"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this way. I met Mexico Mullins this mornin'. You mind old Mexico, don't you? The feller that relocated Discovery Claim on Anvil Creek last summer?" ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... with it through the knee. Then he said, "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. I shall ever walk the worse for his rudeness, and shall ever be without a cure. This poisoned iron pains me like the bite of a gadfly. Cursed be the smith who forged it, and the anvil whereon it was wrought! ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... not only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the Musick of a Kettle-Drum, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the Caius MS. Archbishop Ussher's examination of the Latin version, thus discovered, induced in his mind a suspicion that Bishop Grosseteste was himself the translator. A marginal note, for example, betrayed the nationality of its author; 'Incus est instrumentum fabri; dicitur Anglice anfeld [anvil].' Who so likely to have had the ability to translate from a Greek version as Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few Greek scholars of his age? Evidence is not wanting that the Ignatian Epistles were imported from Greece, and translated under the Bishop's ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of choice, he has now on the anvil another scheme, full of difficulty and desperate hazard, which totally alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms, and, what end soever it shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heartburning and discontent to one of the countries, perhaps to both, to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... last turn in the lane, she heard the ring of Daniel Greensmith's hammer on the anvil, and a few minutes' more walking brought her in sight of the smith himself, who laid down his hammer and shaded his eyes to ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... debarred from telling them by reason of a solemn oath. But I have not yet been able to discover why every dentist keeps a canary in his office. Nor do I know why it is, just as you settle your neck back on a head rest that's every bit as comfortable as an anvil, and just as a dentist climbs into you as far as the arm pits and begins probing at the bottom of a tooth which has roots extending back behind your ears, like an old-fashioned pair of spectacles, that the canary bird should wipe his nose on a cuttle bone and ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... its fires aglow, I hear the bellows blow, And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... anvil, see God's goods across the counter, put God's wealth in circulation, teach God's children in the school,—so shall the dust of your labor build itself into a little sanctuary where you ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... Outlook says: "Brief, pungent studies, sparks struck out on the anvil of events. Sparkling indeed they are and likewise full of ethical wisdom and vigor. Essays for the times whose lessons are printed and clinched at every turn with personal experiences that ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... again. She sits on the cliff, leaning back on the short dry grass—if one still can call it grass, so "deep was done the work of the summer sun." And there near by is the rock, baked dry as the grass, and flat as an anvil's face. "No iron like that!" Not a weed nor a shell: "death's altar by the lone shore." The drear analogies succeed one another; she sees them everywhere, in everything. The dead grass, the dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket! A cricket—only ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Hebrides, Aug. 15, and Sept. 15, 1773.—It is strange however that, while in these three places Boswell mentions Burke's name, he should leave a blank here. In Boswelliana, p. 328, Boswell records:—'Langton said Burke hammered his wit upon an anvil, and the iron was cold. There were no sparks flashing and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... church for to pray. And when matins and the first mass were done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone, and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Anvil Rock and old Camp Hualapais were our next two stopping places. We drove through groves of oaks, cedars and pines, and the days began hopefully and ended pleasantly. To be sure, the roads were very rough and our bones ached after a long day's travelling. But our tents were now pitched ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... cave heard all these strange noises; the crowing of the cocks, the hammering on the anvil, the chopping of wood, the music of the koto, the clappering of the hard wood, the tinkling of the bells, the shouting of Uzume and the boisterous laughter of the gods. Wondering what it all meant, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... enjoined to the necessary works, about our ship and pinnaces, and the providing of fresh victuals, fish, fowl, hogs, deer, conies, etc., whereof there is great plenty. Here our smiths set up their forge, as they used, being furnished out of England, with anvil, iron, coals, and all manner of necessaries, which ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... smiling at Geniality, the President becomes a formality, and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... for instance, that extraordinary linguist, the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... it, putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events, and easy ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... sit under the tree, and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the "competition of species" works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones to the weeds upon the waste; where "he that is not hammer, is sure to be anvil;" and he who will not work, neither shall he eat. It may lead them to devote that energy (in which they surpass so far the continental aristocracies) to something better than outdoor amusements or indoor dilettantisms. There are those among them ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... the Middle Ages. Time was when the place boasted but a single forge; and though bucklers were heaped beside the anvil, and swords and spears lay waiting for repair, the blacksmith leant against his door-post, gazing idly up the hill-side. Gradually he was aware of a figure, which seemed to have grown into shape from a furze-bush, or to have risen from behind a stone; ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... rest. Standing with Mr. Silver under the tree beneath whose shade Thackeray, Keene, and Leech loved to foregather round his al fresco dinner-table, I have hearkened to the pretty clink, clink, clink, of a far-distant smith as he smote his hammer upon the anvil, and, wondering that so sweet a sound could trouble any man, I have realised how shattered must have been the sufferer's nervous system as ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... driving, horse-breeding, and the rearing of dogs, his ordinary occupations were those of the athlete or the artisan. He was skilful with his hands, and an excellent mechanic, proficient at the anvil and the forge, and proud of his skill in digging ditches and thatching roofs. Interested in music, and devoted to play-acting, he was badly educated, taking the coronation oath in the French form provided for a king ignorant of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... pit and, leaning against the cabin of his boat, look about him to see what hell he had escaped into. The sun was shining somewhere, blinding his eyes, which were already seared. A river coiled by, every ripple a blistering white flame. He heard birds and other music which sounded like an anvil chorus performing in the narrow confines of a head as large ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... whose circling smoke O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise. With dovelike wings Peace o'er yon village broods; The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness. Less fearful on this day, the limping hare Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large; And as his stiff, unwieldy bulk he ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... aloud. Her father, Chad, frightened lest he should be "laid hold on" too, this impression on the rebellious Bess striking him as nothing less than a miracle, walked hastily away and began to work at his anvil by way of reassuring himself. "Folks mun ha' hoss-shoes, praichin' or no praichin': the divil canna lay hould o' me for that," he ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... just such an incurable as you." (Laughter.) "And Sam'l, when he wanted to, could get out as many cusses in a second as his anvil shot sparks. And the old man used to wrastle with him nights and speak about punishment, and pray for him in meeting. But it didn't do any good. When anything went wrong, Sam'l had an appropriate word for the occasion. One day the old man got an inspiration when ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mother; and neither of you need feel that you are useless nor idle. Part of these gold claims are yours, and in your own names, and you can both make short 'mushing' trips of inspection over the country when you like; though the new railroad up Anvil will be finished in a few weeks, and then you can ride. Under no consideration must either of you think for one moment of buying steamer tickets back to the States inside of a year. At the end of that time we will be ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... philosopher and no subject was out of his field. Hartigan liked Shives, enjoyed the shop with its smoke and flying sparks, and took a keen relish in the unfettered debate that filled in the intervals between Shives's ringing blows on the anvil. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Nature all; thy Art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and that he{9} Who casts to write a living line, must sweat (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses' anvil, turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel he may gain to scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou! Look, how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... busy scene. Blacksmiths with hammer and anvil make sounding blows as they work up old iron into needed farm utensils. The soap maker's caldron sends up a cloud of ill-smelling steam. At one side carpenters are at work trimming and cutting square holes in logs for ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... the New proposition[5] which are so conclusive to thee,—why dost thou hold them for divine speech?" And I, "The proofs which disclose the truth to me are the works[6] that followed, for which nature never heated iron, nor beat anvil." It was replied to me, "Say, what assures thee that these works were? The very thing itself which requires to be proved, naught else, affirms it to thee." "If the world were converted to Christianity," said I, "without ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... confidence unjustified; for, although the blows of the despairing robber fell like those of the hammer on the anvil, yet the quick motions and dexterous swordsmanship of the young Archer enabled him to escape, and to requite them with the point of his less noisy, though more fatal weapon; and that so often, and so effectually, that the huge strength ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... deserves especial notice for its excellence. The anvil is a big piece of iron which is embedded firmly in the ground. Its upper surface is flat, and pointed at both ends. The hammers are solid cones of iron, the upper part of the cones prolonged so as to give a good grip, and the blows are given directly ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... forbearing, timid, inquisitive, and addicted to sleep," said Gamin to me; "he was fond to excess of lock-making, and he concealed himself from the Queen and the Court to file and forge with me. In order to convey his anvil and my own backwards and forwards we were obliged to use a thousand stratagems, the history of which would: never end." Above the King's and Gamin's forges and anvils was an, observatory, erected upon a platform covered with lead. There, seated on an armchair, and assisted by a telescope, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Fakes up the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... sending deft blasts on every side, now to aid his labour and now anon howsoever Hephaistos willed and the work went on. And he threw bronze that weareth not into the fire, and tin and precious gold and silver, and next he set on an anvil-stand a great anvil, and took in his hand a sturdy hammer, and in the other he took ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... must be forged on Fashion's anvil, or it is good for nothing. How shocking to be friendly with an unfashionable lady! It will never do. How soon one would lose caste! No matter if her mind is a treasury of gems, and her heart a flower-garden of love, and her life a hymn of grace and praise, it will not do to walk on ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... move very easily, having a loose stuffing of feathers thickly set round the piston so as to act as a valve, and produce a regular blast. Both cylinders communicate with the same nozzle, one piston rising while the other falls. An oblong piece of iron on the ground was the anvil, and a small vice was fixed on the projecting root of a tree outside. These, with a few files and hammers, were literally the only tools with which an old man makes these fine guns, finishing then himself from the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and lo, they all hastened to the work. The heifer she came from the field, and from the swift gallant ship came the company of great-hearted Telemachus; the smith came holding in his hands his tools, the instruments of his craft, anvil and hammer and well-made pincers, wherewith he wrought the gold; Athene too came to receive her sacrifice. And the old knight Nestor gave gold, and the other fashioned it skilfully, and gilded therewith the horns of the heifer, that the goddess might be glad at the sight of her fair ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... over at Four Corners, brought his anvil, an' the men made the women folks give up their clotheslines. Then they went out on the hole in the old ferryboat, and let down the anvil. There was two hundred feet of line in all, an' when half of it were out the men ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... poor frightened Mimi. He ran round and round, and darted here and there, until Siegfried could go no more for laughing, and the bear broke from the rope and ran into the woods. When Siegfried turned he saw that the poor little dwarf was crouched trembling behind the anvil, and he stopped laughing, ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... his task. And for seven days and seven nights the sparks never stopped flying from his forge; and the ringing of his anvil, and the hissing of the hot metal as he tempered it, were heard continuously. On the eighth day the sword was fashioned, and Siegfried brought it ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... which mark the variety of moods which (p. 114) swept over him during the summer and autumn of 1789, there was also a continual succession of songs on the anvil in preparation for Johnson's Museum. This work of song-making, begun during his second winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all kinds of subjects, and of all degrees of excellence, but hardly one, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... contemptuous carelessness to the tardy caution, and scorned to place themselves in competition with those untitled classes whom they had long ceased to regard as their fellow-men. But the voice of the people is like the stroke of the hammer upon the anvil; it not only makes itself heard, but, however great may be the original resistance, finishes by fashioning the metal upon which it ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... eases his stroke in the beating vats; the cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house; the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or dripping refuse;—form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have never seen equalled ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... encircled it, Philip devoted himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the "Plow, the Loom and the Anvil," upon the strength of materials, and especially upon bridge-building, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied into the English "Practical Magazine." They served at any rate to raise Philip in the opinion of his friends ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... his mother was poor, and she endeavoured to persuade him to remain at home and work. After a short struggle with himself, Pascal yielded. He turned aside to his forge in silent dejection; and soon the anvil was ringing and the sparks were flying, while away down in the village the busking went merrily on. "If the prettiest were always the most sensible," says Jasmin, "how much my Franconnette might have accomplished;" but instead of this, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... always the nearest. The families of our souls are scattered through the world. Let us re-unite them! Our task is to undo these chaotic nations, and in their place to bind together more harmonious groups. Nothing can prevent it; on the anvil of a common suffering, persecution will forge the common affection ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... all the power of eloquence which he had at his command. And as he thought it improbable so to find him in the evening, he determined to postpone his task. But in doing so he felt that he should be at a loss. The eager words were hot now within his memory, having been sharpened against the anvil of his thoughts by his colloquy with Mary Lawrie. To-morrow they might have cooled. His purpose might be as strong; but a man when he wishes to use burning words should use them while the words ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... condition, however, that the curse should be assumed by Regin, who, also, in order to fitly equip the young man for the coming fight, should forge him a sword, which no blow could break. Twice Regin fashioned a marvellous weapon, but twice Sigurd broke it to pieces on the anvil. Then Sigurd bethought him of the broken fragments of Sigmund's weapon which were treasured by his mother, and going to Hiordis he begged these from her; and either he or Regin forged from them a blade ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 'round a baby's neck it will cut teeth easy. A tea made out of dog fennel or corn shucks will cure chills and malaria. It'll make 'em throw up. We used to take button snake root, black snake root, chips of anvil iron and whiskey and make a tonic to cure consumption. It would cure ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... importance if Mademoiselle Brigitte had not taken this attitude of your godmother, whom she has always found supple to her will, as a personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they have now arrived at such a point that Mademoiselle Brigitte is packing her ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... you would expect. Jubal is the inventor of musical instruments. Tubal-Cain, thought the old Florentines, invented harmony. They, the best smiths in the world, knew the differences in tones of hammer strokes on anvil. Curiously enough, the only piece of true part-singing, done beautifully and joyfully, which I have heard this year in Italy, (being south of Alps exactly six months, and ranging from Genoa to Palermo) was out of a busy smithy at Perugia. Of bestial howling, and entirely ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... loudly whirring black-cock through the creaking branches sprung, Frightened by his horse's hoofs, that like the Cyclop's anvil rung— Like a hurricane on he hurried, wood and valley gliding past, While around him, o'er him, on him, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... language can express must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which Scaliger compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... well warmed and ventilated. Where there has not been sufficient warmth, their provisions—even brandy—became so frozen as to require to be cut by a hatchet. The mercury in a barometer has frozen so that it might be beaten on an anvil. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... of a hammer upon an anvil. Eli intended to shoot. He was a man of his word. He made no threat that he was not prepared to execute, and Indian Jake knew that Eli would shoot on the ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... observe that even the physical actions of the people are unfamiliar,—that their work is done in ways the opposite of Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after surprising methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a hammer such as no Western smith could use without long practice; the carpenter pulls, instead of pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong; and keys ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... dilapidated Polish Majesty having become a Widower, questions would rise, Will not he marry again? And with whom? Certain also, he wants Friedrich Wilhelm's alliance; having great schemes on the anvil, which are like to be delicate and perilous,—schemes of "partitioning Poland," no less; that is to say, cutting off the outskirts of Poland, flinging them to neighboring Sovereigns as propitiation, or price of good-will, and rendering the rest ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... tang of the blade which goes into the handle. All this is done with the simplest tools and contrivances. A few strokes of the hammer in connexion with some trifling moulds and measures, attached to the anvil, perfect, in two or three minutes the blade and its tang or shank. Two men, the maker and striker, produce about nine blades in an hour, or seven dozen and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... of a ponderous piece of iron above two feet long, with a heavy ring at either end which encircled their necks. The rings were so thick that their ends must have been forced together with sledge-hammer and anvil after being put round the men's necks, and then overlapped and riveted. Thus it became impossible to free them from their fetters except by the slow and laborious process of cutting them through with a file. Several old and healed-up sores on the necks and collar-bones ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... candle light, and the moonlight comes through the hanging screen window and through the spaces between the planks of the floor, and our music is the distant ringing of the anvil, and the intermittent liquid notes of a Burmese reed instrument ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... darkness through the binnacle light almost took the boy off his feet. It pounded his oilskin, stung his face. The enormous iron dock groaned and clanged under the mad bastinado. The long arms of the shoring stanchions smote the walls in a kind of terrific anvil chorus to the blaring orchestra of the tempest. The joints of the three huge pontoons sounded as if they were being rent asunder every moment. One minute the great structure would rise dizzily, high into the black blast, a skyscraper flung up on a mountain Madden could look far below on the lights ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the wooden chairs, took away the iron ones, tore out the leaves of all the books, and scattered them in front of the house, smashed the bottles containing medicines, windows, oven-door, took away the smith-bellows, anvil, all the tools,—in fact everything worth taking; three corn-mills, a bag of coffee, for which I paid six pounds, and lots of coffee, tea, and sugar, which the gentlemen who went to the north left; took all our cattle and Paul's and Mebalwe's. They then went up to Limauee, went to church morning ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve And use it for an anvil till he had filled The shelves of heaven ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... expressions were of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... people. He wondered how she could manage the army of black servants who hung on her word as the deliverance of an oracle. He could hear the hum of the life of the place already awake with the rising sun. Down in the ravine behind the house he caught the ring of a hammer on an anvil and closer in the sweep of a carpenter's plane over a board. A colt was calling to his mother at the stables and he could hear the chatter and cries of the stable boys busy with the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... the playing children, the belated smith ringing the evening chimes on his anvil in the smithy, the tits chirping among the firs, the crackle of the rough scales on the red boughs of the Scotch fir above him as they cooled—all fed his soul as though Peter's sheet had been let down, and there was nothing common or unclean on ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... blow was that you gave me; why, one would think that your muscles were made of steel. I thought that I could hit a good downright blow, seeing that I have been hammering at the anvil for the last seven years; but strike as I would I could not beat down your guard, while mine went down, as if it had been a feather, before yours. I knew, directly that I had struck the first blow, and felt how firm was your defence, that it was all up with me, knowing ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not myself obliged ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... nickname of "the harmonious blacksmith" because he was always singing that particular tune. Somehow the name got transferred from the singer to the song, and in 1835 the story of Handel's having been inspired to compose the tune after hearing a blacksmith at Edgware produce musical notes from his anvil was first put into print in a letter to The Times. Not long afterwards an imaginary blacksmith of Edgware was invented, and his alleged anvil ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... far as that is concerned, the room has been very fairly gone over, but nothing that was in it the day my uncle died has been removed, not even his anvil.' ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... her husband to have Theophile Gautier direct this part of the Presse in order not to contend with Balzac, but the novelist was so unreasonable that M. de Girardin had to intervene. "My beautiful Queen," once wrote Theophile to Delphine, "if this continues, rather than be caught between the anvil Emile and the hammer Balzac, I shall return my apron to you. I prefer planting cabbage or raking the walls of your garden." To this, Madame de Girardin replied: "I have a gardener with whom I am very well satisfied, thank you; continue to maintain order ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... railroad around it and run ten trains per minute, day and night. So long as Billy Warlock can keep himself above ground, so long will that old house keep him company, and so long will his forges blow fiery sparks in the cellar, while he hammers and hums and hums and hammers on the anvil by his side. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... toiling millions, free and brave, Whose shores two mighty oceans lave: Your cultured fields, your marts of trade, Keels by the hand of genius laid, The shuttle's hum, the anvil's ring Echo your ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, "Non marte sed arte." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School" express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since Perth (Bertha aurea) had ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... Being the central figure of the domestic circle, the fire threw its strongest light on his massive and sturdy frame, reddening his rough visage so that it looked like the head of an iron statue, all aglow, from his own forge, and with its features rudely fashioned on his own anvil. At John Inglefield's right hand was an empty chair. The other places round the hearth were filled by the members of the family, who all sat quietly, while, with a semblance of fantastic merriment, their shadows danced on the wall behind them. One of the group was John ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... colleagues in the surf-boat which is taking them shoreward, and the ship is headed to the south. The expedition is important—yes, and it was much more important than Master Day imagined; for something more serious than profits on muslin and brocade was on the anvil of fate. ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... the sledge-hammer with the seeming powers of Vulcan himself, and who chanced to be near Robin when he paused to rest and mop the streaming perspiration from his brow, while a well-matched brother took his place at the anvil. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the King walked by her side with his hand on her neck. In this way they came to a small village, and here the nag turned up a by-road and halted outside the blacksmith's forge. The smith's Lad stood within, clinking at the anvil, the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... sheath lies the Anvil's Brother, Hid is the hammered Death of Men. Would ye look on the gift of the green-clad Mother? How then shall ye ask ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... consisted of a large cellar or dungeon, fitted with huge beams of oak fixed close to the floor. Thick iron collars were attached by iron chains to the beams. The collar being placed round the prisoner's neck, it was closed and riveted upon an anvil with heavy blows ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... blacksmith's shop, in the village, he had the man who pounded iron fashion for him on his anvil, a set of tools, exactly like those used by the kabouter and the elf, which he had seen in his dream. Then he hung out a sign, marked "Wooden blocks for shoes." He made klomps for the little folks just ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... should now retire and rebel; if they should occupy the castles of the mountains and sea-coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double attack, and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil, must resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude." [136] We must not forget, that a priest here prefers his country to his religion; and that the Moslems, whose alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... split quite in two in the middle, and dissonant combinations of sound that are the despair of such poor vocal organs as are granted to human beings. The verses seem to have been hammered out on an anvil, by blows from a blacksmith's sledge. In all parts of the book is manifest the agony it cost the writers to find two words that would rhyme—-more or less; and so often as this arduous feat is achieved, the poetic athlete appears to pause awhile from sheer ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... sing-song of my own to fill up,—and how does it take, eh? and where the devil is the second edition of my Satire, with additions? and my name on the title page? and more lines tagged to the end, with a new exordium and what not, hot from my anvil before I cleared the Channel? The Mediterranean and the Atlantic roll between me and criticism; and the thunders of the Hyperborean Review are deafened by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... England granted, and the nation paid such incredible sums as enabled their sovereign not only to maintain invincible navies and formidable armies, but likewise to give subsidies to all the powers of Europe. He knew that a treaty of this kind was actually upon the anvil between his Britannic majesty and the czarina, and he began to be apprehensive of seeing an army of Russians in the Netherlands. His fears from this quarter were not without foundation. In the month of November, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... his younger energies were used for what he had believed to be the world's work, but what he now perceived were the activities of a vain, ego-driven intellect, that delighted to attract the passing eye by the ring of the anvil and a great show of unsleeved muscle. Much of this early work had kept him afield, and his calls home to New York had inflicted upon him the fatal stimulus for quantity. His still earlier years were passed in a home ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... duty to record here, that the acts of Benjamin now became violent; for he darted his sledge-hammer violently on the anvil of Mr. Doolittles countenance, and the place became in an instant a scene of tumult and confusion. The crowd rushed in a dense circle around the spot, while some ran to the court room to give the alarm, and one or two of the more juvenile part of the multitude ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... considered them merely in the capacity of blacksmiths, and condemned them to the anvil. This arose from the chief Cyclopian Deity being called Acmon, and Pyracmon. He was worshipped under the former title in Phrygia; where was a city and district called Acmonia, mentioned by Alexander ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... After their arrows and javelins were discharged, the Saracens commenced the attack with the lance, the mace, and the sword. An English chronicle aptly compares them to smiths, and the Crusaders to the anvil on which their hammers rang. Meanwhile, the Franks did not for a moment intermit their march towards Assur, and the Saracens, who sought in vain to shake their steady ranks, called them 'a nation ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... he put on his old clothes, his sabots and his leather apron, and for ten long days the hammer beat incessantly upon the anvil. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... so that the sacks are conveniently disposed for the hands of the operator, who sits between them. A charcoal-fire is then laid in the hole, and is soon brought to a powerful heat by means of the bellows. A larger stone serves the purpose of an anvil, and a smaller stone does duty for a hammer. Sometimes the hammer is made of a conical piece of iron, but in most cases a stone is considered sufficient. The rough work of hammering the iron into ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... 1862. Everything is silent in Dreamthorp. The smith's hammer reposes beside the anvil. The weaver's flying shuttle is at rest. Through the clear wintry sunshine the bells this morning rang from the gray church tower amid the leafless elms, and up the walk the villagers trooped in their best dresses ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... as will enable just enough pressure to be exerted at any particular place as may be thought proper. This is, of course, assuming that some iron substance is at hand that will answer the purpose of an anvil. The thickness of the iron wire must depend upon the requirements and size of the work in repair, a viola of course taking stouter wire than a violin, a 'cello still more so. A useful average for violin work would be an eighth of an inch diameter. Strong ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... forbid the Fates to cut the Thread of Man's Life upon any pretence whatsoever, unless it be for the sake of the Rhyme. And whereas I have good Reason to fear, that Neptune will have a great deal of Business on his Hands, in several Poems which we may now suppose are upon the Anvil, I do also prohibit his Appearance, unless it be done in Metaphor, Simile, or any very short Allusion, and that even here he be not permitted to enter, but with great Caution and Circumspection. I desire that the same Rule may be extended to his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the scene; it is as good as any piece of the 'Mort Arthur:'—'According to the report of one who told me what he had seen with his own eyes, never did anvil take so many blows as he upon his person and his steed; and they all kept striking at his lordship in such crowds that the one prevented the other. And so many lances, partisans, and crossbow quarries, and other weapons, made upon his body a most mighty din, that above every other ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... countless innocent persons who had been executed, banished or gone into voluntary exile for the sake of the new religion, but also the property of good Catholic patriots had been confiscated for his benefit. After being anvil so many years, it is pleasant to play hammer; and if that was not always done in a proper and moderate way, people excused themselves on the ground of having experienced a hundred-fold harsher and more cruel treatment from the Spaniards. It might have been unchristian to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned—on a Sunday. He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing. Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil. He was the only boy in the village who slept that night. We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed the information, delivered from the pulpit that evening, that Lem's was a case of special ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... obey the archbishop's commands, and, from all sides, barons and knights came riding in to keep the birth-feast of Our Lord. And when they had prayed, and were coming forth from the cathedral they saw a strange sight. There, in the open space before the church, stood, on a great stone, an anvil thrust through with a sword; and on the stone were written these words: "Whoso can draw forth this sword is rightful ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... set up their forge and anvil; and we commenced unloading corrugated iron sheets to form our magazines. Fortunately, I had a number of wall-plates, rafters, &c., that I had brought from Egypt for this purpose, as there is no straight wood ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... old Viking legend inscribed on the cross at Leeds. Volund, who is the same mysterious person as our Wayland Smith, is seen carrying off a swan-maiden. At his feet are his hammer, anvil, bellows, and pincers. The cross was broken to pieces in order to make way for the building of the old Leeds church hundreds of years ago, but the fragments have been pieced together, and we can see the swan-maiden carried above the head of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... have become a positive magnet in the fall; the forge and anvil of the sun have had their effect. In the spring it is negative to all intellectual conditions, and drains ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... was about to answer, his eye fell suddenly on the burly form of Cecco del Vecchio, who was leaning his bare and brawny arms over his anvil, and gazing, with a smile, upon the group. There was something in that smile which turned the current of Adrian's thoughts, and which he could not contemplate without an ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... reason, and fashioned it accordingly. You were thus sailing down the rapid tide of time towards Eternity, without a single authoritative guide (having cast your chart overboard), except what you might fashion and forge on your own anvil,—except what you ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... contrary, incessantly gave forth a succession of reports too rapid to be reckoned. These sounds, although unremitting, were clear and distinct, the one from the other. I can find no better comparison for them than the strokes of a hammer falling on an anvil. Had the ancients heard a similar noise, I can readily conceive whence arose the idea of their imagining a forge in the centre of Etna, with the Cyclops ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... were so bright in the water to one who swam among their reflections. Then the little crests of foam on the waves seemed on fire, and my arms struck sparks, as it were from the water, as the sparks fly from the anvil. Only these were palest blue, not red, and I wondered at them, thinking at first that they were fancy, or from the shine of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... than his own. From his father and his forefathers he inherited his trade, which, in his turn, he will hand over to his son—a hard-working, honest, and sturdy man, the clank of whose hammer and anvil may be ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... metal, which is also very hard and difficult to be worked; so that English iron is used when it can be obtained, and bars of iron form a considerable article of commerce. The blacksmith's utensils consist of a hammer, anvil, forceps, and a pair of double bellows made of two goat-skins. When we saw him he and his slaves were making stirrups, but the operation ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... heart, some frankness and honesty, but he was a bluff, rough sailor, and when excited, oaths of the hottest sort flew from his lips, like sparks from an anvil. Because of his roughness and profanity, and because, perhaps, of the fact of his surrounding himself with a lot of natural children, the Duchess was determined to persevere in her retirement from the Court circle, and in keeping her innocent little daughter out of its ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... was a man of powerful build, wide forehead, overhanging brows, broad chest and shoulders, short thick neck, and strong arms developed at the anvil. His superintendent from boyhood had studied him, but never before had he seen the lion in ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... every colour and every form, over the middle of his shoulders. This was well-measured (?) to him, and it was not an overweight. His hand brought the circlet of red-yellow, as though it were a plate of red-gold, of refined gold smelted over the edge of an anvil, to his brow, as a sign of his charioteering, in ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... The Palace of the Archbishops is now a convent: it was restored by Pugin after being in a state of ruin for many years. Certain portions may be seen at uncertain times. In the ancient dining-room are preserved the hammer, tongs and anvil of St. Dunstan. The Saint's well is in the garden. It was hereabouts that St. Dunstan had his great tussle with the Devil, holding the fiend by the nose with his tongs; eventually the Evil One wrenched himself free; making an eight mile ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... anvil, Beaten by the winds; Star sparks, Burning and dying in the heavens; The furnace glare Red On the polished ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... valley—some shining through the windows of rough dwellings and others moving about in the hands of workers. From the open door of, a blacksmith shop poured a yellow glow from a forge, and against the roar of the stamps arose the musical clink of hammer on anvil. ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... timber railways of the Tyne. But when the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten as with a palsy. The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... support of the Government. They have offered property and life and the most sacred treasures of the heart upon the shrine of constitutional liberty. At the sound of the drum, they have left the farm and the barn, the anvil and the mill, the church and the forum, and formed into the grand army of invincibles which, at the word of command, have marched forward, conquering and resistless. They have borne patiently with delay and defeat, with blunders and crimes, with humiliation and taxation, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... will not do. Yet this first plan of yours must fail, Noma, seeing that before they starve within, the generals of Nodwengo will be back upon us from the mountains, catching us between the hammer and the anvil, and I know not ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... this army was justly thought the equal of twice its own number of raw yeomanry, suddenly called to the field from the anvil, the workshop, or the plough. Its strongest arm was its artillery; its weakest, ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... by the river on which the marble town was built, she came to the little old mill near her own home. There was Alfred hard at work, for he had hired himself out as a miller's boy. Her mother was weeping beneath the willow by the river, and her father was hammering at his anvil. How pleasant his great, glowing fire looked to Rosamond, after her ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... feelings run deep and strong. Every one is filled with this passion, with the soldier's ardor. But when the waters of the deluge shall have subsided, gladly will we return to the plow and to the anvil. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... a light room be available, or a portion of the cellar where there is light, or a workshop may be built in the yard. Buy a moderate sized anvil, a vise and a few other tools, including bell hammer, and this is all required for cold bending. If you go into a forge for hot bending, other devices will be needed. Figure 1 shows how to make the square bend, getting the shoulder ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... you where you'd been, Complained of loneliness and hunger, spoke of children Who lived in order, sat down thrice a day To cream and porridge, bread and meat. We think to corner you—alas for us! Your anger flashes swords! Reasons pour out Like anvil sparks to justify your way: "Your father's always gone—you selfish children, You'd have me in the house from morn till night." You put us in the wrong—our cause is routed. We turn to bed unsatisfied in mind, You've overwhelmed ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... was of profound and lofty and original eloquence. I felt riveted to my seat till he finished it. There was no oratory about it, in the ordinary sense of that word; no graces of elocution. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from his heated mind like the sparkles from the glowing steel on his own anvil, getting on as they come out what clothing of language they might, and thus having on the most appropriate and expressive imaginable. Not a waste word, nor a wanting one. And he stood and delivered himself ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... prospect of love lost; as in the highest natures it might have been. Rather it was the man's pride which suffered: the pride of a high spirit which found itself helpless between the hammer and the anvil, in a position so false that hereafter men might say of the unfortunate that he had bartered his mistress for his life. He had not! But he had perforce to stand by; he had to be passive under stress of circumstances, and by the sacrifice, if she consummated it, he would in ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... ordinary condition, if it were for no other reason than that he might continue to live. He was accordingly, at his own request led into the smithy, multitudes flocking around to tender him their kindest offices, or to witness the process of release; and, having laid down his head upon the anvil, the smith lost no time in seizing and poising his goodly forehammer. "Will I come sair on, minister?" exclaimed the considerate man of iron, in at the brink of the pot. "As sair as ye like," was the minister's answer; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... shielded with infinite care, in the centre there lay a set of smith's tools, crudely fashioned and well worn, tongs and a heavy hammer and a small anvil. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece, but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By ...
— English Satires • Various
... round the walls shone with pewter and copper dishes, cups, kettles, and vessels and implements of all household varieties, and ranged round the floor lay ploughshares, axes, and mattocks, all polished up. The ring of hammers on the anvil was heard in the court in the rear. The front of the hall was open for the most part, without windows, but it ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... straighten, and his eye glitter under the flabby brow, at the recital of any brave, true deed, as if it had been his own; as if, but for some mischance back yonder in his youth, it might have been given to even this poor old fellow to strike a great, ringing blow on Fate's anvil before he died,—to give his place in the life-boat to a more useful man,—to help buy with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... tales of native men and women swimming ashore from vessels many miles at sea—more miles, indeed, than I dare vouch for or even mention. And they tell of a native diver who went down in thirty or forty-foot waters and brought up an anvil! I think he swallowed the anvil afterward, if my memory serves me. However I will not urge ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be an admirable place for a blacksmith shop. I purchased the whole thing very cheaply. Then I set carpenters to work to repair the house and build a blacksmith shop. The former I equipped with furniture, and the latter with anvil, bellows and other tools, and a supply ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... were progressing favorably. Reports from Blakely and the Professor assured them that they would have no difficulty, in a few days, in getting at least thirty of the guns ready. Stut proved himself to be the most apt pupil, and nothing interested him as much as the forge and anvil, and John, noticing this, set him to work on the small anvil to forge out ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... her father, when the girl took up with Martin Blake, the son of the blacksmith in the next village, who might be seen most days with a smutty face and leathern apron hammering away at the glowing red metal on the anvil. It would have been well for him if he had only been seen thus, with the marks of honest toil about him; but Martin Blake was too often to be seen at the 'Crown,' and often in a state that anyone who loved ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... asked the red-hot iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 'Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand?'— 'I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant greenwood.' Kindness fadeth away, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the dry-shampoo it was in need of. But as for me, I'm like an old horse-shoe with its calks worn off. The Master-Blacksmith of Life should poke me deep into His fires and fling me on His anvil and ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... then, and long after, familiarly known to every one in the neighborhood as "Uncle Abram." He soon removed to the west side of the river, and thence to Brooklyn, where he built him one of the first houses erected on that side, on top of the hill. Hard knocks upon the anvil could barely enable him to support his family, so the boy, at the age of nine, was sent to the Granite State, where for ten years he enjoyed, during the Winter months, the advantages of a New England district school, and worked and delved among the rocks upon a farm the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... yielding nature. The direct influence a passive, merely receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully, was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, and as little capable of playing anvil to another mind for long. He rebelled against her ascendancy, but suffered from the spell. She was no Countess Guiccioli, content to adore and be adored, and exercise an indirect power for good on a capricious lover. Her logical mind, energetic and independent, grew impatient ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas |
