"Wedge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the edges of their heads are in contact, the external diameter of the tube exceeds the distance apart of the two calibrating points by more than one millimeter. But such distance apart is increased within certain limits by inserting between the buttons a German silver wedge, L, carried by a rod, t, which traverses the entire tube, and which is maneuvered by a head, B, fixed to its extremity. This rod carries a small screw, v, whose head slides in a groove, r, in the tube, so as to limit the travel of the wedge and prevent its rotation. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... the wedge, as the homely saying has it—the end which we introduce almost every day of our lives, little suspecting to ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... compositors a "turtle," and this constitutes its bed and chase. The column-rules run parallel with the shaft of the cylinder, and are consequently straight, while the head, advertising, and dash-rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The column-rules are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part directed toward the axis of the cylinder, so as to bind the type securely, and at the same time to keep the ink from collecting between the types and the rules. They are held down ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... what's the procedure? How are you going to form a flying-wedge and buck-centre? It's getting late. She'll be waiting at the church at eleven. With ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... a position of vantage to the north of the bridge, having both streams between his army and the town. He had arrayed his troops in a compact mass in the form of a wedge or triangle, whose narrower point was opposite to the roadway of the bridge. The men occupying the outer lines stood with their large shields locked together so closely that they made a strong rampart or shield fortress, behind which the archers and spearmen might remain in safety while assailing ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... Island, after the Master of the Investigator. Neptune Isles, "for they seemed inaccessible to men." Thorny Passage, from the dangerous rocks. Cape Catastrophe, where the accident occurred. Taylor's Island, after a midshipman drowned in the accident. Wedge Island, "from its shape." Gambier Isles, after Admiral Lord Gambier. Memory Cove, in memory of the accident. Cape Donington, after Flinders' birthplace. Port Lincoln, after the chief town in Flinders' ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... independence and complete sovereignty over their territory were at various times utilized by adventurers from France, England, and Spain as a means of promoting the designs of these powers. [Footnote: Am. Hist. Rev., X., 249.] Jackson drove a wedge between the Indian confederacies of this region by his victories in the War of 1812 and the cessions which followed. [Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chaps, ii., xvii.] Although, in 1821, a large belt of territory between the Ocmulgee and Flint rivers was ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Grant dashed across the hard-fought field and up the formidable ridge, issuing orders for securing all that had been gained. An opening wedge had now been inserted in Chattanooga's prison doors, and by midnight the silent captain had thrown his whole weight against them and they fell. Then calmly turning his attention to Burnside, he ordered him to hold his position at every hazard until he could come to the rescue and, ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... sulphuric acid and water. It may be said that the classification was not sufficiently careful, and that the remedies were ill chosen; but it is a hard thing to initiate any reform, and it was necessary to familiarise the public mind with the principle, by inserting the thin end of the wedge first: it is not therefore to be wondered at that among so practical a people there should still be some room for improvement. The mass of the nation are well pleased with existing arrangements, and believe that their treatment of criminals leaves little or nothing to be desired; ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... thunderstorm, and afterwards slow and gentle rain, and thus make it thoroughly productive.' Elsewhere he says: 'A willow-branch may be cut with a knife and bent with a finger, but for a great and gnarled oak we must use an ax and a wedge'; and again: 'If my teeth had been less sharp, the Pope would have been more voracious.' 'Of what use is salt,' he exclaims in another passage, 'if it do not bite the tongue? or the blade of a sword unless it be sharp enough to cut? Does not the prophet say, "Cursed ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... that sometimes it was almost impossible to wedge one's way through. The china plates, stacked high, fairly melted away, as did the dolls piled on the counters. Mrs. Brandeis imported her china and dolls, and no store in Winnebago, not even Gerretson's big department store, could ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... motive, but without it the rich variety would not hold together. Roughly speaking the whole of this dark frame of tones from the accented point of the trees at the top to the mass of the rock on the left, may be said to gradate away into the distance; cut into by the wedge-shaped middle tone of the hills leading ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... This was having each leg fastened between two planks and drawn together in an iron ring, after which wedges were driven in between the middle planks; the ordinary question was with four wedges, the extraordinary with eight. At the third wedge Lachaussee said he was ready to speak; so the question was stopped, and he was carried into the choir of the chapel stretched on a mattress, where, in a weak voice—for he could hardly speak—he begged for half an hour to recover ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... weary weeks, thro' rock and clay, Along this mountain's edge The Frost hath wrought both night and day, Wedge driving after wedge. Look up, and think, above your head What trouble surely will be bred; Last night I heard a crash—'tis true, The splinters took another road— I see them yonder—what a load For such a Thing ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... end of the month, is so strong that forest trees are duped, and are ready to do their part towards a green Yule if only the midday warmth will linger on to those deadly small hours of the morning, when hoarfrost gets the thin end of its wedge into the almanack, and sleepers go the length of coming out of bed for something to put over their feet, and end by putting it over most of their total. From ten till five, at least, the last swallows seem to be reconsidering their departure, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the bark; but a bend of the tree, on which Blonay rested, prevented him. He then selected from some fallen limbs one of the largest, which he carried to the tree and thrust into the hollow, trying to wedge it between the inner knobs on which the feet of the half-breed evidently were placed. But Blonay soon became aware of his design, and opposed it with a desperate effort. Baffled for a long time by his enemy, Humphries became enraged, and, seizing upon a jagged knot of ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... modern Finns or Turks, and which scholars have now agreed to call Sumerian. The Sumerians had been the builders of the cities, the reclaimers of the marshy plain, the inventors of the picture-writing which developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters, and the pioneers of a culture which profoundly affected the whole of western Asia. The Semites entered upon the inheritance, adopting, modifying, and improving upon it. The Babylonian civilisation, with which we are best acquainted, was the result ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... "aye." She had heard the roll called many times, she knew there were fourteen M's, and that she would have time to get out of the gallery if she were quick about it. She made so violent an effort to control the excitement raging within her that her brain ached as if a wedge had been driven through it. She whispered hurriedly to Mary Montgomery, who was leaning breathlessly over the rail and did not hear her, then made her way up to the door as rapidly as she could; even the steps were set ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... without a moon. The stars were so thickly spread, so clear and hot, that there was light enough for the lads to see each other's faces, the rough shapes of each other. It was light enough to notice how the square belfry of San Zeno cut a wedge of black into the spangled blue vault. Sheer through the Milky Way it ploughed a broad furrow, which ended in a ragged edge. You would never have seen that if it had not ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... manner, the tomb-like outer door of the solicitor's chambers (which is also of an intense black) stands in dark ambush, half open, and half shut, all day. The solicitor's apartments are three in number; consisting of a slice, a cell, and a wedge. The slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell is occupied by the principal, and the wedge is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets from the country, a washing-stand, and a model of a patent Ship's Caboose which ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... maybe, by some great general. That central point from which the arm had sprung and which had been due north had sidled over to the northwest; the low-flung line along the horizon had taken on the shape of a long wedge pointing east; farther west it, too, looked more massive now—more like a rather solid wall. And all those soldier-clouds fell into a fan-shaped formation—into lines radiating from that common central point in the northwest. This arrangement I have for ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... where there was a mean chance to get something more substantial to eat. I went in with the crowd, helter skelter; wrestled my way to a long counter, got a cup of tea which I swallowed scalding hot, and, after a hard struggle for it, carried a wedge of custard pie off with the palm of my hand for a plate, and skivered back to the cars, nibbling it as I ran; for the bell was ringing and the conductor yelling "all aboard!" so loud that half the passengers went back coughing and choking, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... more beauties than they really possess. Well, the first business of an artist, then, is to make himself a reputation, and a reputation is not made by one or two successes. A first success, be it ever so great, and achieved under ever so favourable circumstances, is at best but the thin end of the wedge which has been got in, but which has to be driven home with much vigour and perseverance before the work is done. "Art is a fight, not a pleasure-trip," said the French painter Millet, one who had learnt the lesson in the severe school of experience. Unfortunately for Chopin, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... see that the critics would have been better satisfied with this. But, on the principle of the little elephants sacrificing themselves in the passage of a river, Mr. Fields and I determined to start the smallest word first, and thus to drive a gentle wedge into the close chasm of the public favor. Sensitive, however, as I am, dear Ingham, to your criticism, I will at the earliest opportunity consult with him as to a return to the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... symmetrical—light as the feet of figures painted on Greek vases—and the step is always taken toes first; indeed, with geta it could be taken no other way, for the heel touches neither the geta nor the ground, and the foot is tilted forward by the wedge-shaped wooden sole. Merely to stand upon a pair of geta is difficult for one unaccustomed to their use, yet you see Japanese children running at full speed in geta with soles at least three inches ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... him too much. But the food was too much. Unbelieving, he watched Petkoff polish off a large red apple, a pear and a small wedge of white, creamy-looking cheese at the end of the towering meal. Her Majesty was staring, too, in a very polite manner. Lou simply looked glassy-eyed and overstuffed. Malone felt a good deal of ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... against the azure sky. To-day, sign, as she noted, of fine weather, omen, as she trusted, of good fortune, the smoke of its everlasting burnings towered up and up into the translucent atmosphere, and then drifted away—a gigantic, wedge-shaped pennon—towards Capri and the open sea. And, beholding these things, out of simple, physical well-being, fulness of bread, conviction of her own undiminished beauty, and the merry devilry begotten of these, she fell to projecting a second, a companion, one-act drama founded ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... plant from Mexico, very distinct from the tuberous-rooted species before described. Stalk about one foot in height, smooth and branching; leaves four together, the leaflets wedge-shaped, pale yellowish-green, the upper surface marked by two brownish lines or stains in the form of two sides of a triangle; flowers terminal, of a carmine-rose or pink-red color, stained with green at the base of the petals. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... slightly from the one figured in the most ancient of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and is really the same as that which was used in Gaul under the Romans. Indeed, it has not the improvements that the Romans introduced. Two poles forming an obtuse angle is the rough shape of it. The wedge-like share is a continuation of the pole that is held by the ploughman. Often on the causses, where loose stones are inseparably mixed with the soil, the entire plough is ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the ladder, so that it dropped into the shaft and on to the broken reef below. He clambered through on to the ladder, drew the loose scrub ferns into their places, and fitted into the crevice the wedge-shaped stone, kept as a last concealment of ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... to another side of the wood pile, and brought a large beetle and an iron wedge. When he got back to his log, he started out the axe which he had left sticking into it. Then Rollo saw that the axe had made a little indentation, or cleft, in the wood. He put the point of the wedge into ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... thou mayest see that they are still red with the blood of old Gussy Biehlke, who was burnt last year, and who, like thee, would not confess at first. If thou still wilt not confess, I shall next put these Spanish boots on thee, and should they be too large, I shall just drive in a wedge, so that the calf, which is now at the back of thy leg, will be driven to the front, and the blood will shoot out of thy feet, as when thou squeezest blackberries in ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... was spoken for a minute after he sat down. I had got my first look at Lincoln. I had seen his soul. I think it was then I began to realize that a man was being made among us 'more precious than fine gold; even a man more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir.'" ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... the same long upper lip, the same thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to drive their way through life like a wedge. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... faint sigh in token of sympathy with Mr. Truefitt's evident distress, and drew a chair to the table. He shook his head, and with marvellous accuracy, considering that his gaze was fastened on a piece of cold beef, helped himself to a wedge of steak-pie. He ate with an appetite, and after pouring out and drinking a glass of ale gazed again at the forlorn figure of ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... plank and through the Houssa lines, dragging the messenger by the arm, and Hamilton, with a hastily summoned guard, followed. They found Joseph Blowter tied scientifically to a gum-tree, a wedge of wood in his mouth to prevent him speaking, and he was a terribly unhappy man. Hastily the bonds were loosed, and the gag removed, and the groaning Cabinet Minister led, half carried to ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... down on the floor sobbing, after making that practical suggestion; and, casting about for burglarious implements to aid me, I found the spit and a wedge-shaped piece of hard wood. These I inserted just above and below the lock, and, forcing back the door on its frame, I soon had the satisfaction of seeing the bolt slip from ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the weekly parish dance. My religious acquaintances were apt to class all such simple amusements in a sort of general category as "works of the Devil," and turn deaf ears to every invitation to point out any evil results, being satisfied with their own statement that it was the "thin edge of the wedge." This good man, however, was very obviously driving a wedge into the hearts of many of his poor neighbours who in those days found no opportunity for relief in innocent pleasures from the sordid round of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... it illuminated with strange radiancy the dainty disorder of deserted lunch, made prisms out of the wine-glasses, painted the white cloth with wedge-shaped rainbows, and flooded the cavernous interiors of the half-eaten fowl with a ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... unique value of children is their service as an entering wedge in the close-grown love of husband and wife, a wedge that widens and holds forever wider the unity of love it has penetrated. Other responsibilities, other interests, may serve a similar purpose, though more easily dislodged ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... pastry-cook, and most eager to make herself agreeable; she looks quite like a screen picture behind her piled-up cakes, ornamented with little posies. We will take shelter under her roof while we wait; and, to avoid the drops that fall heavily from the waterspouts, wedge ourselves tightly against her display of white and pink sweetmeats, so artistically spread out on fresh and delicate branches ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... (Atri) in the year 465, on the northern slope of the Abruzzi towards the Picenian plain, not immediately on the coast and hence with Latin rights, but still near to the sea, and the keystone of the mighty wedge separating northern and southern Italy. Of a similar nature and of still greater importance was the founding of Venusia (463), whither the unprecedented number of 20,000 colonists was conducted. That city, founded at the boundary of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, on the great ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Headquarters' established commission. This was the ordinary rate when gentlemen skilled in transferring other people's watches and portemonnaies from the pockets of their owners to their own, or when others who had devoted their talents to demonstrating practically the enormous power of the jimmy and wedge originated and carried out by themselves the operations peculiar to those ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... and I felt bothered for several days in succession. Then, however, I stopped worrying myself and regained my normal spirits, to the annoyance of my father who was at that time inveighing against Russia and the ritualistic vicar of our parish, and had a lot to say about the thin end of the wedge. He told me that I must take more interest in politics, and he made both Fred and me promise that we would speak at debating societies during ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... and not legal grounds. In like manner, wherever the franchise was limited, the limit is attempted to be removed. We are, in fact, fast merging into a mere pure democracy,1 for the first blow on the point of the wedge that secures the franchise, weakens it so that it is sure to come out at last. Our liberals know this as well ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... bonnet and horn and chose a seat close to the river. Before her was a gap in the knotted grapevine heaps that clung along the brink of the bank; through it, veiled only by some tendrils that swung wishfully across, lay a wedge-like vista of muddy water, bottom-land, bluff, and sky. The mid-morning sun glinted upon the treacherous current, upon the wet grass of the bottom-land, upon the green-brown bluff and the Gatling at its top, upon the far, curving azure of the sky. Against ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... thought of breaking through the wing sides, flimsy as a deep shadow, for behind twig-laced walls were strange demons possessed of the Man-Call, the Kill-Cry. On, on, on! only in front was any opening; there the prairie lay still and smiling. Wedge-like behind their Bull Leader they thundered. To him the open prairie in front beckoned and smiled a lie of safe passage; the Pound, the death-pit, dug on its rounded breast, lay hushed in silent ambush, and the Bull Leader saw only a narrow gate at the far end of the fast-closing ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... the Phoenician alphabet, but divided scholars between two opinions: the one contending that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were the source upon which the Phoenicians drew; and the other contending with equal fervor that the Babylonian wedge character ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... very busy in their kib-va. Every member was shelling corn of the different colors as if on a wager. Each man made a figure of moist clay, about four or five inches across the base. Some of these were in the form of two mammae, and there were also many wedge and cone forms, in all of which were embedded corn kernels, forming the cloud and other of the simpler conventional figures in different colors, but the whole surface was studded as full as possible with the kernels. Each man brought down his own ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to do it now, before ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... in its feudal propensities was the kingdom of Hungary, which an invasion of Asiatic tribesmen [Footnote: Hungarians, or Magyars—different names for the same people.] in the tenth century had driven like a wedge between the Slavs of the Balkan peninsula and those of the north Poles and Russians. At first, the efforts of such kings as St. Stephen (997-1038) promised the development of a great state, but the weakness of the sovereigns in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Compared with the constant self-flattery of the English, nearly every Irishman is an anti-Irish Irishman. But here again popular phraseology hits the right word. This fairly educated and fairly wealthy Protestant wedge which is driven into the country at Dublin and elsewhere is a thing not easy superficially to summarise in any term. It cannot be described merely as a minority; for a minority means the part of a nation which is conquered. But this thing means something that conquers, and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... stunted willow tree; behind anything—quick!—for they're coming: a great dim wedge, with the apex toward us, coming swiftly on wings that propel two miles to the minute, when backed by a wind that makes a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Larsen started on at a lope, and the rest of the party followed in a lurching, loose-formed wedge. At the edge of the little tableland, Larsen drew down his mount to a walk and turned in ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Land. The Colonial-office had long projected making the Cape a penal colony, and it was supposed that political convicts would not be objected to. The colonists believed that this was merely the plan of insinuating the thin edge of the wedge, which would ensure the whole being driven home. John Mitchell was among the convicts; that gentleman having suffered at Bermuda from the climate, the government desired in mercy to place him in one more salubrious for persons ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the party had been set to work, others had been employed in pushing on the little galleries, and there had sat for hours working in a cramped position, with pick, hammer, and wedge. Others had been lowered by ropes down shafts so narrow that when they got to the bottom it was only with extreme difficulty that they were able to stoop to work at the rock beneath their feet. Many, indeed, of these old shafts have been found in the mines of Montepone, so extremely narrow that ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the little wedge of people with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... looking into his hat to avoid meeting the eyes of the lady. "I didn't have no call to toller, and he knowed how to run, I reckon. Time Mr. Harkless come out the yard again, he was near out o' sight, and we see him take across the road to the wedge-woods, near half-a-mile up. Somebody else with him then—looked like a kid. Must 'a' cut acrost the field to join him. They're fur enough towards home ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... most has been that which has led so many of the northern men to strike hands with the British abolitionists to make war on their southern brethren. If they could effect their ends, and Great Britain could insert the wedge which should separate the States, what further use would she have for the northern section? You are the competitors of Great Britain in the vast field of manufacture, whom she most fears, and though she may be ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... point of contact with the ground," Frank went on, "you'll see that the boulder is propped up by wedge-like stones put under it." ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... increasing tension, however, to form a gun. The breech-end of the second tube from the bore is forged solid so that its grain will run parallel with the bore and give the gun longitudinal strength. Both the wedge and the screw breech-loading apparatus are employed on guns of 7 inches bore (110-pounders) and under. It will thus be seen that the defects of large solid forgings are avoided; that the iron may be well worked before it is formed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cross-lights that come in and hide Him from us. There must be a 'looking off unto Jesus.' There must be a rigid limitation, if not excision, of other objects, if we are to grasp Him. If we would see, and have our hearts filled with, the calm sublimity of the solemn, white wedge that lifts itself into the far-off blue, we must not let our gaze stop on the busy life of the valleys or the green slopes of the lower Alps, but must lift it and keep it fixed aloft. Meditate upon Him, and shut ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... long black necks and white ties "dressing" capitally in line, and their invisible legs doing the goose-step as the inventors of that classic manoeuvre ought to do it. This bird seems to affect the militaire in all his movements. What can be more regular than the wedge, like that so common in tactical history, in which he begins his march, moving in "a column of attack upon the pole"? Even when startled and put to flight, he goes off smoothly and quietly, company-front. In foraging he is strictly systematic, and never forgets to set sentinels. We cannot fail to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... had nearly an armful of it in when it stiffened, fighting free of him, owing to Ponting and the other fellow not having made good. They clung for a moment without moving, resting, and Raft glancing down saw far away below the narrow deck driving wedge-like through the foam-capped seas. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... hewing down the trees of the forest. As we came nearer, traces of destruction marked the presence of civilized man; the road was strewn with shattered boughs; trunks of trees, half consumed by fire, or cleft by the wedge, were still standing in the track we were following. We continued to proceed till we reached a wood in which all the trees seemed to have been suddenly struck dead; in the height of summer their boughs were as leafless as in winter; and upon closer ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... that now burst upon us was one to be remembered. Kolahoi towered ethereal—a sunlit wedge of sheer rock some six thousand feet above us—into the crystal air. From his feet the white frozen billows of the great glacier rolled, a glistering sea, to where we, atoms in the enormous loneliness, stood breathless in admiration. Around the head of the wide amphitheatre ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... first wedge has done its business very well; two or three more will finish it." He then took up another larger wedge, and, inserting the bottom of it between the wood and the top of the former one, which was now completely buried in the root, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... hope of receiving presents; but when they saw our men, these savages, whether because they were afraid or because they were conscious of their crimes, looked at one another, making a low murmur, and then, suddenly forming into a wedge-shaped group, they fled swiftly, like a flock of birds, into ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and ends with trash and short sticks, which had been omitted in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... trouble. The pieces were wedge shaped. They would have to be mounted in thorium in order to keep them rigid. Only Kemp could do that. They had no cutting tool but ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... at right angles to the vocal cords shows some important facts in connection with the mechanism of this portion of the vocal instrument (vide fig. 8). It will be observed that the sound-pipe just beneath the membranous reed assumes the form of a cone, thus the expired air is driven like a wedge against the closed glottis. Another fact of importance may be observed, that above the vocal cords on either side is a pouch called a ventricle, and the upper surfaces of the vocal cords slope somewhat upwards from without inwards, so that the pressure of ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... repeal Mrs. Mary C. Roark, afterwards head of the Eastern Kentucky Normal School, was a leader. Mrs. A. M. Harrison, member of the school board in Lexington, was prominently identified with the effort. This proved a long, hard struggle, as it was considered an entering wedge to full suffrage by the liquor interests and ward politicians of the cities and was bitterly fought. Year after year the bill was defeated in the Legislature. At the request of the suffrage association in 1908 the State Federation of Women's Clubs took charge of it ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... things pretty tight, as is only natural," said Moon, glancing round the rather dwarfish room, with its wedge of slanted ceiling, like the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the room. Great was her surprise when she found herself compelled to recognise that she had a plane surface before her, that her teeth could not lay hold of it, and that it was no more than a vain presentment. She smelled the picture, tried to wedge in behind the frame, looked at us both with a glance of questioning and wonder, and returned to her place, where she disdainfully went to sleep again, refusing to have anything more to do with the painted individual. ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... have to wait for a better target than a moving wedge of water. Instinctively he half crouched in the stance of an embattled spaceman, wishing now that he did have ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... the long blinds were pulled down with a shriek, turning all the light yellow. The clock now had a silent hall to tick in, and an audience of four or five somnolent merchants. By degrees white figures with shady hats came in at the door, admitting a wedge of the hot summer day, and shutting it out again. After resting in the dimness for a minute, they went upstairs. Simultaneously, the clock wheezed one, and the gong sounded, beginning softly, working itself into a frenzy, and ceasing. There ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph announced the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alluvium also of the Wey, near Guildford, in a place called Pease Marsh, a wedge-shaped flint implement, resembling one brought from St. Acheul by Mr. Prestwich, and compared by some antiquaries to a sling-stone, was obtained in 1836 by Mr. Whitburn, 4 feet deep in sand and gravel, in which the teeth and tusks of elephants had been ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... passers-by, he found himself in one of the side streets leading off Piccadilly, and there at the end of the street, a large house was blazing furiously. He worked his way vigorously through the spectators, now so densely gathered as to form a living wedge in the narrow street and block it against all traffic, and at length found himself in a position to see clearly the ruin that had already been wrought on the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... desire of you, my Lords, in your humane frenzy, to show some humanity to the whites as well as to the negroes",—illustrating this remark by a picture of the sufferings of an English trader who had risked thirty thousand pounds on the slave-trade that year. When an entering wedge was attempted for the improvement of the bloody code of criminal law, Thurlow opposed it with passion. The particular clause selected by the reformers was one which demanded that women who had been connected with any treasonable movements should be burnt alive. It was proposed to reduce ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... was I found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it? —Never flung out on the common at night, Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black— An ebon mass. Methinks thou piercest it. As with a wedge!" ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... illuminative picture is certainly the Ball at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneath whom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, Beau Brummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchess is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the Beau tres degage, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly in his waistcoat; in fact, the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... we want. If there is occasion for bulk, take the whale, and you get a round bottom, full fore-body, and a clean run. When you want speed, models are plenty—take the dolphin, for instance,—and there you find an entrance like a wedge, a lean fore-body, and a run as clean as this ship's decks. But some of our young captains would spoil a dolphin's sailing, if they could breathe under water, so as to get at the poor devils. Look at their fancies! The First Lord shall ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a valley where willows budded standing in the snow, he shot a snowshoe rabbit. Another time he got a lean, white weasel. This much of meat they encountered, and no more, though, once, half-mile high and veering toward the west and the Yukon, they saw a wild-duck wedge drive by. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... at once!" he commanded, not loudly, but with intense force, "back there!" This to the inward surging wedge of excited outsiders. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... it to woman, you wish to place your family politically still lower in the scale of citizenship and humanity. This particular twist, General, is working in the minds of the people, and the democrats, having got you where Tommy had the wedge, intend to hold you there. Again you say that Mrs. Cady Stanton was three days in advance of you in the border towns, calling you the Sir John Falstaff of the campaign. I am under the impression, General, that these strong minded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... thrown into a compact figure fringed with spears, which formed an impenetrable hedge against cavalry, he found a remedy for the disadvantages of the ground, which afforded no protection to either of his flanks. After advancing in these two lines Alexander manoeuvred his troops into a phalanx, or wedge-shaped figure, and this wedge he drove into the masses of the enemy to force the wings asunder. In spite of local reverses in parts of the field, the depth and weight of the main attack carried it through the enemy's forces: the survivors ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... natives into communities, and teach them the arts of civilized life. The celestial pair, brother and sister, husband and wife, advanced along the high plains in the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, to about the sixteenth degree south. They bore with them a golden wedge, and were directed to take up their residence on the spot where the sacred emblem should without effort sink into the ground. They proceeded accordingly but a short distance, as far as the valley of Cuzco, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... QUOIN. A wooden wedge adjusted to support the breech of a gun, so as to give the muzzle the required elevation or depression. Also, one of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... without delay, and accordingly he pilots his father out of the crush, and makes for a spot near the winning-post, where the crowd at the cords has a few gaps; and here, by a little unscrupulous shoving, he contrives to wedge himself in, with his father close behind, at about the very best spot on the course, with a full view of the last two hundred yards, and only a few feet from ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... the other hand, usually wore their hair short. Mackenzie noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge. The women wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle. Over these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl or dish. The men also wore this cap, and in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... be repeated Scudamore, the centre rush of the University football team, had flung himself upon the pugilist, seized him by the throat and thrust him back and back through the crowd, supported by a wedge of his fellow students, striking, scragging, fighting and all yelling the while with cheerful vociferousness. By the efforts of mutual friends the two parties were torn asunder just as a policeman thrust himself through the crowd and demanded to know ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... "It's just a wedge to git her in again," she had said to Tim, with whom she had discussed the matter. "I know Ruby Ann, and she'll jump at the chance, and keep it, too. She can wind Mr. Bills round her fingers. I'd rather ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... themselves for the possession of her teats. There was a lively scrap, a lot of hollerin' and squealin' from that bunch of porkers, grunts from the ins and yaps from the outs, you know. Every now and then one of the outs would make a flying start, get a wedge in and take a nip, forcing some one of his brothers out of the heap so that he would roll down the hill into the path. Up he'd get and start over, and maybe he would dislodge some other porker. And the old sow kept grunting ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... methinks is dismal, yet I see Over yon hill one bright and steady star Divide the darkness with its fiery wedge, And sprinkle glory on the lap of earth. Even so, above the still homes of the dead The benedictions of the living lie. Gatherers of waifs of beauty are we here, Building up homes of love for alien hearts ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... back, almost to that street, and held there, without a quarter of the mob knowing that anything was being done. Then a similar operation was repeated on Forty-third Street and Forty-fourth Street, and possession was taken of Madison Avenue. Another wedge was driven into the mob and a section pushed along Forty-second, nearly to Fifth Avenue. Then what was left of the mob was pushed back from the front of the building down Park Avenue. Again Peter ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... could. On the third day of the year, in his room, Martie, broom in hand, paused to study Wallace's "chestard." That must go, too. It had always been a cheaply constructed article, with one missing caster that had to be supplied by a folded wedge of paper. Still, in a consignment with other things, it would add something to the total. Martie put her hand upon it, and rocked it. As usual, the steadying wedge of ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the retiring Congress has not been noted so far, but, though not a large item in itself, it is the entering wedge of subsequent legislation which will be of the highest importance to the country. It is the item in the legislative appropriation bill which allows of the expenditure of $10,000 by the bureau of labor "for the collection of statistics of and relating to marriage and divorce in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... of the Essenes. By reference to the first lesson of this series you will see who and what was this great mystic organization—the Essenic Brotherhood. While resting and studying in their retreats His attention was diverted to the work of Johannen—John the Baptist—and He saw there an opening wedge for the great work that He felt called upon to do among His own people. Dreams of converting His own race—the Jews—to His conception of Truth and Life, crept over Him, and he determined to make this work ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... above hypothetically described. There the Chinese are, and there they were; and there is an end to the question, so far as documentary evidence goes. Of course, the persistent Tarim Valley scheme proposed is only a means to get in the thin end of the wedge, in order to drive home the thick end in the shape of a definite start from the Tower of Babel, and an ultimate reference to the Garden of Eden. If there are still people who believe it their duty on Scriptural principle to accept this naive Western origin of the Chinese, there is no reason why ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... belong to those chill, gray days. At last, from somewhere high up in the air, it came ringing down to us—the stirring "honk, honk" of the wild goose. Though our eyes searched the heavens, we could see nothing of the living wedge of flight up there that was cleaving its way southward with the speed of the wind. But we felt the thrill of that wild, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... words of MS. books, to the 15th century, run on continuously without spacing; and as to punctuation, little or nothing was known. In the Greek works on papyrus before Christ, there are to be found certain marks indicating pauses, such as the wedge-shaped sign (>). In Biblical MSS., however, the division of the text into lines enabled the reader the more easily to understand the meaning, and was an assistance to him in public reading. As many blunders were made ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... thus able to check it. While it derided, commiserated this everyday self, the latter stood in dread of it and even awe. My training, you see, regarded it as symptom of disorder, a beginning of unbalance that might end in insanity, the thin wedge of a dissociation of the personality Morton ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... horsemen, drawn up in a wedge-like form, and I must say that the general in command handled them very ably. Starting at a hand gallop, for the first three hundred yards he rode straight at the tip of the tongue-shaped mass of cavalry which, numbering, so far as I could judge, about eight thousand sabres, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard |
