"Knob" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... landlady I should return in a week or two, and paid her for the remainder of the time in advance. The last thing I did was to take my travelling-cap, which hung near the head of my bed. A break in the wallpaper showed that there was a small door here. Pulling the knob which had held my cap, the door was readily opened, and disclosed a small niche in the wall. Leaning against the back of the niche was a small crucifix with a rude figure of Christ, and suspended ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... three miles from the school—jest a nice, exercisin' sort of walk. Whoa, boys! Sorter have to scotch 'em back goin' down here. Saw a man get killed down there one day; horse kicked him, and do you see that knob over there where them hickory trees are? I had a hard time there one night. A lot of foot-burners come to my house one night durin' the war and took me out and told me that if I didn't give them my money they would roast my shanks. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... yards, simply with the hand, but if at the distance of forty or fifty, with an instrument which we called a throwing-stick. This is a plain smooth piece of a hard reddish wood, very highly polished, about two inches broad, half an inch thick, and three feet long, with a small knob, or hook at one end, and a cross piece about three or four inches long at the other: The knob at one end is received in a small dent or hollow, which is made for that purpose in the shaft of the lance near the point, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... said, "that I turn this dial until the letter 'K' comes opposite the letter 'R.' Then I move this other dial till the number '9' comes opposite the same point. Now the safe is practically unlocked. All I have to do to open it is to turn this knob, which moves the bolts, and then swing the door ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... seconds to eleven when Evan guided the shaking George Deaves into Van Dorn street, and they mounted the steps of number eleven precisely on the hour. A great bell was tolling as Evan pulled the old-fashioned knob. In the depths of the house a bell jangled. Evan's heart was beating hard in his throat; George Deaves was as livid as a corpse—nothing strange in that, though, ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... he said. Clara had a sudden and almost overpowering desire to embrace him. She wanted to disturb his assurance, to startle him by kissing him on the lips or holding him tightly in her arms. Shutting the door quickly, she stood with her hand on the door-knob, her whole body trembling. The trivial by-products of her age's industrial madness went on in the next room. The sheets of paper rustled and the knitting needles clicked. Clara thought she would like to call the young man back into the house, lead ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... blue calico was faded white in patches and at the knees it was dark with soapy water. Her shoes were turned up ludicrously at the toes, as scrub-women's shoes always are. Tillie's thin hair was wadded back into a moist knob at the back and skewered with a gray-black hairpin. From her parboiled, shriveled fingers to her ruddy, perspiring face there was nothing of grace or beauty about Tillie. And yet Heiny found something pleasing there. He could not have told you why, so how can I, unless to say that it was, ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... she found herself upon the knob of the foothill. And when she looked out across a suddenly distinguishable void she seemed struck by the immensity of something she was unable to grasp. She dropped her bridle; she gazed slowly, as if ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... drawing near. The big yellow sun had dropped behind Krepp's Knob, the shadows of the hills almost reached across the ruffled surface of the river. The river bottoms at the base of the hills, with their waving grasses and tassled corn, extending beyond the bend in the river opposite ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... of battle was plainly visible to the silent commander as he looked down upon it from a hill known as Orchard Knob, and he watched the effect of the attacks on both wings of the Confederate line with intense interest. Reenforcements were evidently being hurried to the Confederate right and left and Hooker, delayed by the destruction of a bridge, did not appear at the critical ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... Valois returned; "a ruby, though. A ruby set in a big platinum ring. I saw her hand upon the knob." ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... Darley Champers safely out and into his own office before Rosie had need to relax her grip on the dining room door-knob. ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... waited, listening. There was no reply loud enough for him to hear through the closed door of the cabin. After a moment he tiptoed back and before turning the knob listened again. Nothing but silence. He opened the door with a pounding heart and stepped into ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... was always called Thumbling. He had, however, some courage in him, and said to his father, "Father, I must and will go out into the world." "That's right, my son," said the old man, and took a long darning-needle and made a knob of sealing-wax on it at the candle, "and there is a sword for thee to take with thee on the way." Then the little tailor wanted to have one more meal with them, and hopped into the kitchen to see what his lady mother had cooked for the last time. ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... square and lengthy and terrible; vicious, yellow-gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny, lion-like yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back, running up from shoulder to loins, ended abruptly in the knob-like tail. He looked like the devil of a dogs' hell. And his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... higher level of the hills, but Tawabinisay had the day before picked out a route that mounted as easily as the country would allow, and through a hardwood forest free of underbrush. Briefly indicated, our way led first through the big trees and up the hills, then behind a great cliff knob into a creek valley, through a quarter-mile of bottom-land thicket, then by an open strip to the first little lake. This we ferried by means of the bark canoe carried on ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... "The new regiment on Pine Knob was recruited from the Bowery. I happened to be with Kemp, their surgeon, when sick call sounded, and I never saw such a line of impudent, ruffianly malingerers as filed before Kemp. One, I am convinced, had deliberately shot off his trigger finger; but it couldn't ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Harmony's, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparing to sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violent disorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll of pink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon's scissors, borrowed from Peter, the cut edges ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... only one word similar to English; stroem, like stream, and it signified tide'. E. 'I remember having seen a Dutch Sonnet, in which I found this word, roesnopies. Nobody would at first think that this could be English; but, when we enquire, we find roes, rose, and nopie, knob; so we have rosebuds'. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to receive callers, will hang a card-basket on the front-door knob and close the front of the house. The callers deposit their cards in the basket, and go their way rejoicing. Perhaps the mansion is one that is famed for the excellence of its wines and eatables on such occasions. The veteran caller has promised ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... surface of Phil's instrument, like a rock disappearing in mud. Within seconds it vanished completely; then, a moment later, it began to emerge from the box's underside. Phil let the Geest gun drop into his hand, replaced it on the wall, turned the third knob. The box withdrew its supports and sank down to the mantle. Phil clipped it back inside his coat, closed the coat, and strolled over to the center of the room to wait for Aunt Beulah to return with ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... all the empty, sunburned garden seemed to say weepingly, "There will be no more fairy-tales," she woke with the morning star, and, sitting bolt up in bed, blinked wonderingly, a little painfully, in the direction of the Radical Judge's front door. It was too dark to see the knob yet, but she knew the thing must be there, the long, angelically sweet drop of white ribbon and flowers—the poetic and wistful mourning which is only ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... one sin. They once were gravely pointed out by the guide of a party of tourists as "shuddering asps." He is doubtless the same who, being asked "what that was," (pointing to the North Dome, six thousand feet in the air) said "he'd be hanged if he knew; some knob or other." I recall ten thousand pleasant times as I turn my face seaward; not only the great and omnipotent shadows under the south wall of the valley, nor the continuous canticles of the waters, but innumerable little things that fill up and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... draw anything polished; especially if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... you'll try to play us?" asked Dick, as the captain of the Army eleven rested his hand on the knob. ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... haunch, Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch! Look at the purse with the tassel and knob And the gown with the angel and thingumbob! What's he at, quotha? reading his text! Now you've his curtsey—and ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Yesterday she took me with her and a sort of country girl, a clergyman's daughter from Earl's Court, to buy a hat at Lewis's; (for the girl I mean). It was extraordinary! The girl isn't at all bad-looking, but naturally wears her hair perfectly flat, with a kind of knob at the back, the wrong kind. On the top of this the milliners stuck, first, the most enormous hat, eccentric beyond the dreams of the Rue de la Paix, all feathers, and said, Oh, quel joli mouvement, Madame! The poor girl, frightened to death, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... himself and the icy water into which he was to plunge. Within a few paces of the great glass door marked "MR. MCLAUGHLIN," Skinner hesitated and listened, hoping to hear voices, which would give him an excuse to retreat. But there was no sound. Skinner tapped at the door, turned the knob, and took the plunge into the ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... the earth, but could lay above ground, like anyone else," said a brown mallard-duck. "They may try as much as they please, still they'll never get anywhere with such noses," said a gray goose. And this was actually true. The burrow-ducks had a big knob on the base of the bill, which spoiled ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... and carried it away with her on a four-wheeler. About an hour ago, ma'am." Feather dropped her hand from the knob of the door and trailed back to the chair she had left, sinking ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said, "her that's buried back on the Dolan Knob, used to say that God saw for the little pup when it was blind, but after that it was the little pup's business. An' I reckon she ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... houses, to the far-off, serene, bare mountains. For a moment their calm outlines held her eyes. For a moment the clamor of voices from below seemed to die out of her ears. Then she shivered, drew back into her room, and felt for the knob of the electric light. Darkness was falling, and it was growing cold on this rocky height which frowned above the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... thickened suddenly in that quarter, and he then told her gently he had something to show her on the other side of the knob. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... things of long ago and sacred. Then he seemed, as with an effort, to summon himself, and his thoughts back to the present, and I saw him walk slowly toward the door of the Cabinet Room, place one hand on the knob, with the other brush his handkerchief across his eyes. I saw him throw back his shoulders and grow erect again as he opened the door, and I heard him say in quiet, steady tones, "I hope you ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... hand trembling with eagerness—eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind. She had stood on the door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the instants till a step sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare of the outer world.... And now she had sat for an hour in Violet's drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon might have been spent; and ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... tiptoes along the corridor, by the light of a single candle flickering in the air. Having reached the door of the Emperor's antechamber, they stopped, hardly daring to breathe, and the Empress softly turned the knob; but, just as she put her foot into the apartment, Roustan, who slept there and was then sleeping soundly, gave a formidable and prolonged snore. These ladies had not apparently remembered that they would find him there; and Madame de Remusat, imagining that she already ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... back to the workshop, built a fire on the hand forge and forged a pointed and rather broad blade, four inches long, on the end of a foot of quarter-inch round tool-steel. It was too point-heavy when finished, so he welded a knob on the other end to balance it. Little Fuzzy knew what that was for right away; running outside, he dug a couple of practice holes with it, and then began casting about ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... come any too quick for me!" declared Mr. Damon. "Bless my door knob, but my wife must be worrying ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... like nasty old dress," she explained, with a dazzling smile that was a justification in itself; "me likes pretty new dress!" and then, with one hand reaching up to the door-knob, and the other throwing disarming kisses to Samantha,—"By-by! Lady Gay go circus now! Timfy, come, take ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ear against the safe, listening for the tumblers' fall, as, holding the flashlight in his left hand, its rays upon the dial, the fingers of his right began to work swiftly again with the glistening knob. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... understand that she is wearing her heart away for you. I saw her outside your office once at midnight, saying good night to you and to the children. She wept and blew kisses to Johanna and Ida; she tiptoed up-stairs and caressed the door-knob because your hand had held it a moment before. I have seen this several times from the corner. I suppose you will say that 'that is all right,' too; for your heart must be petrified—Well, perhaps I shouldn't say that your heart is exactly petrified," added Ole repentantly when ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... small table spoke of cheer, the curtains were drawn, and through a half-open door behind the piano one had a hint of a mysterious other room; one could see nothing within it save a large brass knob or ball, which caught the light of the ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... an extent of plank could be dignified with such a name. He was a Mr Cornelius Vanslyperken, a tall meagre-looking personage, with very narrow shoulders and very small head. Perfectly straight up and down, protruding in no part, he reminded you of some tall parish pump, with a great knob at its top. His face was gaunt, cheeks hollow, nose and chin showing an affection for each other, and evidently lamenting the gulf between them which prevented their meeting. Both appear to have fretted themselves to the utmost degree of tenuity from ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... a plant with which they feed their children, who like their mothers are nearly half starved and in a wretched condition. It is a species of fennel which grows in the moist grounds; the radix is of the knob kind, of a long ovate form, terminating in a single radicle, the whole being three or four inches long, and the thickest part about the size of a man's little finger: when fresh, it is white, firm, and crisp; and when dried and pounded makes a fine white meal. Its ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... smoked. It always did smoke when the wind was in the north. A Smut came down and settled on a brass knob of the fender, which the councillor's housekeeper had polished that very morning. The shining surface reflected the Smut, and he seemed to himself ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire not far from Bedford itself. In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-looking fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black. He sat on a settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe, such as they call a yard of clay. His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob behind him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very shrewd, cantankerous and inquisitive. He seemed to value himself above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due; being, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in it; plenty of quail and other small birds. Saw a bustard in the midst of the sandhills which bear 340 degrees. To the north of this camp a short distance is a very strange round stone hill, capped with larger stone, which I have called Elliott's Knob. One native was seen today on the top of one of the stony ridges, but did not get within speaking distance of him; many tracks were discernible for the last eight miles. From top of one of the stone hills ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... more sharply separated from contiguous parts. In the middle of its hind border there is a white, crescent-shaped groove—Koller's sickle-groove (Fig 1.59 s); a small projecting process in the centre of it is called the sickle-knob (sk). This important cleft is the primitive mouth, which was described for a long time as the "primitive groove." If we make a vertical section through this part, we see that a flat and broad cleft stretches under the germinal disk forwards from the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... and flying to the door of a large closet in the room, she turned the knob, the door flew open, and there she ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... invariably follow upon out-of-door music. A clatter of spoons and glasses, a rustle and grating of frocks and of chairs, and the click of scabbards on the pavement. I pushed my way among the fashionable youths contemplating the ladies while sucking the knob of their sticks; through the serried ranks of respectable families, marching arm in arm with their white frocked young ladies close in front. I took a seat before Florian's, among the customers stretching themselves before departing, and the waiters hurrying ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of sterner stuff. He rattled the knob. He turned it. He put in a black face with a grin which divided it from ear to ear. "Cady say I mus' call dem fool boys to breakfus'," he announced. "I never named you-all ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... The counter rang with his knuckles, with the knob of his stick, with his panic of alarm. "Do, do hunt it ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... came stacks of belated letters, "with whole bales of newspapers," said the stage driver, to follow, and with Thursday midnight, long after every one had gone to bed, there came a tapping at Major Stannard's storm door, and presently a fumbling at the bell knob, a ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... of lead in your boot soles, and your head in a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes under water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy going to work. And half-way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more, coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of way ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... those of a Fly, underneath each of which, as I have observ'd also in divers sorts of Flies, and other kinds of Gnats, was placed a small body, N, much resembling a drop of some transparent glutinous substance, hardned or cool'd, as it was almost ready to fall, for it has a round knob at the end, which by degrees grows slenderer into a small stem, and neer the insertion under the wing, this stem again grows bigger; these little Pendulums, I may so call them, the litle creature ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... reached the entrance to the sheriff's office, and placed her hand on the knob, when the man sprang quickly to her side and seized her arm. She uttered a startled cry and pushed open ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... without comment. Harriet busied herself about the room, doing various unnecessary things, and wondering why her master did not inquire concerning home affairs. Finally, having exhausted every pretext for lingering, she coughed very spasmodically once or twice, and, putting her hand on the knob of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... is a great Drum with but one Head called a Gong; which is instead of a Clock. This Gong is beaten at 12 a Clock, at 3, 6, and 9; a Man being appointed for that Service. He has a Stick as big as a Man's Arm, with a great knob at the end, bigger than a Man's Fist, made with Cotton, bound fast with small Cords: with this he strikes the Gong as hard as he can, about 20 strokes; beginning to strike leisurely the first 5 or 6 strokes; then he strikes faster, and at last strikes as fast ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... in which I tried to get one was not likely to be successful. At last I resolved to beg. Observing a fat, red-faced old gentleman coming along the pier, I made up to him boldly. He carried a cane with a large gold knob on the top of it. That gave me hope, "for of course," thought I, "he must be rich." His nose, which was exactly the colour and shape of the gold knob on his cane, was stuck in the centre of a round, good-natured countenance, the mouth ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... him, the turnback swung up on to the steps. In another moment, after noting that the cadets were not looking particularly towards the door, Haynes turned the knob, stepping inside and dropping, with feigned carelessness, into an ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... It had the appearance of use, and within he heard the cough of the solemn office-boy. A faint murmur came from the second room. This must be the private sanctum of the spider; this murmur might be the spider's enchantment over the fly. What should the third room be? The trap? He turned the knob and entered swiftly and silently, much to the detective's surprise and ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... iron animal who had just screeched his way into the depot. The coachman on the box managed with dextrous hand the two black horses who seemed disposed to resent the coming of their puffing rival, while with his hand resting on the knob of the carriage door, looking right and left for somebody, and finally springing forward to welcome his father, was Master Pliny Hastings, older by fourteen years than when that dinner party was given in ...
— Three People • Pansy
... a rim about two inches wide. In fair weather I went bare-headed, Indian fashion. I carried a tomahawk which I had made. The blade was two inches wide and three inches long—the poll two inches long and about as large round as a dime; handle eighteen or twenty inches long with a knob on the end so it would not easily slip from the hand. Oiled patches for our rifle balls on a string, a firing wire, a charger to measure the powder, and a small piece of leather with four nipples on it for caps—all on my breast, so that I could load very ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... "No," he went on, "I once thought I was a detective, but I woke up." Then he started for the door. "Thank you," he said. As he reached for the knob he reeled and clutched at the wall for support. ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... face. Moreover, she had learned what she had come for, and the obvious thing to do now was to go home and reflect. So, without further ceremony, she walked to the door and opened it, and turned again with her hand on the knob. "Look here, Tom Gaylord," she said, "if you tell Austen I was here, I'll never forgive you. I don't believe you've got any more sense ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... knob and then rapped on the door. This was so unusual a method of seeking entrance to a hardware store that Scattergood sat up ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... small, crowded on spike-like racemes from axils of leaves, often from alternate axils. Calyx 4-parted; corolla of 4 lobes, lower lobe commonly narrowest; 2 divergent stamens inserted at base and on either side of upper corolla lobe; a knob-like stigma on solitary pistil. Stem: From 3 to 10 in. long, hairy, often prostrate, and rooting at joints. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, obtuse, saw-edged, narrowed at base. Fruit: Compressed heart-shaped capsule, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... of a genus of birds peculiar to Australia and New Guinea. The typical species has a knob on the bill, and the head and neck destitute of feathers. From Grk. tropis, the keel of a ship, and rhunchos, "beak." They are called Friar Birds (q.v.), and the generic name of Tropidorhynchus has been replaced ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was an icy swamp, and a couple of warped planks, extending from the sidewalk to the door, made a sort of rickety footbridge. The gate hung on one hinge and was opened wide with difficulty. Steavens, the young stranger, noticed that something black was tied to the knob of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... approached the door and tried it. It was locked, but at the sound of the turning knob a sad, dreary moan arose from within—a cry of mingled fear and weakness. The sound of that moaning voice seemed familiar to my ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... 24-25 a battle near Chattanooga took place, with Grant at the head of the Federal forces. Hooker came to join him from the Army of the Potomac, and Sherman hurried to his standard from Iuka. Thomas made a dash and captured Orchard Knob, and Hooker, on the following ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... had stepped into the dim interior, he felt loth to leave her. Duty called him away. The passenger awaiting him up the road was a man he could not afford to disappoint; yet he stood there longer than the occasion warranted, with the knob of the door in hand, watching her struggle with the lamp, which she at last succeeded in lighting. As the walls of the hall and her anxiously bending figure burst into view, he uttered ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... sufficiently done by hand. When the hose are all put together a man is sent along the whole line with a pair of wrenches to tighten such of the coupling-joints as require it. The wrenches are generally made with a hole to fit the knob on the coupling-joint, and, when used, are placed, one on the nob of the male and another on the nob of the female-screw, so as to ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... Di. The inevitable book was on her knee, but its leaves were uncut; the strong-minded knob of hair still asserted its supremacy aloft upon her head, and the triangular jacket still adorned her shoulders in defiance of all fashions, past, present, or to come; but the expression of her brown countenance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with safety-pins, wire nails, metal hair-pins, rusty iron handles of cooking utensils, and the patent keys for opening corned beef tins. Some wore penknives clasped on their kinky locks for safety. On the chest of one a china door-knob was suspended, on the chest of another the brass ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... excitement as he turned the knob of this door gently—gently. The door was locked. He stooped and applied an eye to ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the surrounding hills the Confederates complacently viewed the magnificent pageant, mistaking it for a grand review. So secure were they in their apparently impregnable positions that we carried Orchard Knob and captured nearly the whole picket line before they realized that we were not dress parading. And so, under the immediate eye of General Grant, who stood upon Fort Wood, a very commanding position, from which he could see every man of us, we carried ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... dim sun of a wet autumnal day was sloping down towards the west through clouds and gloom, when a young girl of about twenty-one or twenty-two years of age came out of the cabin we have mentioned, and running up to the top of a little miniature hill or knob that rose beside it, looked round in every direction, as if anxious to catch a glimpse of some one whom she expected. It appeared, however, that she watched in vain; for after having examined the country in every direction with an eye in which might be read a combined expression of eagerness, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... through with a pocket knife, so as to let the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we have all learnt during our ardent pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a small roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, which knob is in fact the embryo palm or seedling, for whose ultimate benefit the whole arrangement (in brown and green) has been invented. That is very much the way with man: he notices what concerns his own appetite, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... his departing guests, Guion stood for a minute, with his hand still on the knob, pressing his forehead against the woodwork. He listened to the sound of the carriage-wheels die away and to the crunching tread of the two men down ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... not go at once; he stood there with his hand on the door-knob and shifted his eyes nervously ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... events of her life. Repetition never robbed them of their horror, and no amount of spoiling between times could make up to her for the violence of the moment. It took all the courage she had to turn the knob ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... less than ten minutes to dress for dinner. Do you think I can do it in that time? I haven't been late since I came to Exeter, so I shall not hurry now. One late mark will keep me in harmony with the rest of the girls." Her hand was upon the knob. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... as she turned the knob in response to the summons from within. "You people nod your ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... to the kerosene can and finally came upon it and felt its surface. Yes, it was the kerosene can. Her trembling little hand fumbled for the tiny faucet. How queer it felt in the dark when she could not see it! It seemed to have a little knob or ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Muntar, close to which the ancient road from Bethlehem to Jericho passes, through Ras Umm Deisis, across the Jerusalem-Jericho road to Arak Ibrahim, over the great chasm of the wadi Farah which has cliff-like sides hundreds of feet deep, to the brown knob of Ras et Tawil. The line was not gained without fighting. The Turks did not oppose us at Muntar—the spot where the Jews released the Scapegoat—but there was a short contest for Ibrahim, and a longer fight lasting till the afternoon for an entrenched position a mile north of it; Ras et Tawil ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... she said, with her hand on the knob. "I'm going to corral a few of the elect and put it to them. Brace up and look pleasant by ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... She looked at the solitary lamp with its grotesquely hideous ornament of red flannel, at Susan's expressionless, freckled face, at the boys in their copper-toed boots and overalls, at the good-natured, but hopelessly common-place Martha Spriggs, with her thin hair drawn tight into a knob the size of a bullet, and her bare arms akimbo. 'Idealize her real!' Would it be possible to idealize ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... lever dog, e, with the cross foot, e, engaging and disengaging the teeth of the rack, b b, in combination with the swivelled knob, d, having a cross bar, g, and working in the slot, a a, of the racket case, A, substantially as and for the purpose ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... off abruptly. The knob had rattled in a door!—a door had opened, and been swiftly closed. The Poor Boy leapt to his feet. He thought he had heard ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... for rinsing the mouth, dusters and other such objects; and company after company went past, when, at the rear, approached with stately step eight eunuchs carrying an imperial sedan chair, of golden yellow, with a gold knob and embroidered ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... appear'd, through a good Microscope, to be a very pretty shap'd Vegetative body, which, from almost the same part of the Leather, shot out multitudes of small long cylindrical and transparent stalks, not exactly streight, but a little bended with the weight of a round and white knob that grew on the top of each of them; many of these knobs I observ'd to be very round, and of a smooth surface, such as A, A, &c. others smooth likewise, but a little oblong, as B; several of them a little broken, or ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... himself long enough to run up to Perkins's room. He was uneasy about his guest—and friend—for that the stranger seemed to have become. Perkins certainly didn't look quite strong—could he have overdone and be ill, alone in his room? After one hasty knock, to which he got no answer, Tom turned the knob. Through the open balcony door he saw a leg and shoulder—and smelled the familiar ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... pass so slowly as did those to Mr. Isburn. He placed his watch upon his desk and watched each minute as it slowly ticked away. When the time was up, he went to the door of Miss Dana's office. He turned the knob—the door opened at a slight pressure, and he entered. In a chair by the window, with her head bowed, sat a young Italian girl. As Isburn approached her; he glanced about the room, but Miss Dana ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the slippery knob I strain An' see a hunderd hills like islan's Lift their blue woods in broken chain Out o' the sea o' snowy silence; The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin', Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth Of empty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... So did Sylvester. Captain Elisha was standing in the doorway, his hand on the knob. He was smiling broadly, but as he looked at the two by the fire he ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... It made no sound nor yielded to his pressure. He tried it again with the same results. Then despairing, and desperate, he struck a match and ran it quickly along the jambs. The hinges were concealed, but he found signs of them at the right. To the left, then—another match—a handle, a knob—where? And then just as the third match went out he found it—a flat, iron lever which moved around a swivel, cunningly let into the woodwork. He caught it quickly in his fingers, twisted it down, and then, automatic in hand, he pushed ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... briefly. "Before I put the key into the lock, I turned the knob, as I have a habit of doing. Instead of catching, it yielded and the door swung open ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... begun to compare the sermon he had just been listening to with his own of the morning—much to the disadvantage of the former, through which he could perceive the fundamental axiom protruding like a cloven foot, when he suddenly ceased thinking for ever, for a blow from the heavy knob of a strong stick crushed his skull in on his brain like an egg-shell, and he sank, a ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... With no wish to play the eavesdropper, I could not help but overhear. They were talking about the generals. 'Yes, I know they're press-agented at eight seventy-five, dear boy,' I heard Mr. Quhayne say, 'but between you and me and the door-knob that isn't what they're getting. The German feller's drawing five hundred of the best, but I could only get four-fifty for the Russian. Can't say why. I should have thought, if anything, he'd be the bigger draw. Bit of a comic in his way!' And then he saw me. There ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... bell of that gloomy central London district. You know what happens. One pulls the knob under the name of the person one seeks—pulls it three, or, it may be, four times in vain. One rings the housekeeper's bell; it reverberates, growing fainter and fainter, gradually stifled by a cavernous subterranean atmosphere. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Petty turned in from the street, hitting both sides of the snow tunnel as he came. He fumbled at the door-knob in a suspicious manner and then ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... himself, "when he fell I held out my hands to keep his head from touching my clothes. Careless trick! Ought to have washed them, first thing." Then, struck by a sudden idea, he went to the well-curb, and slightly moistened his fingers. He then rubbed them on the door-knob, and the edge of the door of the cottage, and pressed them several times in different places on the ladder. "Not a bad scheme," he said, chuckling. He then went again to the well, and washed his hands thoroughly, afterward taking ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... had gone away with the doll and the donkey, you hunched up the blanket and the stiff white counterpane to hide the curtain and you played with the knob in the green painted iron railing of the cot. It stuck out close to your face, winking and grinning at you in a friendly way. You poked it till it left off and turned grey and went back into the railing. Then you had to feel ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... up to her knees, and she was nearly as ridiculous an object as some of the young ladies I had seen at home. She had a respectable bonnet on, however, instead of a straw saucer; and her hair was neatly put under a cap,—not made into a knob on the top of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... with a disease of the aged. Its windowed eyes are rheumy. It sags backward on gnarled joints. All its poor old bones creak when the winds shake it. To Average Jones' inquiring gaze on this summer day it opposed the secrecy of a senile indifference. He hesitated to pull at its bell-knob, lest by that act he should exert a disruptive force which might bring all the frail structure rattling down in ruin. When, at length, he forced himself to the summons, the merest ghost of a tinkle complained petulantly from within ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mobs, are strangely subject to some sudden impulse. Any seamy-faced old drover will illustrate this fact with stories till midnight, telling how Alkire's cattle resting one morning on Bald Knob suddenly threw up their heads and went crashing for a mile through the underbrush; and how a line of Queen's steers charged on a summer evening and swept out every fence in the Tygart's valley, without a cause so far as the human eye ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... appellations of trelliced, ringed, rustred, mascled, scalad, tegulated, single-mailed, and banded. The trelliced method has not been properly ascertained: it probably consisted of leather thongs, crossed, and so disposed as to form large squares placed angularly, with a round knob or stud in the centre of each. The ringed consisted of flat rings of steel, placed contiguous to each other, on quilted linen. The rustred was nothing more than one row of flat rings, about double the size of those before used, laid half over the other, so that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... the stairway to her room, treading lightly along the dark entry, dazed, fatigued, with the wonder of it all. Then, as she laid her hand on the knob of her bedroom door, the door of her ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... has no chariot. His clients mostly come in a shawl, and take their purchases away with them wrapped in a doubtful newspaper beneath its folds. The better-class buyers wear a cloth cricketing cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of hair ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... silken hangings which no doubt had fallen into place when the door had closed behind him. He did not remember having shut it; perhaps the old woman in the outer room had done so. And locked it. For when at last his hand found the knob ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... COLE was born in Jackson Co., Alabama, on the 8th of August, 1845, a slave of Robert Cole. He ran away in 1861 to join the Union Army. He fought at Chickamauga, under Gen. Rosecran and at Chattanooga, Look Out Mt. and Orchard Knob, under Gen. Thomas. After the war he worked as switchman in Chattanooga until his health failed due to old age. He then came to Texas and lives with his daughter, in Corsicana. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... upon, but it really seemed to him that his mother had seen him, after some occult and uncanny fashion, from the back of her head. A vague and preposterous fancy actually passed through his bewildered boyish brain that the little, tightly twisted knob of hair on the back of a feminine head might have some strange visual power ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... also, in denying it, to be a little positive, a little sharp; so that he would perhaps not ask the question again. She didn't like it—it made her unhappy. But Catherine could never be sharp; and for a moment she only stood, with her hand on the door-knob, looking at her satiric parent, ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... diving into the tin, brought out a hunch of bread and a knob of cheese. The voracity with which he fell on them, soon, with him also, stopped up the channels of speech. Louie, alarmed perhaps by the rapidity with which the mouthfuls disappeared, slid up on her heels and claimed her share. Never was there a more savoury meal than that! Their little ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... His white gaiters, coming above the knee, were fastened round the ends of his velveteen breeches and secured by silver buckles. His hob-nailed shoes weighed two pounds each. In his hand, he held a small reddish stick, much polished, with a large knob, which was fastened round his wrist ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... full of impossible hats and bonnets, displayed apparently for advertisement rather than for sale, each on a separate iron spit with a knob at the top. The galleries were decked out in all the colors of the rainbow. On what heads would those dusty bonnets end their careers?—for a score of years the problem had puzzled frequenters of the Palais. Saleswomen, usually plain-featured, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... calls. He strolled over the lawn, watching the hummocks of white clouds which piled up in architectural masses across the southern sky. Then he remembered the portrait and mounted to the atelier. As he put his hand on the knob of the door he thought he heard some one weeping. Suddenly the door was pulled from his grasp and Berenice appeared. Her hair hung on her shoulders. She was in a white dressing-gown. Her face was red and her eyes swollen. She did not attempt to move. Affectionately ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste-board, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the speaker and the person addressed, that is—but Heman's surprise was most manifest. His hand was on the knob of the door, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... her house are two long, boarded beds of old-fashioned flowers, mignonette and petunias chiefly, and over the small, very white door with its shiny knob, creeps a white clematis vine. Just inside the hall-door you will discover a bright, clean, oval rag rug, which prepares you, as small things lead to greater, for the larger, brighter, cleaner rug of the ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... heard inside, and the door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there, white-faced and tottering. She loosed the knob and swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolf caught her and laid her on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took a swift glance around the room by the light of a flickering gas jet. Neat, but extreme poverty was the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the child in a sullen tone, while she turned to that invariable resource of refactory children who happen to be near a door; namely, turning the knob, and clicking the lock back and forth, and swinging ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... side of the mountain, he found the narrow bench, that runs like a great cornice two-thirds of the way around the Bald Knob. The mountaineer knew that at that level, on the side opposite from where he stood, was Sammy's Lookout, and from there it was an easy road down to the sheep ranch in the valley. Also, he knew that from that rocky shelf, all along ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... he had only returned once or twice, and his visits had always been brief and unexpected, and at night. The first time he had startled Joan by dropping in upon her at midnight, his small bundle on his knob-stick over his shoulder, his clothes bespattered with road-side mud. He said nothing of his motive in coming—merely asked for his supper and ate ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... door, I'd never seen him look so beautiful. He is beautiful you know! Now that his physical eyesight is gone, and he's developing that mysterious "inner sight" of which he talks, there's no other adjective which truly expresses him. He stood there for a minute with his hand on the door-knob, with all the light in the room (there wasn't much) shining straight into his face. It couldn't help doing that, as the one window is nearly opposite the door; but really it does seem sometimes that light seeks Brian's face, as the "spot ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... under your knees—don't anybody look up—reach down under your knees and wrap your handkerchief tight around that knob, so it will look like a baseball or a tennis ball. Then throw ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of a hollow brass or leaden cylinder about five inches in length and one inch in diameter, the bore being about one-quarter of an inch in diameter and closed at one end. A wooden piston, which closely fits the bore, bears a rounded knob; it is driven down the cylinder by a sharp blow of the palm upon the knob and is quickly withdrawn. The heat generated by the compression of the air ignites a bit of tinder (made by scraping the fibrous surface ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in the same abstraction. He shook hands with her, moved hesitatingly toward the door. With his hand on the knob he turned and glanced keenly at her. He surprised in her face a look of mystery—of seriousness, of sadness—was there anxiety in it, also? And then he saw a certain elusive reminder of her father—and it brought to him with curious force the memory of how she had been brought ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... is highly ornamental, and assumes vivid colours during the act of courtship; but what are we to think of the dull- coloured comb of the condor, which does not appear to us in the least ornamental? The same question may be asked in regard to various other characters, such as the knob on the base of the beak of the Chinese goose (Anser cygnoides), which is much larger in the male than in the female. No certain answer can be given to these questions; but we ought to be cautious in assuming that knobs and various fleshy appendages cannot be attractive to the female, when we remember ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... in the house when presently two little kimonoed forms stole through the halls and crept to the library door. Billie felt for the knob in the darkness and turned it. The door was locked. In the dense atmosphere it was difficult for them to realize what this ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... a rap on the door and the knob turned as he shot the photograph into his pocket and pretended to be reading a volume of Bacchylides—upside down. The intruder was Teed. Litton was too much startled and too throbbing with guilt to express ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... moment the girl came into the drawing-room, but on seeing Bernard she stopped, with her hand on the door-knob. Her mother went ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... She took him by the hand. Her own hand was shaking, and very cold and clammy. Her knees were weak as she led him toward the door. She could feel them trembling so that every step was an effort. And her hand on the knob had barely strength to turn it. But turn it she did and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ego, it would surely do the trick. But the Swami was staring at the cylinders first in fascination, then fear, then in horror. He jumped to his feet, without bothering to swirl his robe majestically, rushed over to the door, fumbled with the knob as if he were in a burning room, managed to get the door open, and rushed outside. The lieutenant gave me a puzzled ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton |
