"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very plentiful. During our first winter, we had a deer hung on every rafter on the north side of the house. Our supply of meat for the first year or two depended upon our ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... the four walls of the hall and ran in the form of a cross athwart the middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... (a deacon newly dead Supplied the means) Jack Satan holds his head As high as any and as loudly sings His jubilate till each rafter rings. "Rejoice, ye ever faithful," bellows he, "The debt is lifted and the temple free!" Then says, aside, with gentle cachination: "I've got a mortgage ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; Hey ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... beam my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace me— Yes, one more favor I ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... that crowd; you never thought of yourself in an individual capacity at all. It was as if you were a private in an army, or a very ordinary billow of the sea, feeling the battle or the storm, in a collective sort of way, but unable to distinguish your sensations from those of the mass. If a rafter had fallen and crushed you and your unimportant row of people, you could scarcely have regarded it as a personal calamity, but might have found it disagreeable as a shock to that great body of humanity. Recall, then, how astonished you were to be recognized by some one, and to have your ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lighted by a fist-sized chunk of lumicon, hung in a net bag of thongs from the rafter over the table. It was old—cast off by some rich Southron as past its best brilliance, it had been old when he had bought it from Yorn Nazvik the Trader, and that had been years ago. Now its light was as dim ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... true ends, and, being in blind gables, there was no suspicion aroused by the absence of windows. The entrance to these little attics was through small doors that were a part of the partition, and, as usual in country houses, the clothesline stretched across the end from rafter to rafter held enough old carpets and useless stuff to silence any question of secret doors. Several closets also were provided with false backs, where the surplus linen of the household ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draft The great throat ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... down from the rafter, and she went swiftly to the tiny window. She raised her hand, once, then pinched out the flame ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... clung by his elbows. "No good," he whispered hoarsely. "The nearest rafter is a foot below. Let me have the coat. It will be safer than trusting to your hands. I might drag ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... with them. Even so, she may have her nerves preyed upon by eerie tinklings, impossible to locate in the darkness; these are caused by two knives, hung from a nail fixed high up in the rafters. By jiggling a string, which is conducted over another rafter and down the wall to his pillow, the patient makes the knifeblades clash. Sometimes two strings, leading to different beds, complete this instrument of torture. After a determined search, nurse finds ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... in a rafter hung a rusty tin lantern, through the patterned holes of which a single candle had once sprinkled with light the progress of the farmer's evening chores. That, too, had belonged to the early time, and from a dim corner I drew another important piece of furniture of that day. At first this ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of the ceiling follow the course of the great beams supporting the roof. Till it was resolved to construct this ceiling the beams were exposed, and the whole was open to the leads. Canon Stewart speaks of it as a "remarkable example of a trussed rafter roof of seven cants," and says that such a roof was sometimes called a compass roof. He thinks it might have taken the place of an original roof ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... few months before. There were three more children, one Mungie, a lovable child of six, one a pretty three-year-old with a mop of beautiful curls, the youngest a baby just then asleep in its hammock; a little foot dangled out of the hammock, which was hung from a rafter in the verandah roof. We had come to talk to the grandmother and mother about the dear little six-year-old child, and ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... had finished his porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, for the corn and the chaff flew about together, and a cloud of dust ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... song ye may learn the nest," Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then, Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, The dusky-rafter'd many-cobweb'd hall, He found an ancient dame in dim brocade; And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,[2] That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, Her daughter. In ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and—rare exception to the changes elsewhere—generation after generation of the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that it had been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... his head against a rafter, and was quite bewildered for a moment by the shock, the multitude of meteors that rushed across his firmament, and the sudden apparition. Gad, at the same time, stood ready to take a plunge down the stairs in case the schoolmaster should ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... the struggle and the strain Of their hands, the deft in labour, they tugged thereat in vain; And still as the shouting and jeers, and the names of men and the laughter Beat backward from gable to gable, and rattled o'er roof-tree and rafter, Moody and still sat Siggeir; for he said: "They have trained me here As a mock for their woodland bondsmen; and yet shall they ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... inspirits, who honours, who exalts the lot of the labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Outlook, "I," traveler, teddy bear manufacturer, lecturer, interview giver, museum collector, "ME," Guildhall orator, dee-lighted, "MYSELF," mooser, hunter, band-wagon driver, band-wagon, Panama canal, rough rider, circus leader, circus, down-with-rafter, and a former retired and retiring president of the United States. When a young man he spent his father's money by going to college, shooting lions, and raising a large family. During the Spanish-American War he employed a ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... There I was high in a tree, dangling my legs, and staring at smooth lawns, ornamental copses, and brilliant flower-beds without even so much as a dog to enliven the scene. "O'Ruddy," said I to myself after a long time, "you've hung yourself here in mid-air like a bacon to a rafter, and I'll not say much to you now. But if you ever reach the ground without breaking your neck, I'll have a word with you, for my feelings ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... clods, And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust. Salt ground again, and bitter, as 'tis called- Barren for fruits, by tilth untamable, Nor grape her kind, nor apples their good name Maintaining- will in this wise yield thee proof: Stout osier-baskets from the rafter-smoke, And strainers of the winepress pluck thee down; Hereinto let that evil land, with fresh Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full; The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away, In big drops issuing through the osier-withes, But plainly ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... on to a chair, and took it from the rafter on which it had so long lain. Then he carefully ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... four soldier friends came running in, holding their eyes. When Hilda entered the kitchen, she saw that the shell had hit just above those quiet bodies, bringing the rafters and glass and brick upon them. A beam, from the rafter, had been driven into the breast of one of the boys—transfixing him as if by a lance. Shells were breaking in the road, the garden, the field and the near-by houses, every five seconds. In her own house, bricks were ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... the light, light foot, the faint sweet laughter Happy stir and murmur of a child that plays: Slowly the darkness creeps up from floor to rafter, Slowly the fallen ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... monstrous, and fantastic with their skirts and hair and their shadows on the wall. Before Frosted Moses had said that sentence about Courage, Peter had been taking the room in. Because he had been there very often before he knew every flagstone in the floor and every rafter in the roof and all the sporting pictures on the walls, and the long shining row of mugs and coloured plates by the fire-place and the cured hams hanging from the ceiling ... but to-night was Christmas ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... none was to be had. What then was to be done? He resolved to get rid of life by some process, and the next that occurred to him was hanging. In a solemn spirit he prepared a selvage, and suspended himself from the rafter of his workshop. But here another disappointment awaited him, he would not hang. Such was his want of gravity that his own weight proved insufficient to occasion his death by mere suspension. His third attempt was at drowning; but he was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... chamber! What palace of gold ever had a room equal to that chamber? It had a row of barrels, behind which or in which you could safely hide. It had a ladder that would let you smartly bump your head against the highest rafter in the roof, a cross-beam, too, from which you could suspend a swing, and a window in the rear from which you could look upon the Missigatchee River (supposed to have been christened by the Indians). This river-view you could have had, if the window had not been boarded up, ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... follow more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... born mostly of horror, but not entirely, I saw Eltham, stripped to the waist and tied, with his arms upstretched, to a rafter in the ancient ceiling. A Chinaman who wore a slop-shop blue suit and who held an open knife in his hand, stood beside him. Eltham was ghastly white. The appearance of his chest puzzled me momentarily, then I ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Southwest wherever there is water enough to irrigate a few acres. The brown block of adobe house stood on an arid, rocky hillside, and looked like a part of it, save for the white door, and a few bright scarlet strings of chile hung over the rafter ends to dry. Down in the arroyo was the little fenced patch where corn and chile and beans were raised, and behind the house was a round goat corral of wattled brush. The skyward rocky waste of the mountain lifted behind the house, and the empty reach of the mesa lay before—an immense ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... sorter wipe his mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe—pardon, Hal—says I am the very image of a head for ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... weak-looking blue eyes, that every exposure to the sun and wind would redden, and my long, lean hands and arms, that offended my sense of beauty constantly, as I dwelt on their hopelessly angular turns. I had one beauty; so my little paper-framed glass, that rested on the rough rafter that edged the sloping roof of my garret, told me, whenever I took it down to gaze in it, which, but for that beauty, would have been but seldom. It was a finely cut and firmly set mouth and chin. There was, and I felt it, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... queen haughtily. "Procure me my crown." Suzanna looked about her. An old dried-up Christmas wreath hanging on a rafter attracted her attention. Quickly she procured it and held it out to Drusilla. "Here is your crown, Queen," she said. And then, her voice changing, she said: "You'd better let me put it on, Drusilla, it's liable to crumble if you're not careful. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... Come, stand by me, and see if Mentor forgets old friendship." Yet she left the victory still uncertain, that she might prove his courage to the full. She turned herself into a swallow and flew up into the roof and perched on a blackened rafter overhead. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... princely present proud, His hopes of fortune sprang full rife; When, slap, the savage made him feel His talons, newly arm'd with steel, By perching on his nasal member, As if it had been senseless timber. Outshriek'd the wight; but peals of laughter, Which threaten'd ceiling, roof, and rafter, From courtier, page, and monarch broke: Who had not laugh'd at such a joke? From me, so prone am I to such a sin, An empire had not held me in. I dare not say, that, had the pope been there, He ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... much of a ranch now," admitted Jack Harpe. "But everything has to have a beginning. I'm figuring on a right smart growth for the Rafter H within the next year ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... that steal From the shocking laughter Of the old, to kneel By a dripping rafter Under the discolored eaves, Out of trunks with hingeless covers Lifting tales of saints and lovers, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... cheap and substantial building. Light sticks, uninjured by cutting mortices or tenons, a close basket-like manner of construction, short bearings, a continuous support for each piece of timber from foundation to rafter, and embracing and taking advantage of the practical fact, that the tensile and compressible strength of pine lumber is equal to one-fifth of that of wrought iron, constitute ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... they contentedly but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter, and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let off superfluous high spirits or ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated the experiment next year. I have known ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... like frost; and the party, as they stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the property, and the party adjourned to Tentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely; and before they left the table it ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... praying, although I could not see them. I did not pray. They were taken and I was left for some purpose, I suppose. My house finally landed up against the stone railway bridge. I was then pinned down to the floor by a heavy rafter or something. Somehow or other I was lifted from the floor and thrown almost out upon the bridge. Then some people got hold of me and pulled me out and took me over to a brickyard. My eyes and nose were full of cinders. After I reached ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... turkey in a gunny-sack which hung from a kitchen rafter. Should he leave it in the sack, hang it from a rafter of their veranda, out of reach of a chance bobcat or coyote, or—it would be much more of a real surprise to hang the big bird in front of their door in all his feathered glory. The sack would ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... these two wanderers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground. It seemed ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pyramids may have each, three or four kinds, and no two sorts alike on the whole twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a beautiful appearance in a flower garden—that is, eight, ten, or twelve stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two or three varieties, each of which will soon run up the pillars, and form a pretty mass of Roses, which ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... near and behold me Ye who pass by the way to your rest and your laughter, And are full of the hope of the dawn coming after; For the strong of the world have bought me and sold me And my house is all wasted from threshold to rafter. —Pass by me, and hearken, and ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... character. It is intended for forcing early vegetables, strawberries, grapes in pots, and such general propagation of plants as are needed on a country place of moderate extent. The curvilinear roof gives beauty to the design as well as affording more head room inside than the ordinary straight rafter. ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... swishing sound, a splash, and the copious spray of a stream sent over the house from the street fell upon his upturned face. It beat back the smoke. Strength and hope returned. He took another grip on the rafter just as he ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the roof, and the rain beating on the casement, but when, in the calm within, the cheerful flame would roar in the chimney, and glance bright on rafter and wall, still impress me as if the recollection were in reality that of a scene witnessed, not of a mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on former occasions, have avoided going ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... through the stockade gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ends and tie beams. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... seconds later the hurricane struck the cabin with such force that every plank, rafter, beam, and log was first dislocated and then caught up in the whirlwind and scattered over the forest in the wake of the storm. As the roar of the blast died away the rain commenced pouring in torrents accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and soon had some of those wooden slates off, to find as I crawled on to the roof that it was quite evening, and whereabouts I was to get down I couldn't tell. I dare not stop though, for fear the others should come to look after their mate, so unfastening the rope from my waist I tied it to a rafter, slid down as far as it would reach, and hung swinging at the end, thinking that it was all no good, for you two would be gone; and then I dropped, and found ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... night," went on Newt joyously. "From a rafter in Ed Higgins's livery stable. With a clothesline. Kicked a step-ladder out from under himself. Why, even Uncle Dad Simms has heard about it. Ed found him when he went out to—wait a second! I'm goin' your way. What's the rush? He's been dead ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... whenever that implement was wanted; and what is stranger still, another bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy of the most elegant private museum in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... home by this time," responded the journeyman. The old gentleman did not repeat his question; he held fast to the rafter on which he was leaning. "He was already on his way home," continued the journeyman. "I came with him as far as the gate. Then he sent me to the tinner's to see if the tin was ready at last. Joerg told me that he had already brought it to the house and had just come from the roof of St. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... rope was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ready ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was cooking rice; and in both there was a good store of rice, bananas, and sweet potatoes. There was no furniture in either, except matted platforms for sleeping upon, a few coarse pipkins, a red earthen-ware pitcher or two, and some calabashes. On the wall of one was a crucifix, and on a rafter in the other a wooden carving of a jolly-looking man, mallet in hand, seated on rice bags, intended for Daikoku, the Japanese God of Wealth. The people were quite unwashed, but the draught of the river carried off the bad smells which ought to have been there, and, fortunately, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... whipped under his head, there was a gleam and whirl of steel, an explosion, and the bit of paper came fluttering slowly down from the rafter, like a wounded bird struggling to keep upon the air. A draft caught the paper just before it landed and whirled it through the doorless entrance ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... bottle of Armagnac under her arm. Rabecque busied himself at once, and his hungry master disposed himself to satisfy the healthiest appetite in France, when suddenly a shadow fell across the table. A man had come to stand beside it, his body screening the light of one of the lamps that hung from a rafter ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... all rusty, and all calculated to discourage any mouse who ever nibbled cheese. There were also three old bird-cages, in which, since the memory of man, no bird had ever lived; a couple of fire-buckets of ancient black leather, which Eyebright had seen hanging from a rafter all her life without suspecting their use, and a gun of Revolutionary pattern which had lost its lock. All these were to be sold, and so was the hay in the barn, as also were the chickens and chicken-coops; even ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... the Erdberg Works, gives a description of how the roof of a house, 54.6 meters wide, for a gasholder in Berlin, was raised to a height of 22 meters. In that instance the iron structure was put together at the bottom of the tank, leaving the rafter ends and the mural ring. The hoisting itself was effected by means of levers—one to each rafter—connected with the ironwork below by means of iron chains. At the top there were apertures at distances of about 26 mm. from each other, and through these the hoisting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. The bread-pantry, the wine-vat, and the store of sausages on the rafter,—lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him; contented, the sated guest sits, looking neither before him nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. The warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... sixteenths, twelfths, tenths, and eighths of an inch, also a brace-measure, an eight-square measure, and the Essex board-measure. Another style, instead of an Essex board-measure, and the hundredths graduation has a rafter-table. The side upon which the name of the maker is stamped, is called the "face," and ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... But no, I ain't like that—never was an' never will be—an' I ain't one to go pitchin' my life hither an' yon an' dancin' wildly first on one leg an' then the other from dawn to dusk for other people. Elijah's come an' Elijah's gone an' his mattress is hung back to the rafter in the attic an' his sulphur candle is all bought to burn to-morrow an' when that's over an' the smell's over too I shall look to settle down an' not have nothin' more to upset my days an' nights till your time comes, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I hope to goodness as it won't ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... tell-tale wind doth waft her Little breaths of maiden laughter. O, divinely dies the day! And the swallow, on the rafter, In her nest of sticks and clay,— On the rafter, up above her, With her patience doth reprove her, Twittering soft the time away; Never stopping, never stopping, With her wings so warmly dropping Round her nest of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... humanity is retrograding," murmured Capitan Basilio, thinking of the past. "The day after you left they found the senior sacristan dead, hanging from a rafter in his own house. Padre Salvi was greatly affected by his death and took possession of all his papers. Ah, yes, the old Sage, Tasio, also died and was buried in the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high; Bright reason will mock thee Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the cornfield but the little Negro boy, watching him go, did not realize what situation confronted him. That night the master announced that Shell had run away again and the slaves were started searching fields and woods but Shell's body was found three days later by Rhoder McQuirk, dangling from a rafter of Moore's corn crib where the unhappy Negro had hanged ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... hall through the night; and when the third part of the night was passed, Grettir heard huge din without, and then one went up upon the houses and rode the hall, and drave his heels against the thatch so that every rafter cracked again. ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... wonderful. I had a seat in the gallery. The grand old hall was a thrilling scene—the dense throng, the upturned faces, the counsel, the judges, the officers of court, and then the windows, the statues, the echo of history that made every stone and rafter live—Oh, Nan, Nan, listen to me! If I live I'll sit on the bench there some day—I will, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... rent were demanded, and once more he feebly protested that he could not discharge them. Thereon Ramani Babu ordered him to be hung up. Forthwith, a dozen eager hands were laid on him, a rope was passed under his armpits, and the free end thrown over a rafter of the office. By this means he was hauled from the ground and swung suspended, a butt of sarcasm and abuse for Ramani Babu's myrmidons. After enduring this humiliation for an hour or so, he was let down and a final demand made on him for the arrears of rent. On his again ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and distorted, against the woven reed and bamboo walls, their every movement being magnified and strange. In his own part, from time to time he could see the bright green growth that had forced itself through the palm-thatch, and trace every bamboo rafter, save where, in places, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... work. The mid-afternoon found us in the thick of a whirling storm, the grip of the cold relaxed, the woods abloom with the clinging snow. But the crop was nearly in. High and higher rose the cold blue cakes within the ice-house doors until they touched the rafter plate. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... clerk of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all of whom were assembled, were outnumbered by the prodigious array of serving-men, pages, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... now his right-hand was nearly on a level with the floor of the bridge, and he was stretching out his left hand to grasp one of the rails, when his foot suddenly slipping on a sloping rafter, he lost his hold altogether, and, to the horror of his companions, fell with a heavy thud on to the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... companions were, she bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property. For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with fluttering shawls and flapping cap-borders, said briskly, "Good-day to you all. Did any of ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... old sword dropped from its hook on a rafter, Jane danced in glee and declared "a ghost did it," although Dozia insisted she had cut a piece of cord on that very hook. Finally Jane was "canned," as Dozia described the state of being inside of tin things, and an attempt was made ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... builder! Had this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exclaimed, stretching himself still more, yawning and passing a hand through his black hair. "Hang them, they might as well shut up their guests in the smoke-house with the bacons and hams! I feel as cured as a side of pig, ready to be hung to a dirty rafter." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... their invitation, turned to go into the palace, little anticipating the danger that awaited him, for the eldest daughter had drawn up by a chain a huge rafter to let fall and slay Iliya as he rode through the gate. But Iliya perceived her design, and slew her with his lance. Thereupon he rode on toward Kiev, and going straight to the palace, prayed to God and saluted the nobles. And the ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... said that Glover's voice would carry in a mountain storm from side to side of the Medicine Bend yard. That night the very last rafter in the Wickiup gables rang with his cry. He called only once, for O'Neill came bounding up the long stairs three steps at ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... fire burned in the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... empty space. He was on the lip of the front trench. The sound was now a yard to his right, and with infinite care he shifted his position. Now the bell was just below him, and he felt the big rafter of the woodwork from which it had fallen. He felt something else—a stretch of wire fixed in the ground with the far end hanging in the void. That would be the spy's explanation if anyone heard the sound and came seeking ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my dream till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. 'Be of good courage,' he said, 'daughter of Icarius; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... keep your eye on BIRRELL, So wholly free from guile, Conspicuous by his absence From Erin's peaceful isle; Who wakes from floor to rafter The House to heedless laughter, Careless of what comes after Can he but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... him, a rafter here and there was gaping open, and fiery monsters, with blood-red eyes, were peeping down at him and puffing clouds of blue smoke through the interstices. Thousands and thousands of voices were bickering and chattering with each other, the voices of the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... without delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of thieves, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... them, expecting every moment to feel the fangs in his wrist. But he found the match-box, struck a light, carefully examined the floor as far as he could see it, jumped out of bed at one bound, and took refuge in the other room. There he looked in every corner, and along every rafter for the other snake, for he knew that at this season snakes are often found in pairs, but he could not see the mate of the one he had left ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... was a little boy wouldn't say his prayers—, An' when he went to bed at night, away up stairs, His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they found was thist his pants an' roundabout—: An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y." All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark assassin, A ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... there as he thought to fight. But shortly for to speaken of this thing, With Creon, which that was of Thebes king, He fought, and slew him manly as a knight In plain bataille, and put his folk to flight: And by assault he won the city after, And rent adown both wall, and spar, and rafter; And to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their husbands that were slain, To do obsequies, as ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... for Rusty's flying through the open window, beyond the fact that he liked to prowl around the great, dusty room under the eaves, to see what he could find. Once he was inside, he noticed something that had not caught his eye on his former visit. Hanging from a rafter, where the slanting rays of the setting sun fell squarely upon it, was a big bunch of brown ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... communistic friends, they disbelieve entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted from the wooden beams they proceed to add insult to injury by building ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... you stayed all night in a ruined town With a rafter for a bed? With horses stamping underneath In the morning when they are fed? Have you heard the crump-crump whistle? Do you know the dud shell's grunt? Have you played rat in a dugout?— Then you have surely ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... the end of the ledge. Creeping along it he soon found himself close to the opening, surrounded by strong light, but effectually concealed from view by the ledge. It was as if he were on a natural rafter, peeping down on the floor below! As there was a multitude of such ledges around, which it would take several men many hours to examine, he began to breathe more freely, for, would the searchers not naturally think that a fugitive ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... rays of light were caught and sent dancing. Along the wall on the left-hand side presses were overcharged with dusty tea-services. On the right were square grey windows, under which the convex sides of salad-bowls sparkled in the sun; and from rafter to rafter, in garlands and clusters like grapes, hung gilded mugs bearing devices suitable for children, and down the middle of the floor a terrace was built ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... blank, "I got it from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... were on fire in oxygen,' as Professor Faraday said, 'every iron bar, or rafter, or pillar, every nail and iron tool, and the fire-place itself; all the zinc and copper roofs, and leaden coverings, and gutters, and; pipes, would consume and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... now surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the courtyard. The vanquished, of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighboring wood. The victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... build, and which are kept in sheds constructed specially for them, are twenty-six feet long, two and a half wide, and four deep. They are furnished with gimbals, the cross-pieces being connected by a rafter. On the other side there is a small platform, four feet square, and furnished with a roof, under which they are accustomed to keep their provisions. These pirogues have a triangular sail, which is ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... his blanket to a nail away up in the topmost rafter of the cabin, and here he left it ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... their senses with a deep and drowsy peace, and as they climbed from storey to storey it is doubtful if the children caught their leader's words at all. There were no echoes—the spaces were too vast for that—and they swung away from spar to spar, and from rafter to rafter, as easily as acrobats on huge trapezes. Jimbo and Monkey shot upwards ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... but a few seconds behind the man, but those few seconds were fateful. As the pilot stepped into the saloon he beheld a sight that was enough to freeze him motionless. The big kerosene lamps, swung from the rafter braces above, shed over the interior a peculiar sickly radiance, yellowed now by reason of the pale morning light outside. Beneath one of the lamps a tableau was set. Sam Kirby and the man he had struck the night before were facing each other ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of the Indian Medical ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... shone into the loft revealed, to the boy's surprise and wonder, a coil of rope. He examined this, and found a stout clasp-hook at one end. The other end of the rope was made fast to a rafter. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... of closets and cupboards, the convenient placing of shelves, the exact joining of sills and casings. Often he stayed late in the evening, after the workmen with their noisy boots had gone home to supper. He sat down on a rafter or on the skeleton of the upper porch and quite lost himself in brooding, in anticipation of things that seemed as far away as ever. The dying light, the quiet stars coming out, were friendly and sympathetic. One night ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... and his friend, Mr. Hastings, having waited until they saw the last rafter of unfortunate Reilly's house and premises sink into a black mass of smoking ruins, turned their steps to the parsonage, which they had no sooner entered than they went immediately to Reilly's room, who was still there under concealment. Mr. Brown, however, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... heeded now— (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)— A child may read the moody brow Of yon black mountain lone. With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, And storms are formed behind the storm we feel: The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... 28th was attached to a rafter of the front verandah of a bungalow at Lahore. The owner of the house stated that the swallows in question had already reared one brood that year, and that the birds in question had nested in his verandah for some years. There is no doubt that some wire-tailed ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... of Mount Lebanon. Living on the equatorial line and on the meridian so accurately measured by the highest mathematics of France and Spain, Quitonians must needs leave out every right angle or straight line in the walls, and every square beam and rafter. Except on the grand road from Quito to Ambato, commenced by President Moreno, there is not a wheel-barrow to be seen; paving-stones, lime, brick, and dirt, are usually carried on human backs. Saint ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... stepped upon gave way beneath our feet, and tumbled us down together with them lower than when we first set off. However, as we were very light, we were not much hurt by our falls; only indeed poor Brighteyes, by endeavouring to save himself, caught by his nails on a rafter, and tore one of them from off his right fore-foot, which was very sore and inconvenient. At length we surmounted all difficulties, and, invited by a strong scent of plum-cake, entered a closet, where ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... now I dare not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter, I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the window: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the work begin in the still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In many an old garret now bare of such ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various |
