"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw 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 ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... 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, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... you younger people old enough to remember 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... lookin' owley an' sagacious, I'd wallop loose with the twenty-four verses, stampin' up and down, an' accompanyin' said recitations with sech a multitood of reckless gestures, it comes plenty clost to backin' everybody plumb outen the room. Yere's the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... well-worked mud, which is dumped in by bucketsful and continually tramped by barefooted laborers; harder bricks are used for the doorways and windows. The bricklayer uses mud for mortar and his hands for a trowel; he works without either level or plumb-line, and keeps up a doleful, melancholy chant from morning to night. The mortar is handed to him by an assistant by handsful; every workman is smeared and spattered with mud from head to foot, as though glorying in covering themselves with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... allus was. She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Aleck Pop's comment. "I was finkin' dat rascal was plumb dead, suah. And Dan, too! Suah yo' didn't see dat ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... an inversion of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary canon, itself a chasm ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... at a suite of rooms in a tumble-down old palace, where the walls, shamelessly smarted up with coarse paper, crumble at your touch; where the floor rises and falls like the sea, and the door-frames and window-cases have long lost all recollection of the plumb. Madama la Baronessa is at present occupying these pleasant apartments, and you only gain admission to them after an embassy to procure her permission. Madama la Baronessa receives you courteously, and you pass through her rooms, which ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... 1882, Apaches killed Nathan B. Robinson at the Reidhead place and shot Emer Plumb at Walnut Springs, during a period of general Indian unrest. Soon thereafter, President Smith advised the settlers that they had better look for other locations, as the ground was ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... 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 ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... make arrangements for a prolonged absence, as also to communicate with Mr. Campbell, who was still at his home in Hamilton, Ohio. By correspondence we agreed to meet in New York, November 8th, he accompanied by Mr. Plumb, secretary of legation, and I by my aide, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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 ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... plain that every thread on the old man was new. Mart explained. "I stripped him to the buff and built him up plumb to his necktie, which is green—the wan thing he would have to his own taste. To-morrow we ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the dead man and his heirs was certainly much older than any form of Testament or phase of Testamentary jurisprudence. This indeed is the proper moment for suggesting a doubt which will press on us with greater force the further we plumb the depths of this subject,—whether wills would ever have come into being at all if it had not been for these remarkable ideas connected with universal succession. Testamentary law is the application of a principle which may be explained ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... great discussion over slavery. Of the last name, an old lady, famous for her quilt making, said: "Here's my 'Radical Rose.' I reckon you've heard I was the first human that ever put black in a Radical Rose. Thar hit is, right plumb in the middle. Well, whenever you see black in a Radical Rose you can know hit war made atter the second year of the war (Civil War). Hit was this way, ever' man war a-talkin' about the Radicals and all the women tuk to makin' Radical Roses. One day I got to studying ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... towards her, and she again seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side, is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all the men's eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely placed, so as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was just plumb ruined. He said he'd snatch Ikey bald-headed, and do a lot of other things to him, if he didn't walk right out into State street and bring back that Little Brass God. Holy Moses! You ought to have seen ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... a killing to-day," said Old Man Curry. "Well, she'll have 'Lisha to beat, I reckon. And all he's runnin' for is the purse, Frank, like you said. I did my best to bet 'em until the price got too plumb ridiculous, but the children of ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... principal are plantains, of which they have fifteen different sorts or varieties; breadfruit; two sorts of fruit found at Otaheite, and known there under the names of jambu and geevee; the latter a kind of plumb; and vast numbers of shaddocks, which, however, are found as often in a natural state, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... wouldn't be ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico. But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do with ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... is a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such reckoning ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... beautifully moulded; in figure rather small. Her face was a most perfect book of cleverness, yet she was fair, too, beyond belief, with hair of a lovely ruddiness, cut short in the new fashion, and bunching on her shoulders. And eyes! Gods! who could plumb the depths of Phorenice's eyes, or find in mere tint a trace ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... 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, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... a pause: "I don' hear how dat wretch, Black Jim, was stricken, by God-a'mighty's justice, on The Way, las' night. He was found plumb dead under a tree whar de lightnin' ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... he exclaimed, "I've got news for you that'll just fill you plumb full of happiness and good cheer. I hired another hand to-day who'll be a distinct addition to our gang up-river. Just to while away the dark hours I'll let you guess for a while who he is. I'll let you guess from here to Last Oak, above the cypress bend at the rapids. One, two, three—and the ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... matters of knowledge, and then to study the art and science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All we can do is to define clearly the true idea of the Teachers' School, and then to work towards ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... so fussy. When I have children I'm just going to leave them plumb alone. I don't care what ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... not take the infection to-night." And she balanced her little head with the perpendicularity of a plumb-line. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... 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 my ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... church to the Grove; and there partook, as they had been invited to do, of beef and pudding, and good home-brewed beer. The young Mortimers waited upon them at dinner, and before they left the Lodge, presented them each with a plumb cake; and Mrs. Mortimer gave them each an amusing little book to read to themselves and their parents, who had not like themselves possessed the advantages ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... he pleaded, "you've drubbed him enough. Shake me if you ain't through yet. You'll have him plumb addled! Really, we were just in for some fun. We never dreamed the kids would scare so easy. That's only vegetable dye on Rosslyn's head. He thought we had scalped him, but we didn't mean to ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Wessells, Litchfield; 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, ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... rich island," he impressed upon me with an intention I was yet to plumb. "Dole," he exclaimed, "it's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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
... so that no rude handling would harm it, and all shining and glistening brilliantly as if kept with the most exquisite care. Mr. Franklin unfastened a small brass telescope, mounted upon a stand, with a compass, levels, plumb line, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... palace like a marble hill. And he sat among the pillars of the hall, upon his throne of beaten gold, and around him stood the speaking statues which Daidalos had made by his skill. For Daidalos was the most cunning of all Athenians, and he first invented the plumb-line, and the auger, and glue, and many a tool with which wood is wrought. And he first set up masts in ships, and yards, and his son made sails for them: but Perdix his nephew excelled him; for he first invented ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... institution from Georgia, and graduated last June, fifty-fifth in a class of seventy-six. There is a preponderance of white blood in his veins, and in general appearance, except for color, he is a perfect image of Senator Plumb of Kansas. He reports that since he has struck the South he has been treated like a gentleman, which is something different from his experience in the North. He made the acquaintance of Senator Maxey at West Point— the Senator ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... 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 to follow and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the change and the varietie: and finallie the ficklenesse and the follie that is in all degrees: insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancie of attire."[50] Each one aimed at making the best appearance. The long seams of men's hose were set by a plumb line, and beards were cut to suit the face, "If a man have a leane and streight face, a Marquess Ottons cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter-like, a long, slender beard will make it seeme the narrower." "Some lustie courtiers also, and gentlemen of courage doo weare ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... If you ain't got any place to go—why—I've got a ranch and about twenty-five hundred head of cattle and some horses. If you didn't mind marrying me, I could take you out there and give yuh a home. I'd be plumb good to you, if you're ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Old Pete, as he fumbled with his straps about the patient burros, "are plumb pizen ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... in different ages of the Church; but he calls attention to the fact that the dominant note of one age is not always the same as that in another. And in using the words criterion and test, descriptive of the Church, he would convey their full meaning: not merely a plumb-line for the rising wall but divine accuracy itself made external. His outer criterion is to the inner life what articulate speech is ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... current columns of the daily press that "Professor Plumb, of the University of Chicago, has just invented a highly concentrated form of food. All the essential nutritive elements are put together in the form of pellets, each of which contains from one to ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... In the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... withe before him, he foots it up with wonderful speed and certainty, and comes down again in the same manner, bringing his gourd full of liquor on his arm. Among their fruits are many kinds of plumbs; one like a wheaten plumb is wholesome and savoury; likewise a black one, as large as a horse plumb, which is much esteemed, and has an aromatic flavour. A kind called mansamilbas, resembling a wheaten plumb, is very dangerous, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... still go'n' a' do fo yo', Mahstah Majah. Ah steddied huh all out twell she's plumb systemous. Miss Cahline sh' ain't wantin' huh breakfus' twell yo's done, an' she'll tek huh dinneh uhliah. Ah manage, Mahstah Majah. Ah mek all mah reddiments, yes, seh—yo's go'n' a' be jes' lahk ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Fisbee," he said, morosely, after a series of efforts that littered the floor in every direction. "I'm a born compositor, and I can't shift my trade. I stood the pace fairly for a week, but I'll have to give up; I'm run plumb dry. I only hope they won't show him our Saturday with your three columns of 'A Word of the Lotus Motive,' reprinted from February. I begin to sympathize with the boss, because I know what he felt when I ballyragged him for copy. Yes, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... pendulous and protuberant abdomens as the result of feebleness of the hypogastric muscles, to accumulation of fat under the skin and in the omentum, and to dilation of the stomach and intestines. In the "wall exercise," the patient stands erect against an absolutely straight and plumb wall, lifts his hands (carrying a weight) straight over the head, and causes them to describe a semicircle forward. Zantz particularly insists upon arm and leg exercise for the obese, especially the former, since with the same amount of effort a larger amount of oxygen is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... he 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 sense of fatality robbed ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... sat down beside me and began to feed me. She did that, Alan—fed me. When the lightning fired up, I could see her eyes shining and her lips smilin' as if all that hell about us made her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how happy she was that I was goin' her way. Her way, mind you, Alan, not mine. And that's just the way she's kept me goin' up to the minute you hove in sight back there ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... told him to stay the fore topmast plumb. He accordingly came forward, turned all hands to, with tackles on the stays and backstays, coming up with the seizings, hauling here, belaying there, and full of business, standing between the knight-heads to sight the mast,— when the captain came forward, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... I was down and out. You passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... sealed its doom; even at that moment the avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the Assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* Then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seer's words—a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the Lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits—till at last the whole people of Israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the Eternal. "There shall ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the plumb line figure of her neighbour appeared, ushered in by her husband, and received her with a somewhat embarrassed empressement, arising from the consciousness of goodwill disturbed by the fear of imputed meddlesomeness. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... have travelled so fast," answered the raven. "In your world you cannot pull up the plumb-line you call gravitation, and let the world spin round under your feet! But here is my wife's house! She is very good to let me live with her, and call it ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... in more ways than one, for I could not leave the ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute before closing ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... pesterin' 'bout thet. Them young-uns 'druther sleep out'n in, any time. Ef I'd let 'em they'd grow up plumb wild. When yo've got worshed up come on right in the kitchen an' set by. Us Wattses is plain folks an' don't pile on no dog. We've et an' got through, but yo' take all the time yo're a mind to, an' me an' Microby ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... 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
... basement, and that added many hundred dollars to the cost of building the party wall; the fire and telephone companies were continually fussing around and demanding indemnity because their poles and hydrants got knocked out of plumb; the thousands of gallons of dirty water pumped from the job into the city sewers clogged them up, and the city sued for several thousand dollars' damages; one day the car-tracks in front of the lot settled ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken. Still ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... man's part. I was such a child in worldly matters that it was 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 well ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... with a slight duck of the head of careless acknowledgment. Then he glanced with slumbering anger at the stove. "Smoke, we'll have to dig up a new stove. That fire-box is burned plumb into the oven so it blacks ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the latter action is that which draws inwardly. Thus the spokes might be likened to centripetal force. The attraction of gravitation in the earth is the centripetal force, and its rotation produces the centrifugal force. When an object, like a plumb bob, or an article floating on the water is free to move, it is found to lag behind the movement of the earth surface, this retarding movement being sufficient to cause it to creep to the west, with ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... kin throw a bullet straight as a plumb line an' quick as lightnin'," he had said to Preston. "It's as nat'ral fer him as drawin' his breath. That ere chap may git bored 'fore he has time to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... hadn't, of co'se), an' had said p'int-blank that he was the likeliest feller she'd seed in them mountains. An' he tol' Polly Ann that Jeb was ravin' crazy 'bout her. The pure misery of it jes made him plumb delirious, Abe said; an' 'f Polly Ann wanted to find her match fer languige an' talkin' out peert—well, she jes ought to strike Jeb Somers. Fact is, stranger, Jeb Somers air might' nigh a idgit; but Jeb ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... at Montreal we were handsomely domiciled at St. Lawrence Hall. Our room was large and airy, and our bed stood in one of those quaint old alcoves so peculiar to the English bed-chamber; while the table d'hote, with its savory roast beef, plumb pudding, etc., was ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... a meeting of that committee to make arrangements to canvass the State for negro suffrage. The committee met and published an address in favor of manhood suffrage, and said nothing as to woman suffrage. Shortly afterwards the same committee summoned C. V. Eskridge, T. C. Sears, P. B. Plumb, I. D. Snoddy, B. F. Simpson, J. B. Scott, H. N. Bent, Jas. G. Blunt, A. Akin, and G. W. Crawford—all opposed to woman suffrage—to make a canvass for negro suffrage. They were instructed that "they would be allowed to express their own sentiments on other questions." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... gasped 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 added, moved ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Toby," said Bud, as he 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 ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... mothers luggin' babies and leadin' children. My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel! They're lyin' out over there in the slough now, as many as ain't gone to glory. It made me jest plumb murderous!" ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... me this, general, ter take ter you, an' she would hev it, though I told her she'd no business ter be botherin' yer with sich plumb foolishness." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... are returning home; they drifted along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here, quite different from that of the "Ark." The houses were new and orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed ways, and one could see at a glance what each ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "I 'm gettin' plumb dried out," Billy announced, mopping the sweat from his sunburned forehead. "What d'ye say we head ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... lives at Fort McMurray, Jiarobia said to me: "Dat man is the biggest awful liar on de river. You should hear him talk. 'One day,' he said, 'dere was a big stone floating up de muddy river and on it was tree men, and one was blind and one was plumb naked and one had no arms nor legs, and de blind man he looks down on bottom of river an see a gold watch, an de cripple he reach out and get it, and de naked man he put it in his pocket.' Now any man talk ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... within thirty miles of Buckhorn, with glass 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 much away ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... up, and you've changed, and we men can go to the dogs. Why, we can't run that printery without you. We'd go plumb ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... here," he said, in a hopeless, despondent voice, "and mebbe I'll git grit enough to tell ye. I ain't never told none o' the folks that comes up here o' how things was, but I'm goin' to tell you. And I'm goin' to tell it to ye plumb from the beginnin'. too." And a sigh like the moan of ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state,—do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 tip ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... trouble together, an' be happy together, an' grow old bein' happy together—if they're swoppin' all that for these here new, down-to-date ideas of such things, they're makin' a damned poor bargain, accordin' to my way of thinkin'. There is such a thing, sir, as educatin' a man or woman plumb ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... In fact the whole stone-work must be termed, not masonry, but simply judicious and careful piling.[107] In performing it, great attention has been paid to having the vertical surfaces as nearly as possible vertical; but this end could be reached without the use of the plumb-line, and with the aid of mere ordinary eyesight, for the rooms are so small, and the partitions so thin, that anything not "true" could, and can yet be, "shoved" into position by a mere steady, slow push; carefully watched ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... once gave vast publicity to the story that at last a use had been found for the Badger, with his mania for digging holes in the ground. By kindness and care and the help of an attached little steam-gauge speedometer plumb compass, that gave accurate aim, improved perpendicularity, and increased efficiency to the efforts of the strenuous excavator, he had been able to produce a dirigible Badger that was certain to displace all other machinery for ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... it. And each time we got through. Twice I almost had reason to reverse my impression of the power of water. First the stern rose up in front of me, as if squaring off at the tops of the cliffs, then descended, until it seemed to be trying to plumb the depths of the river. The waves, rolling over me, almost knocked me out of the boat, I lost my hold on the oars and grabbed the sides of the boat; then, regaining the oars, I finished the run by pulling with the bow ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... 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
... not used, because the king gave them the choice of using the Royal Arms in a canton. The first of Evelyn's designs exhibits a ship in full sail, with the motto Et Augebitur Scientia. The other are as follows:—A hand issuing from the clouds holding a plumb-line—motto, Omnia probate; two telescopes saltier-wise, the earth and planets above—motto, Quantum nescimus; the sun in splendour—motto, Ad majorem lumen; a terrestrial globe, with the human eye ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel—I prudently avoid names nearer home!—I am sure that to many of you, my hearers, these names are little more than reminders of ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... 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 ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... he could shoot, meteor-like, across the sky, and pass swiftly from place to place, and with it such perfect control over all his organs, such marvellous certitude in all his motions, as to be able to drop himself plumb down from the tallest tree-top or out of the void air, on to a slender spray, and scarcely cause its leaves to tremble. Now, on this morning, he lies stiff and motionless; if you were to take him up and drop him from your hand, he would fall to the ground like a stone or a lump ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the one gaping window; the step was broken leading to the sill, and some of the weather-boarding had rotted from the skeleton. The old end-chimney bore it toughly up, however, and the low brick props under the corners stood plumb. Within lay a single room with open beams, a sort of cupboard stairway projecting over the fireplace, and another door and window were in the rear. Before this fireplace sat Meshach Milburn on an old chair, fairly revealed by the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the 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 ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... cliff-track—all in one quiet golden glow. War? Who could think of War? . . . Nicky-Nan at any rate let the thought of it slip into the sea of his private trouble. It was as though he had hauled up some other man's "sinker" and, discovering his mistake, let it drop back plumb. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... ever been known. It was he who taught the people how to build better houses and how to hang their doors on hinges and how to support the roofs with pillars and posts. He was the first to fasten things together with glue; he invented the plumb-line and the auger; and he showed seamen how to put up masts in their ships and how to rig the sails to them with ropes. He built a stone palace for AEgeus, the young king of Athens, and beautified the Temple of Athena which stood on the great rocky ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... "Miss Majesty, it's plumb humiliatin' to all of us thet we wasn't on hand to meet you," Stillwell said. "Me an' Al stepped into the P. O. an' said a few mild an' cheerful things. Them messages ought to hev been sent out to the ranch. I'm sure afraid it was a bit unpleasant ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... said Charlie on the third day, as he thawed out a gourd full of water that had frozen overnight, "that we could load up the wagons with green stuff when we go through here. That last village we came through was plumb chuck full o' pumpkins." ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... father's my pal, and he married the girl that—a girl—well, the best kind of a girl yer can think of" (poor Sam), "and they both worked hard and was gettin' along fine, until sickness come, and then he lost his job, and it's plumb four months now that he's been idle; and that girl, the wife, was thin as a rail, and they would die all together in a heap before they'd let any one ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... for you was dark the time to slumber, But to hold Freedom's columns all star-plumb! Yours was a watery grave, but Martyrdom And, hence, your resurrection with the number, Whose greatness greatens, as the Ages come To know why their pathway, no ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... to Peru, acting in conjunction with one to Lapland, which was sent out for the same purpose in the eighteenth century, it had been noticed that the attraction of the mountainous regions deflected the plumb-line of the large instruments seven or eight seconds from the perpendicular, and, consequently, greatly impaired the enterprise. At the Cape, on the contrary, there was a magnificent table-land of vast expanse, where this difficulty could not occur. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... surprised her once hard at work with charcoal and board and plumb-line, a house-maid posing for her with a broom. He congratulated himself that his little sermon on the advantages of occupation as a cure for discontent had borne fruit so speedy ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... awkward little conference, an impromptu affair, at the mess the morning after the alarm of fire. Willett stock had been running down before that episode, and went "plumb out of sight" for several hours. It was held by Bonner, Bucketts, Briggs and Strong a most womanish thing on his part to have raised such a row and then "wilted." It was Bentley, the most disgusted man at the post, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... said, "is to be a red-letter day, a day plumb up in X, Y and Z. I got to take my gun and forage for some game; then I'll dress my fresh meat and have a cooking. I'll bring over some grub to keep it company. Let's see—this is plum-day, ain't it?" He stood meditating, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... from a Portuguese man-o'-war usually, but either he had got reckless or didn't think of it. Some of his friends shouted out to him to take care, but he laughed back, tellin' them they were foolish to believe old stories, and to show that he didn't care, in a spirit o' 'dare' he dived plumb under the jellyfish. But he misjudged his distance an' came up clean in the middle of it an' the stingin' hairs just closed ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Christian, yo' mus'n't let yer 'settin' sins fool ye, 'case dey's jes like 'possums. Yo' t'ink dem all dead and gone fur to pester ye no moah, when all ob a suddent heah dey all comes agin, jes' as pow'rful as ebber. Be shore yo' kills dem dead—plumb dead—ebbery time yo' sees de leastest bit ob one stick'n up anywhars.' Dat's what he used fur to remark, an' he war a mighty good man, chuck full ob ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... a plumb out opinion—because it nearly always ruins your reputation as a prophet. But Bob ain't nobody's fool. And he's white from his heels to ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... 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 sharp look-out ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... sound, probe; sounding rod, sounding line; lead. bathymetry. [instrument to measure depth] sonar, side-looking sonar; bathometer^. V. be deep &c adj.; render deep &c adj.; deepen. plunge &c 310; sound, fathom, plumb, cast the lead, heave the lead, take soundings, make soundings; dig &c (excavate) 252. Adj. deep, deep seated; profound, sunk, buried; submerged &c 310; subaqueous, submarine, subterranean, subterraneous, subterrene^; underground. bottomless, soundless, fathomless; unfathomed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and they watched him picking out the mortar from between two big stones with his knife. In five minutes he had it loose, and, grasping it with both hands, he pushed it close to the edge, and then peeped over. The soldier was some yards from the plumb. Jack looked down at the shrubbery for guidance. The smith raised his hand to signify patience. Jack waited. Breathlessly the ambushed party watched the two soldiers, who were now talking together. Would they never return to their doors? Five anxious minutes passed, and then, with ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... a lot sence Myry an' Ezry died," agreed Jake. "An' no wonder! Them two didn't amount to much to my way o' thinkin', but their pa an' ma set considerable store by 'em ... Ben Letts were a bad 'un, too. It used to make me plumb ugly to see 'im botherin' Tess when ye was shet up, Orn, an' him all the time the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White |
