"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hanging from the knotted strings to the small of my back, and with difficulty refrained from crying. I had never been wretched just in that way before. Two imperative duties had met plump and face to face, with a shock that jarred all preconceived principles of belief and action out of plumb. Cousin Molly Belle had trusted me to keep her secret, and I saw no way of doing it except to lie outright and repeatedly. The sin lashed my conscience until I could have located in my corporeal frame the exact whereabouts of the uncomfortable possession. So ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... retorted Shaky, sullenly. "Mebbe young Dave Steele as come back from ther' with a hole in his head that left him plumb crazy ever since till he died, 'cos o' some racket he had wi' Jake—mebbe that's out of a dime fiction. Say, you git right to it, an' kep on sousin' whisky, Slum Ranks. You ken do that—you can't tell me ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... pleasant to me to have the right to pay a woman's bills; I enjoyed seeing her garments lying about on my chairs. In time that exultation wore off. But I was not unhappy, I didn't expect much, I was always so sure that no woman could ever plumb the ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... combination lever plumb, same as for a broken cross-head arm, if it is possible. If not possible, take down the combination lever and valve rod and cover ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... Fortunately, General Sheridan wanted also to do something beneficial for the cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is an honor ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... to go and bully it out right where it happened. You've bought your little chunk of experience and paid for it, and now you're a free man just like the rest of us. You want to buck up, and tell them that don't like it to go straight plumb ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... and mampalam (Mangifera indica, L.) is well known to be a rich, high-flavoured fruit of the plumb kind, and is found here in great perfection; but there are many inferior varieties beside the ambachang, or Mangifera foetida, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... 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 ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... tell you what you do; you go to Capt. Grigg and tell him you want a man detailed to cook some rations to do you home; tell him you are going with Gantt, and that you will stay away from here until you are plumb well of the each." The young recruit bolted to the Captain, who soon set him straight on ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... announced, half-aloud. "I'm shore a plumb fool." Then she turned and disappeared in the deep cleft between the gigantic bowlder upon which she had been sitting and another—small only by comparison. There, ten feet down, in a narrow alley littered with ragged stones, lay the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... right here with us? An' I could learn him how to churn. I s'pec' he 'd make a beautiful churner. He sho' is a pretty little fat man," he continued flatteringly. "An' dress? That beau was jest dressed plumb up to the top notch. I sho' would marry him if I's you an' not turn up my nose at him 'cause he wears pants, an' you can learn him how to talk properer'n what he do an' I betcher he'd jest nachelly take to a broom, an' ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... of beauty is 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 supposed ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... 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
... calculations. She scrutinized the clean, smooth face, and she saw lines which had hitherto escaped her notice. She was at last convinced that she had to contend with a man, a man who had dealt with both men and women. How deep was he? Could honors, such as she could give, and money plumb the depths?... He was an American. She ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... her face. Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with diamonds, looked like a bed with bolsters and pillows piled high, and her eyes—oh, Tom, her eyes! They were little and very gray, and they bored their way straight through the windows—hers and ours—and hit the Bishop plumb in the face. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... seen the family, and on reaching the ranch, my father gruffly noticed me, but my mother and sisters received me with open arms. I was a mature man of twenty-eight at the time, mustached, and stood six feet to a plumb-line. The family were cognizant of my checkered past, and although never mentioning it, it seemed as if my misfortunes had elevated me in the estimation of my sisters, while to my mother ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... was all 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
... general, of which I find it extremely difficult to convey any idea. Compared with the English of the country, there is apparently very little difference between them; but still there is a difference, and of no small importance in a moral point of view. The country peculiarity is like the bloom of the plumb, or the down of the peach, which the fingers of infancy cannot touch without injuring; but this felt but not describable quality of the town character, is as the varnish which brings out more vividly the colours of a picture, and which may be ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... "Toilers of the Sea," whom his hero fought, yet menacing even when dead. It is a frightful figure in its aspect of hatred and ugliness, but good to eat. See that fat Tahitian thrust his finger into the sides of the octopus to plumb its cooking qualities. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... offence committed) be not too strong, too heavy, too hot, and of too long a time admitted to distress and break the spirit of this Christian; and if it be, he applies himself to the rule to measure it by, he fetches forth his plumb line, and sets it in the midst of his people, (Amos 7:8; Isa 28:17), and lays righteousness to that, and will not suffer it to go further; but according to the quality of the transgression, and according to the terms, bounds, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of young boys that like a cute nose and a good figger better than they do sense— Well, you notice I remembered you, all right, when you went and forgot poor old Eddie Schwirtz. Yessir, by golly! teetotally plumb forgot me. I guess I won't get over that slam ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... and watch out, because the first lie you tell—" The justice held up a warning finger. "Now answer me this, never mind anything else; we'll drop a plumb-line right down to the bottom of this thing and have ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... by a Republican governor, the Republican State Committee resolved to remain "neutral," and then sent out speakers who, with the sanction of the committee, bitterly assailed this amendment and those advocating it. Prominent among these were P.B. Plumb, I.S. Kalloch, Judge T.C. Sears and C.V. Eskridge. The Democratic State Convention vigorously denounced the amendment. The State Temperance Society endorsed it, and this aroused the active enmity of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... bit, wipes his fingers on the plantain leaf, puts his hand behind his back, as if to help himself to rise from the ground, snatches his revolver from under his jacket and plugs a bullet plumb centre into Mr. Antonio's chest. See what it is to have to do with a gentleman. No confounded fuss, and things done out of hand. But he might have tipped me a wink or something. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Scared ain't in it! I didn't even know who had fired. Everything ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... laughed bitterly. "Precious scientific men! Villainous old hombogues! The whole set not worth a straw! I hope to gracious, since we must fall, that we shall drop down plumb on Cambridge Observatory, and not leave a single one of the miserable old women, called professors, alive in ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... I'm fed up with her. But I'm like that: I just can't tell her so. I'm not brave enough to tell her to go plumb to hell. That's the way I am, see? When I like a woman, I get plain silly; and if she doesn't start something, I've not got the courage to do anything myself." He sighed. "There's Camilla at the ranch for instance.... ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... don't bust," warned Dextry. "I've seen men get plumb drunk on mountain air. Don't expand too strong in one spot." He went back abruptly to his pipe, its villanous fumes promptly averting any danger of the air's ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the swirl of dust Around their marching legions, that dim cloud Of doubt closed round him. Was there any man So sure of heart and brain as to record The simple truth of things himself had seen? Then who could plumb that night? The work broke off! He knew that he was wrong. I knew it, too! Once more that stately structure of his dreams Melted like mist. His eagles perished like clouds. Death wound a thin horn through the centuries. The grave resumed his forlorn emperors. His ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... they were trying to escape. they did not think the old Oregon was such a runer as she was a fighter, so we Just tailed on with them and giving them shot for shot. In about 20 minuts the first ship went on the Beach, plumb knocked out, and 15 minuts later the secon one went on the Beach, a short ways from the first. Then came the tug of war for we had to run to catch the Vizcaya and the Colon, but we catched them both. the Vizcaya was about 4000 yards ahead ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... he said meditatively, "plumb true; but it's too small to drop a man. I guess it wouldn't stop any one with ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... goes, Miss Huffen—yis, yo'll see th' roof theer bellies down a bit—s' loose. No, you dunna get th' puddin' stones i' this pit—s' not deep enough. Eh, they come down on you plumb, as if th' roof had laid its egg on you. Ay, it runs a bit thin down here—six inches. You see th' bed's soft, it's a sort o' clay-bind, it's not clunch such as you get deeper. Oh, it's easy workin'—you don't have to knock ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... interruptions to such curves, by precipices or steps, are always small in proportion to the slopes themselves. Precipices rising vertically more than 100 feet are very rare among the secondary hills of which we are speaking. I am not aware of any cliff in England or Wales where a plumb-line can swing clear for 200 feet; and even although sometimes, with intervals, breaks, and steps, we get perhaps 800 feet of a slope of 60 deg. or 70 deg., yet not only are these cases very rare, but even ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... my side wasn't worrying much about you. Just as you jumped he put up his gun and let fly at Mortimer with a sense of discrimination which does him infinite credit. He missed Mortimer, but plugged Max plumb through the forehead and my old friend dropped in his tracks right between you and the other fellow. On that we hacked our way through the French window. The corporal found time to have another shot and laid ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... speaker's smiling face and twinkling eyes and laughed. "Well, yo're the foreman if you owns that badge," grinned Hopalong, cheerfully. "We don't need no guns, nohow, in this town, we don't. Plumb forgot we was toting them. But mebby you can tell us where lawyer Jeremiah T. Jones ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates—to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof hollowed about the chimney, with great ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are plumb crazy over this government woman," Twombley went on, "and the children lap out of her hand. She and Mary-Clare are together early and late. Thick ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Range, and was the center of considerable mining excitement a year and a half ago. It is there that the Ivanhoe is located, of which Colonel Gillette was manager, and in which Robert Ingersoll and Senator Plumb, of Kansas, were interested, much to the disadvantage of the former. A new company has been organized, however, with Colonel Ingersoll as president, and the reopening of work on the Ivanhoe will probably prove a stimulus to the whole Black ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... you do your dooty regardin' them pa'tridges," said Byram, quickly. "Dan McCloud's a loafer an' no good. When he's drunk he raises hell down to the store. Foxville is jest plumb sick ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... "Yes, ma'am, plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began scattering lead so sudden I didn't have time to ask many 'Whyfors.' I reckon we'll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion," he ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... an aeroplane falling. At first it was hard to believe it was not doing some patent stunt. Instead of coming down plumb as one would imagine, it fell first this way and then that, like a piece of paper fluttering down from a window. As it got nearer the earth though where the currents of air were not so powerful, it plunged straight downwards. Crowds ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... expecting any day that the workers will take things over and he'll come into money—money the interests have kept him out of. He kind of licks his chops when he talks about it. Never heard him talk about his wife's share, though. Say, that brother of yours is making a plumb fool ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... You couldn't tell it from the real thing! Believe me, Bud's some pickled bum, these days. I run across him up in the mountains, a month or so ago. Honest, I was knocked plumb silly—much as I knew about Bud that you never knew, I never thought he'd turn out quite so—" Joe paused, with a perfect imitation of distaste for his subject. "Say, this is great, out here," he murmured, tucking the robe around her with that tender protectiveness ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... involuntary, and not the intentional, 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 coming up from ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... scolded feebly, as if worn with his long trip. "W'y d' y' fret a man 'fore he c'n git down an' into th' house?" he demanded. "Ah'm plumb ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... useful seeing I had my young cousin's—you know, young Will Henderson, of Barnriff; he's a trapper now—education on my hands. Just as things were good and dollars were coming plenty the enterprise bust. I was out—plumb out. I hunched up for another kick. I had a dandy patent that was to do big things. I got together a syndicate to run it. I'd got a big car built to demonstrate my patent, and it represented all I had in the world. It was to be on the race-track. Say, she didn't demonstrate worth a cent. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... rock which supports Ben Lomond, there exists a natural shaft which descends perpendicularly into the vein beneath. A week ago I went to ascertain the depth of this shaft. While sounding it, and bending over the opening as my plumb-line went down, it seemed to me that the air within was agitated, as though beaten ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... hated half measures. For a certain space he had to live on earth, and he wanted to discover what life really was. What lay beyond the grave he did not know, "sufficient for the day were the day's evil things." But he felt that he must try and plumb the depth or shallowness of the day's interests. He could not bear the idea of a contentment purchased ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the mastery over them—it was a whole forest of burdocks. Here and there stood an apple and a plumb-tree, or else one never would have thought that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... I was plumb scared myself. I heard Liza—that's our young-un, Liza Grace, that got married to the Taylor boy. I heard her crying on the stoop, and she came flying out with her pinny all black and hollered to Marthy that the pea soup was burning. Marthy let out another screech and ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... continuous slopes of varying declivity, which lead down from the high points to the sea. Here and there, though rarely, these slopes centre in a basin which is occupied by a lake or a dead sea. On the deeper ocean floors, so far as we may judge with the defective information which the plumb line gives us, there is no such continuity in the downward sloping of the surface, the area being cast into numerous basins, each of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... ejaculated, mournfully; "bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity. Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... with a straight stick, twelve feet long, which he had measured as exactly as possible by comparing it with his own height, which he knew to a hair. Herbert carried a plumb-line which Harding had given him, that is to say, a simple stone fastened to the end of a flexible fiber. Having reached a spot about twenty feet from the edge of the beach, and nearly five hundred feet ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... 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
... because the life in them, the presence of the creative one, would ever be plain to him. In the Perfect, would familiarity ever destroy wonder at things essentially wonderful because essentially divine? To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... promptly. "Let's be plumb vulgar about it." And he thrust a big roll of bills into ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... conscious of his love for Katiousha; especially if it were sought to persuade him that he could and must not link his fate to that of the girl, he would very likely have decided in his plumb-line mind that there was no reason why he should not marry her, no matter who she was, provided he loved her. But the aunts did not speak of their fears, and he departed without knowing that he was enamored ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... profession of actor, by far the best channel open to him was the theatre. Badly as it paid the outside author, there was nothing that paid better. Venus and Adonis brought "more praise than pudding," if one may venture a guess. With the freedom of the theatre Will could soar to all heights and plumb all depths. No such opportunity had Burns, even if he could have used it, and, owing to a variety of causes, his spirit soon ceased to soar ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... about for some time he continued: "The door jamb is built in vertically; that is sure. A string, or piece of thread will make a plumb-bob; here it is: now let us see; according to the plumb line the boat is at an angle of 33 degrees, as nearly as our imperfect device indicates. There, now this line A shows the top of the boat and B the base of the conning ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... "Well, it's plumb cur'us. Isom's been that way lately. Isom's sick, ye know. Uncle Gabe's got the rheumatiz, 'n' Isom's mighty fond o' Uncle Gabe, 'n' the boy pestered me till I come down to he'p him. Hit p'int'ly air ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... the boy was holding out the wide-mouthed pitcher to the water, intent on dipping it, but the nymphs all clung to his hand, for love of the Argive lad had fluttered the soft hearts of all of them. Then down he sank into the black water, headlong all, as when a star shoots flaming from the sky, plumb in the deep it falls, and a mate shouts out to the seamen, 'Up with the gear, my lads, the wind is ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... why I call it a coup d'etat?" Arobin had put on his coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She told him it was, looking no higher than the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... miner put the precious pipe in his pocket. Then he gazed curiously at the crowd before him. "I don't understand this nohow," he muttered. "That feller who was with me was all right till you called an' whistled, then he acted plumb locoed." ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... it first time. Yes, ma'am. Sure thing. At Millings, finest city in the world. After you're through here, you pack up your duds and you come West with me. Make a fresh start, eh? Why, it'll make me plumb cheerful to have a gel with me on that journey ... seem like I'd Girlie or Babe along. They just cried to come, but, say, Noo York's no ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... what is this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?— Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord,—quite an irregular thing; not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking back to that great epoch in American history, we have no dim regions of antiquity to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 3 ms to a pt. on S. S. passed a Isd. Called Sheeco Islan wind from the N W Camped in a Prarie on the L. S., Capt Lewis & my Self Walked out 3 ms. found the Country roleing open & rich, with plenty of water, great qts of Deer I discovered a Plumb which grows on bushes the hight of Hasle, those plumbs are in great numbers, the bushes beare Verry full, about double the Sise of the wild plumb Called the Osage Plumb & am ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... give her the name, myself," he observed, at last. "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 my aunt, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... door-knobs and a laundry-chute, and a brood to rear, and a hard-working husband to cook for. And as the kiddies get older, I imagine, I'll not be troubled by this terrible feeling of loneliness which has been weighing like a plumb-bob on my heart for the last few days. I wish Dinky-Dunk didn't have to be so ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... 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
... with 'em, and the one that got the most rings got the blue ribbon. Sam said it took a good eye and a steady arm and a good seat to manage the thing, and he enjoyed watchin' 'em. 'But,' says he, 'why they call the thing a t'u'nament is more'n I could make out. I stayed there a plumb hour, and I couldn't hear nor see anything that sounded ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... nuthin'; but, right whar th' grass was tread up th' worst on th' spot whar we saw th' man killed, I found this—" and the hand came out of the pocket and was extended toward the alcalde, holding on its palm a button. "Now I'd plumb forgot all about th' findin' of this button, not settin' any store on it, when, jest as I was a-leavin' th' witness stand, th' thought popped intew my head, that, if th' prisoners happened tew have on th' same clothes they had on when they murdered the ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... 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 working ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... shoulders. Head up, shoulders back!" Now I confess I was walking, and thinking as I walked, with shoulders bent and head forward. At once I straightened up and looked about to see who was speaking. It was the voice of a pine tree, growing hard by the path, tall and straight as a plumb line. "Thank you," I said to ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... 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 line to the column. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... mattock and death's head, but with spirit-level and measuring-cord. They were levelling a stretch of newly-turned and smoothed ground, and they pointed with pride to the portion of the work already accomplished, serried rows of spick-and-span headstones, all "plumb," as they explained, and freshly scraped—not a sign of caressing moss or a tendril of vine to be seen. A neat job, if there ever was one. We should have seen the yard before they had taken it in hand! ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... lever which passes over the limb of the tree, and the tension on the string from the long arm is thus very slight. This precaution is necessary for the perfect working of the trap. To complete the contrivance, a small peg with a rounded notch should be cut, and driven into the ground directly plumb beneath the long end of the lever. It should be inserted into the earth only sufficiently to hold the string without pulling out, and the side of the notch should face the path; its height should be about a foot. Into the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Oscar Broady, a recent graduate of Madison University, who had seen some military service in Sweden, his native country, was raising a Company for the War, in which many Hamilton and Sherburne men were enrolled. Isaac Plumb, one of my most-thought-of friends, was in the number; there were others—Edgar Willey, Israel O. Foote, Fred Ames, and more whose names I do not now recall. I decided to wait no longer, but seek the enemy with ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... objections, you never would have caught Mrs. Van Astrachan going; for she was one of your full-blooded women, who never in her life engaged to do a thing she didn't mean to do: and having promised in the marriage service to obey her husband, she obeyed him plumb, with the air of a person who is fulfilling the prophecies; though her chances in this way were very small, as Mr. Van Astrachan generally called her "ma," and obeyed all her orders with a stolid precision quite edifying to behold. He took her advice ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Mex," demurred 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 ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... me, and stir within my soul That subtle ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and by an unknown ford Stands, and for a moment yearns and shrinks, Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is, So softly murmurous, So silvered ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... wild Giants of the Wood receive What Law he's pleas'd to give? He bids th' ill-natur'd Crab produce The gentle Apples Winy Juice; The golden Fruit that worthy is Of Galetea's purple Kiss; He does the savage Hawthorn teach To bear the Medlar and the Pear, He bids the rustick Plumb to rear A noble Trunk, and be a Peach, Ev'n Daphnes Coyness he does mock, And weds the Cherry to her stock, Though she refus'd Apollo's suit; Ev'n she, that chast and Virgin-tree Now wonders at her self, to see That she's a Mother made, and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... am now able to state my position definitely." Lanyard got up and grinned provokingly down at the group. "You can—all four of you—go plumb ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mount Athos lack the wonderful colour and the clean surface of this one. Looks as if 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
... innocent must look the sun-bathed shore of Africa to the Christian skipper's diligently searching spy-glass. And there from his height, like the hawk they had dubbed him, poised in the cobalt heavens to plumb down upon his prey, he watched the great white ship and waited until she should come within ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... I never found a college boy yet that wasn't plumb sure he could start right in on fifteen minutes' notice and beat Horace Greeley or old ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... into the deep.—Ver. 791-2. 'Inque profundum Pronus abit,' Clarke renders, 'Goes plumb down into the deep.' Certainly this is nearer to its French origin, 'a plomb,' than the present form, 'plump down;' but, like many other instances in his translation, it decidedly does not help us, as he professes to do, to 'the attainment of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... George Graham (1675-1751), a celebrated instrument-maker, was affixed to a vertical chimneystack, in such manner as to permit a small oscillation of the eyepiece, the amount of which, i.e. the deviation from the vertical, was regulated and measured by the introduction of a screw and a plumb-line. The instrument was set up in November 1725, and observations on g Draconis were made on the 3rd, 5th, 11th, and 12th of December. There was apparently no shifting of the star, which was therefore thought to be at its most southerly point. On the 17th of December, however, Bradley observed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Lena's too thin boots, out of plumb, suddenly slipped on a half-formed piece of ice. She made a desperate grab at the smooth surface of the window and then came ignominiously down—not wholly ignominiously, however, since her accident brought to her aid the man ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... are unequal: different natures hold different capacities. A trouble that seems very real at the time, and full of stings, may be found later on to be largely alloyed by wounded self-love and frustrated vanity. Sound it with the plumb-line of experience, of time, of wakening hopefulness, and it may sink fathoms, and by and by end in nothingness, or perhaps more truly in just a sense of salt bitterness between the teeth, as when one plunges in a ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... him slipped out of plumb. The sky and the lawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. The whirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of a lonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and the waves washing up almost ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... Will Hunson!" said she; "look a' this, will ye? A whole pot o' strawberry jam soaked right plumb inter the middle o' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... That willing lad of yours has plumb knocked the answer out of my noodle. Maybe you're thinking of some one else, Buck." Dingwell looked up at him ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Keats!), and wrote letters from a London literary club, to understand that sort of thing. Why, the man was a grandson of Jules Verne, and probably had been accustomed to refined surroundings all his life. And now he was doomed to plumb the sub-fuse depths of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... I know half he's give. But it's a heap, Lord knows! And then he's foolish—plumb foolish." He rested his arms on his legs, leaning forward. "How much d'you s'pose he give me for that land—from here to my house?" ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... down on the ground there, utterly exhausted with my struggle against the wind, and with bearing the fathoms and fathoms of the heavily-leaded plumb-line that lay beside me. ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... pinions 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 niter, hurried him As many miles aloft; that fury stayed, Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... still sniffing around the room, as she put her bonnet and shawl away. "Now you're here I'd like it if you would put on the teakettle and make me a good strong cup of coffee. Jane O'Grady gave me a pound, all parched and ground. I haven't had any before to-day for weeks. I'm plumb tuckered out with ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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 utterly powerless ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... was just in its infancy when I was born," he told Jessie. "And then came the telephone, and these here automobiles, and flying machines, and wireless telegraph, and now this. Why, ma'am, this radio beats the world! It does, plumb, ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... cranium, with its mighty mane of blue wool bristling out in the spray and breeze. Position Fourth: at six in the afternoon, with the Corsican coast in view; the unfortunate chechia hangs over the ship's side, and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of ocean. Finally and lastly, the Fifth Position: at the back of a narrow state-room, in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a nest of them, something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans of desolation. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Mr. Dawkins, Exquires. My i, how we genlmn in the kitchin did enjy it. Mr. Blewittes man eat so much grous (when it was brot out of the parlor), that I reely thought he would be sik; Mr. Dawkinses genlmn (who was only abowt 13 years of age) grew so il with M'Arony and plumb-puddn, as to be obleeged to take sefral of Mr. D's. pils, which 1/2 kild him. But this is all promiscuous: I an't talkin of the survants ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and raised the heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was death—below, a chance ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... It's less than that to the frontier, and we ought to be able to manage it, even if we have to leave the road and cut straight across country. Come along; we'll keep to the road while we can, but if too risky we must go helter-skelter, plumb ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... 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: ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... 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 ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... you, Horn," interrupted Clayton. "Poe was plumb drunk! It is the infernal corn whiskey he drinks that puts the devil in him. It may be he can't get anything else, but it's a damnable concoction all the same. Kennedy has about given him up—told me so yesterday, and when Kennedy gives a fellow up ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Their work withstands its mighty force, So damming it from shore to shore, That, gliding smoothly o'er, In even sheets the waters pour. Their work, as it proceeds, they grade and bevel, Or bring it up to plumb or level; First lay their logs, and then with mortar smear, As if directed by an engineer. Each labours for the public good; The old command, the youthful brood Cut down, and shape, and place the wood. Compared ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... canoe could be drawn off on it by exact measurements. We first drew a straight line down the centre, and from this measured off the two sides with the greatest care. In the game way the stem and stern were measured with a plumb-line. We then turned the log over, and having levelled that side, marked off the keel, thus having it truly in the centre. Natty and Leo had remained to assist ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston |
