"Tongs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is beautiful; one apart from all the others." The men crowded together under the kotatsu—"More ice! More ice! The hibachi grows warm." Laughing O'Kiku brought the necessary supply with the tongs, blew it into ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... market basket, a fish bag with a skewer through the top, and a small japanese basket, with a lid which was kept in place by the poker and tongs ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... Gerald's red coals with the tongs inside his lantern, and he started back to the castle. He had gone only a few steps, though, when he saw that the coals had turned cold and gray, so he had to throw them beside the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... blow; In hissing flames huge silver bars are roll'd, And stubborn brass, and tin, and solid gold; Before, deep fix'd, the eternal anvils stand; The ponderous hammer loads his better hand, His left with tongs turns the vex'd metal round, And thick, strong strokes, the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... boys a-shouting to have their horses shod. Maybe you think they didn't have some fun with Sam'l. But Sam'l sat there, and sat there, and sat there, and after a while the old man pulled out his dinner-pail. Sam'l never opened his mouth. First thing you know, snip went the tongs." Mr. Lincoln turned gravely around. "What do you reckon Sam'l ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ride over and spend Sunday with her, my way being across country to one of the fords on the Schuylkill, or out from town by the Ridge or the Germantown highroad. The ride was long, but, with my saddle-bags and Lucy, a new mare my aunt had raised and given me, and clad in overalls, which we called tongs, I cared little for the mud, and often enough stopped to assist a chaise out of the deep holes, which made ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... The upper classes have no call to practise economy in such matters, and he is no doubt used to take his tea very strong. I think Mr Sharnall's teapot is the best, and I will get out the silver sugar-tongs and one of the spoons ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... is the best and largest house ever built on earth, and is within and without like solid gold. This place is called Gladsheim. Then they built another hall as a home for the goddesses, which also is a very beautiful mansion, and is called Vingolf. Thereupon they built a forge; made hammer, tongs, anvil, and with these all other tools. Afterward they worked in iron, stone and wood, and especially in that metal which is called gold. All their household wares were of gold. That age was called the golden ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... forenenst 'em like three images, so stiff an' so sthraight, an' never spakin' a word. I'm afeard it's here they're comin.' An' I give ye my word she has a child on her back, tied to a boord; no wondher for 'em to be as stiff as a tongs whin they grows up, since the babies is ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the stockings, and in the morning she was up the first of anybody and went and felt them, and found hers all lumpy with packages of candy, and oranges and grapes, and pocket-books and rubber balls, and all kinds of small presents, and her big brother's with nothing but the tongs in them, and her young lady sister's with a new silk umbrella, and her papa's and mamma's with potatoes and pieces of coal wrapped up in tissue-paper, just as they always had every Christmas. Then she waited around ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... tale fresh in his mind, he struck match after match and peered about the cellar. Against the opposite wall he noticed a stick with curved tongs on one end of it, manipulated by a thin metal bar running to the other end. It was one of those handy implements used to lift cans down from high shelves. It stood among other articles, a rake, an old broom, but the deft little mechanical hand on the end of it was bright and ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... pleasant dreams, very pleasant indeed. But suddenly they changed. A terrible monster was chasing him. It had great red eyes as big as saucers, and sparks of fire flew from its mouth. It had great claws as big as ice tongs, and it roared like a lion. In his dream Farmer Brown's boy was running with all his might. Then he tripped and fell, and somehow he couldn't get up again. The terrible monster came nearer and nearer. Farmer Brown's boy tried to scream and couldn't. He was so frightened ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... of long home-made cigars. 'Candela!' Mine host invokes fire, and a little mulatto girl, upon whom it devolves to provide it, presents each smoker with a lump of red-hot charcoal in the clutches of a lengthy pair of tongs. Daylight is appearing, and warns us that we must be ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... tried the very primitive method used by the Indians before they had kettles in which to make sugar. Several large, nearly round stones were washed clean, then heated very hot in the fire. With improvised tongs they were then lifted into a large keg of cold sap. As this operation was constantly repeated, the sap was ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... requires two persons to do; but Zorzi had tricks of his own, and the pontil supported itself on a board while he cracked the pear from the blow-pipe with a wet iron, as well as if a boy had held it in place for him; and then heating and reheating the piece, he fashioned it and cut it with tongs and shears, rolling the pontil on the flat arms of his stool with his left hand, and modelling the glass with his right, till at last he let it cool to its natural colour, holding it straight downward, and then swinging it slowly, so that it ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... new-made honey smells. So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat, When with huge strokes the stubborn wedge they beat, And all the unshapen thunderbolt complete; Alternately their hammers rise and fall; Whilst griping tongs turn round the glowing ball. With puffing bellows some the flames increase, And some in waters dip the hissing mass; 220 Their beaten anvils dreadfully resound, And AEtna shakes all o'er, and thunders under-ground. Thus, if ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... could not keep his hands for a moment from the fire-irons. Perhaps he might be justified if he said that they had been very much troubled of late in that House by gentlemen who could not keep their fingers from poker and tongs. But there had now fallen upon them a trouble of a nature much more serious in its effects than any that had come or could come from would-be reformers. A spirit of personal ambition, a wretched thirst for office, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... John, for they could not but think how it would sound in folks' ears when they heard how the brethren of Fountain Abbey scampered away from a strolling friar, like the Ugly One, when the blessed Saint Dunstan loosed his nose from the red-hot tongs where he had held it fast; but when they had crossed the crest of the hill and the inn was lost to sight, quoth the fat Brother to the thin Brother, "Brother Ambrose, had we ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... fire grew larger, the heap of ashes rose higher and higher—a thick bed of blackened leaves among which ran millions of sparks. But it was a long, a never-ending task; for when several pages were thrown on at a time, they would not burn; it was necessary to move them and turn them over with the tongs; the best way was to stir them up and then wait until they were in a blaze, before adding more. The women soon grew skilful at their task, and the work ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... inflammation,' returned Mr. Bounderby. 'For years, ma'am, I was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs.' ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... her boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags hanging from her heels,—a profoundly accurate type of English national and political life. Your hair in curlpapers— borrowing tongs from every foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich ostentatiously wearing coral about the bare neck; and the poor—cold as ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... talk my mind to him? He'd never had an outside view of himself for years, and I resolved to stand up to him. We went at it hammer and tongs! It became clear that he supposed me to be a Socialist, a zealous, embittered hater of all ownership—and also an educated man of the vilest, most pretentiously superior description. His principal grievance was that I thought I ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... maid stepped forth and such a vision! She had curled her red hair on a pair of old-fashioned tongs. The curling irons were but a quarter of an inch in diameter and they were heated by thrusting them into the living embers of the kitchen fire. When Sary drew the comb through her scanty tresses they ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... earthworks—what was the good of all this heroic courage in the face of Marshal Nogi's relentless calculations? He was overjoyed to see regiment after regiment storm towards him, while from his tent he gave directions for the sharp tongs of the Japanese flanks to close in the rear of ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... its uses and abuses. The humorist and satirist lost no opportunity of deriding the new fashion and its followers. The tobacco merchant was an important person in London of James the First's time—with his Winchester pipes, his maple cutting-blocks, his juniper-wood charcoal fires, and his silver tongs with which to hand the hot charcoal to his customers, although he was shrewdly suspected of adulterating the precious weed with sack lees and oil. It was his custom to wash the tobacco in muscadel and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... "The curse of Cromwell on me, if I wad hae wished better sport than to see cousin Nicol Jarvie singe Iverach's plaid, like a sheep's head between a pair of tongs. But my cousin Jarvie," he added, more gravely, "has some gentleman's bluid in his veins, although he has been unhappily bred up to a peaceful and mechanical craft, which could not but blunt any pretty man's spirit.—Ye may estimate the reason why I could not receive you at the Clachan ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the sweet soul herself," responded Nancy. "She wrote me a letter which would have put another girl in such a rage that she would never have touched any one of you again with a pair of tongs. But that's not Nancy King. For when Nancy loves a person, she loves that person through thick and thin, through weal and woe. I came to-day to try to find one of you dear girls. I have found you. What is the matter with you, Paulie? You do ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... solemn responsibility of preaching a pure gospel to a dying empire. "Such men think of nothing but their dress; they use perfumes freely, and see that there are no creases in their leather shoes. Their curling hair shows traces of the tongs; their fingers glisten with rings; they walk on tiptoe across a damp road, not to splash their feet. When you see men acting that way, think of them rather as bridegrooms than as clergymen. If he sees a pillow that takes his fancy, or an elegant table-cover, or, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... hand into the breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, and a handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called Negro-head. Having filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again, as if his pocket were a drawer. Then, he took a live coal from the fire with the tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned round on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and went through his favorite action of holding out both ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... took up her position in an elm tree just outside the churchyard, where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being at a great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not to lose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattling fire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by the clatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in the church, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noise became so uproarious that the clerk presently, at a sign from ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... half a dozen sit comfortably round a huge wheel which rests on an anvil, using it as a lunch table. Near Canal Street two men are loading ice into a yellow refrigerator car, and their practiced motions are pleasant to watch. One stands in the wagon and swings the big blocks upward with his tongs. The other, on the wagon roof, seizes the piece deftly and drops it through a trap on top of the car. The blocks of ice flash and shimmer as they pass through the sunshine. In Jim O'Dea's blacksmith shop, near Broome ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the ancient cistern from examination; yet there were other influences to the same end. Its vastness was a deterrent. A thorough survey required organization and expensive means, such as torches, boats, fishing tongs and drag-nets; and why scour it at all, if not thoroughly and over every inch? Well, well—such was the decision—the trouble is great, and the uncertainty greater. Another class was restrained by a sentiment possibly the oldest and most general amongst men; that which casts a spell ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the window on horseback, and with a heavy sigh Mrs. Murray dropped her head on her hand, compressing her lips, and toying abstractedly with the sugar-tongs. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loth, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each other "hammer and tongs" in a lively ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... variance with her words Mrs. Terriberry began to manipulate a pair of curling tongs which had been heating ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... lay snug all this while, by that time perceiving the rout and hurlyburly, set open the doors of his sow and sallied out with his merry Greeks, some of them armed with iron spits, others with andirons, racks, fire-shovels, frying-pans, kettles, grid-irons, oven forks, tongs, dripping pans, brooms, iron pots, mortars, pestles, all in battle array, like so many housebreakers, hallooing and roaring out all together most frightfully, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan. Thus shouting and hooting they fought like dragons, and charged through the Pattipans and Sausages. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... at a table afterwards, however, and she had to pour coffee for me, because she was doing that kind office for the rest; and as the sugar tongs had been forgotten, she popped me in a lump of sugar with her own fingers before she stopped to think. Then, she looked as if she would have liked to fish it out again, but, being softer than her heart, it had melted, and I got it ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... spade, dropped the red apples and the gingerbread into his pocket, and stole softly downstairs. The little feet made no noise as they passed over the thick carpets. Marianne, who was lighting the kitchen fire and clattering the tongs, heard nothing. He reached the front door, and, stretching up, pulled hard at the bolt. It was stiff, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... paper, I merely deferred the dispute until the next edition of my Formal Logic. I cannot expect the account in the Discussions to amuse an unconcerned reader as much as it amused myself: but for a cut-and-thrust, might-and-main, tooth-and-nail, hammer-and-tongs assault, I can particularly recommend it. I never knew, until I read it, how much I should enjoy a thundering onslought on myself, done with racy insolence by a master hand, to whom my good genius had whispered Ita ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into—Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!—Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. And what could I do? As long, particularly, as ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... broke in the centre, and fell, scattering a shower of golden embers over the hearth. Rising quickly, with one of her sprightly movements, Mrs. Fowler reached for a pair of small brass tongs and pushed the broken log back on the andirons. Then she threw some fresh wood on the flames, and resumed her seat with an animated gesture as if the incident had ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the major, "was that spiral gentleman handed to me all hot by friend Mark, who took it sizzling out of the fire with a bit of bent stick held like tongs." ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... there'll be some more—" she said. Percival threw the tongs into the fender, and the dialogue came to an abrupt termination. "She" who gave a little jump was Miss Lisle, of course. But there would be some more—What? The young man revolved the matter gloomily in his mind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... at the door. MAIRE BRUIN opens it and then takes a sod of turf out of the hearth in the tongs and goes out through the door. SHAWN follows her and meets her ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... which contained the portrait of her brave and beautiful lover—the miniature he had given her on his departure. He turned from the perusal of the letter with a deadly chill at his heart: he crushed it in his hand, and threw it on the blazing logs upon the hearth, holding it down with the tongs until every fiery spark had disappeared, then watched the blackened flakes as they flew one by one up the chimney; and when the last had disappeared he dashed the tears from his eyes, and, to the great surprise and consternation of Dulac, ordered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... having lived in Montana ever sence he was five years old, and not having sighted salt water in all that time, he don't know but what there IS such critters as "Labrador mack'rel," and he goes at 'em, hammer and tongs. When we come ashore we had eighteen dogfish, four sculpin and a skate, and Stumpton was the happiest loon in Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cooking one of them "mack'rel" with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn't steered him ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... were hauled out to the works and served their time. When they got out they were sights. They weren't strong on sanitation in workhouses in those days. Even their friends shook hands with them with tongs. Think of sixteen proud monarchs of the campus making brick in striped suits, with a cross foreman who used to haul ashes from the college campus lording it over them and tracing their ancestry back through thirty generations of undesirable citizens! Nice, wasn't ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... illness. I had taken the precaution of concealing the key of the case, but I decided to restore the pistol that night after you left. It was more difficult to recover than I anticipated, owing to the depth of the space behind the grate. I had to push back the bedstead and use the tongs before I could reach it. I believe it would have lain there undiscovered for years. There was nothing else that I can recall, except that when I restored the pistol I saw I had left the end of one of my experimental tinder-lighter wicks lying in ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... and tied them with string—of which, of course, there were always plenty of bits in Tom's pockets; I believe if he'd been in a desert island for a year he still would have found bits of string to put in his pockets—to the end of the poker and to the two ends of the tongs. They dangled away beautifully; two succeeded admirably, the third unfortunately was hopelessly burnt. We repeated the operation for another set of slices, which all succeeded, then we spread them with the scraped butter in front of the fire by means of the flat ends of our ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... him with a pair of tongs," spoke Mr. Carlyle, his lips curling again. "If the man goes to his punishment, he goes; but I do not help him ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... been hardened dead hard in water, they were cleaned up bright. A pair of ordinary smiths' tongs was made with jaws of heavy material and to fit nicely all around the outside of the die, leaving a 3/32-in. space when the jaws were closed around the die. The dies being all ready, the tongs were heated red hot, and the dies were ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... sleek-feathered goose: at what time we beheld the whole vicinage of boys and girls, old men, and old women, all the furrows and wrinkles of the latter filled up with malice for the time; the old men armed with prongs, pitch-forks, clubs, and catsticks; the old women with mops, brooms, fire-shovels, tongs, and pokers; and the younger fry with dirt, stones, and brickbats, gathering as they ran like a snowball, in pursuit of the wind-outstripping prowler; all the mongrel curs of the circumjacencies yelp, yelp, yelp, at their ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... mean?" roared the man. "I suppose you mean to infer that I've been carrying on with her. I've not had anything to do with her; I wouldn't touch her with a pair of tongs." He ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... workbench and hung up his hammer and tongs. The varied notes of two or three remote steam-whistles told him that the hour, of the day ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... for a month I have believed myself established, I am always on the eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in the fear of seeing my children suffer ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Gordon. This angered the other boy in the dispute, and he called Gordon a liar. This, according to Gordon's code, was a cause of war. He slapped Ferdy in the mouth, and the next second they were at it hammer-and-tongs. So long as they were on their feet, Ferdy, who knew something of boxing, had much the best of it and punished Gordon severely, until the latter, diving into him, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Baal-Canaan, or Vulcan: for Vulcan was celebrated principally by the Egyptians, and was a King according to Homer, and Reigned in Lemnos; and Cinyras was an inventor of arts, [298] and found out copper in Cyprus, and the smiths hammer, and anvil, and tongs, and laver; and imployed workmen in making armour, and other things of brass and iron, and was the only King celebrated in history for working in metals, and was King of Lemnos, and the husband of Venus; all which are the characters of Vulcan: ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession halted, and a champion of morality accused the broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had committed and for which he was now about ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Micky and me on a night patrol, Having to hide in a fizz-bang hole; And sure I thought I was worse than dead Wi' them crump-crumps hustlin' over me head. Sure I thought 'twas the dirty spot, Hammer and tongs till the air was hot. And mind you, water up to your knees. And cold! A monkey of brass would freeze. And if we ventured our noses out A "typewriter" clattered its pills about. The field of glory! Well, I don't think! I'd sooner be safe and snug ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... storeroom," suggested Dunk, as they neared it. They were rather nervous, in spite of the fact that their forces outnumbered the enemy three to one. With shovel, tongs and poker held in readiness, they advanced. The door of the big closet was closed, and, just as Andy was about to put his hand on the knob, the portal swung open, and out ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... presence of a dozen persons, this man said to his wife: "Caroline, hand me the tongs, there's a love." It is nothing, and yet everything. It ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... long they were at it hammer and tongs, roaring and grunting to the music of the bells on their necks; wrestling and struggling, using their great long necks as flails, now one down on his knees and almost turned over, and now the other, taking every opportunity of doing what damage they could with their powerful jaws, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Puritans ever lounged; two long forms and a dozen stools of various heights, with green or embroidered cushions, upon which to sit while at the Governor's board; and seven chairs, gay with needlework covers, to draw around his fireplace with its shining paraphernalia of various sized andirons, tongs, and bellows. The low, heavy-raftered room with these plentiful seats, the tables with their Turkey covers, the picturesque cupboard with its rich cloth, and its display of the Governor's silver plate, all aglow with the light of a ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... living! I never have to look for a single thing, not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned it once, and the next day Mademoiselle gave me a very pretty pair, also those nice tongs you see me mend the ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... with an after-dinner cup of tea, which she had brought into the drawing-room, and in putting the second lump of sugar into his saucer she paused again, thoughtfully, holding the little cube in the tongs. She was rather elaborately dressed for so simple an occasion, and her silken train coiled itself far out over the mossy depth of the moquette carpet; the pale blue satin of the furniture, and the delicate white and gold of the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... hearing our determination, and then longed to have the pulling of certain whiskers (with the tongs, and they should be red-hot); but from that day, and for as many as were left to us, the good soul made more of us than ever. Not that she was at all surprised; dear brave gentlemen who could look for burglars on their ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... been dragged in by a horse, who drew them right up to the wide stone hearth. But we did not use Lord Beaconsfield for this work. For one thing, he would have been too big to get through the door; besides, we were strong, and liked the job. We had two pairs of ice-tongs, and we would put on our rubber boots, and take the tongs, and go out into the snow, and fasten to a log—one at each end—and drag it across Captain Ben's iron door-sill, and lift it in and swing it across the stout andirons with a skill that improved ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... came to a house that took only twenty-five pounds Bill would let him carry it in with the tongs—unless it was one where Bill, a knightly person, chanced to sustain more or less social relations with the bondmaid. And you could chip off pieces of ice to hold in your mouth, or cool your bare feet in the cold wet sawdust; and you ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... seized both poker and tongs in her room, and crept downstairs. Agatha led the way, a candle in hand. They reached the study, and Agatha threw open the door. To her horror the French window was wide open, and a man was on his knees by the cupboard, a lantern on the ground. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... in vain she attempted to proceed; the subject was one in which her heart felt too deep an interest to be discussed without tears. A brief silence ensued, during which Fardorougha moved uneasily on his seat, took the tongs, and mechanically mended the fire, and, peering at his wife with a countenance twitched as if by tic douloureux, stared round the house with a kind of stupid wonder, rose up, then sat instantly down, and in fact exhibited many ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... very day, and tearing it away from the sides, hastened back, and up to the chamber of death, with her prize in her bleeding hands. Stripping a case from a pillow, she threw in the ice—pounded it with the tongs—shook it together, and lifting up her uncle's insensible head, laid the icy pillow under it, and gathered the ends over his forehead, as well as she could. Then she chafed his hands, exclaiming all the time, "Merciful Jesus, pity him! Merciful Jesus, help ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... musket, and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose—a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it—and Benjie took the poker in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any thing out of him by ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... scratching away savagely on each other's hard shells, without doing a great deal of damage, however. But one of them had lost one eye in the fight, and so we seized him and made off, leaving the other to snap his tongs together in anger because he had nobody to pinch. It must be a dreadful thing to want to hurt somebody and ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... determination, but, when the teams had changed places after the kick-off and the last period had begun, she speedily found that victory was not to be her portion. Mr. Robey sent in nearly a new team during that last ten minutes and the substitutes, fresh and eager, went at it hammer-and-tongs. Thacher enlisted fresh material, too, but it couldn't stop the onslaught that soon took the ball down the field to within close scoring distance of her goal. That Brimfield did not add another touchdown was only because her line, overanxious, ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... saddle. The riding-master informed me from time to time that I was getting on, and I knew instinctively when I was coming off; but I must have made some progress, for my instructor became more encouraging. 'Why, when you come here first, Mr. Pulvertoft, sir, you were like a pair o' tongs on a wall, as they say; whereas now—well, you can tell yourself how you are,' he would say; though, even then, I occasionally had reason to regret that I was not on a wall. However, I persevered, inspired by the thought that each fresh horse I crossed (and some were very fresh indeed) represented ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... being probably acquainted by experience with the mode in which her mother was wont to confer her maternal benedictions, slipt out of arm's length with great dexterity and quickness. The hag then started up, and, seizing a pair of old fire-tongs, would have amended her motion, by beating out the brains either of her daughter or Jeanie (she did not seem greatly to care which), when her hand was once more arrested by the man whom they called Frank Levitt, who, seizing her by the shoulder, flung her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... proportion of lead which had been laid by to be buryed in the large Cash. we now scelected the articles to be deposited in this cash which consisted of 2 best falling axes, one auger, a set of plains, some files, blacksmiths bellowses and hammers Stake tongs &c. 1 Keg of flour, 2 Kegs of parched meal, 2 Kegs of Pork, 1 Keg of salt, some chissels, a cooper's Howel, some tin cups, 2 Musquets, 3 brown bear skins, beaver skins, horns of the bighorned anamal, a part of the men's ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops, as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic equaled only by a more terrible coup in ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Podiebrad, it appears, was fond of the river, like a good Bohemian, and would come down to bathe occasionally. To make a clean job of it, he used to get shaved at the same time, possibly hair-cut. One day as the barber held the King's chin and flourished his razor, the knight of the tongs asked his sovereign: "Who is now the most mighty man in this Kingdom of Bohemia?" "Surely thou art," quoth the King. When the shave was over the King demanded: "Who is now the mightiest man in this Kingdom ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... of the bin which he had tasted,) and upon the decision which the Chancellor might come to on a case brought into court on his advice, and which had been argued that afternoon. At last Frankpledge unwittingly fell foul of a favorite crotchet of Mortmain's—and at it they went, hammer and tongs, for nearly twenty minutes, (it had nothing whatever to do with the case they were consulting upon.) In the end, Mortmain of course adhered to his points, and Frankpledge intrenched himself in his books; each slightly yielded to the views of the other on immaterial points, (or what ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... put the child into it, if she found anything in it, then to throw it without fear into the fire. Accordingly at night when she took down the blanket, there fell out of it a great toad, which hopped up and down the hearth, uttering strange cries. A boy caught it, and held it in the fire with the tongs, where it made a horrible noise, and flashed like gunpowder, with a report like that of a pistol. Whereupon the toad was seen no more. The next day a kinswoman of Dunny said she was grievously scorched with the fire, and on going to the house ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... fighting. And [the people of the country,] being in this strait, they caused a chamber to be made all of iron. Now when the chamber was ready, there came there every smith that was in Ireland, and every one who owned tongs and hammer. And they caused coals to be piled up as high as the top of the chamber. And they had the man, and the woman, and the children, served with plenty of meat and drink; but when it was known that they were drunk, they began ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... interested when they had a high tea in the sitting-room. The best old blue china was out, the loaf sugar, and the sugar-tongs that the little girl watched breathlessly lest her mother should lose the lump of sugar before it ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. Huge muffs seem to have been then the fashion, often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we now should call Japanese sunshades; the perruquier here, too, must have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and curling tongs; the trim abbe in his short cassock, even the truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign of the trade, ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... I were standing by the smithy door, that there came a private coach from Brighton, with its four fresh horses, and its brass-work shining, flying along with such a merry rattle and jingling, that the Champion came running out with a hall-fullered shoe in his tongs to have a look at it. A gentleman in a white coachman's cape—a Corinthian, as we would call him in those days—was driving, and half a dozen of his fellows, laughing and shouting, were on the top behind him. It ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... handles the dolly and hangs on to the rivets while I swat 'em. The pill over by the furnace is the heater; his name is Pafflow, and his job is warming up the rivets. Just before they begin to sizzle he yanks 'em out with the tongs and throws 'em to you. You ketch 'em in the bucket—I hope, and take 'em out with your tongs and put 'em in the rivet-hole, and then Zupnik and me we do the rest. And what do we call you? Miss Webling is no name ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to hand him the tongs, which were standing by the side of the fire. He then held the tongs over the sheet of paper, in a horizontal position, and gently rapped the end of the magnet against them, letting the end project a little ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... assaying—in the assay-house, and watched the gasoline flare and fume in his furnaces to bring the little cupels, with their mass of powdered, weighed, and numbered samples, to a molten state. He took them out with his tongs, watched them cool, and weighed, on the scales that could tell the weight of a lead pencil mark on a sheet of paper, the residue of gold, thus making his computations. He was not pleased with the result. The green lead was not as ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Vidrik Verlandson, The hammer and tongs he bore; And there rode good King Esmer’s sons, All men ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... which he had pinched and scraped to buy would one day go to round the d'Esgrignon estates, and the thought doubled his pleasure. His pride swelled as he sat at his ease in the old armchair; and the building of glowing coals, which he raised with the tongs, sometimes seemed to him to be the old noble house built up again, thanks to his care. He pictured the young Count's prosperity, and told himself that he had done well to live for such an aim. Chesnel was not lacking in intelligence; sheer goodness was not the sole source of his great devotion; he ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... to bring the business to an end, it was because they could no longer remain separate and solitary. Each night, the drowned man visited them, insomnia stretched them on beds of live coal and turned them over with fiery tongs. The state of enervation in which they lived, nightly increased the fever of their blood, which resulted in atrocious hallucinations rising up ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... fortune has allowed to get all his coveted materials and set to work at last in earnest with fire and melting-pot—what he produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get pulvis et cinis—a man at the mercy of the tongs ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... for a fire, except an old pair of tongs, which travels through the house, and is likewise employed to take the meat out of the pot, for want of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... up on Nevada, and cultivated the three ex-miners; mothers ransacked cook-books and old trunks; Ladies' Companions were industriously searched for pleasing patterns; crimping-irons and curling-tongs were extemporized, and the demand for ribbons and trimmings became so great that the storekeeper hurried to the city for a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... now, their tails wagging expectantly, their noses at each of his knees, where they were regaled at regular intervals with choice bits from his plate, the snapping of their solemn jaws expressing their thanks. A second scallop-shell was next lifted from the hearth with the tongs, and deposited sizzling hot on a plate beside the master, the aroma of the oysters filling the room. These having disappeared, as had the former one, together with the waffles and coffee, and the master's appetite being now on the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that the fittings and pipes must be screwed into position. Therefore, "can the fitting on the pipe be placed where it is laid out when this is considered?" must be one of the many questions a plumber should ask himself. Allowance must be made for the chain tongs to swing. Whenever possible, a fitting is made up on the pipe while the pipe is in ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... alone, and were dining in the adjoining room, when a terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death. None dared enter; the minister was sent for, and passed into the room. He emerged, asked for a pair of tongs, and returned, bearing in the tongs A BLOODY GLOVE, and the noise ceased. He always declined to say what he had witnessed. Ministers were exorcists in the last century, and the father of James Thomson, the poet, died suddenly ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... Baris, are excellent blacksmiths, producing a result that would astonish an English workman, considering the rough nature of their tools, which are confined to a hammer, anvil, and tongs; the latter formed of a cleft-stick of green wood, while the two former are stones of various sizes. Their bellows consist of two pots about a foot deep; from the bottom of each is an earthenware pipe about two feet long, the points ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... personal friends to the dining-room door, and they watched the alleged traveler. He had just taken a long, refreshing drink from the finger bowl of his neighbor on the left and was at that moment, trying to scoop up a lump of sugar with the wrong end of the tongs. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.—"What nonsense you are talking, all of you! For heaven's sake, consider what an important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... portion of the side. There are four separate parts in its structure:—1. The door-way, a solid piece of ornamental carpentering, that takes to pieces instantly. 2. The sides, which consist of lengths of wood-work, that shut up on the principle of the contrivance known sometimes as "lazy-tongs," and sometimes as "easy-back scissors:" they tie together and make a circle, beginning and ending with the doorway; a tape is wound round them, as shown in fig. 9, about one-third from their tops. 3. The roof-ribs. The bottom of each of these is tied to the sides of the jourt (A, fig. 10), and its ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... throne of Odin the All-Father, whence he could see everything that happened in the sky or on the earth or in the sea. Next they made a fair house for Queen Frigg and her lovely daughters. Then they built a smithy, with its great hammers, tongs, anvils, and bellows, where the gods could work at their favourite trade, the making of beautiful things out of gold; which they did so well that folk name that time the Golden Age. Afterward, as they had more leisure, they built separate houses for all the AEsir, each more beautiful than the preceding, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Beethoven the piece of sugar, but did not venture on the name. It seemed to her a long name for such a little dog. As she timidly took the sugar from the basin by the aid of the tongs, Lancelot saw how coarse and red her hand was. It gave him the same sense of repugnance and refrigescence as the cold, damp steps. Something he was about to say froze on his lips. He did not look at Mary ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... her poor Brother had been already charmed over head and ears by a gay young baggage of a Countess Orzelska; a very high and airy Countess there; whose history is not to be touched, except upon compulsion, and as if with a pair of tongs,—thrice famous as she once was in this Saxon Court of Beelzebub. She was King August's natural daughter; a French milliner in Warsaw had produced her for him there. In due time, a male of the three hundred and fifty-four, one Rutowski, soldier by profession, whom we shall again hear ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... for months had stood quietly on an old shelf in the store-room, was now taken down and stirred with a stick, and all the toys which Horace whittled out were stained green, and set in the sun to dry. A pair of cheese-tongs, which hung in the back room, a boot-jack, the washing-bench, which was once red,—all became green in a very short time: only the red of the bench had a curious effect, peeping out from its light and ragged coat ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... me and a mackintosh before; very singular to see: over Sussex, down to Pevensey where the Norman Bastard landed; I saw Julius Hare (whose Guesses at Truth you perhaps know), saw Saint Dunstan's stithy and hammer, at Mayfield, and the very tongs with which he took the Devil by the nose;—finally I got home again, a right wearied man; sent my horse off to be sold, as I say; and finished the writing of my Lectures on Heroes. This is all the rustication I have had, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mantelpiece, adorned with vases and festoons of flowers, was of Adam's design, and so also was the dado and the cornice. The walls were painted a pale warm pink. A high brass fender, pierced, surrounded the fireplace, and there were a poker, tongs, and shovel to match, and a small brass scuttle still full of coals. There were ashes in the grate, too, as if the room had only lately been occupied. The boards were bare, but white and well-fitting, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... dark but for the fiery glow of the furnaces which line one end of the place. On these are a number of small pots, filled with red-hot liquid metal; and while we look, a workman lifts one after another, with a pair of long tongs, and pours the glowing gold in streams into ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... rope, and Leonard having tied the packet to it, it was instantly drawn up. Notwithstanding his anxiety to ascertain the fate of Amabel, Mr. Bloundel would not touch the packet until he had guarded against the possibility of being infected by it. Seizing it with a pair of tongs, he plunged it into a pan containing a strong solution of vinegar and sulphur, which he had always in readiness in the chamber, and when thoroughly saturated, laid it in the sun to dry. On first opening the shutter ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the two cadets were at it "hammer and tongs." As they circled around, Codfish put out his foot, trying to trip Fred up. He failed in this, but a moment later Slugger Brown tried the trick with success, and the youngest Rover came down heavily and an instant later Nappy Martell landed on ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... poked the small wood fire with a pair of unnecessarily elaborate gilt tongs, and she nodded, for she remembered how Lord Creedmore had mentioned the child that afternoon. He had hesitated a little, and had then gone on speaking rather hurriedly. She watched the sparks fly upward each time she touched the log, and ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... point-blank at the monster and both shots took effect with a ringing, metallic sound. But they did not halt the Automaton an instant. Locke, reaching the fireplace, seized a pair of old tongs and threw firebrand after firebrand in the path of ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... went to search for the fish, Elton collected a number of clean rounded stones from the beach and placed them in the midst of it. He then half-filled the calabash with water, into which, by means of a cleft stick which served the purpose of tongs, he put the red hot stones, and quickly made the water boil. By the time this was done the men returned with a very respectable sized turtle, which they had caught in a pool, into which he had been unwittingly washed. ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... it had been a mallee scrubber. The calf baaed and butted at Jim, as even the youngest of them will, if they've the wild blood in 'em, and nearly upset him; he was only a bit of a toddler. But Jim picked up a loose leg of a milking-stool, and the two went at it hammer and tongs. I could hardly stand for laughing, till the calf gave him best ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... certain memories to him. In days gone by Elena had been fond of lingering over this fireside. She expended much art and ingenuity in piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... 'Flowers are a bit soft, except roses, which have thorns; but when you meet Jasper and Sapphire and Garnet and Opal and Emerald, I can tell you you 'll have to mind your p's and q's. They won't stand any nonsense; they won't endure any silly speeches, but they 'll just go for you hammer and tongs. They 're boys, every one of them—and—and—we 're expecting ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... passage of time, as he stood frozen to the door-handle, was but the duration of a few brief seconds, and then making a tremendous call on his courage he felt his way to his fireplace, and picked up the poker. The tongs and shovel rattled treacherously, and he hoped that had not been heard, for the essence of his plan (though he had yet no idea what that plan was) must be silence till some awful surprise broke upon them. If only he could summon the police, he could come rushing downstairs with his ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... him some water!" cried Nastasia Philipovna. Then she took the tongs and fished out ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... some which usually haunt the garden, also makes its appearance at night, and pursues its prey along the ceiling. Sometimes an extraordinarily large centipede attempts the same thing, but with less success, and has to be seized with a pair of fire-tongs and thrown into the exterior darkness. Very rarely, an enormous spider appears. This creature seems inoffensive. If captured, it will feign death until certain that it is not watched, when it will run away with surprising ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... was kindled in the forge, and on working the bellows a strong flame was produced. All our tools were composed of coral; two long pieces served as tongs, and another as a hammer. Having heated the iron, Dick knocked it out into a long thin bar, and then placing it on the mass of coral which served as an anvil, cut it with successive sharp blows of his knife into small ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... (beneficent to him) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the whole of the Spectator's culinary music, will the bagpipes be found within benefit of jury law? War to the knife I say, before we'll submit to that. And if the law won't protect us against ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Cicely as a dainty, clinging little maiden who would cajole and coddle Allyn out of his unfriendly moods. Cicely certainly did rouse Allyn from those moods; but it was by no process of feminine cajolery. She went at him, as the phrase is, hammer and tongs. Good-tempered herself, she demanded good temper from him. Failing that, she lectured him roundly. Failing again, she turned her back upon him and left him severely alone, with the result that, in an inconceivably ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... image any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince. Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved "a week under" and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... indifferent to the repulsive fact that if I had fallen in love with the duchess I did not possess a morning suit in which I could reasonably have expected her to touch me with the furthest protended pair of tongs; and I did not see that to remedy this I should have been prepared to wade through seas of other people's blood. Indeed it is this perception which constitutes an aristocracy nowadays. It is the secret of all our governing classes, which ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... in a not unpleasant fuss and excitement, sat down in his dressing-gown before the glass; and while Moore the barber, with tongs, powder, and pomade, repaired the dilapidations of the day, he contemplated his own plump face, not altogether unapprovingly, and thought with a charming anticipation of the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bit of it he'd gi' me, and the ould chap begins bowin' and scrapin', and said something or other about a long tongs.[D] ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... of broad-headed flat metal tongs, one of which is fitted with a solid wedge. The object of this is to permit the free end of a mount held by the tong to be bent over, moistened, applied to the back of the stamp, and pressed down, and the mount can then be released, the stamp lifted, ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... such a place, for it holds for me the wonder of the untoward; as will a strolling Italian plodding past my house at night with his big, silent bear; or the spectacle of the huge, faded red ice-wagon, with powerful horses and rattling chains and tongs, and giants in blue denim atop the crystal; or the strange, copper world that dissolves in the fluid of certain sunsets. And that Wednesday night, a week later, on my way to the "dollar meeting" at Doctor June's, I turned toward the Friendship Carnival with some ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... you much about it," said Phil. "We were on our way to the car when a couple of men suddenly jumped out from a fence corner and went at us hammer and tongs. That's when we got these beauty spots. If we had seen the fellows coming we might not have been hit ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire. Victoria waited on his remarks with ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a whippin' post. His skin looked like a blown bladder arter some of the air had leaked out, kinder wrinkled and rumpled like, and his eye as dim as a lamp that's livin' on a short allowance of ile. He put me in mind of a pair of kitchen tongs, all legs, shaft and head, and no belly; a real gander-gutted lookin' critter, as holler as a bamboo walkin' cane, and twice as yaller. He actilly looked as if he had been picked off a rack at sea, and dragged through a gimlet hole. He was ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the glory of France and his own was savage for war and relentless in the conduct of it, till one day in his obstinate zeal, as he threatened to lay the cathedral city of Treves in ashes, the king, seizing the tongs from the chimney, was about to strike him therewith, and would have struck him, had not Madame de Maintenon, his mistress, interfered and stayed his hand; he died suddenly, to the manifest relief of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... table, was in the habit of preaching. Some had a board placed across their bodies, upon which a whole row of men stood; and as, in this unnatural state of mind, a kind of pleasure is derived from excruciating pain, some too were seen who caused their bosoms to be pinched with tongs, while others, with gowns closed at the feet, stood upon their heads, and remained in that position longer than would have been possible had they been in health. Pinault, the advocate, who belonged to this sect, barked like a dog some ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... but who gave thee the right to calumniate My children of Israel and call them 'a people of unclean lips'?" And Isaiah heard God bid one of the seraphim touch his lips with a live coal as a punishment for having slandered Israel. Though the coal was so hot that the seraph needed tongs to hold the tongs with which he had taken the coal from the altar, the prophet yet escaped unscathed, but he learned the lesson, that it was his duty to defend Israel, not traduce him. Thenceforth the championship of his people was the mainspring of the prophet's activity, and he ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... materials are few and simple; and rude as the results of their labor may appear, it is surprising that they do so well with such imperfect appliances, which usually consist of the following articles: A forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles, molds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, awls, cold-chisels, matrix and die for molding buttons, wooden implement used in grinding buttons, wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and materials for soldering (blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease, wire, and borax), materials for polishing (sand-paper, ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... said St. Clare; "do as you think best. Only I'll make one suggestion: I've seen this child whipped with a poker, knocked down with the shovel or tongs, whichever came handiest, &c.; and, seeing that she is used to that style of operation, I think your whippings will have to be pretty energetic, to make ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his hat on, peeling potatoes with a knife screwed into the wooden socket in his wrist instead of the hook. When he told him what had happened, Captain Cuttle jumped up, put all the money he had, his silver watch, some spoons and a pair of sugar-tongs into his pocket and went back at once with him ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... bad genius here again! Oh no, 'tis the lawyer with an itching palm; and he's come to be scratched. My nails are not long enough. Let me have a pair of red-hot tongs quickly, quickly, and you shall see me act St. Dunstan, and lead the ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... man's confusion, however, when they entered the room, a fire was blazing in the grate. He took up the tongs to hide his confusion, muttering, "It is burning clear now, but it smoked woundily ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... un!" said the Tawdry One, admiringly. "You ain't afraid of catching nothing! Now, I'd have asked what was up before I'd have done that; and I wouldn't touch her with the tongs, nor stay in the room with her was it ever so. You just holler when you want me and I'll come back." And so saying ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... did not realize what he had done. By the time she reached the hearth the paper was already half consumed. She made a snatch at it with the tongs, but a flame sprang up and forestalled her. She had just time to read the words "last Will and Testament of me Har—" before the whole sank into ashes. She turned to her brother with ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... was even more excited than myself; and though she was always reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be composed, I saw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the tablecloth, and the porridge-stick into the fire in place of the tongs. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs—the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... combinations of avid desire and the utter loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and the German squadron were now at it hammer and tongs. Seeing that all hope of escape had been cut off, the German commander turned to face his new foes, determined to give battle to ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... by all who have eyes and the necessary faith. It is believed that he haunts the road-side even when the moon is not shining: consequently, when the crofters have to go out of doors at night, they protect themselves from his spells by carrying with them a blazing peat gripped with tongs. This smokes and sparkles in the darkness and the trow does not like it. It is easy for the electric-lighted citizens of Glasgow and Edinburgh to laugh at the simple folk-lore of fisher and crofter; but no one, however learned and sceptical, can quite escape from the mystic influence of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... fear of that," laughed Rudolf. "I don't want it, I would not touch it with the tongs if ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... matter; but am very sorry to see that my Lord hath thus much forgot his honour, but am resolved not to meddle with it. The play being done, I stole from him and hied home, buying several things at the ironmonger's—dogs, tongs, and shovels—for my wife's closett and the rest of my house, and so home, and thence to my office awhile, and so home to supper and to bed. By my letters from Tangier today I hear that it grows very strong ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... flaming with fire and brimstone...yet nothing at all would he confess, but yelled out with such horrible cries, even as it had been a Divill or some tormented soul in hell...and though he deserved ten times more, yet humane nature might inforce us to pity his distress. After this with tongs and iron pincers made extreme hot in the same furnace, the executioners pinched and seared his breasts, his arms, and thighs and other fleshy parts of his body, cutting out collops of flesh and burned them before his face; afterward into the same wounds ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... what you are doing with the tea?' cried Violet, starting up. He has put in six shellfuls for three people, and a lump of sugar, and now was shutting up the unfortunate teapot without one drop of water!' And gaily driving him away, she held up the sugar-tongs with the lump of sugar in his face, while he laughed and yielded the field, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a brazen lion. Why, my friends, in that place they trimmed their candles with snuffers of gold, and they cut their fruits with knives of gold, and they washed their faces in basins of gold, and they scooped out the ashes with shovels of gold, and they stirred the altar fires with tongs of gold. Gold reflected in the water! Gold flashing from the apparel! Gold blazing in the crown! ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... threw bronze that weareth not into the fire, and tin and precious gold and silver, and next he set on an anvil-stand a great anvil, and took in his hand a sturdy hammer, and in the other he took the tongs. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he got mad at his baby's nurse because she couldn't git the baby to stop crying and he hit her on the head with some fire-tongs and she died. His wife got sick and she sent for me to come and take care of her baby. I sho' didn't want to go and I begged so hard for them not to make me that they sent an older woman who had a baby of her own so she could nurse the ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... pretty well wore himself out by this time, and when he felt those ice-tongs he just stiffened out—an Injun's dead game that-away; he won't make a holler when you hurt him. His squaw was hangin' around with her eyes poppin' out, but we didn't pay no attention ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sat, covered with papers, open law volumes, and red tape; and finally, a tall mantel-piece, on which stood a half-emptied ink bottle—which mantel-piece rose over a wide fire-place, surrounded with a low iron fender, on which a dislocated pair of tongs were exposed in grim resignation to the evils ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... have it out with the good man at once. The house-servants gathered on the stair, because it was a main interest with them to know which of these two was the better horse; and for the space of two hours they were heard to go at the matter, hammer and tongs. Montroymont alleged he was at the end of possibilities; it was no longer within his power to pay the annual rents; she had served him basely by keeping conventicles while he lay in prison for her sake; his friends were weary, and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Austin, reaching for the tongs and laying a log of white birch across the coals; "and that is Gerald's fondness for pretty girls. . . . Not that it isn't all right, too, but I hope he isn't going to involve himself—hang a millstone around his neck before he can see his way clear to some promise ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Miss Rachel!" says I. "And your father, sir, the Colonel's executor! Why, I would have laid any bet you like, Mr. Franklin, that your father wouldn't have touched the Colonel with a pair of tongs!" ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... set me and Mother—me a-twistin' at the prongs Of a green scrub-ellum forestick with a vicious pair of tongs, And Mother sayin', "DAVID! DAVID!" in a' undertone, As though she thought that I ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley |
