"Hold water" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or 3 tons of water and found the bottom to be a rock of very large stones collected together...in half an hour after it was entirely empty it was again quite full of clear good water. We now filled all our empty casks and everything on board that would hold water intending to go to sea when the wind would permit. As in this cove wood is in plenty, and the water is not above 50 yards from the seaside; a vessel of any size may be wooded and watered in two or three ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... deep and rubbing it fine with their hands, and by this means they get an excellent yield.[168] Women have everywhere been the first potters; vessels were needed for use in cooking, to carry and to hold water, and to store the supplies of food. For the same reason baskets were woven. Women invented and exercised in common multifarious household occupations and industries. Curing food, tanning the hides of animals, spinning, weaving, dyeing—all are carried on by ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... made in conformity to the general type of basket of the Southern California aborigine, but with the distinctive marks peculiar to the tribe to which belonged the dwellers within, and woven so tightly as to hold water without permitting a drop to pass through. In the bottom of one of these baskets was scattered a little ground meal of the acorn, a staple article of food with all the Indians of California. The other basket, similar to the first in shape ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... the Playroom.—Every playroom should be provided with a galvanized tub to hold water for sail boats. What boy does not like to play with water, boats and artificial fish? Do not expect him to be contented with toys or plays that amuse the little girl. The boy prefers splashing in water or making a noise with a hammer. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... OF SOILS TO WATER 39 Importance of water to plants 39 Sources of soil water 40 Attitude of soils toward water: Percolation Absorption from below Power to hold water 40 The effect of ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... tried to explain the puzzling facts by claiming that the well-known bravery and tenacity of the Turk on defense, shown all through his history and never more evident than in the Gallipoli campaign, was, for some unknown reason, totally lacking at Erzerum. Such claims, however, do not hold water. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... means making beautiful knives that won't cut and beautiful glasses that won't hold water, and beautiful pictures and poems that say nothing. The people who want their Art dissociated from their morals are in danger of spiritual blight, and inhabiting a universe of empty nothings. Too much self-consciousness is as ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Ham. "Form a line tew th' spring an' pass buckets of water from it tew th' house. Here, you," he cried, as his eyes caught sight of Thure and Bud, "back tew th' house an' git everything in it that'll hold water—pails, gold-pans, kettles, anything—Hurry!" ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... the next step is to change all that—first on paper. Unless the lay of the land is all right at the outset, the configuration of the rock garden must not depend wholly upon the upbuilding; there must be some excavations, but no depressions deep enough to catch and hold water just where you ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... forward by the sovereign and his apologists in justification of this step appears to me to hold water. The necessity pleaded for an interview with the Duke of Poland, the Czar's desire to hasten on Repnin's march, are mere pitiful excuses. Langen and Hallart, the generals sent by Augustus to observe the military operations in Livonia, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Ketchum. "That section will hold water or nothing will. Give me the names of your witnesses, and we will set the mill a grinding. I suppose," he added, carelessly, "you have no objection to bringing ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... after the manner which they had built, after the instructions of the Lord. And they were small, and they were light upon the water, like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water; and they were built like unto a manner that they were exceeding tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish, and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... all right?" cried Hiram, "it cost a quarter to git it drawn up. Then I swore to it before old Squire Rundlett over to Montrose, and it ought ter hold water. You'd better keep it, Mandy, then I can't fling it up at yer that I never axed yer to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... "That won't hold water," she said. "If a man must live like the Lord to be a gentleman, what is Uncle James? And if living like the Lord makes a man a gentleman, why don't we call on ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... made of yucca leaves interwoven in such a manner as to leave the centre open sufficiently to fit the top of the head. These pads are used in carrying water, by placing the pad on the head into which the base of the vase fits. They are used also to hold water jars and vases on the ground, thus protecting the bottom of the vessels from wearing away. They are called in ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... and their key, have latterly obtained results the main tenour of which must be stated here, as they indicate the lines of a portion of the succeeding argument. The task was to attack experimentally the determination of sex—a fascinating problem for which so many solutions that failed to hold water have been found, but hitherto no others. In finding the answer to it, as they appear certainly to have done so far as the higher animals are concerned, the Mendelians are also beginning to ascertain, as we shall see, certain basal facts as to the composition ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Hamoaze and the promise of worse below. Pengelly, who had elected himself captain, swore to hail every ship he came across: and he did—though from the first he met with no encouragement. "Ship, ahoy!" he shouted, coming down with a rush upon the stern-windows of the first and calling to all to hold water. "Ahoy! Ship!" ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... discordantly at the dawn. Our fire had gone out, but the Austrian had left enough wood, another was quickly started; but we found that Angelo in making his curries had melted all the solder from the empty biscuit tins and not one would hold water. So there was a hurried transference of ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... mind always to regard effects in relation to causes, so that merely to cure evil results without striking at the evil cause seems to me, to use a Johnsonian simile, "like stopping up a hole or two of a sieve with the hope of making it hold water." ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... one's business," he had said to his father, "but then it brings one business also. A man with a seat in Parliament who shows that he means work will always get nearly as much work as he can do." Such was Frank's exposition to his father. It may perhaps not be found to hold water in all cases. Mrs. Dean was of course delighted with her son's success, and so were the girls. Women like to feel that the young men belonging to them are doing something in the world, so that a reflected glory may be theirs. It was pleasant ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Cunningham, but it won't hold water. It is inevitable that Eisenfeldt gets the rug and the paintings, and you are made comfortable for the rest of your days. A shabby business, and ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... plan for settling the Irish question is no plan at all, as I have frequently shown. Whenever it has been submitted to the fire of criticism it has been found that it will not wash. It is quite useless to try to mix oil and vinegar in a jug that will not hold water. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I fear.—Two men are walking by the polyphloesboean ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly hold water at all, —and you call the tin cup a miraculous possession! It is the ocean that is the miracle, my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that all things are in all things, and that just according to the intensity and extension of our mental being we shall ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Bubis is of a superior order: the baskets they make to hold the palm oil are excellent, and will hold water like a basin, but I am in doubt whether this art is original, or imported by the Portuguese runaway slaves, for they put me very much in mind of those made by my old friends the Kabinders, from whom a good many of those slaves were recruited. I think there ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and slime and worse filth together. And still as I toiled a song kept liddening (as we say in Cornwall) through my head: a song with two refrains, whereof the first was the old nursery jingle—"Mud won't daub sieve, sieve won't hold water, water won't wet stone, stone won't edge axe, axe won't cut rod, rod won't make a gad, a gad to hang Manachar who has eaten my raspberries every one." (So ran the rigmarole with which Mrs. Nance had ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Pie brethren headed me up in a barrel and rolled me downhill into a creek without taking the trouble to remove all the nails. It seemed like wanton carelessness. But long before my nose was out of splints and my hide would hold water I was perfecting our famous "Lover's Leap" for the next year's bunch. That was our greatest triumph. There was an abandoned rock quarry north of town with thirty feet of water in the bottom and a fifty-foot drop to the water. By means of a long beam and a system ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... equally spread over the whole of the interior: when this is satisfactorily accomplished, pour back the remainder. If the prepared colour is too thick, add a little varnish to the mixture before applying it. If preferred, the colour may be laid on with a soft brush. Should the vase be intended to hold water, the interior must be well varnished after the above operations, or lined with zinc or tin foil. If the potichomanist wishes to decorate the mouth of his vase with a gold border, he can do so by mixing some gold powder in a few drops of the essence of lavender ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... necessity—part childlike again—when we felt we had laughed too long and could not stay ourselves—many midriff-shaken even to tears, as springs gush out after earthquakes—but from those, as I said before, there may come a conflagration—tho', to keep the figure moist and make it hold water, I should say rather, the lacrymation of a lamentation; but look if Thomas have not flung himself at the King's feet. They have made ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... "Hold water! Back her!" shouted Little, who had prepared his plan of operations, and intended to pull dead to windward of her, so that she would have to go in stays before she could come up with ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... with small mop-like tufts, which hold water like a sponge. This is Bellotia Eriophorum, the specific name derived from its resemblance to the cotton-grass. Harvey mentions its colonial name as 'Tagrag and Bobtail,' and if it will enable collectors the more easily to recognise ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the man she loved so that he should not feel disgraced by receiving it from her hand? She conceived some plan as to a loan to be made nominally by her brother,—a plan as to which it may at once be said that it could not be made to hold water for a minute. But she did succeed in inducing her brother to undertake the embassy, with the view of explaining to Phineas that there would be money for him when he wanted it. "If I make it over to Papa, Papa can leave it him in his will; and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... got here than he found the font wouldn't hold water, as it hadn't for years off and on; and when I told him that Mr. Grinham never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen 'em just as well, 'a said, 'Good Heavens! Send for a workman immediate. What place have I come to!' Which was no compliment ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... of pitcher-plants. Some are shorter and broader than others; but they are all green like true leaves, and hold water as securely as a jug or glass. They grow in Borneo and Sumatra, hot islands in the East. The one shown in the drawing grows ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various
... that such a basket was worth a great deal of money. He had learned the art of making such from Moon Face, who had travelled sometimes to the distant railway line and sold them to tourists. It was so tightly woven it would hold water; and in his pride over his handiwork the weaver would have poured a dipper of it into the ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... to the railing; then he walked up the steps, tramped along a rude balcony, and kicking open a door displayed a large room, rather more elaborately finished than a barn. For furniture it had a rough bedstead, but no bed; two chairs, a chest of drawers, a tin pail to hold water, and a board to cut tobacco upon. A brass crucifix hung on the wall, and close at hand a recent scalp, with hair full a yard long, was suspended from a nail. I shall again have occasion to mention this dismal trophy, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... cannot forbear to read, and so Teares my drink and all my content gone. But let me remember there was here and there a word where he hath writ tenderly of his poor Wife, and when I did see him weep my heart did pity him. But what hope or help, for a Jar mended may hold water, but yet the Cracks remain, and the worth gone for ever ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... powers, we appreciate his genius. It is safe to say that a cask made in accordance with his directions, after he had served a short apprenticeship, would not only be fair to see and easy to handle, but would also hold water. This is more than we should venture to affirm of the plot of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Memory simply cannot hold water beyond a certain strain; there comes a rift at last, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... well polished, an oven that would not bake, and a boiler that would not hold water,—this was the fireplace. The floor was of bricks, sunken in waves and broken; through a breach in the roof of the chamber over the "house" blew the wind and leaked the rain, in spite of a sack stuffed with straw thrust between the rafters and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... opinion being commonly held was enough to make him profess the opposite. It was enough to make him examine the opinion for himself, when it affected any of the many subjects which interested him, and if, after giving it his best attention, he found it did not hold water, then no weight of authority could make him say that it did. This matter of the geography of the Iliad is only one among many commonly received opinions which he examined for himself and found no reason to dispute; on these he considered ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... where there is really none. The general decay may have determined the course of many men's thoughts; but it no more set them thinking than (as I have heard said) the decay of the Ancien Regime produced the new Regime—a loose metaphor, which, like all metaphors, will not hold water, and must not be taken for a philosophic truth. That would be to confess man—what I shall never confess him to be—the creature of circumstances; it would be to fall into the same fallacy of spontaneous generation as did the ancients, when they ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital logician; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider man as a logical animal. We fear this view of the matter will hardly hold water. If we attend to the moral man, the constitution of his mind will scarcely be found to be built up of pure reason and a regard to consequences: if we consider the criminal man (with whom the legislator has chiefly to do) it will be found ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... recent practitioners of the grave and polite kind of political irony. But this is at the beginning, and soon afterwards Martin relapses for the most part into the alternation between serious argument which will not hold water and grotesque buffoonery which has little to do with the matter. A passage from the Epistle lampooning Aylmer, Bishop of London, and a sample each of Pap with a Hatchet and the Almond, will show the general style. But the most characteristic pieces of all are ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... knowledge, "Hardyknute" could not pass muster as an antique better than "Vortigern," or the poems of "Master Rowley"; and the notion that Lady Wardlaw could have written "Sir Patrick Spens" will not hold water better than a sieve, when we consider how hopelessly inferior are the imitations of old ballads written by Scott, with fifty times her familiarity with the originals, and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... lodge, headed by my chum, sung, 'We won't go home till morning' I stopped in front of the ice water tank, and said, 'Grand Worthy Duke, I bring before you a pilgrim who has drank of the dregs until his stomach won't hold water, and who desires to swear off.' The Grand Mogul asked me if he was worthy and well qualified, and I told him that he had been drunk more or less since the reunion last summer, which ought to qualify ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... formed a sort of working theory in the case. He scarcely believed that it would hold water, but it would ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... Liversage, 'it's not my will. I've had nothing to do with it; so kindly keep your hair on. As a matter of fact, she must have drawn it up herself. It's not drawn properly at all, but it's witnessed all right, and it'll hold water, just as well as if the blooming Lord Chancellor had fixed it up ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... case; prove one's point, have the best of the argument; draw a conclusion &c. (judge) 480. follow, follow of course, follow as a matter of course, follow necessarily; stand to reason; hold good, hold water. convince, persuade (belief) 484. Adj. demonstrating &c. v., demonstrative, demonstrable; probative, unanswerable, conclusive; apodictic[obs3], apodeictic[obs3], apodeictical[obs3]; irresistible, irrefutable, irrefragable; necessary. categorical, decisive, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... made out that the great throat pouch of the European male bustard (Otis tarda), and of at least four other species, does not, as was formerly supposed, serve to hold water, but is connected with the utterance during the breeding-season of a peculiar sound resembling "oak." (43. The following papers have been lately written on this subject: Prof. A. Newton, in the 'Ibis,' 1862, p. 107; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... honest truth, I suspect the Master has found out that his formula does not hold water quite so perfectly as he was thinking, so long as he kept it to himself, and never thought of imparting it to anybody else. The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity, as. I have noticed that a great pumpkin, the wonder of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Salter with a careless shrug. "I doubt if the assertion would hold water. At the same time Buddha has an enormous number of followers in China, Tibet, India, and Ceylon; they, too, have traditions of a Holy Mother and Child, of a fast in the wilderness, and here, even now, crucifixion is the form of ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... not hold water: it would be difficult to form a mask out of a napkin; the Bastille had a resident surgeon of its own as well as a physician and apothecary; no one could gain access to a prisoner without a written order from a minister, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the Roman religion, and for some thirty years I have been familiar with every scrap of evidence bearing on it; and after going over that evidence once more I can emphatically state my conviction that Wissowa's theory will not hold water for a moment. I shall return to the subject in a later lecture dealing with the religious history of the second Punic war; at present I merely express a belief that, whatever be the history of the accessories of the rite,—and they are various ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... fire, build a stone pan and fix the stones with cherry gum, dig a hole in the ground and put fire under; "that would be a kind of oven." When asked if water would stay in the hole, and if any kind of earth would hold water, the answer may be, "No, nothing but clay, and you'd have to make that." "No! you get clay round a well. My cousin has a well, and there's clay round it." "Why, there's clay in the playground." "You could put the meat into ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... tubs, tins—anything that'll hold water, and look sharp. If you boys work well now, I'll overlook a lot that's been done. If you don't, I'll give you fits. Try and get below, some of you, and pull away what's burning. Probably you'll find some of your dear relations ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... a number of vessels out of Birch bark, stitching the edges with root fibers, filling the bottom with a round wooden disc, and cementing the joints with pine gum so that they would hold water. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... pull some leaves off the rubber plant I am taking to Mrs. Wibblewobble. We'll put the leaves in the bottom of the sieve, and, being of rubber, water can't get through them. Then the sieve will hold water, or milk either, and you can bring it to ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... no use of appealing again to the business folk of the provincial towns; the tone of their letters was all too decisive. The great plans he had made would come to nothing after all. His proposition simply did not hold water. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... Blue. "It ought to be filled up with dirt, and then it wouldn't hold water. You're to ride back with us in ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... have amounted to committing himself to Seward's following alone. And that would not do. Should either faction appear to dominate him, Lincoln felt that "the whole government must cave in. It could not stand, could not hold water; ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the ground, we manured it, and sowed it with abundance of beans, peas, and every vegetable that grows in the island." In the course of their labours they found that a tank would be of great use to hold water, which might be brought by pipes from a spring at a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... most important considerations in the cultivation of flowers. Should the soil be clayey, and hold water, make V-shaped drains, 3 ft. below the surface, and let 2-in. pipes lead to a deep hole made at the lowest part of the garden and filled with brick rubbish, or other porous substances, through which the water ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... but one that will scarcely hold water, is shown in Fig. 95. In this the upper lap is left open, the points are bent under, and the sides left to curve naturally. A baby carriage can also be made in this way, but for the carriage the points must extend down and have wheels drawn on them ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... course, no doubt," the other answered; "but I could not bring myself to that. I could not face the idea of your justifiable wrath. I wanted to win my wife and keep my friend. It was altogether a weak notion, that idea of secrecy, of course, and couldn't hold water for any time, as the result has shown; but I thought you would get over your disappointment quickly—those wounds are apt to heal so speedily—and fall in love elsewhere; and then it would have been easy for me to tell you the truth. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and shady nooks, where the grass and wild flowers weave their lovely patterns for the earth floor, and tall pines spread their soft carpets of brown, while giant oaks and sycamores lift their cathedral arches to support the ceilings of green, and dark rock fountains set in banks of moss and fern hold water clear and cold. It was to one of these that Stanford Manning brought his bride for their honeymoon. Stanford himself pitched their tent and made their simple camp, for it was not in his plan that the sweet intimacy of these, the first weeks of their mated life, should be marred, even ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... each other, and a fire is made between them. Among the furniture are dishes of wood, bark, or horn; and vessels in which they cook their food, narrow at the top, and wide at the bottom. The latter are formed of roots of the spruce fir-tree, so closely interwoven as to hold water. This people have also small leather bags, to hold their embroidered work, their lines, and fishing-nets. They twist the fibres of willow-bark, and the sinews of rein-deer, into fishing-lines; and ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... prowbation, and is trying to be good so he can get in the church for keeps. He said it was hell living the way he did, and he has got me to promise to go to Sunday school. He said if I didn't he would maul me so my skin wouldn't hold water. You see, Ma said Pa had got to be on trial for six months before he could get in the church, and if he could get along without swearing and doing anything bad, he was all right, and we must try him and see if we could cause him to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... mattresses and bedding piled high to break the jumper's fall and get a strong rug to hold, to catch the jumper, and let many people hold the rug. In country districts organize a bucket brigade; two lines of girls from water to fire—pass buckets, jugs, tumblers, or anything that will hold water from girl to girl and throw water on the fire, passing buckets back by another ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... found Lincoln practically decided not to accept Seward's resignation, saying that it would never do to take the course prescribed by the Senators; that "the Government would cave in; it could not stand—would not hold water; the bottom would be out," etc. He requested Welles to go at once to Seward and ask him not to press his resignation. Lincoln's intuitional mind seemed at once to connect Secretary Chase with the attack on Seward. Before Welles left the room, the President rang a bell and directed that a ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... too, the King desired, which was to hold water for the whole year; for all his neighbours had wells, but he hadn't any, and that he thought a shame. So the King said he would give both money and goods to anyone who could dig him such a well as would ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... endeavored to rent Jeffries Hall for a roller skating rink. George Washington Frazee, who learned of the man renting Jeffries' hall for a skating rink, said: "Huh! Another dam fool 'bout skeetin'. Jeffries Hall won't hold water, an' if it did hit wouldn't freeze ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... offer me a loophole of escape, my dear fellow," he said sententiously, "but that theory will not hold water. At present the Indians in Lima and Cuzco do not know that the mummy has been found. Don Pedro only chanced upon the paper which announced the sale by accident and had no time to communicate with his barbaric friends in South America. Failing to get the mummy from you, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... threaten'd,—again blew A gale, and in the fore and after hold Water appear'd; yet, though the people knew All this, the most were patient, and some bold, Until the chains and leathers were worn through Of all our pumps:—a wreck complete she roll'd, At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are Like ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... veranda in front thatched with leaves and grass, forms the Baiga's residence, and if it is burnt down, or abandoned on a visitation of epidemic disease, he can build another in the space of a day. A rough earthen vessel to hold water, leaves for plates, gourds for drinking-vessels, a piece of matting to sleep on, and a small axe, a sickle and a spear, exhaust the inventory of the Baiga's furniture, and the money value of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... version has topography that will not hold water, while the Scott topography does hold water; and the Elliot song seems to borrow the lines on the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry from a form of the Scott version. This being the case, the original version on which Scott worked is earlier than the Elliot version. In the Scott version the rescuers ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... of these are still to be seen not far from the "Ladies' Bath." There was a long trough that conveyed the water, and on each side were depressions which may have been hollowed for the reception of round vessels of different sizes, intended to hold water ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... any of your advice, that's the very time when you don't need to give any. Whenever you think you have a kick comin'—why think again. Then if you still see the kick, make it to the foreman. If that don't work make it to me; but when you make it to me, you want to be mighty sure it will hold water. Above all things I hate a liar, a coward, an' a sneak. Now get busy 'cause life is short an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... doe great matters in making salt-works, so he was sente to seeke out fitte ground for his purpose; and after some serch he tould y^e Gov^r that he had found a sufficente place, with a good botome to hold water, and otherwise very conveniente, which he doubted not but in a short time to bring to good perfection, and to yeeld them great profite; but he must have 8. or ten men to be constantly imployed. He was wisht to be sure that y^e ground was good, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... to Simpkins yet. I must finish Miss King first. You've given your reasons for not making her acquaintance, and I've shown you that they are utterly feeble and won't hold water for a minute. If you've no other objection, then I think, as a straightforward man, you are bound to admit you are in the wrong and do what you ought to have been ready to ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... command," said Uncle Ben. "You hain't heard it before; but it is often needed to keep you from runnin' into a boat, a wharf, a rock, or anything else. The command is, 'Starn all!' When you get it, you must pull backwards. It comes arter 'Hold water!' as you are doin' now. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... underground channel he cast into a deep old unused well, not far distant. Once under the platform, he kept on digging, making the hole larger by far. Numerous rocks abounded in the neighborhood, and these he used to wall up his underground room, so that it would hold water. Just in the middle of the school-room platform he cut, from beneath, a square hole, taking in the spot where the teacher invariably stood when addressing the school. He cut the boards until they lacked but a very little, indeed, of being ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... in wedlock according to the customs of various sects and nations. There is one wedlock, a sacrament, but many forms. Never before did I marry two lovers with the Sword and the Bible—the form of matrimony for fugitive slaves: out of that fact perhaps Mr. Attorney can frame an indictment that will hold water. "If it only resists law and obstructs its officers," quoth he, "it is treason, and he who risks it must risk ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... camp, all the hunters feeling proud of what they had done. When we reached camp, we found the cook waiting for us with everything that would hold water and stand the fire that he could get hold of full of steaming hot water, ready to scald the turkeys, and all the men pitched in ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... 12,158,600 cubic feet of gas. Owing to its immense size, it is built on the telescopic principle in six "lifts," of 30 feet deep each. The sides of each lift, or ring, except the topmost, have a section shaped somewhat like the letter N. Two of the members form a deep, narrow cup to hold water, in which the "dip" member of the ring above it ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... fibre of the olona (Boehmeria), of wauke (Broussonetia papyrifera), of hau (Hilasens tiliasens), etc.; Mats of Pandanus and of Scirpus; Pili (grass to thatch houses with); Canoes (waa); Wood for building; Calabashes (serving for food vessels, and to hold water); Wooden dishes; Arms and ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... injured foot on a stool, and Jess and Jimsy. They had been discussing the case against Mortlake and Fanning Harding. All agreed that things looked as black against them as could be, but—where was the proof? There was not an iota of evidence against them that would hold water an ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... more than a few months; whilst running parallel with them on either side, are chains of lagoons that often run dry through the floods not being excessive enough to overflow the banks. These lagoons are, as a rule, well calculated to hold water, and could be brought under the influence of ordinary floods, instead of being, as now, dependent upon extraordinary ones; thus atoning for the insufficient retaining ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... explosion, certainly,' he said. 'Besides, I promised Jerningham, and such an excuse would never hold water. She is not even ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lily?" said Eames, as though the proposition made by the doctor were one that could not hold water for a minute. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... that this entire system of drainage ended in the excavation (B) already described. The question was now whether such a theory of drainage would "hold water." If it would, the hole I had dug must not, and I waited to see. It promised well. Quite a steady stream poured into it and disappeared. By and by there came a heavy March storm. When I went out in the morning, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... hereto have this 20th day of September 1862 set their hands and affixed their seals." "That sounds stiff enough to hold water in a court of law," said Valentine, when George Sheldon had recited ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... facts, I evolved the following theory, which certainly looked well from my standpoint, but might not hold water. You will see, that from the first I connected the Wardour ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... willow and grass, so closely wrought as to hold water, and a seine neatly made with meshes, in the ordinary manner, of the fibres of wild flax or nettle. The humble effects of the poor savages remained unmolested by their visitors, and a few small articles, with ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... to the present generation, we find on all sides, evidences of a growing notion that many of the statements contained in the Bible will no longer hold water, when put to the test of scientific enlightenment. A minister of the gospel in this church, and another in that, announces from the pulpit that it is no longer possible for him to accept the doctrines of hell's fire and eternal damnation. Others follow their ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... productions which seem to touch the lowest imaginable point of artistic imbecility; and the ever-increasing interest in musical drama that is manifested year after year by London audiences shows that higher motives than those referred to weigh even with Englishmen. The theory above mentioned will not hold water, for there are, as a matter of fact, only two ways of looking at opera: either as a means, whether expensive or not, of passing an evening with a very little intellectual trouble, some social eclat, and a certain amount ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... "Hold water!" Godfrey exclaimed, and as they stopped her way the boat drifted quietly against a rock. They brought her broadside ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... next week, when he brought me my shirts with a look of intelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally erased. At another time, to guard against his general disposition to carry off anything as soiled clothes that he thought could hold water, I requested him to always wait until he saw me. Coming home late one evening, I found the household in great consternation over an immovable Celestial who had remained seated on the front door-step during the day, sad and submissive, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... is not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you choose to pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you please; but you do not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth more than it was before you paid such sum for it. You may, perhaps, induce many potters to manufacture fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to buy them; but the nation is, through the whole business so encouraged, rich by the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... each other out, in spite of them all!" said the old man musingly. "And what does his age or yours, or his place or yours, matter beside that? They've tried to fill you with lies, and you've found that the lies don't hold water. Well—" ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... got to do with it?" snarled Eggleston. "They will pay sometime. As to your honor: That's the cheap sentiment you Southern men are always shouting. Your kind of honor won't hold water here! It was your honor when you tried to hold on to your niggers; and it's your honor when you murder each other ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Stine admitted. "My theories hold water and seem logical enough up to this point. But the magter are the exception, and I have no idea why. They are completely different from the rest of the Disans. Argumentative, blood-thirsty, looking for planetary conquest instead ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... Buckeye. Word came in just before lunch. They're in trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault in the under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what's the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir won't hold water?" ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... thoroughly. Lie out of it to Colonel Tarleton and the others as you will; Captain John Stuart and the baronet are not here to contradict you, and you are the only witnesses. Knock together some story that will hold water and lose no time about ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the party had not taken the precaution to bring along some water I went back to them and found they had none. I told them they would not see a drop for the next forty miles, and they unloaded the lightest wagon and drove back with everything they had which would hold water, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... me, Abe," he said, a little thickly. "All this talk of yours don't hold water—no, nor spirit either," he laughed. "Say, I'm goin' to get ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... impose on your gentle trusting natures. So far from their overlooking it the bath had been the subject of earnest scrutiny, and they had all regretfully come to the conclusion that it lacked one important attribute of a bath—it wouldn't hold water. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... time more forcibly than when the portion of my party, under Mr. Walker, were coming overland from Gantheaume Bay to Perth. In this case six full-grown men, provided with knives, fishing-hooks and lines, a kettle, vessels to hold water and cook their food, arms, and a small quantity of ammunition, and many of them possessing considerable experience in the bush, must all have perished from hunger had not timely assistance reached them; and this from their ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... of theorists, the fine spun cobwebs of the doctrinaires, governmental ideals of brotherhood that were mostly sawdust and governmental practices that were mostly theft under privilege—all went down in the smash of the next twenty years' tempest. All that was left was what was real; what would hold water and ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... "Hold water all! we will go alongside the ship first, and see what is the state of things there. The schooner is safe; she cannot escape; but while we are aboard her who can tell what may be happening aboard the ship? Round with the boats, men, and ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... that makes our position towards this misery of world and life tolerable is the growing contempt for world and life; and if one can arrive at that in a good humour, things are all right for a little while. But when one perceives how few things hold water, when one observes the terrible superficiality, the incredible thoughtlessness, the selfish desire for pleasure, which inspire every one, one's own earnestness appears often in a very comic light. This consideration is to me, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... from bein' rained on, I guess," said Flossie, for indeed the doll's dress was still damp, and very likely it had been out in the rain. That stump would hold water for some time, like a big, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... took the decorations in hand. Bishey, Jerrine, and myself went out and gathered armfuls of asters and goldenrod-like rabbit-brush. From the dump-pile we sorted cans and pails that would hold water, and we made the sitting-room a perfect bower of purple and gold beauty. I put on my last clean shirt-waist and the children's last clean dresses. Then, as there seemed nothing more to do, Bishey suggested that we walk up the road and meet the stage; but ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... the family; when people learn to walk until they can afford to ride; when the poor man ceases to spend more for tobacco than for bread; when those who complain of panics learn that "we cannot eat our cake and keep it," that a sieve will not hold water, that we must rely on our own exertions and earn before we expend, then will panics cease and prosperity return. While we should by no means unreasonably restrict healthy recreation, we should remember that "time is money," ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... whilst he himself sat at breakfast; or even than if the vagabond should protest before this honorable court that he did cut the lead, in order that he (the said vagabond) might have hot rolls and coffee as well as my lord, the witness. If Mr. Taylor's body of evidence does not hold water, then is there no evidence extant upon any question, judicial ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... having one arm-bone shivered, and the dead limb swinging helplessly about in your sleeve, whilst a great miserable sensation comes over you that you are of no more use—that you are only a cracked pitcher, fit to hold water no more, but only to be broken up to mend the road with. There were all those women and children wanting my help, and the help of hundreds more such as me, and instead of being of use, I knew that I must be a miserable burden to everybody, ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... heah. If they didn't get wiped out by Rangers or cowboys, why they jest naturally wiped out themselves. Thet's a law I recognize in relation to gangs like them. An' as for yours—why, Anson, it wouldn't hold water against one ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Indians in it, those Indians make verry nice Canoes of Pine. Thin with aporns & Carve on the head imitation of animals & other heads; The Indians above Sacrafise the property of the Deceased to wit horses Canoes, bowls Basquets of which they make great use to hold water boil their meet &c. &c. great many Indians came down from the uppr Village & Sat with us, Smoked, rained all the evenig & blew hard from the West encamped on the Lard Side opsd. an Rock in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... pity Mrs. Jameson very much in her relations with Lady Byron. I never thought theirs a real attachment, but a connection made up of all sorts of motives, which was sure not to hold water long, and never to hold it after it had once begun to leak. It was an instance of one of those relationships which are made to wear out, and as it always appeared so to me, I have no great sympathy with either party in this ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... put on a sidewalk, for instance, a smooth top coat, the consistency of the two kinds of concrete should be alike, and the top coat should be applied almost immediately after the bottom layer is put in place. Where concrete is used to hold water, a coat of neat cement should always be put on with a broom or a whitewash brush, mixing the neat cement with water in a pail, and it does no harm to go over the surface three or four times, the object being to thoroughly close the pores ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... high shrubs, which would have caused unwholesome damp in England, but were needed here for shade. Foreign Crotons, Dracaenas, Cereuses, and a dozen more curious shapes—among them a 'cup-tree,' with concave leaves, each of which would hold water. It was said to come from the East, and was unknown to me. Among them, and over the door, flowering creepers tangled and tossed, rich with flowers; and beyond them a circular- lawn (rare in the West Indies), just like an English one, save that the shrubs and trees which bounded it were ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Jusma Odni, one of their wives, and sought to possess her. But the Ods fled with her and when he pursued her she plunged a dagger into her stomach, cursing Sidhraj and saying that his tank should never hold water. The Raja, returning to Anhilvada, found the tank dry, and asked his minister what should be done that water might remain in the tank. The Pardhan, after consulting the astrologers, said that if a man's life were sacrificed the curse might ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... soft enough to lie on, by being filled with the feathers of birds. Furniture there was none, except two or three old axes, blunted with long use, a tin pannikin, a mess kid, and some rude vessels to hold water, cut out of wood. On the summit of the island, there was a forest of underwood, and the bushes extended some distance down the ravines which led from the summit to the shore. One of my most arduous tasks was to climb these ravines and collect wood, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat |
