"Hammer in" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eight months. He wore stripes, night and day, and if contumacious, was whipped by the guards. His work was in a stone quarry, a deep hole, into which the summer sun poured an insufferable heat. He was forced to do his work with a 49-pound hammer in that funnel-shaped pit, at a hundred degrees in the shade—if he could find any shade. One day he told the guard he was sick, and could not work any longer. The guard shifted the quid in his mouth and remarked that he ought to have said so that morning. But the man meant what he said, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... had been three weeks in camp. Saunders sat with his back to a big fir and a little hammer in his hand. There was a pile of shattered quartz at one side of him and another smaller heap of fragments of the same material lying on an empty flour-bag at his feet. Devine, who had just announced that ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Western Railway locomotives Mr. Humphries and 'Great Western' steamship Forging of paddle-shaft Want of range of existing hammers The first steam hammer sketched Its arrangement The paddle shaft abandoned My sketch copied and adopted My visit to Creuzot Find steam hammer in operation A patent taken out First steam hammer made in England Its general adoption Patent secured ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... stood a man dressed in black, and with a dark straw hat on his head. He had gray whiskers, and gleaming spectacles of a mildly surprised expression. He smiled kindly when he saw Rufe. Incongruously enough, he had a hammer in his hand. He was going down the ravine, tapping the rocks with it. And Rufe thought he looked for all the world like some over-grown, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... will forget that day, nor the horrible next day, when Madame Gerard came and dressed him in the morning in his black clothes, while he listened to the noise of heavy feet and blows from a hammer in the next room. He suddenly remembered that he had not seen his mother since two ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... heard in the Shops of such Artizans, or that he was supposed to have been a real Trunk-maker, who after the finishing of his Days Work used to unbend his Mind at these publick Diversions with his Hammer in his Hand, I cannot certainly tell. There are some, I know, who have been foolish enough to imagine it is a Spirit which haunts the upper Gallery, and from Time to Time makes those strange Noises; and the rather, because he is observed to be louder than ordinary every Time the Ghost ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his jurisdiction the sees of Apsloe, Bergen, and Stavanger, those of the small Norwegian colonies, of the Orcades, Hebrides, and Furo Isles, and that of Gaard in Greenland. The Shetland and western isles of Scotland, with the Isle of Man, and a new bishopric which the cardinal founded at Hammer in Norway,—and in which he installed Arnold, at that time expelled the see of Gaard,—were also included in the province of Nidrosia. The bishop of Sodor and Man, as well as the bishops of the Shetland and western isles, had till this time been suffragans of the see of York, ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... the mirth of the young people, all the graver pleasure which the father took in the happiness of his son Edwin; his good son, who had never given him a single care. He declared this settling of Edwin had been to him almost like the days when he himself used to come of evenings, hammer in hand, to put up shelves in the house, or nail the currant-bushes against the wall, doing everything con amore, and with the utmost care, knowing it would come under the quick observant eyes ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... because then we'd be pitted against men in the economic struggle. But it's too late to guard against that. It's fact. But facts, we've discovered, are just what men find it so hard to recognize. Men are so dreadfully sentimental.' She smiled with the crowd at that, but she proceeded to hammer in her pet nail. 'They won't recognize those eighty-two women out of every hundred who are wage-earners. We used to believe men when they told us that it was unfeminine—hardly respectable—for women to be students and to aspire to the arts that bring fame and fortune. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... may have their wings broken at the humeri (E) by striking them with a stick or hammer in such a manner as not to break nor seriously disarrange the feathers; the largest-sized pliers (Fig. 16) may also be used for this purpose, but in that case a piece of clean rag should be folded in the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... my hammer in the hedge, climbed into the great waggon white and fragrant with the clean sweet meal, and flung myself down on the empty flour bags. The looped-back tarpaulin framed the long vista of my road with the downs beyond; and I lay in the cool dark, caressed by the fresh breeze ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... dinner time that I got a line on her. Say, she was a converser. No matter what was opened up, she heard her cue. And knock! Why, she had a tack hammer in each hand. They was cute, spiteful little taps, that made you snicker first, and then you got ashamed ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... change in him. For he, too, was haggard and utterly serious as she did not remember him. He stood before her fire and asked her jerkily if she would let him smoke. She said "Yes," and those were the only words spoken for five unbearable minutes the seconds of which her heart beat out like a shaky hammer in ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of its place; because when it has by the blow receiv'd the whole MOMENTUM of the hammer, its velocity will be so much less than that of the hammer as it has more matter than the hammer. Neither are we to attribute to the anvil a velocity less than the hammer in a reciprocal proportion of their masses or quantities of matter; for that would happen only if the anvil was to hang freely in the air (for example) by a rope, and it was struck horizontally by the hammer. Thus is the velocity given by the hammer distributed to all parts of a great stone, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... this morning when I dressed And read the mirror's verdict. Ah, the pain Is gnawing like a canker at my breast, Is beating like a hammer in my brain; I must speak out or break beneath the strain. I'm going bald on top. O cruel reef Where youthful hopes lie wrecked! O dismal lane Whose end is but the sere ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... offered to do it for one dollar and seventy-five cents. 'All right,' he said, 'come and begin tomorrow.' But I had no shingling hammer and all the cash I had in the world was seventy-five cents, which I at once expended in purchasing the necessary hammer. Next morning when I reached the job, my new hammer in hand, all ready to go to work, I was surprised and—what shall I say—dismayed, to find another man already at work, while the owner calmly came to me and said, 'I guess you'll have to let that job go, as this man here has undertaken to do it for ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... strike." He rubbed his forehead with his fingers. "It is like many worms crawling inside my head, when one speaks ill of women. My eyes get hot, and the red streaks come, and then I strike. It was such a thing that made me strike Pollak. But I had a hammer in my hand and I looked and saw that Pollak was dead, so I ran away from there and climbed onto the ship. I am glad I did not have a ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... a last word, and I am inclined to think that whatever Wace may say, it may be best to get out of the region of controversy as far as possible and hammer in two big nails—(1) that the Demonology of Christianity shows that its founders knew no more about the spiritual world than anybody else, and (2) that Newman's doctrine of "Development" is true to an extent of which the Cardinal did ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr. Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper, signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next used, there will be a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... been for Heber and for the bibliophobia which prevailed, when his possessions came to the hammer in 1834, it is doubtful whether Miller of Craigentinny could have achieved the extraordinary coup, which he did by transferring to his own shelves at one swoop the harvest of a lifetime—a lifetime almost ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... was hit by a sledge hammer in the next scrimmage," said Donald after the game. "I remember charging, but that was all. I was down and out, but when I came to I somehow wabbled to my feet and went back against the Indian. I was so dazed I could just see the big fellow moving about and as we sparred off for ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... The hammer in the high derrick ran smoothly to the top, paused, and fell. A half dozen times more it ripped. Then without delay the heavy chains were thrown around the winch, and the steam power began to draw the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... all hands set to work to repair damages. I now saw that the captain, who appeared so fine a gentleman in harbour, or when there was nothing to do, could work as well, if not rather better, than any one. With his coat off, and saw, axe, or hammer in hand, he worked away with the carpenter in fitting a new rail, and planking up the bulwarks; and the steward had twice to call him to breakfast before he obeyed the summons. His example inspired the rest; and in a very short time the bulwarks were made sufficiently ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a big man with a breezy manner, the sort of doctor who hits you with the force of a sledge-hammer in the small ribs, and asks you if you felt anything then. It was on this principle that he acted with regard to Barry's ankle. He seized it in both hands and gave it ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... my window.[16] After this my father freed me of the task of going with him on his rounds. But the anger of Juno was not yet exhausted; for, before I had fully recovered my health, I fell down-stairs (we were then living in the Via dei Maini), with a hammer in my hand, and by this accident I hurt the left side of my forehead, injuring the bone and causing a scar which remains to this day. Before I had recovered from this mishap I was sitting on the threshold of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the pale glimmering of sand, Henriot saw a figure moving. It came quickly towards him, yet unsteadily, and with a hurry that was ugly. Vance was on the way to fetch him. And the horror of the man's approach struck him like a hammer in the face. He closed his ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... genius for expansion. The metre is interesting. It is the heroic couplet, the same form exactly in which Pope wrote his major productions. Yet the rime, which is as evident as the recurring strokes of a tack-hammer in Pope, is scarcely heard at all in My Last Duchess. Its effect is so muffled, go concealed, that I venture to say that many who are quite familiar with the poem, could not declare offhand whether it were written in rime or in blank verse. This technical trick is accomplished by what the French ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... unmistakable, and was perceived by Herodotus.[1180] Clay pigmy figurines found on Phoenician sites[1181] very closely resemble the Egyptian images of that god; and the coins attributed to Cossura exhibit a similar dwarfish form, generally carrying a hammer in the right hand.[1182] An astral character has been attached by some writers to the Cabeiri,[1183] but chiefly on account of their number, which is ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... hastily and stand arrested, a bit of string in one hand and the hammer in the other, and peering reproachfully over the top of his ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... are many other animal facts; as purges, opiates, and even poisons, and contagious matter, cease to stimulate our system, after we have been habituated to their use. So some people sleep undisturbed by a clock, or even by a forge hammer in their neighbourhood: and not only continued irritations, but violent exertions of any kind, are succeeded by temporary paralysis. The arm drops down after violent action, and continues for a time useless; and it is probable, that those ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... day the woods are filled with scores of birds, and on the next hardly one will be seen. Often a single species or family will predominate, and one will remember "thrush days" or "woodpecker days." Yellow-bellied sapsuckers cross the path, flickers call and hammer in every grove, while in the orchards, and along the old worm-eaten fences, glimpses of red, white, and black show where redheaded woodpeckers are looping from trunk to post. When we listen to the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Sif, whom he was going to take home with him. When Freyja went forward to refill the bowls for him, he boasted that he was going to drink up all the ale of the asas. But when the asas grew weary of his arrogance, they named Thor's name. At once Thor was in the hall, swung his hammer in the air, and, being exceedingly wroth, asked who was to blame that dog-wise giants were permitted to drink there, who had given Hrungner permission to be in Valhal, and why Freyja should pour ale for him as she did in the feasts of the asas. Then ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... to find out by personal inspection the condition and value of what was to be sold, and it was his business, he said, to know as little about it as possible, for the less he knew the less it would interfere with his descriptive powers when, hammer in hand, he took his position on the bench. Having established a professional standing, Barnabas Beers was not a man to step down, and though the Professor, after a while, endeavored to extract some information from the auctioneer as to whether ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... at the tea in his cup, Vor 'twer all a-got cwold in the pot, But 'twer woo'se when his wife vill'd it up Vrom the vier, vor 'twer then scalden hot; Then he growl'd that the bread wer sich stuff As noo hammer in parish could crack, An' flung down the knife in a huff; Vor the edge o'n wer thicker'n the back. Vor beaekers an' meaekers o' tools Be ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... at Bridewell is described by Ward, in his "London Spy." Both men and women, it appears, were whipped on their naked backs before the court of governors. The president sat with his hammer in his hand, and the culprit was taken from the post when the hammer fell. The calls to knock when women were flogged were loud and incessant. "Oh, good Sir Robert, knock! Pray, good Sir Robert, knock!" ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and stuffing some spikes and a hammer in his pocket, Charley rapidly mounted a tall tree that stood close beside the truck. As luck would have it, the tree stood all by itself, its nearest neighbors having been cut in making the road. Two-thirds ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... thunderbolt, but rather power and might, and possibly, as the tool which shaped things, creative might. The Celts made ex voto hammers of lead, or used axe-heads as amulets, or figured them on altars and coins, and they also placed the hammer in the hand of ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... angle and direction. I will venture to say I have measured them as accurately as any geologist going could do...I have been working at so many things that I have not got on much with geology. I suspect the first expedition I take, clinometer and hammer in hand, will send me back very little wiser and a good deal more puzzled than when I started. As yet I have only indulged in hypotheses, but they are such powerful ones that I suppose, if they were put into action for but ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Winter laughed and shook his hammer in glee, as he drew near. Once, twice, three times, he rapped. The little boy within heard him, and rapped three times in reply,—just as Old Man Winter ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... double-barreled shotgun that had always given a good account, of itself in times past; and would again if called to show its sterling qualities. And with this in the hands of Thad Brewster, who was a perfectly fearless chap, according to his churns, who did not know that his boy heart could hammer in his breast like a runaway steam engine, why, they surely ought to be able to stave ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... home to his lodging, taking Gudbrand's son as a hostage; but he gave them a man as hostage in exchange. In the evening the king asked Gudbrand's son What their God was like? He replied that he bore the likeness of Thor; had a hammer in his hand; was of great size, but hollow within; and had a high stand, upon which he stood when he was out. 'Neither gold nor silver are wanting about him, and every day he receives four cakes of bread, besides meat.' They then went to bed; but the king watched all ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... have been taken out and transported great distances. The quarrying is done by drilling a series of small holes, six inches or more deep and almost the same distance apart, inserting steel wedges along the whole line and then tapping each gently with a hammer in succession, in order that the strain may be ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... a tooth removed. For some days distressed with a jumping toothache, he came aft to the mate for relief. Mr. Pike refused to "monkey" with the "fangled" forceps in the medicine-chest. He used a tenpenny nail and a hammer in the good old way to which he was brought up. I vouch for this. I saw it done. One blow of the hammer and the tooth was out, while Larry was jumping around holding his jaw. It is a wonder it wasn't fractured. But Mr. Pike avers he has removed hundreds of teeth by ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... per cent. This was almost the proportion at Paris many years ago, according to Parent-Duchatelet; today, according to Chevalier, it is larger; and Bourneville believes that 75 per cent, of the inmates of the Parisian venereal hospitals have practised homosexuality. Hammer in Germany has found among 66 prostitutes that 41 were homosexual.[156] Hirschfeld thinks that inverted women are specially prone to become prostitutes.[157] Eulenburg believes, on the other hand, that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... duty to finish a certain piece of work in a certain time. Now it is your duty to get well again, to be as strong as a horse by next year. It is your duty. If only the sledge-hammer would stop, that cursed sledge-hammer in the back ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... to laugh, glared at the wreck. In the doorway of the kitchen Grace Van Horne, hammer in hand, leaned against the jamb, her handkerchief at her mouth and tears in her eyes. Lavinia, majestic and rigid, dominated the scene. From behind the high-boy came ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... vent-plug, wipes and lays the hammer in place and the lock-string around it, then puts on the lock-cover; sees his gun properly secured, and the implements and spare articles returned to ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... to the Academy of Sciences some very interesting experiments on the development and distribution of heat produced by a blow of the steam hammer in the process of forging. The method used was as follows: The bar was carefully polished on both sides, and this polished part covered with a thin layer of wax. It was then placed on an anvil and struck by a monkey of known weight, P, falling from a height, H. The faces of the monkey ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... shores of the lake, and his time was mostly passed—for how better can a man spend a month of pleasure?—in looking for outcroppings of Devonian rock of the post-tertiary period. For which purpose he carried a vacation hammer in his pocket, and made from time to time a note or two as he went along, or filled his pockets with the chippings ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... uninfluenced, in sentiment at least, by the growing radicalism of the age, enjoyed the free, jolly, but unpresuming carriage of the stalwart old man, to whom, if indeed on his head the almond-tree was already in blossom, the grasshopper was certainly not yet a burden: he could still ply a sledge-hammer in each hand. "My lord," came from his lips in a clear, ringing tone of good-fellowship, which the nobleman who occasionally stopped at his forge to give him some direction about the shoeing of this or that horse, liked well to hear, and felt ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... everything. If anything happened to get broken, the pastor could either "mend it himself or direct how it was to be done. If a house was to be built for a new family of red men, who had never handled a saw or hammer in their lives, and had lived up to that time in tents, the pastor lent a hand to begin it, drew out the plan (not a very complicated thing certainly), set them fairly at work, and kept his eye on it until it was finished. In short, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... a slouch hat and light overcoat, stands holding a heavy smith's hammer at arm's length. EDE has a horseshoe in his right hand, a smaller hammer in his left, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... ages ago a beautiful fern grew in a deep vale, nodding in the breeze. One day it fell, complaining as it sank away that no one would remember its grace and beauty. The other day a geologist went out with his hammer in the interest of his science. He struck a rock; and there in the seam lay the form of a fern—every leaf, every fibre, the most delicate traceries of the leaves. It was the fern which ages since grew and dropped into the indistinguishable mass of vegetation. It perished; ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Do you think I would allow common upholsterers to touch your treasures! I wish to mount step-ladders in my shirt sleeves, with a big hammer in my hand, and ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... bell-buoy rocked in the tideway—with its melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint "tap-tap" was now audible. Barebone knew it to be the sound of a caulker's hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side. They were drifting past the mouth of ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... was absurd. Tears dropped into my open portmanteau; I felt insufferably sad; but how I longed to live! I was ready to embrace and include in my short life every possibility open to man. I wanted to speak, to read, and to hammer in some big factory, and to stand on watch, and to plough. I yearned for the Nevsky Prospect, for the sea and the fields— for every place to which my imagination travelled. When Zinaida Fyodorovna came in, I rushed to open the door for her, and ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my breath. Then, however, it was always there, a ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... life, waking, eating, buying, and selling. Black men and ocher-colored folk. There seemed to be a mystery somewhere. One imagined them gathering at night in secret to begin their real un-understood life. At times it seemed impossible that it was the same world. Surely the sun that struck like a hammer in Jamaica could not be the gracious warm planet that gilded the gorse of the Antrim glens. And up the Baltic in mid-winter it was bleak as a candle, and even then in Antrim it had a great kindliness. Nor were the winds the same. The hot ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Dick as they ran up and down the edge of the moat howling with rage and disappointment. "Come in if you would sup on arrow-heads such as this," and he sent one of his deadly shafts through the breast of a red-headed fellow who waved a torch in one hand and a blacksmith's hammer in ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... had worked marvels: in a week M. Moriaz felt like a new man. There had come to him a most formidable appetite, and he could walk for hours at a time without becoming weary. He abused his growing strength by constantly strolling through the mountains without a guide, hammer in hand; and every day, in spite of the remonstrances of his daughter, he increased the length of his excursions. The more people know, the more inquisitive they become; and, when one is inquisitive, one can go to great lengths without feeling fatigue; one only becomes conscious of this after the exertion ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... parlor, and proceeding to the farmyard, made a signal to one of the Hogans, who went down hammer in hand to where he stood. During a period of ten minutes, he and Hycy remained in conversation, but of what character it was, whether friendly or otherwise, the distance at which they stood rendered it ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... words "How to Make" is perhaps the most distinctive product of the present-day publishing house. No other type of book can so effectively win to a love for reading a child who seems indifferent to books; who, as a boy friend of mine used to say, "would rather hammer in nails than read." The "How to Make" books tell such a boy how to hammer in nails to some purpose. I happened to see recently a volume called "Boys' Make-at-Home Things." With much curiosity I turned its pages,—pages ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... the hatchet and the axe. Grumbling something under his breath, Pollock shouldered the staples and thrust the hammer in his pocket. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... hall the coffin waits, and the idle armourer stands. At his belt the coffin nails, and the hammer in his hands. The bed of state is hung with crape—the grand old bed where she was wed— And like an upright corpse she sitteth gazing dumbly at the bed. Hour by hour her serving-men enter by the curtain'd door, And with steps of muffled woe pass breathless o'er the silent floor, And marshal mutely ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... door, with the saw in one hand and the hammer in the other, very much in the attitude of listening. At Matthew's approach, he commenced feeling the teeth of the saw, as if to ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... A workman's hammer in the court below chim'd in, beating out the tune, and driving the moral home. I heard a low sob behind me. The jailer's daughter ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... fearful strain on the giant, but he held fast as if his own life depended on it. The cords stood out on his neck and forehead, and perspiration rolled down his face. He could hear his own heart thumping like a hammer in his breast. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... of exhibiting signs of the business or profession in which they are engaged. The Pawnbroker decorates his door with three gold balls—the Barber, in some places, (though it is a practice almost out of date) hangs out a long pole—the Gold-beater, an arm with a hammer in the act of striking—the Chemist, a head of Glauber, or Esculapius—the Tobacconist, a roll of tobacco, and of late it has become customary for these venders of pulverised atoms called snuff, to station a wooden figure of a Highlander, in the act of taking a pinch of Hardham's, or High-dried, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his disordered faculties, raised his rifle to help his champion with a shot. His heart beat like a hammer in his throat, but he knew there was only one thing to do, that was to get the rifle-sights carefully lined in his eye and shoot when Scuffy gave ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... out from the forge with his hammer in his hand. He had, I remember, a grey flannel shirt, which was open at the neck and turned up at the sleeves. My uncle ran his eyes over the fine lines of his magnificent figure with the glance of ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the noise of the messenger's ascent. Standing beside a boulder of grey granite, before a background of the gnarled dwarf-cedars, his hat off, his blue shirt open at the neck, his bare forearms brown, hairy, and muscular, a hammer in his right hand, his left resting lightly on his hip, he might have been the Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as any ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... repeated, with his hand on the knob. "Minnie, the old place will be under the hammer in three weeks, and if you know what's good for you, you'll sign in under the new management while there's a vacancy. You've been the whole show here for so long that it will be hard for you to line up in the back row ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... limber yellow-hammer In the dawn of spring and sultry summer, In hedge or tree the hours beguiling With notes as of one ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... watched him with the hammer in her hand, ready to repeat the blow if necessary; indeed, she would have repeated it had it not been that after he fell, in turning over Smallbones' head had rolled under the low bedstead where ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... He had a hammer in his hand and was hitting some object in the roadway over which he was bending with a concentrated interest that made him quite unconscious of ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... shook with waterfall. And before I had time to ask, "Who goes there?"—as in this solitude one might do—a slight, short man, whom I knew by sight as a workman of Aber-Aydyr, named Evan Peters, was close to me, and was swinging a slate-hammer in one hand, and bore in the other a five-foot staff. He seemed to be amazed at sight of me, but touched his hat with his staff, and said: "Good-night, gentleman!" in Welsh; for the natives of this part are very polite. "Good-night, Evan!" I answered, ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... 164, differs from the hammer in having a wooden instead of a steel head. A maul or beetle is a heavy wooden mallet. The effect of the blow of a mallet is quite different from that of a hammer, in that the force is exerted more gradually; whereas the effect of the hammer ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... eyes. In fiery blackness he kicked and struck in useless froglike movements. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer in his ears. Streaks of red fire played against the blackness of his eyelids. He knew that in a few more seconds his straining lungs would gulp in the stinging ooze, he knew his will could not prevent his drawing in some ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... more each day so as to win somewhat more of wealth. But soon we found that it would not be so; for they had no mind to till the teeming earth or work in the acres we had given them, or to sit at the loom, or hammer in the stithy, or do any manlike work; it was we that must do all that for their behoof, and it was altogether for them that we laboured, and nought for ourselves; and our bodies were only so much our own as they were needful ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the shares in this stock that should be offered while the price was low, and keep them as an investment. He felt sure that he with the New York capitalist had now money enough to "swing" all the shares in market, and they each agreed to purchase all that should be brought to the hammer in their respective cities. Following up his promise faithfully, Bullion bought all the stock of the railroad that came into State Street, and in this way rapidly exhausted his ready money. Then he raised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... the quartz is white as milk, and the feldspar red as blood. When still wet by the receding tide, these veins and beds seem as if highly polished, and present a beautiful aspect; and it was always with great delight that I used to pick my way among them, hammer in hand, and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... his hammer in his hand, ready to defend them. Then they heard a terrible noise and roaring. As it began to dawn, Thor went out, and saw a man lying in the wood not far from them; he was by no means small, and he slept ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... began to hammer in her, which had not so hammered since Osborn started upon his joy-year. No more could she bear contemplation of Julia and her delight. She ran along the corridor to her room, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... their aprons and paper caps, and Adam was standing with his left hand on Seth's shoulder, while he pointed with the hammer in his right to some boards which they were looking at. Their backs were turned towards the door by which Dinah entered, and she came in so gently that they were not aware of her presence till they heard her voice saying, "Seth Bede!" Seth ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... protected from future prowlers. As a final hint, however, she went back to the shop and mixed some paint with lampblack and oil, and lettered a thin board which she afterwards carried up and nailed firmly across the outside kitchen door. Hammer in hand she backed away and read the words ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... and is nailed to a lofty cliff by Hephaestus. His appeal to Nature, when his tormentors depart and he is left alone, is peculiarly pathetic. The daughters of Oceanus, constituting the Chorus, who have heard the sound of the hammer in their ocean cave, are now borne in aloft on a winged car, and bewail the fate of the outraged god. Oceanus appears upon a winged steed, and offers his mediation; but this is scornfully rejected. The resolution ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... him a wretched sum for it, Matteo besought him straitly that he should accept it as a present. To this the other would not consent, and yet wished to have it for the same miserable price; whereupon Matteo, flying into a rage, crushed it to powder with a hammer in his presence. For the same King Matteo executed many cartoons for tapestries, and with these, to please His Majesty, he was obliged to go to Flanders, and to stay there until they had been woven in silk and gold; which being finished and taken to France, they were held to ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... the two tents were pitched. Priscilla was sitting on a camp stool at the entrance of Lady Isabel's tent. The Reverend Barnabas Pennefather, looking cold and miserable, was crouching at her feet in a waterproof coat. Lady Isabel was going round the tents with a hammer in her hand driving the pegs deeper ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME ABORTION of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... given to a woman, who was sitting on a bench with a little hammer in her hand and a small steel block in front of her. She laid a curly needle on the block, and hammered it till it was straight, and then ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... scream, rushed to the door with her mouth full of tacks, and a hammer in her hand, just in time to get butted into by Billy, which laid her flat on her back in less time than you can wink. As luck would have it, the shock made her open her mouth and the tacks flew out for if she had swallowed them she ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... King went home to his lodging, and with him Gudbrand's son as a hostage, while the King gave them another man in exchange. In the evening the King asked Gudbrand's son how their god was made. He said that he was fashioned to represent Thor: he had a hammer in his hand, and was tall of stature, hollow within, and there was a pedestal under him on which he stood when out-of-doors; nor was there lack of gold and silver upon him. Four loaves of bread were brought to him every day, and flesh-meat therewith. After this talk they ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... producing, when the two surfaces came together, a complete cylindrical cavity of the proper size to receive the barrel to be forged. The workman, after heating a small portion of the barrel in his forge, placed it in its bed upon the anvil, and set his hammer in motion, turning the barrel round and round continually under the blows. Only a small portion of the seam is closed by this process at one heat, eleven being required to complete the work. To effect by this operation a perfect junction of the iron, so that it should be continuous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Thor), an angry warrior hurling his hammer, the thunder-bolt, from the stormy clouds. These thunder-bolts were often found buried in the earth; and being really the polished stone-axes of the earlier inhabitants, they do actually resemble a hammer in shape. But Woden, the special god of the Teutonic race, had practically usurped the highest place in their mythology: he is represented as the leader of the Germans in their exodus from Asia to north-western ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... playing in those days. Naturally, the young man was extremely mortified at this, and endeavored to apologize over and over again. But the composer cut him short. "Say not a word," said he; "if I had your strength I would break every hammer in the piano when I played that piece." This may be one of those "ben trovato" anecdotes which, if ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... cap on her head, endeavouring to push up the lid with all her might. Jules Favre, lean, small, head enormous, under lip thick and protruding, hair wildly flying like a willow in a storm, wearing a dress coat, and holding a nail in one hand and a hammer in the other, with his knee pressed upon the coffin-lid, is trying to nail it down, in spite of the very natural protestations of the half-naked woman. In the distance, and running towards them, is Monsieur Thiers, with a great broad face and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton |
