"Hob" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feares, Breake gentle sleepe with misconceived dout. Let no deluding dreames, nor dreadfull sights, Make sudden sad affrights; Ne let house-fyres, nor lightnings helpelesse harmes, Ne let the Pouke, nor other evill sprights, Ne let mischivous witches with theyr charmes, Ne let hob Goblins, names whose sence we see not, Fray us with things that be not: Let not the shriech Oule nor the Storke be heard, Nor the night Raven, that still deadly yels; Nor damned ghosts, cald up with mighty spels, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... this fight against Sam you can't expect his friends to hob-nob with you when it comes ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... comfortable and felt so warm. There was a bright fire; Bouncer was stretched on the rug; the kettle boiled on the hob; breakfast was laid; the sun shone in at the lattice window. And now Mary, looking out into the garden, remembered what Susan had said about the trees, for they did indeed look beautiful. Every branch and every ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle
... the prisoner was therefore taken down to Winchester, to be tried in Wolvesey Castle. So terrible was the popular hatred of Raleigh, that the conveyance of him was attended with difficulty, and had to be constantly delayed. 'It was hob or nob whether he should have been brought alive through such multitudes of unruly people as did exclaim against him;' and to escape Lynch law a whole week had to be given to the transit. 'The fury and tumult of the people ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... to his dismay Every time he tried to play That the ball with sundry hoots Chased the hob-nails in his boots. Finally he had to use On his feet a pair of shoes Of a most peculiar shape Made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... not want it now, and yet, poor child, could she have looked beyond, she might have seen cause for thankfulness that the thing most hotly desired was withheld for this early love had not root enough for the wear and tear of life. It was a hob day romance, born of the senses, the bewildering fascination of a graceful presence and winning voice, and well for her if her guardian angel stood with even a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands, the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi' it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. 'Hell shall have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and rode forth upon his earrand." It was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the truth," rejoined Simon Quanden. "Hob and Nob, for so they are named, are fast friends. When Hob gets into the box to turn the spit, Nob will watch beside it till his brother is tired, and then he will take his place. They always eat out of the same ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... are almost as singular a race as their animals. Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,—not of the same cut and color though,—which reach below their knees; and from the racket they make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set, who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals; now and then gently advising ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... families have emigrated to the British lands beyond the seas, others are shut up in their country houses, retrenching their expenses, selling their acres, and investing their money abroad. The Labour faction, again, are almost in as bad odour as the Liberals, because of having hob-nobbed too effusively and ostentatiously with the German democratic parties on the eve of the war, exploiting an evangel of universal brotherhood which did not blunt a single Teuton bayonet when the hour came. I suppose in time party divisions will reassert themselves ...
— When William Came • Saki
... Christendom: I protest to you (as I am a gentleman and a soldier) I ne'er talk'd with the like of him: he has not so much as a good word in his belly, all iron, iron, a good commodity for a smith to make hob-nails on. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... he saw nobody except in his practice. He studied hard, even to weariness and faintness, contrived strange experiments, and caught, he believed, curious peeps into the house of life. Upon them he founded theories as wild as they were daring, and hob-nobbed with death and corruption. But life is at the will of the Maker, and misery can not kill it. By degrees a little composure returned, and the old keen look began to revive. But there were wrinkles on the forehead that had hitherto been smooth as ivory; furrows, the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... something like admiration for the ingenuity of my elders in conjuring up spooks, hob-goblins, and bugaboos with which to scare me into submission. I conformed, of course, but I never gave them a high grade in veracity. I yielded simply to gain time, for I knew where there was a chipmunk ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... that stood upon the hob; she stamped out to the scullery and re-filled it at the tap. She returned, stamping, and set it with ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... of every shade of opinion, and make friends with them. We are taught to rail against a man the whole session through, and then hob-a-nob with him at the concluding entertainment. We find men of talent far exceeding our own, whose conclusions are widely different from ours; and we are thus taught to distrust ourselves. But the best ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the scattering of fuel and cinders on the open hearth could be prevented. Sussex backs gave place in time to the grate in which a metal back was frequently incorporated, flanked by the dogs in front. Then came the closed-in grates and the hob-registers of the eighteenth century, many being designed after the beautiful ornamentation produced by the Adam Brothers; also the decorative metal work enriched with ormolu and brass, which in due course again gave way to the plain and oftentimes ugly register ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... Turkish bath; but when a second door was opened the heat became even more intense, for the kitchen fire was still alight, and, as if sent as an extra blessing from above, the coffee-pot was actually on the hob, filled and ready for the peasants' early morning meal. Could anything be more providential—warmth and ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of the stables. A faint sound of bells gave evidence of harnessing, and became presently a clear and continuous jingle timed by the movement of the beast, now stopping, now going on again with a brisk shake, and accompanied by the dull tramp of hob-nailed sabots. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... writing. It has a magic of its own—the bedroom fire. Not such a one as night by night warms hothouse bedrooms of the rich, but that which burns but once or twice a year. How the coals glow between the bars, how the red light shimmers on the black-lead bricks, how the posset steams upon the hob! Milk or tea, cocoa or coffee, poor commonplace liquids, are they not transmuted in the alembic of a bedroom fire, till they become nepenthe for a heartache or a philtre for romance? Ah, the romance of it, when youth forestalls to-morrow's conquest, when middle ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... tuck doesn't require any superhuman ingenuity! Give me your scissors, and I'll show you at once. Quince marmalade? Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn't, what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, and hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? I'll make the spiced peaches! I'll order the kindling! And if there ever comes a time when I feel lost and can't manage without advice, I'll go across to Mrs. Hall. Don't worry about us. We shall get on happily ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... the hob. Chairs were drawn close before the blaze, for, despite the "springiness" in the air without, the atmosphere in the vast library of the chateau ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... criticises one kind of ill-done thing exclusively, he cannot but, in course of time, lower his standard. Seeing nothing good, he will gradually forget what goodness is; and will accept as good that which is least bad. So it is with the graphic reporter in Parliament. He really does imagine that Hob 'raked the Treasury Bench with a merciless fire of raillery,' and that Nob 'went, as is his way, straight to the root of the subject,' and that Chittabob 'struck a deep note of pathos that will linger long in the memory of all who heard him.' If Hob, Nob, and Chittabob ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... instead of being over a hundred. All these women and girls were beautiful, all had charm, all were more or less ravishing—simply because for days we had been living in a harsh masculine world—a world of motor- lorries, razors, trousers, hob-nailed boots, maps, discipline, pure reason, and excessively few mirrors. An interesting item of the laundry was a glass-covered museum of lousy shirts, product of prolonged trench-life in the earlier part of the war, and held by experts to surpass ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... Tom, speaking loud so as to be heard above the roar of the numerous planes around them, "because it might have played hob with the squadron, and even ruined the ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... the fifty thousand dollars which, under the terms of our deed of trust, we are required to pay in on July first of each year as a sinking fund toward the retirement of our bonds. By super-human efforts—by sacrificing a dozen cargoes, raising hob with the market, and getting ourselves disliked by our neighbours—we managed to meet half of it this year and procure an extension of six months on ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... He sat in his armchair, his back gently bending, his knees a little apart, his eyes placidly inclined toward the fire. The end of his recreation was announced by the tapping of the bowl of his pipe upon the hob, for the purpose of emptying it of its ashes. Ashes to ashes; ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... but it was in Montreal itself that the throngs reached immense proportions. From the first moment of arrival, when the Prince in mufti rode out from under the clangour of "God Bless the Prince of Wales" played on the bells of St. George's Church, that hob-nobs with the station, crowds were thick about the route. As he swung from Dominion Square (in which the station stands) into the Regent Street of Montreal, St. Catherine Street, crowds of employes crowded the windows of the big and fine stores, and added their ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... where to find him, we engage to give you a bully dinner every day, and, a bully supper every night of your life, and a swig of stout ale to wash it down, with plenty of straw to sleep on, and a winnow-cloth and lots of sacks to keep you as warm and cosey as a winter hob. You know where to find me every evenin' after dusk, Tom, and when you come with good news, you'll be a made man; and, listen, Tom, it'll make you a foot taller, and who knows, man alive, but we may show you ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "With you. Hob and nob," returned the sergeant. "The top of mine to the foot of yours,—the foot of yours to the top of mine,—Ring once, ring twice,—the best tune on the Musical Glasses! Your health. May you live a thousand years, and never be a worse judge of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... wholemeal for a cake, that Mrs. Dooley, who was in rather affluent circumstances, might not think them "too poorly off altogether." But, after all, the hours had slipped blankly by, and nobody had arrived. So the widow had ruefully put her teapot to sit on the hob until himself came in—for, properly speaking, she was at this time not yet a widow—and had stepped down her tussocky slope with her double disappointment ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... farthing." He then sent for Dick, who at that time was scouring pots for the cook, and was quite dirty. He would have excused himself from coming into the counting-house, saying, "The room is swept, and my shoes are dirty and full of hob-nails." But the merchant ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... undeniable. She regarded her companion as a friend, and was evidently overjoyed at his presence. Spencer banged into the elevator, astonished the attendant and two other occupants by the savagery of his command, "Au deuxieme, vite!" and paced through a long corridor with noisy clatter of hob-nailed boots. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... sense once more, And draw a figure, that shall tell you What you, perhaps, forget befel you, By way of horary inspection, 985 Which some account our worst erection. With that he circles draws, and squares, With cyphers, astral characters; Then looks 'em o'er, to und'erstand 'em, Although set down hob-nab, at random. 990 Quoth he, This scheme of th' heavens set, Discovers how in fight you met At Kingston with a may-pole idol, And that y' were bang'd both back and side well; And though you overcame the bear, 995 The dogs beat you ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides. One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in bloody rows. See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate! A hundred guests invited walk in state; A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait: Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear, Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear; Yet they ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... straightened up in his chair. He lifted his white fluted china tea-cup, which had queer little chintz-like bunches of flowers over it and a worn gilt handle, and took a pinch of tea from the caddy; then, pouring some boiling water over it, he set it on the hob to steep. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the family, however, when the ladies left the dining-room, slipped away from her friends, and summoning the cook to her presence, received an explanation of the mystery. The woman said, she had left the kitchen only for one minute, and when she returned, she saw the monkey standing on the hob of the kitchen grate, with one fore-paw resting on the lid of the boiler which contained the soup. "Oh, Mr. Curiosity," she exclaimed, "that is too much for you, you can't lift that up." To her horror and ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the flagged kitchen, with its joints of bacon and its bunches of dried herbs, hanging from the low beamed ceiling, its wide hob grate, its dresser, table and chairs of old Westmorland oak, every article in it shining with elbow-grease,—she saw that Mrs. Grayson looked particularly ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... HOB" is the story of a fierce father and son who lived together in solitude, shunned by their fellow-men. One Christmas night they drifted into a quarrel, in the course of which the son seized his father, and was about to turn him out of doors: when the latter, with unaccustomed ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... man of the house, 'who tried to take down her fortune into her stomach. She was near death, and she was all day stretched in her bed at the corner of the fire. One day when the girl was tinkering about, the old woman rose up and got ready a little skillet that was near the hob and put something into it and put it down by the fire, and the girl watching her all the time under her oxter, not letting on she seen her at all. When the old woman lay down again the girl went over to put on more sods on the fire, and she got a ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... I dined with him at Mr. Ramsay's, with Lord Newhaven[1240], and some other company, none of whom I recollect, but a beautiful Miss Graham[1241], a relation of his Lordship's, who asked Dr. Johnson to hob or nob with her. He was flattered by such pleasing attention, and politely told her, he never drank wine; but if she would drink a glass of water, he was much at her service. She accepted. 'Oho, Sir! (said Lord ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... saw you through your dining-room windows. You were hob-nobbing with Captain Blackbeard. You looked rosy and well. You smiled. You drank off the ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... or juglers." Certainly, some of the names he marshalls in array smell strongly of the tavern. These are some of them: Pippin, Philpot, Modu, Soforce, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito, Lustie Huffe-cap, Killico, Hob, Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, and Lustie ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... walked into the kitchen, and sat himself down on the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it was a great deal too high for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a pair of wings;—not to speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode of force;—but then, to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which appears to us the more interesting circumstance;—though the other is very interesting ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... her steps in the evening, to look at her new surroundings by the light of the just completed shop-window. And then she must not pass an old acquaintance's door. She must come in and have a cup of coffee—it was standing clearing on the hob, ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... soldier, I ne'er changed with his like. By his discourse, he should eat nothing but hay; he was born for the manger, pannier, or pack-saddle. He has not so much as a good phrase in his belly, but all old iron and rusty proverbs: a good commodity for some smith to make hob-nails of. ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... said the malicious rogue. 'Wilt hob-nob with me, maiden? What do you say? Are we adepts at sacking a house? 'Twill give thee trouble to fill thy cellars again as we found them. Take heart, girl. If you will come to, and take kindly to your angling, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... out his pipe on Betty Flanders's hob, and buttoning his coat. "It doubles the work, but ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... I hob-nobbed across the table and looked unspeakable things at each other; the girls held down their heads; Mrs. Dal wiped her eyes; and the major pronounced himself the happiest ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... don't believe it just see here. Is there one of you at this table that at some time or other hasn't had her hair pulled or her face slapped by me? No! Not a one. What's more, I'll bet that if any one of you were to show the place you sit on, you'd find the scars of where I beat you with a hob-nailed shoe. No? Well, there you are! And we've never been better friends, and we're ready to stand by when any one of us gets into trouble. And that's the way for people to be. Quick-tempered? Very well. But ready to make up afterwards, like honest Christians. Leave your grumps ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... room, rugged, uncouth, virile, full of the odours of tobacco, of leather, of rusty iron; the bare floor hollowed by the grind of hob-nailed boots, the walls marred by the friction of heavy things of metal. Strangely enough, Annixter's clothes were disposed of on the single chair with the precision of an old maid. Thus he had placed them the night before; ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... move in the womb, and then the woman is troubled with a loathing for meat and a greedy longing for things contrary to nutriment, as coals, rubbish, chalk, etc., which desire often occasions abortion and miscarriage. Some women have been so extravagant as to long for hob nails, leather, horse-flesh, man's flesh, and other unnatural as well as unwholesome food, for want of which thing they have either miscarried or the child has continued dead in the womb for many days, to the imminent hazard of their lives. But I shall now proceed ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... self-respecting pig ought to be, and the chickens were healthy and well-grown. Ted re-entered the house, scraping his feet carefully this time, and looking at Margaret with increased respect as she bustled about. The kettle already sung merrily on the hob, a plateful of most inviting buttered toast was keeping warm within the fender, and Miss Hep. was in the act of placing on the table a smoking dish ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... but when the time comes for you to stand, just you remember that even hereabout there's hundreds of little houses for one manshun, and in every one of those little houses there's a vote, and you can have it if you go the right way about. When you're in, Eloquent, then you can hob-a-nob with the gentry if it so pleases you; but till you're in, remember it's the working man as can ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... his acquaintance. As Cleon and the landlord sat hob-nobbing together in the little snuggery behind the bar, Mr. Deedes put in his head to ask a question of the latter. Thereupon the landlord begged permission to introduce his friend Mr. Cleon to the notice of his guest, Mr. Deedes. The two men bowed, Mr. Cleon rather sulkily; but Mr. Deedes ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... was less impressionable than either of the three would have wished. Her heart seemed not easy to reach; her impulses were not inflammable. Young Milbrey early confided to his family a suspicion that she was singularly hard-headed, and the definite information that she had "a hob-nailed Western way" ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... he muttered to himself, and he shuffled across the heath in his big, clumsy, hob-nailed boots towards the spot. In a couple of minutes he had wormed his way between two gorse-bushes growing at the edge of the deep hollow, and was looking with much interest at ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the tension with her usual chatter. "Tell us about some of the people you knew in Hungary, I mean important ones," she asked curiously. Her romantic imagination saw Veronica hob-nobbing with royalty and surrounded by splendors. "Did you ever see a real prince?" she asked in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... (three dessert-spoonfuls) of freshly ground coffee is put in the pot. Upon it is poured freshly boiling water—three-fourths of the amount required. After stirring with a wooden spoon, the remainder of the water is poured in, and the pot is returned to the "hob" to infuse, and to settle for from three to five minutes. Some stir it a second time before ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... open to three-year-olds and upward, and run over a distance—two miles and a half. The distance kept out the sprinters—it also, now and again, played hob with racing idols. To win a horse must be able to go—also to stay. With twenty thousand of added money, there was sure to be always a long list of entries. The conditions held one curious survival from the original fixture—namely, that, horses brought over three hundred miles to run ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... hobbled over to the bed as quietly as his wooden leg would allow. He bent over him, felt his pulse, and then said, cheerfully, "All right, buddy, guess it's time now for rations." Taking a covered cup from the hob on the grate, he deftly put a spoonful of hot beef tea to ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to the parlour of your house, finds that a tea-pot and some spoons which had been left in the room on the previous evening are gone,—the window is open, and you observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window-frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. All these phenomena have struck your attention instantly, and before two minutes have passed you say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the window, entered the room, and run off with the spoons and the tea-pot!" That speech is out of ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... Hob's pound to cool, My boy Hobbie O? Because I bade the people pull The House into the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... they were forced to leave him, and when dawn appeared, the maiden came and healed him with the water of life. And when she went away, he saw with joy that she had already become white to the tips of her fingers. And now he had only one night more to go through, but it was the worst. The hob-goblins came again: "Art thou there still?" cried they, "thou shalt be tormented till thy breath stops." They pricked him and beat him, and threw him here and there, and pulled him by the arms and legs as if they wanted to ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... will do well enough," replied the skeptic, "but save me from the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners—did I hear you correctly, uncle, when you spoke ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... instant was to cut me in two; but the madman, with an incredible effort, started it out of the earth and flung it fairly over me! Unable however to recover his balance, he trod upon my forehead with his hob-nailed shoe, and cut a deep gash just over my eye, and another in my skull: whether with the same foot or in what manner I do not know. My eye was presently closed up, and my hair steeped in the blood that flowed ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a human being to thread the eye of a needle. Another time, telling them of the glory of the angels, he explained that angels had stars set in their heels instead of hob-nails. Good and simple teaching, well fitted for settlers in the wilds; the schoolmaster in the village would have laughed at it all, but Isak's boys found good use for it in their inner life. They were trained and taught for their own little world, and what could be better? In the autumn, when animals ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... "Hob-nail boots. I find the imprint of the same boots in both places. One man apparently did all of this," was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... English, sees double, reels, heels a little, heels and sets, shews his hob-nails, looks as if he couldn't help it, takes an observation, chases geese, loves a drap, and cannot sport a right line, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... zu fuhren, Die Gottgesandte nahte mir: Doch ach! sie frevelnd zu beruhren Hob ich den Lasterblick zu ihr! O! du, hoch uber diesen Erdengrunden, Die mir den Engel meines Heil's gesandt: Erbarm' dich mein, der ach! so tief in Sunden Schmachvoll des Himmels Mittlerin verkannt!" In this stanza and in this ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... He sat down heavily, not looking at her. She stepped to the fire and took the empty teapot from the hob, then light-footed to the dresser for ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... any one, child. Susy, I told you the kettle would boil before we were ready for tea. Take it off and put it on the hob; and be careful, for goodness' sake, Susy ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... household should be in such harmony. Poor old Twoshoes is so old and toothless and quaky, that she can't sing a bit; but don't be giving yourself airs over her, because she can't sing and you can. Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth. Set that old kettle to sing by our hob. Warm her old stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on quite long enough," said George Cannon, as he stooped to poke the morsel of fire in the old-fashioned grate, which had a hob on either side. On one of these hobs was a glass of milk. Hilda had learnt that day for the first time that at a certain hour every evening George Cannon drank a glass of warm milk, and that this ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... as carefully as she could in the hall. They were square-toed and hob-nailed and most unsuitable for ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... an excellent time of it, and, to use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain hope'—so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert—'of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And yet ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... billy-cocked, gaitered, and hob-nailed, was clamping down the frozen lane, the earth ringing like iron under iron as he walked. By his side was a fair-haired lad of nine or ten years of age, a boy of frank and engaging countenance, carefully ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... cannot even guess at. Mr. Vanderclump looked upon the bright and blazing fire; his eye rested, with a calm and musing satisfaction, on the light volumes of steam rising from the spout of the tea-kettle, as it stood, rather murmuring drowsily, than hissing, upon the hob. There was, he might have felt, a sympathy between them. They were both placidly puffing out the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; give 't ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... superficial form and missed the substance, as, for example, in the habit which arose of talking with warm-hearted familiarity of great eighteenth-century men, and parodying their conversation. It was easy enough to speak of Johnson as 'Grand Old Samuel,' and to hob-nob with Swift or Sterne, seeing that, like the lion's part in Pyramus and Thisbe, 'you can do it extempore, for it is nothing ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... get wise to what we are really after up here on this mountain, Mr. Crow," said he, "it would play hob with everything. If it gets out that we are after gold—why, the price of land would ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... was difficult to believe that the unwomanly-looking being who passed before me was actually a female; yet such was the case. Clad in coarse, greasy, and patched fustian unmentionables and jacket, thick canvas shirt, great heavy hob-nailed boots, her features completely begrimed with coal-dust, her hard and horny hands carrying the spade, pick, drinking-tin, sieve, and other paraphernalia of her occupation, her not irregular features wearing a bold, defiant expression, and nothing womanly about her except two or three latent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... into the kitchen, noticed the nice little fire in the bright grate (the lodge boasted of no range); she also saw a pile of buttered toast on the hob, and the tiny kitchen was fragrant with the smell of ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... lumber-room, all as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... first step—and she went on, and on, and on, until that which at first she loathed became no longer disagreeable, and by degrees grew into a craving that was irresistible;—and, at last, she regularly hob-and-nobb'd' with the disconsolate rib of Stubbs, and shared alike in all ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. "Take that chair, my dear Poynter," he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing thereon his ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... shore, but therewithal He meeteth Puck, which most men call Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall, With words from frenzy spoken: "Oh, oh," quoth Hob, "God save thy grace! Who drest thee in this piteous case? He thus that spoiled my sovereign's face, I ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... as they were within doors the Minister placed his trembling companion in the old leathern chair in his little sanctum, made up the fire, and poured him out a glass of whisky with hot water from the kettle that was opportunely ready on the hob. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... part of the bargain that we are never to commit trespasses. The bargain is that if we would be forgiven we must forgive them that trespass against us. Nor again is it part of the bargain that we are to let a man hob-nob with us when we know him to be a thorough blackguard, merely on the plea that unless we do so we shall not be forgiving him his trespasses. No hard and fast rule can be laid down, each case must be settled instinctively as ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... dissenting congregation in the town, and therefore well separated from his reverence. The worthy mercer's dissent did not extend, so rumour had it, to the making of hard bargains, and doubtless he was for once hob-nobbing with the great in respect of his long purse rather than of his long prayers. Other townsmen, whose names I did not know or cannot recall, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... experience was his measure of the utmost that is possible in human nature. He would have called a kettle visionary if he had never seen one himself. It was only saved from that reproach by the fact that it hung on his kitchen hob. What was so unfair about him was that he took gorillas and alligators, and the "wart pig" and all its warts on trust, though he had never seen them. But the emotions which have shaken the human soul since ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... she assured him she had her wages, so he was content. Seldom was one happier than Mr. Gillat at that supper, or afterwards, when the table was cleared and they drew up to the fire. They sat one each side of the fender on cane-seated chairs, the coffee on the hob, and Johnny smoking a Dutch cigar of Julia's providing. One can buy them at the railway stations in Holland, and she had scarcely more pleasure in giving them to Johnny than she had in smuggling home more ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... positively no dress events. Men and women are urged to bring their old clothes and wear them out here, or provide only khaki or corduroy, with short skirts, bloomers and leggings for the fair sex. Strong shoes are required; hob-nailed if one expects to do any climbing. Wraps for evening, and heavy underwear for an unusual day (storms sometimes come in Sierran regions unexpectedly), are ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... on to the hob, and peeped into all the dishes, but over one he leant so far, that he was carried up by the steam through the chimney, and then for some distance he floated on the smoke, but after a while he fell upon ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... pipe-bowl on the wooden table at The Sun parlour. The third qualified it for refilling. You will see, if you are attentive and observant, that this was Mo's first pipe that afternoon; as, if the ashes had been hot, he would not have emptied them on that table, but rather on the hob, or in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... almost always gay, if not farcical. Audiences, which in the early days assembled before seven o'clock, had to be sent home happy. After the tragedy, the slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after "Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's "Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The Irish Widow." (These two illustrations are taken at random from the programs of the Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted until comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the present generation can remember when ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... baseball, attention! When you're again on the job— When, in your rage for invention, You with the language play hob— Most of your dope we will pardon, Though of the moth ball it smack; But—cut out the "sinister garden," ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Hob the smith with sturdy arm Circleth the feigned maid; And, spite of Jack's assumed alarm, Busseth his lips, like a lover warm, And will not 'Nay' ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the old sailor, knocking the ashes from his pipe upon the hob; "you may try, but dash my timbers if you'll ever cross ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the big observer on the rock, "we'd play hob helpin' him out. He don't need help, that feller don't. If I ever saw a man that could ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... breakfast rolls—and whiter still the table-cloth on which they were laid; and merrily sang the kettle on the hob, as the white steam rose from ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... "I say, Hob't Ma'tine," he began, "don' yer cuss me fer eatin' all the supper. I 'lowed ter this Jackson, as yer call 'im, that yer'd get a bite somewhar else, en ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... extravagant. 'You see, it was in this way—he came originally from the same place as I, and taught me things; but I am not intimate with him. Shan't I be glad when I get richer and better known, and hob and nob with ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... if a dozen of these were smashed. They're along similar lines as the watertight compartments of steamships. Some auto tires are made the same way too. But if a bomb was dropped on top of the gas bag, I reckon the explosion would play hob with the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... up thi pipe—for aw knaw tha'rt reight fond ov a rick,— An tha'll find a drop o' hooam-brew'd i' that pint up o'th' hob, aw dar say; An nah, wol tha'rt tooastin thi shins, just scale th' foir, an aw'll side thi owd stick, Then aw'll tell thi some things 'at's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... Johnson's stately periods, so the uncouth address in print to the populace of the nursery was doubtless forgotten in daily intercourse. But the conventions were preserved, and honest fun or full-bodied romance that loves to depict gnomes and hob-goblins, giants and dwarfs in a world of adventure and mystery, was unpopular. Children's books were illustrated entirely by the wonders of the creation, or the still greater wonders of so-called polite society. Never in them, ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... out, "Hob Wright, Rafe Wood, John Pargetter, and thou Will Green, bestir ye and marshal the bowshot; and thou Nicholas Woodyer shall be under me Jack Straw in ordering of the staves. Gregory Tailor and John Clerk, fair and fine are ye clad in the arms ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... of money, a kind heart and scarcely any brains. He was an ideal choice, everybody was agreed upon that. The fellow that Constance was really in love with at the time, Jimmy Gordon, was a friend of your father's. Well, the gentle Arthur went to pieces financially a good many years ago. He played hob with all the calculations, and so we find Constance, his wife, lamenting in the graveyard of her hopes and cursing Jimmy Gordon for his unfaithfulness in marrying before he was in a position to do so. If Jimmy had remained single ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... characteristically tried not to show it. "Well, now, ma'am," he drawled, "I'm afraid you ain't been to the post office much mail times. If you'd just drop in there some evenin' and hear Gabe Bearse and Bluey Batcheldor raise hob with the Kaiser you'd understand why the confidence of the Allies is unshaken, as the Herald gave out ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... east by the backs of shops and lofty slum tenements, could not be said to be cheerful. It suited Auld Jock, however, for what mind he had was of a melancholy turn. From his place on the floor, between his master's hob-nailed boots, Bobby could not see the kirkyard, but it would not, in any case, have depressed his spirits. He did not know the face of death and, a merry little ruffian of a terrier, he was ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... scrambled up to the room, and threw open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since translated ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... apart. Quoits, as everybody ought to know, were derived from the ancient game of discus. They are circular plates of iron, with a hole in the centre, one side being flat and the other rounded. The game is played often with sides. The aim of each player is to pitch his quoit on the hob, or, if he cannot do that, as near it as possible, the parties throwing from one hob to another. Charles Bracebridge and Lemon were playing on opposite sides when the archers came up. First Charles threw. One quoit was close to the hob, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... we must hob-nob with such common people, all for the sake of our son!" cried Zelie, when Thuillier was safely down the staircase, to which the mayor had ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... pouring out of the church, their hob-nailed shoes clattering against the stone pavement, and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... [Oberon] meeteth Puck, which most men call Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall, With words from phrenzy spoken. "Hoh! hoh!" quoth Hob; "God save ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... grate, which had been empty and rusty and cold when she left it, but which now was blackened and polished up quite respectably, there was a glowing, blazing fire. On the hob was a little brass kettle, hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a warm, thick rug; before the fire was a folding-chair, unfolded and with cushions on it; by the chair was a small folding-table, unfolded, covered ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... element. He stooped to beg for neither smiles nor favour, but the gnarled country oak is cut up into cabinets in artificial prose and verse. In the letters to Mr Graham, the prologue to Mr Wood, and the epistles to Clarinda, he is dancing minuets with hob-nailed shoes. When, in 1787, the second edition of the Poems came out, the proceeds of their sale realized for the author L400. On the strength of this sum he gave himself two long rambles, full of poetic material—one through the border towns into England as far as Newcastle, returning by Dumfries ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hob, my dear, and a basin over it. Matilda, my love, you know my maxim—'Duty first, dinner afterward.' Cadman, I will come ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... choose to settle down. It seems he drifted out to Helena, where there's quite a colony of Chinks, and started in to wash and iron. As nearly as I can understand his gibberish, he was doing pretty well, too, until he got mixed up in one of those secret society feuds that play hob among those fellows. It seems that he belonged to the On Leong clan and the Hip Son Tong got after him. They sent on to 'Frisco for some highbinders—those professional killers, you know—and Wah Lee got wind ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... the children are," she said at last, lifting the boiling pot on the hob. Then she went to the stair-foot and called, "Marc, Jeanneton, Pierre, Marie. Breakfast is ready, my children. Toinette—but where, then, is Toinette? She is used to be ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... is not sliced and carved into mincemeat, he comes home to a heap of ashes, and a handful of acres, harried and rivelled into a common; Sir Knight thanks him for his valour, but he does not build up his house; Sir Knight gets a grant from the king, or an heiress for his son, and Hob Yeoman turns gisarme and bill into ploughshares. Tut, tut, there's no liberty, no safety, no getting on, for a man who has no right to the gold spurs, but in the guild of his fellows; and London is the place for a born Saxon like ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me lang maist for the country. There's a joy to a country evening. Whiles it's winter. But within it's snug. There's the wind howling doon the chimney, but there's the fire blazing upon the hearth, and the kettle singing it's bit sang on the hob. And all the family will be in frae work, tired but happy. Some one wull start a sang to rival the kettle; we've a poet in Scotland. 'Twas the way ma mither wad sing the sangs o' Bobby Burns made me sure, when I was a bit laddie, that I must, ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... occurred, he came forward as one of the chief leaders of it; there were however, several other leaders. The names by which the principal of them were known were Jack Straw, William Wraw, Jack Shepherd, John Milner, Hob Carter, and John Ball. It is supposed that many of these names were fictitious, and that the men adopted them partly to conceal their real names, and partly because they supposed that they should ingratiate themselves more fully with the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... sent for that sort of mob Where Tartars and Africans hob-and-nob, And the Cherokee talks of his cab and cob To Polish or Lapland lovers— Cards like that hieroglyphical call To a geographical Fancy Ball On the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... had become rather difficult to understand. I was keenly alive to the exceptional study of human nature presented by this fine specimen of an old rustic priest, who was not the less to be respected because he took a great deal of snuff, hated shaving, wore hob-nailed shoes of the roughest make, and a threadbare, soup-spotted soutane with frayed edges. He was not a bit ascetic, and although he had lived so many years by himself, his good-humour and gaiety continually overflowed. It may be that a housekeeper ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... pair sat down and hob-a-nobbed; and while they did so, the murderer, who had been lying and whimpering in his berth, raised himself upon his elbow and looked ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of these tables the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr. Wegg over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on, the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and color, but were ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... are again sworn into office before the Barons of the Exchequer. The senior alderman below the chair (the next in rotation for Lord Mayor) cuts some sticks, delivers six horse-shoes, and counts sixty-one hob-nails, as suit and service for some lands held by the City under the Crown. The Barons are then invited to the banquet given by the sheriffs on their return to the City, at which the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Degree Examinations. Many a young man of his year whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he had caricatured—many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club—many of his own set who had not half his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into your three or four gallon pot, three parts filled with cold water, and set it on the fire to boil; remove all the scum that rises to the surface, and then let it boil gently on the hob; when the meat has boiled an hour and is about half done, add the parsnips in a net, and at the end of another half hour put in the cabbages, also in a net. A piece of beef weighing five or six pounds ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... Cakchiquel vinak, yxka[c]ahol, quecha.—[c]a x[c]amar [c]a vave ri Caveki Totomay Xurcah qui bi xeboco.—Xavi [c]a x[c]amar vave ri Ahquehayi, Loch, Xet, quibi, xeboco;—xavi [c]a x[c]am ri ahPak, Telom, [c]oxahil, [c]obakil quibi xeboco; quere navipe ri Ikoma[t]i, xavi [c]a x[c]amar; he[c]a cah [c]hob ri [c]a xe[c]amar vave ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... any subject: of art, literature, politics; of life and morals; of the news of the day. He would regale us with anecdotes of persons, places, events; he had outlasted many generations of students, and had hob-and-nobbed in their grub-period with men who had since become celebrities, as he was now hob-and-nobbing with us. He was quite shameless, quite without reverence for himself or others; his conversation was apt ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... conditions of life, and that not a small proportion of them have grown venal and grasping. The happy old days when artists and inn-keepers, peasants and such chance visitors as loved the simple unsophisticated life, hob-nobbed together on terms of equality are gone for ever. Fashion, that merciless deity, has annexed the Insula Caprearum to her ever-growing dominions;—there are smart villas on the Tragara road and even at Ana-Capri; there are British tea-rooms and Teutonic Bierhaelle in the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting, however, to set his great hob-nail boots on each of the compromising footprints which his son had ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... safely deposited on the hob, Nancy would throw her cloak into this corner, and her bonnet into that, with the air of a woman absorbed by the consideration of some vexatious trial; she would then sit down, and, lighting her doodeen, (* ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... other, with a large bunch of bright keys jingling at one side, and a huge house-wife pocket, with a round pin-cushion dangling beside it, at the other. Jemmy Burke himself, a placid though solemn-faced man, was sitting on the hob in question complacently smoking his pipe, whilst over the glowing remnants of an immense turf fire hung a singing kettle, and beside it on three crushed coals was the teapot, "waitin'," as the servants were in the habit of expressing ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of coarse gray linen, his waistcoat, of rough blue cloth with horn buttons much worn and a jacket of the cloth so oddly called Maurienne velvet, with which the Savoyards like to clothe themselves, stout hob-nailed shoes, and no stockings. This costume was exactly like that of his father, except that Farrabesche had on his head the broad-brimmed felt hat of the peasantry, while the boy had only a brown ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... terribly. The little company broke up with hand-shaking all around, Tobe saying: "Sister Buggone, I bears no ill-will. I'se gwine ter look inter my speritool frame, an' ef I cotch de debil playin' hob wid me he's gwine to be put out, hoof ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... rainy night, as this is, When rarely and more rare the coaches rattle From street to street, to sip thy fragrant kisses; While from the Strand remote some drunken battle Far-faintly echoes, and the kettle hisses Upon the glowing hob. No tittle-tattle To make a single thought of mine an alien From thee, my coffee-pot, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... have trodden them in ages past at dawn, noon, and night, to and from their labor; and in ages to come the mowers and reapers shall tread them to the morning music of the lark, and through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, they shall show the fresh checker-work of the ploughman's hob-nailed shoe. The surreptitious innovations of utilitarian science shall not poach upon these sacred preserves of the people, whatever revolutions they may produce in the machinery and speed of turnpike locomotion. These pleasant and peaceful ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... I inquired for the Weller family, it seems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby had disappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drank pineapple rum with water, luke, from the kettle on the hob. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... the fire one evening, enjoying the profound calm of the place, attending from time to time to my little coffee-pot on the hob, and slowly turning the pages of a favorite author, I luxuriate in a state of mind half idle, half studious. Leaving off presently to listen to some sound which I hear, or fancy I hear, in the adjoining ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... owlets through the long blue night Are shouting to each other still: Fond lovers, yet not quite hob nob, They lengthen out the tremulous sob, That echoes far from ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... conferences, there attended a certain smart, well-set-up officer named Miassoyedeff, a colonel stationed at Wirballen on the East Prussia frontier, and who had received gracious invitations from the Kaiser to go shooting and to hob-nob with him. This man afterwards became a spy of Germany, as ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... upon the saddle once again the knight of Mancha rose, and in his hand far balancing his lance, full tilt against the troops of bulls opposing run. And thou, shrill Crillitrilkril, than whom no cricket e'er on hob of rural cottage, or chimney black, more gladsome turned his merry note, e'en thou didst perish, shrieking gave the ghost in empty air, the sport of every wind; for e'en that heart so jocund and so gay was pierced, harsh spitted by the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... would have wore moccasins that wouldn't leave no scratch, even on the soft bark of a tree root. Y'see, a white man might wear moccasins, same's I do; but I never knew a Redskin shove his hoofs inter hob-nailed boots. Wait, Kiddie, wait! I've ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... out, and tried my best to hate myself for letting it worry me. Somehow I was able to attribute the fiasco to an inborn sense of shyness that has always made me faint-hearted, dilatory and unaggressive. No doubt if I had gone about it roughshod and fiery I could have played hob with the excellent jeweller's peace of mind, to say the least, but alas! I succeeded only in approaching at a time when there was nothing left for me to do but to start him off in life with a mild handicap in the shape ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... actually wearing a velvet smoking jacket. A cigarette was between his lips; his patent leather boots reflected the firelight. McTeague wore a black surah neglige shirt without a cravat; huge buckled brogans, hob-nailed, gross, encased his feet; the hems of his trousers were spotted with mud; his coat was frayed at the sleeves and a button was gone. In three days he had not shaved; his shock of heavy blond hair escaped ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... influence of a woman to have been ennobling who could act as Mrs. Godwin did at an early period of her married life; who, when one of her husband's friends, whom she did not care about, called to see Godwin, explained that it was impossible, as the kettle had just fallen off the hob and scalded both his legs. When the same friend met Godwin the next day in the street, and was surprised at his speedy recovery, the philosopher replied that it was only an invention of his wife. The safe-guard in such cases is often ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti |
