"Axle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it as it dries up, as a fisher watches a grain of sand in his hand? That mighty law of attraction that suspends the world in space, torments it—and consumes it in endless desire—every planet that carries its load of misery and groans on its axle—calls to each other across the abyss, and each wonders which will stop first. God controls them; they accomplish assiduously and eternally their appointed and useless task; they whirl about, they suffer, they burn, they become extinct and they light up with new ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... project, nothing less than to repair the injury there and then, under that terrible fire. Assisted by one of his men he ran back to the caisson and secured the spare wheel that was attached to the rear axle, and then commenced the most dangerous operation that can be executed on a battlefield. Fortunately the extra men and horses that he had sent for came up just then, and he had two cannoneers to lend ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... years of age, had been familiar with every street in Paris, was not to be baffled: he was a man of resources. He seized the springs of the coach, raised himself up by the strength of his wrists, and hung on behind, with his legs resting on the axle-tree of the back wheels. He was not quite comfortable, but then, he no longer ran the risk of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... wheelbarrows, but baskets are the universal substitutes. The plough is made entirely of wood, only pointed with iron, and is borne to and from the field on the shoulder. The carts are picturesque, but clumsy; they are made of wicker-work, and the iron-shod wheels are solidly attached to the axle, so that all revolves together, amid fearful creaking. The people could not be induced to use a cart with movable wheels which was imported from America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the stone or ore taken out of the veins, it is grinded in mills between grindstones, or pounded in the ingenious reales, or royal engines, by means of hammers or beetles, like the mills for Paris plaster. These generally have a wheel of twenty-five or thirty feet diameter, with a long axle or lying shaft, set round with smooth triangular projections, which, as the axle turns, lay hold of the iron hammers, of about two hundred-weight each, lifting them to a certain height, whence they drop down with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... his arms around the axle and tried to get one leg over; but as soon as he took his foot off the ground, the wheels began to go. He put his foot down again and made the wheels go faster, hanging on to the axle with his arms and paddling on the ground with ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... example, when Hesiod says that a waggon is made up of a hundred planks. Now, neither you nor I could describe all of them individually; but if any one asked what is a waggon, we should be content to answer, that a waggon consists of wheels, axle, body, ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... iron spikes, on which either the driver rides or some heavy weight is imposed in order, as it is drawn around, to separate the grain from the chaff: others use for this purpose what is called the punic cart, consisting of a series of axle trees, equipped with toothed rollers, on which some one sits and drives the cattle which draw it, as they do in hither Spain and other places. Others cause the grain to be trodden out under the hoofs of ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... up the axle of the automobile and put on a new tire—inner tube and shoe combined—Sam set to work and cleaned up the roadway, throwing all the glass into the bushes. Then the new tire was pumped ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... moment Frank Edwards emerged into the road, he was nearly jammed against the railings in front of the thatched cottage, by the rapid approach of a post-chaise. While he looked in at the window, the wheel dipped into a rut, the axle instantaneously broke, and the body of the carriage bumped upon the ground. In an instant he had secured the horses, and the Chobb family, rushing out, advanced to the door of the vehicle. With some difficulty the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... him. The distance from Bozeman to Helena was about ninety-five miles, and from what he had heard the roads were in a terrible condition. Heavy rains had fallen recently, and the mud in some places along his journey was said to be nearly axle deep. Undaunted by the gloomy prospect before him, however, Manning rested quietly, and, when the time for starting arrived, he was fully refreshed and eager for the long ride ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... matter to be studied, proper method of studying will further relieve both teacher and pupil from overwork by eliminating much friction in the process of study. The want of axle grease on a wagon does not increase the actual weight of a ton of coal, but it makes the pulling a lot harder; likewise, awkward methods of study do not increase the curriculum in fact, but they do in effect, by making progress slower and ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... are hung on bands of the strongest leather. There is very little choice or difference between them; and they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and curtained with painted canvas. They are covered with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have never been cleaned since they were ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the system of rollers and box, g, the construction of the axle, with its extension, e, and shoulder, d, as and for the purpose ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... slept in their chairs under the big bright lamps; and while they rested the Air-Motor worked silently, hour after hour, and the heavy wheel whirled steadily on its axle, and only its soft and drowsy humming was ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... town a monstrous wheel is turning, With glowing spokes of red, Low in the west its fiery axle burning; And, lost amid the spaces overhead, A vague white moth, the moon, ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... two-wheeled cart used in husbandry, and so constructed as to be turned up at the axle ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... de talk dat goes 'round," said Uncle Eben, "ain' no mo' real help in movin' forward dan de squeak in an axle." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... in the sky, The earth rolls on below, And we can feel the rattling wheel Revolving as we go. Then tread away, my gallant boys, And make the axle fly; Why should not wheels go round about, Like planets ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... instantly ran towards the chaise, in order to offer what help was in my power. 'Help me,' said the poor fellow, as I drew nigh; but before I could reach the horses, they had turned rapidly round, one of the fore-wheels flew from its axle-tree, the chaise was overset, and the postilion flung violently from his seat upon the field. The horses now became more furious than before, kicking desperately, and endeavouring to disengage themselves from the fallen chaise. As I was hesitating whether to run to the assistance of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... The wheels sank axle deep in it. The horses floundered through it in the darkness, and every now and then the lamps were reflected in a big pool of shallow water. The wind blew keen and cold, but the coach was full ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... any time to account for the workings of Fate or to follow the course of its agents. The track of an earth-worm destroys a dam; the parting of a wire wrecks a bridge; the breaking of a root starts an avalanche; the flaw in an axle dooms a train; the sting of a microbe depopulates a city. But none of these unseen, mysterious agencies was at work—nothing ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... do hold a body up! I meant what I said— that I didn't want the job of livin' with your pa if anything happened to you. You know as well as I do that he thinks you're the very axle for the earth to whirl 'round on. But, there, I don't know as I wonder—jest ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... the first necessary step to this, was the getting his pardon, to gain a little time, to manage things anew to the best advantage: that at present all things were at a stand without life or motion, wanting the sight of himself, who was the very life and soul of motion, the axle-tree that could turn the wheel of ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... to make a travelling carriage for a 4.7-in. gun. It consisted of a double trail of 14-inch timber fitted with plates and bearings to carry the cradle of the ordinary ship mounting. A pair of steel wheels and a heavy axle were required, and all the work was done in the dockyard under Captain Scott's supervision. This mounting was satisfactorily tried and embarked on the Terrible for Durban ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... lifted their hats with the most irresistible gravity conceivable. "Fancy such a thing happening in the United States!" said Lynde. "If we were to meet such a crowd at home, half a dozen urchins would immediately fasten themselves to the hind axle, and some of the more playful spirits would probably favor us with a stone or two, or a snowball, according to ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in a compact howl. Tuscarora Hose Company Number Six swept on a perilous wheel into Niagara Avenue, and as the men, attached to the cart by the rope which had been paid out from the windlass under the tongue, pulled madly in their fervor and abandon, the gong under the axle clanged incitingly. And sometimes the same cry ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... the wheels of timber carriages, heavily laden with trunks of trees which were dragged through by straining teams in the rainy days of spring, have left vast ruts, showing that they must have sunk to the axle in the soft clay. These then filled with water, and on the water duck-weed grew, and aquatic grasses at the sides. Summer heats have evaporated the water, leaving the weeds and grasses prone upon ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... gleaming there, living things seeming there, Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night; Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe, Throats blank of sound, but ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... at length to patch up the wagon by tying the "rocker" of the wagon body to the forward axle with the rope halter, and reloading our meal bags, drove slowly home without further incident. Addison, having captured the reins, retained possession of them, much to my mental relief. Halstead laid the blame ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... meaning and determination of the business the 18-pounders were packed axle to axle amongst the mud and shell holes, ready to bark forth their loud defiance to the Hun. The 4.5 howitzers were visible in batches at various places. Further back, but still closely packed were the 6-inch howitzers, the ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... stopped several places on business as I came through. I drove from Burlington this morning, but I got off the road. The car broke down on me, and I couldn't fix it,—broke an axle. So I had to walk in. That is what I was seeing about to-day,—sending a man out for the car and arranging about the repairs." He smiled again. "What in the world did you think I would walk from Des Moines for?" he asked Prudence, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... out of the darkness. A little red light gleamed out at them. They could see that it hung from the axle of a clumsy country cart, but they could not see whether the cart was laden or not and whether there were human beings on it. Two other carts followed the first. They could just see the outlines of a man in peasant garb ...
— The Dead Are Silent - 1907 • Arthur Schnitzler
... weather carts sink up to the axle in black liquid mud, which flies in all directions from the wheels, and at each footfall of horse or mule, splattering pedestrians and shop-fronts on the sidewalks and smothering other vehicles ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... step, carriages, bullocks, and all must have been precipitated. No one knew what could be done until some one proposed to bring up an elephant, and let him manage it his own way. The elephant took a moment's survey of the fix, put his trunk under the axle of the free wheel, and waited. The surrounders, who saw what he meant, moved the bullocks gently forward, the elephant followed, supporting the axle, until there was ground under the wheel, when he let it quietly down. From all I had heard of the elephant, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the noise of a primitive conveyance behind him. It was a telega. Curiously primitive, the telega is four-wheeled, with two planks thrown crudely across the axle-trees. Rouletabille gave the man who was seated in it thee roubles, and jumped into the planks beside him, and the two little Finnish horses, whose manes hung clear to the mud, went like the wind. Such crude conveyances are necessary on such crude roads, but it requires a strong ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... which fringes the Beer Vlei. It may also be conjectured that De Wet and his following, as they were stripping the adjacent little township of Strydenburg, learned with satisfaction that the British columns, which lay round him like the spokes of a wheel to the axle, were as immobile as usual—Plumer from the force of circumstances, the others for the reasons set down in the preceding chapter. But the cunning guerilla had no intention of dallying at Strydenburg. It was not part of his strategy to spend two consecutive ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... yelling and straining began, and men grunted as they heaved against an axle. After a long seance of such effort there came a sharp exclamation, like an oath, and the confusion fell to a murmur of dismay. Someone jerked open the door, and Dupin's grizzled ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... simpler, or more absolutely practical, than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round very fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the cause of such phenomena, and thence educe a general remedy for them. Such ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... on the Continent in pulling small vehicles adapted to various purposes. In fact, most of the carts and wagons that enter Paris, or are employed in the city, have one of these animals attached to them by a short strap hanging from the axle-tree. This arrangement answers the double purpose of keeping off all intruders in the temporary absence of the master, and, by pushing himself forward in his collar, materially assists the horse in propelling a heavy ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the burning Libyan tract; The hot dry air will let thine axle down: Toward the seven Pleiades keep ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... which are connected by a flexible axle to the seat of the carriage, but these have no other purpose than that of preventing the affair from turning to one side ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... lxxxvii. Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 49. Paulin. Nolan. apud Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 397, No. 5.) Yet pomp is well exchange for convenience; and a plain modern coach, that is hung upon springs, is much preferable to the silver or gold carts of antiquity, which rolled on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... halt she ate nothing, sitting in a muse against the wagon wheel. Presently she put her plate down and, mounting on the axle, scanned the way they had come. She could see the rock, rising like the clumsy form of a dismantled galleon from the waters of a darkling sea. For a space she stood, her hand arched above her eyes, then snatched the kerchief from her neck and, straining an arm aloft, waved it. The ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... an axle here, with leagues to walk to the nearest farm, there was no hope of Granada to-morrow. And now the road was equally well fitted for breaking axles, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by sending large quantities of provisions and delicacies of all kinds, with game in huge quantities, and whole tuns of the best liquors, foreign and domestic. Thus the high-roads were filled with droves of bullocks, sheep, calves and hogs, and choked with loaded wains, whose axle-trees creaked under their burdens of wine-casks and hogsheads of ale, and huge hampers of grocery goods, and slaughtered game, and salted provisions, and sacks of flour. Perpetual stoppages took place as these wains became entangled; and their rude drivers, swearing and brawling ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... wheel of the wagon collided with a tree. The wheel was shattered, and the end of the axle broken off short. At the same instant the horse sprang sharply to the left evidently in an effort to get back into the log road, facing almost in the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... seat on the hill, came rolling and leaping behind them with frightfully growing momentum, and tumbled in after them—plump! Verily, the wheel of fortune had never before made so many turns in so short a time! Its axle fairly smoked as it rolled into ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... and hit on an idea. Going into the large yard, he cut two oaken wedges, took a new wheel, and drove a wedge firmly into one end of its axle-box. Then he went ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... praise nor blame, but say that so it is: some people praise this homeliness overmuch, as if the land were the very axle-tree of the world; so do not I, nor any unblinded by pride in themselves and all that belongs to them: others there are who scorn it and the tameness of it: not I any the more: though it would indeed be hard if there were nothing else in the world, no wonders, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... the progress of the work. Daggett had taken to pieces and brought with him the running part of a common country wagon, which was soon found of vast service in transporting the skins and blubber across the rocks. The wheels were separated, leaving them in pairs, and each axle was loaded with a freight that a dozen men would hardly have carried, when two or three hands would drag in the load, with an occasional lift from other gangs, to get them up a height, or over a cleft. This portion of the operation was found to work admirably, owing, in ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... found Washburn in front of the stable oiling a buggy. He had placed a notched plank under an axle and was rapidly twirling ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four hours or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... night from Cecil Street to Cavendish Square he did think much of himself. Indeed such self-thoughts come naturally to all men, be their outward conduct ever so reckless. Every man to himself is the centre of the whole world;—the axle on which it all turns. All knowledge is but his own perception of the things around him. All love, and care for others, and solicitude for the world's welfare, are but his own feelings as to the world's wants ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis^, trave^, corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; cantilever, modillion^; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, mainstay. trunnion, pivot, rowlock^; peg &c (pendency) 214 [Obs.]; tiebeam &c (fastening) 45; thole pin^. board, ledge, shelf, hob, bracket, trevet^, trivet, arbor, rack; mantel, mantle piece [Fr.], mantleshelf^; slab, console; counter, dresser; flange, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the old cart and attempted to unscrew the axle tap. But some one reached over the head of the crowd and gripped him where his shoulder and arm met, and pulled him forward and twirled him around like ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... mustn't be touched for fear of the axle grease. See? I've got a list of 'em—public lands, through freights, water power, smelter, lumber deals," the telegraph man opened his table drawer and held out a scrawled list. "If you call that delivering the goods, I call ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... trappings and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging behind, and two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... master, and wanderd about like a knight-errand-boy who had forgotten his message. Sleap deserted my lowly pillar, and, like a wachful shepherd, I lay all night awake amongst my flocks. I had got hold of a single idear—it was the axle of my mind, and, like a wheelbarrow, my head was always turning upon it. At last I resolved to rite, and I cast my i's about for a subject—they fell on the Palass! Ear, as my friend Litton Bulwer ses, ear was a field for genus to sore into;—ear was an area for fillophosy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... short, when last I saw them as they turned the curve of the road ahead, the big car's front axle was connected by a chain to the rear of the runabout as it chugged away in low gear dragging the big ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... rice flew about, and as the buggy drove off, an old dilapidated iron-shod miner's boot was found dangling on the rear axle of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... in July January November 1 2 The earth is shaped most like a baseball football pear 2 3 A sweet-smelling flower is the daisy poppy rose 3 4 The month before July is May June August 4 5 The axle is a part of an ax ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... moved sinuous as a bow, Till all his weight hung poised on flank and loin. And e'en as, when a chariot-builder bends With practised skill his shafts of splintered fig, Hot from the fire, to be his axle-wheels; Flies the tough-rinded sapling from the hands That shape it, at a bound recoiling far: So from far-off the dread beast, all of a heap, Sprang on me, hungering for my life-blood. I Thrust with one hand my arrows in his face ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... and heavy, smashed the German trenches on the hill opposite. The headquarters men and I looked over the valley and saw the line of bursting shells. Much to their amusement, I told them that this was my music, that I had ordered the shoot. I felt like the fly on the axle of a cart, who said to his companion fly, "Look at the dust we ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... from the ends of the earth, animal shows, theatres, and bazaars. Cairo Street boasted 2,250,000 visitors, and the Hagenbeck Circus over 2,000,000. The chief feature was the Ferris Wheel, described in engineering terms as a cantilever bridge wrought around two enormous bicycle wheels. The axle, supported upon steel pyramids, alone weighed more than a locomotive. In cars strung upon its periphery passengers were swung from the ground far ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... which I had in a ride with Mr. Gurney. Whilst the wheels obey the slightest motions of the hand, a trifling pressure of the foot keeps them inflexibly steady, however rough the ground. To the hind axle, which is very strong, and bent into two cranks of nine inches radius, at right angles to each other, is applied the propelling power by means of pistons from two horizontal cylinders. By this contrivance, and a peculiar mode of admitting the steam to the cylinders, Mr. Gurney ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... is entirely different from anything we see in the West. The Chinese call it a K'ung chung, while the top is called t'o lo. It is constructed of two pieces of bamboo, each of which is made like a top, and then joined by a carefully turned axle, each end being of equal weight, and looking not unlike the wheels of a cart. It is then spun by a string, which is wound once around the axle and attached to two sticks. A good performer is able to spin it in a great variety of ways, tossing it under and over his foot, spinning it with ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... incredulity; but my own experience, subsequent by many years to hers, has corroborated her marvelous histories of flights of birds that almost darkened the sun (i.e. threw a passing shadow as of a cloud upon the ground), and roads with ruts and mud-holes into which one's carriage sank up to the axle-tree. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... did not know: nor the labourers gathering in cider apples heaped under Devon apple-trees, nor, next day, the sportsmen banging off guns at the partridges around Salisbury. The slow, jolly life of England on either side of the high road turned leisurely as a wagon-wheel on its axle, while between hedgerows, past farm hamlets, church-towers and through the cobbled streets of market towns, he had sped and rattled with Collingwood's dispatch in his sealed case. The news had reached London with him. His last post-boys had carried ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was a stockbroker's office that was thoroughly metropolitan in the facilities it afforded the elite for relieving themselves of the tribulation of riches; and adjoining it was Simpson Brothers & Company, wherein hick'ry-shirted gentlemen bartered for threshing machines, hayrakes, axle grease, and such like baubles ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... this device, supplemented by wooden wedges, no longer sufficed, and the tires had to be set for summer work. Frequently the tire rolled off on the sandy highway, and the farmer was reluctantly compelled to borrow a rail from the nearest fence, and place it so as to support the axle; he then put the denuded wheel and its tire on the wagon, and drove slowly to the nearest blacksmith's shop, his vehicle "trailing like a wounded duck," the rail leaving a snake's track behind it on ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... that about two years before, as he was passing along the street with his cart and horse, the axle-tree of his cart touched Rose Cullender's house, and broke down some part of it, at which she was very much displeased, threatening him that his horses should suffer ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... The overseer of the works received us, and escorted us courteously throughout the establishment; which is very extensive, giving employment to a thousand men, what with night-work and day-work. The big gun is still on the axle, or turning-machine, by means of which it has been bored. It is made entirely of wrought and welded iron, fifty tons of which were originally used; and the gun, in its present state, bored out and smoothed away, weighs nearly twenty-three tons. It has, as yet, no trunnions, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with some loss, both to themselves and to their pursuers. On the 10th those of the burghers who held together had reached Luneburg, and shortly afterwards they had got completely away from the British columns. The weather was atrocious, and the lumbering wagons, axle-deep in mud, made it impossible for troops who were attached to them to keep in touch with the light riders who sped before them. For some weeks there was no word of the main Boer force, but at the end of that time they reappeared in a manner which showed ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "These fellows can give points to our metallurgists. But for our purposes, of course, what they've caught on to here has no practical value. Gold has got to come down a good deal, or phosphor-bronze has got to go up a good deal, before it will pay us to turn gold dollars into axle-bearings and cogs and pinions. But it's mighty interesting, all the same. Fusing with silicium would give a gold-silicide that might fill the bill for hardness; but I can't even make a guess as to how they do ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... axle breaks, or a waggon side-slips off the pave into the morass reserved for infantry, and overturns. The result is a block, which promptly extends forward and back for a couple of miles. A peculiarly British chorus of inquiry ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... of an aged negro; and the simultaneous slight creaking of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or pulling a child's wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the kitchen door to the stable. Whiles, he proffered soothing music: over and over he repeated the chant, though with variations; encountering ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... drawn by six horses, down, down, down, as fast as we could go. I expected to be dashed to pieces, but we safely descended in one hour, heights we had taken three to climb. Fox held a steady rein, and seemed as calm as if we were trotting on a level, though any accident, such as a hot axle, a stumbling horse, or a break in the harness would have sent us down the mountain side, two thousand feet, to inevitable destruction. He had many amusing anecdotes to tell of Horace Greeley's trip to the Geysers. The distinguished journalist was wholly unprepared for the race ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... excitement to be diminished by trials. Her husband humoured her, but secretly he took care that every preventible chance of a breakdown should be removed. When she was absent, he tested every pinion and every cog, eased a wheel here and an axle there, and in truth what he had to do in this way with file and sandpaper was almost equal to the labour spent upon saw and chisel. Infinite adjustment was necessary to make the idea a noiseless, smooth practical success, and infinite precautions had to be taken and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... crowd incessantly paced hither and thither, vehicles barred the road; and Florent, in order to pass them, had to press against some dingy sacks, like coal-sacks in appearance, and so numerous and heavy that the axle-trees of the vans bent beneath them. They were quite damp, and exhaled a fresh odour of seaweed. From a rent low down in the side of one of them a black stream of big mussels ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... second floor, while attached to its pivot on the ground floor is the actual grinding stone. The wheat to be ground flows into a central aperture in this stone from a suspended vessel, a simple system of strings and ropes acting as an efficient brake on the axle of the upper wheel to control its speed, and others allowing the grain to fall uniformly and, when necessary, preventing ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... camel is generally harnessed is a rude cart of wood, ingeniously put together, without a particle of iron, and, after the fashion of such structures, shrieking, creaking, and groaning as the wheels turn on their roughly-made and ungreased axle. The drivers, however, care nothing for the hideous and incessant noise, and probably are so accustomed to it, that they would not feel at home with a cart whose wheels moved silently. The mode of harnessing is precisely that which so simple a vehicle requires. From the front ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the bush from Cheemaun—Champlain's Road, they called it even then. And such a road as it was, little Lizzie never saw—all stumps and roots, and great mud-holes where the wagon wheels sunk to the axle. There were two wagons tied together and drawn by a team of oxen, and the barrel of precious dishes was in the first one. And just as they were coming bumping and rattling down Arrow Hill, the hind wagon came untied and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... That was butted into at the garage this morning and its radiator cracked. So I had to fall back on this. It's quite a good little car. In its way. My wife drives it at times. It has one or two constitutional weaknesses—incidental to the make—gear-box over the back axle for example—gets all the vibration. Whole machine rather on the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... were repeated again and again, without anything to reveal the presence of a human being amid the solitude. At last the sculptor alighted and saw that the left wheel of the carriage, which was grazing the edge of the precipice, had lost its linch-pin and was on the point of leaving the axle-tree, which would almost inevitably have hurled ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... bridge by dark. One car after another got in trouble; first it was a puncture, then it was a tricky carburetor that refused to be put to rights; towing-ropes were called into requisition, but the best had been left behind, and those we had were rotted, and broke on every hill. Lastly a broken axle put one of the tenders definitely out of commission, and, of course, I had to wait behind with it. To add to everything, a veritable hurricane set in, with thunder and lightning and torrents of rain. The wind blew so hard that I ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... Otto von Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone—a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart electricity to other bodies, and that bodies so electrified may repel as well ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... much used in the bush for moving heavy logs and trunks of trees. It consists of two pairs of wheels, with their axle-trees joined by a long beam, under which the trunks are suspended by chains. Its structure is varied in town for moving wooden houses. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... one of those trucks which are used in wooded tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick planks and the trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed of a massive iron axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted a heavy shaft, and which was supported by two huge wheels. The whole thing was compact, overwhelming, and misshapen. It seemed like the gun-carriage of an enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axle, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... which thus in godlike accents spoke:— "The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?" "Yes," the man replied. "Well," said the voice, "I'll aid thee ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... it. The two-ton Hawkesbury, with seven-and-a-half tons of load, was down to the axle-beds; and the Cornstalk was endeavouring, by means of extracts from the sermons of Knox's soundest followers, to do something like justice to the contingency. Thompson sighed, glanced toward the ram-paddock, and hooked his team ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... single strand of rope on which they were to haul was passed back across the stream and attached to the rear axle of "Old Nanc." ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... his place, he is permanent and fixed in his place; and although we see him beginning to ascend in the orient or east, at the highest in the meridian or south, setting in occident or west, yet is he in the lowest in septentrio or north, and yet he moveth not, it is the axle of the heavens that moveth, the whole firmament being a chaos or confused thing, and for that proof I will show this example: like as thou seest a bubble made of water and soap blown out of a quill, it is in form of a confused mass or chaos, and being ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... had been laid on a gauge three inches narrower than the cars were designed for. What was to be done? The Mexicans at first proposed to rebuild the cars,—make the bodies narrower, and cut off the axle-trees to fit the gauge of the rails. In their hopeless ignorance this was the only way they could see out of the difficulty. The present superintendent, a practical American engineer, was at the time in Zacatecas, and took in the position of affairs at a glance, offering ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... of the cowboys saw that the boys were making something, and when they told him the trouble with the rusty wheels he gave them some axle grease that he used on the big wagons. After that the wheels ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... the Waters. "Over you go, old man. You can take the full head of us now. Those new steel axle-straps of yours can stand anything. Come along, Raven's Gill, Harpenden, Callton Rise, Batten's Ponds, Witches' Spring, all together! Let's show these gentlemen how ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through."— "There!" said ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... autumn day I was with my older brothers in the corn lot, where they had gone with the lumber wagon to gather pumpkins. When they had got their load and were ready to start I planted myself on the load above the hind axle and let my legs hang down between the spokes of the big wheel. Luckily one of my brothers saw my perilous position just as the team was about to move and rescued me in time. Doubtless my legs would have been broken ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... equipage a fair equestrian who shrieked with fright and clung to her pommel as her excited "mount" lashed out with his heels and made splinters of the hack's rearmost spokes and felloes. Down went the hack on its axle point. Out sprang a tall officer from the open carriage, and in a second, it seemed, transferred the panic-stricken horsewoman from the seismatic saddle to the safety of his own seat and the ministrations ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... church in carriages drawn by teams of oxen. Hardly passable after rain, the roads, says Hasted, were "so miry that the traveller's horse frequently plunged through them up to the girths of the saddle; and the waggons sank so deep in the ruts as to slide along on the nave of the wheels and axle of them. In some few of the principal roads, as from Tenterden hither, there was a stone causeway, about three feet wide, for the accommodation of horse and foot passengers; but there was none further on till ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... shady gloom Had given day her room, The sun himself withheld his wonted speed, And hid his head for shame, As his inferior flame The new-enlightened world no more should need; He saw a greater sun appear Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree could bear. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... yokes his wild horses with gold and fastens the foaming bits, and letting all the reins run slack in his hand, flies lightly in his sea-coloured chariot over the ocean surface. The waves sink to rest, and the swoln water-ways smooth out under the thundering axle; the storm-clouds scatter from the vast sky. Diverse shapes attend him, monstrous whales, and Glaucus' aged choir, and Palaemon, son of Ino, the swift Tritons, and Phorcus with all his army. Thetis and Melite keep the left, and maiden Panopea, Nesaea and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... in the human machine. In the motor cycle all the levers are of that complex kind which are called wheels, and the joints at which these levers work are also circular, for the joints of a motor cycle are the surfaces between the axle and the bushes, which have to be kept constantly oiled. No, we freely admit that the systems of levers in the human machine are quite unlike those of a motor cycle. They are more simple, and it is easy to find in our bodies examples of all the three ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... yourself—money—they seek to outwit you by crowding a month of merriment into half a dozen hours. Yet their victory is brief and fallacious, for if hours spin too fast by night they will move grindingly on the axle the next morning. None of us can beat you in the end. Even the hat-check boy grows old, becomes gray and dies ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... axle," whooped Mr. Bangs in reply. "Nut's kind of loose, for one thing, and the way the wheel wobbles I'm scart she'll come off. Call this a road!" he snorted indignantly. "More like a plowed field a ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... town, what a strange collection of baggage animals, horses, camels, and donkeys! What a mass of carts, drays, buggies, wheelbarrows, handbarrows, and many queer makeshifts for carrying goods—the strangest of all a large barrel set on an axle, and dragged or shoved by means of two long handles, the proud possessor's belongings turning round and round inside until they must surely be churned into a most confusing jumble. Then we see the "Swagman" with his load on his back, perhaps ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... from his pony, and rushed toward the one hind-wheel which was still upheld by what was left of its broken axle, and by a part of ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... was driving down a steep path which led to a village, when he upset his vehicle and broke the axle. A passing peasant helped him to bind it up, and directed him to the smithy; but he declared that he was the Plague, and for the good deed that had been done him all the village should be spared. So he turned his horse, drove back up the hill, and vanished like a cloud. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... without going into any profound mathematical calculations, we can get the answer roughly—say, within a mile of what is correct! We will assume that when the wire is all wound up the ball is perfectly solid throughout, and that no allowance has to be made for the axle that passes through it. With that simplification, I wonder how many readers can state within even a mile of the correct answer ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... ammunition room from which the guns carried in the two side turrets are fed. At the rear is the engine room. From two or four gasoline engines are used—these driving the rear axle and its integral sprockets over which the caterpillars run. The latter run an idler pulley or sprockets at the extreme front ends and are supported by means of rollers attached to the upper portion of the frame on each side when passing over the top. This movement of the caterpillar belts ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... dragon as some call it, is reputed to be nine feete or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axle-tree of a cart, a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends. The former part which he shootes forth as a necke, is supposed to be about an ell long, with a white ring as it were of scales about it. The scales along his backe, seeme to be blackish, and so much ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley |
