"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whole must yield, and the charge for repairs is probably great, but, on the best building the Ecole des Beaux Arts can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blows over its windy plains, has managed to survive, after a fashion, six ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... lieutenant-colonel, Elisha S. Kellogg, Derby; major, Nathaniel Smith, Woodbury; adjutant, Charles J. Deming, Litchfield; quartermaster, Bradley D. Lee, Barkhamsted; chaplain, Jonathan A. Wainwright, Torrington; surgeon, Henry Plumb, New Milford. ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. They never ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... (Water) Fowl. Observe the Evening is best before Sun-set. Stake down your Nets on each side the River half a foot within the Water, the lower part so plumb'd as to sink no further; the upper Slantwise shoaling against, but not touching by two foot, the water, and the Strings which bear up this upper side fastned to small yielding sticks prickt in the Bank, that as the Fowl strike may ply ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... All that day I hadn't eaten anything. I hadn't slept worth speaking of for three nights. The whole game was up for me. I was worse than ruined. I had half a crown in my pocket. I had ten or twelve pounds in the bank—and they wouldn't let me overdraw a farthing. I tell you, I was just plumb busted. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... there employed whose touch is like the stroke of an artist. He handled each brick as if it were porcelain, balanced it carefully in his hand, measured with his eye just the amount of mortar which it needed, and dropped the block into its bed, without staining its edge, without varying from the plumb line, by a stroke of hand-craft as true as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Sam, "this here won't do. I know you're plumb tired out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, ain't there no mo' houses in the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... He didn't even look the same. Sich eyes! Al'ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They'd give anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after that—said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with him—he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away from that grave—you don't want to look odder than ye are by nature. And when ye git ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the direction of the plumb-line and in the force of gravity as observed widely and accurately over the Earth's surface indicate that the surface strata are very irregular as to density. To harmonize the observed facts Hayford has shown the need of assuming ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... know them. Plumb dissatisfied with me, ain't you? Makes me feel awful bad." Jim was sailing into the full tide of his sarcasm when Keller touched him on ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the devil's own imps; I'd a heap rather play with a rattlesnake than him." He paused, to assure him self that Sikes was safely out of hearing. "I thought maybe I better tell yer while I had a chance. That fellar is plumb pisen, miss." ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... we are seeing them, you can bet they are seeing us! There hasn't been a yard for a mile back, where the hoof tracks weren't bloody. They'll lose a horse if they keep on to-day: then, they'll be without a packer; but if they are plumb up against it, why don't they face round and fight? They are three to our two? They could hide behind any of these sand rolls and pot us crossing the sinks; but if they are not at the end of their tether, why don't they hustle and get out of sight? If they aren't played out, they could outride ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sech a mighty job at last. But law, if it hed been Peter Birt 'stid of me, that thar wild tur-r-key would hev laid on this hyar ledge plumb till the Jedgmint Day!" ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... advised his frantic parents to throw water in his face. Chip told her exactly what he had told the Old Man, in exactly the same tone; so the Countess retreated, declaring that he wouldn't be let to act that way if he was her kid, and that he was plumb everlastingly spoiled. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... no chance of hit or miss—it is inevitable as life—it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections, not only in the committees that were ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... to shoot unless officially authorized or personally desirous of visiting the silver-mines of Siberia. Crack! thug! The smoke clears away. By Jove! his imperial majesty has done it cleverly; hit the brute plumb on the os frontis, or through the heart, it makes no difference which. Down drops Bruin, kicking and tearing up the earth at a dreadful rate; cheers rend the welkin; pots, pans, and kettles are banged. High above all rises the stern voice of the autocrat, calling for another rifle, which is immediately ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... necessarily appear very benign, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather; for in such cases there will be frequent conjunctions of sirloins and ribs of beef; aspects of legs and shoulders of mutton, with refrenations of loins of veal, shining near the watery triplicity of plumb-porridge—together with trine and sextile of minced pies; collared brawn from the Ursus major, and sturgeon from Pisces—all for the honour of Christmas: and I think it is a much pleasanter sight than a Covent-Garden comedy, to see a dozen or two of husbandmen, farmers, and honest tenants, at ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... thus, the thicknesse of halfe the earth is (as shall be shewed) about 4000 miles, now the plumb height of the highest mountaines is not accounted aboue a mile and a halfe, or two miles at the most. Now betweene two miles and foure thousand, there is no sensible proportion, and a line that is foure thousand and two miles ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... thought, to perfection, If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness, It is the need of it,—it is this sad self-defeating dependence. Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you. But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose. All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something. Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming, With the ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... here, tropical nature's desire for a welter of life. And when they're too young to have developed the hard outer shell of experience, why, their womanhood is just naked to the searching, smirching tropical sun, and they go plumb crazy. Develop dual personalities. Lose their civilization. Want to go into the jungle, and so on. Thin white skin, like thinnest silk, and blue veins full of young red blood showing through. A fine spectacle, Payne; a natural princess among girls ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... its shorter side, and upon any length of line which may be taken on the tracing-board as a base for elevation, an Equilateral Triangle will be found whose sides are of course all equal and therefore known, as they are equal to the base, and whose line joining apex to centre of base is a true Plumb line, forming at its foot the perfect right angle, so important in the laying of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... earthquake was ten years ago, just after I came. I reckon I oughter remember it. It was a queer sort o' day in the fall, dry and hot as if thar might hev bin a fire in the woods, only thar wasn't no wind. Not a breath of air anywhar. The leaves of them alders hung straight as a plumb-line. Except for that thar stream and that thar wheel, nuthin' moved. Thar wasn't a bird on the wing over that canyon; thar wasn't a squirrel skirmishin' in the hull wood; even the lizards in the rocks stiffened like stone Chinese idols. ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... me on one minute and holding me back the next just because you got to annex the scalp of every man your sweet eyes fall on. That's all right, honey, I ain't blaming you; but there's been moments lately, Pearl, when I've thought that maybe you might care, moments when I been plumb crazy with joy. You ain't let 'em last very long, honey," with a strained smile, "but they most made up for the black question mark that came after 'em." He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his wet brow with a ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... what it is given to very few men to see. From horizon to horizon, as if built by plumb, line and square, stretched a glittering wall, reaching from the forest to the sky. The base of this wall was lost in snow-white billows of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the three of us got after one two year old—a bull and a bad 'un. Shorty was on one side and me and Cuttle was on the other side. Shorty daubed his rope and made a fair catch, but when his hoss set back the rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he could ease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the rope whenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on this rope and was pulling back hard when the ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... every sort of human notion that's opposite to mine. And I'm crazy for him. Say, Bud, I love him better than anything in life. If anything happened to that boy, why, I guess all that's worth while in me would die plumb out." ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... flame did they go plunging down the depths, gyrating like mad comets with long smoke-trailers and redly licking manes of fire. Not in shattered fragments did they burst and plumb the abyss. No; quite intact, unharmed, but ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... long spell. While us was dere I 'member de Klu Kluxers an' all de carryin' on. Dey would dress up in white sheets an' come 'roun' an' scare all de Niggers. Dey'd whip de bad ones. Some of 'em would git cow horns an' put on dey heads. One time dey chased a Nigger plumb under de house jus' a-playin' wid 'im. Dey was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... this circle business should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count—but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted with ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Jephthah, "offspring is cur'ous. Sometimes hit 'pears like you air kin to them, and they ain't kin to you. That Pony boy of your'n is son to a full mealsack; he's plumb filial and devoted thataway to a dollar, if so be he thinks you've got one in yo' pocket. The facts in the business air, Nancy, that you've done sp'iled him tell he's plumb rotten, and a few of the jailings that you so kindly ricommend for my pair ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... the bullsnakes up at Lead in the Black Hills. I was only a kid then. This wasn't no such tur'ble long a snake, but he was more'n a foot thick. Looked just like a sahuaro stalk. Man name of Terwilliger Smith catched it. He named this yere bull-snake Clarence, and got it so plumb gentle it followed him everywhere. One day old P. T. Barnum come along and wanted to buy this Clarence snake—offered Terwilliger a thousand cold—but Smith wouldn't part with the snake nohow. So finally they fixed up ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... the observer's attention, and, indeed, fills him with amazement, as does their construction in general. What instruments of precision did a rude people possess who could raise such walls, angles, monoliths, true and plumb as the work ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... to be tied up on the Two-Bar and muzzled, for you're plumb mad, McNair! It's just that kind of firebrand talk that's hurting our cause. The farmers have got enough enemies now, God knows, without making a lot of new ones. Doggone your hide, Mac, what're you trying to do?—Stir up another ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... it had been done with a knife, doesn't it? Alpine crags seem vertical but are nearly always inclined; their primary rock, you know, cannot flake off abruptly like this tufa. This is a genuine precipice. Plumb!" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... fitted him to a Hair, he knew how to make the most of a Pudding; no Pudding came amiss to him, he would make a Pudding out of a Flint-stone, comparatively speaking. It is needless to enumerate the many sorts of Pudding he made, such as Plain Pudding, Plumb Pudding, Marrow Pudding, Oatmeal Pudding, Carrot Pudding, Saucesage Pudding, Bread Pudding, Flower Pudding, Suet Pudding, and in short, every Pudding but Quaking Pudding, which was solely invented ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... ones, an' gets to a rock, where we c'n sit an' study natur' a bit, before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o' Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I looks up, he's plumb absent. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of plumb. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... connected the mast with the ship. These were removed, and a heavy trap door, upon which the foot of the flagstaff rested, was its only support. A massive bolt alone held the trap in place. Will and the Professor were by the ice shaft, watching the plumb-line. At a signal, the Doctor struck the bolt a heavy blow with a sledge, the trap fell, and the beautiful mast shot like a flash of lightning down through the frosty atmosphere, entered the ice hole precisely in the center, and sank to the depth of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... of course," he said shortly, "but if you don't work today, Gilbert, you're plumb out of it. I can't keep your place open for you forever, you know. What do you ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bit chesty the first day that he was ordered to shoot the sun," Dave laughed. "Dig took the sextant, and made a prize shot, or thought he did. After he had got the sun, plumb at noon, he lowered the instrument and made his reading most carefully. Then he went into the chart room, and got busy with his calculations. The longer Dig worked the worse his head ached. He stared at his figures, tore them up and tried again. Six or eight times he worked the problem ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... guess what I was doin' there. It's surer here. He's got to come down the trail, an' when I spot him by the Juniper clump"—he jerked an arm towards a spot almost a mile farther up the valley—"I kin scoot up the underbrush a bit and git him—plumb. I could do it from here, sure, but I don't want no mistake. Once only, jest one shot, that's all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... blood in you, which showed up," exclaimed Joe, catching the boy's arm in a friendly grip, with an odd respect in his touch, which marked the admission of young Farrar into the brotherhood of hunters. "I hadn't a charge left, an' not even my hunting-knife. Lots o' city swells 'u'd have been plumb scared before a growler like that,"—touching Bruin's carcass with his foot,—"even if they had a small arsenal to back 'em up. They'd have dropped rifle and cartridges, and hugged the nearest trunk. I've seen fellers do it scores ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... think he welcomed sickness just so he could hide at home safe." There were tears of another sort in Miss Schmitt's eyes now. Kessler thought he detected a brightness in his wife's eyes. "No," Miss Schmitt said, "Bob was afraid of life. Just plumb scared." She refused to let the tears flow. "Oh, but I'm being a terrible hostess! I have so few visitors now. How ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith
... in vain. He could see a long way, and sometimes it almost seemed as if he saw farther than at others; but lower down there was always that purply transparent blackness into which his eyesight plunged, but could not quite plumb. ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the crackers and dropped my cigar into Vesuvius. I tell you he was worth four and eightpence, and the man was right when he said there wasn't his match in London. I doubt if there was his match anywhere for being plumb- full of red balls and green balls and blue balls and crimson stars and fizzlegigs and whole torrents of tiny crackers and chase-me- quicks, and when you about thought he was never going to stop he shot up a silver ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... too strong meat for babes. Now I'm Orthodox to the core" (here she lowered her voice as if there might be a stray deacon in the garden), "but 'pears to me if I was makin' out lessons for young ones I wouldn't fill 'em so plumb full o' brimstun. Let 'em do a little suthin' to deserve it 'fore you scare 'em ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... you plumb bugs? Why—" Vic gulped and stuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it, sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to get it too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salary that'll ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the power and the wisdom which knew all but could foreknow nothing, into abysses of anguish, suspense, and disappointment such as—Heaven be thanked!—we common men and women are not called upon to plumb. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... got to looking at the teamsters as of no particular account when they walked out, but when they wouldn't work, they became the most important part of the show, and after the show was over the managers who had told the striking teamsters to go plumb, found that they had gone plumb, and they had to rush all over Pittsburg and find them, and grant their demands, and get ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... confront The individual who could And won't: But horny-handed sons of toil, Who now purvey our meats and drinks, Our gardens devastate, and spoil Our sinks, Shall seldom condescend to take That inconsiderable sum For which they daily butch, and bake, And plumb; Such humble votaries of trade No more shall follow arts like these; Since most of them ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... sixth letter I have written you on the subject. What can be the reason of the great delay in forwarding letters by the post? Your last was above a fortnight old before it got to Princeton; and, upon inquiry, Daddy Plumb informs me the riders are ordered to ride forty miles a day during the season. Must I attribute it to the fatality which has already separated us, and, I fear, is determined to put an eternal bar to our junction? Such an event would blast all ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Sharp and his wife, Miss Annie, owned us and, Child, dey was grand folks. Deir old home was 'way up in Jackson County 'twixt Athens and Jefferson. Dat big old plantation run plumb back down to de Oconee River. Yes, mam, all dem rich river bottoms ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... is such a church! It ought to have been our St. Botolph's. ... Such a verdant covert wood Stothard might paint for the haunting of Dioneus, Pamphillus, and Fiammetta as they walk in the novel of Boccacce. The ground shadowed with bluebells, even to the formation of a plumb-like bloom upon its little knolls and ridges; and ever through the dell windeth a little path chequered with the shades of aspens and ashes and the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Take this Plumb when just upon the turning ripe, prick with a Pen-knife to the very Stone on that Side where the Cleft is, put them into cold Water as you do them, then set them over a very slow Fire to scald; when they are become very tender, take them carefully out of the ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... lit fire-crackers on my saddle. Then we went out jest's if a kiss was nothin', an' I wasn't three strides into my gait 'fore I felt the boss knoo his business, an' was trustin' me. So I studied to please him, an' he never took the whip from the dash—a whip drives me plumb distracted—an' the upshot was that—waal, I've come up the Back Pasture to-day, an' the coupe's tipped clear over twice, an' I've waited till 'twuz fixed each time. You kin judge for yourselves. I don't set up to be no better than my neighbours,—specially ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... I'se goin' ter take care ob you jis' like de Boy an' his Mother tole me. I is sho! Nothin' ain't goin' to happen 'long o' you while George Washington McKinley Jones knows what hisself am about! I'se goin' ter put dis letter in my breas'-pocket, an' it's goin' ter stay right plumb ober my heart, till I take yer back to dem two all right! Now, sah, let me show de boys. Lawd! I clar if my mammy"—the proud smile quivered—"should see me, I jes' reckon de visions she'd have would ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... creature of flame and fire. She said the most outrageous things at dinner, talking a lot of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away if any more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For an instant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winging lightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughter rose and fell around her. With butterfly touch she opened the cupboard of memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, skimming the thin ice of bygone ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... WANT of her?" he demanded slowly. "Why, if you'd been five years without sight of a white woman, an' then you woke up one morning to meet an angel like HER on the trail two thousand miles up in nowhere what would you want of her? I was stunned, plumb stunned, or I'd had her then. And after that, if it hadn't been for ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... evenin' the boss puts on a kind of eatin' jacket, a sawed-off coat that makes a growed man look plumb foolish, and she comes out in silk and satin that shows considerable hide. Have you ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... bird, talkin'. An old gobbler is tellin' his hens that day is comin'. It's a plumb waste on his part, because they know it theirselves, but he must jest let 'em know what a smart bird he is. An' it's that pride uv his that will be his ruin. Git up, Paul; we must have him an' one ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... don't have to tell you why," he said diplomatically. "You know as well as I do she's plumb corroded with jealousy of you for winning out with her dear Abigail just when she thought she had things fixed. I don't suppose you know the inside story of how your predecessor got the sack? The Pride person ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... lofty winter one I admired very much, for they were both spacious and well-situated—on the side of the promenade nearest to the bath. Diphilus had placed the columns out of the perpendicular, and not opposite each other. These, of course, he shall take down; he will learn some day to use the plumb-line and measure. On the whole, I hope Diphilus's work will be completed in a few months: for Caesius, who was with me at the time, keeps a very ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the right of the window is a chest of drawers, and a washstand is against the wall, Left. On a small table to the right of the bed an electric reading lamp is turned up, and there is a light over the dressing-table. The INSPECTOR is standing plumb centre looking at the bed, and DE LEVIS by the back of the chair at the foot of the bed. WINSOR and CANYNGE are close to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to home!" laughed the cow-boy. "You just light down and we'll trail over to Chola Charley's and prospect a tub of frijoles. The dinner-bell when you are broke is plumb correct. Got any more of that po'try broke to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't have built a ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Captain Wass. "She's a-going to tramp him plumb underfoot—unless she's going to get up a little more speed and jump over him!" he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... 'em was still hitched to the fence, an' t'other was gone. We stood around a minute or two examinin' the hoss an' then pa says let's go up the road aways an' see if we c'n see anything. An' by gosh, we hadn't gone more'n fifty feet afore we come plumb on a man layin' in the middle of the road. Pa shook him an' he didn't let out a sound. He was warm but deader'n a tombstone. I wuz fer leavin' him there till we c'd git the coroner, but pa says no. We'd carry him down to our porch, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... fringe of it; but to a landsman sufficiently daunting while it lasted. Late in the afternoon I thrust my head up for a look around. We were weltering along in horrible forty-foot seas, over which our bulwarks tilted at times until from the companion hatchway I stared plumb into the grey sliding chasms, and felt like a fly on the wall. The Lady Nepean hurled her old timbers along under close-reefed maintopsail, and a rag of a foresail only. The captain had housed topgallant masts and lashed his guns inboard; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,—and 'tain't ever the Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they don't make that five-dollar kind of wine ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... building at the corner of Third and Market streets, as I passed, I saw to be more than a foot out of plumb and hanging over the street like the leaning ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... was the laconic but excellent speech of Mr. Henry Plumb. He already had his forefinger on ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... here, Allen. If you think you can marry Morton Bassett's daughter with that kind of a scandal in your pocket, I tell you you're mad—you've plumb gone insane! Great God, boy, you don't know the meaning of the words you use. You handle that thing like a child with a loaded pistol. Don't you see what that would mean—to Marian, to Blackford, to Mrs. Bassett—to Aunt Sally! Now, you want my advice, or you said ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... pone. He'd take Nella-Rose quick enough if she'd have him, but barrin' her, he hangs to Marg so as ter be nigh Nella-Rose in any case. And right here Burke Lawson figgers. Burke's got two naturs, same as old Satan. Marg can play on one and get him plumb riled up to anythin'; Nella-Rose can twist him around her finger and make him ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... folded the note, and as he put it in his vest pocket he felt the proud beat of his heart. Fifteen minutes later when the convention adjourned for noon, Nathan and Morty Sands ran plumb into Thomas Van Dorn, sitting in the back room of the bank, wet eyed and blubbering. The Judge was slumped over the big, shining table, his jaws trembling, his hands fumbling the ink stands and paper weights. His eyes were ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... perfect development, however, of this pattern-producing faculty a severe training is necessary. The art student must begin by painting china, crockery, and 'still life' generally. He should rule his straight lines and employ actual measurements wherever it is possible. He will also find that a plumb-line comes in very useful. Then he should proceed to Greek sculpture, for from pottery to Phidias is only one step. Ultimately he will arrive at the living model, and as soon as he can 'faithfully represent any object that he has before him' he is a painter. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... skeered for fear Ah wouldn't qualify fo' de position ob 'sistant physicum janitor dat Ah jes' scratched gravel night an' day, and it wa'n't long before the reduction of the pain in mah muscles begun to took place. I was plumb busted when Marsa Frank gib me dat position. Ah didn't hab a cent about me. Eber hear ob a coon what didn't hab a cent about him? Yah! yah! yah! Well, sah, dat was my condition. Now, sah, Ah'ze rich. Ah'ze gut eleben dol's in de bank, an' Ah'ze addin' to it continerly, sah—Ah'ze ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... Then, 'That's all right,' he announced cheerily. 'You'll set watches, Mr. Grimalson, and keep her in easy hail. The weather will certainly hold fine for a bit, and early to-morrow I'll be alongside again with instructions. Plumb south our course lies, for the present. I'll tell you why, later. You have ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them bursts from its cell with a horrible yell and in the lulls between pangs you go forth among men with the haunted look in your eye of one who is listening for the footfalls of a dread apparition, and one half of your head is puffed out of plumb as though you were engaged in the whimsical idea of holding an egg plant in the side of your jaw. A kind friend meets you, and, speaking with that high courage and that lofty spirit of sacrifice which a kind friend always exhibits when it's your tooth that is ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... vans He spread for flight, and, in the surging smoke Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed— Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, Nor ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... They told her to get up her clothes, they would be by for her. She was grandma's and grandpa's owners' nurse girl. She told them and they sent her on to tell the white folks. They sent her clear off. She didn't want to leave. She said her master was plumb good to her and them all. They kept her hid out. The Yankees come slipping back to tole her off. They couldn't find her nowhere. They didn't ax about her. They was stealing her for a cook she thought. She couldn't cook to do no good she said. She wasn't married for a long time ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... "Seein' I just got her a week ago last Saturday. I ASKED Casper Hoyt what under the canopy possessed him to give her a name like that. Said his father named her. Well, I thought his father must be plumb foolish, or something, but I didn't like to say so to HIM. Seems too bad to waste them gilt letters, or I'd a-had another name on her 'fore this. I wanted to use as many of them letters as I could, an' I thought of callin' her for ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... accomplish their overthrow. And,—what is completely analogous,—in Amos vii. 1-3, the prophet beholds the approaching divine judgment under the image of a swarm of locusts, just as, in ver. 4, under that of a fire, and in ver. 7, under that of a plumb-line. All these three images are in substance identical; their meaning is expressed in ver. 9 by the words: "The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be destroyed." The locusts denote destroying ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... walls here were lined completely with small flat bricks, and looked much the same all round. I examined these bricks as closely as I might, and took course by course, looking first at the north side where the plumb-line hung, and afterwards turning round in the bucket till I was afraid of getting giddy; but to little purpose. They could see my candle moving round and round from the well-top, and knew no doubt what I was at, but Master Turnkey grew impatient, and shouted down, 'What are you ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... down, he gets scraped cleaner and cleaner, till the last polishes him as smooth as a yearling baby. Having thus reached the lower end of the table, there are a quantity of hooks fitted to strong wooden arms, which revolve round a stout pillar, and which, in describing the circle, plumb the lower end of the table. On these piggy is hooked, and the operation of cutting open and cleansing is performed—at the rate of three a minute—by operators steeped in blood, and standing in an ocean of the same, despite the eternal buckets of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... George Sand must be gratified this time! Your article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! what enthusiasm! ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... should meet the upper portion of the door, when it may be assumed that a perfect standing posture has been taken. The poise will seem at first to be a little forward of a straight line, but to disprove this it will be found that a plumb line dropped from the ear will fall through shoulder, hip and ankle. The head will be poised as if to carry a burden steadily on the crown and the weight of the body will rest on the ball of the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the weapon landed plumb in the middle of the German's forehead. He had opened his mouth to shout, but no sound came forth. The rifle fell from his hands and he went ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... wrenched a huge mouthful from one of the "hanks" to test the quality. "But I'll tell ye what's a fact. When I come home tonight, after a meetin' of that there Committee of Safety I was tellin' you about, I found that I had plumb disremembered to fetch along the bacon, meal, an' taters that my wife done told me to bring, an' so I thought I would jest run over an' see if I couldn't borry some of you to last me a ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... my reasons, George. But I don't mean to go into 'em. All that's dead and gone. There was a pack of fellows then on my shoulders—I was plumb tired of 'em. I had to get rid of—I did get rid of 'em—and you, too. I knew you were inquiring after me, and I didn't want inquiries. They didn't suit me. You may conclude what you like. I tell you those times are dead and gone. But it seemed to me that Robert Anderson was best ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drew back, leaving the old man absorbed in ecstasy, and tried to see if the light, falling plumb upon the canvas at which he pointed, had neutralized all effects. They examined the picture, moving from right to left, standing directly before it, bending, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... throat, and winked hard to keep the tears from starting again—"'cause he ain't got much appetite. But when he's eatin' good his legs is jest great. Why, there ain't no other dog in Golconda that's got as strong legs as Baldy when he's—when he's eatin' good," he repeated hastily. "An' Golconda's plumb full o' fine dogs." ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... pots. The upper pot is open at the top, but the lower one has a cover, with hinged doors; and from the top of the cover a funnel is carried to a set of condensers. At a convenient distance from the two pots is placed a steam or hydraulic crane, so arranged that it can plumb each pot, and also the large moulds which are placed at either side of the lower pot. The mode of ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... the handle of the lever-bar, and with all his strength jerked it toward him. A square in the floor opened as the trap was flapped back upon its hinges, and through the opening the haltered form shot straight downward to bring up with a great jerk, and after that to dangle like a plumb-bob on a string. Under the quick strain the gallows-arm creaked and whined; in the silence which followed the hangman was heard to exhale his breath in a vast puff of relief. His hand went up to his forehead to wipe beads of sweat which ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... retorted with vigor. "Usedn't you to keep me awake praying for her—hollerin' at God to forgive her? Didn't you, or did you?" No answer. "And you think this is her!" The ridiculousness of the fantasy smote him. "Say, you must 'a' went plumb nutty! Bendin' over that tub must 'a' gave you a rush ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... knows a woman, really—not all her thoughts." And had Major Durward, honest fellow, realized the volcanic force of passion hidden behind the tense inscrutability of his wife's lovely face, he would have been utterly confounded. We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those who are closest ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... you, Tender-foot, feel about this, but wait until you have a chance to shoot it plumb through the head, and it gets away with it all, and then tell me what you would think," said Elam sullenly. "You probably don't have such things in the settlements, but that's no sign that they aint found ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... carry it on horses over into Ohio to get it milled. Took Pa five days to make the trip; an' then the blame old squaws 'ud come, an' Ma 'ud be compelled to hand over to 'em her big white loaves. Jest about set her plumb crazy. Used to get up in the night, an' fix her yeast, an' bake, an' let the oven cool, an' hide the bread out in the wheat bin, an' get the smell of it all out o' the house by good daylight, so's 'at she could say there wasn't a loaf in the cabin. ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... town site this morning, eh? Wish it well for me. If I've got to be civilized I'm going to be plumb civilized. Well, so long." ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... are constantly feeling, fumbling and exploring, superintending, as it were, the finishing touches given to the work. They are her instruments of precision; they represent the builder's compasses, square, level and plumb-line. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... utterance of his thoughts. "I've gone all out over this case. I saw, the minute they briefed me, that one tiny flaw, his neglect to take up that option—you remember, I told you—right down at the bottom of the whole tangle, and I went plumb down for it and hung on to it and fought it up like, like a diver ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... tree, but not yet perfectly ripe, two species of oranges, the common China and the small one usually called the Mandarin orange; pomgranates, bananas very indifferent and melons equally bad; apricots far from being equal to those of our own country; a large plumb, resembling the egg plumb, also indifferent, and peaches that might have been much improved by judicious culture; apples and pears that in England we should have no hesitation in pronouncing execrably bad; and a species of fruit unknown ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Orleans Chamber of Commerce is in position to dispute. The fact remains, however, that Charleston's position on the map justifies the Chamber of Commerce's alliterative designation of the place as "The Plumb-line Port to Panama." This is so true that if Charleston should one day be shaken loose from its moorings by an earthquake—something not unknown there—and should fall due south upon the map, it would choke up the mouth of the Canal, were not Cuba interposed, to ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... you will now float serenely down the eternities! But by-and-by there is a kink. You find, that, though the line runs off so fast, it does not go down,—it only floats out. A current has caught it and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy little tormenting river, that won't and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... turns on the line, each going as fast and as far as he can, until he gets pretty tired. Saw a coal seam in a cut rock wall on the bank. Mounted a series of heavy rapids all day. At 7 P.M. hit a canyon and had hard work to get up the rapids, for almost a mile. All worn out. Camp 8.30. Jesse plumb fagged out. Everybody wet. We dried our clothes around the fire before we went to bed. Can see how hard this would be for real tenderfeet. Found an old Klondike shack, fallen in, this afternoon, apparently deserted nearly twenty years. Caught some splendid Arctic trout ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... that, as the prophet represents, it is as if a fire of destruction were on the one hand and a flood of wrath on the other. Ah, Brethren, the truth can never be made to bend. It is as the builder's line to the foundation; and as the plumb ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... cowboy with a contortion of the stiff, swollen lip that passed for a smile. "I rounded the bend in a coulee down yonder an' run plumb against a hard projection." ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Parliament for securing the Church of England, and told me, with great satisfaction, that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid dissenter who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plumb-porridge. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... me," thought Heywood, and held himself ready, trembling. But the fellow made no sign, the broad squat features no change. The pose was that of vague, comfortable thought. Yet his vision seemed to rest, true as a plumb-line, on the hiding-place. Was he in doubt?—he could reach down ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... 'bout blind before de War, and 'bout time of de War he go plumb blind and have to set on de long seat under de bresh shelter of de house all de time. Sometime I lead him around de yard a little, but not very much. Dat about de time all de slave begin to slip out ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... may not, have been one of the fifteen. I'm not quite clear on that point. Indeed I'm somewhat muddled in the main; but I suspect the SQUIRE is up to some deed of infamy, and I have done my best to plumb its slimy depths." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... know, Stane. I'm going to do the straight thing for once in my life, as you will discover presently. Don't you worry about me. I am plumb at the end of things and I know it. But don't communicate any suspicions you may happen to have to Anderton. He has set up that precious duty of his as a fetish, worships it, as you heard. Think of Dandy Anderton of the old days on his knees at the ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... a fold. razed, destroyed. plate, flattened metal. pries, inspects closely. plumb, perpendicular. prize, to value. plum, a fruit. pray, to supplicate. place, site; spot. prey, a spoil. plaice, a fish. pore, a small opening. please, to gratify. pour, to cause to flow. pleas, excuses. poll, the head. bell, a sounding ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... disdainfully. "Hello, dere, foolish! What yo' think Ah am anyhow? To' must think Ah'm plumb crazy," and Sam looked pityingly at George. "Ob co'se Ah wouldn't nebber lif' ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... careful to plumb the questions with which they have to grapple and to weigh the inconveniences and the advantages of the acts they have the desire ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... and were very tempting to the eye. George loved plumbs above all other fruit, and he walked very slowly from the parlour with his eyes fixed on the basket. The longer he looked, the more he wished to taste them. One plumb, he thought, would not be missed; and as he put his hand in to take that one, two others lay close under his fingers. It was as easy to take three as one, and the three plumbs were taken and put into his pocket. When he reached the hall ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... dilutionists. The first question he asked my daughter was if she wore high heels; he said he would not attempt to cure any woman of any disease so long as she was perched on her toes with her spine out of plumb. His advice to me was to get out of the London fogs as quickly as possible. No one who has not suffered a London fog can imagine the terrible gloom that pervades everywhere. One can see nothing out of the windows but a dense black smoke. Drivers carry flambeaux in the streets ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... full six hundred feet below my position! I could have flung the stump of a cigar upon the water; in fact, an object dropping vertically from where I sat—for it was a projecting point—must have fallen plumb into ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his own language he ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... lightning. We were coming up the side nighest us here—we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs over—when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it went, and he with it—rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!" ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... so fussy. When I have children I'm just going to leave them plumb alone. I don't care ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... the greatest of all modern draughtsmen used. Ingres, then, with all his freedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed to draw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on his paper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to the plumb-line. It enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in the other lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stability of a figure. Rules of art are, like this straight line, dead and powerless in themselves: they help both creator and lover ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... bursting shell, but the little visitor came slowly and inexorably onward. Then came three resounding crashes as the bombs dropped. One got the corner of a hangar and demolished it. Another burst into the open and did no damage, but the third fell plumb between two machines waiting to go up and left them tangled ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace |
