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More "Tinder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the place, showing that the men with port fires were at work, and in a quarter of an hour the bluejackets and marines were seen issuing from the houses and coming down to the shore. The place was by this time a sheet of fire, the lightly built huts, dried in the heat of the sun, catching like tinder, and blazing up in a fierce flame, that in a few minutes left no vestige ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... little farm; they say 'tis going like tinder, and he's half crazed," came back to them as ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... means this was done, or what purpose it answer'd, we were not able to Guess. I thought the Combustable matter was contain'd in a reed or piece of small Bamboo, which they gave a Swing round in the hand and caused it to go off.* (* The natives carry hollow canes with burning tinder for making fires.) ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... near horse with one hand, she sprang upon the wagon-tongue, and the next moment sat upon the board at his side. Then, rummaging in a deep pocket, she produced, one after the other, a short black pipe, an eel-skin tobacco-pouch, flint, tinder, and a clumsy knife. With a dexterity which could only have come from long habit, she prepared and kindled the weed, and was presently puffing forth rank streams, with an air ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... King, and knew that Giglio must come to grief, got up very early the next morning, and went to devise some plans for rescuing her darling husband, as the silly old thing insisted on calling him. She found him walking up and down the garden, thinking of a rhyme for Betsinda (TINDER and WINDA were all he could find), and indeed having forgotten all about the past evening, except that Betsinda was ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forward to stamp out these sparkling perils, the fire had spread, as the girl, wise in the direful ways of brush-fires, had known at once that it would spread, to the encircling pine-tops, left in a tinder barricade about the clearing by the sawyers ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... nice for going to church, the thing was to rub oneself with a little tansy that grew on the hillside. Father was full of wisdom. He taught the boys about stones, about flint, how that the white stone was harder than the grey; but when he had found a flint, he must also make tinder. Then he could strike fire with it. He taught them about the moon, how when you can grip in the hollow side with your left hand it is waxing, and grip in with the right, it's on the wane; remember that, boys! Now and again, Isak would go too far, and grow mysterious; one Friday ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... piece off it from top to bottom, but fortunately did not disable it; but a sad mishap befell one of our men while sitting at mess at the time, for he was struck dead, his shirt being burnt in places like tinder, and his mess-tin being likewise turned black, while the top of a bayonet that was standing close to the unfortunate man was melted like lead. The blow had shaken our little bark so terribly that the captain ordered the pumps to be tried; fortunately there was no leakage to be found, but ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... it, sire! Your words were like the steel striking the flint, and kindling the tinder of their national ardor. It will burn, sire—burn so brightly that Russia, Austria, and Prussia, may be badly injured in ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, and she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... neck, I was taken too quickly aback to stir; but stood like a stuck pig, while the butler fumbled with his tinder-box. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of a burning-glass, and know how easily dry grass or tinder, or a piece of paper, may be set on fire by a good glass when the sun is bright; but they would find it very difficult to place a glass over a little cannon so that it would infallibly be discharged at any set hour. And ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... hopes were excited on the perception of a faint brimstone odour issuing from an antiquated iron box found among some rubbish; but instead of any vellum or parchment, there were only the unused remains of some bundles of veteran matches, with their tinder-box accomplice, which had been thrown aside and forgotten, ever since the time when the functions of those old hardened incendiaries, flint and steel, were extinguished by the lucifers. All further search, ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... Markgraf went to the salon to fetch what he needed; he brought in a tiny and graceful Chinese tea-pot of the Rose family, which he filled with gun powder, and through the neck of which he carefully introduced a long piece of tinder, lighted it and, running, carried this infernal machine into the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... Caleb dropped the bow and gently fanned the powder heap. It still smoked. He removed the fire-board, and lifting the punk, showed the interior of the powder to be one glowing coal. On this he laid the Cedar tinder and over that a second piece of punk. Then raising it, he waved it in the air and blew gently for awhile. It smouldered and then burst into a flame. The other material was handy, and in a very short time they had a blazing fire in the middle of ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the chimney-piece five or six articles which appeared to be made of tin from the noise they made in falling, the captain succeeded in getting hold of another pipe and the tinder-box, for in those days flint and steel were the implements generally used in procuring a light. With much ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... behind the rest, and looking back to see the result of his infernal deed. Secretly, when no one knew it, he had kindled a fire at the rear of the wooden building, which being old and dry caught readily, and burned like tinder. ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... always been hard, though she was still a virgin spinster; but it had never yielded in this way at the first assault. She had intended to bring together a middle-aged, studious clergyman and a discreet matron who might possibly be induced to marry again, and in doing so she had thrown fire among tinder. Well, it was all as it should be, but she did feel perhaps a little put out by the precipitancy of her own success, and perhaps a little vexed at the readiness of Mrs. Bold ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... seen human arms, hands, and heads, and as soon as twelve heads have appeared, the weird plant vanishes. It is further added that on one occasion a shepherd happened to pass the mysterious spot where the thistle was growing, when instantly his arms were paralysed and his staff became tinder. Accounts of these fabulous trees and plants have in years gone been very numerous, and have not yet wholly died out, surviving in the legendary tales of most countries. In some instances, too, it would seem that certain trees like animals have gained a notoriety, purely ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the curious pieces of Raphael, Durer, and Holbin, and before that of canvass, and much more lasting: To these add the galls, misletoe, polypod, agaric (us'd in antidotes) uvae, fungus's to make tinder, and many other useful excrescencies, to the number of above twenty, which doubtless discover the variety of transudations, percolations and contextures of this admirable tree; but of the several fruits, and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... fire; but now needing it, they are met with the difficulty, if not impossibility, of making one. The mere work of kindling it were an easy enough task, the late occupant of the Calypso's caboose being provided with flint, steel, and tinder. So, too, is Seagriff, who, an inveterate smoker, is never without igniting apparatus, carried in a pocket of his pilot-coat. But where are they to find firewood? There is none on the islet—not a stick, as no trees grow there; while ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... Officers of State; 1530 That henceforth they may stand reputed, Proscrib'd in law, and executed; And while the Work is carrying on Be ready listed under DON, That worthy patriot, once the bellows, 1535 And tinder-box, of all his fellows; The activ'st Member of the Five, As well as the most primitive; Who, for his faithful service then Is chosen for a Fifth agen: 1540 (For since the State has made a Quint Of Generals, he's listed in't.) This worthy, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... with a kick, pointed to something on the floor. Amazed and wrathful, Mrs. Cross saw a long roller-towel, half a yard of it burnt to tinder; nor could any satisfactory explanation of the accident be drawn from Martha, who laughed, sobbed, and sniggered by turns as ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... but one can well imagine that, in the assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries and warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the doctrines of peace, must have made many a stout heart' to beat quicker, tinder its drab coloring, with recollections of Naseby and Preston; transporting many a listener from the benches of his place of worship to the ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the place of the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher, the blast of Rupert's bugles, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... from the dexterity with which it is wielded, a single stroke generally sufficing to sever a limb, while recovery from its stab is almost hopeless. Attached to the girdle also are a powder-flask, a small metallic box containing fat to anoint the rifle-balls, a purse of skin for carrying flints, tinder, and steel, and not unfrequently a hatchet, or knife in a sheath. The sabre is silver-hilted, without a guard; and its scabbard, richly embroidered, is composed of several pieces of morocco of different colors. The pistols also are mounted with silver; the poniard ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... ignition. The only fire producer that it is worth while supplementing the sulphur match with is the even older-fashioned flint and steel, which to a man who smokes is a convenience in a wind. All the modern alcohol and gasoline pocket devices are extinguished by the lightest puff of wind, but the tinder, once ignited, burns the fiercer for the blast. With dry, shredded birch-bark I have made a fire upon occasion from the flint and steel. One resource may here be mentioned, since we are on the subject, which is always carried in the hind-sack of my sled against difficulty in fire making. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the stiff fuse from the firebox into the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces of fuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in the bottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. The ends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... for the stars, else it might be our fate to be lost in the wilderness, which I did not much relish. We were all at this time "hungry as hunters," and beginning to feel very miserable from being wet through. What little ammunition I had left I fired off as signals, or made tinder of to get up a fire, but the wood would not burn. In this hapless condition the black boys began murmuring, wishing to go on, pretending, though both held opposite views, that each knew the way; for they thought nothing could be worse than their ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... time flew by as swift an' as pleasant as a bird on the wing, an' the sun wint down, an' the moon shone sweet an' soft instead, an' they two never knew a ha'porth about it, but kept talkin' an' whisperin', an' whisperin' an' talkin'; for it's wondherful how often a tinder-hearted girl will bear to hear a purty boy tellin' her the same story constant over an' over; ontil at last, sure enough, they heerd the ould man himself comin' up the boreen, singin' the 'Colleen Rue'—a thing he never done ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... smoke a pipe with ol' Jeff," Solomon answered. "They ain't no nonsense 'bout him. I learnt him how to talk Injun an' read rapids an' build a fire with tinder an' elbow grease. He knows me plenty. He staked his life on me a dozen times in ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the heart. The heart is said to be the lord of the body, which it rules as a master rules his house. Shall the lord, who is the heart, be ailing and his sickness be neglected, while his servants, who are the members only, are cared for? If the knee be lacerated, apply tinder to stop the bleeding; if the moxa should suppurate, spread a plaster; if a cold be caught, prepare medicine and garlic and gruel, and ginger wine! For a trifle, you will doctor and care for your bodies, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... rose up before him like a black billow. Then came the almost comforting thought, he could not lurk without creating suspicion on the part of Mrs. Henshaw. He would have to get out, somehow. The weather was glorious, and the strip of seaweed hanging by the mantelpiece dry as tinder. A sea-side visitor who sat all day in his room in the face of such weather, would create a most unhealthy interest in the mind of any sea-side landlady. No, whatever else he might ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... cool. We caught four or five of the performers as they came out, and closely examined their feet. They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a quarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... awaited results. A sound like the snort of a steam-engine followed, and presently flames were seen bursting from the top of the chimney-like trunk. The dry mould and dust of ages that had collected inside this shaft had now caught fire, like so much tinder, turning the whole tree in a twinkling ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... parties returned, highly rejoiced at having found plenty of oysters and fresh water. I had also made a fire by the help of a small magnifying glass; and, what was still more fortunate, we found among a few things which had been thrown into the boat, and saved, a piece of brimstone and a tinder-box, so that I secured ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... barely habitable, and had to contest the tenancy with rats, which asserted their claim with such tenacity, that he went to sleep at the risk of being devoured. Their incursions compelled him to furnish himself with loaded pistols and a tinder-box, and he kept watch one night, remaining quiet till there was an irruption, when he started up and struck a light. But his vigilance proved of no avail, for the clink of the flint and steel caused a stampede, and not a rat remained by ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables, and caulking, asparagus, medicine, and works of fantastic art], spears and arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bowstring and quiver, oil-cans, water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage, bellows, mats, paper; these are but a few of the articles ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... I heard a heavy groaning; so, instead of pursuing the robber, I felt my way into Nanny's chamber. "Nanny," said I, "mother, what's the matter?" but there was no reply, except another groan. I knew where she kept her tinder-box and matches; I found them, and struck a light; and by the light of the match I perceived the candle and candlestick lying on the floor. I picked it up, lighted it, and then turned to the bed; the flock mattress was above ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... cell!" he was ordered by Godfrey McCulloch. "We must have them all out. There are torches and the old place might take light. The wood is sure to be as dry as tinder ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... breathless; about my body was strapped a leather belt to which was attached a wicker bottle. When we were seated on the rock, my dear Brigitte asked for the bottle; I had lost it, as well as a tinder-box which served another purpose: that was to read the inscriptions on the guide-posts when we went astray, which occurred frequently. At such times I would climb the posts, and read the half-effaced ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... suspect there 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
... behind him Le Beau made his ISKOO of birch-bark and dry wood at the far end of the windfall. The seasoned logs and tree-tops caught the fire like tinder, and within a few minutes the flames began to crackle and roar in a manner that made Miki wonder what was happening. For a space the smoke did not reach him. Le Beau, watching, with his rifle in his bare hands, did ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... those who allow themselves to be guided by their initial impressions and make resolutions or commit acts tinder the domination of a special consciousness into which perception ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... old fellow!' he said. 'How about that!' and he shook him heartily by the shoulder. The instant he let go the figure collapsed. In order to get a closer view Hartnoll then struck a light with the tinder box. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... above a city of doom. Herr Ritter sat up late that night, reading a packet of old worn- looking letters, which he had taken out of a small wooden box beneath his bed; and as he read them, burning them to tinder one by one in the flame of his lamp. A little torn morsel of a note, yellow with age, and half charred with the smoke of the destruction it had escaped, fluttered down from the table through the open casement, and fell in the balcony by my side. There were words on the paper, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the Asiatic regions. The properties of this tree are thus enumerated by Hooker:—The fruit serves for food; clothes are made from the fibres of the inner bark; the wood is used for building houses and making boats; the male catkins are employed as tinder; the leaves for table cloths and for wrapping provisions in; and the viscid ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Smith [To the Butcher] That was no foolish thought of thine, yon candle. I do remember now as I look back, They always loved the lights. My Rudi there Would aye be meddling with my tinder-box. And once I—Oh!— [Choking] ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... never succeeded in making flames, but it is thrilling to get sparks from flint. Once a child brought an old tinder box with steel and flint, but even then we were not skilful enough to get up a flame. Still it is something to have tried, and we are left with a respectful admiration for those who could so easily do ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... roller passed tinder her, the surf-boat swooped higher and higher, and the laboring paddles seemed to give her less and less momentum. The head-man strained at the steering oar. The Krooboys had hard work to keep their perches ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... brought a candle and a tinder-box in his pocket. When the flame burned up, we saw an arched stone roof above our heads, and broad deal shelves all round us covered with dusty ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are afraid that she will catch fire by touching me," ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to finish the whole thing up," went on the biggest brother, ruefully eying the prairie. "The country's as dry as tinder. And our place ain't plowed around half well enough. If a blaze should happen to come down on us"—he shook ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... will serve my turn,' said the hunter applying to his gun. 'But stay—I do not care to see any more fire to-day than is necessary.'—And drawing his work off to a safe place, he went on to kindle tinder and make a nice little fire.—'Haven't you learned how to make ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... troubles. Once lit, with all the 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... forth radiant; and Garth marvelled afresh at the vision of urban perfection she made in the wilderness. He was blowing the fire at the time; a typical tenderfoot's fire, all tinder and no fuel, at which the breeds grinned askance. He soon learned better. The breeds haunted their camp, enjoying their struggles with that superior, insulting grin. Natalie, rolling up her sleeves, announced her intention of cooking the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... aine mama unn ain papa edam (wesen). unn (unt) diesa abn wais (twai) kinna (tinder) ghatf (dehappt). unn die kinna sint (dsint) in den walt tegang (gangen). unn-daben (habn) holz (olz) geh[o]l (ohlt). dann sint (dsint) sie an ain utsom-haendom (zuke-haeussn) zezan (gangn). unn (unt) habn (abn) ge ... ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... to fire is a natural transition. How to get a blaze just when you want it puzzles the will sometimes hugely. Every traveller should provide himself with a good handy steel, proper flint, and unfailing tinder, because lucifers are liable to many accidents. Pliny recommended the wood of mulberry, bay-laurel, and ivy, as good material to be rubbed together in order to procure a fire; but Pliny is behind the times, and must not be trusted to make rules for General McLellan's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... reach it, the great north barn was in flames. There was no way of summoning outside help, even if any one could have reached them in such a storm, and the wind was blowing the fire straight in the direction of the house; in less than an hour, most of the old and rotten outbuildings had burnt like tinder, and the rest had collapsed under the fury of the sweeping gale; but by eight o'clock the stricken Grays, almost too exhausted and overcome to speak, were beginning to realize that though all their hay and most of their ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... structures packed in closely together were like so much tinder wood. Those who had escaped drowning died in their ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... from early childhood, even in the icy northern waters, and he had been trained in swimming to hide his head beneath his floating shield, so that it could not be seen. He had learned also to carry tinder in a walnut shell, enclosed in wax, so that no matter how long he had been in the water he could strike a light on reaching shore. He had also learned from his father acts of escape as well as attack. Thus he had once sailed on a return trip from Denmark after plundering a town; ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... alone in her room on the Thursday night lights a fire (not to destroy it; two of her fellow-servants are prying outside her door, and she knows better than to make a smell of burning, and to have a lot of tinder to get rid of)—lights a fire, I say, to dry and iron the substitute dress after wringing it out, keeps the stained dress hidden (probably ON her), and is at this moment occupied in making away with it, in some convenient place, on that lonely bit of beach ahead of us. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... in my 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
... a bundle three or four times as big as I want," Giuseppi said, "and then half of them will be dry. I can put my clothes on them and the tinder. I will answer for the fire, but I would rather have been with ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... his communication, Caleb feebly stretched his wan hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant brushed the tinder into the grate. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... into the bank, and the passengers were all saved. The pilots, in the presence of such disaster, were in the sorest straits, and were, moreover, the ones of the boat's company upon whom most depended the fate of those on board. Perched at the very top of a large tinder-box, all avenues of escape except a direct plunge overboard were quickly closed to them. If they left the wheel the current would inevitably swing the boat's head downstream, and she would drift, aimlessly, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... tinder and the flint and steel," remarked Israel, "we must git to a lew plaace an' light the candle. Come over 'ere. Ther's a 'ollow behind the rocks, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... and reached his tinder box. As the steel struck sparks from the flint, these revealed the face ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... 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 this fire she explored some of the inner rooms. Nor here did she ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shooting star, it is fire," he replied in a startled voice, and, as he spoke, other streaks of light, scores of them, began to rain down from the brow of the cliff and land upon the wooden buildings to the rear of the palace that were dry as tinder with the drought, and, what was worse, upon the gilded ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... man, had delayed; rather they had not considered that there was any immediate danger from fire; it was too early in the season for the grass to be tinder dry, as it would become a month or six weeks later. They were wholly unprepared for the catastrophe, so far as any expectation of it went. But for all that they knew exactly what to do and how to go about doing it, and they did not waste a single minute in meeting ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... 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
... thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion had shaken ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... back from the window and groped for her tinder-box. The glow, as she blew the spark upon the dry rag, lit up a very pretty but tear-stained pair of cheeks; and when she touched off the brimstone match, and, looking up, saw her face confronting her, blue and ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... As the flames which Alexander in those hot parts of India saw falling upon his host, solid to the ground, wherefore he took care to trample the soil by his troops, because the vapor was better extinguished while it was single; so was descending the eternal glow whereby the sand was kindled, like tinder beneath the steel, for doubling of the dole. Without repose was ever the dance of the wretched hands, now there, now here, brushing ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... among the Indians. They could be plainly seen in the red glare thrown by the burning cabin. It had been a very dry season, the rough shingles were like tinder, and the inflammable material burst quickly into great flames, lighting up the valley as far as the edge of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring and a horrible spectacle. Columns of yellow and black smoke rolled heavenward; every object seemed dyed a deep crimson; the trees ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pig-tail 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 I began ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away the snow from before the fallen tree trunk as best he could. Using as tinder a handful of the long hairy moss that hung from the inner limbs of the spruce trees, he lighted it with a match from the tin box salvaged the previous day at the big rock. Placing the burning moss upon the cleared spot next the log he ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... granary, or storehouse, in which was kept all the ripe maize of the tribe, together with much starch-root (koonti katki) and a large quantity of yams. The granary was built of pitch-pine posts and poles, heavily thatched with palm-leaves, that the summer suns had dried to a tinder. ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... having been taken from the field, some night—dear sport for the lads!—takes place the burning of the "hempherds," thus returning their elements to the soil. To kindle a handful of tow and fling it as a firebrand into one of those masses of tinder; to see the flames spread and the sparks rush like swarms of red bees skyward through the smoke into the awful abysses of the night; to run from gray heap to gray heap, igniting the long line of signal fires, until the whole earth ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the blacks aloft with his musket, I sprang to the hatchway and sang out, "We do not want to do you any harm, but if you attempt any trick, for our own sakes we must shoot every one of you!" I said this because I saw one of them striking away over a tinder-box, with the intention, I had little doubt, of trying to set the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... time they had reached the back-kitchen door, just as Sylvia had unladen herself, and was striking a light with flint and tinder. The house seemed warm and inviting after the piercing outer air, although the kitchen into which they entered contained only a raked and slumbering fire at one end, over which, on a crook, hung the immense pan of potatoes cooking for the evening ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... having been found in the morning, was dried in the sun during the day, which was very fine; a steel, gun-flints, and tinder made also a part of the same parcel. After a good deal of difficulty we set fire to some fragments of dry linen. We made a large opening in the side of an empty cask, and placed at the bottom of it several ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... beautiful candle, fluttering about, on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, burnt up and reduced to tinder by the consuming fire of matrimony. Happy marriages, men say, are made in heaven, and I believe it. Most marriages are fairly happy, in spite of Sir Cresswell Cresswell; and yet how little care is taken on earth towards such ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... the flood-gates of heaven were opened, and the rain suddenly pelted down in such overwhelming torrents that in less than five minutes the conflagration aloft was completely extinguished; but not until the sails had been burnt to tinder, the spars badly charred, and most of the standing and ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... inevitably perish, they determined to search for the hut, and to winter there, if so fortunate as to find it. Himkof, with three others, were selected to make the search. They were provided with a musket, twelve charges of powder, a dozen balls, an axe, a small kettle, a knife, a tinder-box and tinder, a wooden pipe for each, some tobacco, and a bag with twenty pounds of flour. This was as much as they could carry with safety, as they had to make their way for two miles over loose ridges of ice, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... Dartrey's an honest fellow with women. But men are men. Very few men spare a woman when the mad fit is on her. A little woman-pretty little woman!—wife to Jacob Blathenoy! She mustn't at her age have any close choosing—under her hand. And Dartrey's just the figure to strike a spark in a tinder-box head.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... can hardly define what, instinct, guided my eyes to the side table where I had left my manuscript. It was gone. At that instant: the wind from the wide open window and door blew the lamp flame and stirred the curtains, and a great sheet of whole black tinder drifted across the carpet up ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... to a tinder, is the farm: so Sam, our carter, says; and 'twas done by some idle boys lighting a bonfire of dry furze near." This was her report when she returned to ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... servant, guilty of absence without leave, who was bound to a stake in the presence of his sister, and destroyed by a cannon placed six paces off, but only loaded with powder, in order to prolong the agony; now, a Christian accused of having tried to blow up Janina by introducing mice with tinder fastened to their tails into the powder magazine, who was shut up in the cage of Ali's favourite ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the slow rise of jumbled rock that evidently marked the extent of weathering on that side. Here he turned to the right and rode out into the valley. The floor was level and thickly overgrown with long, dead grass and dead greasewood, as dry as tinder. It was easy to account for the dryness; neither snow nor rain had visited that valley for many months. Slone whipped one of the sticks in the wind and soon had the smouldering end red and showering sparks. Then he dropped the stick in the grass, with ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... English bachelor, equipped with gladstone bag, shaving kit, evening clothes and tweeds; passing from country house to London club, from Oxford common room to Sussex gardens, the solemn pageantry of the cultivated classes now and then burst upon him in its truly comic aspect. The tinder and steel of his wit, too uncontrollably frictioned, ignited a shower of roman candles, and we conceive him prostrated with irreverent laughter in ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... surprised him beyond measure. There, in the darkness, stood Hank Stiger. The half-breed had a bit of lighted tinder in his hand, and at his feet lay the keg of powder with a long fuse attached ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hove overboard, and which, being dragged with its surface against the water, impedes the progress of the whale. Besides these things, each boat is supplied with a case in which are stowed several necessary articles, the most important being a lantern and tinder-box—the lantern to be used as a signal when caught out at night—a compass, and perhaps a small cooking-apparatus. A whale-boat, when going in chase, has a crew of six men: one is called the headsman, the other the boat-steerer. The headsman has the command of the boat. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... terkulturo. Tiller (of boat) direktilo. Tilt klini—igi, duonlevi. Tilt (an awning) kovrilego. Timber ligno, lignajxo. Time tempo. Timely gxustatempa. Timepiece horlogxo. Timid timema. Timidity timeco. Timorous timema. Tin stani. Tin stano. Tinder fajrfungo. Tinfoil hidrargajxo. Tinge koloretigi. Tingle vibreti, soneti. Tinkle tinti. Tint koloretigi. Tiny malgrandeta. Tip pinto. Tip (gratuity) trinkmono. Tippet manteleto. Tipple drinki. Tippler drinkemulo. Tipsy ebria. Tirade ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... smocks, Look well to your locks, And your tinder box, Your wheels and your rocks, Your hens and your cocks, Your cows and your ox, And beware of the fox. When the bellman knocks, Put out your fire and candle-light, So they shall not you affright: May you dream of your delights, In your sleeps see pleasing sights. Good rest to all, both old ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... I told you the other day? Stories start from nowhere. It's just like putting a match to tinder. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... exhorted to forget all that has happened. Yes, the wrath, the conflict, the cruelty, but not those overruling decrees of God which this war has pronounced. As solemnly as on Mount Sinai, God says, "Remember! remember!" Hear it to-day. Under this sun, tinder that bright child of the sun, our banner, with the eyes of this nation and of the world upon us, we repeat the syllables of God's providence and recite the solemn decrees: No more Disunion! No more Secession! No more Slavery! Why did this civil war begin? We do not wonder that European statesmen ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... hungry. I was allowed a 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, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... my own room, I made the customary motions of undressing, so that I might time myself; and when the cycle was complete, set my tinder-box ready, and blew out my taper. The matter of an hour afterward I made a light again, put on my shoes of list that I had worn by my lord's sick-bed, and set forth into the house to call the voyagers. All ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thick spruce grove near the river and drew together a fairly good supply of dead wood. On the under side of the branches of the fir trees was generally to be found a thick growth of hairy moss, and with a handful of this as tinder it did not take me long to get a good fire blazing. Close to the fire I threw a pile of spruce boughs that I broke from low branches and the smaller trees. I melted snow in my cup for water, and in this put a few lumps of mould from the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... history, and when I would stop talking, she would ply me with questions. So I told her how poor everybody was before the discovery of gold; how mothers would send their boys to grandma's early morning fire for live coals, because they had no matches or tinder boxes; how neighbors brought their coffee and spices to grind in her mills; how the women gathered in the afternoons under her great oak tree, to talk, sew, and eagerly listen to the reading of extracts from letters and papers that had come from friends away back in the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... a curious tradition in the north of England, which is practically done away with in these days of lucifer matches. In the old days of tinder boxes, if any one failed to get a light, it was of no use his going round to the neighbours to get one, for even his dearest friends would refuse him, it being considered most unlucky to allow any light to leave the house between ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... 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 ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a difficult matter to light the fire. They scraped off the inside of the bark until they accumulated a little heap of tinder. It was ignited with a few sparks of the flint and steel, and then the bark too caught fire. After that they had nothing to do but feed the flames which grew and grew, casting a luminous red glare in every corner of the old Council House. Then it was so strong ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was going on the fire died out, having been flooded by the water. The Prince would not waken his brothers, although he had no tinder-box of his own to rekindle the flame, but resolved to search around a little in the wilderness in hope of stumbling upon some ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... dragged on with its one little glimmer of light and its big black clouds of disappointment, and it was Christmas-time when the spark came to the waiting tinder. What a bloody bill could the holidays and holy days of the world tot up! On the Sunday night before Christmas a British subject named Tom Jackson Edgar was shot dead in his own house by a Boer policeman. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... stake they bound Korak. Then they brought brush and piled about him, and The Sheik came and stood by that he might watch the agonies of his victim. But Korak did not wince even after they had fetched a brand and the flames had shot up among the dry tinder. ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... girl uttered an exclamation of thankfulness; then, after groping about, she found a tinder-box, and ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... 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
... 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 ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... fire. As for the rent, John, do not waste this trifle on that," whispered Vivian, slipping his purse into his hand, "for I will see Stapylton Toad, and get time. Why, woman, you'll never strike a light, if your tears drop so fast into the tinder-box. Here, give it me. You are not fit to work to-day. And how is the trout in Ravely Mead, John, this hot weather? You know you never kept your promise with me. Oh! you are a sad fellow! There! ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the blatter of hail, the soft crush of snow and the rattle of thunder among crags. Then it quieted to the low sultry croon which told of blazing midday when the streams are parched and the bent crackles like dry tinder. Anon it was evening, and the melody dwelled among the high soft notes which mean the coming of dark and the green light of sunset. Then the whole changed to a great paean which rang like an organ through the earth. There were trumpet notes ill it and flute notes and the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... stores of his own imagination: and there was 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 Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... — N. fuel, firing, combustible. [solid fuels] coal, wallsend^, anthracite, culm^, 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^, bavin^; blind coal, glance coal; German tinder, pyrotechnic sponge, punk, smudge [U.S.]; solid fueled rocket. [fuels for candles and lamps] wax, paraffin ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... head, 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 the inventor ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... tree with its symmetrical spread of branches stood lifeless. And its tons of low-hanging festooned moss was as void of life as was the tree they had killed. Tinder-dry it hung there, a beauteous, tragic, spectacle, towering high above the surrounding flatness of landscape, visible for miles by ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... such plans and labors and purposes as these, the days passed quickly for two weeks. By that time the fierce rays of the sun had dried every board and stave so that it became like tinder. The ship itself felt the heat; the seams gaped more widely, the boards warped and fell away from their rusty nails, the timbers were exposed all over it, and the hot, dry wind penetrated every cranny. The interior ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... in abundance, together with a lantern, axe, bill-hook, tinder-box, matches, candles, oil, tea, coffee, sugar, biscuits, wine, brandy, sauces, etc., a few hams, some tins of preserved meats and soups, and a few bottles of curacea, a glass of which, in the early dawn, after ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Sterling went home to snatch a bite of something to eat, and lazy Lem Wacker came strolling into the place, pipe in full blast, Bart had not hesitated to exercise his brief authority. A spark among that tinder pile would mean sure and swift destruction. Besides, light-fingered Lem Wacker was not to be trusted ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... by the saloon centre table tinder the full blaze of the electric lamp, looked at her with a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... 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, auld, solid gear, for he had naething else. There was a fower-posted bed wi' auld tapestry; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought, to tell him the truth, after he took the change that was put upon him so well, and it made him so happy like. Well, I was afeard of my life he'd pull off the cap to search for the scar, so I would not let your head be touched any way, dear, saying it was tinder and soft still with the fall, and you'd cry if the cap was stirred; and so I made it out indeed, very well; for, God forgive me, I twitched the string under your chin, dear, and made you cry like mad, when they would come to touch you. So there was no more about it, and I ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... his orders. He was indeed a holy man. Not in the memory of the oldest had a miracle such as this happened. Upon their return with wood and embers the holy man built the fire, handing a lighted torch to Kathlyn and signifying for her to touch the tinder. The spirit in Kathlyn told her that these people meant her no immediate harm, so she stepped out of the sarcophagus and applied the torch. The moment the flames began to crackle the villagers ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... glance Across the table, shot by chance From fair Eliza's graceful form, Assail'd and took my heart by storm? And mark'd you not, with earnest zeal, I ask'd her, if she'd have some veal? And how, when conversation's charms Fresh vigour gave to love's alarms, My heart was scorch'd, and burnt to tinder, When talking to her at the winder? These facts premised, you can't but guess The cause of my uneasiness, For you have heard, as well as I, That she'll be married speedily; And then—my grief more plain to tell— Soft cares, sweet fears, fond hopes,—farewell! But still, tho' false ...
— English Satires • Various
... even if you got away, which you couldn't do, they would come back and capture the depot. We have got to 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
... 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
... was ready, the young scout-master after grouping his followers around the heap, solemnly took a brand from one of the cooking fires, and with a flourish applied it to the inflammable tinder. Immediately the crackling flames shot up through the stuff prepared, and in another minute there arose a brilliant pyramid of fire that caused the neighboring trees to stand out like red ghosts. And then arose ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... guided my eyes to the side table where I had left my manuscript. It was gone. At that instant: the wind from the wide open window and door blew the lamp flame and stirred the curtains, and a great sheet of whole black tinder drifted across the carpet up ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Israel, and it remains true to-day and for ever. Do we see it fulfilled? One looks round upon our congregations, and into one's own heart, and we behold the parable of Gideon's fleece acted over again—some places soaked with the refreshing moisture, and some as hard as a rock and as dry as tinder and ready to catch fire from any spark from the devil's forge and be consumed in the everlasting burnings some day. It will do us good to ask ourselves why it is that, with a promise like this for every Christian soul to build upon, there are so few Christian souls that have anything like realised ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... famulus. Tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, conversing agreeably, to the shores of Fu Bay. The famulus climbed a tree for some green cocoa-nuts. Tamaiti himself disappeared a while in the bush and returned with coco tinder, dry leaves, and a spray of waxberry. I was placed on the stone, with my back to the tree and my face to windward; between me and the gravel-heap one of the green nuts was set; and then Tamaiti (having previously bared his feet, for he had come in canvas shoes, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been pertinent to the issue of the late trial, I think it necessary to adduce them here, to convince the world of the wretched state this Town had been in; the reason they had to apprehend, while such blood-thirsty inmates were quarter'd among them ; and the necessity they were tinder, constantly to be on their guard, while there were even such exultations at the ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... travelled without a fire-bag containing flints, steel, and tinder; and, through all vicissitudes, Donald had retained the one that he had appropriated, together with his Indian costume, in the Wyandot camp. With this, then, Bullen started a fire, and finding a broken iron pot ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Vienna before departing for England was again a lighted match set to a mass of tinder, it raised such a commotion in that music-loving city. The imperial family paid her the most marked attention, and the people were inclined to go to any extravagances to show their admiration. During these performances, the stalls, which were ordinarily two florins, rose to fifty, and sometimes ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... difficulty. It will be better appreciated when the men's childish nature is borne in mind. Their patience was terribly strained in their attempts to make the sparks fly into the tinder. Again and again one of them would throw the rocks angrily to the ground, ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... herself, and held to the wall for comfort. She heard a click, and in the light of a shower of brilliant sparks was the phantom of a man's beard and dim walls; one tiny red glow remained in the tinder, like an illuminant in a black nothingness. He seemed to hold it about breast-high ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables, and caulking, asparagus, medicine, and works of fantastic art], spears and arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bowstring and quiver, oil-cans, water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage, bellows, mats, paper; these are but a few of the articles that are made ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... daylight. Go up on the highest point of ground, build a leanto and make your camp-fire. If you have no matches, you can sometimes start a fire by striking your knife blade with a piece of flint or quartz, a hard white stone that is common nearly everywhere. The sparks should fall in some dry tinder or punk and the little fire coaxed along until you get a blaze. There are many kinds of tinder used in the woods, dried puff balls, "dotey" or rotten wood that is not damp, charred cotton cloth, dry moss, and so on. In the pitch pine country, the best kindlings after we have caught ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... bite rarely, demand but slight attention. And two people idling in a boat get very close in thought together and come soon to know each other well. And a ruthless young man of twenty and a tempestuous woman of thirty are as the conventional tow and tinder. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... leather was made in the United States by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools. Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... situation—this rake, this dark-eyed 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, appealing purity ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... still remember the tinder box in the kitchen, the steel, the flint, and the threads dipped in sulphur. The sparks made by striking fell on the tinder and caught it on fire here and there. Soon after the long, rough lucifer matches appeared, which were dipped into a little bottle filled, I believe, with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the fire in 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, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... between Okhotsk and Yakutsk, and as a week might pass without the shelter of so much as a hut, it was necessary to take tents and bearskin beds for the Chamberlain, his Cossack guard, valet-de-chambre, cook and other servants, one set of fine blankets and linen, cooking utensils, axes, arms, tinder-boxes, provisions for the entire trip, besides a ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... a while, and then began a search of the oaks. He was looking for squirrels, which he knew abounded in these trees, and, after much slow and painful walking, he shot a fine fat one among the boughs. Then followed the yet more mighty task of kindling a fire with sticks and tinder, but just when he was completely exhausted, and felt that he must fail, the spark leaped up, set fire to the white ash that he had scraped with his knife, and in a minute later a ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Ross whirled the dying torch about his head. Recalling how the aliens had sent his horse mad, he tossed it behind him into the grass between the tents and the herd. The tinder-dry stuff caught immediately. Now if the men tried to ride after him, they ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... forests become as dry as tinder and the loss from fire amounts to millions of dollars every year. It is the chief duty of the rangers at this time to patrol the roads and trails leading through the forests and keep ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... across these. The logs would last several days, and be renewed when necessary, but the fire was not allowed to go out. Should this happen, the fire-pan was sent to a neighbor for coals, or the tin lantern with a candle for a light. In default of neighbors, the tinder-box, or flint-lock musket with a wad of tow were used to evoke a spark. "Tending fire" meant renewing the lighter parts of the fuel; for this purpose, there was, in prudent families, a generous pile of dry cord-wood in the kitchen. With these appliances, considerable warmth was ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... near a wood, and Azariah sought to improve the occasion by a little dissertation on the destructive nature of the goat. Of late years a sapling rarely escaped them, and still more regrettable was the carelessness of the shepherd who left the branches they had torn down to become dry like tinder. He spoke of many forest fires, and told all the stories he could remember in the hope of distracting Joseph's thoughts from the length of the journey. We are now about half-way, he said, disguising the truth. We shall see the city upon the evening glow in about another hour. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... fashionable frivolity are equally dull, unspeakable is the relief of some flashes of vivacity, some sparkles of wit. Of course it is hard enough for those, most natively disposed that way, to strike fire. I would willingly be the tinder to promote the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... without his cigarette-case, was longing to smoke, and hung behind for that purpose. But on applying to the Marshal, he was told that only common soldiers ever smoked in Maerchenland. With some trouble a highly flavoured pipe, a tinder-box, and a pouch containing a dried herb that appeared to be the local substitute for tobacco were procured for him. However, a very short experience convinced him that duty required him to put in an appearance at ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... at Hakodate itself makes one feel that it is Japan all over. The streets are very wide and clean, but the houses are mean and low. The city looks as if it had just recovered from a conflagration. The houses are nothing but tinder. The grand tile roofs of some other cities are not to be seen. There is not an element of permanence in the wide, and windy streets. It is an increasing and busy place; it lies for two miles along the shore, and has climbed the hill till it ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... explore the interior of that cavern, he must provide himself with a torch. Accordingly he retraced his steps across the glade, re-entered the forest, and proceeded to look about him for a few dry branches to serve as torches, some dry moss for tinder, and a couple of pieces of wood suitable for rubbing upon each other when it was desired to kindle a fire. These things were soon found, and Stukely was returning to the open glade with the perfect silence ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and half angry, answered with the low, ironical laugh not uncommon to him, "Pish! you ladies are apt to think us men much greater fools than we are. A briefless lawyer is not very inflammable tinder. Yes, a cousin's love,—quite enough. Poor little Helen! time enough to put other notions into her head; and then—she will have a sweetheart, gay and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moment he seemed to hear his father's voice saying to him, "Why, boy, you're built like an ox!" The memory was like a match to tinder. He flung his hard young legs about the man's ankles, bringing him down like a dead weight upon his own body. With the wind half crushed out of him, he struggled and rolled to protect his revolver. A dozen times the man snatched, plunged and parried to ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... his racket so successfully that at last I lost my temper. I foresaw that I should spoil the whole business by an unseemly outburst of passion. I determined on another course. I got up quietly, went to the tinder box, but could not find it; I asked him for it, and he gave it me, delighted to have won the victory over me. I struck a light, lighted the candle, took my young gentleman by the hand and led him quietly into ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... always ready to bestow on the inexperienced, especially when they are young, that, no doubt, was because the manuscript I had acquired bore such a dilapidated appearance. The margins of the thick old Nuremberg paper were eaten into by mice and insects, in many places black patches like tinder dropped away from the yellow pages; indeed, many passages of the once clear writing had so utterly faded that I scarcely hoped to see them made legible again by the chemist's art. However, the contents of the document were so interesting and remarkable, so unique in relation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... busily engaged in hunting all manner of small bits of dry fuel under the sheltered sides of the logs, and in hollow stumps. As soon as he had gathered a few handfuls of this tinder, he drew out a match, and started ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... heels, following the horrible trail of sound in 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 ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... of this clock-like regularity his labors were broken by frequent unfruitful seasons. Symmons says of him, that "he frequently composed in the night, when his unpremeditated verse would sometimes flow in a torrent, tinder the impulse, as it were, of some strange poetical fury; and in these peculiar moments of inspiration, his amanuensis, who was generally his daughter, was summoned by the bell to arrest the verses as they came, and to commit them to the security ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... holding down the fire block with one foot, held the socket of the drill with the left hand, while with the right she drew the bow rapidly back and forth. In less than a minute there was a tiny spark. Then rapidly growing, flame appeared and a moment later, along the carefully prepared tinder, the fire ran to the kindling beneath the fagots. And then, as the flames rose and began to curl about the fagots all the girls began to sing together the Camp Fire ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... every time that, turning, inwardly upon his own conduct, he shall contemplate it under the same perspective as does his neighbour? Is there then no remorse but for those who believe in incomprehensible systems? Is the idea that we are tinder the eye of beings of whom we have but vague notions, more forcible than the thought that we are viewed by our fellow men; than the fear of being detected by ourselves; than the dread of exposure; than the cruel necessity of becoming despicable in our own eyes; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... 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 riding-whip ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... re-entered the apartment, with Connor's Sunday coat in his hand, from the pocket of which he drew a steel and tinder-box. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... phenomena of fermentation, may claim a character of simplicity and generality that is well worthy of attention. Fermentation is no longer one of those isolated and mysterious phenomena which do not admit of explanation. It is the consequence of a peculiar vital process of nutrition which occurs tinder certain conditions, differing from those which characterize the life of all ordinary beings, animal or vegetable, but by which the latter may be affected, more or less, in a way which brings them, to some extent within the class of ferments, properly so called. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... inflammable heap, and when tired Mr. Sterling went home to snatch a bite of something to eat, and lazy Lem Wacker came strolling into the place, pipe in full blast, Bart had not hesitated to exercise his brief authority. A spark among that tinder pile would mean sure and swift destruction. Besides, light-fingered Lem Wacker was not to be trusted ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... without approval House bill No. 19, entitled "An act for the relief of H.B. Wilson, administrator of the estate of William Tinder, deceased." ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... flint and tinder, matches being unknown in those days, and began to strike a light, when Adams took the pipe hastily from his mouth and ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... 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 they wanted ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of Andersen's Fairy Tales may be used in the third grade, and perhaps in the second. Some suitable stories are "The Real Princess," "The Fir Tree," "The Tinder Box," "The Hardy Tin Soldier," and "The ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... particularly her distant son." Another says: "I have been perusing some of her letters, which I value above gold. Through them all, breathes the same spirit of ardent love to Jesus, with a deep sense of her own helplessness. Her character was that of an humble soul constantly living tinder the rays of the Sun of righteousness. I have often heard her express fears concerning herself, but never doubting the faithfulness of Jesus, in whom she trusted. Since I had the happiness of knowing her—which is more than thirty ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... mistake. Thus, the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but only she and her compeers. The next grade in the social scale being made of leather, and the next of coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people, they had just so many matches out of tinder- boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they were—established in their sphere at once, beyond the possibility of getting ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... tobacco valued at sixpence, and three pence in coin, or, as it is quaintly worded, "in money and golde." Satirists of course made fun of the smoker's pocketful of apparatus. A pamphleteer of 1609 says: "I behelde pipes in his pocket; now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to his tacklings; sure his throat is on fire, the smoke flyeth ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... of doing things had not wholly ceased during my childhood; they were kept up in these old towns longer than elsewhere. We used tallow candles and oil lamps, and sat by open fireplaces. There was always a tinder-box in some safe corner or other, and fire was kindled by striking flint and steel upon the tinder. What magic it seemed to me, when I was first allowed to strike that wonderful spark, and ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... thoughtfully put a tinder-box, flint and steel, and a couple of candles into the basket. After feeling his way on for some distance, he stopped and ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... I am knowne to be a humorous Patritian, and one that loues a cup of hot Wine, with not a drop of alaying Tiber in't: Said, to be something imperfect in fauouring the first complaint, hasty and Tinder-like vppon, to triuiall motion: One, that conuerses more with the Buttocke of the night, then with the forhead of the morning. What I think, I vtter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such Weales men as you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me—that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood— Of something more than tinder-grass and weed— That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... left behind, went off as if lit simultaneously by the rocket. One of the ship-houses contained the old 'New York,' a ship thirty years on the stocks, and yet unfinished; the other was vacant. But both houses, and the old 'New York,' burned like tinder. The vessels fired were the 'Pennsylvania,' the 'Merrimac,' the 'Germantown,' the 'Plymouth,' the 'Raritan,' the 'Columbia,' and the 'Dolphin.' The old 'Delaware' and 'Columbus," worn-out and disabled seventy-fours, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... on awaking had forgotten the spot where she had stowed her treasure. The little pipe, slipping downwards in the crack, had turned over, upsetting its contents upon the loose hay beneath the rick, which being, as Judy had related, dry as tinder, quickly caught fire from the smouldering embers. A strong breeze had arisen that night, and the flame had spread to the stack itself with the results which Roseen knew. The pipe that had done all the damage, being snugly stowed away beneath the overhanging ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... fire is a natural transition. How to get a blaze just when you want it puzzles the will sometimes hugely. Every traveller should provide himself with a good handy steel, proper flint, and unfailing tinder, because lucifers are liable to many accidents. Pliny recommended the wood of mulberry, bay-laurel, and ivy, as good material to be rubbed together in order to procure a fire; but Pliny is behind the times, and must not be trusted to make rules for General McLellan's boys. Of course no one would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... dry wood together until they took fire, and this method is said to be used among some isolated distant tribes at the present time. A later and easier way was to strike flint and steel together and to catch the spark thus produced on tinder or dry fungus. Within the memory of some persons now living, the tinder box was a valuable asset to the home, particularly in the pioneer regions ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... ever his master, and to- day the King's health had been a fair excuse. He did not spy me, but the roar of his ballad had startled the two men outside, and so, while he was stumbling over chairs, and groping for a tinder-box, I slipp'd out in the darkness, and downstairs ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... votes that day with two peerages;(509) Sir R. Bampfylde(510) and Sir Charles Tynte(511)—and so are going to light up the flame of two more county elections—and that in the west, where surely nothing was wanting but a tinder-box! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... down Market street the Academy of Sciences and the Jennie Flood building and the History building kindled and burned like tinder. Sparks carried across the wide street ignited the Phelan building and the army headquarters of the department of California, General Funston commanding, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... stretched out a long arm and tapped at the panel. There was no answer. He tapped again. Still no answer. He glanced at the enforcedly silent woman beside him, and something in her eyes, a gleam of triumph or sardonic amusement, or both, was tinder to ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... evidently marked the extent of weathering on that side. Here he turned to the right and rode out into the valley. The floor was level and thickly overgrown with long, dead grass and dead greasewood, as dry as tinder. It was easy to account for the dryness; neither snow nor rain had visited that valley for many months. Slone whipped one of the sticks in the wind and soon had the smoldering end red and showering sparks. Then he dropped the stick in the grass, with curious ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... as he mastered a curious sensation of emotion at the man's words, which brought up the memory of a pair of tender, loving eyes gazing into his at the moment of farewell, "you have forgotten the tinder!" ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... threatened them. But they endeavored to set fire to the convent and church three times without being able to succeed, notwithstanding that the material of the building was but little less combustible than tinder, for it was all constructed of wood, bamboo, and nipa. Those who tried to burn that edifice, regarded that as a miracle. Moreover, one can well understand the necessity that they suffered for they had ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... his teeth stret over the best linen table-cloth, and fold it up tight, as innercent now as a baby, the dirrity baste! But the worrest of all was the copyin' he'd be doin' till ye'd be dishtracted. It's yersel' knows the tinder feet that's on me since ever I 've bin in this counthry. Well, owin' to that, I fell into a way o' slippin' me shoes off when I 'd be settin' down to pale the praities or the likes o' that, and, do ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... pleasant object," his father said, quietly, as he struck the tinder and again lighted the lamp. "I fancy, Edgar, that if a mob of people were to break down the door and find themselves confronted by that object they would ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... impelled mad Madison upon this war; And shut the mouths of thousand higher men Than he. It is a lesson may I learn So as to ne'er forget, that in the heat of words Sparks oft are struck that should be straightway quenched In cool reflection; not enlarged and fed With passionate tinder, till a flame is blown That reaches past our bonds, and leaves behind Black, sullen stumps where once the green trees grew. If honour's what we want, there's room enough For that, and wild adventure, too, in the West, At ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... logs, the crevices being stuffed with moss, and lined with thick brown paper, the seams of the latter covered with a narrow beading of pine. The roof was lined with tar-paper, which made a dense and blinding smoke. It had been built a year, and was so dry that it burnt like a tinder-box. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... the rock breathless; about my body was strapped a leather belt to which was attached a wicker bottle. When we were seated on the rock, my dear Brigitte asked for the bottle; I had lost it, as well as a tinder-box which served another purpose: that was to read the inscriptions on the guide-posts when we went astray, which occurred frequently. At such times I would climb the posts, and read the half-effaced ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... compared with those of remote ages, because nobody thinks it worth while to preserve them. It is almost as easy to get a personal memento of Priam or Nimrod as it is to get a harpsichord, a spinning-wheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch-back. An Egyptian wig is attainable, a wig of the Georgian era is hardly so, much less a tie of the Regency. So it is with the scenes of common life a century or two ago. They are being lost, because they were familiar. Here are two of them, however, which have limned ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... face by that box for tinder, Glowing forth in fits from the dark, And fading again, as the linten cinder Kindles to red at the flinty spark, ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... a 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 early, his father was there before him, standing in his customary attitude ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... did seem to him distinctly foolish, not to say careless, not to say out and out incendiary, for any girl to go blushing her way like a fire-brand through a world so palpably populated by young men whose heads were tow, and hearts indisputably tinder, rather than tender. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... most, 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 ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... is a long, loose, woollen coat with a girdle, trousers, under-garments, woollen leggings, and a cap with a turned- up point over each ear. The girdle is the depository of many things dear to a Tibetan—his purse, rude knife, heavy tinder-box, tobacco pouch, pipe, distaff, and sundry charms and amulets. In the capacious breast of his coat he carries wool for spinning—for he spins as he walks—balls of cold barley dough, and much besides. He wears his hair in a pigtail. The ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... the edges. The cariole used by the traders is merely a covering of leather for the lower part of the body, affixed to the common sledge, which is painted and ornamented according to the taste of the proprietor. Besides snow-shoes, each individual carries his blanket, hatchet, steel, flint, and tinder, and generally fire arms." ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... 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 to make the dresses and ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... cried the pirate, foaming with rage; "bind him to the mainmast; unbandage his eyes; let us have plenty of tinder; lay a train of powder, and to the ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... logs are dry as tinder and they crackle with the heat, And the sparks, like merry children, come a-dancing round my feet, In the cold, long nights of autumn I can sit before the blaze And watch a panorama born of all my yesterdays. I can leave the present burdens and the moment's bit of woe, And claim once more the ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... in, and the man made a fire with the help of his tinder-box and a few dry sticks that he routed out from a corner. The fire was soon blazing merrily, and they took off their clothes and held them before the flames to dry. Whilst this was being done, the marooned man, whose face even now bore the imprint of death, brought a ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... before, upon a quarter of such provocation, he would have flashed into fight; but cold, hunger and friendlessness had damped the tinder in him. He made to go on and get away from it all; ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... told it, the water that had brought down the house had lifted me off my feet and flung me among waves. That would have been the last of the dominie had I not struck against a chest, then half-way on its voyage to the sea. I think the lid gave way tinder me; but that is surmise, for from the time the house fell till I was on the river in a kist that was like to be my coffin, is almost a blank. After what may have been but a short journey, though I had time in it to say my prayers twice, we stopped, jammed among fallen trees; and seeing a bank ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... and sublimes as a white vapor. It may be prepared by precipitating and drying. When heated, it takes fire previous to melting, glows like tinder, and is converted into antimonious acid, which is now infusible. When heated upon charcoal in the flame of reduction, it is reduced to the metallic state, and partly volatilized. A white vapor sublimates upon the charcoal, while the external flame exhibits a greenish-blue color. ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... been drawn through a pond. After we had done this, and had a little rested ourselves, we began to look about in search of food, but we could find nothing except a few crumbs of bread and cheese in a man's coat pocket, and a piece of tallow-candle stuck on the top of a tinder-box. This, however, though not such delicate eating as we had been used to, yet served to satisfy our present hunger; and we had just finished the candle when we were greatly alarmed by the sight of a human hand ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... outside whose house a light has been seen at this season. The signal for kindling the new fire is given by the rising of the Morning Star. The flame is produced by twirling an upright stick between the hands on a horizontal stick laid on the floor of a sacred chamber, the sparks being caught by a tinder of cedar-dust. It is forbidden to blow up the smouldering tinder with the breath, for that would offend the gods. After the fire has thus been ceremonially kindled, the women and girls of all the families in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... bird on the wing, an' the sun wint down, an' the moon shone sweet an' soft instead, an' they two never knew a ha'porth about it, but kept talkin' an' whisperin', an' whisperin' an' talkin'; for it's wondherful how often a tinder-hearted girl will bear to hear a purty boy tellin' her the same story constant over an' over; ontil at last, sure enough, they heerd the ould man himself comin' up the boreen, singin' the 'Colleen Rue'—a thing he never done barrin' whin he had a dhrop in; an' the misthress walkin' in front ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the king; "quick, throw her down the trap-door!" When the princess fell down the trap-door she found a door, then another, and another, always feeling her way along. At a certain point she felt with her hands like the blind, and found tinder and matches. She then lighted a candle which she found there, and saw a beautiful young girl, with a padlock on her mouth, so that she could not speak, but she made signs that the key to open it with was under the pillow of the bed. The princess got it and opened the padlock; then the young ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... rippleless sea "as idle as a painted craft upon a painted ocean." The Eleanor Jones drifted about in one of these flat, hopeless calms till the pitch boiled in her seams and the sails seemed dried to tinder. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... which I did not much relish. We were all at this time "hungry as hunters," and beginning to feel very miserable from being wet through. What little ammunition I had left I fired off as signals, or made tinder of to get up a fire, but the wood would not burn. In this hapless condition the black boys began murmuring, wishing to go on, pretending, though both held opposite views, that each knew the way; for they thought nothing could be worse than ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... shure as there is a God in heav'n, if you don't get Squire to consint to let me go back, there'll be mischief. There now, Miss Nora, I've spoken. You're purty, and you're swate, and 'tis you has got a tinder heart; but that won't do you no good, for I'm mad with misery. It's me bit of a cabin I want to die in, and nothing less will contint me. You may go back now, for I've said what I come to say; but it's to-morrow night I'll be here waiting for ye, and I warn ye to bring me the consint ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... at last a faint spark was seen at the top of the pile, which began to glow, and, spreading, became constantly larger. He, or his companion, for often two men twirled the stick, one relieving the other, caught this spark in a bit of tinder—perhaps some dry punk or a little fine grass—and by blowing coaxed it into flame, ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... every effort was made to secure whatever could be saved from the wreck. Bales of cloth, cases of wine, a few boxes of cheese, some hams, the carcass of a milch cow that had been washed on shore, buckets, tubs, butts, a seaman's chest, (containing a tinder-box, and needles and thread,) with a number of elegant mahogany turned bed-posts, and part of an investment for the India market, were got on shore. The rain poured down in torrents—all hands were busily at work to procure shelter from the weather; and with the bed-posts and broadcloths, and part ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... under dictation, and she wasn't bribed to write it. There's heart in it, sir, if I may be allowed the expression: there's a woman's heart in that letter: and when a woman's heart is once allowed scope, a woman's brains shrivel up like so much tinder. I put this letter to that speech in the corridor at the Reindeer, Mr. Austin; and out of those two twos I verily believe I can make the queerest four that was ever reckoned up by a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... is not always that we may light a camp-fire," said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder with the flint and steel which a ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... day we had for dinner a very fat piece of beef. I took advantage of this to pocket some lumps of fat, intending to make a candle with it and a wick composed of some twisted threads from my shirt. The difficulty was to kindle the candle when made, for none of us had a tinder box, though we had steel in our chisel and could easily break a piece of stone from the slab ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... in its sordid manifestations: it exalts the sufferer. And his life's work is there. Hitherto there had been no "Albanian Question" to perplex the chanceries of Europe. He applied the match to the tinder; he conjured up that phantom which refuses to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... threatened to be swept away. Here was a tall flag-staff for signals, and a place for a beacon-light when needed, and a bench with a rest for a spy-glass. In the hut itself were signal flags, and a few spare muskets, and a keg of bullets, with maps and codes hung round the wall, and flint and tinder, and a good many pipes, and odds and ends on ledges. Carroway was very proud of this place, and kept the key strictly in his own pocket, and very seldom allowed a man to pass through the narrow doorway. But he liked to sit inside, and see them ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and like tinder, were wrapped in flames. Grief emerged from the kitchen, carrying a naked black child by the leg. Its head ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mountain into the black, rocky bed of the Cheat, hundreds of feet below; have dashed at speed round steep grades hewn in the solid rock, where the sharp, jagged peaks rose a thousand feet beneath us; and I have raced in pitchy nights on the western rivers in tinder-box boats, that seemed shaking to pieces away from their red-hot furnaces; but I do not recall any piece of travel that gave the same sense of the instability of railroad affairs as that ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... 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 ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... now and pray her to save you. Think what it will be to hang as at this moment your servant hangs over that yawning gulf of space, waiting through the long hours till at last you see the little wreaths of smoke begin to curl from the tinder of the cord. Why! before the end found them I have known men go mad, and, like wolves, tear with their ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... strange thing that one cannot get to see the Princess. They all say she is very beautiful; but what is the use of that, if she has always to sit in the great copper castle with the many towers? Can I not get to see her at all? Where is my tinder-box?' And so he struck a light, and whisk! came the dog with eyes as ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... little round tables, set out under the trees on the lawn of some country inn, where the enchanting music of harp and fiddle twangled on the summer air, where great bowls of punch chimed gently as the lumps of ice knocked on the thin crystal. The little tables were spread tinder the trees, and then, later on, perhaps, the customers were spread under the tables.—I would ask you to recall the manly seidel of dark beer as you knew it, the bitter chill of it as it went down, the simple felicity it induced in the care-burdened mind. I could quote to you poet ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... at Quebec, Flint was ready to set out. I had preserved intact the money my kind father had given me, and with it I purchased, at Flint's suggestion, a rifle, and powder, and a shot-belt, a tinder-box, a pipe, some tobacco, a tin cup, and a few other small articles. "Now you've laid in your stock in trade, my lad," he observed, as he announced my outfit to be complete. "With a quick eye and a steady hand you've the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... evening, when the murmur of the multitude was hushed, I crawled cautiously into the cairn (I should have been buried alive had it collapsed), and at once commenced operations with the flint and steel and tinder which I had taken care to leave there. In another minute I had set fire to the wood and dry material that filled the bottom of the shaft. When I was satisfied that it was thoroughly alight, I discreetly withdrew and joined the wondering ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he was knighted—a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer has a box at the opera. On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a match fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... were as wet as those of the hermit. So were those of the professor. Luckily Moses carried the old-fashioned flint and steel, with which, and a small piece of tinder, spark was at last kindled, but as they were about to apply it to a handful of dry bamboo scrapings, an extra spurt of rain extinguished it. For an hour and more they made ineffectual attempts to strike a light. Even the cessation of the rain ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... this made a good supply of very fair candles from the tallow of the goats he had killed, and next day he returned to the cave with six of these, and his tinder-box to light them with. In those days there were no matches, and men used to strike a light with a flint and steel, and tinder, which was a stuff that caught fire very easily ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... night alarm of fire at a military post that borders on the thrilling. In the days whereof we write the buildings were not the substantial creations of brick and stone to be seen to-day, and those of the scattered "camps" and stations in that arid, sun-scorched land of Arizona were tinder boxes of the flimsiest ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the first of any efficient aid, striving to make his way up the smoke-filled stairs, but this was impossible. The house was one of those ancient ones, piled story upon story; so old that it was almost tinder. But those on the opposite side were so close that not unfrequently a plank or two flung across from opposite windows made a bridge for the benefit of those seeking to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the priests speak of—yes! Of a truth, there will, for the priests will see to it! There is a padre-sahib here in Howrah now for the Hindoo priests to whet their hate on. You saw the woman ride past here a half-hour gone? There is a pile of tinder ready here, and any fool of a priest can make a spark! There will be a rising, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly. "Come, tell me ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... said to fly to a flaming Body, like Vultures or Eagles to a putrifying Carcass, and there to make a very great pudder. Since we have nothing more difficult in this Hypothesis to conceive, first, as to the kindling of Tinder, then how a large Iron-bullet, let fall red or glowing hot upon a heap of Small-coal, should set fire to those that are next to it first: Nor secondly, is this last more difficult to be explicated, then that a Body, as Silver for ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... and in a quarter of an hour the bluejackets and marines were seen issuing from the houses and coming down to the shore. The place was by this time a sheet of fire, the lightly built huts, dried in the heat of the sun, catching like tinder, and blazing up in a fierce flame, that in a few minutes ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... 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
... 'bringing up'; for, except that he had a stronger burr in his accent, his speech differed little from that of the Loamshire people around him."[2] In short, except that lucifer matches are twice introduced as familiar things in days when the tinder-box was the only resource in general use for obtaining a light,[3] we have not observed anything in which the authoress ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of thousands of sparks flying skywards, and it was not long before the vast pile was burning as fiercely as the rest. The great rafters of Burmese teak, brought by Mongol Khans six centuries before to Peking, were as dry as tinder with the dryness of ages; and thus almost before we had noted that the bottom of the tower was well alight the flames were shooting through the roof and out through the hundreds of little square windows which in olden days were lined by ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... stone dead. I'm too tinder-hearted to be burying anything but a dead bate, Dannie. That's a thousand years old, but laugh, like I knew you would, old Ramphirinkus! No, thank you, I don't go ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... out on 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
... hand at making a fire, and he quickly found plenty of fine tinder which flashed up when a match was applied. Then more wood was carefully placed on the little blaze, until in a brief time he ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... star had fallen in that spot and been shattered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined monarchy had no reflection save in those inestimable precious stones. But enough on this subject. It were but tedious to describe how the Emperor of Austria's mantle was converted to tinder, and how the posts and pillars of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar of ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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
... herbage of the desert, the fierce winds which sweep over it will yet, especially in late spring or early summer, drive a fire (which has obtained a start in some fairly grassed vale or nook) through its dead, tinder-like remains. How far human improvidence and recklessness—especially that of our own destructive Caucasian race—has contributed to denude the Plains of the little wood that thinly dotted their ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... left, 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
... Lay and light a fire in a stove, using not more than two matches, or light a gas range, top burner, oven and boiler, without having the gas blow or smoke. Lay and light a fire in the open, using no artificial tinder, such as paper or excelsior, and not more than ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... has Geordie, An' routh o' gude gowd in his kist, An' if siller comes at my wordie, His beauty I never will miss 't. Daft gowks, wha catch fire like tinder, Think love-raptures ever will burn? But wi' poortith, hearts het as a cinder, Will ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 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 ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... your arm,' saith he, 'and follow me.'—So, linking his arm in mine, he drew me (for it was pitch dark, and how he found his way I know not) aside from the road, unto a small forsaken and ruinated hut that stood on the common.—'Stand where you be a moment,' quoth he; and striking the tinder, he lit a rush candle. 'Now, know you me?' saith he. 'Not a whit better than afore,' quoth I.—He blew out the candle.—'You have forgot my face,' he saith. 'Mind you a year gone, ministering unto a dying woman (as was thought), in this place, under an hedge, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
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