"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again crystallize upon legitimate questions of National interest—questions of tariff, finance, and foreign relations. The disastrous conflict between Federal and State jurisdiction would cease. North and South, no longer hammer and anvil, would forget and forgive the past. School-houses and churches would be our fortifications and intrenchments. Capital and population would flow, like the Mississippi, toward the Gulf. The black race would gravitate by the law of nature toward the tropics. The memory and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of vantage as they could, their number, indeed, amounting, with my household, to two hundred persons. In the centre of the open space a small forge-fire had been kindled, the red glow of which added much to the strangeness of the scene; and on the anvil beside it were ranged a number of horses' and donkeys' shoes, with a full complement ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... which follows. So, in the first round of the world-long battle between the persecutors and the persecuted, the victory is all on the side of the latter. So it has been ever since, though often the victors have died in the conflict. 'The Church is an anvil which has worn out many hammers,' and the story of the first collision is, in essentials, the story ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... that he'll be caught between the hammer and the anvil of Lee and Jackson, just as ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not to be wondered at. A man who spends his life climbing into people's mouths and playing "The Anvil Chorus" on their molars with a monkey-wrench, who says, "Now this won't hurt you in the least," and then deals one a smart rap on a nerve with a pickaxe—such a man cannot expect to be popular. He must console himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... Hammers on the anvil rest, Dews upon the gowan's breast; Young hearts heave with tender thought, Low winds sigh, with odours fraught, Stars bedeck the blue above, Earth is full of joy and love; Row, lads, row; row, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the sweat and blood of enslaved fellow-men, and who have never had to appropriate for their own enjoyment the fruit of the labour of others—have never stood before the cruel alternative of being either the hammer or the anvil in the struggle ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... practically harmless. Now, it will be my pleasure to perform two startling experiments with the unfrozen substance," and with that he picked up a handful of the wet sawdust and flung it on a small iron anvil that stood on the table. "You will enjoy these experiments," he said, "because it will show you with what ease dynamite may be handled. It is a popular error that concussion will cause dynamite to explode. There is enough dynamite ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... night, having travelled four leagues to-day. Captain Lyon called my attention this afternoon, to the note of a bird in a wood, when passing over the mountain, named the Ferreirinho (little Blacksmith), from the resemblance of the note to the ringing sound of a smart blow from a small hammer on an anvil, terminating ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... a piece of flat rock on the floor of this recess, which Zackey used as his anvil, and in front of which he kneeled. At his side was a candle, stuck against the wall, where it poured a flood of light on objects in its immediate neighbourhood, and threw the boy's magnified shadow over the floor and against the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... the chains of matrimony on the religious anvil of Gretna Green, I am now one of the happiest fellows in existence. My election is crowned with success, and I venture to presume all after-petitions will be rejected as frivolous and vexatious. The once lovely ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... farmer, an abundant crop; favorable indeed to women. Cold, or small, favors may be expected from those in power. The means of success is in your power, but in order to obtain it you will have to labor under difficulty. If the anvil is broken, it foretells that you have, through your own neglect, thrown away promising opportunities that cannot ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... up your pinafores, and cry when Bully led you off. Him and me ain't friends no more, so's you could notice. Seven years now since I hit him for cussin' me for somethin' that wa'n't my fault! But, by gee whiz, old Bully Presby could go some! We tipped an anvil over that day, and wrecked a bellows before they pulled us off each other. I've always wondered, since then which of ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... as Earth is from Heaven so is Tartarus from Earth. A brazen anvil falling down from Heaven to Earth nine days and nine nights would reach the earth upon the tenth day. And again, a brazen anvil falling from Earth nine nights and nine days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth night. Around Tartarus runs a fence of bronze and Night spreads in a triple line all ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... nothing hymn-like in the words, which are largely a glorification of Gen. Washington, but the tune, a concerted piece better for band than voices, has the drum-and-anvil chorus quality suitable for vociferous mass singing—and a zealous Salvation Army corps on field nights could even fit a processional song to ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... others had been busy. They'd placed an anvil, real or imitation, on the green in front of the house, for the pictures were all to be taken out of doors. The blacksmith had begun to hammer away at a horse-shoe, and that was our signal to dash up to the door. He stopped hammering, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... scene for those who had the interest of the colony at heart. Every district of the Upper Province had contributed its portion of labour, talent, and ingenuity, to furnish forth the show. The products of the soil, the anvil, and the loom, met the eye at every turn. The genius of the mechanic was displayed in the effective articles of machinery, invented to assist the toils and shorten the labour of human hands, and were many and excellent in their kind. Improvements in old implements, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... friends the Egyptians, by the name of Baal-Canaan, or Vulcan: for Vulcan was celebrated principally by the Egyptians, and was a King according to Homer, and Reigned in Lemnos; and Cinyras was an inventor of arts, [298] and found out copper in Cyprus, and the smiths hammer, and anvil, and tongs, and laver; and imployed workmen in making armour, and other things of brass and iron, and was the only King celebrated in history for working in metals, and was King of Lemnos, and the husband of Venus; all which are ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... resume will give some idea of the wealth of commodities brought to Virginia in 1620. Among the implements useful for clearing land were pickaxes, felling-axes, squaring-axes, spades, weeding-hoes, scythes, reap-hooks. Grindstones and two French millstones were brought along with 22,500 nails, an anvil and two sieves ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... eat the leek; but the child and the helpless and the sick it is a pleasure to aid. I love the poor as much as I love anything. I could live their life, if I were put to it. As a gentleman, I hate squalor and the puddles of wretchedness but I could have worked at the plough or the anvil; I could have dug in the earth till my knuckles grew big and my shoulders hardened to a roundness, have eaten my beans and pork and pea-soup, and have been a healthy ox, munching the bread of industry ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... set this ode, and reproduced it at Covent Garden, with deserved success. Not often do such a poet and such a musician meet at the same anvil. The great German also set the former ode, which is known as "The Ode on St. Cecilia's Day." Dryden himself told Tonson that he thought with the town that this ode was the best of all his poetry; and he said to a young flatterer at Will's, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... cave heard all these strange noises; the crowing of the cocks, the hammering on the anvil, the chopping of wood, the music of the koto, the clappering of the hard wood, the tinkling of the bells, the shouting of Uzume and the boisterous laughter of the gods. Wondering what it all ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... our guide! From field, from wave, The plough, the anvil, and the loom, We come, our country's rights to save, And speak a tyrant faction's doom. And hark! we raise, from sea to sea, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... powerful abilities. He never flinched; but, after reiterated blows, remained seemingly unmoved as at the first. The scintillations of Johnson's genius flashed every time he was struck, without his receiving any injury. Hence he obtained the epithet of The Literary Anvil. BOSWELL. See post, April 15, 1778, for an account of another dinner at Mr. Dilly's, where Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... their work actively while those remarks were passing, and ere long the smoke of the forge fire arose in the still air, and the clang of the anvil was added to the other noises with which ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... kept the house. Now and again he got a little work from comrades, and poor people of his acquaintance; he did his best without proper implements, or if he could not manage otherwise he would go to Jens. Jens had lasts and an anvil. At other times he sat at the window, freezing, and gazed out over the harbor and the sea. He saw the ships being rigged and fitted, and with every ship that went gliding out of the harbor, to disappear below the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... honeycomb, and into the shafts and out of them bobbed hurrying, eager creatures. The whirring of windlasses, the clatter of nail-keg buckets, the incessant calls, 'Look up below!' and the distinct ringing of hammer on anvil, blended into a quaint symphony of labour. The swish, swish, swish, of the wet dirt in the cradle-hoppers and the rattling of the tailings thrown from the shovels providing an unvarying substratum of sound. There were tents everywhere, large and small, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... unnatural! O Sah-luma!—marvellous Sah-luma! twaddler Sah-luma! what a brain box is thine! ... How full of dislocated word-puzzles and similes gone mad! Now, as I live, expect no mercy from me this time!".. and he shook his head threateningly,—"For if the public news sheet will serve me as mine anvil, I will so pound thee in pieces with the sledge-hammer of my criticism, that, by the Ship of the Sun! ... for once Al-Kyns shall be moved to laughter at thee! Mark me, good tuner-up of tinkling foolishness! ... I will so choose out and handle thy feeblest lines that they shall seem but ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a very old man with long yellow-white hair, one a negro whose skin had no lustre at all. The rest were very dark-skinned, peak-bearded, and had long hair falling round their necks. A soldier with a hammer and a small anvil climbed into the cart, and bent down out of sight. There was a ring of iron on iron, and the man next the very old man raised his arms and began to speak very slowly, very distinctly, and very mournfully. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the smith, He that smoothed with the hammer Him that smote on the anvil; Saying of the solder, It is good; And fixing the idol with nails, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... other side, a wife, who, as the old proverb has it, hammers on the same anvil day and night, to compel her husband to make his will, and then the husband is equally urgent that his wife shall do the same. And men learned in the law are procured on each side, the one in the bedchamber, and his opponent in the dining-room, to draw up counter-documents. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... required the Retreat from Mons before even G.H.Q. as a whole would accept the fact, though Colonel Macdonogh, the head of the intelligence section, was our firm ally. The iron of confidence, both to used and user, had to be welded with the first great blows on the anvil of war. For these reasons it was vital that every available trained pilot and suitable machine should be employed with the Army, even at the danger of serious initial depletion at Home. The smooth progress of expansion was largely attributable alike ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... lived in the grass and rose leaves of our garden, for the German blacksmith who lately occupied our hospital building had planted his garden with "Caroline Testout" and crimson ramblers. His voice was like the tinkling of fairy hammers upon a silver anvil. And with this fine clear note was the elusive voice of another cricket that had such a marked ventriloquial character that we could never tell whether he lived in the rose bushes or in the trees. His note was the music of silver bells upon the naked feet of ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... get a small, cheap anvil, which will be of the greatest service in your work. It should be mounted close up to the work bench. Two small hammers, one with an A-shaped peon, and the other with a round peon, should be selected, and also a plane and a small wood ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Arcot quietly, "and I intend to throw that star in such a way that we can escape between the twin fields! We can escape between the hammer and the anvil as millions of millions of millions of tons of ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... very stable substance when exposed to the air under varying conditions of temperature (-10 deg. to 50 deg. C.) for several months. It cannot be exploded by flame, nor by heating it in an open vessel. It is only slightly decomposed by strong percussion on an anvil. A fulminate detonator produces the best explosive effect with tri-nitro-toluene. It can be used in conjunction with ammonium nitrate, but such admixture weakens the explosive power; but even then it is stated to be stronger than an equivalent mixture of di-nitro-benzene ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... echoing at intervals amongst the rocks. We soon discovered the cause; in a hollow of the rocks I saw a very hot fire, which Jack was blowing through a cane, whilst Fritz was turning amidst the embers a bar of iron. When it was red hot, they laid it on an anvil I had brought from the ship, and struck it alternately with hammers to ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... examination of the Latin version, thus discovered, induced in his mind a suspicion that Bishop Grosseteste was himself the translator. A marginal note, for example, betrayed the nationality of its author; 'Incus est instrumentum fabri; dicitur Anglice anfeld [anvil].' Who so likely to have had the ability to translate from a Greek version as Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few Greek scholars of his age? Evidence is not wanting that the Ignatian Epistles ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... forms of mankind, by their early modes of exertion; or by the diseases occasioned by their habits of life; both of which became hereditary, and that through many generations. Those who labour at the anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry sedan-chairs, or who have been educated to dance upon the rope, are distinguishable by the shape of their limbs; and the diseases occasioned by intoxication deform the countenance ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... iron on the anvil, see God's goods across the counter, put God's wealth in circulation, teach God's children in the school,—so shall the dust of your labor build itself into a little sanctuary where you ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... affair go on unchecked. When the English ambassadors pressed him, he exclaimed to them (for apart from this he would gladly have shown more favour to the King) that he felt himself as it were between anvil and hammer. Divers proposals were made, one more extraordinary than the other, if only the King would give up his demand;[99] but this was no longer possible. The two cardinals, Campeggi and Wolsey, had to begin judicial proceedings: King and Queen appeared before the Court, Articles were put forward, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... his living-room. Forge. Door to living-room above forge. Bellows down stage below forge. Bench with vise at left. Big double doors. Trusses. Tub of water back of anvil. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... consist of a pair of peculiar goat-skin bellows, provided with wooden nozzles tipped with iron. A catgut bowstring drills for boring holes, and screw-drills for cutting threads, hammers, and an anvil. A rude but ingenious forge is constructed out of a few handfuls of stiff mud, and, building a charcoal fire, they spend the evening in sharpening and tempering drills for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the work in a lathe while it is standing still. Never use the ways of a lathe for an anvil or ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... strong, but thin and hungry. The dogs had to lie waiting in the snow on the ice while their masters sat bargaining under the large awning. At every baking on board special loaves were made for the native visitors, who would sit by the hour watching the smith shaping the white hot iron on his anvil. Women and children were regaled with sugar and cakes, and all the visitors went round and looked about just as they liked on the deck, where a quantity of articles, weapons, and utensils lay about. Not the smallest trifle disappeared. The Chukchis were honest and decent people, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and the name Jervoyce having, to his fancy, a Norman-French sort of aspect which seemed to lift its bearer to a superior social height. James had many irons in the fire, and seemed to be prosperously busy at the commercial anvil all day long. Amongst the business enterprises he had in hand, there was but one which at any time had appeared to yield him no return for his labours. He had lent money on the strength of the security afforded by a brine ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... old-fashioned feasting—all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... were bent on exacting all the advantages of the situation they had so heroically conquered and that the moderates of the Southern provinces still found themselves placed between the hammer of Spanish domination and the anvil ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... yook Good man. Gyami Bad (cam. Gaelic). Probably the origin of the common canting term gammy, bad. Ishkimmisk Drunk (misgeach. Gaelic) Roglan A four-wheeled vehicle. Lorch A two-wheeled vehicle. Smuggle Anvil. Granya Nail. Riaglon Iron. Gushuk Vessel of any kind. Tedhi, thedi Coal; fuel of any kind. Grawder Solder. Tanyok Halfpenny. (Query tani, little, Romany, and nyok, a head.) Chlorhin To hear. Sunain To see. Salkaneoch To taste, take. Mailyen To feel (cumail, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the anvil was ringing; but whoever had seen how often the young blacksmith struck the iron falsely, would have easily seen that he thought of something besides the hammer he ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... practical work to be done to secure freedom for the slaves was to circulate petitions through all the Northern States. For months these petitions were circulated diligently everywhere, as the signatures show—some signed on fence posts, plows, the anvil, the shoemaker's bench—by women of fashion and those in the industries, alike in the parlor and the kitchen; by statesmen, professors in colleges, editors, bishops; by sailors, and soldiers, and the hard-handed children of toil, building railroads ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the end of Paradise Street. He reached the grave-yard, walking for the most part as in a terrible dream, among strange distorted shapes of men and women, the houses tottering black on either hand, and ever that anvil-beat of the blood at his temples. Then of a sudden his wooden limb slipped, and he fell ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... speeches, the Dwarfs who were in the forge took up the bar of fine gold and flung it into the fire. Then taking it out and putting it upon their anvil they worked on the bar with their tiny hammers until they beat it into threads that were as fine as the hairs of one's head. But that was not enough. They had to be as fine as the hairs on Sif's head, and these were finer than anything else. They worked ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... ascent, which led by a narrow and deep path to the mansion. Nigh to the bridge over the moat stood a blacksmith's hovel, conveniently situated for all job-work emanating from the armoury and the kitchen, which at that time afforded full exercise for the musical propensities of Darby Grimshaw's great anvil. This hut was a general resort to all the idlers in the vicinity; Grim, as he was generally styled for the sake of abbreviation, discharging the office of "preses," or chief moderator, in all debates held therein. He was a shrewd ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... day, the tyrant ordered that Adrian's limbs should be one by one struck off on a blacksmith's anvil, and lastly his head. And still it was his wife who held him and sustained him through all and, ere the last stroke of the executioner, had received his last breath. She took up one of the severed hands, kissed it, and placed ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blacksmith—or, to give him his full name which he insisted on at all times, John Royce Pederstone—was busy on his anvil, turning a horse shoe. His sleeves were rolled up almost to his shoulders and his lithe muscles slipped and rippled under his white skin in a rhythm of harmony. His broad chest was bare as his arms, and his chubby apple-red cheeks shone ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... expressive gestures evidently were intended to drive back the intruders; and as these last could not but feel that they were not upon their own ground, they used every endeavour to conciliate the opposing party. The blacksmith belonging to the expedition was at work with his bellows and anvil near the river bank, and his labours seemed to awaken very much the curiosity of the natives, who, however, still refused to sit down, and continued to wave their branches in the faces of the white people, and to spit at them repeatedly, all which conduct ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... murder. After being admitted there by treaty to dwell as friends and fellow-citizens, his warriors rose one night and massacred their hosts without compunction. Harried from the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil. When at last their persecutors—the Ngapuhi and Te Waharoa—met over their bodies, Te Waharoa's astuteness and nerve were a match for the invaders from the north. In vain the Ngapuhi besiegers tried to lure him out from behind the massive palisades of Mata-mata, where, well-provisioned, he ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... be neat, and you leap over into dandyism, fancying all the while that bluster is manliness. No, sir. You may make shoes, you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins knotted, your hands grimed; and yet you may be a hero. And, on the other hand, you may write verses and be a clown. It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to become divine; nor shall one be accursed, though he drink of the ninefold ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... classed with Thomas Bailey Aldrich, nor must any other man, ancient or modern; that Aldrich was always witty, always brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as the red-hot iron on the blacksmith's anvil—you had only to hit it competently to make it deliver an ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... cemetery: the view so well known to visitors to that city. The people of Rouen who have spread out into the enormous suburb of St. Sever, on the left bank of the Seine,[42] are busy by thousands in the manufactories,—the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... clergy's side, who with a profound duty to her Majesty, are perfectly pleased with the present turn of affairs. Besides, curious people will be apt to enquire into the dates of some promotions, to call to mind what designs were then upon the anvil, and from thence make malicious deductions. Perhaps they will observe the manner of voting on the bishops' bench, and compare it with what shall pass in the upper house of convocation. There is, however, one comfort, that under the present dispositions of the kingdom, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... or pass, in a portion of which, called the Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, covered with beautiful dog's tooth ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... resolution, he shifted his lodgings into a private court, being distracted with the din of carriages, that disturb the inhabitants who live towards the open street; and gave his acquaintance to understand, that he had a medical work upon the anvil, which he could not finish without being indulged in silence and tranquillity. In effect, he gradually put on the exteriors of an author. His watch, with an horizontal movement by Graham, which he had often mentioned, and shown as a very curious piece of workmanship, began, about this ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... discovered. It was of the greatest rarity and is described as being as long as two middle finger joints. It was as thick as the first thumb joint, was pointed at both ends, and had eight well-cut facets. When struck upon an anvil, it wore the files and hammers, itself remaining intact. This young man of Cumana wore it hanging round his neck, and he sold it to Andreas Morales for five green glass beads because their colour ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... illustrate the range of American naturalism and the progressive disillusion of a generation. Manassas is the work of a man filled with epic memories and epic expectations who saw in the Civil War a clash of titanic principles, saw a nation being beaten out on a fearful anvil, saw splendor and heroism rising up from the pits of slaughter. And in spite of his fifteen years spent in discovering the other side of the American picture Mr. Sinclair in Jimmie Higgins, the story of a socialist who went to war against the Kaiser, showed traces still of a romantic ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the chivalric ages; will it not be gloriously delightful to see once more "the light of other days" upon us? To see those battlements decked with the banners of the house of Mumbles, to hear the clarion ring, to listen to the strains of martial music, to see the lounge and thrust and anvil blow, knights ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... his race endure— Think on him whom butchers murder'd On the field of Magus Muir:— By his sacred blood I charge ye, By the ruin'd hearth and shrine— By the blighted hopes of Scotland, By your injuries and mine— Strike this day as if the anvil Lay beneath your blows the while, Be they Covenanting traitors, Or the brood of false Argyle! Strike! and drive the trembling rebels Backwards o'er the stormy Forth; Let them tell their pale Convention How they fared within the North. Let them ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... ye're talkin' like a Populist an' an anarchist an' a big bullhead gen'rally. Ye bring up two or three Jew men, an' think f'r to scare us with thim. But look here. Supposin' a man comes into my place an' lays down on th' anvil a silver dollar, an' I give it a wallop with ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... the leading gentry." There's an inn, "The George"; There's a blacksmith's forge, And in the neat little inn's trim garden The old men, each with his own churchwarden, Bent and grey, but gossipy fellows, Sip their innocent pints of beer, While the anvil-notes ring high and clear To the rushing bass of the mighty bellows. And thence they look on a cheerful scene As the little ones play on the Village Green, Skipping about With laugh and shout ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... was that I had not charged any of them anything, and had given them a marriage certificate with a seal on it, made out of a Mexican dollar; and had given a treat and fired off the anvil. Still, although the Pope of Rome was beyond the jurisdiction of even the Alcalde of Tubac, I could not see the way open ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... my chicken! you know a thing or two!" he said, as he took his iron from the fire, and laid it again on the anvil. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... cooking utensils placed by the side, of the brushwood brought from a distance; a portable forge was established; and this colony, which seemed as though it had risen from the ground as by a miracle, was soon busily employed, while the anvil resounded with the blows which were fashioning horses' ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... hands and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and buried them beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit, as far beneath the earth to Tartarus. For a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth. Round it runs a fence of bronze, and night spreads in triple line all about it like ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... former activities and misfortunes, and waited without impatience till some one should come who would give him a light for his cigar-stump. Shrill hammering from a workshop, the distant ring of the anvil in a smithy, the low rumbling of a far-away wagon came up to his heights with a little dust from the road and thin smoke from chimneys of all sizes, to show him that down in the town people were bravely toiling and sweating, while Karl Huerlin sat peacefully untroubled on his throne at ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... of sex and sexual tradition still, and we have to free ourselves from it. We do free ourselves from it. We have learnt in a thousand different ways to hold back death, and this sex, which in the old barbaric days was just sufficient to balance our dying, is now like a hammer that has lost its anvil, it plunges through human life. You poets, you young people want to turn it to delight. Turn it to delight. That may be one way out. In a little while, if you have any brains worth thinking about, you ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of being an open, roomy vessel for holding things, it may be awkwardly shaped, and sometimes difficult to open at all. Nor do things pour out of it in a stream, as water does from a pitcher; they rather flash out of it, like sparks from the anvil. Instead of possessing its own knowledge, it is possessed by it; it burns as it emits it, and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... pyramid for the roof, mighty pretty, I assure you, and joined very well together, with iron spikes, which he made himself; for he had made him a forge, with a pair of wooden bellows and charcoal for his work, forming an anvil cut of one of the iron crows, to work upon, and in the manner would he make himself hooks, staples, spikes, bolts, and hinges. After he had pitched the roof of his innermost tent, he made it so ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... the tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the royal family about the battered palace, and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a grand tutti of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room; the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red mineral bounding and thundering down the iron chute. And now all gone—all fallen away into this ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this movement will conquer the territory not with arms in their hands, but with the gold-rocker, the plough, the loom, and the anvil, the steam-boat, the railway, and the telegraph. Commerce and agriculture, disenthralled by the influences of free institutions, will cause the new empire to spring into life, full armed, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. Its ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... with theirs compare— That praise of them no fitting language hath. Divine was Rhodope—and Venus' wrath Was such at Erylesis' perfect throat, She dragged her to the forge where Vulcan smote Her beauty on his anvil. Well, as much As star transcends a sequin, and just such As temple is to rubbish-heap, I say, You do eclipse their beauty every way. Those airy sprites that from the azure smile, Peris and elfs the while they men beguile, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... broke in sundry pieces, and sometimes would take up those pieces, and hurle them about the room, and into the other room; and when it did not hurle the glasse at their heads, it did strike upon the tables, as if many smiths, with their greatest hammers, had been laying on as upon an anvil; sometimes it thumpt against the walls as if it would beat a hole through; then upon their heads, such stamping, as if the roof of the house were beating down upon their heads; and having done thus, during the space (as was conjectured) of two hours, it ceased and vanished, but with ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Anvil's Brother, Hid is the hammered Death of Men. Would ye look on the gift of the green-clad Mother? How then shall ye ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... is like Siegfried, the noble child, That song-and-saga wonder, Who, when his fabled sword was forged, His anvil ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... not only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the Musick of a Kettle-Drum, the Project ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... valuable as arms, of whatever style and fashion they might be. The bellows blew, and the hammer clanged continually upon the anvil, while the blacksmiths were repairing the broken weapons of other wars. Doubtless some of the soldiers lugged out those enormous, heavy muskets which used to be fired, with rests, in the time of the early Puritans. Great horse-pistols, too, were found, which would go off with a bang like a cannon. ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the feet; and as I did so the wind came, hard and biting, against my face. There, just below me, not fifty feet away, were rolling the great waves, white-capped and roaring, pounding like vast sledges upon the anvil of the sand. My entire being thrilled at the majestic sight, and for the moment I forgot everything as I gazed away across those restless, heaving waters, seemingly without limit, stretching forth into the dim northward as far as the eye could ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... those who tear The matted sward with spade and share, And those whose sounding axes gleam Beside the lonely forest-stream, Till its broad banks lie bare; And him who breaks the quarry-ledge, With hammer-blows, plied quick and strong, And him who, with the steady sledge, Smites the shrill anvil all day long. Sprinkle the furrow's even trace For those whose toiling hands uprear The roof-trees of our swarming race, By grove and plain, by stream and mere; Who forth, from crowded city, lead ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... has sold me more than my money's worth; I believe, however, there is something more in the cart." Thereupon I rumaged the farther end of the cart, and, amidst a quantity of straw, I found a small anvil and bellows of that kind which are used in forges, and two hammers such as smiths use, one ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... should censure me for sometimes recording the men of mean life, let me ask, Which is preferable, he who thunders at the anvil, or in the senate? The man who earnestly wishes the significant letters, ESQ. spliced to the end of his name, will despise the question; but the philosopher will answer, "They ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... circumstances. The clubs of the warriors caused Nicko's almost indestructible hide to ring like a great bell. The handle of one warrior's lethal bludgeon snapped and the attacker stared at it in amazement. The rest beat down again upon the prone Nicko, their clubs bouncing off and resounding in a sort of anvil chorus. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... their country pursue their enemies, or retreat before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions, and ambassadours are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries of life are required and obtained; and the successive business of the seasons continues to ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... urgent invitation of General Banks, whose military duties seem to have been somewhat hampered by civil calls, to remain over the 4th of March and participate in the inauguration of a civil government for Louisiana, in which the Anvil Chorus was to be played by all the bands in the Army of the Gulf, the church bells rung, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... follow'd, evidence their truth;" I answer'd: "Nature did not make for these The iron hot, or on her anvil mould them." "Who voucheth to thee of the works themselves," Was the reply, "that they in very deed Are that they purport? None hath ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... when the girl took up with Martin Blake, the son of the blacksmith in the next village, who might be seen most days with a smutty face and leathern apron hammering away at the glowing red metal on the anvil. It would have been well for him if he had only been seen thus, with the marks of honest toil about him; but Martin Blake was too often to be seen at the 'Crown,' and often in a state that anyone who loved him would have grieved to see; and he was always to be found at any race meetings and steeplechases ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... likelihood, originally the sun-god of the Asiatic nations; displaying all the attributes of that luminary; and because fire is "the great agent in reducing and working the metals, Vulcan, the fire-god, naturally became an artist, and is represented as working with hammer and tongs at his anvil. Thus the Greeks, instead of worshipping Nature, worshipped the Powers of Nature, as personified in the almost ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the iron ribbons for the sleigh runners he had to go across to the smithy; and there stood a cottar at work roughing horseshoes. Red glowing iron once more, and steel. The clang of hammer on anvil seemed to tear his ears; yet it drew him on too. It was long since last he heard that sound. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... CHAPTER I. (SPERM WHALE).—This whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to his will; he grinds it to powder, and makes one of his own, with which he will face either man or god. In the making of it he sings the glorious Sword-song; and when it is made he tests it by splitting the anvil with it. Here the first act ends. There are two Siegfried themes to notice; the first, the ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... Whale; V. the Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER I. ( Sperm Whale). —This whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... he can be practical. If Mr. Burritt should prove as good a statesman as a theorist, he would be an exception to most who belong to the aerial school. As a writer he stands deservedly high. In his "Sparks from the Anvil," and "Voice from the Forge," are to be found as fine pieces as have been produced by any writer of the day. His "Drunkard's Wife" is the most splendid thing of the kind in the language. His stature is of the middle size, head well developed, with ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... calling from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist, the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Morte d'Arthur there is the legend of the Sword of Assay. In the church against the high altar was a great stone, four-square, like unto a marble stone. In the midst of it was an anvil of steel, a foot high, and therein stood a naked sword by the point. About the sword there were letters written, saying, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is righteous king born of all England." ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... ciliated epithelium. On the posterior portion it is connected with the mastoid cells. Three small bones are stretched across the cavity of the tympanum, and called, from their form, the malleus, incus and stapes, or the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. Agassiz mentions a fourth, which he terms the os orbiculare. Each wave of sound falling upon the membrana tympani, throws its molecules into vibrations which are communicated to the chain of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... or of any rhetorical artifice, but throw themselves headlong into their subject, trusting to nature for that language which is at once the shortest and the most appropriate to the occasion; spurning all far-fetched metaphors aside, and ringing out their verse as the iron rings upon the anvil! It was in this way that Homer, the great old ballad-maker of Greece, wrote—or rather chanted, for in his day pens were scarce, wire-wove unknown, and the pride of Moseley undeveloped. God had deprived the blind old man of sight; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the vise as an anvil. Ordinary and proper use of this tool will insure it for a lifetime, aside from its natural wear. It may be said with safety that a vise will never break if used for the purpose for which it was intended. One blow of a hammer may ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... retinues of servants, crowded into London and gathered into the greatest church. When the people came forth from the service there was seen in the churchyard a great marble stone, four square, and having in the midst of it a steel anvil a foot high. Through the middle of this anvil a beautiful sword was sticking, with the point projecting beyond. Around the sword in letters of gold ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... answered, "in one sense. It is thus he speaks, and, like all partial parents, even thinks he feels toward his offspring; but observe his acts narrowly from first to last. He has a manufacturer's heart, with all his genius. He loves machinery—the sound of the mill, the anvil, the spinning-jenny, the sight of the ship upon the high-seas, or steamboat on the river, the roar of commerce, far more than the work of the husbandman. We are an agricultural people, we of the South and ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... previously witnessed, came under my observation. The air was filled with fire-flies, which, emitting a phosphoric light something similar to the light of the glow-worm, only more red and brilliant, danced around me like sparks from a smith's anvil when he is beating a bar of red-hot iron. These creatures flutter about with a humming noise, and frequently settle in large swarms upon branches of trees, giving them the semblance of so many pieces of timber taken newly out of a fire. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... idiot, and rising and sinking to the labored breathings, and adding the torture of its leaden weight to the dying struggles. We are curiously made. In all the throng of gaping and sympathetic onlookers there was not one with common sense enough to perceive that an anvil would have been in better taste there than the Bible, less open to sarcastic criticism, and swifter in its atrocious work. In my nightmares I gasped and struggled for breath under the crush of that vast book for many ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... whose imagination is active, and whose happiness lies, not in doing, but in perceiving—half a poet, half a critic, and all a spectator. He is contrasted, excellently, with the figure of Hollingsworth, the heavily treading Reformer, whose attitude with regard to the world is that of the hammer to the anvil, and who has no patience with his friend's indifferences and neutralities. Coverdale is a gentle sceptic, a mild cynic; he would agree that life is a little worth living—or worth living a little; but would remark that, unfortunately, to live little enough, we have to live a great ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil, Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... stood in act to speak, or rather stammer, But sage Antonia cut him short before The anvil of his speech received the hammer, With 'Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more, Or madam dies.'—Alfonso mutter'd, 'D—n her,' But nothing else, the time of words was o'er; He cast a rueful look or two, and did, He knew not wherefore, that ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... its black tracery. In the middle of that square-ruled page of light I see transparently outlined the smith's eccentric silhouette, now black and sharp, now softly huge. Spectrally through the glare, and in blundering frenzy, he strives and struggles and fumbles horribly on the anvil. Swaying, he seems to rush to right and to left, like a passenger on a hell-bound ferry. The more drunk he is, the more furiously he falls upon his iron ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Little Brothers of the Knock-Out Drops, Five Hundred and Seventy-five Thousand books sold (and mine is twelve per cent. of the gross) while you are STILL drawing your little $18 per and STILL singing second tenor in the Anvil Chorus. ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... well, for you will never feel the crown on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the air; we therefore would conclude that nitro-glycerin carried about exposed cannot explode, even if you drop a coal of fire into it; if the liquid is confined, or is under pressure, then an explosion will ensue; if paper be moistened with it and put on an anvil and a smart blow given with a hammer, a sharp detonation ensues; if gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... Count himself seized the King round the neck, but the King tumbled him out of his saddle in return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own horse, and standing over him, beat away at his iron armour like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when the Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the King would not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to a common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight, that it was afterwards called ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... implements, brooms, baskets, harrows, sleds and carts; tailoring, making all kinds of underwear, hosiery, gloves and mittens; linen furnishings, for table and bed, together with many other articles of household use. Often, the forge and the anvil, with tools for rough iron working, were added to the equipment of the farm. In those days, farming required a knowledge of the use of tools; the square, the level, the plumb-bob; the hammer, the saw and the plane; were ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... St. Catherines.—Pass close south of the Shambles and steer for Anvil Point, thence hug the ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... for the forge, with the pioneers' aprons for sides, and part of a gun-barrel for the pipe. The tiller of the Briton's rudder was used for an anvil, and nails were made out of the copper bolts from her stern posts. A sailor's canoe, which was nearly finished, took fire, and both her gunwales ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... task. And for seven days and seven nights the sparks never stopped flying from his forge; and the ringing of his anvil, and the hissing of the hot metal as he tempered it, were heard continuously. On the eighth day the sword was fashioned, and Siegfried brought it ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... window. His chest, he explained curtly, was "susceptible." As we crawled westward through the glaring country, the sun's rays reverberated on the carriage roof till I seemed to be crushed under an anvil, counting the strokes. I had dropped my book, and was staring listlessly out of the window. At the other end of the compartment my fellow-passenger had pulled down the blinds, and hidden his face behind the Western Morning News. He was a red and choleric little ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... before. In October Liszt visited him again, and heard the "Walkuere" on the piano. A musical journal in Leipzig was emboldened to speak of a forthcoming event that would agitate the whole musical world. With what joyous cheerfulness he composed "Siegfried," and his Anvil-song is shown in a letter about Liszt's symphonic poems, which appeared in the following spring. Accident and irresistible impulse, however, led immediately to the ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... disguises. It has forcibly struck me that if I could be indulged in the pleasure of half-an-hour's conversation with you on the subject, it would furnish me with some hints, which, beaten on the anvil of my brain, would be of eminent service to me on the occasion," &c. A meeting was appointed, and, at an early date the author dined at the actor's cottage. Godwin, anxious not to outrage probability in his story, sought information as to "the power of destroying ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... tongs, and the red sparks radiated in showers as the hammer thumped dully on the soft metal—thumps sharply punctuated by the clean ring of steel as the polished face of the tool bounced merrily upon the chilled surface of the anvil. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... very yielding nature. The direct influence a passive, merely receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully, was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, and as little capable of playing anvil to another mind for long. He rebelled against her ascendancy, but suffered from the spell. She was no Countess Guiccioli, content to adore and be adored, and exercise an indirect power for good on a capricious lover. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... seems that the blacksmith has made a horse-shoe, and that therefore the horse-shoe is his. But the blacksmith knows that the horse-shoe does not belong solely to him, but to his landlord, to the rate collector and taxgatherer, to the men from whom he bought the iron and anvil and the coals, leaving only a scrap of its value for himself; and this scrap he has to exchange with the butcher and baker and the clothier for the things that he really appropriates as living tissue or its wrappings, paying for all of them more ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... shuttle's song; There's triumph in the anvil's stroke; There's merit in the brave and strong Who dig the mine or fell ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... young nephew and of the kingdom. If the authority thus conferred upon him met with general acceptance, he would probably make an excellent ruler. If it were questioned he would strike out, and show no mercy. In those hard days every man of high position must be either hammer or anvil, and Richard was resolved that he would not ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... scaffolding for the fireworks and benches for the audience. General Banks urged me to remain over the 4th of March, to participate in the ceremonies, which he explained would include the performance of the "Anvil Chorus" by all the bands of his army, and during the performance the church-bells were to be rung, and cannons were to be fired by electricity. I regarded all such ceremonies as out of place at a time when it seemed to me every hour and every minute were due ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... man of powerful build, wide forehead, overhanging brows, broad chest and shoulders, short thick neck, and strong arms developed at the anvil. His superintendent from boyhood had studied him, but never before had he seen the lion in his ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... rock, where he kept his eye steadily upon the progress of the vessel. While the artificers were at work, chiefly in sitting and kneeling postures, excavating the rock, or boring with the tools, and while their numerous hammers, and the sound of the smith's anvil continued, the situation of things did not appear so awful. In this state of suspense, with almost certain destruction at hand, the water began to rise upon those who were at work on the lower parts of the sites of the beacon and lighthouse. From the run of the sea upon the ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... Ye will be after breaking my heart, ye will; and me waiting for you these long years, and now at last come all the way over from old Ireland to find ye as hard and obdurate as the blacksmith's anvil in the corner of Saint Patrick's street, in Ballybruree," were the first words that caught my ear. "Shure you will be afther relenting and not laving me a disconsolate widower, to go back to ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... Venancio answered; but the same thought kept beating down on their dull brains like a hammer on an anvil. ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... menace unmistakable. The Reconstruction of the Empire was on the anvil; what was to be India's place therein? The Dominions were proclaimed as partners; was India to remain a Dependency? Mr. Bonar Law bade the Dominions strike while the iron was hot; was India to wait till it was ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... write Greek. I will look into Pope for it, who, ten to one, will not tell me the real translation. I think the first hour of the morning is also favourable to the bodily strength. Among other feats, when I was a young man, I was able at times to lift a smith's anvil with one hand, by what is called the horn, or projecting piece of iron on which things are beaten to turn them round. But I could only do this before breakfast, and shortly after rising. It required my full strength, undiminished by the least exertion, and those who choose ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... one Sunday evening he decided to be done with dallying, and to bring Ruth between the hammer and the anvil of his will. It was the last Sunday in July, exactly three weeks after Sedgemoor, and the odd coincidence of his having chosen such a day and hour ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... delight stories about this particular hero which went beyond grown-up credence altogether. But there are some few narratives that survive the application of the laws of evidence. For instance, it is recorded that, taking advantage of the temporary absence of a rival smith, he carried away an anvil under his cloak without exciting suspicion that he was bearing any weight ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... my heart, all heated, On the hard anvil, minded so Into his own fair shape to beat it With his great hammer, blow on blow; And yet I whisper—"As God will!" And at his ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... creations of that marvellous Greek mind might be fitly used to symbolize phases of the present. Hercules might labor now; there are other stables than the Augean; and not yet are all Hydras slain. Armor is needed; and a Vulcan spirit is making the anvil ring beneath the earth-crust of humanity. But Venus, the voluptuous, the wanton,—no sensuousness pervading any religion of this era finds in her its fitting type and sign. She, her companions, and her paramours, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... duties just as the Fourth Coalition was being hammered to pieces, on the same anvil which had destroyed the others. By the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807), Napoleon prepared to unite the northern nations in his war on British commerce. Hearing or divining his purpose to further this project by seizing the fleet of Denmark, Canning dispatched an armed force to Copenhagen with ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... here was a difficulty, the native bellows were of no use for the work in hand. He therefore contrived, by means of two goat-skins and a circular piece of board, to make a pair of bellows of sufficient power to fan the fire and heat the iron, and with a blue granite stone for an anvil, a pair of tongs indicative of Vulcan's first efforts, and a hammer, never intended for its present use, he successfully accomplished his task, and afterwards repaired some gun-locks, which were as essential for the comfort and success of ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... carried the white hot bar to his anvil, and began to hammer. He despised girls, as a rule, and their ways. Decidedly Lizzie annoyed him; and yet as he worked he could not help glancing at her now and then, as she sat and watched him. By-and-by he saw that her eyes were ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said Niccolo. "Don't you be bringing up my speeches again after you've swallowed them, and handing them about as if they were none the worse. I vote and I speak when there's any use in it: if there's hot metal on the anvil, I lose no time before I strike; but I don't spend good hours in tinkling on cold iron, or in standing on the pavement as thou dost, Goro, with snout upward, like a pig under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzo—dead and gone before his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... questions of state, questions of the land, questions of peace, questions of war. There, for the first time, was pronounced that phrase which contained a whole new alignment of society,—the Rights of Man. There, for fifty years, has been heard the ringing of the anvil upon which supernatural smiths were forging pure ideas,—ideas, those swords of the people, those lances of justice, that armour of law. There, suddenly impregnated with sympathetic currents, like embers which redden in the wind, all those who had flame in their hearts, great advocates ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo |
