"Cast-iron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be no possibility of mistake in getting it into the freight car designed to carry it to Southampton, but did not require him to stay there and see that all was put on board. When the cases reached Southampton it was found that one was missing. It was one of the heaviest of the lot, containing the cast-iron pier on which the photoheliograph was to be mounted. While it was possible to replace this by something else, such a course would have been inconvenient and perhaps prejudicial. The steamer was about to sail, but would touch at Plymouth ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... immensely—the trunks of some were three feet in diameter, and around them all was a massive iron railing. The brick and brownstone houses on Waverly Place and Fourth-street had long been removed, and huge edifices with cast-iron fronts supplanted them. I looked in vain for the little drug-store on the corner with its red and green bottles, and the fruit-man's below with its show of yellow bananas and sour oranges. The University, dimly seen ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Hexameter and Pentameter from Schiller, we believe the case to have arisen thus: in talking of metre, and illustrating it (as Coleridge often did at tea-tables) from Homer, and then from the innumerable wooden and cast-iron imitations of it among the Germans—he would be very likely to cite this little ivory bijou from Schiller; upon which the young ladies would say: 'But, Mr. Coleridge, we do not understand German. Could you not give us an idea of it ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... home comforts back," he vowed sullenly. "The Beach hain't what it used ter be. Goin' on a picnic with Abe Rose is like settin' yer teeth into a cast-iron stove lid covered with a thin layer ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... twilight; the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and of the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius. He is like a lump of coal rich with gas, which lies expending itself in puffs and {p.282} gleams, unless some shrewd body will clap it into a cast-iron box, and compel the compressed element to do itself justice. His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will.[117] I don't now expect a great original poem from Coleridge, but ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... with an enormously large head, a broad, bold forehead, large, aquiline nose, huge mouth, and broad, heavy chin. His eyes were small, but very brilliant, and, when under excitement, flashed like fire, although his demeanor was like that of a cast-iron man. ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... to resist a bribe in a great and shifting body like the House. Any scoundrel feels that he can slink among the rest unseen. The old members who have been returned term after term since they began to grow stubby beards on their cast-iron chins are an argument against rotation; they have had a chance to acquire the confidence of the public, they are experienced legislators, and they ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... delightful in its comfortable simplicity, or decorated with the noblest and most meaning art in the place; the modern, mean, miserable, uncomfortable, and showy, plastered about with wretched sham ornament, trumpery of cast-iron, and brass and polished steel, and what not—offensive to look at, and a nuisance to clean—and the whole thing huddled up with rubbish of ash-pan, and fender, and rug, till surely the hearths which ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... cast-iron shot. When the gun is fired, the cylinder bursts and scatters the shot over a wide ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... not suppose that they agreed—that would have been indeed a miracle and quite a fresh departure for a picture with a reputation earned in a different branch of thaumaturgy. It does not much matter, however, what they thought, for experts in matters of art are the victims of such cast-iron prejudices that if once they fancy they see the influence of Leonardo da Vinci in a picture and take it into their heads that it comes from Piedmont, it will be found the most difficult thing in the world to persuade ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... are less numerous but more weighty. The liability to imperfect construction and careless management often makes a furnace, especially a cast-iron one, a savor of death unto death rather than of health and comfort; also, when we are warmed by air thrown into a room at a high temperature, and dry at that, a greater degree of heat is necessary for comfort than if our bodies and clothing absorb heat from ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... but, by Jove, I did not think you had the heart to insult her, after all. A man can't stand by and see that. Clear off your pipe and your brandy before she comes, or, as sure as I am made of flesh and blood, and not cast-iron——" ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... do with wooden bridges only, nothing will be said of the proper relative dimensions of cast-iron columns to sustain the strains to which they may be subjected, but a table of the strength of columns will be ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... Holmes, the annalist, says, that tea began to be used in New England in 1720. Small quantities, must, however, have been made many years before, as small copper tea-kettles were in use in Plymouth, in 1702. The first cast-iron tea-kettles were made in Plympton, (now Carver,) Mass., between 1760 and 1765. When ladies went to visiting parties, each one carried her tea-cup, saucer, and spoon. The cups were of the best china, very small, containing about as much as ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... do his utmost to get a lighthouse built on the rock. He shortly afterwards became a shipowner and merchant in Liverpool; and, being successful in business, he forthwith put his intention into execution. His first plan was to fit long cast-iron pillars deep into the rock, and to place upon them a circular room, as the habitation of the light-keepers, with a lantern at the top. He had already raised the pillars to a considerable height, when a heavy gale came on, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... this, known as a flowing well, is the best "find" possible, as the fortunate borer has nothing more to do than to put down a tubing of cast-iron artesian pipe, lead the oil from its mouth into a tank, and then, sitting under his own vine and fig-tree, leave his fortune to accumulate by daily additions of thousands of dollars. A flowing well, struck while Miselle was upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Mark's, and one long nine-pounder is exquisitely ornamented with a reticulation of vines cast in relief over the whole length of it. It bears the name of Albergetti, its founder. The only modern guns I saw were half a dozen heavy cast-iron thirty-two-pounders of Liege, and a few light bronze guns on the battery commanding the entrance of the harbor. The whole circuit of the walls is still furnished with the ancient bronze guns, of which several are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... wasted no words; his answers always came so quick and brief that they seemed to be part of the question that had been asked instead of a reply to it. When he stood at table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a cast-iron gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawning want in somebody's eye; then he pounced down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue again. When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright till he got to the door; he turned hand-springs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... satisfactory rooms. Here the new owner, or his architect, had the discretion to preserve as much as possible of the past. The old mill owner's counting room, on the lower floor, is now the library and, in almost untouched condition, is complete even to the cast-iron ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... flicker round his lips. It wasn't everybody who could crawl on his belly for nearly a quarter of a mile with a bullet through his leg, and come up smiling at the end of it. A cast-iron constitution! If he had only known it fifteen, even ten years ago, what a different life he might have led. The great disgrace would never have ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was wood, the means of propulsion sails, with some thought of steam-engines and paddle-wheels; the means of offence were cast-iron guns large in number but small in size, the largest being 9 or 11 inches in diameter and throwing a shell of some 75 or 130 pounds weight, while the means of defence consisted solely in the "wooden walls," and modern ideas regarding armor had not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... poured into a tank and mixed, and subsequently allowed to flow into an acid egg or montjus, to be afterwards forced up to the nitrating house in the danger area. The montjus or acid egg is a strong cast-iron tank, of either an egg shape, or a cylinder with a round end. If of the former shape, it would lie on its side, and upon the surface of the ground, and would have a manhole at one end, upon which a lid would be strongly bolted down; but ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... are shields, charged in relievo with the armorial bearings of the Grosvenor family, and of other ancient families that, by intermarriages, the Grosvenors are entitled to quarter with their own. The windows, which are "richly dight" with tracery, are of cast-iron, moulded on both sides, and grooved to receive the glass. The walls, battlements, and pinnacles, are of stone, of a light and beautiful colour, from the Manly ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... Cattle crowd have a good stove they won't sell it," replied Jack. "You will likely find a second-hand flue in it, or a rubber hose leader. Those boys are brilliant. If we need a new stove let it be from Duke's, with a cast-iron guarantee." ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... for the superintendent's cast-iron visage had softened considerably, and he manifested unmistakable interest as he reached out and took up and inspected the neatly formulated ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... these facts, which had so to speak to be extracted by force, varied in their details; the last, however, seemed most nearly to approach the truth. Amongst the objects picked up by the Astrolabe were an anchor weighing about 1800 pounds, a cast-iron cannon, a bronze swivel, a copper blunderbuss, some pig lead, and several other considerably damaged articles of little interest. These relics, with those collected by Dillon, are now in the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the oldest inhabitant—that wonderful piece of antiquity, with white hair, garrulous tongue, and cast-iron memory,- -who was born with the present century—very often before it—and remembers George III, the Battle of Waterloo, and the invention of the steam-engine. But in Australia, the oldest inhabitant is localized, and rechristened ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... trenches.... Barring a revolution, the war might last for years ... years.... "Peace Proposals" irritated what little humor they had left to ghastly obscene joking.... "Victories" left them as cold as the mid-winter bed.... The Hohenzollerns, the other kings and princes, the cast-iron junkers, would cling fast to their own until the Enemy Allies' day of judgment, for surrender meant their quicker extermination; now, at least, they were still in the saddle, able to cheer their haunted egos with ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... mild word,' I said. 'But I want to know another thing. It seems to me that the line you've picked is as good as could be. But it's a cast-iron line. It commits us pretty deep and it won't be a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... not hesitate to provide elaborate refreshments for the guests. Here, too, the spirit of fun and jollity should prevail, and great merriment is always provoked by the ludicrous expression of the guest who has broken two teeth on the cast-iron olive. Other delightful surprises should be arranged, and a little Sloan's liniment in the punch or ground glass in the ice cream will go a long way toward making the supper amusing. And finally, when the guests ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... so," with a shrug. "But he is a very disagreeable person! Cast-iron, you know. I am so thankful you are not a ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... to regard the two-story brick house and the square of lawn with a concrete deer on one side of the walk, balanced by a concrete deer on the other. Before the gate was the cast-iron effigy of a small Negro in fantastic uniform, holding an iron ring aloft. The Gashwiler carriage horse had been tethered to this in the days before the Gashwiler ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... is enough to vex the soul of a cast-iron dog! Whenever I set out any milk to cool, somebody comes and seals it up ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... spare bedroom and the ceiling of the sitting room. Not the kind of a register that comes from a twisted-around shaft in a house that uses furnace heat. But jest really a hole in the floor, with a cast-iron grating, to let the heat from the room below into the one above. She says she guesses two people that wasn't so very honourable might sneak into the house the back way, and up the back stairs, and into the spare bedroom, and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the 'Seventies, frowning under an outrageously insistent mansard, capped by a cupola, and staring out of long windows overtopped with "ornamental" slabs. Two cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mould, stood on opposite sides of the front walk, their backs towards it and each other, their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that they ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... simple interior, too, of these castles and palaces, the honest oak without paint or varnish, the rich wood carvings, the ripe human tone and atmosphere,—how it all contrasts, for instance, with the showy, gilded, cast-iron interior of our commercial or political palaces, where everything that smacks of life or nature is studiously excluded under the necessity ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... twenty-seven feet by thirty-five. The portico which fronted the river was composed of six columns, more than four feet in diameter at the base. The staircase-room was ninety feet in length, twenty-seven in width, and forty-seven in height, with two staircases of cast-iron, of large size and elegant form, prepared at Birmingham. The spacious grounds were surrounded with iron railing, and the front entrance was adorned with a noble gate, likewise ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... password was given. And then, coming to the gap in the wire, Ned, Bob and Jerry, with the others, passed through. Each member of the party carried an automatic pistol and several hand grenades. These were small, hollow containers, of cast-iron, loaded with a powerful explosive, which was set off after a certain trigger or spring or firing pin (according to the type used) was released by the thrower. The explosive blew the grenade to bits, and it was scored, or crisscrossed, by deep indentations so that ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... a great saver—of backache, especially to the beginner; as Warner says, "at the best you will conclude that for gardening purposes a cast-iron back with a hinge in it is preferable to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... his steed. "How to pass a carriage," "How to lose your way," "How to travel on two legs in a frost," are among the best of these. Another clever print shows the rider of a pulling animal with a mouth of cast-iron just clearing an old woman's barrow; while among the larger prints we have "Richmond Hill," "Hyde Park," "Coxheath Ho," and "Warley Ho," and his inimitable print of a "Riding House," ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... DuBarry are indisposed. My cast-iron constitution holds good. As a rule, I take no medicine or medical advice. In a few instances I have acceded to the wishes of my friends, and applied to the doctors; but have been careful not to allow their prescriptions to get further than ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... side with this, as if in ironic illustration of the other side of the life of the Ghetto, was a seeming royal proclamation headed V.R., informing the public that by order of the Secretary of State for War a sale of wrought-and cast-iron, zinc, canvas, tools and leather would take place ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the shrill sounds of the lathes that drew groans from the steel, Raphael passed into a large, clean, and airy place where he was able to inspect at his leisure the great press that Planchette had told him about. He admired the cast-iron beams, as one might call them, and the twin bars of steel ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known—so we of the North thought—as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on a railroad." ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... drored it down again to the gate. The fine frenzy was proved by the fury with which the woman flung wide the portal that the horgan might be drored out. She flung it back too far, and the hinge, a soulless thing of cast-iron, snapped. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... properly levelled, nicely green- swarded, and well-cared for. The first person interred in the ground was the wife of the first incumbent—the Rev. T. Clark. Outside and in front of the building there is a large blue-featured clock with a cast-iron inside. It was fixed in 1857, and there was considerable newspaper discussion at the time as to what it would do. Time has proved how well it can keep time. It is looked after by a gentleman learned in the deep mysteries of horology, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... forty or fifty feet. When, at last, the waters had grown calm, and Stevenson was able again to visit the rock, he found that the force of the sea had removed six immense blocks of granite twelve or fifteen paces off; and in the smith's forge the ash-pan, though it had a heavy cast-iron back, had been washed away, and was found on the opposite side of the rock. Stevenson thought there was no time to lose, so he and the men worked away at the building, which was to be a home for the workmen, and ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... because it made the house damp; and there was such a broad carriage-drive from the gate to the house! The gate was no longer the modest green wooden gate, ever ajar with its easy latch; but a tall, cast-iron, well-locked gate, between two pillars to match the porch. And on one of the gates was a brass plate, on which was graven, "Hobbs' Lodge—Ring the bell." The lesser Hobbses and the bigger Hobbses were all on the lawn—many of them fresh ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dried out, rung exactly like a 60-in. cast-iron pipe, when any one walked through them or stamped ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... is to dine in such a place. Unless you are blessed with a cast-iron constitution and a stomach of the same pattern, you are not likely to survive. Usually they put down boiled meat first, after which comes the soup. The chief regret in your case is that the soup had not come first, so that you could have ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... received two letters dated the 14th, and couched in tones so peremptory as to suggest a suspicion that no milder words would enforce obedience—that his Commander-in-chief feared that nothing short of cast-iron orders would drag him away from the Neapolitan Court. "Your Lordship is hereby required and directed to repair to Minorca, with the whole, or the greater part, of the force under your Lordship's command, for the protection of that island, as I shall, in all probability, have ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... in her house. The floor was not even polished. She had left the old somber hangings on the walls, had kept the old-fashioned country furniture, burned tallow candles, had fallen in with the ways of the place and adopted provincial life without flinching before its cast-iron narrowness, its most disagreeable hardships; but knowing that her guests would forgive her for any prodigality that conduced to their comfort, she left nothing undone where their personal enjoyment was concerned; her dinners, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... putting in of the tubes entails some trouble, it is worth while to select a good kettle for treatment. Get one that is made of thick tinned sheet iron (cast-iron articles are unsuitable), or even of copper, if you are intent on making a handsome gift which will last indefinitely. The broad shallow kettle is best suited for tubing, as it naturally has a fair heating surface, and its bottom area gives room for inserting ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... A cast-iron glue-pot makes a very good crucible for melting the metal, which can be either aluminum, white metal, zinc or any other metal having a low melting-point. This completes the equipment with the exception of one or two simple devices which ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... beautiful sight at night, with their huge, glowing furnaces and the forms of the brawny workmen, passing between us and the light. In one furnace they are heating pieces of cast-iron, about twelve inches long, four inches wide, and one-half ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... after a moment's reflection, and a glance round the room for something to serve for apparatus, took from a shelf, where he had espied a number of articles, the smallest of a set of cast-iron cart boxes, as are usually termed the round hollow tubes in which the axletree of a carriage turns. Then selecting a tin cup that would just take in the box, and turning into the cup as much water as he judged, with the box, would fill it, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... The Oracle The Cast-iron Canvasser The Merino Sheep The Bullock White-when-he's-wanted The Downfall of Mulligan's The Amateur Gardener Thirsty Island Dan Fitzgerald Explains The Cat Sitting in Judgment The Dog The Dog—as a Sportsman Concerning a Steeplechase Rider Victor Second ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the footings, these again distributing the loads on the soil. The aim is to have an equal pressure per square foot of soil at the same time, for all footings, thus insuring an even settlement. The skeleton construction now almost wholly consists of wrought steel. At first cast-iron and wrought-iron were used but it was found they corroded ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... splendour, were they possessed of the symmetry and well-favoured situation of the Dom at Cologne? And so it is that we can but feel regret when we mentally note the lack of nave at Beauvais, of spires at Bourges, and, yet again, regret even with more pain the monstrousness of the cast-iron fleche which has been added to the central tower at Rouen. But these are after all minor imperfections—seldom, if ever, in aught but pleasurable anticipation, do we see in the masterpieces of art or nature a perfect unity; so why seek to negative their virtues by futile ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... baked a good many more'n Miss Ruth and I can dispose of, and that poor helper man of yours ought to be glad to get 'em after the cast-iron pound-weights that you and he have been tryin' to live on. Mercy on us! the thoughts of the cookies he showed me this mornin' have stayed in my head ever since. Made me feel as if I was ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a great day. Before his discovery was noted by the keepers he had joyfully destroyed two bars, and with a broken piece used as a lever was attacking a third. These bars were promptly replaced by larger bars, of harder wood, but screwed to the same cast-iron brackets that had carried the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... The train drawn consisted of eight-wheel wagons fully loaded with deals. The average weight of each wagon was 5 tuns 8 cwt. 3 qrs., and of each wagon with its load 15 tuns 5 cwt. 3 qrs. nearly. The wagons had cast-iron chilled wheels, each 2 feet 6 inches in diameter, with inside journals 3 7/8 inches in diameter, and 8 inches long. All the wagons had been put in complete order, and the journals, fitted with oil-tight boxes, were kept well oiled. The gage of the line was 6 feet. The weather was ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... made in the construction of the engine. Patterns for the castings were fabricated, most of them by Charles Marshall on Taylor Street,[12] and castings were poured. The body or main casting of the engine resembled a length of cast-iron pipe: it had no bosses or lugs cast on, nor any water jacket, for they thought the engine would be kept cool merely by being placed in the open air. The front end of the engine was secured to the vehicle by four bolts ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... England or America have been domiciled in these districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-glass windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels. There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals, courts, jails, and a foreign police. There are foreign ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... spalls off or cracks apart and does not flow under compression, and the unit strength of a shaft of concrete under compression has little relation to that of a flat block. Some years ago the writer pointed out that the weakness of cast-iron columns in compression is due to the lack of tensile strength or toughness in cast iron. Compare 7,600 lb. per sq. in. as the base of a column formula for cast iron with 100,000 lb. per sq. in. as the ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... of 5-inch timber was thrown over her deck, and this covered with a layer of old-fashioned railroad iron, from three-fourths to one inch thick, laid lengthways. At the time of this attack she had a cast-iron prow under water, and carried a IX-inch gun, pointing straight ahead through a slot in the roof forward; but as this for some reason could not be used, it was lashed in its place. Her dimensions were: length 128 feet, beam 26 feet, depth 121/2 feet. ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... car waiting," said Marigold. "Now, sir." He lifted me with his usual cast-iron tenderness into bed and pulled the coverings over me. "It's a funny time to talk about house repairs at eleven ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Cast-iron plows formed one item of this little foundry's work. Oliver, being a farmer, knew plows—and he knew that there was not a good plow in the world. Where others saw and accepted, he rebelled. He insisted that an approximately perfect plow could be made. He realized that a good plow should stay in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... tidying up a flower-bed as he reached the lawn, and, to Dexter's astonishment, he nodded and gave him another of his cast-iron smiles. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... will work. Unfortunately, the philosophers of Laputa would have had no more difficulty in filling up details than the legislators of England or the United States. When Bentham had settled in his 'Radical Reform Bill'[437] that the 'voting-box' was to be a double cube of cast-iron, with a slit in the lid, into which cards two inches by one, white on one side and black on the other, could be inserted, he must have felt that he had got very near to actual application: he can picture the whole operation and nobody can say that the scheme is impracticable for want of working ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... take up wi' a wastrel ne'er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an' a fighting dog at his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn't do herself harm. They talk o' rich folk bein' stuck up an' genteel, but for cast-iron pride o' respectability there's naught like poor chapel folk. It's as cold as th' wind o' Greenhow Hill—ay, and colder, for 'twill never change. And now I come to think on it, one at strangest things I know is 'at they couldn't abide th' thought o' soldiering. There's a vast o' fightin' i' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... this principle which enabled the contractors to jack up successfully the roof of a long section of the cast-iron lined tubes under Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, in connection with the reconstruction of the Battery tubes at that point, the method of operation, as partly shown in Fig. 2, Plate XXVIII, being to cut through a section of the roof, 4 by 10 ft. ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... and army reforms, championed by the Archduke Charles, had shelved the petted incapables of the Court and opened up undreamt-of vistas of hope even to the common soldier. Moreover, it was certain that the Tyrolese would revolt against the cast-iron Liberalism now imposed on them from Munich, which interfered with their cherished ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in the place started to laugh. I tell you there were fellows there with stitches in their sides from laughing so that they'd have given a five-pound note to be able to stop. But they couldn't. Every time they looked at me and saw me sitting there with a kind of a cast-iron grin on my face—and every time they looked at the two temperance secretaries who were gaping like stuck pigs, they started off laughing again. Charlie Sanderson, the butcher, who's a stoutish kind of man, tumbled off ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... pressing to the north, and both were far away. The sun sank like a ball of fire dipped in blood as I watched. The long red trail faded off the waters, and the soft colours out of the sky. The sea was a chill waste of tumbling waves. The sky was a cast-iron shutter. The manhood went out of me, and I sank with a sob on to my frail spar, for of all our company which had sailed so gallantly out of Peter Port five days before, I was the only one left, and the rest had all been done to ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... good one o'clock dinner, followed by a snooze by some of us, while others slept straight on till tea-time. I set out alone for a walk into a part I had not visited before, namely, along the seashore west of Mex Camp, to Dakeilah village. I passed an old fort with three very old cast-iron guns of 9-inch bore, lying uselessly on their sides, one labelled "loaded—dangerous". Beyond that the sand is a great depth, and the natives seemed to have it divided into allotments, each piece dug into a deep, wide trench from 6 to 12 feet deep, and along the bottom they have ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... went from Charmian to Claude—"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must both want a good long rest after all you've been through over here in God's own ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... cast-iron smile faded from the impassive face of the attorney-general and an unrelenting devil came to peer out of the colorless eyes. Then Meigs rose cat-like and laid his ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Adams was a pretty, graceful little woman, with a dainty charm about her, and a winning, off- hand manner, which made her a favorite with both young and old. Aunt Jane Roberts was tall and thin, with a cast-iron sort of countenance, surmounted by a row of little, tight, gray frizzles of such remarkable durability that, though evidently the result of art rather than nature, neither wind nor storm, appeared to have any effect upon them. On ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... additions; every addition or growth was an imperfection, an excrescence, a deformity. Progress was unnecessary and undesired. The Church had a rigid system of dogma which must be accepted in its entirety on pain of being treated as a heretic. Philosophers had a cast-iron system of truth to match—a system founded upon Aristotle—and so interwoven with the great theological dogmas that to question one was almost equivalent to casting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... axes; door after door. And now the innermost door opens; discloses the long-gowned Senators of France: a hundred and sixty-seven by tale, seventeen of them Peers; sitting there, majestic, 'in permanent session.' Were not the men military, and of cast-iron, this sight, this silence reechoing the clank of his own boots, might stagger him! For the hundred and sixty-seven receive him in perfect silence; which some liken to that of the Roman Senate overfallen by Brennus; some to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... somewhere and would demand his company, Henley reflected, in dismay at the thought of his present fancies being disturbed in such a prosaic way. Or perhaps she had taken a sudden whim to go to prayer-meeting—this thought prompted by the dismal clanging of a cast-iron church-bell at Chester. In that case there was a chance of escape, for she would ask Mrs. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... or the neighbourhood, and exported from Liverpool to the river Bonney in Africa, large quantities of cast-iron rings, in imitation of the copper rings known as "Manillas" or "African ring-money," then made at Bristol. A vessel from Liverpool, carrying out a considerable quantity of these cast-iron rings, was wrecked on the coast of Ireland in the summer of 1836. A few of them having fallen into the hands of Sir William Betham, he was led to write the Essays before mentioned. The making of these cast-iron rings has been discontinued since the year 1838, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm, such unwilling humour, such close-fisted-generosity. This new Graeculus esuriens will make a living out of any thing. He will invent new trades as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at all risks. Put him on ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... and deep. According to the first principles adopted by the missionaries, the domesticated Indians were held down rigorously in a condition of servile dependence and subjection. They were indeed, as one of the early travelers in California put it, slaves under another name—slaves to the cast-iron power of a system which, like all systems, was capable of unlimited abuse, and which, at the very best, was narrow and arbitrary. Every vestige of freedom was taken from them when they entered, or were brought into, the settlement. Henceforth they belonged, ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... Mushroom Ventilator. Short cast-iron tube with movable iron rod passing through the center. A metal cup is fitted to the top of the rod, which may be lifted to permit air to enter, or closed to prevent water from entering. ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... faces.'" All in a moment he stiffened and the shadow loomed; and while Meryl wondered Diana ran on unheedingly, "If I say to you when we meet, 'Which face is it to-day?' you will know that I mean, is it your day of lordly graciousness, or is it the cast-iron, beware-of-the-bull frown day?" ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... later one of your companions drags out of the alforja something crumpled that resembles in general appearance and texture a rusted five-gallon coal-oil can that has been in a wreck. It is only imperceptibly less stiff and angular and cast-iron than rawhide. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... construction of a net of canals and aqueducts, both for Eden Vale and for the Dana plateau. The canals served merely to carry the storm-water into the Dana; whilst the refuse-water and the sewage were carried away in cast-iron pipes by means of a system of pneumatic exhaust-tubes, and then disinfected and utilised as manure. The aqueducts were connected with the best springs in the upper hills, and possessed a provisional capacity of supplying ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... average historical novel, pretending to reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether wonderfully and fearfully made—the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is supposed ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... openin' one of them cast-iron pies same as you made for us last week. You drill a hole in the crust nigh the edge of the plate and then put that thing in and pry the upper deck loose. Good idea, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... met together in anxious consultation. Just then the sun rose brilliantly, and revealed the vessels but a few miles distant, sailing before a fair wind toward Pequot Harbor. These strange men, of cast-iron mould, gave expression to their joy, not in huzzas, but in prayers and thanksgivings. But in the midst of this joy their attention was arrested by another spectacle. Three hundred Pequots, like a pack of tumultuous, howling wolves, came rushing along ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... in the Military Academy if a much broader course could be given to those young men who come there with the necessary preparation, while not excluding those comparatively young boys who have only elementary education. There is too much of the "cast-iron" in this government of law under which we live, but "mild steel" will take its place in time, no doubt. The conditions and interests of so vast a country and people are too varied to be wisely subjected to ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... ladyhood thus impeached, and lest I infringe upon the cast-iron code of box-factory etiquette, there was nothing to do but yield. I unhooked my skirt, dropped it to the floor, and stepped out of it in a trice, anxious to do anything to win back the good will ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... hall presented a curious spectacle. Its immense area was singularly adapted to the purpose. Lofty pillars formed of cannon, superposed upon huge mortars as a base, supported the fine ironwork of the arches, a perfect piece of cast-iron lacework. Trophies of blunderbuses, matchlocks, arquebuses, carbines, all kinds of firearms, ancient and modern, were picturesquely interlaced against the walls. The gas lit up in full glare myriads of revolvers grouped ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the bees took up the song and droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head the enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran air—or Heaven knows what—let slip flickering lights and shadows to play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking down upon it with the quick, transforming power of love, thought ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... none so effectual as a patient digging up (with a long "daisy fork") of plant after plant by the roots. The whole family party and any chance visitors will not be too many for the work, and, if each laborer is provided with a cast-iron back with a hinge in it, so much the better. A writer in the Garden seems to have been very successful with salt, used early in the season and with great care. He says: "After the first cutting in the spring put as much salt on each weed, through ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gave me a scare when I saw you swing over the edge of the car, but it was no use for me to try and slow up then, besides I had time to make up, and the engineer can't stop for his best friend then. But I must say you have a cast-iron nerve." ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... his budget. He narrated his career, in fact, from the beginning, through all its variations, and whenever his companion's credulity, or his habits of gentility, appeared to protest, it amused him to heighten the color of the episode. Newman had sat with Western humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves, and seen "tall" stories grow taller without toppling over, and his own imagination had learned the trick of piling up consistent wonders. Bellegarde's regular attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense; ...
— The American • Henry James
... in Southern California, moving from one large hotel crowded with Eastern visitors to another. This uncommon self-indulgence and her devotion to Helene were the only weak spots Ruyler was able to discover in that cast-iron character. She seldom attended the brilliant entertainments of her daughter and refused the endowed car offered by her son-in-law. Helene married to the best parti in San Francisco and quite happy, she seemed content to settle down into ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... proceeded Lucy, half aloud, 'you are the greater man, I know very well; but it is in human nature to prefer flesh and blood to mediaeval saints in cast-iron, even if one knows there is ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shadows for her lost New York. Her drugged brain fell asleep as it wrestled with its fears. Her body protested at its couch. All her limbs like separate serpents tried to find resting-places. They could not stretch themselves out on the bench. Fiends had placed cast-iron braces at intervals to prevent people from doing just that. Kedzie did not know that it is against the law of New York, if not of Nature, to sleep on ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... corner of a settle, and a multitude of the large beads with which this infernal industry is carried on I gathered from all parts of the compass, coming forth at length (quadrupedally) with a double handful of the treasure-trove and a very lively appreciation of the resistant qualities of a cast-iron table-stand when applied to the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Columbia had circumnavigated the globe. The United States Mint was still working by horse-power, not employing steam till 1815. Whitney's cotton-gin had been invented in 1793. Terry, of Plymouth, Conn., was making clocks. There were in the land two insurance companies, possibly more. Cast-iron ploughs, of home make, were displacing the old ones of wood. Morse's "Geography" and Webster's "Spelling-book" were on the market, and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... that his skull was a beehive in an uproar, and that one lobe of his brain was struggling to swarm off. His legs and arms felt as if they belonged to another man, and a very limp one at that. A ton of cast-iron seemed to be pressing his eyelids down, and a trickle of red-hot metal flowed from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... twenty cart-horses. The fundamental difficulty in the construction of a piano has always been to support this continuous strain. When we look into a piano we see the "iron frame" so much vaunted in the advertisements, and so splendid with bronze and gilding; but it is not this thin plate of cast-iron that resists the strain of twenty tons. If the wires were to pull upon the iron for one second, it would fly into atoms. The iron plate is screwed to what is called the "bottom" of the piano, which is a mass of timber four inches thick, composed of three layers of plank glued together, and so arranged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... pipe used for each cow-box or manger connects each with the cistern, and the distributing end of it rests upon, or is suspended over, the trough assigned to each animal. About one-third of this trough, which was here a cast-iron box, about twelve inches deep and wide, protrudes through the boarding of the stable. In this outside compartment is placed a hollow copper ball attached to a lever, which turns the axle or pivot of the cock. Now, this little buoy, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet—that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat fell off ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... could only have been found in some vessels of the United States navy." The second faulty feature about the "Merrimac" was that her rudder and propeller were entirely unprotected. The ram which was so much dreaded, and which made the "Merrimac" a forerunner of a new class of war-vessels, was of cast-iron, projecting four feet, and so badly secured that it was loosened in ramming the "Cumberland," and started a bad ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... truncated immediately beyond the point of intersection. The painfulness of this ill-judged adaptation was conquered by association—the eye became familiarized to uncouth forms of tracery—and a stiffness and meagerness, as of cast-iron, resulted in the moldings of much of the ecclesiastical, and all the domestic Gothic of central Europe; the moldings of casements intersecting so as to form a small hollow square at the angles, and the practice being further carried out into all ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... mind," she said matter-of-factly. "Just like I can tell that you're getting ready to screech 'Charlatan!' at me, and like you think I got a cast-iron girdle and homely shoes. Well, they're comfortable, dearie, which is more than you can say for those high-heeled slippers of yours. That left little toe of yours is killing ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... 1804 constructed a locomotive for the Merthyr and Tydvil Rail in South Wales, which succeeded in drawing ten tons at five miles an hour. The boiler was of cast-iron, with a one-cylinder engine, spur gear and a fly-wheel on one side. He sent the waste steam into the chimney, and by this means was very nearly arriving at the blast-pipe, afterwards the great and important discovery of George Stephenson. The jumping motion on the bad roads, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness |
