"Hammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sergeant Ross leading and our courageous young interpreter at our side, we stealthily ascended the dark, narrow stairs to the second floor, where a heavy door barred the way, but for such obstacles our good officer was prepared. A few blows of his strong hammer made bolts and bars yield. We passed through into a small dark passage. From there could be heard on all sides sounds of excitement; light feet running hither and thither to places of escape, only to be turned back by the sight ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the stars. The influence of an African night ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as a hammer by boys just out of school and by obscure journalists, which demolished the splendors of the social state," said the Comte de Vandenesse. "In these days every rogue who can hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an ell of satin by way of a cuirass, ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... not only spent to the full the princely allowance I had received from him, but was above half my whole fortune in debt. However, I had horses and equipages, jewels and plate, and I did not long wrestle with my pride before I obtained the victory, and sent all my valuables to the hammer. They sold pretty well, all things considered, for I had a certain reputation in the world for taste and munificence; and when I had received the product and paid my debts, I found that the whole ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Passing the boat a few yards, it turned with a gracious sweep and nestled in its shade, and, though motionless, it was wide awake. The eyes on each end of the projecting extremities of the head blinked up at the boat. It was comfortable, but suspicious. Was its conscience quite clear? The hammer-head has not the reputation of being an active enemy of man. Why should it be distrustful? This hammer-head would not sleep in the shadow, so let it be made aware of the serpent. I took hold of the chain cautiously, the shark watching, and with a quick turn of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... make my plugs to fit the holes.' Then the next thing I thought was that prob'ly they wouldn't remember to bring a tool aboard with 'em, and that they'd hunt for some'at of the sort aboard here. So I goes to my cabin, gets out a inch and a half auger, a chisel, a hammer and some nails, and places 'em on the tarpaulin of the fore-hatch, where anybody going for'ard couldn't help seein' of 'em; and 'There,' I says to myself, 'if those fellers haven't brought no auger aboard with 'em, that's the tool they'll use.' So I chanced it, and ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the steam hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither. Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwards towards ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... we'll shoot it out!" cried Wellesly, whipping his revolver from his pocket. The hammer fell with a flat thud, and with an angry exclamation he clicked the trigger again. With furious haste he went the round of the cylinder. Jim and Haney stood grinning at him, their ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... where the breath is changed to rime; where one's hands, nose, and ears, freeze if exposed to the air for a moment; where brandy is quickly congealed, and quicksilver becomes hard enough to be struck with a hammer." ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire-barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials. Only, on looking closer into the hive of industry, you might observe that arrows were constantly flying to and fro, that the cranes did not tenderly deposit their masses ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Valentinian and his court were in Rome; no one armed and ready waited in impregnable Ravenna to break the Hun as with a hammer when he should venture to take the road through the narrow pass between the mountains and the sea. The great defence was not to be held; the road, as once before, lay open and unguarded. In this moment, one of the greatest crises in the history of Europe, suddenly, and without ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... appointed, Colin presented himself at the Deputy Commissioner's office and was met by Dr. Crafts' secretary. His pulse was beating like a trip-hammer, and he probably looked nervous, for the secretary glanced once or twice in his direction. Then, wishing to give news that would be welcome, she said formally, of course, but ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... near the doctor's heart was beating like a sledge hammer. Bivens's programme had been carried out to the letter. Stocks had declined for the first hour a point, and in the second hour suddenly smashed down two more points amid the wildest ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Afterwards he went to Spain and came to a bad end there, as Condivi says. He died in the prisons of the Inquisition, he had been condemned for destroying a figure of the Madonna of his own carving; his patron paid him insufficiently, so he went to the house, hammer in hand, and destroyed the statue, with this unfortunate result. He starved himself to death in prison as a worse fate awaited him. ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... uneffaced by human feet. At the corners of mews, Cochin-China fowls stalked gaunt and savage; nobody being left in the deserted city (as it appeared to me), to feed them. Public Houses, where splendid footmen swinging their legs over gorgeous hammer-cloths beside wigged coachmen were wont to regale, were silent, and the unused pewter pots shone, too bright for business, on the shelves. I beheld a Punch's Show leaning against a wall near Park Lane, as if it had fainted. It was deserted, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... will soon observe that even the physical actions of the people are unfamiliar,—that their work is done in ways the opposite of Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after surprising methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a hammer such as no Western smith could use without long practice; the carpenter pulls, instead of pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong; and keys must be turned, to open or close a lock, in what we are accustomed to think the wrong direction. ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... by keys, each hammer striking two or three strings (which are tuned in unison) and immediately rebounding from these strings, allowing them to vibrate as long as the key is held down. The mechanism that allows the hammers to rebound from the strings and fall ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... hand with hammer and chisel, and boxes were opened, to the great delight and admiration of the girls. They were all very happy and busy setting things to rights, but Albinia was in difficulty how to bestow her books. There was an unaccountable scarcity both of books and book-cases; ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nutshell of a wooden house, which was, in truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of the street; but you might have knocked down Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or two, and carried off the pieces in ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... physiologic curiosities. In the trades and arts we see development of the special senses that is little less than marvelous. It is said that there are workmen in Krupp's gun factory in Germany who have such control over the enormous trip hammers that they can place a watch under one and let the hammer fall, stopping it with unerring precision just on the crystal. An expert tool juggler in one of the great English needle factories, in a recent test of skill, performed one of the most delicate mechanical feats imaginable. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... They stood watching him as he was driving in one of the last nails, feeling a kind of indolent curiosity in the work, when suddenly there arose in the road behind them a frightful outburst of shrieks and cries. The smith dropped the horse's foot and the hammer, and started up. Dudleigh and Edith also turned by a quick movement to ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... middle now, sir, exactly," said the man, standing on the high steps; "but," continued he, tapping with his hammer, "I ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... hearing the music of the Indian is equalled by the trouble he has with our instruments. His attention is engaged by the mechanism. He hears the thud of the hammer, "the drum inside" the piano, the twanging of the metal strings, and the abrupt, disconnected tones. Until he is able to ignore these noises he cannot recognise the most familiar tune. Even then, if his songs are played as an unsupported aria, they are unsatisfactory ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... of the fatherless? This was His work, for had He not called His servant to do His bidding, and what was that servant but an instrument that could neither fit itself nor use itself? Can the rod lift itself, or the saw move itself, or the hammer deal its own blow, or the sword make its own thrust? And if this were God's work, was He not bound to care for His own work? And was not all this deliberately planned and carried on for His own glory? And would He suffer His own glory ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... discovered a party of workmen, unfortunately by no means numerous, but with countenances full of resolution. They had armed themselves hastily with forks, iron bars, and clubs. Agricola, who was their leader, held in his hand a heavy sledge-hammer. The young workman was very pale; but the fire of his eye, his menacing look, and the intrepid assurance of his bearing, showed that his father's blood boiled in his veins, and that in such a struggle he might ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... how he should begin, not concealing, on learning he had only a few dollars, that he was sure he would fail. After breakfast Magarth told him what he could not do without, and laid in a bundle an ax, a saw, a spokeshave, an auger, a hammer, nails, and would have added a grindstone had there been any way of carrying it. 'You'll have to come out to us when your ax needs grinding.' In a pail he put some flour, peas, and a lump of pork, tying a frying-pan ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... by dogs," exclaimed Vejarruco, shaking his fist, which had all the hardness and the strength of a hammer, "if we do not soon make an ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to read signs. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. He had the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind of mustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, I have become a part of this mustard. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Cameron, partly because of the hammer knocking in his head, but chiefly because of the thoughts set going by Tim. Cameron was not abnormally egotistical, but he was delightedly aware of the new place he held in the community ever since the now famous Dominion Day picnic, and, now that the harvest rush had somewhat ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... funeral. Uncle Wash was de blacksmith in de forks of de road 'cross de railroad from Concord Church. He was a powerful man! Him use de hammer and tongs for all de people miles and miles 'round. Him jine de Springvale Afican Methodist 'Piscopalian Church, but fell from grace. Him covet a hog of Marse Walt Brice and was sent to de penitentiary for two years, 'bout dat hog. Him ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... represent one Hephaestus as a god, and him lame, holding hammer and fire-tongs, and working as a coppersmith for hire. So it appeareth that he is needy. But it is impossible for one who is lame and wanteth men's aid to ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... a hammer and he chopped it with a bill, He poured sulphuric acid on the edge of it, until This terrible Avenger of the Majesty of Law Was far less like a ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... minute, Sylvia. Up to the present, I've been passed over by the authorities; but now I've been given my chance. If I can hammer the raw native levies into shape and keep order along a disturbed frontier, it will lead to something better. Now, I'm neither a military genius nor altogether a careless idler—I believe I can do this work; but, coming rather ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... nails. He witnessed the operation of crucifying one of them, the Sister Felicite. A certain M. La Barre was the operator. The nails were of the sort called demi-picaron, very sharp, flat, four-sided, and with a large head. They were driven, at a single blow of a hammer, nearly through the centre of the palm, between the third and fourth fingers; and in like manner through each foot a little above the toes and between the third and fourth; the same stroke causing the nail to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... rooms on Barrington Street were full to overflowing. A stock of goods was going under the hammer at ridiculously low prices, and among the bidders Hugh McNeil was conspicuous. As he turned to speak to a friend, he was much surprised to see Dexie Sherwood among the crowd. She was alone and not a little frightened at finding herself jostled about, and she welcomed Hugh ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... a rule which is industrial. A man is sent into the world to wield a hammer, a saw, and run an engine. If his rule over his hammer is weak, if he does not know how to use it well, if its blow is uncertain and its result unskilled, then he passes from the line of kings, and is subject, instead of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... like this ride! How he'd pull out his little hammer and peg away at these wonderful rocks! What specimens he'd collect! and how his sharp eyes would see every little bird and beast that moves through this wilderness! Oh! I hope, I hope, he is still alive and safe. If I ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... all was quiet in the shop for a time, except for the occasional sound of Norah's hammer as she worked in the window. Marion was putting things away in the cases which stood against the wall. It ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... effectually with them, they shall become mollified and tender; as it was with those hardened Jews who, by wicked and cruel hands, murdered the Lord of life: though they stouted it out a great while, yet how suddenly, when God brought them under the hammer of his Word and Spirit, in Peter's powerful ministry, were they broken, and, being pricked in their hearts, cried out, 'Men and brethren, what ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tax for a young girl, the daughter of a tyler. Her mother maintained that she was under the age required by the statute; and the officer was proceeding to ascertain the fact by an indecent exposure of her person, when her father, who had just returned from work, with a stroke of his hammer beat out the offender's brains. His courage was applauded by his neighbors. They swore that they would protect him from punishment, and by threats and promises secured the cooperation of all the villages in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Barbican, "do you think people could beat iron without a hammer, or turn up furrows without ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... volunteers flocked to the standard of the Duke. And their leader went swiftly on to make preparations worthy of so great a host. While all the woods of Normandy are ringing to the axe, and all the shipwrights' yards are sounding to the hammer, we may pause and see what this mighty expedition ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Ages great carriers in the Mediterranean. This would easily account for the name Majolica. Taltavull held that it was a genuine product of the island, though he was bound to admit that no remains of manufacturing potteries had as yet been discovered. And so they went at it hammer and tongs, deduction and counter-deduction, proof and counter-proof; and the owner of that glittering mauve-marked bowl which had started the discussion threw in a well-considered word here and there to keep the argument ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... lowing into the courtyard, and the goldsmith followed with the instruments of his art. Nestor gave him gold, and the smith beat it into thin leaf with his hammer, and laid it skilfully over the horns of the heifer. A handmaid brought pure water, and barley-meal in a basket, while one of Nestor's sons stood ready with an axe, and another held a bowl to catch the blood. Then Nestor dipped his hands in the water, took barley-meal ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... Mason as a magician, the man who turns the salt ocean into sweet water. But metal refuse, scraps of iron, old boiler plates, under his magic touch, are also turned into the most useful things. For instance, the steam hammer used in the government workshop is rigged on steel columns from the debris of an engine room of a wrecked vessel. The hammer is the crank of a disused shaft of a cotton machine, the anvil is from an old "monkey," that drove the piles for the Suakim landing stage in 1884; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... was now a worse spendthrift than ever, and it was not long before the plantation went under the hammer, and Mrs. Mary Ruthven was compelled to live upon her sister-in-law's charity. St. John drifted to New Orleans and finally to the West, and that was the last heard of him. Let us trust that he saw the error of his ways and ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... formed a real estate and brokerage partnership, and we were making money at a phenomenal rate. The air was vibrating with the ring of the trowel and the hammer. Gardens and roadhouses had appeared in the pleasanter places out of town. Everywhere in the central part of the city were livery stables, restaurants, saloons. The harbor was full of sailing craft. Every day saw the tides of emigration pour upon this hospitable shore. I felt the stir ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... and cutting up some vegetables. She had her hair bunched up like an onion, a fashion which, as we all know, appealed to the Dutch in the seventeenth century, or at any rate to the plebeian Dutch. I must also tell you the name of this squire before I go any further: his name was Hammer—Paul Hammer. He was unmarried. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the queen in. If the bees in the box came out and joined the others, we'd reckon we hadn't shook the queen in, and go for them again. When a hive was full of honey we'd turn the box upside down, turn the empty box mouth down on top of it, and drum and hammer on the lower box with a stick till all the bees went up into the top box. I suppose it made their heads ache, and they went up on ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... seen the lives of the Saints you spoke of in a former letter. But when I go to London I must look out for a volume. I have begun to read Thucydides, which I never read before, and which does very well to hammer at for an hour in a day: though I can't say I care much for the Greeks and their peddling quarrels; one must go to Rome ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... element in the socialist movement, Miss Oswald, while Harry represents the political element. Each is valuable in its way; but Oswald's is the more practical. You can move great masses into demanding their rights; you can't so easily move them into cordially recognising their duties. Hammer, hammer, hammer at the most obvious abuses; that's the way all the political victories are finally won. If I were a radical at all, I should go with you, Oswald. But happily I'm not one; I prefer the calm philosophic attitude of ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... forgets that my tools of magic have been stolen," said the Wizard sadly, "and a wizard without tools is as helpless as a carpenter without a hammer or saw." ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... calmness or quietness that comes to men in the midst of a life's grief. Jack was riding loosely, and swung forward just as the filly, a fresh young thing, threw back her head; and it struck him with sledge-hammer ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... superiority over the dwellers in other continents. By the invention of printing, knowledge was internationalized for all who had the training to use it. Books are the tools of the brain-worker all the world over; but, unlike the file and the chisel, the needle and the hammer, books not only create, but suggest. A new idea is like an electric current set running throughout the world, and no man can say into what channels of activity ...
— Progress and History • Various
... thunderbolts of the world's literature have been forged. In the room, which has two front windows shaded from the prying street by two little red calico curtains, is a lounge that looks as though it had been made by an author unaccustomed to saw or hammer. On the wall were a few woodcuts in plain frames or pinned on the wall. Here was a photograph of Carlyle, taken one day, as a member of his family told me, when he had a violent toothache and could attend ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... six feet above the water at the center. The bed of the stream is eroded from strata of sandstone that is extremely hard, containing corundum, and so perfect is its continuity that it conveys sound distinctly for a distance far beyond the reach of the human voice, when tapped upon with a hammer. The top of the arch is studded with lovely stalactites, clear as glass, that extend to the outer edge of the arch and form massive and beautiful groups there. Above the arch is a large opening. In truth the side of the room is out, and a great dark space ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... training hammer. 18 point cross-cut saw. 9 point rip saw. Large screw driver, wooden handle. Small screw driver. Nail puller. Stanley smooth-plane, No. 3. Bench hook. Brace and set of twist bits. Manual training rule. Steel rule. Tri square. Utility box—with ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... cheated the orphans? Secretly sinned?'—and this, and t'other; and when they have finished, Say it over ag'in, and you get little good o' your slumber." So the angel he talked, and, like iron under the hammer, Sparked and spirited the Poohoo. "Surely," I says to the angel, "Born on a Sunday was I, and friendly with many a preacher, Yet the Father protect me from these!" Says he to me, smilin': "Keep y'r conscience pure; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... on natural history, or the like. Always tapping rocks with a hammer, or hunting specimens, or botanizing. Great chap. Hasn't been here in Elmvale long. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... you will become so Westernized that you will lose all love for New England. That's my experience." So said a brawny pioneer, a man of large mind, and generous heart, and a sledge-hammer fist that never struck a coward's blow; but when swung in defence of the right was like "the jaw-bone" of Samson to the Philistines. He had emigrated from Maine twenty years before, and was one of the first settlers I met on the prairie near the scene of my story. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... is established.—On the 30th of June, eleven of their leaders, taken off to the Abbaye, write to claim their assistance. A young man mounts a chair in front of the Cafe Foy and reads their letter aloud; a band sets out on the instant, forces the gate with a sledge-hammer and iron bars, brings back the prisoners in triumph, gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around them to prevent their being re-taken.—When disorders of this kind go unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of the 14th ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... gold—two per cent.? Three per cent.? Immense wealth lay before us: a ton of silver is worth 250,000 francs. Meanwhile—and now I take blame to myself—no one thought of testing the find, even by a blow with the hammer. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... prowess by its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane: "Tristes tetes de Danois!" as Gaston Lafenestre used ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interpreting the Scriptures, rested upon the struggles through which he, while a monk, had found his God; and it may well be said that the new era of German history began with Luther's prayers in the monastery. Life was soon to thrust him under its hammer, to harden the pure ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... down locked together, Dave underneath. The puncher knew that if he had room Miller would hammer his face to a pulp. He drew himself close to the barrel body, arms and legs ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... folded up the letter. The writing was that of the wife of the factor at Fort Charles—she knew it. She sat for a minute looking straight before her. She read her father's allegory. Barbarian in so much as her father was, he had beaten this thing out with the hammer of wisdom. He missed her, but she must not come back; she had outgrown the old life—he knew it and she was with him in spirit, in his memory; she understood his picturesque phrases, borrowed from the large, affluent world about him. Something of the righteousness and magnanimity of this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by this dangerous plant is of the size and form of a small orange, slightly depressed at the stalk and the opposite part. It is very black and hard to break, a hammer or its substitute being necessary to disclose its contents which consist in a great number of little seeds ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... sailors, boatmen, of Flanders and Brabant, with a herd of bakers, brewers, and butchers, were congregated by express order of Parma. In the little church itself the main workshop was established, and all day long, week after week, month after month, the sound of saw and hammer, adze and plane, the rattle of machinery, the cry of sentinels, the cheers of mariners, resounded, where but lately had been heard nothing save the drowsy homily and the devout hymn ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on their flint points, Fleetfoot liked to play near the workshop. He liked to watch Straightshaft strike off flakes with a hammer-stone and punch. He liked to listen to the song that ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... strong, stood Elise Malboir, pushing a rod of steel into the sputtering coals. Over the anvil, with a small bar caught in a pair of tongs, hovered Madelinette Lajeunesse, beating, almost tenderly, the red-hot point of the steel. The sound of the iron hammer on the malleable metal was like muffled silver, and the sparks flew out like jocund fireflies. She was making two hooks for her kitchen wall, for she was clever at the forge, and could shoe a horse if she were let to do so. She was but half-turned ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hammer raps, "the fate of this land, boys, with all time lookin' on since ever Time began! Y're the fiery furnace of all the world's hopes and fears, of all earth's people, of all poets' dreams; an' God only knows what a mess o' slag y're turning out! Y'r muck rakers are belching y'r failures to the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... several articles of feminine apparel had come and gone under the hammer. The crowd had decreased somewhat and his position now commanded a clear view of the auctioneer's platform, and he realized that the fierce light of the arc lamps beat down upon as charming a costume as he had seen for many a day. All of corn-flower blue it was, a chiffon gown, a big chiffon muff ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... our survey of Rembrandt's dwellings in Amsterdam, we must finally follow him on his retirement, when, owing to his bankruptcy, his wonderful collection had been dispersed to the winds under the auctioneer's hammer, and when he had to leave his large house, the court allowing him to take only two stoves and some partitions in the attic. We have therefore to cross the entire town in its width and repair to its western extension, where ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite thou, Louis Tournay, cart-wright of the Marais, old soldier of the regiment Dauphine: smite at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe (q. hammer?) strike such a stroke. Down with it, man: down with it to Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up for ever! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard-room, some 'on bayonets stuck into the joints ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... take the masons long to point up and strengthen the old foundations, and early in September everything was under full headway, the sound of hammer, saw, and plane resounding all day long. It was Winnie's and Bobsey's task to gather up the shavings and refuse bits of lumber, and carry ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... the bullet which he had extracted from the body of Saunders, and fitted it into the empty cartridge which had been under the hammer in the revolver, and thereby proved to the satisfaction of everyone that the gun was intimately connected with the death of the man. So the jury arrived speedily, and without further fussing over evidence, at ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... sech things? Bill had the biggest feet in the township, but I'll bet my wallet that he never trod on a violet in all his life. Bill never took no slack from enny man that wuz sober, but the children made him play with 'em, and he'd set for hours a-watchin' the yaller-hammer buildin' her ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... particularly pleasing to me, and on one of my lonely walks, without knowing anything particular about Hans Sachs and his poetic contemporaries, I thought out a humorous scene, in which the cobbler—as a popular artisan-poet— with the hammer on his last, gives the Marker a practical lesson by making him sing, thereby taking revenge on him for his conventional misdeeds. To me the force of the whole scene was concentrated in the two following points: on the one hand the Marker, with his slate covered with chalk-marks, and on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... every possession that he had. It left him penniless, if he was not almost so already, and in the end it left him smothered beneath the glory of his blinding and unutterable Dream. He never understood that suggestion is more effective than a sledge-hammer. His faith was no mere little seed of mustard, but a full-fledged forest singing its message in a wind of thunder. He shouted it aloud ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... will attack the Hondslaardjiik," cried he. "The two privateers will hammer the frigate, while I and the St. Jacques des Victoires will attend to the Delft. The Lenore will sail in among the convoy. Fight, and fight ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... to be accidentally infinite when its existence as such is not necessary, but accidental. This can be shown, for example, in the work of a carpenter requiring a certain absolute multitude; namely, art in the soul, the movement of the hand, and a hammer; and supposing that such things were infinitely multiplied, the carpentering work would never be finished, forasmuch as it would depend on an infinite number of causes. But the multitude of hammers, inasmuch as one may be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... all the entrances. At the corners of the wall d'enceinte are turrets with loopholes. There soldiers are posted day and night to mount guard, each set being relieved from duty at intervals of two hours during the night, when the hammer bell in the centre of the palace grounds sounds its mournful but decided strokes. At midnight a big drum is struck, the harmonic case of which is semi-spherical and covered with a donkey-skin first wetted and made tight. It is by the sound of this smaller bell within ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... With buttercups and daisies; Oh, how I long to quit the throng Of human forms and faces: The vain delights, the empty shows, The toil and care bewild'rin', To feel once more the sweet repose Calm Nature gives her children. At times the thrush shall sing, and hush The twitt'ring yellow-hammer; The blackbird fluster from the bush With panic-stricken clamour; The finch in thistles hide from sight, And snap the seeds and toss 'em; The blue-tit hop, with pert delight, About the crab-tree blossom; The homely robin shall draw near, And ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... right of the divan, while drawn up to it was the huge leather chair, the chair in which the Old Gentleman had died. In the drawer of the desk Vandover kept his father's revolver; he never thought of loading it; of late he had only used it to drive tacks with, when he could not find the hammer. Opposite the divan, on the other side of the room, was the famous tiled stove with the flamboyant ornaments; back of this the mantel, and over the mantel a row of twelve grotesque heads in plaster, with a space between each for a pipe. To the left in the angle of the room ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... angrily. "But if you think all of a sudden that manners are so essential, why didn't you hammer some into me when you had the whip hand and could do what you pleased? You didn't find any ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... consequently rendered the more careful in their search after truth. Among the universal historians, Rotteck gained the greatest popularity on account of the extreme liberality of his opinions, and Heeren and Schlosser acquired great note for depth of learning. Von Hammer, who rendered us acquainted with the history of the Mahometan East, takes precedence among the historical writers upon foreign nations. Niebuhr's Roman History, Wilken's History of the Crusades, Leo's History of Italy, Ranke's History of the Popes, etc., have attained well-merited fame.—The ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... place, I took a large sail-needle and some heavy-thread and I sewed two pairs of his trousers and two of his coats up the middle of the legs and arms, so he couldn't put them on, at least right away. I picked up hammer and nails and nailed his shoes and sea-boots securely to the middle of his cabin floor. Under his pillow I found a full flask of brandy. I emptied half ... when I replaced it, it was full again. But I had not resorted to the brandy cask ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... that the tapping of the wheels with a hammer is a mere ceremony? Well, I don't know exactly; I should not like to say. It's not often that the chaps find anything wrong. They may sometimes be half asleep when a train comes into a station in the middle of the night. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... and aircraft make manifest and convincing is this point, which argument alone has never been able to hammer into the mass of inattentive minds, that if the human intelligence is applied continuously to the mechanism of war it will steadily develop destructive powers, but that it will fail to develop any corresponding power of decision ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... acorns suited him well. And he was very skilful in opening them. He would grasp a nut firmly with his feet and split it with his strong bill. Johnnie Green could not crack a butternut with his father's hammer more quickly than Jasper could reach the inside of a ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... composition of the soil resisted the shovels and turned the points of the picks. Recourse was had to the Navy, who supplied a small forge for the sharpening of the latter. Thus to other noises was added that of the hammer on anvil. The reserves were utilised by the Brigade and Division for works in rear of the position. The demands of the Engineers seemed never ending and were often in excess of the number of men available. This caused considerable confusion and irritation followed by requests ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... the right man, and you may lose one who points straight at him. Take my advice. Watch the place. There's more to be gained by going at it cautiously. These people understand the old hammer-and-tongs game." ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... very November, little more than a week ago, the spirit of the old centuries seemed to have re-entered the breasts of Florentines. The great bell in the palace tower had rung out the hammer-sound of alarm, and the people had mustered with their rusty arms, their tools and impromptu cudgels, to drive out the Medici. The gate of San Gallo had been fairly shut on the arrogant, exasperating Piero, galloping away towards Bologna with his hired horsemen frightened behind him, and shut on ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and catching up a stout hazel-stick, he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loth, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... he said in French, turning to his horse, "is nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about." ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... of a crossbow has a releasing function: it removes the obstacle that holds the string, and lets the bow fly back to its natural shape. So when the hammer falls upon a detonating compound. By knocking out the inner molecular obstructions, it lets the constituent gases resume their normal bulk, and so permits the explosion ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... rackets, white parasols, caps, Panama hats, and other summery articles are bestowed. Just through the arch at this corner stands a new portable Turkish bath, recently unpacked, with its crate beside it, and on the crate the drawn nails and the hammer used in unpacking. Near the crate are open boxes of garden games: bowls and croquet. Nearly in the middle of the glass wall of the pavilion is a door giving on the garden, with a couple of steps to surmount the hot-water pipes which skirt the glass. At intervals round the ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... hostile efficiency of Prussia; the tall machine that had struck down Denmark and Austria, and now stood ready to strike again, extinguishing the lamp of the world. There was a hitch before the hammer stroke, and Bismarck adjusted it, as with his finger, by a forgery—for he had many minor accomplishments. France fell: and what fell with her was freedom, and what reigned in her stead only tyrants and the ancient terror. The crowning ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... he tried to hammer an excuse, To which the sole reply was tears and sobs, And indications of hysterics, whose Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs, Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose: Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job's; He saw too, in perspective, her relations, And then he tried ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... numbering four or five, are large rocks set solidly in the earth. The hammers are nearly all stone, though some of the workmen have a small iron hammer ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... did not condescend an answer. Newton went into the shop, and returned with a chisel and hammer. Taking a chair to stand upon, he very coolly began to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... like a boy: "What of it? Let him watch! Put up your veil, Kaya. Great heavens, what a night it has been! My heart is going still like a hammer—is yours? Lean back on the cushions—put up your veil. Let me see you once,—let me see you! Look at me as you did in the Theatre—Kaya! ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... slightly crouched, and with a sudden tiger-like spring he was upon them. A sledge-hammer drive to the jaw of one sent him reeling backwards among the trees, while a mighty swinging blow to the right crumpled up another in the middle of the road. So astonished was the third at this unexpected attack, and the ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... desperate, and as we were without Cowan we were in the same mental condition. It was hammer and tongs from that time on. I don't know that there was any intention to put players out of business, but there was not ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... the offices knew him. He asked to see His Excellency the Director of the Theaters, Baron de Hammer Langbach. A young clerk, sleek, bald, pink-faced, with a white waistcoat and a pink tie, shook his hand familiarly, and began to talk about the opera of the night before. Jean-Christophe repeated his question. The clerk replied that His Excellency was busy for ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that the Blow he gives on these Occasions resembles that which is often heard in the Shops of such Artizans, or that he was supposed to have been a real Trunk-maker, who after the finishing of his Days Work used to unbend his Mind at these publick Diversions with his Hammer in his Hand, I cannot certainly tell. There are some, I know, who have been foolish enough to imagine it is a Spirit which haunts the upper Gallery, and from Time to Time makes those strange Noises; ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Virginia Bohemians. Virginia: a History of the People. Maurice Mystery. Youth of Jefferson. Ellie. Henry St. John, Gentleman, sequel to Virginia Comedians. Wearing of the Gray. Fairfax, or Greenway Court. Hilt to Hilt. Hammer and Rapier [Grant and Lee]. Life of R. E. Lee. Her Majesty the Queen. Canolles. Mr. Grantley's Idea. Stories of the Old Dominion. My ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... in the belt. As examples of Chukch dishes I may further mention, vegetable soup, boiled seal-flesh, boiled fish, blood soup, soup of seal-blood and blubber. To these we may add soup from finely crushed bones, or from seal-flesh, blubber, and bones. For crushing the bones there is in every tent a hammer, consisting of an oval stone with a hollow round it for a skin thong, with which the stone is fastened to the short shaft of wood or bone. The bones which are used for food are finely crushed with this implement against a stone ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold |
