said that you had the Kemble eye and nose, and I'm sure you won't hesitate about cutting off your whiskers when so much depends upon it; they'll soon grow again you know, Peter; as for your dark chin that don't matter a rush, as Lady ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... had the inclination of cutting off the inhabitance of the pale faces. Nevertheless, they did not always remain idle or unconcerned spectators of the feuds and dissensions that so long prevailed among the white people, toward the red men. The successive and regular ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... cables messages have sometimes to take very circuitous routes. For instance, during the two days, three years ago, that a tremendous storm committed such havoc among the telegraph wires around London, cutting off all communication with the lines connected with the Channel cables at Dover, Lowestoft, etc., it was of common occurrence for London merchants to communicate with Paris through New York. The cablegram leaving London going north to Holyhead and Ireland, across the Atlantic to New York and back ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... cut off more than he could cram into his pipe, he'd put his hand in his pocket for the pipe and drop some of the tobacco there. Then he'd hand the plug to his mate, engage the stranger in conversation and try to hold his eye or detract his attention from Brummy so as to give Brummy a chance of cutting off a couple of pipefuls, and, maybe, nicking off a corner of the cake and slipping it into his pocket. I once heard a bushman say that no one but a skunk would be guilty of this tobacco trick—that it is ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... said my father, "but, if he cannot be revenged of you in any other way, he will give up his own hounds, in order that he may prevent you from coming over any part of his estate." I had often heard of a man cutting off his own nose to spite his neighbour, but I did not think that, in this instance, it was very likely to happen. "Trust me," said he, "within one month he will forbid you from going over his lands; therefore be on your guard; for be assured that I know the littleness of his ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... laughing, "the mania for cutting off arms is an old one there. It turns up every now and then like some of our newspaper hoaxes, for the subject has given plots for plays on the Spanish stage so early ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... becomes every day greater and greater; it is deep rooted; it is destroying the means of resuscitation; it is ripping up the goose and taking out the golden eggs; in suspending the operations of labour, it is cutting off the possibility of a speedy return of employment. But, what say the Correspondents of the Board of Agriculture? Not one single man of them, except a parson or two, pretends that the distress is of a temporary nature; on the contrary, 205 of them, out of 322, attribute the ruin to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... after them, clambering over the mountains from the seacoast, came the Saracens—oh, you were the boys!—and they, being a refined and elegantly educated circle, compared with the Goths, of course did the same amount of slaughtering and love-making, only more refinedly and elegantly; cutting off heads instead of knocking them in; and with the gold spoons and other instruments that they found in the church, instead of making sword hilts and helmets, they at once worked them into graceful, crescent-shaped earrings, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "That's nothing. I can raise a hundred and fifty easy enough on my house and pay it off again next winter, so there's nothing to fuss about. And now, ma'am," turning to Mrs. Appleby, and abruptly cutting off any further discussion of the topic, "now, ma'am, I'll give you a little order for groceries, if you please—which was what I ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... word of all this, or you and I will quarrel; but speak of the matter to Monsieur Gourdon, and tell him to come and see me the day after to-morrow. I may be able to procure him the delicate operation of cutting off a forefinger." ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... will drip on me. Keep me well shod. Examine my teeth when I do not eat. I may have an ulcerated tooth, and that, you know, is very painful. Do not fix my head in an unnatural position, or take away my best defense against flies and mosquitoes by cutting off my tail. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves [123], who were given him for the oar, he formed the Julian harbour at Baiae, by letting the sea into the Lucrine and Avernian lakes; and having exercised ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the attendant savages, whom the Jesuit Father calls attendant demons, that waited their coming. The torture which ensued was but preliminary, designed to cause all possible suffering without touching life. It consisted in blows with sticks and cudgels, gashing their limbs with knives, cutting off their fingers with clam-shells, scorching them with firebrands, and other indescribable torments. [ 1 ] The women were stripped naked, and forced to dance to the singing of the male prisoners, amid the applause and laughter of the crowd. They ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... called me. The broad, rapid sweep of the river up which we won our slow passage, the great beetling cliffs dark in shadows, and crowned by trees, the jutting rocks whitened by spray, the headlands cutting off all view ahead, then suddenly receding to permit of our circling on into the unknown—here extended a panorama of which ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... who should that day cut off the head or hand of Lord Maxwell. Willie of the Kirkhill, mounted upon a young gray horse, rushed upon the enemy, and earned the reward, by striking down their unfortunate chieftain, and cutting off his ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... in his mind. And because in his idea it ought so to be, he trusts that Antony will make Caesar's death the occasion of strengthening those who killed him, not perceiving the strong likelihood, which soon passes into a fact, that in cutting off Caesar they have taken away the only check on Antony's ambition. He ought to have foreseen that Antony, instead of being drawn to their side, would rather make love to Caesar's place at ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Major-General Hurlbut (no doubt upon file in your office) for the delivery to Confederate authorities of one Colonel Fielding Hurst and others of his regiment, who deliberately took out and killed seven Confederate soldiers, one of whom they left to die after cutting off his tongue, punching out his eyes, splitting his mouth on each side to his ears, and cutting off his privates. I have mentioned and given you these facts in order that you may have no further excuse or ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... "but then I have, or something pretty much like it; for I saw the gardener, over yonder, cutting off the head of a young pear-tree, and he told me he was going ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... Topworking consists in cutting off the top of some undesirable seedling and replacing it with scions or buds from some desirable variety. It is just the same as any other grafting or budding process. Almost any size tree can be topworked but, of course, the larger the tree the more difficult the operation. A ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... death penalty was inflicted not only for taking human life but also for minor offenses, such as stealing. Even in our own country in colonial times bodily mutilation was not uncommon, such as branding with a hot iron, or cutting off the ears. Prisons were vile ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... immediate benefit of the manure, which otherwise, from the extraordinary rapidity of its growth, could not be obtained by it. In three months from the time of sowing, the seed is ripe. The crop is harvested by cutting off the heads. In Nepaul these are either heaped on a rude scaffolding, near the cultivator's house, or, more commonly, they are suspended from the branches of the trees close by, where, exposed to wind and weather, the hard and tough sheath ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... ears of green corn, husk them, and remove the silk. Then, as shown in Fig. 11, cut the corn from the cob with a sharp knife, grasping the ear by the larger end and cutting upwards. After cutting off the kernels, scrape the ears so that nothing edible will be wasted, drawing the knife downwards. Put the corn into a saucepan, add milk until the corn is nearly covered, and season with salt, pepper, and a little butter. Allow ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... all consciousness of the dreadful scene; and when I regained my senses the monsters had fled after cutting off the head of the poor victim of their ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... saw the Zeppelin fall and knew that its raiding days were over. Then he discovered that his own machine was in trouble. In another moment he realized the impossibility of returning to the British lines, and was compelled to volplane toward earth, cutting off his driving power. Descending in a soft field, he found that his motor was out of order. Thirty precious minutes were spent repairing the damage. It took him as long again to get his machine started, a task not often accomplished ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... correspondingly enormous, and thus the law of averages simply keeps up the normal proportion of the race. But at the other end of the scale, reproduction is by no means thus enormously in excess of survival. True, there is ample margin of accident and disease cutting off numbers of human beings before they have gone through the average duration of life, but still it is on a very different scale from the premature destruction of hundreds of thousands as against the survival of one. It may, therefore, be taken as ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the sun shone, and, laying on as fast as though he had been mad, he brought the giant to the ground. In vain were the giant's roars and prayers and promises to yield himself and be Tom's servant. Tom laid at him till he was dead, and then, cutting off his head, he went into the cave, and found a great store of silver and gold, which made his heart to leap. So he loaded his cart, and after delivering his beer at Wisbeach, he came home and told ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... over in its agony. At length it lay an inert mass on the surface, and the boats came back, towing it in triumph. Next there was the work of "cutting in," or taking off the blubber which surrounded it; the huge body being turned round and round during the operation, as the men stood on it cutting off with their sharp spades huge strips, which were hoisted with tackles on deck. Last of all came the "trying out," when the blubber, cut into pieces, was thrown into huge caldrons on deck, with a fire beneath ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... characterized by a sincere humanity, which stands out in startling contrast with the cruelties practised later by his enemy, the "butcher Cumberland." It prevented the prince from gaining an important military advantage by the reduction of Edinburgh Castle. He attempted the reduction of the castle by cutting off its supplies, but when the general in command threatened to open fire upon the town in consequence, Charles immediately rescinded the order, although {217} his officers urged that the destruction of a few houses, and even the loss of a few lives, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look up-stairs. This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring each other, and of course there could be but one result—they threw their tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same signs of decay. In one corner they found a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and hid themselves, as if from a spirit of the dead, but the manant, he whose father Michael had hanged, made at him with a sword, and dealt him a great blow, cutting off his ear. But others who had not fled, and chiefly the cure, held the manant till his hands were bound, that he might not slay one so favoured of Madame St. Catherine. Not that they knew of Michael's vow, but it was plain to the cure that the man was under the protection of Heaven. Michael ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... mighty arm about his waist crushing him until his bones seemed to crack and one huge hand cutting off the gasp of his throat, his body was bent back in this gorilla embrace and a purple mist spread darkly before his eyes. He had just enough tremor of consciousness left to know that he hung limp and was being lifted and swung ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... fleet succeeded no better than his army. Issuing from the Gulf of Ambracia, it was intended to attack Parga from the sea, joining in the massacre, and cutting off all hope of escape from that side, Ali meaning to spare neither the garrison nor any male inhabitants over twelve years of age. But a few shots fired from a small fort dispersed the ships, and a barque manned by sailors from Paxos pursued them, a shot ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... curious architecture or strange secrets of history, and is not beautiful or romantic at all. It has no tale to tell of old civilizations, not otherwise known, told of by few grey stones. Ruin to-day is destruction and sorrow and debt and loss, come down untidily upon modern homes and cutting off ordinary generations, smashing the implements of familiar trades and making common avocations obsolete. It is no longer the guardian and the chronicle of ages that we should otherwise forget: ruin to-day is an age heaped up in rubble around us before ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... three years, he said, they would labour at the futile roads, the roads that led nowhere. Really, commented the third passenger, it was impossible to understand the Oriental mind. They had chosen this—this isolation, this cutting off from home and friends, rather then go to Europe to serve the race that had treated them so well. Afraid? Oh, no—too ignorant to be afraid. Brave enough when it came to that—just obstinate. Just refused to serve, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... possible escape for the leaders of the rebellion. They must already begin to entertain fearful apprehensions of their certain ultimate doom. Our great fleet hovers upon their coast and penetrates their bays and rivers, cutting off most of their commerce with the outside world, and isolating them within the narrow limits of the territory actually occupied by them; while our immense armies are pressing them at all important points, with a deliberation and steadiness which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... quit the apartment, cruelly wounded, sometimes wondering whether he had really acted on a harsh selfish punctilio in cutting off the dying woman from the consolations of religion, and thus taking part with the persecutors, while his heart bled for her. Sometimes it seemed to him as if he had been on the point of earning her consent to his marriage with her daughter, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bitter Creek.—New road to the left, cutting off ten or twelve miles. Good camp; water a ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... castle in the meadow, and capturing Bobby and Billy at intervals, under the plea of painting their pictures; and then going through a process which was more entertaining to them than to their little victims—that of cutting off their arms and legs to hang on ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... proceeds to prove by showing what is undeniably the case) that almost all mankind readily receive miraculous occurrences on far lower evidence than Paley's common sense would require them to demand. Surely he must be related to the Irishman who placed his ladder against the bough he was cutting off. I ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of all this did Harry Kendal hear. His brain was on fire. He only realized one thing—that he was a beggar on the face of God's earth; and, to make matters worse, he had by his own rash act driven Dorothy from beneath that roof, thereby cutting off his own chance of marrying her and ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... and a treasury, not empty, but useless. But the new general had not served against the Maroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to his opponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all his efforts towards cutting off his opponents from water; and, most effectual move of all, he attacked each successive cockpit by dragging up a howitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in shells. Shells were a visitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaint compliments to their new opponent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... pain and suffering. The little fellows obeyed them, and ran for safety to some hazel brush near by, where, of course, the Indians soon found them, but their thirst for blood being somewhat allayed, and their object attained, they contented themselves with cutting off a piece of John's scalp, tearing it most brutally from the quivering flesh, when the squaws from some tepees near by, hearing his heartrending screams, came to the rescue, and begged that they might keep the children. And there they ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... dealt with by a magisterial reprimand or the granting of conditional liberty. In view also, of the important part played by dress, ornaments, etc., in the feminine world, penalties inflicted on vanity—the cutting off of the hair, the obligation to wear a certain costume, etc., might with advantage be substituted ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... blessed be thou above all the women of the earth. Thou art the exaltation of Jerusalem and the great glory of Israel, for the Lord hath directed thee to the cutting off of the head of the chief of our enemies, and thou hast ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett
... deplorable condition, and complaining of the cold-blooded manner in which they were to be sacrificed to the obstinate cupidity of their leaders. But the latter were wary enough to anticipate this movement, and Almagro defeated it by seizing all the letters in the vessels, and thus cutting off at once the means of communication with their friends at home. Yet this act of unscrupulous violence, like most other similar acts, fell short of its purpose; for a soldier named Sarabia had the ingenuity to evade it by introducing a letter into a ball of cotton, which was to be taken to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. The only reason I haven't dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that I don't want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in the prosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consider your ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... among young ladies too, who can be as cynical as other people in these times, such speeches as, 'Well, I suppose he has proved Anne Boleyn to be a bad creature; but that does not make that horrid Henry any more right in cutting off her head.' Thus two people will be despised where only one was before, and the fact still ignored, that it is just as senseless to say that Henry cut off Anne Boleyn's head as that Queen Victoria hanged Palmer. Death, and death of ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... their real wishes. So she herself was left with the casting vote, and chose to go on! Thus The Instigator's well-thought plan to remove an incubus was frustrated. He was so disgusted with his failure in a laudable object that, directly after "lunch" (which meant each one cutting off from the half-sheep, that was handed round, the piece he or she preferred), he went off with his microscope trying to find other interests, and in a few minutes was growing unduly excited over a shrub on which he discovered some most unusual excrescences. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... there was a big hole in the bow, but otherwise the craft had suffered little damage. Why she had not sunk was a mystery until, later on, old Jerry discovered that some of the cargo, consisting of flat cases, had got wedged into the break, thus cutting off a ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... flight drove the people in an ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the northward-running roads. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes, and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges in its sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but unable ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... ourselves. While the infantry were making a frontal attack on the positions defending Gaza, we—that is, the mounted divisions—were to strike out east and north with the double object of holding up Turkish reinforcements from Beersheba and Hereira (S.E. of Gaza), Huj (E. of Gaza), and cutting off the retreat of the main body should the town be taken. What to do should the attack fail we were not informed. Presumably we were to trust to what Mr. Kipling aptly calls "the standing-luck of the British Army" to pull ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... regulars took the delay most philosophically, seeming content to wait just as long as the enemy would permit them. Pierre began to wish he was with one of the guerilla parties outside, for these were busy all the time, making little raids, cutting off foraging parties, skirmishing with pickets, and retreating nimbly to the hills whenever attacked in force. At length there came a change. A battalion of New Englanders, about five hundred strong, advanced to within easy range of the fort, ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... after it, and Tchertop-hanov flew along too, but not with the rest of the party, but two hundred paces to one side of it, just as he had done the time before. A huge watercourse ran zigzagging across the hillside, and as it rose higher and higher got gradually narrower, cutting off Tchertop-hanov's path. At the point where he had to jump it, and where, eighteen months before, he actually had jumped it, it was eight feet wide and fourteen feet deep. In anticipation of a triumph—a triumph repeated in such a delightful way—Tchertop-hanov chuckled exultantly, cracked his ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... more, and to take the shape of a star with curved rays, alone sent us its pale light. When we attained the very bottom of the cistern, we found a superb sight was to be had of all those steps, lighted from above and cutting off their shadows with marvelous precision. I then heard the hum of which I have already spoken: the immense granite conch had as many echoes ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to give us a good push on our way here," he told Jack, when the latter continued to fret and hint about "cutting off corners" in order to hasten their getting away. "We're bound to do our part of the job right up to the handle. Besides, what do ten ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... restrain the onward march of civilization, Christianity, and free government by a barbarian wall? Do you suppose that you could keep that vast country a howling wilderness in all time to come, roamed over by hostile savages, cutting off all safe communication between our Atlantic and Pacific possessions? I tell you that the time for action has come, and cannot be postponed. It is a case in which the "let-alone" policy would precipitate a crisis which must inevitably result ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... they did not succeed. The navy of Athens proved unconquerable. By cutting off the lines of supplies of the Persian armies, the Greek sailors invariably forced the Asiatic rulers ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... and in hopeless tones, as he flashed his light. And there, completely filling the tunnel, was a great block of stone, fitting from ceiling to floor and from side wall to side wall, completely cutting off all escape. ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... service of the community, as at present provided for, is a murderous absurdity. That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity. But that is precisely what we have done. And the more appalling the mutilation, the more the mutilator is paid. He who corrects the ingrowing toe-nail receives a few ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... great importance is performed only on vines and not on the orchard. To thin a vine is to select and reserve the one, two and some times even three best new tendrils sprung from the stem of the vine, cutting off all the others, lest the stem may be unable to furnish nourishment for those which have been reserved. So in a nursery it is the custom to cut it back at first so that the vine may grow with a stronger stem and may have greater strength to produce fruitful tendrils: for a stem which grows slender ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... civilization.[112] The world will never forget that by the burning of the great library of Alexandria the rich legacy which the old world had bequeathed to the new was destroyed. By its occupation of Egypt and Constantinople, and thus cutting off the most important channels of communication, the Mohammedan power became largely responsible for the long eclipse of Europe ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... cutting off his finger; but he wanted two things to do it with—courage and a knife; and he ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... when the Senate and the Equites began to combine and express their indignation, he drew out the soldiers into the Forum, and driving the party of Saturninus to the Capitol, he compelled them to submit for fear of dying of thirst, by cutting off the pipes that supplied them with water. The partisans of Saturninus in despair called out to Marius and surrendered on the Public Faith, as the Romans term it. Marius did all he could to save their lives, but ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... despairing of their commonwealth. He has told them they were too modest. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off the interest, as they had themselves consented to do, with the fourth of the capital, he has added the whole growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent to the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted on this meliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six per cent, to take place from the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cuirasses, reaching down to the groin, and, instead of skirts,[228] thick cords twisted. 16. They had also greaves and helmets, and at their girdles a short faulchion, as large as a Spartan crooked dagger, with which they cut the throats of all whom they could master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[229] 17. They stayed ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... black, 'why she will be true to herself. Let Dissenters, whether they be Church of England, as perhaps they may still call themselves, Methodist, or Presbyterian, presume to grumble, and there shall be bruising of lips in pulpits, tying up to whipping-posts, cutting off ears and noses—he! he! the farce of King Log has been acted long enough; the time for Queen Stork's tragedy is drawing nigh'; and the man in black sipped his gin and water in a very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were leaning far out of them over their racing horses' necks, urging them and easing them by every trick in a horseman's understanding. They were making a trail which soon they knew would be a path of fire. They knew that with every stride of the stalwart creatures under them they were possibly cutting off the last hope of a retreat to safety. They knew, none better, that once amidst that furnace which lay directly ahead it was something worse than an even ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... event of its being driven into them, by untoward circumstances. With this view, three hundred pack horses, laden with flour, were sent on to fort Recovery; and as it was known that considerable bodies of the enemy were constantly hovering about the forts, and awaiting opportunities of cutting off any detachments from the main army, major McMahon, with ninety riflemen under captain Hartshorn, and fifty dragoons under captain Taylor, was ordered on as an escort. This force was so large as to discourage the savages from making ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... apt to err in this way; you make the combustion slow by cutting off air, and you run the risk of stopping the combustion altogether. When you wish a stove to burn better, it is customary to open a trap door below the fuel; this makes the red hot mass glow more vigorously, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... crossing a desert three eagles swooped down upon him and it was all he could do to fight them off. He slashed at them with his sword and succeeded in cutting off the beak of one, a wing of another, and a leg of the third. He put these three things ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... Reflanging Tin Cans. Cutting off the can the first time. First lift the spring pin in the top piece, push the lever from you, drop the spring pin between the stop of the first operation roll and the cutting-roll stop. Place the can in the sealer, push the can-raising ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... these celebrations was that of cutting off the hair in honour of the god; women who hesitated to make this sacrifice must offer themselves to strangers, either in the temple, or on the market-place, the gold received as the price of their favours being offered to the goddess. This obligation only lasted for one day.[24] It was also customary ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... possibility of further savings. Now, chancing to meet your lawyer, Mr. Vining, the other day, I learned from him that it had been long a wish which your delicacy prevented your naming to me, that I, to whom the fee-simple descends, should join with you in cutting off the entail and resettling the estate. He showed me what an advantage this would be to the property, because it would leave your hands free for many improvements in which I heartily go with the progress of the age, for which, as merely tenant for life, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... determined by the position of the paddle-wheel, which is adjustable and floats upon the liquid although controlled in its circular motion by the shaft which passes through a square aperture in it and also a sleeve extending upward from it. The duty of the latter is to economise steam by cutting off the jet as soon as, by its rapidity of motion, the paddle-wheel has thrown the mercury to the sides to such an extent as to sink to a certain level in ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... said calmly, as she retraced her steps and stood before Sir Edward, again looking up at him with those earnest eyes of hers, "quite dead; and if I had a sword I would play at cutting off his head. I suppose you wouldn't lend me your sword hanging up in the hall, ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... of men from whom have been defaced almost the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God. Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it vertically from top ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... great ones. No man reaches the superlative degree of wickedness all at once. Few men spring from the height to the abyss, they usually slip down. The erosive action of the sand of the desert is said to be gradually cutting off the Sphinx's head. The small faults are most numerous. We are least on our guard against them. There is a microscopic weed that chokes canals. Snow-flakes make the sky as dark as an eclipse does. White ants eat a carcase quicker ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... no way except from village to village, and a blood-feud may shut it for months. The people have not the habit of dealing with the foreigner, whom they look upon as a portent, a walking ghost, an ill-omened apparition. Porterage is in embryo, no scale of payment exists; and no dread of cutting off a communication profitable to both importer and exporter prevents the greedy barbarian plundering the stranger. Captain Speke and I were fortunate in being the first whites who seriously attempted the Lake Region; our only obstacles were the European merchants at Zanzibar; the murder of M. Maizan, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... anything! Luck never let us turn ourselves loose there a-tall. You wait, by cripes, till yuh see us where we git warmed up and strung out proper! You wait! Honest to gran'—" It was Luck's elbow that stopped him by the simple expedient of cutting off his wind. Big Medicine gave a grunt ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... forms of this misuse, but a page of almost any book will supply abundant instance. We do not suffer so abject slavery to the definite article as the French, but neither do we manifest their spirit of rebellion by sometimes cutting off the oppressor's tail. One envies the Romans, who had no article, ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... two-directions—longitudinally and transversely. Between these and the intestine is a cavity—the perivisceral cavity—like that of our own bodies, but filled with a nutritive fluid like our lymph. This cavity seems to have developed by the expansion and cutting off of the paired lateral outgrowths of the digestive system of some old flat worm. But other modes of development are quite possible. The intestine has now an anal opening at or near the rear end of the body. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler |
