"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up to the oblivion of slumber, beneath the cool and starry sky. We made a fire against a log about eighteen inches thick; this was a limb from an adjacent blood-wood or red gum-tree, and this morning we discovered that it had been chopped off its parent stem either with an axe or tomahawk, and carried some forty or fifty yards from where it had originally fallen. This seemed very strange; in the first place for natives, so far out from civilisation as this, to have axes or tomahawks; and in the second place, to chop logs or boughs off a tree was totally against their ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... axe,' said Aubrey, well pleased to retort a little teasing by the way; 'young Axworthy baiting the trap, and old Axworthy sitting up in his den to grind ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the best man on earth. Further acquaintance with the old man taught me that he was one of nature's noblemen. He was an Illinois farmer, who had enlisted as a private, and had in time become colonel of his regiment, and had been placed in command of this brigade. Every evening he would take an axe and cut up fire-wood enough for headquarters, and he was not above cleaning off his horse if his servant was sick, or did not do it to suit, and frequently I have seen him greasing his ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... gazed, the lone and lovely Isle denoted a paradise of unkempt vegetation, unfeared birds. No stump was there to betray the passing of the devastating axe. No footprint except that of birds—erratic, rectangular, scribbling—dented the sand. No human being had ever visited those groves perfumed by orchids, gauzy as the wings of the butterflies which poised over them and sipped the nectar stored in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... his friends. She engaged to meet him at midnight in a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and that he there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold, covered with a clean napkin. He went with his pick-axe and shovel at the appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he considered a favourable omen of the wealth he ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... great sport. I like to hear the thud of the axe as it comes down on the trunk. Then it is always an exciting time as the tree begins to bend and fall to the ground. Somehow, it seems like a person. I can't help pitying ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heaved stroke Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt Or fright them ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... and continuing until the reign of Menkheperra (Thothmes III). Tcheserkara (Amenhetep I) gave me in gold two rings, two collars, one armlet, one dagger, one fan, and one pectoral (?). Aakheperkara (Thothmes I) gave me in gold four hand rings, four collars, one armlet, six flies, three lions, two axe-heads. Aakheperenra gave me in gold four hand rings, six collars, three armlets (?), one plaque, and in ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... that it barely escaped being called black. It was set aside to cool, and after a short parley, the children set out to reconnoitre, armed with such weapons as they thought most useful. Bubbles carried an axe, Florence a bottle of ammonia, which she meant to throw in the face of the intruder "to take his breath away," she declared; and Dimple bore a long rope and a pair of large scissors. She intended, she said, to snip at the man if he came near her, ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... will be necessary, because the ground is frozen. Look around for an axe; we shall be obliged to work our way ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... perused the junior Tory's address to the Electors, throughout which there was not an idea—safest of addresses to canvass upon! perused likewise, at Captain Baskelett's request, a broad sheet of an article introducing the new candidate to Bevisham with the battle-axe Romfreys to back him, in high burlesque of Timothy Turbot upon Beauchamp: and Cecil hoped his cousin would not object to his borrowing a Romfrey or two for so pressing an occasion. All very funny, and no doubt the presence of Mr. Everard ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Brissotins and Girondins. The Comit de Salut Public decreed forced loans and the leve en masse. Foreigners were expelled from the Convention and imprisoned throughout France. Mayor Bailly, Mme. Roland, Manuel, and their friends, passed under the axe. The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The reductio ad horribile of all the fine arguments in favor of popular infallibility ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... In this double-ender of a State political jobbery was at fault, because it had no headquarters. It could not get together a ring; it could not raise a corps of lobbyists. Such few axe-grinders as there were had to dodge back and forth between the Fastburg grindstone and the Slowburg grindstone, without ever fairly getting their tools sharpened. Legislature here and legislature there; it was like guessing at a pea between ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... to the same market, where mutual exchanges are freely effected. The fruits of muscular exertion procure the fruits of mental effort. John serves Thomas with his hands, and Thomas serves John with his money. Peter wields the axe for James, and James wields the pen for Peter. Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, employ their wisdom, courage, and experience, in the service of the community, and the community serve Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, in furnishing them with food and raiment, and making them partakers of the general prosperity. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... reason for an outburst of wrath. He stormed at Brougham; he declared that it was an act of high-treason to call out the Life Guards without the express authority of the King, and he raged in a manner which seemed to imply that only the mercy of the sovereign could save Grey and Brougham from the axe on Tower Hill. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... manage to introduce myself there. I had not advanced two hundred paces ere I discovered that I had lost my way; I looked round, and found myself in an antique and desert wood of firs, to the roots of which it appeared the axe had never been laid. I still hastened onwards a few steps, and perceived I was among dreary rocks, surrounded only by moss and stones, between which lay piles of snow and ice. The wind was extremely cold, and ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... The monasteries were in ashes. The monks of St. Cuthbert were wandering from place to place, with the relics of the great northern Saint. The worship of Woden seemed on the point of returning. The clergy had exchanged the missal and censer for the battle-axe, and had become secularized and brutalized by the conflict. The learning of the Order was dead. The Latin language, the tongue of the Church, of literature, of education, was almost extinct. Alfred himself says that he could not recollect ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... than three centuries ago, his predecessors were men of mark and consideration. Our own King Hal took more heed of his executioner than of half the counties over whose necks his axe was suspended; while Louis XI., a legitimate sovereign of France, used to dip in the dish with Tristan Hermite and Olivier le Dain. A few reigns later, and the hangman of the French metropolis (who shares with its diocesan the honour of being styled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... were found erected in the fissures of the rocks at the projections of the cape, evidently placed there by the crew to attract the attention of vessels passing. The mizen mast and main topmast had been cut away, and there were a few marks of the axe upon her mainmast. The natives appeared to have taken notice of the ironwork, for some spike nails were found about their fireplaces; these traces, however, were not very recent, nor was it probable that any natives were upon the island at ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... man can't be pinched without the goods," he observed shrewdly. "I was raised in a country where they took fools out an' brained 'em with an axe. You fellers ain't been none too friendly, recollect. When's your boss expected home, did yuh say? I'd kinda ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... Is well known to you, Mr. Reflector, took a gentler method of marking their disapprobation of an author's work. They were a humane and equitable nation. They left the furca and the patibulum, the axe and the rods, to great offenders: for these minor and (if I may so term them) extra-moral offences the bent thumb was considered as a sufficient sign of disapprobation,—vertere pollicem; as the pressed thumb, premere pollicem, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... miles west of Cape Coast Castle. The whole region is almost entirely covered by dense scrub or lofty trees, with a thick undergrowth of shrubs and creepers, through which it is impossible to pass, unless where native paths exist or a way has been cut by the axe of the pioneer; while in all directions marshes exist, emitting exhalations destructive to the health and lives of Europeans ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... means to be a terror to the world, Measuring the limits of his empery By east and west, as Phoebus doth his course.— Lie here, ye weeds, that I disdain to wear! This complete armour and this curtle-axe Are adjuncts more beseeming Tamburlaine.— And, madam, whatsoever you esteem Of this success, and loss unvalued, [35] Both may invest you empress of the East; And these that seem but silly country swains May have the leading of so great ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... tower head and neck above him. He at once strains his hands to tear their knots apart, his fillets spattered with foul black venom; at once raises to heaven awful cries; as when, bellowing, a bull shakes the wavering axe from his neck and runs wounded from the altar. But the two snakes glide away to the high sanctuary and seek the fierce Tritonian's citadel, [227-261]and take shelter under the goddess' feet beneath the circle of her shield. Then indeed a strange terror thrills in all our amazed breasts; and Laocoon, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... battle-axe, And bade his followers mount their hacks, With a look on his countenance so stern, So little of fun, so full of fight, That, when he came in the Count's full sight, In something of haste and more of fright, The Count rode out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... with pouches, large and small, for hurling stones of various size. Slung over his back was a big bag, also of leather, which contained his ammunition—smooth pebbles gathered from the torrent bed, the largest being the size of a man's fist. Strapped round his waist was a flint axe, the head being a beautiful celt, which Toller had discovered long ago on Clun Downs, and skilfully fixed in ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... giving a good shape to the chest and good carriage of the upper part of the body and head. They are called into play in all exercises like striking, batting, tennis-playing, ball-throwing, swinging, shoveling, swimming, as well as in pulling, in lifting weights, in swinging an axe or handling a broom. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... could sin against his totem-animal by eating it; he could sin against his 'brother the ox' by consuming its strength in the labor of the plough; he could sin against the corn by cutting it down and grinding it into flour, or against the precious and beautiful pine-tree by laying his axe to its roots and converting it into mere timber for his house. Further still, no doubt he could sin against elemental nature. This might be more difficult to be certain of, but when the signs of elemental displeasure were not to be mistaken—when the rain withheld itself for months, or the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... nests at pleasure, while from twenty feet upward to the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber, for now the axe-men were at work cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, and seemed to fell them in such a manner that, in their descent, they might bring down several others, by which means the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... section embraces January, February, and March; the second, April, May, and June; the third, July, August, and September; and the fourth, October, November, and December. Conspicuously inscribed on the clog will be noticed the ring for New Year's Day; the star denoting the Epiphany; the axe for St. Paul; February 14th is indicated by a lover's knot; a spear denotes St. George's Day in April; and May Day by a tree branch. The keys of St. Peter are noticed as indicating the 29th of June; the scales of St. Michael are seen at the end of September. ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... Together they carried the mysterious strong box into the chateau, but not without great difficulty and frequent pauses to rest, because of its immense weight. Pierre broke open the chest with an axe, and the cover sprang back, disclosing to view a mass of gold coins—all ancient, and many of them foreign. Upon examination, a quantity of valuable jewelry, set with precious stones, was found mingled with the gold, and, under all, a piece of parchment, with a huge ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... [After due consideration.] It's an intellectual exercise. He's the right man, Fanny. You see it isn't a party in the active sense at all, except now and then when it's captured by someone with an axe ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... see how Lord Darnley cut his foot with an axe while he was hewing the root of a tree, and died in consequence of lock-jaw! Harriet, who knew him and all the good he did in their neighbourhood, is ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... comfort, help and heal, Yet now no earthly trace of him remains. Spring freshets from the hills have washed away The last wrecked fragments of his hermitage, And though I pleaded hard, I could not save The oak, his dear dumb daughter, from the axe, Albeit 'twas she preserved him unto us. Forgive me, sir, my chatter wearies you, Here be the grapes my boy has plucked: they sate Both thirst and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... to swing an axe," he enumerated slowly, "and you'll have to lug a rod and tripod. You'll wade through bog and fight your way through underbrush. And then, for variety, swing an axe some more. If you've never learned yet what it is ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... a-building, we are told that the stone was made ready at the quarry, "and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house." The structures of intellectual beliefs which Christians have reared in the various centuries to house their religious faith have been built, for the most part, out of materials they found already prepared by other movements of the human mind. It has ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... became the virtual ruler of the kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from his first elevation, received, alone among English kings, the crown of England as the free gift of her people, and, alone among English kings, died axe in hand on her soil in the defence of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... returned with axe and saw 40 At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... them with a force that drove him to his knees. Up went that three-legged stool again, to descend like a thunderbolt upon the head of another. That freed me. The sergeant was coming up behind, but another flourish of my improvised battle-axe sent the two remaining soldiers apart to look to their swords. Ere they could draw, I had darted like a hare between them and out into the street. The sergeant, cursing them with horrid volubility, followed closely ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... we'll have to. I'm thinkin' they'll find us in a fortni't, whatever," reassured Bob, rising and picking up the axe. "We'll be needin' a shelter, an' I'm thinkin' I'll ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... was a certain recklessness in his actions—as though his every movement advertised a careless regard for consequences. She held her breath when he split a short log into slender splinters, for he swung the short-handled axe with a loose grasp, as though he cared very little where its sharp blade landed. But she noted that he struck with precision despite his apparent carelessness, every blow falling true. His manner of handling the axe reflected the spirit that shone in his eyes when, after kindling the fire, ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Still they bravely persevered. While undaunted efforts were being made to get on shore, Mr William J. Stivey, carpenter of the Sampson, setting a noble example, which others followed, leaped on shore, and, axe in hand, hewed manfully away at the stakes to make a passage for the boats ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... conducted him to the cellar, where Harry found the remnants of the old box which Katy had tried to split. Seizing the axe, he struck a few vigorous blows, and the pine boards were reduced to a proper shape for use. Taking an armful, he returned to the chamber; and soon a good fire was blazing ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... risen. Still the waves broke fiercely over the wreck, and it was impossible to take any steps towards reaching the land, whose green hills and bright valleys gladdened the heart of the storm-tossed sailor-boy. With an axe which he found in the forecastle, he knocked away a couple of the planks of the bulkhead which divided the seamen's quarters from the hold. He passed through, by moving a portion of the miscellaneous cargo, to the cabin, where he obtained ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... moment's whim might end all. Surely his way of bearing that suspense was very noteworthy and noble. It is difficult to keep a calm heart, and still more difficult to keep on steadily at work, when any moment might bring the victor's axe. Suspense almost enforces idleness, but Paul crowded these moments of his prison time with letters, and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are the fruits for which we are indebted to a period which would have been to many men ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to the top of Mount Marcy, where it pushes its rocky forehead high into the heavens. Here in these beautiful wild regions you will find lakes over whose waters you may glide in a canoe, whose forest-clad shores seem never to have been marred by the axe of civilization. Here as the sun sinks to repose amid these purple mountains, and the last rays of light on their waters seem like sheets of fluid gold, and the lonely cry of the loon breaks the solitude, you too will feel that you do not need to go to Europe for natural mountain beauty when such ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... properties of the chalk-flint, and knew where in Scotland it was to be found. They were mineralogists enough, too, as their stone battle-axes testify, to know that the best tool-making rock is the axe-stone of Werner; and in some localities they must have brought their supply of this rather rare mineral from great distances. A history of those arts of savage life, as shown in the relics of our earlier antiquities, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... tracts of easy drainage, as a whole—deposits are found of some combinations with iron, so firmly cemented together, as to be almost impenetrable with the pick-axe, and apparently impervious to water. Exceptional cases of this nature must be carefully sought for by ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good things that Athelred is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while he has been wielding the broad-axe; and, between us, on this unequal division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life with humorous or grave intention, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of "Karib" prop. a dinghy, a small boat belonging to a ship Here it refers to the canoe (a Carib word) pop. "dug-out" and classically "monoxyle," a boat made of a single tree-trunk hollowed by fire and trimmed with axe and adze. Some of these rude craft which, when manned, remind one of saturnine Caliph Omar's "worms floating on a log of wood," measure ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... blush {in emulation}; and they encourage one another, and raise their spirits with shouts, and discharge their weapons without any order. Their {very} multitude is a hindrance to those that are thrown, and it baffles the blow for which it is designed. Behold! the Arcadian,[66] wielding his battle-axe, rushing madly on to his fate, said, "Learn, O youths, how much the weapons of men excel those of women, and give way for my achievement. Though the daughter of Latona herself should protect him by her own arms, still, in spite ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... on, moving more quickly as the faint, regular crash of an axe on wood came nearer and nearer. A barbed-wire fence had sprung up unaccountably in the wood, following a devious course among the thick trees, and as they scrambled carefully under it, Henry D. pausing ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... is responsible for the strange story of Minerva—how Jupiter commanded Vulcan to split open his skull with a sharp axe, and how the warlike virgin leaped in full maturity from the cleft in the brain, thoroughly armed and ready for deeds of martial daring, brandishing her glittering weapons with fiery energy, and breaking at once into the wild Pyrrhic ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... for it would not have been fitting that a Kshattriya should destroy Kshattriyas. The lesson would not thus have been so well taught to the world. So that we have the strange phenomenon of the Brahmana coming with an axe to slay the Kshattriya, and three times seven times that axe was raised in slaughter, cutting the Kshattriya trunk off from ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... of Western New-York, Ohio, and a good part of Michigan, which I had long ago rejoiced in, but which I never before prized so highly. Some portions of these fast falling monuments of other days ought to be rescued by public forecast from the pioneer's, the woodman's merciless axe, and preserved for the admiration and enjoyment of future ages. Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, &c., should each purchase for preservation a tract of one to five hundred acres of the best forest land still accessible (say within ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... wood for the fire, The stone-axe is broken, my husband carries the other. Where is the soul of the sun? Hid in the dam of the beaver, waiting the spring-time. Ahmi, ahmi, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... made for the heart. It proposes to regulate the inward affections of the soul, and through them the outward life. Thus it lays the axe at the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... roofless room, where both their voices once sounded. Oh! as I gaze calmly on these mute warders on the walls, I cannot paint you my feelings of the sense of injustice and wrong, a refining, a resenting sorrow—my heart bleeds at the thought of the cruel axe, and I am punished for its laws that no longer exist. I pray not to be horror-stricken at the thoughts of the past ambition and power of princes who cast destruction over our house, and made us spectacles of barbarity. But, nevertheless, many great and Christian men the Lord ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... Mary Jane," directed the devious woman. "You needn't be telling you picked it up and that 'tis no more than a come-by-chance, because then she'd set no store upon it. But just say 'tis a gift for her, and she'll be pleased and axe no questions." ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... next endeavour was to release the captain, who was entangled under the boat. As it was impossible to right her, we set-to to split her side open with the boat hook, because by awful bad luck the head of the axe we had flew off at the first blow and was lost. The rescue took thirty minutes, and the extricated captain was in a pitiable condition, being badly bruised and having swallowed a lot of salt water. He was unconscious. While at that work the submarine came to the surface quite ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... divided into three equal parts; the meat, and all other articles of our rations, in the same way. Each of the larger boats has an axe, hammer, saw, auger, and other tools, so that all are loaded alike. We distribute the cargoes in this way that we may not be entirely destitute of some important article should any one of the boats be lost. In the small boat we pack a ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... outlived the usage. It is the picturesque. In the deep recesses of the primeval forest, along the mountain-slope, and away up the tumbling brook, Nature may be majestic, beautiful, and even sublime; but she is never picturesque. This quality comes only after the axe and the saw have let the sunlight into the dense tangle and have scattered the falling timber, or the round of the water-wheel has divided the rush of the brook. It is so here. Some hundred years ago, along this ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... servants filled the background of the room, and listened with suspended breath to the axe-strokes with which the savage crowd broke down the doors, and heard the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... chest," said Baklanov. "Bring an axe. Here is an American comrade. Let him smash the chest open, and write down what he ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... law, (but let the reader remark, that it prevails but in one of the colonies), against mutilation. It took its rise from the frequency of the inhuman practice. But though a master cannot there chop off the limb of a slave with an axe, he may yet work, starve, and beat him ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... and shelter of their fellows. It is almost impossible to restore a New Zealand forest when once destroyed. Then most of the finest trees are found on rich soil. The land is wanted for grazing and cultivation. The settler comes with axe and fire-stick, and in a few hours unsightly ashes and black funereal stumps have replaced the noble woods which Nature took centuries to grow. No attempt is made to use a great part of the timber. The process is inevitable, and in great part needful, frightfully wasteful as it seems. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... you remember that one we caught 'bout a month ago? Oh no, of course not. You was ashore with the skipper's gig at Seery Leony. That there was a whopper, sir, and he did lay about with his tail, till the cook had it off with a lucky chop of his meat axe. That quieted the beggar a bit, and give him a chance to open Mr Jack Shark up and see what he'd ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... mother's inscrutable melancholy—a part of that mysterious malady that consumed her life—whispered their warnings in my husband's ears, and he resolved, with that energy which belongs to men of his nature, to lay the axe at once to the root of this evil in the only way that presented itself to his mind—as possible ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... in pursuit of finny prey, swim about the cove, their eyes looking into the depths, their long pick-axe beaks held ready for a plunge. Then, as a fish is sighted underneath, down go head and neck in a quick dart, soon to be drawn up with the victim writhing between the tips of the mandibles. But the prey is not secured yet. On each pelican attends a number of ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... year, when I again met young Borrowe gayly disporting himself at a lawn-tennis tournament at Mattapoisett, I did not know whether his brother's method of removing dynamite with an axe had been entirely successful. He said it ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... water-tanks. By the side of the door, and under shelter of the verandah, a saddle is standing on end, while a bridle hangs from a peg in the wall overhead. A heap of two-foot logs is near the water-tanks, with a short-handled axe stuck in an upturned stump which does duty for ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... of whilom revolutions. March onward! We will follow in your footsteps. The nations take it in turn to lead humanity. It is for you, whose youthful vitality has been hoarded during centuries of enforced inactivity, to pick up the axe where we have let it fall. In the virgin forest of social injustice and social untruth, the forest in which mankind has lost its way, make for us ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... usually exhibited in the rude habitations of the first settlers. It was a story and a half high, and the walls were built of solid pine timber, originally roughly hewed, but recently dressed down with broad axe over the whole outward and inner surfaces so smoothly that, at a little distance, they presented, with their still visible seams, more the appearance of the wainscoting of some costly cottage than the humble log cabin. The building had also been newly shingled, new doors ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... that marked the grave of the poor Spanish lady and Black Bartlemy. "Truly we will seek out another habitation and that at once. Howbeit, I have gotten me my hammer." And I showed her the hatchet, the which, unlike the ordinary boarding-axe, was furnished with a ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... against the Colonna. After a shower of stones and darts, which fell but as hailstones against the thick mail of the horsemen, they closed in, and, by their number, obstructed the movements of the steeds, while the spear, sword, and battle-axe of their opponents made ruthless havoc amongst their undisciplined ranks. And Martino, who cared little how many of his mere mob were butchered, seeing that his foes were for the moment embarrassed by the wild rush and gathering circle of his foot train (for the place of conflict, though ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... suggested Grant, "there was something said about the coat and the tools that the prospector had with him. If I'm correct it seems to me that the men wanted to see the coat and the axe and ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Scarcely a door remained on its hinges, and the furniture of the rooms disappeared. The church was violated, its pictures soiled, and its statues smashed; Christ's wounds should be wounds indeed, hard voices cried, as axe and hammer rung over their pitiless work. The library was emptied of its books. Walls and roofs and floors were all that the monks found when they ventured back. Ellenbog, however, fared better than many. A friendly brother had seized up some of his books and papers and hidden ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... such. His mountains are gashed and cleft and carved not only because their intricacy of craggy surface or the Titanic turmoil of mountain-shattering delights him, but also because he loves to suggest the deliberate axe or chisel of the warrior or the artist Man. He turns the quiet vicissitudes of nature into dexterous achievements of art. If he does not paint or dye the meads, he turns the sunset clouds into a feudal ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... of Salisbury, of whom you read aloud to me when I was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword. There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building materials ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... had spoken thus about her meal, Satyavan, taking his axe upon his shoulders, set out for the woods. And at this, Savitri said unto her husband, "It behoveth thee not to go alone! I will accompany thee. I cannot bear to be separated from thee!" Hearing these ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Saladin, whose cimeter could cut a cushion in two in an instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, and he didn't care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black pony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, cracked at once the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then Tom felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoanut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the poker. Philip in his happier ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... authority to stop mischief. The Senate of ancient Rome, so jealous of its prerogatives, assigned to a Dictator, in times of trouble, the power of life and death, and that magistrate knew no other code than his own will and the axe of his lictors. The ordinary laws did not resume their course until the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... their backs, With halberd, bill, and battle-axe: They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong, And led his sumpter mules along, And ambling palfrey, when at need Him listed ease his battle-steed. The last, and trustiest of the four, On high his forky pennon bore; Like swallow's tail, in shape and hue, Flutter'd the streamer glossy ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... is not likely to be trusted by us. I know your character, that is sufficient. Now, although the government make no difference between one party or the other, with the exception that some may be honoured with the axe instead of the gibbet, you will observe what we do: and as our lives are already forfeited by attainder, we make no scruple of putting out of the way any one whom we may even suspect of betraying us. Nay, more; ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Then with a battle-axe herself will scar Her own wild arms, and sprinkle on the ground Blood, for Bellona's emblems of wild war, Swift-flowing ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... When Tur sprung forward, and with sharp reproach, And haughty gesture, thus addressed Kabad: "Ask this new king, this Minuchihr, since Heaven To Irij gave a daughter, who on him Bestowed the mail, the battle-axe, and sword?" To this insulting speech, Kabad replied: "The message shall be given, and I will bring The answer, too. Ye know what ye have done; Have ye not murdered him who, trusting, sought Protection from ye? All mankind for this Must curse your memory till the day ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... country lend A passing thought. All labor is at rest. The plough lies set, point in the mottled breast Of half-tilled field; the flail is laid above The barn's brown wall; the shining sickles move Not from their keep; the woodman's axe is still; The golden sheaf doth not the feeder fill; The huntsman's horn is hung behind the door; The delver's spade stands idle on the floor; The horse and oxen run the open field, Set free to graze; the holloaing drivers wield No ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... it was, with his red spear and scalping-knife, his bow and his battle-axe, his brand and ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... recuperate, less able to resist next year's inroad. Mr. Meyer describes the ceaseless progress of the destruction even now, when there is so little left to destroy. Every morning men and boys go out armed with mattox or axe, scale the steepest mountain sides, and cut down and grub out, root and branch, the small trees and shrubs still to be found. The big trees disappeared centuries ago, so that now one of these is never seen ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... (July 20) George took an axe and cut us a portage route from our camp through a swamp a mile and a half to the foot of a hill. This route we covered three times. It was impossible for one man alone to carry the canoe through the swamp, and in addition to it and the firearms we had at ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... old white-faced Swede. He had wandered this way, Heaven knows how, and taken up his acres—I forget how many years ago—all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, useless years of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick. Without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good from that; without doubt he had ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comrade, was the young Prince Gregor. Long marches through the wilderness had stretched his limbs and broadened his back, and made a man of him in stature as well as in spirit. His jacket and cap were of wolfskin, and on his shoulder he carried an axe, with broad, shining blade. He was a mighty woodsman now, and could make a spray of chips fly around him as he hewed his way through the ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... air! A clash of arms! A running of swift feet and Walkyn sprang betwixt them, his face grimed with dust and sweat, his armour gone, his great axe all bloody in his hand: "Master!" he cried, "in Winisfarne lieth Pertolepe with over a thousand of his company, I judge—and in the woods 'twixt here and Winisfarne is Hollo of Revelsthorne marching on us through ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... younger, I stood by you on Flodden Field when Sir Edward, Christopher Harflete's father, was killed at our side, and those red-bearded Scotch bare-breeks pressed us hard, yet I never itched to turn my back, even after that great fellow with an axe got you down, and we thought that all was lost. Then shall I do so now?—though it is true that I fear yon goblin more than all the Highlanders beyond the Tweed. Ride on; man can die but once, and for ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... a person who would speak to you, Master Vickars," the servant said. "I told him it was not your custom to see any here, and that if he had aught to say he should call at your house in St. Mary Axe; but he said that he had but just arrived from Hedingham, and that your honour would excuse his ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... coming I started for this valley, which I visited once, years ago, and, although the snow caught me before I could reach it, I managed, owing to my former knowledge, to get down the slope without losing any of my horses. Then in the valley I saw saplings cut freshly by the axe, cut so recently in truth that I knew the wielders of the steel must still be here, and in all likelihood were white men. Strong in that faith I called aloud and you answered, but I did not dream that one ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... forbidden to eat at home, or on expensive couches and tables.... Another ordinance levelled against magnificence and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe, and the doors with nothing but the saw. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple coverlets, or golden cups." Thus he smothered art ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Servius, they determined to wrench the crown from him after destroying the king. They therefore sent two shepherds into his presence, who pretended to wish advice about a matter in dispute. While one engaged Tarquin's attention, the other struck him a fatal blow with his axe. The queen was, however, quick-witted enough to keep them from enjoying the fruit of their perfidy, for she assured the people from a window that the king was not killed but only stunned, and that for the present he desired them to obey the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... as she stood there, with the rich blood mantling her face. Jasper was sure that he had never seen any one so lovely as he appeared suddenly in sight around a bend in the trail. He was walking fast with an axe over his shoulder, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw Lois before him. At first he was half tempted to turn back, lest his presence might not be desired. He did not wish to have the appearance of spying upon those before ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... dream, foretells that what enjoyment you may have will depend on your struggles and energy. To see others using an axe, foretells, your friends will be energetic and lively, making existence a pleasure ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... free American—" And suddenly Jimmie, who was next in the wagon, felt himself flung to one side, and a policeman leaped by him, and planted his fist with terrific violence full in the orator's mouth. "Wild Bill" went down like a bullock under the slaughter-man's axe, and the patrol-wagon started up, the cry of its siren drowning the protests ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... very night after he returned to his palace, he saw the old man the third time in a dream, who said to him, "The time of your prosperity is come, brave Zeyn: to-morrow morning, as soon as you are up, take a little pick-axe, and dig in the late sultan's closet; you will there ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices of artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants, whilst it has diminished their means of mere existence. It has driven before it the animals of the chase, who fly from the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settlement and seek refuge in the depths of remoter forests and yet untrodden wilds. Thus do we too often find the Indians on our frontiers to be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... while the former might be tidy at nine, and yet by 10 o'clock lumps of cotton waste might be blowing all over the place, tins and bonnet covers once more in untidy heaps. I often "did the boiler," but I simply hated chopping the sticks. One day the axe was firmly fixed in a piece of hard wood and I was vainly hitting it against the block, with eyes tight shut, when I heard a chuckle from the top of the steps. I looked up and there was a Tommy looking down into the hole, watching the proceedings. Where ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Kuilemberg had followed their example. Mansfeld had seceded, the brothers Van Battenburg awaited in prison an ignomonious fate, while Thoulouse alone had found an honorable death on the field of battle. Those of the confederates who had escaped the sword of the enemy and the axe of the executioner had saved nothing but their lives, and thus the title which they had assumed for show became at last a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on the point of a pike and triumphantly ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall |
