"Grindstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old French priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil's procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they that look on are parishioners, and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that its edge was ever over-keen," replied Lambourne. "When I was a youth, I had some few whimsies; but I rubbed them partly out of my recollection on the rough grindstone of the wars, and what remained I washed out in the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... follow that asteroid, Miss," he said, "and see if we can't pick up some odd fragment of zirconia when it's smashed in the grindstone there. Then we'll light ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... the old woman to a marriage between Junius and Miss March; and saw, as plainly as she saw the lamp on the table, that Roberta had been brought here on purpose to be sacrificed to Mr Croft. Everything had been made ready, the altar cleared, and, as well as the old lady's grindstone would act, the knife sharpened. "But," said Miss Annie to herself, "she needn't suppose that I am going to sit quiet and see all this going on, with Junius away off there in Washington, knowing nothing about ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... I had been doubtful of his final decision; for ever since our explanation at Bensersiel I had had the feeling that I was holding his nose to a very cruel grindstone. This straight word, clear and direct, beyond anything I had hoped for, brought me to my senses and showed me that his mind had been working far in advance of mine; and more, shaping a double purpose that I had ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log, and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite side of the river. They were quite wild, regular myals, but some ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the cliffs of the South Joggins, near Minudie, Nova Scotia (from north to south through coal with upright trees and sandstone and shale). c. Grindstone. d, g. Alternations of sandstone, shale, and coal containing upright trees. e, f. Portion of cliff, given on a larger scale in Figure 440. f. Four-foot coal, main seam. h, i. Shale ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... . . What an abominable hand do I scribble! but I have been chopping wood, and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and such occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to be done in the world; but, thank God, I am able to do my share of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... papers on electricity frequently speak of rubbing the tubes as a fatiguing exercise. Our spheres are fixed on iron axes which pass through them. At one end of the axes there is a small handle with which you turn the sphere like a common grindstone. This we find very commodious, as the machine takes up but little room, is portable, and may be enclosed in a tight box when not in use. It is true the sphere does not turn so swift as when the great wheel is used; but swiftness we think of little importance, since ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... von Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, made a machine which looked like a little grindstone—a wheel of sulphur mounted on a turning axle, which being used with friction produced powerful electrical sparks and lights. He found by experiments with this machine that bodies thus exerted by friction may impart ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... old lady, "don't bubble and boil. I have a great regard for you, and care a great deal more for you than I do for her, and it is only people that I care a great deal for that I stir up. Go back to your grindstone, or whatever you were at work at, and do not worry your mind about your little Cicely. It may be that I shall like her enough to wish that I had ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to cheat ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many acquaintances. In short, I held my nose to the grindstone. The upshot of it all is that I have got rid of a superstition. We have so many, that one the less— perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real difference in one's comfort. The superstition in question—of course you have it—is that there is no salvation ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... having their headquarters at Cleveland, which during a comparatively few years have grown into prominent sources of wealth and are yearly expanding in value and adding to the material prosperity of the city, the Building Stone and Grindstone interest is worthy of especial mention. Only a very few years since this trade was in its infancy, and as late as 1863 had not come to be recognized as worthy of special efforts for its development. That it then became so is in great measure ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... parts; of sal-ammoniac, 2 parts; and flour of sulphur, 1 part; mix them well together on a mortar, and keep them dry. When required for use, take 1 part of the mixture, and 20 parts of clean borings, mix thoroughly, and add a sufficient quantity of water. Note.—A little grindstone added improves ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... be wallowing in gold, when a better man is groping crusts in the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too—things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why I raked up you. Come, out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... capable of doing a few days earlier. She had travelled far in search of something new, and this was the first time she had tasted the biting green tea with the reek of the smoke about it from a blackened pannikin. Grindstone bread baked in a hole in the ground was also a novelty, and the crumbling flakes of salmon smoked by some Siwash Indian a delicacy, while she wondered if it was only the keen mountain air which made the flesh ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... old-timer; you don't find such good-tempered steel in the axes made to sell these days, with their lying red and blue labels pasted on 'em. Give this one a good grinding and it will chop all the wood you'll ever want to cut. Let me have it this morning. I've got a grindstone at the store, and I'll make Pomp put a ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... King was putting on his war boots, something very great was surely about to happen. Hearing a fizzing noise behind him, he turned around, and there was the Prince in the court-yard, grinding his sword on a grindstone, which was turned by two slaves, who were working away so hard and fast that they were nearly ready to drop. Then he knew that wonderful things were surely coming to pass, for in ordinary times the Prince never lifted his finger ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... impaired his prospects and taken up the calling of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades,—of whom it was remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grindstone,—he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned his acquirements to the account ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... put the umbrella down he would have been all right. But his stubborn character was displayed to the full by his still gripping the unwieldy thing and, like "Old Grindstone George," hanging on to the handle. He staggered to his feet, the umbrella quite hiding the coming freight train from his view, and stumbled a pace forward, directly toward ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... after the health of the excellent Fox, asked if I saw him often, and so on and so on. I divined with amusement that was pleasurable that the little man had his own little axe to grind, and thought I might take a turn at the grindstone if he managed me well. So he nodded to de Sourdam of the Austrian embassy and had his word with Pluyvis, and rejoiced to have impressed me—I could see him bubble with happiness and purr. He proposed that we should stroll as far as the paper kiosque that he patronised ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... steelyard, grindstone, clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot, brush, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... with swords that were sharp from the grindstone, Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us. * * * * * Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf Fell on the war-field, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... sharpen knives using either a grindstone, whetstone, the edge of an iron stove, or ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... American. I might have known you'd say that. All your people want to go one better than anybody else. But I can tell you it doesn't do for Englishmen. They want their noses kept to the grindstone. That's my experience! Of course it was a great pity Manisty ever went into Parliament at all. He'd been abroad for seven or eight years, living with all the big-wigs and reactionaries everywhere. The last thing in the world he knew anything about was English politics.—But then his father ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... running half the length of the house, and there, in the autumn, the best apples from the orchard were carried, and put on a thin layer of hay, each apple apart from its fellow (for they ought not to touch), and each particular sort, the Blenheim Oranges and the King Pippins, the Creepers and the Grindstone Pippins (which grew nowhere else), divided from the next sort by a little ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... I showed up on the pike that human accident that breathes like a man and talks like a rabbit chased me eight miles there and back. The first time I tried to approach the infernal house I fell over a grindstone and signed checks in the gravel with my nose. Hereafter, when you want a burglar, pick somebody your own size. I'm going to hunt a hospital and get sewed ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... mind renewed: Though farther from her nature rude, Yet nearer to her spirit's hold: And though of gentler mood serene, Still forceful of her fountain-jet. So shall her blows be shrewdly met, Be luminously read the scene Where Life is at her grindstone set, That she may give us edgeing keen, String us for battle, till as play The common strokes of fortune shower. Such meaning in a dagger-day Our wits may clasp to wax in power. Yea, feel us warmer at her breast, By spin of blood in lusty drill, Than when her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... boy we had a grindstone in our yard which was used by us and our few scattered neighbors. One night we were awakened by hearing the grindstone going, and father went to the door to see who was using it. A party of forty Sioux braves on their ponies were standing ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... the corporal coming across the road, with a hatchet in his hand. He had been to grind it at the mill, where there was a grindstone, that ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... Canucks, and Dagos, and Polacks, and the Lord knows what—a darned set of foreigners, foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone. I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing on ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... kind the fire might be Peter was not quite sure. The two young creatures faced each other. There was laughter in each face, but something else; something strenuous, tragic even; as though "Life at its grindstone set" had been at work on the radiant pair, evoking the Meredithian series of intellect from the senses,—"brain from blood"; with "spirit," or generous ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assured her chums. "Catch me swatting for the Senior Oxford like poor old Meta and Daphne. I tell you those girls will hardly enjoy a decent game of tennis this term. The Bumble Bee's got their wretched noses on the grindstone, and they'll have a blighting time till the affair's over. No, I'm a wary bird, and I'm not going to be decoyed into an intellectual trap and dished up for examination. Not even the Essay Prize shall tempt me! You may win it yourself, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... speed. The velocity of rotation becomes too great for the tenacity of the stone to withstand the stress; a rupture takes place, the stone flies in pieces, and huge fragments are hurled around. For each particular grindstone there is a certain special velocity depending upon its actual materials and character, at which it would inevitably fly in pieces. I have once before likened our earth to a wheel; now let me liken it to a grindstone. ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... afterwards this man discovered that all the knives in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... folk,' and he was ready to learn from them a little. Thanks to his exceptional position, his practical independence, Hor told me a great deal which you could not screw or—as the peasants say—grind with a grindstone, out of any other man. He did, in fact, understand his position. Talking with Hor, I for the first time listened to the simple, wise discourse of the Russian peasant. His acquirements were, in his own opinion, wide enough; but he could not read, though Kalinitch could. 'That ne'er-do-weel ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... ancient cider-mill can be found. It consists of a circular block of masonry, perhaps ten feet in diameter, the outer circumference of which is a continuous stone trough, about 18 inches across, and 15 inches deep, called "the chase," in which a huge grindstone, weighing about 15 cwt., revolves slowly, actuated by a horse walking round the chase in an unending circle. The apples are introduced in small quantities into the chase, and crushed into pulp by the grindstone. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the grindstone for Beechnut while he ground his axes, and then he held our tools for us to sharpen them. We could not hold ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... as is the fact that it dates back to the Herodian period in which Jesus lived. There is also some frescoed work upon it showing that it was held sacred by the early Christians. Then the "rolling stone" and the groove in which it was placed is very interesting. This was something like a gigantic grindstone which rolled in the groove and was large enough to cover the opening ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... Jinnie then turned 'round and spied little Tommy. He put, and she put arter him. There wasn't nothin' else to do, so Tommy took a high jump and landed in the pig-sty. Old Bill is kinder deef in one ear, and he didn't notice much what wuz goin' on on that side of him. He was runnin' the grindstone and puttin' a good sharp edge on his butcher knife, when he happened to look up and seed old Jinnie comin' head on. He dropped the knife and started for the house, thinkin' he'd dodge in the front door. Over went the grindstone and old Jinnie, too, but ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... such impropriety, aghast at the consequences, Mooty—doctor alike of laws, of science, and of medicine, and a man of imperative mood—sharpened his tomahawk at the Chinaman's grindstone, theatrically testing its edge with distorted thumb. Tom Goat disappeared as silently as last night's dew, for Mooty does not hesitate to summarily administer his own judgment when his professions are scorned, his family bewitched, his countenance ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... in the school; for since the Grand River (Government) Boarding School has demonstrated in their midst what faithful teachers can do for the children, the whole community are ready to show their appreciation, from good old Chief Grindstone to the wee little folk who carry flowers to their white friends in the school; and every ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... was high old sport, but I couldn't zackly see where the lafture come in. I riz and we embraced agin. We careered madly to a steep bank, when I got the upper hands of my antaggernist and threw him into the raveen. He fell about forty feet, striking a grindstone pretty hard. I understood he was injured. I haven't heard from ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... days, was very welcome. The damp had not reached the biscuits, and for several minutes it could be heard cracking under the solid teeth of Dick Sand and his companions. Between Hercules's jaws it was like grain under the miller's grindstone. It did not crackle, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... tusks, too, Re-sharpened till they looked like new; In fact, the Ape's new grindstone strong Was working nearly all ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... boy, all same Melican," he told Martin, as he industriously turned the grindstone beneath the cleaver's edge. "Me like all same lepublic—me fight like devil all same time when China war. Now Jap he come take China. No good. Me kill um Jap. Velly good. All same chop um ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the door which opens into the kitchen is a large dresser, with long rows of brass and copper cooking-utensils and bright-colored dishes, the little grindstone for sharpening knives, half-buried in its varnished case, and the egg-dish, old enough to serve as ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... be home again," he breathed. "Now that I don't have to keep my nose to the grindstone I'm going to come home oftener. Things change so. We may never all be ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... she's been flamming about with, and that grand house, better than new, with all the latest improvements. Wa'n't we some jays to be took in like we was by a little, white-faced chit like her? Couldn't see through a grindstone with a hole in it! Bolton House.... And an automobile to fetch the old jailbird home in. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Will I lose all the good we have gained for the sake o' bad temper? The end's in sight,—the blessed end o' the secrecy, an' the weary struggle o' keepin' me gineral's nose to the grindstone, and now to leave go? Not while Cleena Keegan draws a free breath, an' can handle a ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... you preserve him thus upon my favour, You know his temper, tye him to the grindstone, The next rebellion I'le be rid of him, I'le have no needy Rascals I tye to me, Dispute my life: come in and ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was understood among the commonality that the French were determined to subdue and make a conquest of Britain, as they had done of all the rest of Europe, holding the noses of every continental king and potentate to the grindstone, there was a prodigious stir and motion in all the hearts and pulses of Scotland, and no where in a more vehement degree than in Gudetown. But, for some reason or an other which I could never dive into the bottom of, there was a slackness or backwardness on the part of government in sending ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... half-hour of only moderately enjoyable conversation, for Georgie kept the grindstone of the misery of his lot without Atkinson, and the pleasure of companionship firmly to the Colonel's nose. It was no use for him to attempt to change the subject to the approaching tableaux, to a vague rumour that Piggy had fallen face downwards in the ducking-pond, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... very big machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power by machinery, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Ioynstooles, remoue the Courtcubbord, looke to the Plate: good thou, saue mee a piece of Marchpane, and as thou louest me, let the Porter let in Susan Grindstone, and Nell, Anthonie ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hardening, than carbon steels of a lower grade. For forging it should be heated slowly and uniformly to a bright red and only light blows used as the heat dies out. Do not hammer at all at a black heat. Reheat slowly to a dark red for hardening and quench in warm water. Grind on a wet grindstone. ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... I have never had a chance. My father was poor and couldn't give me the advantages that other young men had. So I've had my nose on the grindstone all ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Meyer's theories, a somewhat excessive part; Arthur and his Twelve (?) Knights of the Round Table signifying solely the year with its twelve months; Percival and the Miller signifying solely steel and the grindstone; Stonehenge and the Gododin put to purely calendarial purposes; the Nibelungen, the Mahabharata, and the Iliad, finally following the fate of the Gododin; all this appears to me, I will confess, a little prematurely grasped, a little unsubstantial. But that any one who knows ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... answer to these questions was made by Thomas Wright, an instrument maker in London, in a book published in 1750. He supposed the stars of our sidereal system to be distributed in a vast stratum of inconsiderable thickness compared with its length and breadth. If we had a big grindstone made of glass, in which had become uniformly imbedded a vast quantity of grains of sand or similar minute particles, and if we were able to place our eye somewhere near the centre of this grindstone, it is easy to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... came to that conclusion, in regard to myself, long and long ago. Sick wife, hungry children, and four or five backs to cover; no wonder a poor man's nose is ever on the grindstone. For my part, I am sick of it. When I was a single man, I could go where I pleased, and do what I pleased; and I always had money in my pocket. Now I am tied down to one place, and grumbled at eternally; and if you were to ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... and hearty meals clustered about Kilmer: wherever he touched the grindstone of life there flew up a merry shower of sparks. There is convincing testimony to the courage and beauty that lay quiet at the heart of this singer who said that the poet is only a glorified reporter, and wished he had written ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... die," stated the old man, "I'm going to live to turn into a grindstone and wear out. But it's a fact. There's plenty left can ride a log all right, but they're a tough lot. It's too close here ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... no doubt," returned MacSweenie, "and a grindstone too. Do you remember what that man Nazinred said when he came here on his last trup,—that the Indians about his country would be fery pleased to see traders settle among them? He little thought—an' no more did I—that we would be so soon sent to carry out their wishes; but our ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the way was as familiar to Rebecca as to uncle Jerry; every watering-trough, grindstone, red barn, weather-vane, duck-pond, and sandy brook. And all the time she was looking backward to the day, seemingly so long ago, when she sat on the box seat for the first time, her legs dangling in the air, too short to reach the footboard. She ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cursed kirk that ever I came in." With his helmet on his head, and spear in his hand, he roams up to the rock, and then he hears from that high hill beyond the brook a wondrous wild noise. Lo! it clattered in the cliff as if one upon a grindstone were grinding a scythe. It whirred like the water at a mill, and rushed and re-echoed, terrible to hear. "Though my life I forgo," says Gawayne, "no noise shall cause ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... you shall find, that to afford the deepest Blue, which caeteris paribus has the greatest particles or sands; and if you further divide, or grind those particles on a Grindstone, or porphyry stone, you may by comminuting the sands of it, dilute the Blue into as pale a one as you please, which you cannot do by laying the colour thin; for wheresoever any single particle is, it exhibits as deep a Blue as the whole ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... running to waste. It required Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... worst thing in the world: ennui trying to live, and some Englishmen who said: "I do this or that, and so I amuse myself. I have spent so many sovereigns, and have procured so much pleasure." And thus they wear out their life on that grindstone. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and water until he did that example. In order to assist hunger in bringing the boy to it, after the first day showed that the boy was still going, the old gentleman hunted up all the axes and hatchets, scythes and knives on the place, and made the boy turn grindstone while he held the implements on. Greek met Greek. The boy wouldn't give in, and the old man couldn't and preserve his dignity, but try as he might the old man could not tire out the boy; the old hands gave out first, and the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... afternoon a slashing spring rain set in, and Mr. Stanley, who was a forehanded worker, found a job for all of us in the barn. Ben, the younger son, and I sharpened mower-blades and a scythe or so, Ben turning the grindstone and I holding the blades and telling him stories into the bargain. Mr. Stanley and his stout older son overhauled the work-harness and tinkered the corn-planter. The doors at both ends of the barn stood wide ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... deep into Hall's hand and fought with a feline fury that is always terrifying. Jim was gazing in big-eyed silence, when Hall, enraged, thrust the cat into the leg of a boot and growled, "I'll fix yer biting," and held her teeth to the grindstone till the body in ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a snug little sum in a separate bank as a reserve sufficient to withstand any attacks on your business, your step will be more elastic, you will have more confidence in yourself, you will have less worry than if you are keeping your nose to the grindstone ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... would n't make no difference to her. She'd talk to a pump or a grindstone; she'd talk to herself ruther 'n ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... smiling, "I'm afraid we can't conceive of that. We consider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have. If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, "were not kept like a toad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse staring ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... of adoption into the tribe, and set to using those same brains in the making of hatchets and ornaments. A few days passed and he was yet further enlarged. Powhatan longed for two of the great guns possessed by the white men and for a grindstone. He would send Smith back to Jamestown if in return he was sure of getting those treasures. It is to be supposed that Smith promised him guns and grindstones as many as could be ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... brave three hundred made a gallant stand, but were defeated. Would there had been a Leonidas among them! Would that the whole of their kinsmen had erected forts instead of dykes, and dropped the plough-handles to press the edge of the sabre against the grindstone! Sad indeed is the fate of that people who make any terms with such an enemy, except such as may be granted at the bayonet's point. Sad indeed is the condition of that people who are wrapt in security when Persecution steals in upon them, hiding its bloody ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... leaving them broad enough for a Turk, with pockets like large bags hanging down inside of them, then the boy rebels and refuses to go anywhere. If he goes he takes his road through Stone's Woods, and comes home the back way by the wagon-house. The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... surfaces, it is not more than one third of this amount or 1/33d of the weight. While this, however, is the average result, the friction is a good deal less in some cases. Mr. Southern, in some experiments upon the friction of the axle of a grindstone—an account of which may be found in the 65th volume of the Philosophical Transactions—found the friction to amount to less than 1/40th of the weight; and Mr. Wood, in some experiments upon the friction of locomotive axles, found that by ample ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o' Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... One can't suppose that he's rich enough to fling all his salary to an understudy while he gads. Yet I've seen him going to his room with a sheaf of papers which would keep the nose of a common secretary at the grindstone for six or seven hours, whereas P. S. is free to do as he pleases in less than half ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held— The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled, The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands, The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the Lords of ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... are opposed by the same property. A grindstone, a tuning-fork, and an atom of hydrogen require, to move them in their appropriate ways, an amount of energy proportionate to their mass or inertia, which energy is again transformed through friction ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... young Dervish from Eastern Asia. The Dervish wore long hair, and was dressed in a garment entirely made up of patches of cloth of various colours. These people had travelled with our caravan for two days, each carrying the heavy grindstone in turns. It had often much amused us to watch the care of the young Dervish, despite his fatigue, not to part with his alms bag, attached to the end of a long staff, when taking the ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... be mentioned here, among other elements of difficulty, that Cecil's maid Grindstone was a thorough Dunstonite, who 'kept herself to herself,' was perfectly irreproachable, lived on terms of distant civility with the rest of the household, never complained, but constantly led her young mistress to understand that she was ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ezekiel's time was the potter's wheel; a simple platform mounted on crude vertical bearings so that it could be turned with one hand while the clay was worked with the other. From this the grindstone and the lapidary wheel developed for working metal and stone. These early machines probably employed some form of foot treadle but even these could not turn the wheel very fast. If the stone had a large ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... to be a real help to him. Gets to the office at eight o'clock, rain or shine, and loves nothing better than to sit and grub there all day long. Steady as a rock. Splendid future. Holds his own nose to the grindstone like a real little lamb. I hope he asked ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... secretary practiced his Hebrew names and studied the relations between sound, color, form and the rest, he kept himself a little better in hand, for Love is a mighty humanizer and holds down the nose upon the grindstone of the wholesome and practical values of existence. He turned, so to speak, and tried to face the matter squarely; to see the adventure as a whole; to get all round it and judge. It seems, however, that he was too much in the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... but the mirror is not made yet. It must be of about two inches diameter, and must be founded in moulds of fine sand at the moment when a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus occurs. The mirror must be smoothed with a grindstone and polished with tripoly and a piece of lime-wood; but all the operations must be conducted only when the planetary influences ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... reached her ear, and Ellen and the two little boys came around the corner of the house, and settled down under the window. A group of lilacs, with feathery purple blossoms, made a deep, cool shade, where the children sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... its cuisine, and the dinner which followed was, for various reasons, a memorable one, though some of the guests appeared distinctly puzzled by the sequence of viands and liquors. Still, even those who, appreciating the change from leathery venison and grindstone bread, had eaten too much at the first course, struggled manfully with the succeeding, and good fellowship reigned until the cloth was removed, and the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... learn, for he had scarcely risen from a meal of salt pork, somewhat blackened in the frying-pan, and grindstone bread indifferently baked by Devine, when Jim and several strangers plodded into camp. He was very ragged, and apparently very weary, but he displayed no diffidence ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... blow upon these islands nine months in the year bring a burden of moisture from the Pacific which is condensed into rain and mist by the mountains, and which, with the rank vegetation that it fosters, carves them and sharpens them like a great grindstone revolving against their sides. At a place called the Pali—and at the Needles, on the island of Maui—it has worn through the mountain-chain and made deep and very picturesque gorges where, in the case of the Pali, the wind is so ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... as well as of the taught. If Greek and Latin had not been 'given' in that convenient manner, Dr. Arnold, who had spent his life in acquiring those languages, might have discovered that he had acquired them in vain. As it was, he could set the noses of his pupils to the grindstone of syntax and prosody with a clear conscience. Latin verses and Greek prepositions divided between them the labours of ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... gigantic groove provided for it, till it lighted on the edge of both wheels at the same instant. Of course it would not rest there, not the ten-thousandth part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore, till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of course, feel the world's attraction all the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... if they had been light balls, and seized one of the large thick beams which had not yet been worked at "Marry, master," he cried, "marry, this is good sound oak; I wager it will snap like glass." And thereupon he struck the stave against the grindstone so that it broke clean in half with a loud crack. "Pray be so kind," said Master Martin, "pray have the kindness, my good fellow, to kick that two-tun cask about or to pull down the whole shop. There, you can take that balk for a mallet, and that you may have an adze to your mind ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... museums, too. Mrs. MacGregor knew nothing of art, except that, as she said to Nancy, well-bred persons simply had to know something about it. After their walk came lessons, grueling, dry-as-dust, nose-to-the-grindstone lessons, during which Nancy's speech was vivisected. At two o'clock they lunched, and Nancy had further critical instructions. The dishes she had once been allowed to order were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... centre of the ceiling, occupying almost all the space overhead, a snow-white substance hung as if suspended. Were it not for its colour and its size, it might have been likened to an immense, horizontal grindstone hung in mid-air, with apparently nothing to hold it there. Around its side they could make out a narrow gap between it and the ceiling. And directly along its lower edge was a series of small, fiery jewels inset, and of the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... one of those sharp, snooting, snouting sort of faces, and the other was a bulbous, boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that marked him down as a man you couldn't trust in the fowl-yard. They were busy sharpening up a carving knife on a portable grindstone, but the moment they caught sight of the travellers the Possum whipped the knife behind him and the Wombat put his hat over ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... suggestion. It is just as manifestly a tongue put out for inspection as if it had Nature's own label to that effect hung over it. I don't know whether you can see these things as clearly as I do. There are some people that never see anything, if it is as plain as a hole in a grindstone, until it is pointed out to them; and some that can't see it then, and won't believe there is any hole till they've poked their finger through it. I've got a great many things to thank God for, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Harry, his face radiant. "Julia, why, you won't know yourself strolling on the sands with a parasol while your poor delicate husband is toiling and moiling away in the dingy city. Good for you, father! You lift that pretty nose of hers up from the grindstone where she's held it so many years that she doesn't know anything different. Hurray, Julia!" In his enthusiasm the speaker rose and leaned over the chair of his astonished wife. "You wake up in the morning and read a novel instead of your appointment book for a while," he ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... to the last extremity, by the tide of public sentiment in England, they should escape from all philanthropic interference and surveillance, and be able to bring the faces of their unyoked peasantry to the grindstone ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... some nice steel. Then a good assortment of pliers, cutting, flat, and round. In selecting brushes, you will have to be very particular and secure the open and straight bristle brushes, which are also hard to find these latter years. Take all the coarser brushes and hold them on a coarse grindstone, running them whole length, both ways; this takes off the new rough end of the bristles before using first time. Then there are punches, broaches, drills, calipers, countersinks, files, etc., etc. Besides this, I have adopted the plan of making any tool I happen to need for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... into a first-rate mechanic," says Mr. Grabguy, as he writes,—"I have bought the bearer, Nicholas, a promising chap, as you will see. Take him into the shop and set him at something, if it is only turning the grindstone; as I hav'nt made up my mind exactly about what branch to set him at. He's got temper-you'll see that in a minute, and will want some breakin in, if I don't calklate 'rong." This Mr. Grabguy envelopes, and directs to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... like lightning, all the hyaenas in full pursuit uttering great cries. As he turned a corner the little hare cut off both his ears, so that they should not know him, and pretended to be working at a grindstone which lay there. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... the famous Grindstone Ford of Bayou Pierre, where crayfishes had destroyed a pioneer dam. Beyond, at the forks of the path where the Choctaw Trail bore off to the cast the party pursued the alternate Chickasaw Trail by Indian guidance, and soon noted the change in the character of the soil ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... felling-axes, four handsaws, a whipsaw with equipment for filing, two hammers, three shovels, two spades, two augers, six chisels, two piercing tools, three gimlets, two hatchets, two frowes, two handbills, a grindstone, nails of all sorts ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester |
