"Millstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that any idea can be formed of the difficulty in which he found himself involved by his initial blunder of thinking he had got a distinctive feature which entitled him to claim the theory of evolution as an original idea of his own. He found his natural selection hang round his neck like a millstone. There is hardly a page in the "Origin of Species" in which traces of the struggle going on in Mr. Darwin's mind are not discernible, with a result alike exasperating and pitiable. I can only repeat what I said in "Evolution Old and New," namely, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... right hand man to the left hand said, As down in the vale we went, "Harden your heart like a millstone, Ned, And set your face as flint; Solid and tall is the rasping wall That stretches before us yonder; You must have it at speed or not at all, 'Twere better to halt than to ponder, For the stream runs wide on the take-off side, And washes the clay bank under; Here goes for a pull, 'tis a madman's ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... any Massachusetts man can read the above without shuddering, and experiencing alternate emotions of horror and indignation, his heart must be harder than a millstone and colder than the ice of the poles. We know not the particular circumstances of the crime for which this poor wretch suffered, but as far as we can learn from the public prints, it was for the murder of his Master. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... raised against the bloody one. "And gentlemen,"' my father resumed his oration, forgetting my sober eye for a minute—'"Gentlemen, we are the ultimate Court of Appeal for men who cherish their honour, yet abstain from fastening it like a millstone round the neck of their common-sense." Credit me, Richie, the proposition kindled. We cited Lord Edbury to appear before us, and I tell you we extracted an ample apology to you from that young nobleman. And let me add, one that I, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Capricorn; therefore it must be that Maria in the sign of Aries can see, when the Sun sinks below the mid-circle of the first Poles, this Sun to revolve round the Earth below, or rather the sea, like a millstone, of which only one half of its body appears, and can see this come rising up after the manner of the screw of a vine-press, so much so that it completes ninety-one rotations, or a little more. When these rotations are completed, its ascension is to Maria almost as much in ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... to depart, I came down from the tree and, going to the place I had seen them fill up, scraped off and removed the earth; and in patience possessed my soul till I had cleared the whole of it away. Then appeared the trap door which was of wood, in shape and size like a millstone; and when I lifted it up it disclosed a winding staircase of stone. At this I marvelled and, descending the steps till I reached the last, found a fair hall, spread with various kinds of carpets and silk stuffs, wherein was a youth sitting upon a raised couch and leaning back on a round ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... see through a millstone, when there is a hole in it," said Mrs. Kinloch. "And I mean to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... At best, you would have been forced into some kind of paltry work just to support me—and where would be the good of our marriage? You know perfectly well that lots of men have been degraded in this way. They take a wife to be their Muse, and she becomes the millstone about their neck; then they hate her—and I don't blame them. What's the good of saying one moment that you know your work can never appeal to the multitude, and the next, affecting to believe that our marriage would make ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... cumbrous load which rendered all free, vigorous action impossible, and prevented Russia from rising to the level of the Western nations. If Russia had succeeded in stemming the flood of adverse fortune in spite of this millstone round her neck, what might she not accomplish when free and untrammelled? All sections of the literary world had arguments to offer in support of the foregone conclusion. The moralists declared that all the prevailing ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Christ to simple men, Announced the coming doom, and fulminated Against the scarlet woman and her creed: For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd 'Thus, thus with violence,' ev'n as if he held The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself Were that great Angel; 'Thus with violence Shall Babylon be cast into the sea; Then comes the close.' The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world; He at his own: but when ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years in that house should Austen leave it again, never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... may still cling to the log is removed by a rapidly revolving corrugated wheel of steel, while the larger blocks are split by a steam splitter. The next stage of their journey takes these blocks to a great millstone set perpendicularly instead of horizontally. Here a very strong and ingenious machine receives one block at a time, and with an automatically elastic pressure holds it sidewise against the millstone, which, like the mills of the gods, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... organ in the high and dim cathedral,—the man who has witnessed and acutely felt all this, and has no feelings of piety, or deference to religion, must be endued with a heart hardened beyond the flintiness, as the Scriptures beautifully express it, "of the nether millstone." ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... view from the motor-car. If you are traveling on foot, however, there is much more to be observed, such as the great doorstep made from a broken millstone, the gigantic rambler by the kitchen window, the tiger-lilies gone wild in the dooryard, and above all, the view from the front windows. Since the house was visible far up the road, conversely a long stretch of the road ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... scaffold. But the scaffolding should not make him forget the tower! Some way in this last hour his mind had seemed to clear. His immense amount of useless work was not hanging about his neck like a millstone. Something had cut that away. He was free from it all. He could feel within himself that his approach to his problem was better than it had been before. Perhaps he had made the mistake of the others of looking at it as something fearfully ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... their neighbours. It is true that some are born with a special talent and capacity for debt—they live on it, and live merrily withal, but most debtors feel the weight of their chains, and suffer greater pangs than those which they inflict on any defrauded creditor. If the millstone grinds slowly it grinds small, and undischarged accounts bring more pain than the goods to which they relate ever brought pleasure. Among such bitternesses surely most bitter are the bills for things of which the fruition has ceased—for ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... That the two ladies were not very happy together was evident, and then he made a little comparison between Madeline and Mary. Was it really the case that for the last three years he had contemplated making that poor child his wife? Would it not be better for him to tie a millstone round his neck and cast himself into the sea? That was now his thought ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... these people became "poor whites" and were ground between the nether millstone of their more prosperous neighbours and that of the blacks, until they sank to the lowest level. Their voices were hushed and forgotten; their former estate blotted out in their present degradation, and just then ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... Adams. Lord Castlereagh bore no malice against Mr. Gallatin for the treaty. On the contrary, he wrote of it to Lord Liverpool as "a most auspicious and seasonable event," and wished him joy at "being released from the millstone of an American war." With Lord Castlereagh Mr. Gallatin arranged in the course of the summer a convention regulating commercial intercourse between the United States and Great Britain, the only truly valuable part of which ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... rattle of Sultan's hoofs told of my coming. It was no wonder, for these poor folk were living between two armies and wanted neither, friend nor foe. For them it was only a choice between the upper and the nether millstone. At last I came to a wayside ale-house where lights were showing. I rode up, dismounted, ran the reins over the catch of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... entrance into wealth and love and alas! into trouble. For the latter followed hard upon the two first. Mr. Ocumpaugh's mother, who had held sway at Homewood for thirty years or more, was hard as the nether millstone. She was a Rathbone and had brought both wealth and aristocratic connections into the family. She had no sympathy for penniless beauties (she was a very plain woman herself) and made those first few years of her daughter-in-law's life as nearly miserable ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... change, Leslie. He is the same yesterday and to-day and forever. And He said that whoever took away from the meaning of the words of His book would have some terrible punishment, so that it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... used to express the manner of action. "The higher the river, the swifter it flows;" "James learns easier than Juliet; he sees deeper into the millstone than she:"—"the more swiftly it flows;" "learns more easily; farther into the millstone." "He conducted the boldest of any:"—"the ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... others, since happiness lay in ignorance and falsehood? Contagion would surely end by acting; he would become nothing more than a grain of sand among innumerable other grains, one of the humblest among the humble ones under the millstone, who trouble not about the power that crushes them. But just at that second, when he hoped that he had killed the old man in him, that he had annihilated himself along with his will and intelligence, the stubborn work of thought, incessant and invincible, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of granite, a half elevation being shown on Fig. 19, the stone being supplied by the Millstone Granite Company, Millstone Point, Conn. Fig. 3, Plate XXVII, shows the portal and the cut-and-cover section after the arches were completed ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... them, which were a moral burden because they conflicted with our highest and noblest sense of right. We no longer feel under the necessity of reconciling human mistakes with divine infallibility. Professor Goldwin Smith has told us recently that these old theories of the Bible were a millstone about the neck of Christendom, and that they must be gotten rid of if Christianity was to live. This is all that doubt and investigation have done to the Bible. They have cleared away the things that no sane and earnest and devout mind wishes to keep; and they have restored to ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... had been done they should be restored at once. For it is written (Deut. 23:19): "Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury": and (Deut. 24:6): "Thou shalt not take the nether nor the upper millstone to pledge; for he hath pledged his life to thee": and (Ex. 22:26): "If thou take of thy neighbor a garment in pledge, thou shalt give it him again before sunset." Thirdly, by forbidding them to be importunate ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... amaze. The queen, I would name thee, Of maidenly muster; Thy stem is so seemly, So rich is its cluster Of members complete, Adroit at each feat, And thy temper so sweet, Without banning or bluster. My grief has press'd on Since the vision of Morag, As the heavy millstone On the cross-tree that bore it. In vain the world over, Seek her match may the rover; A shaft, thy poor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... saw that he was the apple of the old man's eye. He hailed me as an old friend. He welcomed me back into his life as if I were only associated with pleasant things. But I soon saw that he was not happy. The memory of that tragedy was hanging on him like a millstone. He was trying to drag himself free. But he was like a dog on a chain. He could see his liberty, but he could not reach it. And the fact that he loved a woman, and believed that he had won her love made ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... United States, Canada should cut the painter from the Great British Commonwealth. But he was a trifle cynical about the young nation, just as Disraeli was fifty years ago when he said that "these colonies would yet be a millstone about Britain's neck". Neither of them was more cynical about us than we usually are about ourselves, never ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... square-towered churches of Norman foundation. Round about his steading, which was screened by sycamores from the westerly gales, lay the mountain pastures, broken by terraces of limestone rock. Above, where the limestone yields place to the millstone, were the high moors and fells, where grouse, curlews and merlins nested among the heather, and hardy, blue-faced sheep ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... to work. And when you have become a genuine laborer, you'll begin to try to improve not the condition of others, but your own. The way to help workers is to abolish the idlers who hang like a millstone about their necks. You can help only by abolishing the one idler ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... execute his threatenings on those who despise his commands, and though ye flatter yourselves in your own eyes, and cry, "Peace, peace," even though ye walk in the imagination of your own heart, yet certainly "he is a God of truth." I pray you read that sad and weighty word, that will be like a millstone about many men's necks to sink them in hell, Deut. xxix. 20, 21, ye who "add drunkenness to thirst," whose rule of walking is your own lust, and whatsoever pleaseth you, without respect of his commands, and yet flatter yourselves with a dream of peace, know this for ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... me you're not; and you are the shrewdest one I've come across yet. You lie when you say you meant to tell me what had happened beforehand, and you know it. But you'll find out at your cost what it means to bind me to a millstone for a wife. But you shan't be a millstone. You'll do your share toward the support. Yes, by George, you shall. I'll put ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... believe. Weet, wet. Weir, war. Wha, who. Wham, whom. Whang, large piece, slice. Whare, where. Whase, whose. Whestling, whistling. Whig-mig-morum, talking politics. Whinging, whining. Whunstane, hard rock, millstone. Whyles, sometimes. Winna, will not. Winnock-bunker, window-seat. Woddie, woody. Wonner, wonder. Woo, wool. Wood, mad Wordy, worthy. Wrack, wreck. Wraith, spectre. Wrang, wrong. Wyle, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... only after surmounting the hardest obstacles, by "the sweat of toil," to borrow his own vigorous phrase. While waiting for that desired epoch, when he would be able to be himself and nothing else, he was forced to continue to turn the millstone that ground out the worthless grain. In 1823, his productive power seems to have fallen off, either because he had exhausted the patience of his publishers, or for some other reason. During that year he published nothing ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... that the Bible is agin, for you know they jawed our Lord hisself, and he said, 'Woe! woe! to you lie-yers.' Now, Marse Alfred, if you have made up your mind you are gwine to have that hankcher, it will be bound to come; for if it was tied to a millstone and drapped in the sea, you lie-yers would float it into court; so Bedney, jest perduce what ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... significant. (See Fig. 558.) In explaining how the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic I will quote a passage from the "creation myth" as I rendered it in an article on the origin of corn, belonging to a series on "Zuni Breadstuff," published this year in the "Millstone" of Indianapolis, Indiana. "Is not the bowl the emblem of the earth, our mother? For from her we draw both food and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother; and round, as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... a "cadeau" from Koorshid Aga, and, as a great wonder, the kisras (a sort of brown pancake in lieu of bread) were free from sand. I must have swallowed a good-sized millstone since I have been in Africa, in the shape of grit rubbed from the moorhaka, or grinding-stone. The moorhaka, when new, is a large flat stone, weighing about forty pounds; upon this the corn is ground by being rubbed ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Duke's cruel order to have Sidonia sent to their castle of Saatzig. Therefore, the indignant knight sat down and wrote an earnest remonstrance to his Highness the Duke, and prayed his Grace, therefore, to remove this millstone from his neck, or he would resign the post of Governor of Saatzig, and withdraw to his own good castle of Pansin. This letter he despatched by a running courier to Old Stettin, and it produced a good effect upon the Duke; for, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... who could see almost as far into a millstone as the average 'varsity president, was of the opinion that the tendency to ever more compact organization was transforming both education and religion into farces, blighting the spiritual and intellectual life of man and precipitating in the world of industry ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... convictions to good; for those convictions are sent of God like seasonable showers of rain, to keep the tillage of thy heart in good order, that the grace of fear may grow therein; but this stifling of convictions makes the heart as hard as a piece of the nether millstone. Therefore happy is he that receiveth conviction, for so he doth keep in the fear of God, and that fear thereby nourished in his soul; but cursed is he that doth otherwise—"Happy is the man that feareth alway; but he that hardeneth his heart shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... victory at Bosworth, pledged to destroy the whole reactionary class which incarnated feudalism. For the feudal soldier was neither flexible nor astute, and allowed himself to be caught between the upper and the nether millstone. While industrial and commercial capital had been increasing in the towns, capitalistic methods of farming had invaded the country, and, as police improved, private and predatory warfare, as a business, could no longer be made to pay. The importance of a ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... bird came down, and all the twenty millers took poles, and lifted the stone up. The bird stuck his neck through the hole in the millstone, and put it on like a collar, and flew back to the tree, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... those who do not know what to do; they mock at themselves, and in doing so prove the correctness of their view. And then it is pleasant to believe one's self unhappy when one is only idle and tired. Debauchery, moreover, the first result of the principles of death, is a terrible millstone for grinding ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote: From the Indians: ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... proper to give it to her," said Mrs. Bluestone, whose heart was all softness towards Lady Anna, but as hard as a millstone towards ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... that it has no place for ghosts. I watched one building not long since. It had no proper garret, to begin with, only a sealed interval between the roof and attics, where a spirit could not be accommodated, unless it were flattened out like Ravel, Brother, after the millstone had fallen on him. There was not a nook or a corner in the whole horse fit to lodge any respectable ghost, for every part was as open to observation as a literary man's character and condition, his figure and estate, his coat and his countenance, are to his (or her) ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... grey worsted stockings, to hide the holes in them, were all dragooned down about her heels. On the whole, she was rather, I must confess, an out-of-the-way creature; and though I had not muckle faith in these bodies that pretend to see further through a millstone than their neighbours, I somehow or other, taking pity on her miserable condition, being still a fellow-creature, though plain in the lugs, had not the heart to huff her out; more by token, as Nanse, Benjie, and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences: for it must needs be that offences come: but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh. Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... out over the sides on to the cloth which is spread on the ground underneath the mill. It is a monotonous task, and very often two people work it together, one feeding in the grain and the other turning the millstone. This is pleasanter, as each worker is "company" for the other. Perhaps our hostess will let us roll the millstone for her while she feeds in the grain and sweeps up the flour from the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... the world alone, with the millstone of her shame around her neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a while she had kept both herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that twelve hours' drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out of it for the child, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... importance, and it has a very large trade in the early vegetables and fruit of the valley of the Correze, and in grain, live-stock and truffles. Table-delicacies, paper, wooden shoes, hats, wax and earthenware are manufactured, and there are slate and millstone workings ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... stop to this gratuitous legislation. Accordingly, one evening, when an inspired cobbler was holding forth to an assemblage of the kind, the intrepid Peter suddenly made his appearance with his ominous walking staff in his hand, and a countenance sufficient to petrify a millstone. The whole meeting was thrown into confusion—the orators stood aghast, with open mouth and trembling knees, while "Horror!" "Tyranny!" "Liberty!" "Rights!" "Taxes!" "Death!" "Destruction!" and a host of other patriotic phrases, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... captains will have nothing to say to a ragamuffin; for in that trade, as in all others, it is the coat that depicts the man. You may hand, reef, and steer like an angel, but if you have a hole in your trousers, it is like a millstone round your neck. The Devonian lost heart at so many refusals. He had not the impudence to beg; although, as he said, "when I had money of my own, I always gave it." It was only on Saturday morning, after three ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... darkness, seated there upon the millstone with her gun across her knees, she told me all the story, very quietly:—How at the last she had been found in the house in Brussels by Marc'antonio and Stephanu and fetched home to the island; how she ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Sumner's death, helps women organize temp. crusade, 456; tells them they can not succeed without ballot, anecdote of Douglass, writes to Leavenworth Times on this subject, tells Industrial Cong. women are a millstone around their necks, criticises Dio Lewis, 457; writes one hundred lets. for May meet., telegram saying she smoked on platform, etc., 458; slips home often to see mother, writes fiftieth anniversary let. to brother D. R., honesty best policy in home and society, 459; ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... accounted for. If, at the time when England bestowed cheap tears upon the sorrows of Uncle Tom, cheap aristocratic homage upon Mrs. Stowe, and cheap or indeed gratis advice upon "American sisters," any American or Continental paper had prophesied (seeing farther into a millstone than Times prophets during the war) that the issues between Slavery and Abolition would, in a very few years, come to a tremendous crisis and not less tremendous arbitrament, and that the great majority of the most trained and influential ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... once more. Then with the rose-red shoes in one foot and the golden chain in the other, the bird flew to an oak tree which overhung the mill stream, beside which three millers were busy picking out a millstone, and, perching on a bough, sang its ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... friending and took to noble lording him, to show that they were quite two. The fact is that they are in a huge difficulty with this appropriation clause, which served their turn for a while (when it turned out Peel and cemented their alliance with the Radicals), and now it hangs like a millstone round their necks, and is not unlikely to produce the dissolution of the Government. Strange that this Irish Church in one way or another is the insuperable obstacle to peace and tranquillity in Ireland, and to the stability of any Administration here; and yet it is fought for as if the prosperity ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... over with her," repeated Steel, this time in dry statement of fact, "at least on one occasion, in the presence of a lady who had a prior claim upon your conversation. That lady was Mrs. Vinson, and it is she who ought to have a millstone hanged about her neck, and be cast into the sea. Don't look as though you deserved the same fate, Langholm! It would have been better, perhaps, if you had paid more attention to Vinson's wife and less ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... was evidently by no amateur, the face of both father and son were admirably portrayed. The strong Syrian faces were mellowed by the ruddy gleams of sunset. A tame kid was gambolling behind them, and two women were grinding corn, with the millstone between them. On the flat white roof of the house, another woman had just laid aside her distaff in a hurry. The father's arms with their gold bracelets were clasping the gaunt, sharp shoulders ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with her, though it were to the further end of the world. You can understand now what I mean when I say that I do not know how to begin." Jack acknowledged that in that matter he did understand his brother. It is always hard for a man to commence any new duty when he knows that he has a millstone round his neck which will probably make ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... put a millstone in my knapsack?" inquired Bland suddenly. His face was flushed, and there was a streak of wet dust across his forehead. "If you did, it was a dirty joke," he added irritably. Dan laughed. "Now that's odd," he replied, "because there's one ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... a triple element Congress committed the work of reconstruction. The "Scalawag," the "Carpet-bagger," and the Negro. Who were this trio? The scalawag was the native white man who made up the middle class of the South; the planter above, the Negro below. And between this upper and nether millstone he was destined to be ground to powder, under the old regime. A "nigger-driver," without schools, social position, or money, he was "the poor white trash" of the South. He was loyal during the war, because in the triumph of the Confederacy, with slavery as its corner-stone, he saw ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... "I don't count on bein' able to see no furder through a millstone than my neighbors, but I've been aweer o' that ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... stretched her arms to the wild, hurrying clouds that looked in upon her through the yawning rifts in the roof, and called upon her Maker for vengeance. "How long wilt Thou delay, O Lord, righteous in judgment? Fulfil Thy promise! Bind Thou Thy millstone about the neck of this wretch, hated and accursed of Thee, and let it drag him down to the uttermost depths of the Lake of Fire, where such as he shall wallow and howl ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... vindicated Right, one to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes, their prayers, their tears,—will you, for a moment's bodily comfort and rest and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the upper and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour by your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself; and put the knife to your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to you neither ease nor rest. You will but have ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... I sees into it jes like a millstone. You'se got a long head, Dan. But what ye gwine to do ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... wiped off the dust, and opening it hastily, my eyes fell upon the following words: —"And he said unto his disciples, it must needs be that offences come; but woe unto him by whom they come; for better had it been for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... however, was not unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius describes their construction in terms not inapplicable to the mechanism of a common mill of the present day, and other ancient authors refer to them. "Set not your hands to the mill, O women that turn the millstone! sleep sound though the cock's crow announce the dawn, for Ceres has charged the nymphs with the labors which employed your arms. These, dashing from the summit of a wheel, make its axle revolve, which, by the help of moving radii, sets ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... bleed for her at home, even unto death, if that blood might, through the blessing of God, be a stream to cleanse her putrifying members. But O, holy Jesus! why waste I words upon one whose heart is harder than the nether millstone! Thou preachedst not to Pilate, nor didst thou work thy wonders for Herod. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... whom anxiety had made confidential; "for I own I was prejudiced against her from the first, as, if you'll excuse me, ma'am, all we Bowstead people are apt to be set against whatever comes from my Lady's side. However, one must have been made of the nether millstone not to feel the difference she made in the house. She was the very life of it with her pretty ways, singing and playing with the children, and rousing up the poor gentleman too that had lived just like ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me, but whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it is more profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he should be sunk in the depths of the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... adventures that had befallen him. I tried over and over again to elicit sensible replies to my questions as to where he came from; but he simply gibbered and babbled like a happy baby. I coaxed; I threatened; I persuaded; but it was all in vain. I soon found he was a regular millstone round my neck—particularly when we were on the "walk-about." He would suddenly take it into his head to sit down for hours at a stretch, and nothing would induce him to move until he did so ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... of her, and might have succeeded, had not my habit of drinking been so confirmed. When at Ceylon, I fell sick, and was left behind. The brig was lost, and as I had forgotten to insure my portion of her, I was ruined. I struggled long, but in vain—intemperance was my curse, my bane, the millstone at my neck, which dragged me down: I had education, talents, and energy, and at one time, capital, but all were useless; and thus did I sink down, from captain of a vessel to mate, from mate to second mate, until I at ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... and myself. I might ... would God I had! (Weeping himself.) Don't weep, my good old friend; I was lost long since; don't think of me; don't pity me; don't shame me with your pity! I began this when I was a boy. I bound the millstone round my neck; (it is irrevocable now), and you must all suffer ... all suffer for me!... (for this suffering remnant of what was once a man). O God, that I can have fallen to stand here as I do now. My friend lying to save ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ancient city over which the plough had triumphed, and literally not one stone was left upon another. A few stone columns of a rough description, some of which were broken, were lying in various directions, and I noticed a lower millstone formed of an exceedingly hard conglomerate rock; these pieces were too heavy to move without great exertions, therefore ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Bevern, the millstone of Winterfeld being off his neck, has become a more responsible, though he feels himself a much-delivered man. Had not liked Winterfeld, they say; or had even hated him, since those bad Zittau times. Can now, at any rate, make for Schlesien and the meal-magazines, when he ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... was. His stature was but medium, not exceeding five feet four inches, I think; and to make the most of it, he flung his head far back, and gave himself a little strut in walking. He had a thin face with a sharp nose that looked as if it would peck you, and grey eyes that could pierce a millstone if there was a guinea on the far side of it. His hair, for he wore his own, had been red, though it was now grizzled; and the colour of it was set down in Moonfleet to his being a Scotchman, for we thought ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... vile details, fathomed such immense hypocrisy, assisting in thought at a double vision so atrocious in irony, that she would have liked to die, mechanical and implacable, pounded her brain with the weight and ceaseless action of a millstone. She ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... clever at your tricks, but you can't trick me. Don't I know about the money you stole from 'er father? Don't I, eh? You can tell 'er your lies about it being stolen by someone else, but I can see a 'ole through a millstone. You can't trick me, I tell you. They're giving that girl a good 'ome and care and all that, but we're goin' to see she 'as 'er rights. You've filled 'er silly 'ead with your stories. You've made 'er think you're all ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his friend, loses him. Observe how I am placed! It is maddening. I have had a dozen opportunities to marry riches. This millstone is eternally round my neck. I have gone through my part of the fortune which was left us independently. She has all of hers, and that is why she is so strong. I ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... is the old mill itself, now disused and falling to decay. Here the path becomes a little precipice, and you must scramble as best you can down two or three rough steps, and round the corner of the ruined mill. This is a millstone, this great round thing like a granite cheese, half buried in the ground; and here is another, which makes a comfortable ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... at work producing vast changes in the relations of land and water. "It has long been the opinion of the most eminent geologists that the coalfields of Lancashire and Yorkshire were once united, the upper coal measures and the overlying Millstone Grit and Toredale Bocks having been subsequently removed by denudation; but what is remarkable is the ancient date now assigned to this denudation, for it seems that a thickness of no less than 10,000 feet of the coal measures had been carried away before the deposition ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... Bible says it would be better for a man, sometimes, if a millstone were about his neck, and he were in the bottom of the sea. I'd look out for that, if I were you. Hurry up with your meat; I ought to ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... demand of Congress relief in this respect, it has power, as their local legislature, to grant it, and by abolishing slavery there, carry out the will of the citizens. But now new light has broken in! The optics of the thirty-six have pierced the millstone with a deeper insight, and discoveries thicken faster than they can be telegraphed! Congress has no power, O no, not a modicum, to help the slaveholders of the District, however loudly they may clamor for it. The southern doctrine, that Congress is to the District a mere ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 29: I read not long since, in that authentic record called the Percy Anecdotes, that I had been educated at Musselburgh school, where I had been distinguished as an absolute dunce; only Dr. Blair, seeing farther into the millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr. Blair at my father's and elsewhere, I never had the good fortune to attract his notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, I was never a dunce, nor thought to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... that look of concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying heavily, for all the harm she ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... gone very far ere they found the giant Gilling also sound asleep, lying on a steep bank, and they maliciously rolled him into the water, where he perished. Then hastening to his dwelling, some climbed on the roof, carrying a huge millstone, while the others, entering, told the giantess that her husband was dead. This news caused the poor creature great grief, and she rushed out of the house to view Gilling's remains. As she passed through the door, the wicked dwarfs rolled the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Derbyshire and Ireland, are of great thickness, being alternated with chert (a siliceous sandstone), sandstones, shales, and beds of coal, generally of the harder and less bituminous kind (anthracite), the whole being covered in some places by the millstone grit, a siliceous conglomerate composed of the detritus of the primary rocks. The mountain limestone, attaining in England to a depth of eight hundred yards, greatly exceeds in volume any of the primary limestone beds, and shews an enormous addition ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... mills were erected at the Falls of St. Anthony, with a very great output of flour, which, with the lumber manufactured at that point, composed the chief export of the state. The process of grinding wheat was the old style, of an upper and nether millstone, which left the flour of darker color, less nutritious, and less desirable than that from the winter wheat made in the same way. About the year 1871 it was discovered that a new process of manufacturing flour was in operation on the Danube and at Budapest. Mr. George H. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but when it came to the intellectuals—when it came to delicate chicane, and scheming, and trickery—he couldn't see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered comfort ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... neither doth it profit. My heart was very hard, and it rose up in rebellion against the Lord. Then it pleased Him (blessed be His holy name) to bray me in the mortar of affliction, and to crush me between the upper and the nether millstone. Yet I heeded not; and, like Nebuchadnezzar, my mind was hardened in pride, continually. Then, as the King of Babylon was driven forth from the sons of men, and his heart made like the beasts', and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... fearful risk—it was his duty to guard her from the chance, not hers to say whether such danger should be encountered or no. The nature of her answer may be easily surmised. She was generous, though he was not. She would never retard his advance, or be felt as a millstone round his neck. She encouraged him with all her enthusiasm, and bade him throw prudence to the winds. If he rose, must she not rise also? Whatever step in life was good for him, must it not be good for her as well? And so that matter ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Ajax, in the midst of the boss, and the brass rang around. Ajax next taking up a much larger stone, whirling, discharged it, and applied immense strength. And he broke through the shield, having struck with a rock like unto a millstone, and he wounded him in the knee; and he was stretched supine, having come into violent contact with his shield; but Apollo quickly raised him. And now in close combat hand to hand, they would have wounded each other with their swords, had not the heralds, the messengers of gods ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... looking for her a month and more, and there were strange kind of rumors afloat; and nobody mentioned Dan's name, unless they tripped. I went glowering like a wild thing. I knew I'd never see Dan now nor hear his voice again, but I hated the Lord that had done it, and I made my heart like the nether millstone. I used to try and get out of folks's sight; and roaming about the back-streets one day, as the snow went off, I stumbled on Miss Catharine. "Old Miss Catharine" everybody called her, though she was but a pauper, and had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Corrie only rushed away to hide from Alice the irrepressible emotions that nearly burst his heart. Yes, Corrie was thoroughly subdued by grief. But the spring was not broken, it was only crushed flat by the weight of sorrow that lay like a millstone ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... cruel talons Albion's entrails tore, Whose hungry maw was glutted with her gore! The mists of error, that in darkness held Our reason, like the sun, his voice dispell'd. And lo! exhausted, with no power to save, We view Britannia panting on the wave: Hung round her neck, a millstone's pond'rous weight Drags down the struggling victim to her fate! While horror at the thought our bosom feels, We bless the man this horror who reveals. 120 But what alarming thoughts the heart amaze, When on this Janus' ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the battle armour that he used for that conflict and fight; he put a kilt of striped silk, bordered with spangles of gold, next to his white skin, and over that he put his well-sewn apron of brown leather to protect the lower part of his body. Upon his belly he put a great stone as large as a millstone, and over that great stone as large as a millstone he put his firm deep apron of purified iron, on account of the fear and the dread that he had of the Gae-Bulg that day. And his crested helmet that he used for battle and conflict and fight he put upon his head: there ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... the head when he saw them on the stairs, and ingratiate himself with them as far as he dared; they were sturdy youngsters, and Ernest was afraid even of them, for they were ready with their tongues, and knew much for their ages. Ernest felt that it would indeed be almost better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of the little Holts. However, he would try not to offend them; perhaps an occasional penny or two might square them. This was as much as he could do, for he saw that the attempt to be instant out of season, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... detachments of his army, he speedily drove the enemy from Hackensack, Chatham, Springfield, Westfield, and Elizabethtown, all which places we have possessed ever since that time, as well as Millstone and Princeton to the west, and Cranbury to the south; the enemy being confined to a narrow communication on Rariton River, from Brunswick to Amboy, twelve miles. About ten days ago General Washington moved his head quarters towards ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... passes in his view into a world-wide judgment; and my text is purely ideal, imaginative, and apocalyptic. Its nearest ally is the similar vision of the Book of the Revelation, where, when Babylon sank with a splash like a millstone in the stream, the ransomed people ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... The ten pounds still owing was like a millstone round his neck. If he didn't look sharp and pay up he would be County-Courted too. He couldn't come down on his father-in-law. His father-in-law would tell him that he had already received the equivalent of ten pounds in hampers. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... to the city; The little dog's run away; The egg has fallen and broken, And the oil's leaked out, they say. But you be a roller And hull with power, And I'll be a millstone And grind ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of a very simple nature. It is disintegrated rock, worn small by the enormous millstone of ice that rolls slowly over the bed, and deposited in part as 'terminal moraine' near the summer melting-point. It is the quantity of mud thus produced, and borne down by mountain torrents, that makes the alluvial plains collect so quickly at their base. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... new delight. The cares and worries of existence fade away and disappear in company with the land, in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. One no longer feels like the bored mortal who has all winter turned the millstone of work and pleasure, but seems to have transmigrated into a new body, endowed with a ravenous ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the heart and arteries, after due evacuations by venesection and cathartics, by gently compressing the brain. This might be done by suspending a bed, so as to whirl the patient round with his head most distant from the center of motion, as if he lay across a millstone, as described in Sect. XVIII. 20. For this purpose a perpendicular shaft armed with iron gudgeons might have one end pass into the floor, and the other into a beam in the cieling, with an horizontal arm, to which a small bed ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... variety, portraying many different types of character, but we shall name only a few. "Andrea del Sarto" is a study of the great Italian painter, "the perfect painter," whose love for a pretty but shallow woman was as a millstone about his neck. "My Last Duchess" is a powerfully drawn outline of a vain and selfish nobleman. "Abt Vogler" is a study of the soul of a musician. "Rabbi ben Ezra," one of the most typical of Browning's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to choose, who loves an other best."—Shak., p. 91. "But to return to R. Johnson's instance of good man."—Tooke's D. P., ii, 370. Our common Bibles have this text: "And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to break his skull."—Judges, ix, 53. Perhaps the interpretation of this may be, "and so as completely to break his skull." The octavo edition stereotyped by "the Bible Association of Friends in America," has it, "and all-to brake his ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... little boy, but I told myself then that I would never kiss any other girl. I thought then that—that some day I might ask you to marry me. I—I had a wild dream that I might try to make you love me. I didn't know then that poverty is a millstone about a man's neck." He gave ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the bottom, it occurred to one of them that they ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... he said, in great excitement, 'you have taken a millstone from my neck. I have been sitting wondering whether I shouldn't cut my throat at once, or make off ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... of her trouble, and when he heard it he plunged into the well to look for the ring. A party of young sorcerers quickly gathered round, thinking that the mouse was in the trap, and they flung a great millstone after him. But he searched in the mud and water for some time, and presently sprang out of the water with the millstone on his finger, which he offered to the maiden, saying that he had not ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... long and feeble reign of fifty-six years England's motto might well have been the warning words of Scripture, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!" since a child he remained to the last; for if John's heart was of millstone, Henry's ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... porch of the interesting old church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin near the Tiber is preserved a huge circular stone like a millstone. It is composed of white marble, upwards of five feet in diameter, and is finished after the model of the dramatic mask used in the ancient theatres. In the centre is a round hole perforating the mass right through, forming the mouth of the mask. It is called the Bocca della Verita, and has ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Huang, of the Eastern mansion," interposed Ming Yen from outside the window. "What a determined and self-confident fellow he must be to even come and bully us; Mrs. Huang is his paternal aunt! That mother of yours is only good for tossing about like a millstone, for kneeling before our lady Lien, and begging for something to pawn. I've no eye for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the woods to John Helme's house carrying in his hand a stout birchen staff or small tree-trunk, which he laid down on the flat millstone imbedded in the grass at the back door, while he displayed and sold his wares and had his dinner. He then went out to the dooryard with little Johnny Helme, sat down on the millstone, lighted his pipe, opened his jack-knife, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... in every fibre. He almost hated the little handbag he carried, which held his flute and piccolo. It seemed a burden just then—a millstone round his neck. He hated the scene he had left—and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck unchanging in ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... was a fool. Their father divided all his goods among them and died, and the three brothers went out into the world to seek their fortunes. Now the two wise brothers left all their goods at home, but Ivan the fool, who had only inherited a large millstone, took it along with him. They went on and on and on till it began to grow dark, when they came to a large forest. Then the wise brothers said, "Let us climb up to the top of this oak and pass the night there, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... duster it goes into the hopper, and down in betwixt the stones; and them stones grind, grind, grind, till you'd think the life was ground clear'n out of it. But 'tain't so; contrary! That's affliction; the upper and nether millstone—Scriptur! Maybe sickness, maybe losin' your folks, maybe business troubles,—whichever comes is the wust, and more than any mortal man ever had to bear before. Well, now, see! That stuff goes in there, grain; it comes out wheat flour! Then you take and wet ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... not parallel to the forcible separation of a slave from his wife under the hard necessity of choice between perpetual bondage with a wife, or freedom without her. The merciful God who kindly enacted, 'No man shall take the nether nor the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to pledge,' and that a garment pawned should be restored before sundown, that wages should not be withheld over night, yes, the God who legislated about bird's-nests ordained the dissolution of the marriage ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... from the library and tried to read, but without much success. His thoughts continually recurred to his pecuniary embarrassments, and the debt which he owed to Duval seemed to hang like a millstone around his neck. How should he approach his father on the subject? In his present humor he feared he ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... without any lofty prejudices. Horizon, at that time altogether a green youth, amorous and light-minded, dragged the sempstress after him on his wanderings, full of adventures and unexpected things. After half a year she palled upon him dreadfully. She, just like a heavy burden, like a millstone, hung around the neck of this man of energy, motion and aggressiveness. In addition to that, there were the eternal scenes of jealousy, mistrust, the constant control and tears ... the inevitable consequences of long living together ... Then he began little by little to beat his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... tremulously in the darkness, "my dear husband, I know where thy thoughts are tending. If the Spirit is with thee, do not deny it for our sakes, I pray thee. The Lord did not give thee thy wife and children to hang as a millstone round thy neck. I am thy helpmeet, to strengthen thee in his service. I am thankful that I have my health this spring better than usual, and Dorothy is a wonderful help. Her spirit was sent to sustain me in thy long absences. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... structure, being composed of a number of different substances of unequal hardness. The consequence of this is that they wear away at different rates; and, hence, the surface of each grinder is always as uneven as that of a good millstone. ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... the Carboniferous rocks of the county, and it rises from beneath them on the shore of the Firth of Clyde south of Wemyss Bay. The Carboniferous strata of the central low ground form a great basin traversed by faults, all the subdivisions of the system being represented save the Millstone Grit. Round the north and north-east margin there is a great development of volcanic rocks—lavas, tuffs and agglomerates—belonging to the Calciferous Sandstone series, and passing upwards into the Carboniferous Limestone. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... despots as there are pachas, beys, and viziers. Wars are almost perpetual between the Sultan and some rebellious governor of a province; and in the conflict of these despotisms, the people are necessarily ground between the upper and the nether millstone. In short, the Christian subjects of the Sublime Porte feel daily all the miseries which flow from despotism, from anarchy, from slavery, and from religious persecution. If any thing yet remains to heighten such a picture, let it be added, that every office in the government ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Tom thought she would be a pleasant millstone in those circumstances; but he only remarked that he believed the lady in question would be a good wife for whoever could ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... she had not spared the dripping. The tea was brewed, hot and strong, the teapot, singed by long use, standing on the hob. There was a crusty loaf, a pat of butter indented in the middle with one of Dick's regimental buttons, and a plate of cakes, hard as the nether—millstone and very crumbly, having been purchased from the distant town at the beginning of the week in expectation of this ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... of gold falling continuously upon any body (or soul) is as the waters of a petrifying spring. But, on the other hand, the occasional and precarious dripping of coppers has by no means a genial effect. If the one recipient becomes hard as the nether millstone, the other (just as after constant 'pinching' a limb becomes insensible) grows callous, and also (though it seems like a contradiction in terms) sometimes acquires a certain dreadful suppleness. Nothing is more monstrous than the generally received opinion with respect to a ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... the more the harder you press,—you'll find it rather wearisome work, and be glad enough to come to a bit of good, firm rock, that won't budge an inch whether you stand, walk, or stamp upon it; and, though it be hard as the nether millstone, you'll find it the easier footing ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... ladies are like very profligate, impudent and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gravitation; weight; heaviness &c adj.; specific gravity; pondorosity^, pressure, load; burden, burthen^; ballast, counterpoise; lump of, mass of, weight of. lead, millstone, mountain, Ossa on Pelion. weighing, ponderation^, trutination^; weights; avoirdupois weight, troy weight, apothecaries' weight; grain, scruple, drachma^, ounce, pound, lb, arroba^, load, stone, hundredweight, cwt, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a huge stone, as big as a millstone, against him, but it falls harmless upon his scales, "that were like a coat-of-mail"; then Cadmus pierced him with his spear. In his fall he crushes the forests; the blood flows from his poisonous palate and changes the color of the grass. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... whisks his tail to tell himself that he is right. In my agony of observation all these things I heeded, but only knew that I had done so when I thought long afterward. At the moment I was in such a fright that my eyes worked better than my mind. However, even so, I thought of my golden millstone, and was aware that they crossed below, and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... buried together, and begged him not to exhume them, since they would "smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days." Apparently he ranked Seward among these defunct and decaying Conservatives; certainly he regarded the secretary as a "millstone about the neck" of the President.[52] Still, in spite of such denunciations, times were not in this respect so bad as they had been, and the danger that the uncompromising Radicals would make wreck of the war was ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... he leaned against a great old tree, trifling with his own impatience as people often do in those intervals when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling—its windows brightened with the sky-gleam, its doorway with the half of a millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood's friend—the old tree against which he leaned—and, glancing his eye down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... last. The gallant resistance before Princeton had delayed the Americans so long that the van of the army of Cornwallis was already close to their rear as they approached Brunswick. Seeing this, Washington abandoned his design on that town and crossed the Millstone River, breaking down the bridge at ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... the girl, half amused at John's condition, although it was but little worse than her own. This universal malady, love, never takes its blind form in women. It opens their eyes. Under its influence they can see the truth through a millstone. The girl's heart jumped with joy when she saw John's truth-telling manner, and composure quickly came to her relief, though she still feigned confusion because she wished him to see the truth in her as she had seen it in him. She well knew of his blindness, and had almost begun to ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Dick. "Two formations. Mountain limestone yonder; this we are on, with all these rough pieces on the surface and sticking out everywhere, is millstone-grit." ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... fell, which stormy winds, Driving the gloomy clouds, shake to the ground, Till all the fertile earth lies cover'd deep. Such volley pour'd the Greeks, and such return'd The Trojans; casques of hide, arid and tough, 200 And bossy shields rattled, by such a storm Assail'd of millstone masses from above. Then Asius, son of Hyrtacus, a groan Indignant utter'd; on both thighs he smote With disappointment furious, and exclaim'd, 205 Jupiter! even thou art false become, And altogether such. Full sure I deem'd That not ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... terrible skeleton in their household. When Mr. Jocelyn confined himself solely to opium he was not so revolting, but common, beastly intoxication was unendurable. They felt that it was brutalizing his very soul, and becoming a millstone around their necks which must drag them down to some unknown abyss of infamy. Mechanically they went through the motions of eating, the mother and daughters forcing down the little food they could afford, and the children ravenously devouring all that was given to them. As Mildred saw the mother ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe |
