"Tinder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... maid Had sworn another oath; And with this other maid to church Unthinking Stephen went— Poor Martha! on that woful day A cruel, cruel fire, they say, Into her bones was sent: It dried her body like a cinder, And almost turn'd her brain to tinder. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... said "it was in memory of the girl he left behind him!" But as he never spoke of this girl to either of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either jesting or mistaken. In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder, and the clothes on our back. These last ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... carry the project through while I am alive, and it would really seem most proper to wait until I was gone before they put up my monument. I have nothing, however, to say on the subject. I am gratified, of course, to see the manifestation of kindly feeling, but, as the tinder of vainglory is in every human heart, I rather shrink from such a proposed demonstration lest a spark of flattery should kindle that tinder to an unseemly and destructive flame. I am not blind to the popularity, world-wide, of the Telegraph, and a sober forecast ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... be verily evil work in the cape, and a witch's bodkin hath pierced these cunning eyelets. It goeth so fast now that erelong every guileless, senseless thing in our houses, down to the tinder-box and the candle-stick, will find hinges and turn into a gate, whereby witchcraft can enter. You say, Widow Hutchins, that Olive Corey gave this ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... when he arrived made him wish that he dared postpone the issue, and the hand which fitted a key to his own front door trembled with trepidation. Once he had seen his wife's face he would know. Her anger would not burn slowly, in such a case, but in the conflagration of tinder laid to powder. Yet when he stole quietly to the study door and looked in, anxiety made his breath uneven. She was sitting there, within arm's length of the table—which, thank God, seemed to the casual glance, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... each letter in small pieces, placed the whole in the grate where dead cinders still remained, and with a vesta set a light to them. For a few moments they blazed fiercely up the chimney, then died out, leaving only black tinder. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in the furnace did the rest. What with the bundles of dried herbs which burnt like so much tinder and the woodwork, the panelled walls and furniture, nothing could save ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... busy in preparing the boats for active work. In each boat were stowed two lines, two hundred fathoms in length, coiled away in their respective tubs ready for use; four harpoons, and as many lances; a keg, containing several articles, among which were a lantern and tinder-box; three small flags, denominated whifts, for the purpose of inserting into a dead whale, when the boats might have to leave it in chase of others; and two cirougues— pieces of board of a square form with a handle in the centre, so that they could ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the door, they would force their way in immediately; upon which the Collier turned round and said, as if speaking to his wife, "Come, dame, you must get up and strike a light, and we will let the gentlemen in presently." There was then some pretended delay in finding the tinder-box, and at length the Collier began striking the steel with the flint, and, after bestowing a few curses on the dampness of the tinder, intentionally struck down the tinderbox, tinder and all, upon which he said, "There, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... necessary to form a syndicate. Three hundred thousand dollars came into the club's account at the first appeal. The work began under the superintendence of the most celebrated aeronaut of the United States, Harry W. Tinder, immortalized by three of his ascents out of a thousand, one in which he rose to a height of twelve thousand yards, higher than Gay Lussac, Coxwell, Sivet, Croce-Spinelli, Tissandier, Glaisher; another in which he had crossed America ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche, the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the dike. Now what had reached being must ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... brain, If thou wouldst have me burn and weep for thee! If it be true thou livest alone, Amor, On the sweet-bitter tears of human hearts, In an old man thou canst not wake desire; Souls that have almost reached the other shore Of a diviner love should feel the darts, And be as tinder ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... half-lunatic Nigger, who was not in my reckoning, nor in Swope's, who put the match to the tinder and upset such carefully laid plans. As I feared, the revolt of the crew blazed up immediately. My shipmates were eager, too eager. As it turned out, their precipitancy was to cost them their chance of victory, for they began to riot while the three ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... captaincy of the boat crew, on which I pulled stroke, and I'm still hitting the water when she gives the word, though it now looks as if we are both adrift on the high and uncharted seas—or sitting on the lid of a tinder-box, juggling lighted torches. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... deck again twilight had fallen, but far back on the horizon was a tiny blur—the Silver Star. As Jack gazed back at her, she vanished below the horizon as suddenly as an extinguished spark in a piece of tinder. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... as he calmly lighted his pipe by means of a German tinder-box, and replied, 'This is my carriage. When things are flat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy myself. I am ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... MOTHER OR SISTER.—Young men, it can never tinder any circumstances be right for you to do to a woman that, which, if another man did to your mother or sister, you could never forgive! The very thought is revolting. Let us suppose a man guilty of this shameful sin, and I apprehend that each of us would feel ready to shoot the villain. We are not ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the right side, with holes and pools of the sweetest water. Here "green grow the rushes," especially the big-headed Kasb (Arundo donax); the yellow-tipped Namas or flags (Scirpus holoschnus) form a dense thicket; the Ushr, with its cork-like bark which makes the best tinder, is a tree, not a shrub; and there are large natural plantations of the saffron-flowered, tobacco-like Verbascum, the Arab's Uzn el-Humr ("Donkey's Ear"). Add scattered clusters of date-trees, domineering over clumps of fan-palm; and, lastly, marvellous to relate, a few hundred feet of greensward, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... then been concerned with the outward manifestation of war—cannon, cholera, shell, and the green glittering trees of the forest itself. But the war had made progress since then. It had advanced out of material things into the very souls of men. It was no longer the forest of bark and tinder with which the chiefs of this world had to deal, but, to adapt the Russian proverb itself, "with the dark forest of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... they are the firemen of the islands and by their effective work have repeatedly checked conflagrations, which are of frequent occurrence and tend to be very destructive in this country, where most of the houses are built of bamboo and nipa palm, and where roofs become dry as tinder during the long period when there is little or no rain. They have aided in combating pests of locusts, and, in short, have been ready to meet almost any kind of an emergency which ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... easy. Everything had been soaked by the rain of the previous night, and a bit of dry grass could scarcely be found. At length he procured a little; and by rubbing it in the damp gunpowder which he had extracted from his pistol, and drying it in the sun, he formed a sort of tinder that caught fire after ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... difficulty attendant upon flint and steel and burnt rag, they had to be kept alight from morning till night and from night till morning. If a fire went out it was a woful business to start it again with the reluctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an easier way, of going round to a neighbor and borrowing a shovelful of hot embers wherewith to kindle the blackened hearth. But in villages built for the most part of wood this might well be regarded as a dangerous process. So the law did regard it, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the fire. Nearly all families had some form of a flint and steel,—a method of obtaining fire which has been used from time immemorial by both civilized and uncivilized nations. This always required a flint, a steel, and a tinder of some vegetable matter to catch the spark struck by the concussion of flint and steel. This spark was then blown into a flame. Among the colonists scorched linen was a favorite tinder to catch the spark of fire; ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... is so bad, the ships that are driven about on the sea (death is unwelcome, men love to live) look about them and see this fish; they ween it is an island. They are very glad of it, and with all their might they draw towards it, make the ships fast, and all go ashore. With stone and steel and tinder they make a good fire on this monster, and warm themselves well, and eat and drink; the whale feels the fire and makes them sink, for he quickly dives to the bottom, he kills them ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... This Doubleday allowed, posting himself as watchmen at the door. No sooner was Fawkes alone than he took the opportunity to rid himself of the chief evidences against him, by flinging the match and tinder out of his window, which overlooked the river. In another minute Sir Thomas Knevet and his men entered ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... cabin to strike a light, which he obtained by a piece of iron and flint, with some fine dry moss for tinder. While he was so employed, my eyes were fixed on the vessel, wondering what it could be. It moved through the water, turned this way and that. "It must be alive," thought I; "is it a fish or a bird?" As I watched the vessel, the sun was going down, and there ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... only allude to amadou, or German tinder, which is prepared in Northern Europe from Polyporus fomentarius, Fr., cut in slices, dried, and beaten until it is soft. This substance, besides being used as tinder, is made into warm caps, chest protectors, and other articles. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... elldr, fire: hence we have "At sla elld ur tinnu," to strike fire from flint; which approaches very near to a tinder-box. Ling, Icel., the heath or heather plant: ljung I take to be the same word. Gat, Icel. for way or opening; hence strand-gata, the opening of the strand or creek. Tjarn, tiorn, Icel., well exemplified in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... often a great dissimilitude between his fair captivator, as she appeared to others and as she seemed when invested with the attributes he gave her." "My heart," he himself, speaking of those days, observes, "was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other." Yet, it must be acknowledged that sufficient room exists for believing that Burns and his brethren of the West had very different notions of the captivating and the beautiful; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... so I knew that there was nothing for it but to gallop hard and try my luck elsewhere. I rode round the English picket, and then, as I heard nothing more of them, I concluded rightly that I had at last come through their defences. For five miles I rode south, striking a tinder from time to time to look at my pocket compass. And then in an instant—I feel the pang once more as my memory brings back the moment—my horse, without a sob or stagger, fell stone ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... occurred during our stay, by the thatch having, through long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder. The roofs became ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze. There is not a single inscription ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... piece of flint as we came along this morning," Will said, "and by means of one of these chisels we ought to be able to strike a light; a few dead leaves, finely crumbled up, should do instead of tinder." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... good supper at a cook-shop, sauntered about the streets for awhile, then sauntered slowly home, after buying a tinder box, with which to light my candies. I found my ladder dangling unnoticed, so I nimbly climbed to my room, pulling it up after me, like the savages in Polynesia. I lit my candles, intending to read; but I found that I was far too well inclined to mischief to pay much heed ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... ways, William, although, in most of them, tinder is necessary. The savages can produce fire by rubbing a soft piece of wood against a hard one. But we have gunpowder; and we have two ways of igniting gunpowder - one is by a flint and steel, and the other is by collecting the sun's rays into one ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... madman's cunning; for at a sudden thought he stopped, and the cursing tongue was silent. Five minutes later he left the place, closing the door carefully behind him; but before that time a red jet of flame, like the ravenous tongue of a famished beast, was lapping at a hastily assembled pile of tinder-dry furniture in one corner of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the cool judgment of Bob Quirk, violence would have resulted. The primitive mind is slow to resent an affront, and while the chief deputy had couched his last remarks in well-chosen language, his intimation that I was a fugitive from justice, and an outlaw in resisting arrest, was tinder to stubble. Knowing the metal of my outfit, I curbed the tempest within me, and relying on a brother whom I would gladly follow to death if need be, I waved hands off to my boys. "Now, men," said Bob to the deputies, "the easiest way out of this matter is the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... tinder grew dull and went out. For a long while I lay there, thinking, awed by the ways of God—so certain, so inscrutable. And understood how at the last all things must be revealed—even the momentary and lightest impulse, and every deepest and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... population had no food but this root. The food supply of a whole nation seemed on the point of being cut off. A loud demand was made for "the opening of the ports." By existing laws the ports admitted foreign grain tinder import duties varying in severity inversely with the fluctuating price of home-grown grain; thus a certain high level in the cost of corn was artificially maintained. These regulations, though framed for the protection of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... lane that bordered the big wheat-field. On this side was fallow ground for half the length of the section, and the other half was ripe barley, dry as tinder, and beyond that, in line with the burning fields, a quarter-section of blasted wheat. The men were there. Kurt saw at once that other men with horses and machines were also there. Then he recognized Olsen and ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... little girl is the subject. Of course that was ever so long ago, when there were no lucifer matches, and steel and tinder were used to light fires; when soda and saleratus had never been heard of, but people made their pearl ash by soaking burnt crackers in water; when the dressmaker and the tailor and the shoemaker went from house to house twice a year ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... be more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are afraid that she will catch fire by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... before nightfall from the village and sit down in a row, one behind the other, on the path. The man in front has a leaf-mat drawn like a hood over his head and back in order that the ghost may not touch him from behind unawares. In his hand he holds a glowing coal and some tinder, and as he puts the one to the other he calls to the ghost, "Come, take, take, take; come, take, take, take," and so on. Meantime his mates behind him are reckoning up the names of all the men near and far who are suspected ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... half-past eight, having completed the fixing of the smith's forge, his vice, and a wooden board or bench, which were also batted to a ledge of the rock, to the great joy of all, under a salute of three hearty cheers. From an oversight on the part of the smith, who had neglected to bring his tinder-box and matches from the vessel, the work was prevented from being continued for at least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Of bark, will make cloth; Its wood, boats and houses;— Its leaves are not loath To be used for a towel, A table-cloth, napkin; Its juice will make bird-lime, And tinder, its catkin. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... monument," ordered Garry, thus proving himself to be a real woodsman and Ranger, never forgetting that a stray spark or ember may smoulder for some little time and perhaps start a fire that would sweep through the forests as though they were so much tinder. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... collected at the end of the groove farthest from that part of the board on which he was kneeling. He then continued his operation; and in a short time the wood began to smoke, the sides of the groove becoming completely charred. On this he stopped and gathered the tinder over that part of the groove which appeared to be most strongly heated. After a few moments, it became manifest that the sawdust or tinder was ignited; and a gentle application of the breath now drew forth a flame which rose to the height of several inches. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man's heart as a match to tinder. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... fair amount of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my room reading, writing, or drawing. This room of mine soon became ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... wonder and alarm. All his instincts warned him that a new danger was at hand. The breath of the wind suddenly grew hot, and sparks carried by it blew past him. He knew, in an instant, that the forest was on fire behind him and that tinder dry, it would burn fast and furious. Changing from a walk to a run, he sped forward as swiftly as he could, while the flames suddenly sprang high, waved and leaped ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the life which Spinoza and the stoics reprove, and which is the exact opposite of that serene and contemplative life, always equable like the starlight, in which man lives at peace, and sees everything tinder its eternal aspect; the opposite also of the life of conscience, in which God alone speaks, and all self-will surrenders itself ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... normal and healthy boy, but the discussions, the debates, and the passions sweeping over the Union throughout the year had sifted into Pendleton also. The news today had merely struck fire to tinder prepared already, and, infused with the spirit of youth, he felt much excitement but no depression. Making a careful toilet he descended to the drawing room a little before the regular time. Although he was ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the darkness. He wanted to shout 'This way, Anne! I am here!' but he couldn't. At the horror of this chase, more ghastly in his imagination than if he could have seen it, the perspiration broke out on his forehead, while his throat was as dry as tinder. A last supreme scream was cut ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... roaring, a swishing; the storm, a shower which died away, leaving changing patches of blue in the lumpy sky, and all nature calm and pleased, but oh, so wet! Of course the fire was out in the lodge and nearly all the wood was wet. Now Quonab drew from a small cave some dry cedar and got down his tinder-box with flint and steel to light up; but a serious difficulty appeared at once—the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a morning of felicitous hopes. Shallow-brained cheerfulness, foolish dreams, unfounded hopes, you would say; and I will not venture to deny it: suspicions to that effect arose too frequently in my own mind. But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... to teach himself the mysteries of his new trade. While living in this solitary way he is detected by Mrs. Herne, an old gypsy woman, "one of the hairy ones," as she terms herself, who carried "a good deal of devil's tinder" about with her, and had a bitter grudge against the word- master. She hated him for having wormed himself, as she fancied, into the confidence of the gypsies and learned their language. She regarded him further, as the cause of differences between herself ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the other priest, "that at twenty you must indeed have been excitable, a veritable tinder-box, to have retained so much energy! Come, monsieur, try to calm yourself and have patience: you yourself admit it can only be ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... When all your alchemy, and your algebra, Your minerals, vegetals, and animals, Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades, Could not relieve your corps with so much linen Would make you tinder, but to see a fire; I gave you countenance, credit for your coals, Your stills, your glasses, your materials; Built you a furnace, drew you customers, Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside, A house to ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... man Tom stumble down the ladder, heard the sound of flint and steel, saw their two evil heads outlined against the glow of the tinder as they blew and, leaping upon them, I smote with my heavy ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... skins about her and had swept her into his arms. With her face crushed against his breast he lowered his head and dashed back into the fiery holocaust of the outer room. The cabin, with its pitch-filled logs, was like a box made of tinder, and a score of men could not have beat out the fire that was raging now. The wind beating from the west had kept it from reaching the door opening into the corral, but the pitch was hissing and smoking at the threshold ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... a whole candle, that I might not find myself in the dark when I rose, and exhausted in body and mind, was soon fast asleep. I must have slept many hours, for when I awoke I was in darkness—the candle had burnt out. I groped for the basket, and examined the contents with my hands, and found a tinder-box. I struck a light, and then feeling hungry and weak, refreshed myself with the eatables it contained, which were excellent, as well as the wine. I had replaced the remainder, when the key again turned in the door, and Melchior ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... settlement, where the deceased (Cox) and he were worked together in the same gang. Cox constantly entreated him to run away with him from that settlement, which he refused to do for a length of time. Cox having procured fishhooks, a knife, and some burnt rag for tinder, he at last agreed to go with him, to which he was powerfully induced by the apprehension of corporal punishment, for the loss of a shirt that had been stolen from him. For the first and second day they strayed through the forest; on the third made the beach, and travelled ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... forgotten now, so many extravagancies tread upon one another's heels, and hustle each its predecessor off the stage. Spirit-rapping is the last, and is spreading like wildfire throughout the land: some characters have so much tinder in their composition, that they catch in a moment. But it will soon go out—'tis like the crackling of thorns under the pot—a quick blaze for a moment, and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... appears, did actually burst forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... to her without being discovered. There was no time to be lost. I opened the door with the greatest facility and gained the opening into the back path. I locked the door after me, and brought the key with me for a short distance, then placed all the keys tinder a rock. I had no hat but only a black veil. I threw that over my head after the fashion of Italy and gained the outer gate. There were masons at work near the gate which was open and I passed through into the street without being questioned by ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... Old Heck flung at him. "Steer for steer, cow for cow, hoof for hoof—I'll put Quarter Circle KT critters against every brute you own that th' Ramblin' Kid lands his horse tinder the wire ahead ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... folded his epistle until it could be crumpled into an envelope. Riles sealed, stamped, and addressed it, and a moment later the dust was rising down the trail as the cowboy bore the fatal missive to town. The die was cast; the match had been set to the tinder, and the fire must now burn through to a finish, let ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... smudge, flames break from the wettest timber, and green moss blazes with a furious heat. You hastily gather handfuls of seemingly incombustible material and throw it on the fire, but the conflagration increases. Grass and green leaves hesitate for an instant and then flash up like tinder. The more you put on, the more your smudge rebels against its proper task of smudging. It makes a pleasant warmth, to encourage the black-flies; and bright light to attract and cheer the mosquitoes. Your effort ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... he, glancin' keen at me from Tinder his bushy eyebrows, "this Mrs. Bagstock seems to think we are using her badly. As a matter of fact, those Inter-Lake shareholders were lucky. We might have frozen them out altogether. You ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... they are identical in all points. I readily grant that Father Alexis uses his thumbs better; I admit, too, that he has a grain or two more of phosphorus in his brain, for you know the savants of to-day, at their own risk and peril, have discovered that the human mind is nothing but a phosphoric tinder-box." ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the world like the broken spout of an oil- can with a couple of pieces of nutmeg-grater soldered on, as strainers, at the lower end; nor the string of sapless charque beef, nor the pouchful of villanous tobacco, nor the paper for manufacturing it into cigarritos, nor the cow's-horn filled with tinder, and the flint and steel attached. Thus mounted, clothed, and equipped, he is ready for a gallop ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... fire were very far from ended. We had no difficulty in getting another spark to catch in another piece of this strange sort of tinder, of which we found great plenty near at hand. But it would not blaze. With the slightest breath it vanished almost as a flash of powder; and it was long before we hit upon anything that would do us any further good. ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... got to stop this clatter somehow. The stones are hot now. The whole thing'll burn up like tinder if we can't chock ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Pan-at-lee found this ancient cave homelike and familiar. There was less litter within than she had found without and what there was was mostly an accumulation of dust. Beside the doorway was the niche in which wood and tinder were kept, but there remained nothing now other than mere dust. She had however saved a little pile of twigs from the debris on the porch. In a short time she had made a light by firing a bundle of twigs and lighting others from ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not required to strain right against justice and honesty. What is the offence? How is our Lord the King or his subjects aggrieved? Those rags!—I know not what the splendid household of the Duke may require for matches and tinder; for this is all the value that can be attached to them. Shall we call for them back again, lest the Duke and the Duchess should lose their recovered treasure? I am not disposed to dispute their right; for even if they were the perquisite of the housekeeper, I am convinced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Salvador, tinder the title of the Greater Republic of Central America, when apparently on the threshold of a complete federal organization by the adoption of a constitution and the formation of a national legislature, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... heap of black tinder where some papers had been burnt weeks or perhaps months ago. There were cigar-ends lying about, showing that whoever had been ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... The powder is very inflammable, and when propelled in a hollow cone against lighted spirit of wine on tow at the other end by a sudden jerk, its flash serves to imitate lightning for stage purposes. It was formerly used as tinder for lighting fires with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... "Pennsylvania oil" at the grocer's for eight skilling, as a doubtful domestic experiment. Steel pens had not crowded out the old-fashioned goose-quill, and pen-knives meant just what their name implies. Matches were yet of the future. We carried tinder-boxes to strike fire with. People shook their heads at the telegraph. The day of the stage-coach was not yet past. Steamboat and railroad had not come within forty miles of the town, and only one steam factory—a cotton mill that ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the ditch, on Ainsley's directions, each man tied his own lot in one bundle, bringing the ends of the fuses together and tying them securely with their ends as nearly as possible level, so that they could be lit at the same time. Each man had with him one of those tinder pipe-lighters which are ignited by the sparks of a little twirled wheel. When Ainsley had placed the men on the edge of the crater, he gave the word, and each man lit his tinder, holding it so as to be sheltered from sight from the German trench, behind the flap of his mackintosh. Then each ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground ant the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... had come to think that the man was innately a libertine, awaiting but the right one to strike the hidden flint and set the tinder aglow—the tinder that would burn, and consume, and destroy. He had known of men like that—of men who went the even pathway of their lives until there crossed it another who tore them from it; and that one they followed, leaving soul and morals and decency and cleanliness forever behind ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... black-snakes, lions, leopards, bears, wolves, and wild cats. However this did not dishearten our hero, for he was resolved to attempt regaining his liberty, let the consequence be what it would. The captains then gave him a pocket-compass to steer by, a steel and tinder-box, a bag of cakes, a cheese, and some rum, telling him, he must leave the three-notched road a little way off, and steer to his left hand; (in Maryland they distinguish the roads by letters or notches cut on ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... held, caught in some draught, went out, and we were in darkness. Amante proposed that we should carry the letters back to my salon, collecting them as well as we could in the dark, and returning all but the expected one for me; but I begged her to return to my room, where I kept tinder and flint, and to strike a fresh light; and so she went, and I remained alone in the room, of which I could only just distinguish the size, and the principal articles of furniture: a large table, with a deep, overhanging cloth, in the middle, escritoires and other heavy articles against the walls; ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... population, and extent. It was at first resorted to by a party of Fellatas, who named it Alorie, and encouraged all the slaves in the country to fly from the oppression of their masters, and join their standard. They reminded the slaves of the constraint tinder which they laboured; and tempted them by an offer of freedom and protection, and other promises of the most extravagant nature, to declare themselves independent of Yarriba. Accordingly, the discontented; many miles round, eagerly flocked to Alorie in considerable numbers, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... shall catch the seven o'clock back, I should think. Oh, my blessed heart, the fuss and commotion he'll make! And those granite setts at Tinder Hill—he might well call them kidney pebbles—they'll jolt him almost to bits. I wonder why they can't mend them, the state they're in, an' all the men as go across in that ambulance. You'd think they'd ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... handful or two of the crumbling wood, broke it up into dust, then struck a spark on to the tinder, touched it with a slow match and inserted this into the little pile of wood; a minute's blowing and the flames sprang up. He drew out the slow match and putting his foot upon it placed it in his wallet, then he broke off some more wood and ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... vessel in which he sailed, and was invested with discretionary powers to cruise in the South Seas for any cargo which might come most readily to hand. He had on board, as usual in such voyages, beads, looking-glasses, tinder-works, axes, hatchets, saws, adzes, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, files, spokeshaves, rasps, hammers, nails, knives, scissors, razors, needles, thread, crockery-ware, calico, trinkets, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and Jeanne, entering the kitchen-garden, sat down tinder an olive tree, reflecting that Noemi could easily learn from the door-keeper where to find her. The old gardener, whose curiosity was aroused, asked, with many apologies, if she was a ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... and rain, but could hardly be trusted in a high wind. All these men were inveterate smokers, and carried their pipes and tobacco pouches at their waists. Most had sheath knives attached to belts, and some carried flint, steel, and tinder. They formed picturesque groups, some talking with purchasers and others collected around fires or near their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... fight for it, that's evident; and the boats of a fleet could hardly make their way in here. We had best get the three craft moored with their broadsides to the entrance. We will blow the boats to tinder if they try to come in, and then we can load up with all the most valuable goods and slip out at night-time. That is ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... of the men to another who was smoking a pipe, "if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you'll have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it." And Mrs. Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels of paper and rubbish ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the Pueblos, say that at one time all the nations, Navajos, Pueblos, Coyoteros, and white people, lived together tinder ground, in the heart of a mountain, near the river San Juan. Their food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all kinds of game were closed up with them in their cave; but their light was dim, and only endured ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... — N. fuel, firing, combustible. [solid fuels] coal, wallsend[obs3], anthracite, culm[obs3], coke, carbon, charcoal, bituminous coal, tar shale; turf, peat, firewood, bobbing, faggot, log; cinder &c. (products of combustion) 384; ingle, tinder, touchwood; sulphur, brimstone; incense; port-fire; fire-barrel, fireball, brand; amadou[obs3], bavin[obs3]; blind coal, glance coal; German tinder, pyrotechnic sponge, punk, smudge [U. S.]; solid fueled rocket. [fuels for candles and lamps] wax, paraffin wax, paraffin oil; lamp oil, whale ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... bed-tick covers—to be afterwards filled with the down they should procure from the sea birds. He bought, too, a strong lamp, with a supply of paraffin oil, and several dozen boxes of matches; so that he and Eric should not have to adopt the tinder and flint business, or be obliged to rub two pieces of dry stick together, in the primitive fashion of the Australian aborigines, when ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with asphaltum. She was making one of these water bottles. She heated small round stones in the fire and put them in the asphaltum, and then lined the bottle, making it tight. She had no matches, of course, nor even a tinder-box, but started fire by rubbing two ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... another mass of matter, as when a bullet strikes a target and becomes heated; or it may be friction, as when a car-axle heats when run without proper oiling to reduce friction; or it may be condensation, as when tinder is ignited by condensing the air about it; or chemical reactions, when molecular structure is changed as in combustion, or an electrical current, which implies a dynamo and steam-engine or water-power. If light appears, its antecedent has been ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free herself,—that this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... cans mixed up with packing boxes and kindling wood in the front yards, after the happy-go-lucky housekeeping methods followed by Plummers Lane housekeepers, I should say three blocks would go like tinder. Bill McCormack was down to see us, just as we were knocking off, and he was pleased as Punch at what ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... They're like tinder; Don't blow on them, Mother! I bet they'll burn faster Than you find the victuals ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... light their guide could well enough tell how to miss those ways that led wrong, yet in the dark he was put to a stand; but he had in his pocket a map of all ways leading to or from the celestial city; wherefore he struck a light—for he never goes without his tinder-box also—and takes a view of his book or map, which bids him be careful in that place to turn to the right hand.. And had he not been careful to look in his map, they had in all probability been smothered in the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the roof, branches of pine had been spread over the timber, and the branches in turn covered with a thick layer of straw to prevent the earth from filtering between the logs. This material was as dry as tinder, and held the fire. ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... and a few moments after the cry of "fire" added to the terrors of the storm. A barn belonging to a neighbor who lived a mile distant from us, had been struck by that flash, and was soon wrapped in flames. It was a large building, with timbers and boards like tinder, and was filled with hay, and it was well-nigh consumed before assistance could reach the spot, and it was with much difficulty that the flames could be kept from the other buildings on the premises, indeed several of the neighbours were ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... of Nature, measure time by the lapse of ages, and that a thousand years will often pass between the convulsions of the internal fires which find an outlet through the earth's craters. The smoke and heat of the mountain, however, reminded me of my tinder-box, and I gathered some flints, of which there were a number lying round, before returning to my dwelling in the native town. I had kept my ability to make fire, so far, secret, but if my life was threatened I resolved ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... and another took out tinder and flint, and soon they had a big fire roaring, and my grandfather could see Patrick plainly enough. If he had kept still before, he kept stiller now. Soon they had four poles up and a pole across, right over ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... that dismal barrack! All that the Jew used to spend on decorating the street, he is saving up now in his money chest!" The words were like a spark among tinder and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal. . . . On the whole, then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the Phoenicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder box were all that they contained, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subjected to pressure, so warm vapor becomes hot when forced into less bulk, but in neither case does the quantity of moisture or the quantity of heat sustain any alteration. Common air becomes so hot by compression that tinder may be inflamed by it, as is seen in the instrument for producing instantaneous light by suddenly forcing air ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... transportation, and munitions, and even axes, picks, and shovels, so much in use later in the war, evidenced the forethought that governed this force. The boats, from their open lower deck construction, proved admirable for transports, but their tinder-box construction made fire-traps of them, requiring unremitting vigilance. These points were well understood, and the readiness with which the troops adapted themselves to circumstances was a constant source ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... remembered what they did; a moment more and Rose lay panting in her father's arms, enveloped in a thick blanket which he had thrown around her burning night-dress. The fire was extinguished, the babe lay unawakened, and only the dark flecks of tinder scattered over the bed, and the trampled mass on the floor, told what had been. But Rose had breathed the hot breath of the flame, deadly to human life, and no water could quench ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... he replied, and began: 'Now, listen attentively. There was once a box of matches which lay between a tinder-box and an old iron pot, and they told the ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... at an end. The last spark had died out of the paper in the grate and left only black tinder; the table was left bare, the golden plates and richly embroidered napkins, and the garlands were transformed again into old handkerchiefs, scraps of red and white paper, and discarded artificial flowers all scattered on the floor; the minstrels ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to light it?" one of them exclaimed in a tone of consternation. "I don't suppose we have got flint and steel or tinder box ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... or dig the ditch, To lop or fell the tree, To lay the swarth on the sultry field, Or plough the stubborn lea; The harvest stack to bind, The wheaten rick to thatch, And never fear in my pouch to find The tinder ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. The sight of the flame seemed to wake up Arthur with a shock from the lethargy that was stealing over his faculties. Mr. Holt had chosen a good site for his fire in the lee of a great body of pines, whose massive stems broke the wind; so the blaze quickened and prospered, till ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... grass-thatched and like tinder, were wrapped in flames. Grief emerged from the kitchen, carrying a naked black child by the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord, fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled top-knot, is a blue cotton rag—not handkerchief, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... ne'er-do-well, notorious all down Cheapside for his relentless dalliance with the fair, placed in intimate proximity with one of England's most glorious specimens of ripening womanhood. It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the meeting of flint and tinder—these two so widely different in the essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable, from the first they loved—he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake, she with the sweet, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Harry W. Tinder, whose name we mentioned at the beginning of this story, had been engaged as aeronaut. He had no assistant, and the only passengers were to be the president and ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... don't get my hosses, Saddle Zeb and lead old Si, And we'll search the wind-swept prairie Till we find that girl, or die! Who'd a thought a man's whole future Could get twisted up like this? All his plans burn up like tinder In the fire of one sweet kiss! "Zeb, come here, and good old Simon— Listen while I talk to you; Put your noses on my shoulder While I tell you what we'll do. Your fool master's deep in trouble, Can't explain to you just how, But until ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his tinder-box, an' lit a can'le, an' made three steps o't ower to Janet's door. It was on the hasp, an' he pushed it open, an' keekit bauldly in. It was a big room, as big as the minister's ain, an' plenished wi' grand, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fire,—but such a fire as they Upon the moment could contrive with such Materials as were cast up round the bay,— Some broken planks, and oars, that to the touch Were nearly tinder, since, so long they lay, A mast was almost crumbled to a crutch; But, by God's grace, here wrecks were in such plenty, That there was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... few paces when they met Registrator Heerbrand, who companionably joined them. At the Gate, they filled their pipes, which they had about them; Registrator Heerbrand complained that he had left his tinder-box behind, and could not strike fire. "Fire!" cried Archivarius Lindhorst, scornfully; "here is fire enough, and to spare!" And with this he snapped his fingers, out of which came streams of sparks and directly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Moscow burnt itself out, employed himself in endeavouring to buy some warm garments. Money was plentiful, for there had been no means of spending it since they entered Russia, and he was fortunate in being able to buy some very warm tinder-garments that had been looted by the plunderers on the night of their first arrival before Moscow. He also purchased a peasant's sheep-skin caftan with a hood, and sewed this into his military cloak so as to form a lining, the hood being for the time turned ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty |
