"Pincers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fairly knocked off as much as I want, and then I place the piece in the fire, and again apply the bellows, and take up the song where I left it off; and when I have finished the song, I take out the iron, but this time with my plaistra, or pincers, and then I recommence hammering, turning the iron round and round with my pincers: and now I bend the iron, and lo, and behold, it has assumed something the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... strode out. Darvid remained alone. In that spacious, lofty chamber, richly furnished, in the abundant light of a costly lamp, he remained alone. Clasping his inclined head with both hands, he squeezed it with his white, lean fingers, as with pincers. How many vexations and troubles had met him here after an absence of years! There was something greater still than even these vexations and troubles. The coil of serpents rose in his breast and crawled up ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... rack of cruelly pointed and twisted instruments. Under this was a row of long, delicate pincers, with coils on the handles to indicate that they might be heated to fiendish precision of temperatures. There were gleaming metal racks with calibrated slide-rods and spring dials to denote just what pull was being exerted on whatever unhappy creature might be stretched ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... fingers rendest off Thy coat of proof," thus spake my guide to one, "And sometimes makest tearing pincers of them, Tell me if any born of Latian land Be among these within: so may thy nails Serve thee for everlasting ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... were written in a Manual, used by the Grand Inquisitor of Seville as late as A.D. 1820. An analysis is given by Dr. Rule, in his "History of the Inquisition," Appendix to vol. i., pp. 339-359, ed. 1874. Then we hear, elsewhere, of torture by roasting the feet, by pulleys, by red-hot pincers—in short, by every abominable instrument of cruelty which men, inspired by religion, could conceive. Let the student take Llorente and Dr. Rule alone, and he will learn enough of the Inquisition horrors to make him shudder at the sight of a ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... is caught here! What if we are caught here too? These weeds may stem us—turn great crab pincers and hold ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... have his hand enclosed and seared in a tube of red-hot iron, to have his arms, legs, and thighs torn to pieces with burning pincers, his bowels to be quartered, his heart to be torn out and thrown into his face, his head to be dissevered from his trunk and placed on a pike, his body to be cut in four pieces, and every piece to be hung on a gibbet over one of the principal gates ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... was sitting at a table in the window, looking at something very small which he held in a pair of fine pincers. He had a round spy-glass sort of thing in one eye—which reminded the children of watchmakers, and also of the long snail's eyes of the Psammead. The gentleman was very long and thin, and his long, thin boots stuck out under the other side of his table. He did not hear the door open, and the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... appeared. An adequate supply of wax for the construction of a comb having been elaborated, one of them disengaged itself from the centre of the group, and clearing a space about an inch in diameter, at the top of the hive, applied the pincers of one of its legs to its side, detached a scale of wax, and immediately began to mince it with the tongue. During the operation, this organ was made to assume every variety of shape; sometimes it appeared like a trowel, then flattened like a spatula, and at other times like a pencil, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... events of the past three weeks, as given in the brutal wording of the shipowner, had torn at his nerves like the pincers of an inquisitor. He saw now how the world would judge the relations between Elaine and himself. The change of name, the meeting at the same hotel at Arles, the second meeting, the companionship of that fateful week at Nimes—the world would put only one interpretation ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... see a pretty and curious little sight, look to Orchis pyramidalis, and you will see that the sticky glands are congenitally united into a saddle-shaped organ. Remove this under microscope by pincers applied to foot-stalk of pollen-mass, and look quickly at the spontaneous movement of the saddle-shaped organs and see how beautifully adapted to seize proboscis ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Rasps, and Pincers, all bone, the implements of an eminent Chiropedist, who flourished his tools before the flood. (Owing to the excessive unevenness of the surface in those times, the diluvians were peculiarly ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... she continued pensively, "one of those animals of the sea that can cut with their claws, that have arms like scissors, saws, pincers ... that devour their own kind, and ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ugliness of the garment bores you in the picture, exactly as it would in nature. And the same criticism applies equally well to the faces, the hands, the leather aprons, the loose iron, the hammers, the pincers, the smoked walls. I should not be surprised to learn that Mr. Stanhope Forbes had had a forge built up in his studio, and had copied it all as it stood. A handful of dry facts instead of a passionate impression of life in its envelope of mystery ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Russian positions, which formed projecting angles to the northwest and northeast of Przasnysz so that instead of taking the city directly from the front he would seize it as with a gigantic pair of pincers from both sides and behind. The plan succeeded to the full. The Russian lines were broken on both sides of the city and the German troops, rushing through, met behind it, forcing the Russian defenders hastily to evacuate the place to avoid ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... indigo, or some other black powder, which continues ever after; and this is considered as a great honour, none being allowed to do this but the birmans who are of kin to the king. Those people wear no beards, but pull out the hair from their faces with small pincers made for the purpose. Some leave 16 or 20 hairs growing together, some on one part of the face and some on another, and pull out all the rest; every man carrying his pincers with him, and pulling ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... not see that he was trying to outwit him, and agreed. So the crab caught hold of his neck with his claws as securely as with a pair of blacksmith's pincers, and called out, "Off ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... conjure up a hundred objects of woe. In truth his brain resembles the dungeons of the Inquisition, where the walls are covered with so many instruments of torture that one is dazed, and asks whether these horrible contrivances he sees before him are pincers or playthings. Tell me, I say, what difference is there in saying to my mistress: "All women deceive," or, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... through life looking at the curve of that nose and the modelling of that chin and jaw! I thought of the Squire's stern voice, and his blunt, plain-featured face. Always, always, so long as I lived, I should long to take a pair of pincers and tweak that nose into shape, and nip little pieces of flesh from the neck, and pad them on the hollows beneath the cheek-bones. Suddenly I began to laugh. I imagined myself doing it— saw the expression in ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... which, as they gazed, began, like embodied joys, to fly merrily from the iron. Tommy followed, keeping Clare well between him and the black-browed man, who rained his blows on the rosy iron in his pincers, as if ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... measurement fifty centimetres long, but these were not considered remarkable. Many are said to much exceed two feet from the tail to the tip of the claws and horns. They are of an iron-black color, and have formidable pincers with serrated edges and tip-points inwardly converging, which cannot crush like the weapons of a lobster, but which will cut the flesh and make a small ugly wound. At first sight one not familiar with the crawfish of these regions can hardly believe he ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... smoked was clear, for the old lady had already gone through the process of unrolling one of the small cartouche-like cigars. Having re-rolled it between her fingers, she placed it within the gripe of a pair of small golden pincers. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... tenor of his remarks abruptly changed, and he danced and rubbed with pain. One of the pestilent "fire ants" of his country had managed to snuggle among the crevices of the lounge, and its nip was like that of a red hot pair of pincers. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the mysterious inaccessible stars. But her feeling was no longer vague: the cause of her pain—the image of Mrs. Grandcourt by Deronda's side, drawing him farther and farther into the distance, was as definite as pincers on her flesh. In the Psyche-mould of Mirah's frame there rested a fervid quality of emotion, sometimes rashly supposed to require the bulk of a Cleopatra; her impressions had the thoroughness and tenacity that give to ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Tabernacle? I was of great assistance to Moshe. I moved my lips when he hammered; went for meals when he went; shouted at the other children not to hinder us; handed Moshe the hammer when he wanted the chisel, and the pincers when he wanted a nail. Any other man would have thrown the hammer or pincers at my head for such help, but Moshe-for-once had no temper. No one had ever had the privilege ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... to Marienfliess, and boasted loudly that, when he had made an end of her old maid, Wolde, he would seize her next; and even sworn that, to make a terrible example of her, her nose and ears should be torn off with red-hot pincers ere she was tied to the stake. And what would my Elias do for her? She had a few dozen gold crowns which her sister Dorothea had left her by will, and willingly she would give them, if he turned the base malice of her enemies to shame. Ah, he might take pity on her; for ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... crab's love, if soothing, Is no sweeter than pincers are soft—and a new sickle Cuts no sharper than crab's claws nip, keen as boar's toothing! Yet crab's love's no less fervent than bard's, if less musical— 'Tis a new thing I'd ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... study the hoof must be removed. This may be done in two ways. By roasting in a fire, and afterwards dragging off the horny structures with a pair of pincers, a knife having first been passed round the superior edge of the horny box. Or by maceration in water for several days, when the hoof will become loosened by the process of decomposition, and may be easily removed by the hands. The latter method is less likely to injure the sensitive structures, ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... one should wish to try the experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she flies away, rushes into the tube, which ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... everything that he undertook. One day he borrowed a dulcimer, and made one by it. With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... have to," said Mr. Hardee, but it was clearly to be seen that he did not want to. He went into the barn, and came out wearing a pair of rubber boots, and carrying a pair of pincers— the "wire-cutting ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... Heah dey be!" cried Eradicate, as he produced a heavy pair from his pocket. "I—I couldn't find de can-opener fo' Mrs. Baggert, an' I jest got yo' pliers, Massa Tom. Oh, how glad I is dat I did. Here's de pincers, Massa Peterson." ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... was as a man is in a dream. Sorrow had done its work on him, agonising his nerves, till at length they seemed to be blunted as with a very excess of pain, much as the nerves of the victims of the Inquisition were sometimes blunted, till at length they could scarcely feel the pincers bite or the irons burn. Always abstemious, also, for this last twelve days he had scarcely swallowed enough food to support him, with the result that his body weakened ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... murder. Whereupon the Count had him seized and put to the torture, and without the application of any further torment he confessed the crime and was condemned by the law to the gallows; but first he was torn with red-hot pincers on the way ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... evinced the greatest joy and would have fallen into the trap and have unlocked the casket at once, had I not first discovered the key and sent for a pair of pincers with which I turned it. While waiting the arrival of the pincers she asked her consort if he had any idea why she set such store ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... twitchings in all my limbs. There is nothing more horrible than a night passed in the way I passed that one, faint and weak, enduring torture from hunger and thirst, striving after sleep and never finding it. I can only compare the sensation of hunger I experienced to that of twenty pairs of pincers tearing at my stomach. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... bulldog ant has a liking for the careless picnicker, whom she—the male ant, like the male bee, is not a worker—bites with a fierce energy that suggests to the victim that his flesh is being torn with red-hot pincers. I have heard it said that but for the fact that Australia is so large an island, a great proportion of its population would by this time have been lost through bounding into the surrounding sea when bitten by bulldog ants. It is wise when out for a picnic in Australia to camp in some spot away ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... merriment; greed, economy; usury, interest; lust, love; pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and laziness, good nature. He saw his Brethren maltreated in the vilest fashion. Some were cast into the fire; some were hanged, beheaded, crucified;56 some were pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, and roasted to death on grid-irons. He studied the lives of professing Christians, and found that those who claimed the greatest piety were the sorriest scoundrels in the land. "They drink and vomit," he said, "quarrel and fight, rob and pillage one another by cunning and by violence, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... roof. He thought it so beautiful that he got up and ran out, and as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. But he ran on into the middle of the street, with a slipper on one foot and a sock on the other; he still had on his apron, and still held the gold chain and the pincers in his hands, and so he stood gazing up at the bird, while the sun came shining ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... polished up the little negroes' heads.) "Women had hysterics in those days to get their ends, but now" (he began to laugh) "their vapors end in charcoal. In short, marriage" (here he picked up his pincers to remove a hair) "will become a thing intolerable; whereas it used to be so gay in my day! The reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.—remember this, my child—said farewell to the finest manners and morals ever ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and dost thou not understand what is waiting for thee? Look there!" and he pointed to a corner of the atrium in which, near a long wooden bench, stood four Thracian slaves in the shade with ropes, and with pincers in ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... open-eyed while he ran long needles into the fleshy part of his arms and legs without flinching, and he allowed one of the gentlemen present to pinch his skin in different parts with strong crenated pincers in a manner which bruised it, and which to most people would have caused intense pain. L. allowed no sign of suffering or discomfort to appear; he did not set his teeth or wince; his pulse was not quickened, and the pupil of his ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... breeches and top-boots, and a very old-fashioned cocked hat that looked terribly the worse for wear. He used to have a light brown coat and waistcoat, with very large pockets that I always believed to be full of powders, and draughts, and pills on one side; and on the other of tooth-pincers, and knives, and saws for cutting off people's legs and arms. Then, too, he wore a pigtail, his hair being drawn back and twisted up, and bound, and tied at the end with a greasy bit of ribbon. But it was not like anybody else's ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... wait to wrest his tribute of glance and blush from every one that passed, lo! he had changed all that, and Saint Anthony in an old master looks not more resolutely 'the other way' than he, his very thoughts crushing his flesh with invisible pincers. No more softly-scented missives lie upon his desk a-mornings; and, instead of blowing out the candle to dream of Daffodilia, he opens his eyes in the dark to defy—the Dweller on the Threshold, if haply he ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the assassin was execrable—a crime against the memory of the great man whom it professed to avenge. It was decreed that the right hand of Gerard should be burned off with a red-hot iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, that he should be quartered and disembowelled alive, that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and that, finally, his head should be taken off. Not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... by such fantastic behavior, Harley struggled wearily to his feet. He had been a dead man as surely as though shot with a ray-gun. One twitch of those terrible rock pincers would have broken him in two pieces. It had seemed as though that deadly twitch were surely forthcoming. And then the thing had released him—and had lain down to go to sleep! Or was ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... have been an amusing sight for our friends, had they been able to see us spread out our bistoury, our pincers, and three pairs of scissors, one with gold branches, on the table of this hut. The commissaire praised our philanthropy, the women watched us in awed silence, and the tallow candle melted and ran down the iron candle-stick ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... At another time, when the king, who examined him in person, saw that the man was stubborn and denied the confessions already made, he ordered him to be tortured again. His finger nails were pulled off with a pair of pincers, and under what was left of them needles were inserted "up to the heads." This was followed by other ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... prisoner with fierce red eyes, and rested on their hammers for a minute; and said the elder to his companion, "Take out Elijah Harbottle's gyves;" and with a pincers he plucked the end which lay dazzling in ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was irresistible. He stopped, and stepped into the magic cavern of darkness, gleaming with the forge-fire, where George Lobban, the smith, having hammered a glowing horseshoe into shape, gripped it with his pincers and flung it hissing into ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... committed in the Duchy of Modena. History knows no more about him, except that he had a wife and family. Of Niccolo da Pariana nothing has to be related. Ottavio da Trapani was caught at Milan, brought back to Lucca, and hanged there on June 13, 1604, after being torn with pincers. Massimiliano is said to have made his way to Flanders, where the Lucchese enjoyed many privileges, and where his family had probably hereditary connections.[193] Like all outlaws he lived in perpetual peril of assassination. Remorse and shame invaded him, especially when news arrived ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... chipped off until the arrowhead was formed. Only the most expert do this successfully.[213] Sometimes the stone to be operated on is heated in the fire, and slowly cooled, which causes it to split in flakes. A flake is then shaped with buck-horn pincers, tied together at the point with a thong.[214] In another report it is the stone with which the operation is performed which is said to be heated.[215] In a pit several hundred flint implements were found stored away in regular layers with alternate layers of sand ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... his companion, gave a hasty glance at the workshop, from which came the clink of pincers, and pitched the horn right into the middle of ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... you think," replied Uncle Ben. "Their hard, horny mandibles are good cutting instruments, and are used for teeth, saws, chisels, and pincers all in one. They form a ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... end in view the engineer Murchison, summoned to San Francisco, caused enormous grappling-irons to be fitted upon an automatical system which would not let the projectile go again if they succeeded in seizing it with their powerful pincers. He also had some diving-dresses prepared, which, by their impermeable and resisting texture, allowed divers to survey the bottom of the sea. He likewise embarked on board the Susquehanna apparatuses for compressed air, very ingeniously contrived. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... seasickness is as different from any other as an alcohol jag is different from a champagne drunk. This English channel seasickness begins on your toes, and you feel as though the toenails were being pulled out with pincers, and the veins in your legs seem to explode, your arms wilt like lettuce in front of a cheap grocery, your head seems to be struck with a pile-driver and telescoped down into your spine, and your stomach feels as though you had ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... please," returned Hugh Calveley sternly. "What I have to say is to the King, and to the King only; and though you break every bone in my body with your engines, and tear off my flesh with red-hot pincers, you shall not force the secret ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of him suggested the faces of the dying martyrs in certain primitive pictures. Nothing short of physical pain can thus convulse the features of a man's countenance. And he really suffered as much as if he were being stretched on the rack and burnt with red-hot pincers. Nevertheless, he felt that his mind remained lucid, as must be that of the martyrs undergoing torture, and he clearly understood that, in consequence of a series of inexorable facts, he had, for a few moments—but on the most terrible conditions!—the power of perhaps ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... hang, burn and torture the best that I may, Ho pincers and thumbscrews and rack—oho! And all heads I cut off in a headsmanlike way; So I'll hang, burn and torment 'till cometh the day That my kind heart within me shall crack—oho! Well-a-wey! ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... the second portion passing under the first, and thus bringing the wing down to half its original size. By this time the mechanical or automatic folding process stops, and the rest of the folding up has to be done by the aid of the pincers at the end of the body. Finally the packing up is complete, and the two hard outer cases, like a couple of tarpaulins, are drawn over the delicate wings ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and the physician inspected and handled Roswal's wound with as much care and attention as if he had been a human being. He then took forth a case of instruments, and, by the judicious and skilful application of pincers, withdrew from the wounded shoulder the fragment of the weapon, and stopped with styptics and bandages the effusion of blood which followed; the creature all the while suffering him patiently to perform these kind offices, as if he had been ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... vengeance of calamity. Were I not thus reduc'd, thou wouldst not know, That, thus reduc'd, I dare defy thee still. Torture thou may'st, but thou shall ne'er despise me. The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear, And sighs and cries by nature grow on pain. But these are foreign to the soul: not mine The groans that issue, or the tears that fall; They disobey me; on the rack I scorn thee, As when my falchion ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... in proportion to the worry which the deputy caused him. He had but one longing, to pocket him, as he put it, to have him at his bidding by fair means or foul, to extract his secret from him. He dreamt of tortures fit to unloose the tongue of the most silent of men. The boot, the rack, red-hot pincers, nailed planks: no form of suffering, he thought, was more than the enemy deserved; and the end to ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... amidst a vast concourse of the populace, to the Greve, the common place of execution, stripped naked, and fastened to the scaffold by iron gyves. One of his hands was then burnt in liquid flaming sulphur; his thighs, legs, and arms, were torn with red hot pincers; boiling oil, melted lead, resin, and sulphur, were poured into the wounds; tight ligatures tied round his limbs to prepare him for dismemberment; young and vigorous horses applied to the draft, and the unhappy criminal pulled, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... shares. While she was doing this, Jean le Rouge would set a stool for me in front of the fire and would seat himself on a log of wood, which he would roll to the fireplace with his foot. His wife put some twigs on the fire with a pair of heavy pincers, and as we sat and talked we watched the big yellow potatoes cooking in the pot which hung from a ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... retires into the arbour and her wooers resume their places on the threshold. A fresh appearance of the female, who repeats the play with her jaws; a fresh retreat of the males, who do the best they can to flourish their own pincers. The Osmiae have a strange way of declaring their passion: with that fearsome gnashing of their mandibles, the lovers look as though they meant to devour each other. It suggests the thumps affected by our yokels in their ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Taylor would add some certification to the rumor. One thing simply had to be: There must be no mistake about placing information in Lieutenant Delancey's hands so as to create the other jaw of the pincers that I was going to be forced to close ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... the thing's donkey-face came off in a moment, and out popped a long arm with a pair of pincers at the end of it, and caught Tom by the nose. It did not hurt him much; but it held ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... But all the last was covered with short hair, Yellow and fine. Eight sprawling legs adhered To his tough breast. Eight eyes were in his head, Two in the front, and three on either side; They had no eyelids, and were never closed, Protected by a strong transparent nail. His pincers grew between his foremost eyes— Were toothed like saws, were venomous, and sharp, With claws on either end. Two arms stretched out From his mailed shoulders, and with these he caught His tangled prey, or guided what he spun. Slowly the ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... with iron filings, white eyes, greasy blackened clothing, and hairy chests, could have fancied himself transported into the wild nocturnal world of German ballad poetry. After the skin had been in the fire for ten minutes, the foreman pulled it out with a pair of pincers. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... arms that belong to another, and whom a form, obtained as a favour, is {now} disguising?' {Thus} he spoke; and he planted the grip of his fingers on the upper part of my neck. I was tortured, just as though my throat was squeezed with pincers; and I struggled hard to disengage my ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... sore, and at any rate cause a great deal of pain; while the feather that grows in its place is apt to be twisted or of poor quality, and occasionally the birds die, as a result of the operation. When a feather is nipped off with pincers or cut with a knife the bird is quite insensible to the operation. The stumps that are left in the flesh of the ostrich fall out in the course of a month or six weeks, or can be easily drawn out, and then a new and good feather grows in place of the old one. The reason why plucking still ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... bring me your husband's head." At this the Dewan's son hurried back and lay down on his bed. Presently he saw the woman come with a sword and cut off her husband's head. But when she took it to the Gosain, he rose and beat her with his iron pincers and drove her out, swearing that he would have nothing more to do with a woman who was so heartless as to kill her own husband. Then the woman returned and placed the severed head by her husband's body and raised a great outcry, that her husband had been ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... spoke he pointed laughingly to a great lobster which had been out on its travels away from its home amongst the rocks, and had been swept up, to be turned out upon the smack's deck, to crawl about flapping its tail and opening and closing its pincers, held aloft ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... appointments, with the exception of the Dewangur one. Pigs are here fed on boiled nettle leaves: old ladies may be seen occasionally busily employed in picking the leaves for this purpose, and which they do by means of bamboo pincers or tweezers. A few plantains may be met with here, but in a wretched state. Rice may be seen 500 feet above this, on the north of the castle, the slope of a hill being appropriated to its cultivation; the terraces above, owing to the inclination, are very narrow, and from the paucity ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... "the Ultimate Futility" grins horribly from its mask. Well! It is precisely at these hours, at the hours when the little pincers of the gods especially nip and squeeze, that it is good to turn the pages of Fyodor Dostoievsky. He brings us his "Balm of Gilead" between the hands of strange people, but it is a true "alabaster box of precious ointment," and though the flowers it contains are snatched ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Pilgrimage pilgrimo—ado. Pill pilolo. Pillage rabegi—ado. Pillar kolono. Pillory punejo. Pillow kapkuseno. Pillow-case kusentego. Pilot piloto, gvido. Pimple akno. Pin pinglo. Pince-nez nazumo. Pincers prenilo. Pinch pincxi. Pinch (of snuff, etc.) preneto. Pine (languish) konsumigxi. Pine away (plants, etc.) sensukigxi. Pining sopiranta. Pineapple ananaso. Pine tree pinarbo. Pinion (feather) plumajxo, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... misprison misprision monies moneys monied moneyed negociate negotiate negociation negotiation noviciate novitiate ouse ooze opake opaque paroxism paroxysm partizan partisan patronize patronise phrenzy phrensy pinchers pincers plow plough poney pony potatoe potato quere query recognize recognise reindeer raindeer reinforce re-enforce restive restiff ribbon riband rince rinse sadler saddler sallad salad sceptic skeptic sceptical skeptical scepticism skepticism ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... apart from each other; "An American Fool's Cap," a sheet of fools-cap paper; "Tainted Money," a penny flattened and mutilated until it is spoiled; "A Longfellow Souvenir," a section of bamboo; "A Pair of Ancient Pincers," two dried crawfish or lobster claws; "A Fool's Paradise," a pair of dice; "Sacred White Rabbit," a ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... there, he found M. de Brevan standing in his shirt- sleeves before an immense marble table, covered all over with pots and bottles, with brushes, combs, and sponges, with pincers, polishers, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Habit had made him unconscious of that malicious multiplication and subdivision of noise that kept every point of consciousness vibrating to a different note, so that while one set of nerves was torn as with pincers by the dominant scream of the looms, others were thrilled with a separate pain by the ceaseless accompaniment of drumming, hissing, grating and crashing that shook the great building. Amherst felt this tumult only as part of the atmosphere of the mills; ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... once revealing the same, as duty ordered Lieutenant Katte to do. That Katte's crime amounts to high-treason (CRIMEN LOESOE MAJESTATIS); that the rule is, FIAT JUSTITIA, ET PEREAT MUNDUS;—and that, in brief, Katte's doom is, and is hereby declared to be, Death. Death by the gallows and hot pincers is the usual doom of Traitors; but his Majesty will say in this case, Death by the sword and headsman simply; certain circumstances moving the royal clemency to go so far, no farther. And the Court-Martial has straightway to apprise Katte of this same: and so doing, "shall ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... to hurt you. Forgive me!" Santan said, slowly, as though each word were plucked from him by red-hot pincers. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... some instances this is difficult and it is necessary to include some of the adjacent tissue, although care should be taken not to include a nerve. To apply a ligature, it is necessary to have artery forceps (tweezers or small pincers may suffice) by which to draw out the artery in order to tie the string around it. To grasp the vessel it may be necessary to sponge the blood from the wound so that the end will be exposed. In case the end of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... third short and thick at the end; the terminal part of antennae long, thread-like, and formed of very numerous articulations; the eyes large, and with a short pedicel. Anterior legs long and smooth, the pincers overlapping each other at the end, their inner edge rough, scarcely toothed; from before the base of the inside of the movable claw a thickish line of hairs extends about halfway down the hands, which bulge, and are rounded on the inside, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... very short while the gates opened and a great band of armed men, more than thirty I think, and a knight on horseback among them, who was armed in red, stood before us, and on one side of him was a serving man with a silver dish, on the other, one with a butcher's cleaver, a knife, and pincers. ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... sang, and he thought it very beautiful. He stood up, and as he went over the door-step he lost one slipper. But he went right into the middle of the street, with one slipper and one sock on; he had on his leather apron; in one hand he carried the gold chain, and in the other the pincers, while the sun shone brightly up the street. There he stood, and ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... of his every oar; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... remained and stood his trial. He was convicted without the slightest evidence, and he and d'Ettallonde were both sentenced: First, to endure the torture, ordinary and extraordinary; second, to have their tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of iron; third, to have their right hands cut off at the door of the church; and fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of iron and burned to death by a slow fire. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... certain letters that were sealed with gold in the coffin. He looketh thereat and readeth, and then saith that these letters witness of him that lieth in the coffin that he was one of them that helped to un-nail Our Lord from the cross. They looked beside him and found the pincers all bloody wherewith the nails were drawn, but they might not take them away, nor the body, nor the coffin, according as Josephus telleth us, for as soon as Perceval was forth of the chapel, the coffin ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... villainy of the world, are preparing for him? Why should I play the compassionate Indian, and, knocking out the brains of the captive with my tomahawk, at once spoil the three days' amusement of my kindred tribe, at the very moment when the brands were lighted, the pincers heated, the cauldrons boiling, the knives sharpened, to tear, scorch, seethe, and scarify ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead westerly gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all sides by fat, gray clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted the spray into lacework on the ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... indication of the age, by the altered appearance of the mouth, is not to be depended upon after the animal is four or five years old. The incisor teeth are six in number in each jaw, and are placed opposite to each other. In the lower jaw, the pincers, or central teeth, are the largest and the strongest; the middle teeth are somewhat less; and the corner teeth the smallest and the weakest. In the upper jaw, however, the corner teeth are much larger than the middle ones; they are farther apart from their neighbours, and they terminate ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... of many sorts; but the chief were his hammer, pincers, chisel, tongs, and anvil. It is astonishing what a variety of articles he turned out of his smithy by the help of these rude implements. In the tooling, chasing, and consummate knowledge of the capabilities of iron, he greatly surpassed ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of small pincers, unwound the wire and cautiously withdrew the fuse from the hole. Examining the end of the fuse she saw it was filled with a powdery substance which, when ignited, would explode the bomb. She had recourse to her hairpin again ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the fire—caught it—bore it downward—and ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... that Sholto threw down his pincers and hammer, and valorously pushed open the lower door of the smithy. He looked with bold, dark blue eye at his father, and strode slowly across the grimy door-step. Brawny Kim had not moved for an hour. His great hands lay in his lap, and his eyes ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... alike as possible; set them upon the table, and the function of each—which is its rate of going—will be performed in the same manner, and you shall be able to distinguish no difference between them; but let me take a pair of pincers, and if my hand is steady enough to do it, let me just lightly crush together the bearings of the balance-wheel, or force to a slightly different angle the teeth of the escapement of one of them, and of course you know the immediate result will be that ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... the nose, and passed out on the other side between the ear and the back of the neck, with so great violence that the head of the lance, with a piece of the wood, was broken and remained fast; so that it could not be drawn but save with extreme force, with smith's pincers. Yet notwithstanding the great violence of the blow, which was not without fracture of bones, nerves, veins, and arteries, and other parts torn and broken, my lord, by the grace of God, was healed. He was used to go into battle always with his vizard raised: that is why the lance passed right ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Animals, were exactly form'd in the manner of Crabs or Lobsters claws, for they were shap'd and jointed much like those represented in the Scheme and the ends of them were furnish'd with a pair of claws or pincers, CC, which this little animal did open and shut at pleasure: It seem'd to make use of those two horns or claws both for feelers and holders; for in its motion it carried these aloft extended before, moving them to and fro, just as a man blindfolded ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... all the same, fiercely stabbing, jerking, as if some virulent little demon were holding ends of the facial nerves in a pair of pincers, and waiting till the sufferer was a little calm for a few moments before giving the nerve ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... directing this instrument alternatively right and left, even the fleetest insect cannot get out, and all those that are caught by its movement, are driven to the bottom of the sack; they should be taken out one by one, either with the hand or pincers, and pierced immediately with a pin proportioned to the size of the animal. The coleopters should be pierced on the right wing (clytze), the hymenopters, dipters and lepidopters in the middle of the waist, the orthopters and nevropters a little behind, between the base ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... on Italian waysides, the wanderers passed great, black crosses, hung with all the instruments of the sacred agony and passion: there were the crown of thorns, the hammer and nails, the pincers, the spear, the sponge; and perched over the whole, the cock that crowed to St. Peter's remorseful conscience. Thus, while the fertile scene showed the never-failing beneficence of the Creator towards man in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said the lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest—and now—' He fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron pincers, and laid it on the Curator's table. 'That is for a memory between thee and me—my pencase. It is something ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the grip relax. The vast stone pincers were lifted from him; slithered to the ground ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... being full-fledged—only a third-year student—but I may do a little in that way for love, you know. If you have a leg, for instance, that wants amputating, I can manage it for you with a good carving-knife and a cross-cut saw. Or, should a grinder give you annoyance, any sort of pincers, small enough to enter your mouth, will ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... tool-chest, Tom. I used to have that at Sattegur in my bungalow, and do most of my carpentering myself, for the natives there are not much of hands when you want anything strong. When you want a tool—bradawl, gimlet, pincers, anything—here they all are." He opened and shut drawers rapidly as he spoke. "Nails, screws, tacks, you'll know where to find them, only put things back when done with. What did I come for? Oh, a rule. Here we are." He ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel judicial torture, then taken to the Place de Greve, where he was lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses, and the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... common pincers, such as are used for pulling nails out, and place them so that the tail comes between their hollows; push this against the part still unskinned; hold this firmly down on the table with the left hand, and pull from the root of the tail with the right. Very often the tail will not move past ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... constantly groaning in the desert! I have carried on my loins eighty pounds of bronze, like Eusebius; I have exposed my body to the stings of insects, like Macarius; I have remained fifty-three nights without closing an eye, like Pachomius; and those who are decapitated, torn with pincers, or burnt, possess less virtue, perhaps, inasmuch as my life is a ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... have past the limits of a man, The bonds of nature. 'Twas thy bewitching eye, thy Syrens voice, That throwes me upon millions of disgrace, Ile have thee tortur'd on the Racke, Plucke out those basiliske enchaunting eyes, Teare thee to death with Pincers burning hot, Except thou giue me the departed lives Of ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... dreadful and unavailing suffering, as he must inevitably die. The king immediately sent his surgeon, with orders to spare no possible efforts to save the life of the hero. The lance-head was broken off so short that it was impossible to grasp it with the hand. The surgeon took the heavy pincers of a blacksmith, and asked the sufferer if he would allow him to make use of so rude an instrument, and would also permit him to place his ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... lay cold at his heart, As cold as his marble slab; And he thought he felt, in every part, The pincers of scalded crab. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the thing loved, yet now and then she becomes agitated, and fluctuates amidst the waves of hope, fear, doubt, ardour, conscience, remorse, determination, repentance, and other scourges, which are the bellows, the coals, the forge, the hammer, the pincers, and other instruments which are found in the workshop of the sordid ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... from some peculiarities of shape to have once been an oratory, but it was now begrimed with smoke and dust from the forge which Don Ippolito had set up in it; the embers of a recent fire, the bellows, the pincers, the hammers, and the other implements of the trade, gave it a sinister effect, as if the place of prayer had been invaded by mocking imps, or as if some hapless mortal in contract with the evil powers were here searching, by the help of the adversary, for the forbidden secrets of the metals ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... sufferer's pain is increased by the sharpness and the duration of the suffering. But some of the martyrs endured sharper and more prolonged pains than Christ, as is seen in St. Lawrence, who was roasted upon a gridiron; and in St. Vincent, whose flesh was torn with iron pincers. Therefore it seems that the pain of the suffering Christ was not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... a light and facile set of fingers to fit pallet and arbor and fork together: close work and tedious. Seated on low benches along the tables, their chins almost level with the table top, the girls worked with pincers and flame, screwing together the three tiny parts of the watch's anatomy that were their particular specialty. Each wore a jeweler's glass in one eye. Tessie had worked at the watch factory for three years, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... Like an unbelieving Arab, Put the dog and cat to pain, Making them to howl again. Only think what he would do— Tease the awful Apis too! Basking by the sacred Nile Lay the trusting crocodile; Cruel Psamtek crept around him, Laughed to think how he had found him, With his pincers seized his tail, Made the holy one to wail; Till a priest of Isis came, Called the wicked boy by name, Shut him in a pyramid, Where his punishment was hid. —But the crocodile the while Bore the pincers up the Nile— Here the scribe who taught him letters, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... wicked. One would go out with the old woman and begin suffering torments. My Creator! First of all you would be shivering as in a fever, shrugging and dancing about. Then your ears, your fingers, your feet, would begin aching. They would ache as though someone were squeezing them with pincers. But all that would have been nothing, a trivial matter, of no great consequence. The trouble was when your whole body was chilled. One would walk for three blessed hours in the frost, your Holiness, ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... up, but as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. But he went away right up the middle of the street with one shoe on and one sock; he had his apron on, and in one hand he had the gold chain and in the other the pincers, and the sun was shining brightly on the street. Then he went right on and stood still, and said to the bird, "Bird," said he then, "how beautifully thou canst sing! Sing me that piece again." "No," said the bird, "I'll not sing it twice ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Robert was determined to obtain proofs against Medea. Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi was kept some days without food, then submitted to the most violent tortures, and finally condemned. When he was going to be flayed with red-hot pincers and quartered by horses, he was told that he might obtain the grace of immediate death by confessing the complicity of the Duchess; and the confessor and nuns of the convent, which stood in the place of execution outside Porta ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the pincers drew his arm across his forehead to wipe off the sweat. "Come," said he, "let us set to work, for now it's all to be ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... devilish heretics refuse to learn and know it. Burn 'em, tear 'em, nip 'em with hot pincers, drown 'em, hang 'em, spit 'em at the bunghole, pelt 'em, paut 'em, bruise 'em, beat 'em, cripple 'em, dismember 'em, cut 'em, gut 'em, bowel 'em, paunch 'em, thrash 'em, slash 'em, gash 'em, chop 'em, slice 'em, slit 'em, carve 'em, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work. Her crooked, knotted fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the potatoes into the water as they were done. Three daring fowls jumped one after the other into her lap, seized a bit of peel ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... with you; they're all so seriously grieved on your account. He places the strokes carefully down over your back as if he were weighing out food, almost as if he were fondling you. But your lungs gasp at each stroke and your heart beats wildly; it's as if a thousand pincers were tearing all your fibers and nerves apart at once. My very entrails contracted in terror, and seemed ready to escape through my throat every time the lash fell. My lungs still burn when I think of it, and my heart will suddenly contract as if it would send the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... as occasion might require; and drew out a little phial of balsam, with which he rubbed humpback's neck a long time; then he took out of his case a neat iron instrument, which he put betwixt his teeth, and after he had opened his mouth, he thrust down his throat a pair of small pincers, with which he took out a bit of fish and bone, which he shewed to all the people. Immediately humpback sneezed, stretched forth his arms and feet, opened his eyes, and shewed several ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him—first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers—red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The true ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a giant wood-beetle two inches long. Its two battling pincers were jet black, and curved like hooks of iron. It was a rich brown in colour and in the sunlight its metallic armour shone in a dazzling splendour. Neewa, squatted flat on his belly, eyed it with a swiftly beating heart. The beetle was not more than a foot away, ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... that Fcrgus has just related, when he did another deed. When Culann the smith served a feast to Conchobar, Culann said that it was not a multitude that should be brought to him, for the preparation which he had made was not from land or country, but from the fruit of his two hands and his pincers. Then Conchobar went, and fifty chariots with him, of those who were noblest and most eminent of the heroes. Now Conchobar visited then his play-field. It was always his custom to visit and revisit ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... commemoration of a visitation of the Plague in 1669, when the country people brought their produce and left it outside the gate to be taken in by the city dwellers, who deposited the money for the goods in bowls of vinegar, whence it was abstracted by pincers, to avoid infection. The stone on which the exchanges were made is incorporated in ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... mortal sin and requiring purification, combined (p. 116) with the characteristic German conception of him as a wild animal who has to be tamed. His reformation was accomplished by the use of planes, augers, saws, pincers and other instruments suitable for removing horns, tusks and claws from a dangerous animal, and the Deposition, or "modus deponendi cornua iis qui in numerum studiosorum co-optari volunt," became a recognised University ceremony. The statutes attempt to check it, e.g. at ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... internodes of the stem are sensitive to a touch. When a petiole of this species clasps a stick, it draws the base of the internode against it; and then the internode itself bends towards the stick, which is caught between the stem and the petiole as by a pair of pincers. The internode afterwards straightens itself, excepting the part in actual contact with the stick. Young internodes alone are sensitive, and these are sensitive on all sides along their whole length. I made fifteen ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... action to the word, he closed the fatal pincers, and nipped away the ends of the offending tusks, it is to be hoped without causing him any great pain. But although poor Jacko probably did not suffer much, his rage knew no bounds; and no sooner was the canvas unfolded, than he sprang towards ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... brought up a coil of wire, some string, a file, a pair of pincers, and so many different articles that Bertie laughingly inquired if he was a ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... is rather a family-dish than a company one; the bones cannot be well picked without the help of alive pincers. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... imagine or the tongue relate; a single one of which was sufficient to make the hair stand erect, the blood to freeze, the flesh to melt, the bones to drop from their places—yea, the spirit to faint. What is empaling or sawing men alive, tearing off the flesh piecemeal with iron pincers, or broiling the flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth, compared with one of these? Mere pastime! There were a hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse cries, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of the finely powdered substance with two parts of soda (free from potassa), and one part of borax. Fuse the mixture upon charcoal in the oxidation flame to a clear, transparent bead. This is to be exposed again with the pincers to the oxidation flame, to burn off the adhering coal particles. Then pulverize and dissolve in hydrochloric acid to separate the silica; evaporate to dryness, dissolve the residue in water, with the admixture of ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... the emissaries had been punished with relentless severity. A man named Hawkins had been racked for attempting to borrow money for the queen from the great London merchant, Sir Thomas Cook. A shoemaker had been tortured to death with red-hot pincers for abetting her correspondence with her allies. Various persons had been racked for similar offences; but the energy of Margaret and the zeal of her adherents were still ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dark, and I could hardly see the great pyramid; when there came a heavy murmuring sound in the air; and a horned beetle, with terrible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a blow like the beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and waved its pincers at me: and its fore claws became strong arms, and hands; one grasping real iron pincers, and the other a huge hammer; and it had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... found. This gave evidence that a blacksmith once plied his trade only a few yards west of the ancient brick church. Many blacksmiths worked at Jamestown (there was one among the first group of settlers). In the Jamestown collection are many tools which they left behind, including pliers, pincers, chisels, punches, hammers, ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... publicly burned in the Square of Sant' Eligio, after suffering all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century torture, which continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged intention of inducing them to denounce any further accomplices. But though they writhed and fainted under the pincers of the executioners, they confessed nothing. Indeed, they preserved a silence which left the people amazed, for the people lacked the explanation. The Grand Justiciary, Hugh des Baux, had seen to it ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... mysophobia will wash the hands after touching any object, and will, so far as possible, avoid touching objects which he thinks may possibly convey infection. Some use tissue paper to turn the door-knob, some extract coins from the pocket-book with pincers. I have seen a lady in a public conveyance carefully open a piece of paper containing her fare, pour the money into the conductor's hand, carefully fold up the paper so that she should not touch the inside, and afterwards drop it from the tips of her fingers into ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Fig. 56. Wooden pincers, kept closed by a spiral brass spring, with a hole (.14 inch in diameter and .6 inch in depth) bored through the narrow closed part, through which a radicle of a bean was allowed to grow. Temp. 50o ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... drawn back, and revealed a strange assortment of those implements by which man, worse than the beast of the field, has sinned against his fellow. There were the rack, the brazier with its red-hot pincers, the thumbscrew, and, in short, instruments—happily unknown now—in the greatest variety; all intended to wring the truth from crime, or worse, the self-condemning falsehood from the lips ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... pincers, are made expressly for the purpose of wrenching the scales from the cones, so that the seeds ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers—these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... dragging her treasure after her, never leaving it, day or night, sleeping or waking, and defending it with a courage that strikes the beholder with awe. If I try to take the bag from her, she presses it to her breast in despair, hangs on to my pincers, bites them with her poison-fangs. I can hear the daggers grating on the steel. No, she would not allow herself to be robbed of the wallet with impunity, if my fingers were not supplied ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... seems they don't consider the climate but the geographical position.... Well, an hour later, in the darkness, a huge ferry-boat of the shape of a barge comes into sight with huge oars that look like the pincers of a crab. The ferry-men are a rowdy set, for the most part exiles banished here by the verdict of society for their vicious life. They use insufferably bad language, shout, and ask for money for vodka.... The ferrying across takes a ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... "Follow the example of Nick's Oriental friend in front of us. He doesn't look as if red-hot pincers would make ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... trace the note," the colonel muttered, as he strode away from the station. "That handsome tiger-cat has laid her claw on it, I am certain. But she won't confess; red-hot pincers would not drag a secret from her, if she meant to keep it. I doubt if she will even betray herself by a blush. Poor Constance! What chance had she against such a Machiavel in petticoats? I am bad at ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and one end of it presented to the cylinders of the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled out to three or four times its original size. A sooty workman grasps the opposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, and returns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the opposite side. In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into an enormous length, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... my nails again until I have enthroned her sovereign lady of me, and of you all, and of this our humane Commonwealth. By golden Venus and her son, by Mars armipotent powerless in such toils, and by Vulcan in chains too cunning for his pincers; by Saints Ovid and Sappho, the Chian, the Mantuan, and the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... had their story written by the articles that they contained when they were found. Thus, when there were discovered in a suite of rooms opening on the Street of Herculaneum, certain levers one of which ended in the foot of a pig, along with hammers, pincers, iron rings, a wagon-spring, the felloe of a wheel, one could say without being too bold that there had been the shop of a wagon-maker or blacksmith. The forge occupied only one apartment, behind which opened a bath-room and a store-room. Not far from there a pottery is indicated ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... more tryall of him to make him confesse, hee was commaunded to have a most straunge torment, which was done in this manner following: His nailes upon all his fingers were riven and pulled off with an instrument called in Scottish a turkas, which in England wee call a payre of pincers, and under everie nayle there was thrust in two needles over, even up to the heads; at all which tormentes notwithstanding the Doctor never shronke anie whit, neither woulde he then confesse it the sooner ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... filled it with water and placed it on an oil-stove that stood in the center of the room. He looked questioningly about the four walls, discovered a cleverly contrived tool-box beneath the cupboard shelves, sorted out a pair of pincers and bits of iron, laying the latter in a row over the oil blaze. He took down a can of condensed milk, poured a spoonful of the thick stuff into a cup of water and made room for it near the bits ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... a long piece of pasteboard and wrote as the girls dictated. One could buy anything one wanted, Bessie explained; bread and butter, eggs, chops, steak, potatoes, canned goods, for which there was ample provision for cooking on the gas-stoves used by the rose-makers to heat their pincers. When the little girl was gone I learned that she was one of the errand-runners, and that this was her ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... tower, again it was frizzed into wings on each side over the ear; in short, the girl had to appear in the most ridiculous head-dresses, such as no one had ever worn, and which required unsparing use of tongs, pincers, brushes, and pomade. Athalie pretended to do this out of affection for her cousin, and the poor child had no idea how she was ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... was a scuffle below him in the dark. One of the rats squeaked a little, acknowledging receipt of a crab's pincers closed upon him, or her. Followed the sounds of some scuttering, confusion, and the horrible slide and scrape of horny shells upon stone. Then silence, and the skua knew that, in that wonderful way they have, the crabs, at any rate, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... change of the awnings could be effected, should the weather require any change in their position, while the addition of a staff enabled such man likewise to act as a constable. There were also placed, on each side of the platform, along the whole range of it, men provided with pincers, hammers, &c., to repair any damage that might happen to the platform, or whatever was calculated to impede the progress of the procession, and its attendant ceremonies. These men were also supplied with a like livery, with staves ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... I fear? I never told a lie, Kind have I been to father and to mother, I never turn'd my back upon a foe. I slew my people's enemies— Why should I fear to die? Let the flame be kindled round me, Let them tear my flesh with pincers, Probe me with a burning arrow, I can teach a coward Mingo How a valiant man ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... have put me to the torture and forced me to say who I was, and where my mistress was in hiding. I hope if they had, that I should have stood out; but none can say what he will do when he has red-hot pincers taking bits out of his flesh, and his nails, perhaps, being torn out at the roots. So even if I could not have swam a stroke I should ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... frank looking, and a man of few words. As soon as he was in bed, Dr. Duchesne sent for a barber to shave him, as his bushy whiskers had been ravaged by a bullet that had lodged itself in the salivary gland, carrying with it hair and flesh into the wound. The surgeon took up his pincers to extract the pieces of flesh which had stopped up the opening of the wound. He then had to take some very fine pincers to extract the hairs which had been forced in. When the barber laid his razor very gently near the wound, the unfortunate man turned livid ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt |
