"Whetstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Birchard Hayes was born. This has long been Delaware's pride, and will be its fame. The income of his widowed mother, who was bereft of her husband four mouths before her son's birth, was derived from the rent of a good farm lying two miles north of Delaware, on the east side of the Whetstone. This income, used with frugality, enabled her to commence the education of her children. They were sent first to the ordinary schools of the town. The first teacher who enlisted the affections of her since distinguished pupil was Mrs. Joan Murray, a most worthy woman, whose ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... scythe in strokes unconsciously timed to the tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and began to swing his scythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quiet folk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemed intent upon his own thoughts, and, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Some rubbed their k[n]iues vppon a whetstone; Some threw them vnder the table, & ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... they were preparing a dinner for him, he took out a big knife and sharpened it on a whetstone, repeating his threat of searching the house and ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... more sincerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with crocus powder, "to put an edge on." He had a remarkably fine whetstone, "the best in England; it was worth half a sovereign," and this he often and vainly begged me to accept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an evening to the lodging-house, he would cunningly borrow my knife, and then disappear. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... this empire; I am too young and inexperienced. They put gold to the test when they wish to learn if it is fine. And so it is my wish, in brief, to try to prove myself, wherever I can find the test. In Britain, if I am brave, I can apply myself to the whetstone and to the real true test, whereby my prowess shall be proved. In Britain are the gentlemen whom honour and prowess distinguish. And he who wishes to win honour should associate himself with them, for honour is won and gained ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... said, Mr. Jones. And I will warn you, in time, of one man in particular. His name is John Mason. Keep clear of him, if you wish to keep out of trouble. He's as smooth and oily as a whetstone; and, like a whetstone, abrades every thing he touches. He's a bad man, that ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... "What a whetstone for the imagination the business sense is!" I commented. "Perhaps if your grandfather owned shares in the Eclipse, you will be able to see the second signal station erected the next year on Point Lobos, just beyond the Fort. From there a vessel could be decried many miles outside the Heads ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... goody Harrison. And the child lying on the outside I took it and laid it between me and my husband. The child continued strangely ill about three weeks, wanting a day, and then died, had fits. We felt a thing run along the sides or side like a whetstone. Robert Francis saith he remembers his wife said that night the child was taken ill, the Lord bless me and my child, here is ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... Fortune's work neither, but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How now, wit? whither ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Italian theatre has passed through all the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true representative of the ancient Mime, but afterwards degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella; the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his notions of one, from the absurd pretender with us who has ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the old man, and in much haste. "I ain't goin' to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!" And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on the wall, and at once went ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... would, we could see no signs of Flossie and her donkey, so at last we had to come down disappointed. On reaching the veranda I found Umslopogaas sitting there, slowly and lightly sharpening his axe with a small whetstone he always carried ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... WHETSTONE, GEORGE (1544?-1587?).—Dramatist, one of the early, roistering playwrights who frequented the Court of Elizabeth, later served as a soldier in the Low Countries, accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland in 1578, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... "it has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that is the badge ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... take to mean a "jagged whetstone," very unfit for its purpose; but what is the force ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... examine it when you visit this country. The next rock crystal, of which I have two specimens.[7] The fourth is alum, of which I procured a small quantity, as I did not visit the cave where it is to be obtained. The fifth is oil and whetstone, of which there is a great abundance in that quarter. The sixth is asbestus. In a word, the subjects are worthy the attention of those who wish to be instrumental in enlarging or developing that ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... And beyond, and again beyond, lay the naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana—white with poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect, to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Justice Dyer, who died March 24, 1582, Whetstone gives proof that in Elizabethan England purity was the exception rather than the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... resolved to try the augur's skill, asked him, whether what he was then pondering in his mind could be effected? Nae'vius, having consulted his auguries, boldly affirmed that it might: "Why, then," cries the king, with an insulting smile, "I had thoughts of cutting this whetstone with a razor." "Cut boldly," replied the augur; and the king cut it through accordingly. Thenceforward nothing was undertaken in Rome without consulting the augurs, and obtaining their advice ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... line, my flote and my lead, My hook, & my plummet, my whetstone & knife, My Basket, my baits, both living and dead, My net, and my meat for that is the chief; Then I must have thred & hairs great & smal, With mine Angling purse, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... me that the very contradiction and opposition we meet with from our fellow-men, ought to rouse our spirit to love them more, for they serve as a whetstone ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... called an oil-stone, was discovered at the Breen cabin. On this stone were the initials "J. F. R.," which had evidently been cut into its surface with a knife-blade. Mrs. V. E. Murphy and Mrs. Frank Lewis, the daughters of James F. Reed, at once remembered this whetstone as having belonged to their father, and fully ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... how an intellectual or scientific man will sometimes select for his life companion a woman of only ordinary intelligence, who will, nevertheless, adorn her husband's home by her simple domestic virtues. A wife does not need to be a moral whetstone to sharpen her husband's wits by the fireside, neither would it enhance his happiness to find her filling reams of foolscap paper with choice specimens of prose and poetry; intelligent sympathy with his work is all he demands, and a loving, restful companion, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now, In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[418][10.H.] And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj] No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Mrs. Ramsey doesn't get out to her concerts any more, on account of her leg, and that makes her bluer'n a whetstone, but otherwise I guess we're all pretty much of a muchness. Everybody misses—land t' goodness," she caught herself up, "I guess there is one piece of news! I guess there is one ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... these threads in the flame, till they melt and run into a small round Globul, or drop, which will hang at the end of the thread; and if further you stick several of these upon the end of a stick with a little sealing Wax, so as that the threads stand upwards, and then on a Whetstone first grind off a good part of them, and afterward on a smooth Metal plate, with a little Tripoly, rub them till they come to be very smooth; if one of these be fixt with a little soft Wax against a small needle hole, prick'd through a ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... inch thick. The two perforations are 2-1/2 inches apart; they have been bored from opposite sides, and show no evidence of use. Nine notches have been cut in one end of the tablet. It has been much injured by recent use as a whetstone. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... Subiectes: especially, the multitude of ignorant people. Feare God: be true to thy Prince: and obey the Lawes. At London. Printed by Richarde Jones, dwelling at the Signe of the Rose and Crowne, neere Holborne bridge, 1587, 4to. The author was George Whetstone. An Address to the Reader signed T. C. [Thomas Churchyard] sets forth that "my good friend M. G. W. at his departure into the Country, left this most honest work to be censured by me; being right well assured, by the continuance of our true ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... dunce, So but he choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, Which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. Although no writer, I may yet impart To writing folk the precepts of their art, Whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, And how a work is made, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... its course, returning with evening to the Bruncknow house, whose inmates were away at the time on some expedition of their own. Sometimes they saw the smoke of signal-fires over in the Dragoons; sometimes the slender columns rose from the summit of the Whetstone Mountains in the north. One morning—they had spent the previous night out here in the hills—they awoke to find a fresh trail in the bear-grass within a hundred yards of where they had been sleeping, and in the middle of the track Dick Gird ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... and after a nap, talked very unrestrainedly with me on the present state of France, on Buonaparte, the criminal law, and the wisdom of the Justices at sessions. I was determined—like Horace's whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put an edge on him—to say something deep and decisive on some of the subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk. Perhaps (like the character with the Greek name in the Rambler, who tells his guest, showing him ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... any thing else, rather than in that which is pressed upon his foremost attention. In this sense a numerous school is, to a degree that can scarcely be adequately described, the slaughter-house of mind. It is like the undertaking, related by Livy, of Accius Navius, the augur, to cut a whetstone with a razor—with this difference, that our modern schoolmasters are not endowed with the gift of working miracles, and, when the experiment falls into their hands, the result of their efforts is a pitiful miscarriage. Knowledge is scarcely in any degree imparted. But, as they are inured to a dogged ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... sit mumchance The evening through: he's got a powerful gift Of saying nothing: no sparks to strike off him; Though he's had to serve as a whetstone, this long while, To keep ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... repressed. His right hand closed on Garth's like a vice; and at the same time a knife slipped out of his sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round; and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... nor I, nor Burd so blithe Had driven them in this haste; But the old, old man, so lean and lithe, That afar behind us paced; So lean and lithe, with shoulder'd scythe, And a whetstone at his waist. ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... His address was equal to a course in "Paradise Lost," nor was it without its effect upon the audience. Every boy in the room felt in his pocket to make sure that it contained his knife, and every one began to wonder just where he would find the whetstone when he went home. We were all eager for school to close for the day that we might set about the important matter of whetting our knives. Henceforth wood-carving was a part of the regular order in our school, but it was done without special supervision. Of course, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Captain Cy, pushing forward a rocker. "My! but I'm glad to see you. 'Twas bluer'n a whetstone 'round ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... looking mysteriously around with his hand behind under his coat, 'You med have un for sixpence,' he says, and produces a partridge into whose body the point of the scythe ran as she sat on her nest in the grass, and whose struggles were ended by a blow from the rubber or whetstone flung at her head. He has got the eggs ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... reported had been used by its former owner in several tournaments and there borne itself handsomely. This done, well or ill, his armour must be seen to, and Dick's also, such as it was; his lance tested, and all their other weapons sharpened on a whetstone that Sir Geoffrey borrowed. For this was a task that Grey Dick would leave to no ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... Old Ford, and Bow 5 Hackney Dalston and Islington 2 Ditto Hornsey, Muswell Hill, to 8 Whetstone Tottenham The Chase, Southgate, &c., 6 called Green Lanes Enfield Wash Enfield Town, Whetstone, 10 Totteridge, to Edgworth From London Hampstead, Hendon, and 8 Edgworth Edgworth Stanmore, to Pinner, to 8 Uxbridge London Harrow and Pinner Green 11 Ditto Chelsea, Fulham ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... when I had signified my eagerness to hear, "that I graduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, but blue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was a clergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covered a multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, and consequently twenty when, at the beginning of sophomore ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... may be drawn from these chapters, in which the critic will be always sure of meeting with something that may serve as a whetstone to his noble spirit; so that he may fall with a more hungry appetite for censure on the history itself. And here his sagacity must make it needless to observe how artfully these chapters are calculated for that excellent purpose; for in these we have always taken care to intersperse ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... wonder if he wasn't a trull's bully from Lewknor's Lane or Whetstone Park. The rascals pass themselves off as sparks of fashion at ridottos, masquerades and what not and live by robbery and blood money. I warrant I'll soon run your fine gentleman to earth. He talks about telling his father. Pooh! That was but to ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... in the trial (17 April) of one of his accomplices, Nicholas Throckmorton, against whom they brought in a verdict of not guilty.(1407) For this they were bound over to appear before the Star Chamber. Four of the twelve made submission; the rest, among whom were Thomas Whetstone, a haberdasher, and Emanuel Lucar, a merchant tailor, were committed some to the Tower and the rest to the Fleet, where they remained for six months. In the meantime the Court of Aldermen wrote (19 July) to the council in their favour, but with little success.(1408) A month ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Taming of the Shrew is {112} directly based upon the Taming of a Shrew. Measure for Measure is less direct, borrowing from George Whetstone's play in two parts, Promos and Cassandra ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... wealthy, had the faintest desire to pay the bills. Angry and tactless letters, therefore, passed between d'Eon in London and de Guerchy, de Nivernais, and de Praslin in Paris. De Guerchy was dull and clumsy; d'Eon used him as the whetstone of his wit, with a reckless abandonment which proves that he was, as they say, 'rather above himself,' like Napoleon before the march to Moscow. London, in short, was the Moscow of little d'Eon. When de Guerchy arrived, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... intense heat, because it destroys its temper, and therefore impairs its cutting qualities. Table carving knives should not be used in the kitchen, either around the stove, or for cutting bread, meats, vegetables, etc.; a fine whetstone should be kept for sharpening, and the knife cleaned carefully to avoid dulling its edge, all of which is ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... further change had come. Prowlers, made bold by the long silence in the nunnery, came and went under the very walls of the compound. In the court, beside a candle, Ah Pat the compradore sat with a bundle of halberds and a whetstone, sharpening edge after edge, placidly, against the time when there should be no more cartridges. Heywood and Rudolph stood near the water gate, and argued with Gilbert Forrester, who would not quit his post ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Barnet. Pop. of urban district, 11,566. The prefix recalls the former lordship of the manor possessed by the friary of St John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell, London. Friern Barnet adjoins Finchley on the north and Whetstone on the south, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know, but I cannot bear them; not because they have anything ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... it should, by all that was consistent, have been. Lute, evidently, observed no traces of transcendent happiness, when I encountered him in the back yard, beside the woodpile, sharpening the kindling hatchet with a whetstone, a process peculiarly satisfying to his temperament because it took such a long time ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... burlesque on baronetcy was expected in sulky helplessness—but the overthrow of the CHAMPION of LIBERTY, the ORATOR whose eloquence was to have been the passing dirge of Justice—his overthrow was the overthrow of thousands. With his, hearts sunk, and menaces grew silent; the monster at his whetstone dropped the half-sharpened dagger at the conviction of Henry Hunt; and the tool of his excitement unscrewed the pike-head and threw away the musquet. I have no hesitation in declaring, that all the numerous verdicts for the Crown, that of late have asserted the majesty ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone the vehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, but she was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deep understanding of a man, or the domineering spirit of a crude lad, jealous of his ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... throat? cut a whetstone, young Accius Noevius! Doe as much with your 130 tongue as he did with a ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... half of Whetstone Park is called by its present title, and the western half is Phillips Rents. He mentions it as "once famous for its infamous ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... babies as we are. Some very very few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him, when he desired to rearrange the tribes: this man was an augur whose equal has never been seen. Tarquinius, angry at his opposition, took measures to abase him and to bring his art into contempt. So, putting into his bosom a whetstone and a razor, he went among the populace having in his mind that the whetstone should be cut by the razor,—a thing that is impossible. He said all that he wished, and when Attus vehemently opposed him, he said, still yielding ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... rails around the rickyard, and the thatch on the haystack is white with it in places. He draws out the broad hay-knife—a vast blade, wide at the handle, the edge gradually curving to a point—and then searches for the rubber or whetstone, stuck somewhere in the side of the rick. At the first sound of the stone upon the steel the cattle in the adjoining yard and sheds utter a few low 'moos,' and there is a stir among them. Mounting the ladder he forces the knife with both hands into the hay, making a square cut ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... were especially ingenious in the matter of puns, anagrams, {355} and similar conceits. The death of the Rev. Samuel Stone, of Hartford, afforded an opportunity of this sort not to be missed, and his threnodist accordingly celebrated him as a "whetstone," ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... summers lapse away beneath Their cool Athenian shade: And I a string for myrtle-wreath, A whetstone unto blade; ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... to visit the house of an old woman, who, when he was coming, very prudently hid whatever she had to eat. One day coming with some friends, he asked her if she had not some meat. And she said, 'Nay.' 'Well,' quoth the friar, 'have you not a whetstone?' 'Yea,' quoth the woman, 'what will you do with it?' 'Marry,' quoth he, 'I would make meat thereof.' Then she brought a whetstone. He asked her likewise if she had not a frying-pan. 'Yea,' said she, 'but what the divil will ye do therewith?' 'Marry,' said the fryer, 'you shall see by and by ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... which have been discovered in the circular huts, called Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, which are the earliest remains of human abodes in Wales, are by the people called Fairy Whetstones, but, undoubtedly, this name was given them from their resemblance to the large circular whetstone at present in common use, the finders being ignorant of the original use ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... out-parishes in the Counties of Middlesex and Surrey which are comprehended within the bills of mortality, and esteemed part of this great town. And first, St. Giles's in the Fields contains these chief streets and places: Great Lincoln's Inn Fields, part of Lincoln's Inn Garden, Turnstile, Whetstone Park, part of High Holborn, part of Duke Street, Old and New Wild Street, Princes Street, Queen Street, part of Drury Lane, Brownlow Street, Bolton Street, Castle Street, King Street, the Seven Dials, or ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... institutions drew for their constituency from an area of about four square miles for the school and a somewhat larger area for the church. Brownstown school, to the south, Hendrickson's to the east, and Whetstone to the west made up other school communities. Pleasant Grove church, Salem, and Brownstown, with a different territory covered by each, made up church areas that did not coincide with the school areas bounding Mifflin Center school territory. In like ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... and health. The teeth of these people also, whatever they may suffer in their colour by chewing betel, are an object of great attention: The ends of them, both in the upper and under jaw, are rubbed with a kind of whetstone, by a very troublesome and painful operation, till they are perfectly even and flat, so that they cannot lose less than half a line in their length. A deep groove is then made across the teeth of the upper jaw, parallel with the gums, and in the middle between them and the extremity of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... in their stronghold at New Providence Island in 1660, withstood an attack by a Spanish fleet for five days. The three English captains, Stanley, Sir Thomas Whetstone, and Major Smith, were carried to Panama and there cast into a dungeon and bound ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... opposite to Gwernach. And Gwernach said to him, "O man, is it true that is reported of thee, that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kay. Then was the sword of Gwernach brought to him. And Kay took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, or as thou wouldst if it were thine own." Then Kay polished one half of the blade, and put it in his hand. "Will this please ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... thou diviner, tell me, whether what I am thinking on can be done or not?" When he had tried the matter by divination, he affirmed it certainly could. "But I was thinking," says he, "whether you could cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, and perform what thy birds portend may be done." Upon this, as they say, he immediately cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, was erected in the comitium, upon the very steps on the left of the senate-house, on ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the whetstone clear out to the tip Of his snake-handled, snubnosed old blade; And he swung his straw hat with a sweep and a rip With the sun ninety-four ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... witnesses. While waiting for an answer, I busied myself writing, and as I had no stationery I wrote on the walls. Beginning as high as I could reach, I wrote in columns, each about three feet wide. Soon the pencil became dull. But dull pencils are easily sharpened on the whetstone of wit. Stifling acquired traits, I permitted myself to revert momentarily to a primitive expedient. I gnawed the wood quite from the pencil, leaving only the graphite core. With a bit of graphite a hand guided by the unerring insolence of elation ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... been called on neither to march nor fight. As they lay in the woods, and the pickets, firing on the enemy's patrols, kept up a constant skirmish to the front, the laugh and jest ran down the ranks, and the unfortunate Pope, who had only seen "the backs of his enemies," served as whetstone for their wit. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... stay, let's see what he dare do; cut off his ears! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I'll run my rapier to the hilts ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... literary hack, Whetstone, who wrote a poetical memoir of George Gascoigne after his death, entitles it a remembrance of "the well employed life and godly end" of his hero. It is not necessary to dispute that Gascoigne's end was ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his own humor; so ready to detect what was weak, extravagant, or unfair; so full of relish for intellectual power and accuracy, and so attached to and proud of my father, and bent on his making the best of himself, that this trial was never relaxed. His firm and close-grained mind was a sort of whetstone on which my father sharpened his wits at ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... The same thought is found in George Whetstone's epitaph on the good lord Dyer, 1582: Et semper bonus ille bonis fuit, ergo bonorum Sunt illi demum pectora ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... pairs stout shoes, for footmen. 1 pair boots, for horsemen. 1 pair shoes, for horsemen. 3 towels. 1 gutta percha poncho. 1 broad-brimmed hat of soft felt. 1 comb and brush. 2 tooth-brushes. 1 pound Castile soap. 3 pounds bar soap for washing clothes. 1 belt-knife and small whetstone. Stout linen thread, large needles, a bit of beeswax, a few buttons, paper of pins, and a thimble, all contained in a small buckskin ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... de Maffei has justly observed that Sallust, in his very circumstantial detail of that conspiracy, makes no mention of any such discovery. Neither does it appear that the figure is in the act of whetting, the stone which he holds in one hand being rough and unequal no ways resembling a whetstone. Others alledge it represents Milico, the freedman of Scaevinus, who conspired against the life of Nero, and gave his poignard to be whetted to Milico, who presented it to the emperor, with an account of the conspiracy: but the attitude ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Ku was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears run down ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... complains that T has deprived him of many letters that ought to begin with [Greek Sigma omitted]. 84. If Jovis or Jupitris. 85. The celebrated Roman grammarian. A proverbial phrase for the violation of grammar was "Breaking Priscian's head." 86. Livy says, Actius Nevius cut a whetstone through with a razor. 87. A kind of lizard that was supposed to kill ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... ought to be forty or fifty, as a matter of right, not of charity. Call it official conservatism, inertia, treachery, call it by soft names or hard; in the end it comes to this, I suppose, that it is the whetstone upon which our purpose is sharpened, and in that sense we have apparently got to be thankful for it. So a man may pummel his adversary and accept him as a means of grace at the same time. If there were no snags, there would be no wits to clear them away, or ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... of Borrow's peculiar conversational gift as any of its predecessors. Its thumbnail sketches, if somewhat more subdued and less elaborate, are not less full of character. John Jones, the Dissenting weaver, who served Borrow at once as a guide and a whetstone of Welsh in the neighbourhood of Llangollen; the "kenfigenous" Welshwoman who first, but by no means last, exhibited the curious local jealousy of a Welsh-speaking Englishman; the doctor and the Italian barometer-seller at Cerrig-y-Druidion; the "best Pridydd of the world" ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a visit, and, pretending to be engaged in something that required him to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... following;—(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... had come in during the discussion. He seated himself, and recommenced his favorite task of stropping his knife upon a whetstone. At the Cockney's last words he ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... to punish her would have been to distress the faithful Raoul. They quarrelled for the future part of their lives in plenty, just as they had formerly quarrelled in poverty; for wrangling curs will fight over a banquet as fiercely as over a bare bone. Raoul died first, and Gillian having lost her whetstone, found that as her youthful looks decayed her wit turned somewhat blunt. She therefore prudently commenced devotee, and spent hours in long panegyrics on her ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... down to get a rig to go out home in. It's colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme your check, and I'll get your traps. Have ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... an interpreter [literally, a truceman]: "For he that is the Trouchman of a Straungers tongue may well declare his meaning, but yet shall marre the grace of his Tale" (G. Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582). ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... right arm. In his bullet pouch he also carries spare flints, steel and various odds and ends. Beneath the broad belt which encircles his waist there is a large butcher knife in a sheath of buffalo hide. There is a whetstone in a buckskin case made fast to the belt, and also ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year. Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... of experience. With this view I took up my pen, and dashed off a few lines, in which I made no allusion, either to my first interview, or the affair of the dinner; but simply putting forward a few general observations on the state of the country, signed with my own name, and dated from Whetstone-park, which was, at that time, my residence. The following was the reply I received from the duke, which I print verbatim, as an index—short, but comprehensive, as an index ought to be—to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... shifter; once a year his apparel is ready to revolt. He doth use much to arbitrate quarrels, and fights himself, exceeding well, out at a window. He will lie cheaper than any beggar, and louder than most clocks; for which he is right properly accommodated to the whetstone, his page. The other gallant is his zany, and doth most of these tricks after him; sweats to imitate him in everything to a hair, except a beard, which is not yet extant. He doth learn to make strange sauces, to eat ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... But they du preach, I swan to man, it's puf'kly indescrib'le! They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss-power coleric ingine, An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, for all he's used to singein'; Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' to the innards To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... didn't intrewde myself when they was a settling of the himportant bizziness as they was cum about, so I strolled off to a little willage as I seed in the distance, and which is acshally called Egipt, tho it ain't much bigger than Whetstone Park, Hobern, the ome of my herly birth! From a rayther hurryed conwersashun with a real Native, I gathered the himportant fack that the one reason why all the great big Beach Trees of the Forest had had their tops cut off, was, that OLIWER CROMWEEL wanted the bows for his sojers to carry, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... have stayed stuck on each single hair there, for the twisting of the anger which met it as it rose from his hair above him. The Lon Laith ('Champion's Light') stood out of his forehead, so that it was as long and as thick as a warrior's whetstone, [7]so that it was as long as his nose, till he got furious handling the shields, thrusting out the charioteer, destroying the hosts.[7] As high, as thick, as strong, as steady, as long as the sail-tree of some huge [W.2623.] prime ship was the ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the word. The rump was the filthy nickname of an odious faction—the history of this famous appellation, which was at first one of horror, till it afterwards became one of derision and contempt, must be referred to another place. The rump became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in "burning rumps" of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children, come at length to make a plaything ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that "City's Lord" essayed, To make the whetstone of his rebel sword; On me, with mischief rife, rebellious Cade Sat whilst he thought and dubbed himself a Lord; And bade my conduit pipe for one whole year At city's cost, run naught but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... of this kind may have an advantage of its own, even when it is unsuccessful; it may serve as a piece of embodied criticism, showing what the experimenter conceived to be the conditions of success, and may thus, to borrow Horace's own metaphor of the whetstone, impart to others a quality which it is itself without. Perhaps I may be allowed, for a few moments, to combine precept with example, and imitate my distinguished friend and colleague, Professor Arnold, in offering ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... few men with whom he sat at ease. It was Steele who drew his friend towards the days to come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. Steele said in one of the later numbers of his Spectator, No. 532, to which he prefixed a motto that assigned to himself only the part of whetstone to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... is founded on an event that is said to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, the Hecatomithi, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play, The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book The Heptameron ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... there for something; now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself. At last he found what he seemed to want—a rusty old butcher knife and a whetstone. Then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. The winds sighed around the lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the distances. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the very purest excellence, by reason of the flinty bottom, at any rate in these the upper regions. For the valley is the western outlet of the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the north, and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see, near Venice, a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword. This he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Around in all directions were basilicae, or halls of justice; porticoes filled with busy lawyers; bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Naevius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there's no stirring on the road. I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward, so they are come back again ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... saw that it might very easily be made into a defensive or offensive weapon. I took possession of it, and having hidden it under my dressing-gown I conveyed it into my cell. As soon as I was alone, I took the piece of black marble, and I found that I had to my hand an excellent whetstone; for by rubbing the bar with the stone I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and they steered their course northwards. When they came to the mouth of the Throndhjem fjord Thorberg's two brothers, Fin and Arne, were there already, with two ships each of twenty benches. Thorberg met his brothers with joy, and observed that his whetstone had taken effect; and Fin replied he seldom needed sharpening for such work. Then they proceeded north with all their forces to Throndhjem, and Stein was along with them. When they came to Agdanes, Kaff Arnason was there before them; and he also had a wellmanned ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... have upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding speech, which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing loth. Mother of my mother was Stymphalian Metope[11] of fair flowers, for she bare Thebe the charioteer, whose pleasant fountain I will drink, ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... his eyes gaze afar, past the gates through which the bride had vanished. He sees the blue night-sky, and a single star sparkling upon it, and as he looks upon the star, he takes a sword from under his cloak, draws the steel from the scabbard, and, still gazing upon the star, sharpens it on his whetstone. Thus, with widely opened eye, yet seeing, hearing nothing, the somnambulist, wrapped in deep, magnetic sleep, strides on in the moonlight, possessed by a power of which he is not conscious, which may stain his hands with blood, or hold him back from the verge of an abyss. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bit of the ax is at a small angle with the front and back edges of the blade, and is nearly a straight line. The axes are kept keen and sharp by whetstones collected and preserved solely for the purpose. Besao, near Sagada, quarries and barters a good grade of whetstone. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... an intermediary is commonly conjectured. The novel from Cinthio's Hecatommithi which formed the basis of Othello existed in a French translation; and his form of the plot of Measure for Measure came to Shakespeare through the English dramatic version of George Whetstone. The version of the bond story in The Merchant of Venice closest to the play is in Il Pecorone of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, but the tale is widespread. Incidents in The Merry Wives have sources or parallels in the same work, in Straparola's ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... about five and a half feet long, the thickness of a baseball bat at one end and three inches in diameter at the other. Behind him, each of the natives had laid his stabbing-knife, skinning-knife, and whetstone. At the word the killing began. Each native brought down his club simultaneously, the first blow invariably crushing the slight, thin bones of the fur seal's skull and stretching it out unconscious. The six or seven seals that ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the wood small; stayed there in the house and had good meat and drink, but never saw anyone but the tabby-cat and her servants. Once she said to him, "Go and mow my meadow, and dry the grass," and gave him a scythe of silver, and a whetstone of gold, but bade him deliver them up again carefully. So Hans went thither, and did what he was bidden, and when he had finished the work, he carried the scythe, whetstone, and hay to the house, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... acquiesced in his larger knowledge. "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers like these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer'n a whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to run arter him. I put the case last Thursday. Mebbe ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... would have painted a hundred portraits, as strong, as vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by Velasquez or Hals. But if Nature had willed him so, I do not think we should have had the Nocturnes, which are clearly the outcome of a highly-strung, bloodless nature whetted on the whetstone of its own weakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light. It is hardly possible to doubt that this is so when we look on these canvases, where, in all the stages of her repose, the night dozes and dreams upon our river—a creole in Nocturne 34, upon ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... him: a little, great man, a man of cunning plots and contrivances, very bold and determined and crafty beyond words. He is moreover a notable good seaman and commander, quick of hand and eye. Dangers and difficulty are but a whetstone to set a keener edge to his abilities. He was once a chief of buccaneers and is now a baronet of England and justice of the peace, aye, and I think a member ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... (Fig. N.) is put on by slitting the arrow and inserting the flat handle of the arrow point, and wrapping it with silk, sinews, or copper wire. These points can be sharpened along the line A B on a whetstone, and will cut like knives. The hunting arrow looks like ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... whetstone, is significant of sharp worries and close attention is needed in your own affairs, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... was the name of a man who had only come to Iceland a short time before, Grima was the name of his wife. Their sons were Hallbjorn Whetstone-eye, and Stigandi. These people were natives of Sodor. They were all wizards and the greatest of enchanters. Hallstein Godi took them in and settled them down at Urdir in Skalm-firth, and their dwelling there was none of the best liked. That summer Gest went to the Thing ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... did not raise his eyes, but drew a damp cloth up and down the counter, slowly and heavily, as a man sharpens a knife on a whetstone. ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the vaine of Chawcer, happen to tel one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vaine of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit an hundred dogged fables, libles, slaunders, lies, for the whetstone. But many will sooner lose their liues than the least jott of their reputation. What mortal feudes, what cruel bloodshed, what terrible slaughterdome have been committed for the point of honour and some few ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Morris, proclaims a heaven here below without law, where man kills his fellow man and answers only to his own conscience; where we will tear up the railroads and walk, blow up our steamships and use rowboats, in our harvest fields the whetstone on the old hand-scythe will still the music of the McCormick reaper. With his delicate tastes he fears the hoof-beat of your herd. But you all agree that to go backward means to go forward, and that the way to save civilisation is to lapse into barbarism. Whether you call yourselves ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... "A whetstone is no carving instrument, But yet it maketh sharpe carving tooles; And, if thou know'st that I have aught miswent,* *erred, failed Eschew thou that, for such thing to thee school* is. *schooling, lesson ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... were sore, I made a shift to hobble seven miles more: The way to Dunchurch, foul with dirt and mire, Able, I think, both man and horse to tire. On Dunsmoor Heath, a hedge doth there enclose Grounds, on the right hand, there I did repose. Wit's whetstone, Want, there made us quickly learn, With knives to cut down rushes, and green fern, Of which we made a field-bed in the field, Which sleep, and rest, and much content did yield. There with my mother earth, I thought it fit To lodge, and yet no incest did commit: My bed was curtained with good wholesome ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... pens and the creaking wheels of the pioneer's ox-wagon. It will sound above the clatter of Baltic ship-yards and in the silence of the desert where the caravan routes stretch white beneath the moon. The Afghan, bending knife in hand over a whetstone, and the Chinese coolie knee-deep in his wet paddy-fields, will pause in their work to listen to the sound, uncomprehending, even while the dust is gathering on the labours of the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... have been wallowing in the slough of despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as a whetstone." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... what I expected, and I like to deal with clever people. Did you put yourself on the whetstone before you came here? I'll go ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 727; bodkin &c (perforator) 262; belduque^, bowie knife^, paring knife; bushwhacker [U.S.]; drawing knife, drawing shave; microtome [Micro.]; chisel, screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite^; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate^, set, strop, grind; chip (flint). cut &c (sunder) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to turn the grass once after one Who mowed it in the dew before the sun. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen Before I came to view the leveled scene. I looked for him behind an isle of trees; I listened for his whetstone on the breeze. But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been,—alone, 'As all must be,' I said within my heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.' But as I said it, swift ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... not disputed that the plot existed beforehand in Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra; and there was probably an ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... knows the secret of making a willow whistle! He must know the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by a crowd of spectators, some admiring, some skeptical, the boy selects his ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whetstone from his pocket, spat on it, and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... representative of the ancient Mime; but, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, he degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, Brighella, the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, however, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became, in after years, a child of nature, and the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... "Smooth as a whetstone, straight as an arrow," meaning the cliff. Perhaps because of their pictorial descent, the characters did not shock one. Unlike the usual branding of nature, they seemed not out of keeping with the spot. Not far beyond, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... having filled in with charcoal compactly trodden down, a mortar mixed of gravel, lime, and ashes is spread on to a depth of half a foot. The surface having been made true to rule and level, and smoothed off with whetstone, gives the look of a black pavement. Hence, at their dinner parties, whatever is poured out of the cups, or spirted from the mouth, no sooner falls than it dries up, and the servants who wait there do not catch cold from that kind of floor, although they ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... "Oh man! is it true that is reported of thee, that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kai. Then was the sword of Gwrnach brought to him. And Kai took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked him whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, and as thou wouldest if it were thine own." Then Kai polished one half of the blade and ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... to sharpen knives using either a grindstone, whetstone, the edge of an iron stove, or ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... bullet-pouch, in which he also carried flint, steel, and other odds and ends. Round his waist he wore a belt, in which was stuck a large knife in a sheath of buffalo-hide, made fast to the belt by a chain or guard of steel. It also supported a little buckskin case, which contained a whetstone, a very necessary article; for in taking off the hides of the beaver a sharp knife was required. His pipe-holder hung around his neck, and was generally a gage d'amour, a triumph of squaw workmanship, wrought with ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... prayed he, but all his vows were vain, Mahound was deaf, or slept in heavens above, And as a lion strikes him with his train, His native wrath to quicken and to move, So he awaked his fury and disdain, And sharped his courage on the whetstone love; Himself he saved behind his mighty targe, And forward spurred his steed and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... earnestlie desire in his heart that the like may neuer light vpon this land, but may be auerted and turned away from all christian kingdomes, through his mercie, whose wrath by sinne being set on fire, is like a consuming flame; and the swoord of whose vengeance being sharpened with the whetstone of mens wickednesse, shall hew them in peeces as ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... educators—they fill one with discontent and drive a person onward and upward to the ideal. A whetstone is dull, but it serves to sharpen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... similar title, is only to be pardoned on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college. It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment; the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, and Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied the matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract is extravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with great vehemence, but only in that temper which permitted the young ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... waters, the sesquipedalian word, the mountains in travail and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge in medias res, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... in front of the big red brick wall one bright winter's day, for the time had gone by very quickly. Old Brownsmith had a sharp knife in his hand, and I was holding the whetstone and a thin-bladed saw that he used to ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... rented a farm of about fifteen acres, at least ten of it was grass; he grew an acre of potatoes and some corn, and some turnips for his sheep. He had a nice bit of meadow, and he took down his scythe, and as he put the whetstone in his belt Bryden noticed a second scythe, and he asked Mike if he should go down with him and help him ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... on the contrary, the minor, more obscure, or commoner productions must be carefully distinguished and circumspectly handled by those who do not desire or cannot afford to throw away their money. The names above cited are themselves very unequal; some, like Breton, Churchyard, Whetstone, Barnfield, Watson, and Constable, are sought, and will ever be sought, by reason of their peculiar rarity; and, save in a sentimental way, no one would probably dream of placing Beaumont, Chapman, Wither, and some ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... this side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the false ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... great knife, and, coming up to these poor children, sharpened it upon a great whetstone which he held in his left hand. He had already taken hold of one of them when his ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... clipper, paper cutter; sword &c. (arms) 727; bodkin &c. (perforator) 262; belduque[obs3], bowie knife[obs3], paring knife; bushwhacker [U.S.]; drawing knife, drawing shave; microtome[Microbiol]; chisel, screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite[obs3]; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c. adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c. adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate[obs3], set, strop, grind; chip [flint]. cut &c. (sunder) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 'we are the very pink and perfection of the true Attic' 'Done with you!' says Callicles, 'frequent quizzings are a whetstone of conversation' 'For my part,' cries Eudemus, '—it grows chill—I like my liquor stronger, and more of it; I am deathly cold; if I could get some warmth into me, I had rather listen to these light- ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... A-M^4, unpaged. Wanting M 4 (? blank). Epistle dedicatory to William Fleetwoode, signed George Whetstone and dated July 29, 1578. Printer's address to the reader, signed R. I. Argument. Part II has a separate titlepage within woodcut border, 'The seconde part of the Famous Historie of Promos and Cassandra. Set forth in a Comical Discourse ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... hurted so bad," said Uncle Remus, putting an edge upon his axe with a whetstone held in his hand, "hit wuz a mighty long time 'fo' he could ramble 'roun' en worry ole Brer Rabbit. Der time Cousin Wildcat fetch'd 'im dat wipe 'cross de stomach, he tuck'n lay de blame on Brer Rabbit, en w'en he git well, he des tuck'n juggle wid de yuther creeturs, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... Minute Structure of the Bone.*—Prepare a section of bone for microscopic study as follows: With a jeweler's saw cut as thin a slice as possible. Place this upon a good-sized whetstone, not having too much grit, and keeping it wet rub it under the finger, or a piece of leather, until it is thin enough to let the light shine through. The section may then be washed and examined with the microscope. If the specimen ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... These are made truly according to Vitruvius's writings. At Aachen I bought an ox horn for 1 gold florin. I have taken the portraits of Herr Hans Ebner and George Schlaudersbach, and Hans Ebner's a second time. I paid 2 stivers for a fine whetstone, also 5 stivers for a bath and drinking in company; changed 1 florin for expenses. I gave the town servant who took me up into the hall 2 white pf.; spent 5 white pf. With companions, drinking and bathing; I have lost ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... caught in an oration, "it is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic for ever, like the old Man of the Sea, upon his back!"[141]—FADLADEEN, it was plain took this last luckless allusion to himself and would treasure it up in his mind as a whetstone for his next criticism. A sudden silence ensued; and the Princess, glancing a look at FERAMORZ, saw plainly she must wait ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Whetstone, shot in the neck by John A. Howser, August 18, in this city. Howser halted the man, who was riding on a mule on the road; had an altercation with Mr. Whetstone; Howser, Whetstone's son-in-law, shot him while he ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... thereafter they talked in whispers for an hour or more, and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt's were sharpening themselves anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if possible, but no more than that. They must pick the best out of that score of survivors of the Monmouth men that Colonel ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Rajputs. The headquarters of the caste is in Gwalior, where there is probably still some scope for their ancient trade. But in British territory the Sikligar has degenerated into a needy knife-grinder. Mr. Crooke [505] describes him as "A trader of no worth. His whole stock-in-trade is a circular whetstone worked by a strap between two posts fixed in the ground. He sharpens knives, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... causes the argillaceous schist to be traversed by quartz, transforming it, in part, into whetstone and silicious schist; the latter sometimes containing carbon, and being then capable of producing galvanic effects on the nerves. The highest degree of silicifaction of schist is that observed in ribbon jasper, a material highly ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... thralls were mowing in a field as a Wanderer went by clad in a dark blue cloak and carrying a wanderer's staff in his hand. One of the thralls spoke to the Wanderer: "Tell them in the house of Baugi up yonder that I can mow no more until a whetstone to sharpen my scythe is sent to me." "Here is a whetstone," said the Wanderer, and he took one from his belt. The thrall who had spoken whetted his scythe with it and began to mow. The grass went down before his scythe ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... gagging of the comic actors, was indispensably necessary. The "comedians of Ravenna," who were not "tied to any written device," but who, nevertheless, had "certain grounds or principles of their own," are mentioned in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582, and references to such performers are also to be found in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and Ben Jonson's "Case is Altered." In "Antony and Cleopatra" occurs ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... After the article has been carefully made from specially selected wood—in the case of the choicest specimens of lacquer work this is usually a pine-wood of fine grain—it is first coated with a preparation composed of clay and varnish, which, after being permitted to dry, is smoothed down with a whetstone. When this operation has been concluded, the article proposed to be lacquered is covered with some substance, either silk, cloth, or paper. It is then given from one to five coats of the foregoing mixture, each coat being permitted to dry before the next is ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... advantage to the boys. Before coming West, their father had owned a mowing machine, but primitive methods prevailed on the frontier, and he had been compelled to use a scythe in his haying operations. Joel swung the blade like a veteran, scattering his swath to cure in the sun, and with whetstone on steel, beat a frequent tattoo. The raking into windrows and shocking at evening was an easy task for the brothers, no day passing but the cured store was added to, until sufficient was accumulated to build a stack. That was a task ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams |
