"Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the question. It's the advisability of publishing it. I say to you that if you insist on this story's publication, you'll kill the Times deader than a door-nail. I'll call the business manager in." Walford whistled through a tube, and shortly after the business manager appeared. "Read this," said Walford briefly, "and give Mr. McQuade your honest opinion regarding its ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... images which had a strong feeling tone and which were associated with seen or heard reports of the experiences of others. For instance, when he read in a newspaper that someone had hurt his hand with a pin, or that someone had cut his foot on a nail, he immediately felt a not directly painful but uncomfortable sensation at the particular place in the hand or in the foot, together with a shrinking of the whole body and such tactual sensation usually ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... them and to be given an opportunity to succeed along with their scheme. When a man becomes so unfortunate as to be unable through diffidence to explain himself, his big idea goes into the waste basket and with it all of the hopes he has built upon it. Another nail has been driven ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... father," contributed the editor of the Express, "had a Crown grant of the whole of Moneida Reservation at one time. Government actually bought it back from him to settle the Indians there. He was a well-known Family Compact man, and fought tooth and nail for the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... this study, or at least before the spring birds begin to arrive, direct the children to try the following experiments. Scatter crumbs where they may be seen from the windows. Nail cups in the trees containing sugar and water, and others containing seeds. Nail up a bone or two, and a piece of suet as large as your two hands. This last will be relished by the birds, for it provides the kind of food most needed in ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... one of the cradles through which the short Sierra-draining rivers reach the ocean; its threading stream is the Merced; and if on any good United-States Survey-map you will please to follow that river back to the mountains, when your finger-nail touches the Sierra it will be (or would, were the maps somewhat correcter) in the Great Yo-Semite. You will then see that our course led us across three streams, after leaving the San Joaquin at Stockton en route for Mariposa,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... of these days, I will write an article for the 'Atlantic,' that your papa need not have all the say to himself: however, I believe he has hit the nail on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest. Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, .. was a Quaker, the island ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... false name. It is not, truly speaking; the labour that is divided; but the men:—Divided into mere segments of men—broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... was nailed over the gate of the hacienda Del Valle. Conceive, then, what a lucky thing for us! What a splendid revanche we shall have when, in place of the head of the insurgent Lantejas, we shall nail up that of Lantejas ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... when the mercury wuz way out of sight, And the frost it wuz on every nail, With jist the mail sack and specie box, The greaser and I hit the trail. We picked two passengers up at Big Pine, And while the broncos were changed that day I noticed them havin' a sneakin' chat With the greaser from ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... and businesslike, and if a smile hovered about her lips as they explored the odd little house, it did not go beyond the bounds of a polite interest. At length she seated herself on an empty nail keg in the shop, and became absorbed in thought. The agent leaned against ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... you ask in a letter, A short rhyme at random, no more and no less, And you may insert it, for want of a better, Or leave it, it doesn't much matter, I guess; And as for a tip, why, there isn't much in it, I may hit the right nail, but first, I declare, I haven't a notion what's going to win it (The Champion, I mean), and what's more, I don't care. Imprimis, there's Cowra—few nags can go quicker Than she can—and Smith takes his oath she can fly; While Brown, Jones, and Robinson ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... her aside and searched the room. In the corner was a low cot, hanging on a nail was an old cloak; on the table the remains of a black loaf and an empty cup. They searched and searched in vain; tapping the walls, tearing at the stone foundations, peering up at the rafters, tumbling over one ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... festoons, and curtains—of shoes, for example, or of earthen pots, watering-cans, baskets, and buckets—which dangle from the ceiling to the ground, and sometimes almost hide the floor. The shop signs are like those at Rotterdam—a bottle of beer hanging from a nail, a paint-brush, a box, a broom, and the customary huge heads ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... really lived, the carpenter's son, they take out and crucify all over again. As a young poet has phrased it, they nail him to a jeweled cross with cruel nails of gold. Come with me to the New Golgotha and witness this crucifixion; take the nails of gold in your hands, try the weight of the jeweled sledges! Here is a sledge, in the form of a dignified and scholarly volume, published ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... thing left that had belonged to the woman he had loved so greatly! He said that perhaps that Virgin on the hills might still be looking far out over the waters, and he knelt before a little crucifix which hung from a nail in the rough boards of the walls. I heard him repeating, in a low voice, in soft quick words, the prayers his faith led him to hope might be hearkened to by the Lady of Sorrows, as she watched from that little hill on the other side of the ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... helpers been so many, we could never have made the place so beautiful. Before the general dancing begins there will be a double quadrille of honor, in which all those will take part who have driven a nail, papered or painted a wall, dug a spadeful of earth, or done any work in or about ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of this remarkable letter says: "In case you are attacked at Henley House, and, notwithstanding a vigorous resistance, you should have the misfortune to be overpowered, then you are to nail up the cannon, blow up the house, and destroy everything that can be of service to the enemy, and make the best retreat you ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... the house that faced the street, and their large living-room was chiefly remarkable for the beams supporting the floor above it. They had all been sawn lengthwise out of a single oak-tree, and the outer edges of some had been left untrimmed. From a nail in the midmost beam hung a small rusty key, around which the spiders wove webs and the children many speculations: for the story went that a brother of the old Doctor's— the scapegrace of the family—had ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... dirt all over with a big nail, and pried it loose, and then he had pretended that his shovel was a big iron scoop that could scoop the dirt out just the way the big scoop did when it was dragged ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... friendly shelter and such unlooked-for convenience for our purposes, can only be estimated by those who have experienced them; and it is only to strangers to such feelings that it will appear ridiculous to say, that even the nail to which our thermometer had been suspended, was the subject ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... (the Duchesse du Maine) says she has more courage than her husband, her son, and her brother-in-law put together; and that, like another Jael, she would kill my son with her own hand, and would drive a nail into his head. When I implored my son to be on his guard against her, and told him this, he laughed at my fears and ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... the master of the house had to pay him a small fine; or sometimes a jug of beer "from the cask next to the wall," which seems to have commonly held the best beer, would be demanded by the bearer. The Hag was then carefully hung on a nail in the hall or elsewhere and kept there all the year. The custom of bringing in the Hag (wrach) into the house and hanging it up still exists in some farms of North Pembrokeshire, but the ancient ceremonies which have just been ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... him to erect a monument to one of our late customers. Ah! the house has supplied many an uniform to General Montcornet; he soon blackened them with the smoke of cannon. A brave man, he was! and he paid on the nail." ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... The enormously long nail of his right index finger rested upon the opened page of the book, to which he seemed constantly to refer, dividing his attention between the volume, the contents of the test-tube, and the progress ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... one, upsetting several, all the while the bloody rapier in one hand and the mask held in place by the other. The astonished inmates of the tavern saw him leap like a huge bird and vanish through one of the windows, carrying the sash with him. But a nail caught the grey cloak, and it fluttered back to the floor. Scarce a moment had passed when the pursuers crowded in. When questioned, the stupefied host could only point toward the splintered window frame. Through this the men scrambled, and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... "let me tell ye, that if you're sick I'd keep off the decks. You have a gold watch. Some one might nail ye." ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... half-finished dinner when Longmore sat down, and he was still in his place when they rose. She had hung her bonnet on a nail above her chair, and her companion passed round the table to take it down for her. As he did so she bent her head to look at a wine-stain on her dress, and in the movement exposed the greater part of the ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... McTeague knelt. The dentist's knees thudded on the floor and he presented to view the soles of his shoes, painfully new and unworn, the leather still yellow, the brass nail heads still glittering. Trina sank at his side very gracefully, setting her dress and train with a little gesture of her free hand. The company bowed their heads, Mr. Sieppe shutting his eyes tight. But Mrs. Sieppe took advantage of the moment to stop crying and make ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... at. Then one day, when the weather was fine and I knew the old man would be out in his buggy driving round—I dressed myself up to beat the band. I took hours to it—scrubbing, powdering, sacheting, perfuming, fixing the hair, fixing my finger-nails, fixing up my feet, polishing every nail and making them ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... she put out in the entry the first thing; then, remembering that that was not systematic, she carried it down stairs and hung it on its nail. The shoes and the dresses, the cape and the cloak, the tippet and the hat, she put in their places; the torn apron and the unmended stockings she tumbled into her basket, then went back and folded them up ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... in the world did it happen? On a nail?" Henny, the Dutch doll, asked as he put his arm about ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... served as coverlids. The pillow was a curious affair, being a thick piece of bamboo, about four feet long, on little legs. We were shown into one of these rooms, and a sign made to us to go to sleep. Even the largest houses have not a nail in them, but are fastened together with sennit, which is a line made from the root of a tree. I may say that everything is fastened with sennit—canoes, as well as houses—so that large quantities ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... capful of wind. Three broad flags ripple out behind Where the masts will be: Royal Standard at the main, Admiralty flag at the fore, Union Jack at the mizzen. The hammers tap harder, faster, They must finish by noon. The last nail is driven. But the wind has increased to half a gale, And the ship shakes and quivers upon the ways. The Commissioner of Chatham Dockyard is coming In his ten-oared barge from the King's Stairs; The Marine's band will play "God Save Great George Our King"; And there is to be ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and came down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most anything—and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and quicker'n ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... back to the fly-leaf and began to nail the last fallacy a little tighter to the cross. The girl regarded him, first with amused impatience, then with a vexed frown, finally with a wistful regret. He was so very old for his age, she thought; he could not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... while the truth is that it is clay merely;' which passage again has reference to the material cause. The text adds a few more illustrative instances of similar nature, 'As by one nugget of gold all that is made of gold is known; as by one pair of nail-scissors all that is made of iron is known.'—Similar promissory statements are made in other places also, for instance, 'What is that through which if it is known everything else becomes known?' (Mu. Up. I, 1, 3.) An illustrative instance ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... Marcella! He said quite calmly, that he was going to take you. Then it was I saw what life without you would be. He gave me a thumb-nail sketch of myself—and of you and him. You both seemed rather fine. I seemed a stinking, grovelling, strawy sort of thing. To my amazement it seemed right that he should have you. Lord, it scorched! I stopped thinking about killing him, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... very small proportion to that under pasture. It is only quite recently that artificial feeding for cattle has been resorted to, and compelled the farmer to grow root crops. Perhaps, in the present condition of the market for beasts and grain the nimble-minded Celt is hitting the right nail on the head, and cattle and dairy farms are the future of the agriculturist, who will compete against American meat with English produce fed upon English grass and roots, and upon maize imported from the New World. I prefer, however, to ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... also some boxes and baskets under the bed. If the lodgers had any underwear they could make use of these, but as Perrine had only what she was wearing, the nail at the head of the ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... priests and elders, which were all Satan's seed, to have Him put to death. The cry "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" was inspired by himself. He used man to dishonor the Son of God, to revile Him, spit in His face, to scourge Him and finally to nail Him to the Cross. Did he think that he might yet get the victory and keep the Lord Jesus from finishing the work the Father gave Him to do? We do not know if such was the case, but we know that while the Son of God gave Himself, Satan ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... was a sure test. While playing, one day, with a hammer in a blacksmith's shop, Joseph, then a child two and a half years old, gave Frances a blow upon the middle finger of the left hand, which crushed the bone, and deprived the finger of its nail. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... house," interrupted the host, with a burlesque haste in disclaiming responsibility for it that made them all laugh. "My ancestral halls are in Salem, and I'm told you couldn't drive a nail into their timbers; in fact, I don't know that you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Hope, stepping up to the point whence they were to shoot, "remember the terms. He who first drives the nail obtains the rifle, Fan, and her pup, and accompanies me to the nearest settlement. Each man shoots with his own gun, and draws ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Miss Massereene, with a little curve of her neck, glances back expressively to where an unkind nail has caught the tail of her long soft gown. That miserable nail—not he—has caused her delay. Stooping, he extricates the dress. She bows coldly, without raising her eyes to his. A moment later she is free; still another moment, and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... have been ever so foolish. Just now I can hear Daddy and Mr. Barnett saying good night, and I know that they have been fighting tooth and nail over that chess board. And I hear Mr. Barnett thanking Daddy, in a voice that is all choked up with emotion. I am so glad to think the dear little man is happy. Isn't it too bad, Aunt Jennie, that we can't all be happy all ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... cried out with pain and pulled his finger away with all his might. The child let go at last and retreated to his former distance. Alyosha's finger had been badly bitten to the bone, close to the nail; it began to bleed. Alyosha took out his handkerchief and bound it tightly round his injured hand. He was a full minute bandaging it. The boy stood waiting all the time. At last Alyosha raised his gentle eyes ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... opened his desk, took off his coat and hung it on a nail, after his custom, thereafter seating himself at his desk, with the official cough which signified that the campaign of the day had begun. He turned over the papers for a moment, and remarked absent-mindedly, and more to be polite than because the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... warned me. Old men hold their fingers up—so! One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never. It's a round finger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're lecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders—or, Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to the face of a corpse. I declare, it's just like! I feel as if I didn't a bit mind talking of corpses tonight. And my money's gone, and I don't much mind. I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that——he is a dear, kind, good old nobleman, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "That nail on the door! There's not a clean spot. Now for the kettle! You fill it, while I rummage. What's the most unlikely place for the tea? It will be there. She's the sort of muddler who'd leave it loose among ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... thought not. But one matter troubled him: the lock of the pantry door had been shattered. To remedy this he moused around until he discovered some long nails and a claw-hammer. When he was ready to go to sleep he'd nail himself in. And in the morning he'd pry the door loose. That was simple. Sard chuckled for the first time since he had set eyes upon the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... another spare sail for'ard," observed Willy Dicey to Harry. "Don't you think we can manage to nail it on round the stern and quarters? I saw some tools put into the boat, and one of the carpenter's mates is ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... and therefore had no difficulty in moving about the hut, from whose low roof, after a good deal of trying, I at last obtained a piece of palm-leaf that seemed likely to suit my purpose. This done, my need was a point of some kind—a pin, a nail, the tongue of a buckle, a hard sharp piece of wood, and ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... they have nowadays, and to bring it down on him till he'd crushed the last drop of blood out of his toes! Pressure!—I'll tell you! This place didn't do well at first—everybody in town, in our line, anyway, knows that—but even in these days I paid him his interest regular—down on the nail, mind, as prompt as the date came round. But now—things are different. I'm doing well—in a bit I could pay my gentleman off—though not just yet. But there's big money ahead—this house has caught on, got a reputation, become popular. And now what d'ye think ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... books.—Cuneiform writing: its hieroglyphic origin; the Protean character of the sounds which may be assigned to the ideograms, grammatical tablets, and dictionaries—Their contracts, and their numerous copies of them: the finger-nail mark, the seal. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... incessant adulterous assault, the old men burned alive, the children stabbed in their cradles by human beasts inflamed by alcohol and license. . . . Some of the octogenarians were weeping as they told how the soldiers of a civilized nation were cutting off the breasts from the women in order to nail them to the doors, how they had passed around as a trophy a new-born babe spiked on a bayonet, how they had shot aged men in the very armchair in which they were huddled in their sorrowful weakness, torturing them first ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Sunday and we'll have to go to work the next morning. Scenery and costumes and everything and—and—" Here Mr. Smilk showed signs of blubbering, a weakness that suddenly gave way to the most energetic indignation. "Why, doggone it, every time I think of what that woman done to me, I could bite a nail in two. If ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... I ever tackled was that of supplying the buffalo for Bronx Park. I rounded up a magnificent 'king' buffalo bull, belligerent enough to fight a battleship. When I rode after him the cowmen said I was as good as killed. I made a lance by driving a nail into the end of a short pole and sharpening it. After he had chased me, I wheeled my broncho, and hurled the lance into his back, ripping a wound as long as my hand. That put the fear of Providence into him and took ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... into his hand a wisp of her long, golden hair. "Sleep on it and dream of me. Do not look so sad. I shall come for you without fail, and by this sign you shall know when I am coming. When this mark begins to heal," she said, as, with the nail on the forefinger of the right hand, she ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... With well-tim'd oars before the royal barge. Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets tost. Methinks I see the new Arion fail, The lute still trembling underneath thy nail. At thy well-sharpened thumb, from shore to shore, The trebles squeak with fear, the basses roar: Echoes from Pissing-Alley Shadwell call, And Shadwell they resound from Aston-Hall. About thy boat the little fishes throng ...
— English Satires • Various
... is a solemn day, for on it the Son of God fought such a fight, that He could only win it at the price of His own life's blood; and a humiliating day, for our sins helped to nail Him on the cross—and therefore a day of humiliation and of humility. Proud, self-willed thoughts are surely out of place to-day (and what day are they in place?) On this day God agonised for man: but it is a day of triumph and deliverance; and we must go home as men ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... then and there to the god. There was a man then of Halicarnassos, whose name was Agasicles, who being a victor paid no regard to this rule, but carried away the tripod to his own house and hung it up there upon a nail. On this ground the other five cities, Lindos, Ialysos and Cameiros, Cos and Cnidos, excluded the sixth city Halicarnassos from sharing in ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... 'who, at this critical crisis, does not avow the sentiments of a constitutionalist, is a nail in the King's ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... letters—and for the rest, Wordsworth's, Carlyle's, Tennyson's and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ... (there is the nail, under Wordsworth—) and then pulled down Tennyson's in a fit of justice,—because I would not have his hung up and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the drawers and the boxes, and whatever ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the President. "Fight us tooth and nail though you may, we intend to have you married. You have happened upon us by chance, and you shall have no reason to repent of it. We are in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... could discover The sign of the sloth on you, From the last mane-lock laid over To the last nail tight in the shoe; A blast, and your ranks stood ready; A shout, and your saddles filled; A wave, and your troop was ready To wheel where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... she has forgotten all about me." He looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes to train-time. He opened the door and looked out. The chill morning air struck him sharply in the face. He turned quickly, snatched his overcoat from a nail in the hall and put ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... here belonging to Mak...Mak...I never can say the name," said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger and dirty nail towards ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... seemed immovable, like a figure of stone. His bare arms gave the impression of a taut rope. A heavy timber which they lifted from across his back, where it had lain like a seesaw, must have all but broken his spine. A rusted nail in it had torn his poor, shabby coat almost in twain, and there was blood on the flannel shirt beneath it. Blood was flowing freely from a wound in his head and dripping down from his neck like water ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... enemy. She has lost all three masts, and the greater part of the ship's company are killed and wounded; what will you do to save her?" To this knotty problem many extemporized "practical" answers are given, of which the most plausible is by Mr. Dash, of Virginia—"I should nail my colors to the mast and let her sink under me." As this could scarcely be called saving her, Mr. Dash is rebuked for irrelevance; but, after the gamut of possible solutions has been well guessed over, the instructor ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... who later became Lord Chatham (S538), was one of the warmest friends that America had; but he openly advocated this narrow policy, saying that if British interests demanded it he would not permit the colonists to make so much as a "horseshoe nail." Adam Smith, an eminent English political economist of that day, vehemently condemned the British Government's colonial mercantile system as suicidal; but his condemnation came too late to have any effect. The fact was that the world was not ready then—if ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... by the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish- spear! Still happier were they, when, at night, with his sons and nephew, they were allowed to huddle on the forge, sitting on the bottoms of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... give. So if you know how to read, find someone who can't. If you've got a hammer, find a nail. If you're not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble—seek out someone ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... last nail in our coffin. If we only could have forded that, we would not have been ousted. On the other side of the river we would have found not only grass for our tired horses, but would also have been able to find remounts. Hertzog's commando was not far off, and they were ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... curious thing human nature is!" she commented, when he had made an end. "My better judgment says you were all kinds of a somebody for not clinching the nail when you had it so well driven home. And yet I can't help admiring your exalted fanaticism. I do love consistency, and the courage of it. But tell me, if you can, how far these fair-fighting scruples of yours go. You have made it perfectly plain that if a thief should ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the wall for another biscuit and with an effort pulled it out, nail and all. He carefully removed the nail from the centre, wondering idly if he had eaten the nail with the first biscuit. Preposterous! He would have remembered—it was a huge nail. He felt his stomach. He must be very hungry. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... must detect trouble under a thousand disguises. Perhaps a small boy has thrown a snake across the wires or driven a nail into a cable. Perhaps some self-reliant citizen has moved his own telephone from one room to another. Perhaps a sudden rainstorm has splashed its fatal moisture upon an unwiped joint. Or perhaps a submarine cable has been sat upon by the Lusitania and flattened to death. But no matter what ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... short nail scissors, and I cut its throat in three strokes, quite gently. It opened its bill, it struggled to escape me, but I held it, oh! I held it—I could have held a mad dog—and I saw the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... finely with a piece of wood, but nothing must be lost. It is easy to see shrivelled pieces of plant, but not easy to pick them out; the simplest plan is to burn them away. The soil must be carefully tipped on to a tin lid, or into a crucible, heated over a flame and stirred {5} with a long clean nail. First of all it chars, then there is a little sparkling, but not much, finally the soil turns red and does not change any further no matter how much it is heated. The shade of red will at once be recognised as brick red or terra cotta, indeed "terra cotta" means "baked ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... cried Miss Julia as Lois covered her glass with her hand and forbade the wine. "As if a nail were not enough to ruin a horse! O you careless boy! Miss Lothrop is more of a philosopher than you are. She ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... What is the peculiar character in a deaf man's physiognomy?—can any person define it satisfactorily in words?—not in pages; and Mr. Cruikshank has expressed it on a piece of paper not so big as the tenth part of your thumb-nail. The horses of John Gilpin are much more of the equestrian order; and as here the artist has only his favorite suburban buildings to draw, not a word is to be said against his design. The inn and old buildings are ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "You've hit the nail on the head, Edith," he declared approvingly. "England could never have been beaten except by her own sons. And England's navy has ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... "Betty, you've hit the nail right on the head. Now that's why we must fix things so safety won't depend on level heads or time to think. The danger signal must pop right into our heads from force of habit. The sooner American boys and girls—yes, ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... hurled as a matter of principle through Froelich's window produced almost as momentous consequences as the want of the horseshoe nail did in Franklin's famous maxim. It is the unknown element in every transaction that makes ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... room. This had been a bedroom, a woman's bedroom. He guessed that by the remnants of fabric hanging over the windows, as well as by a skirt and sunbonnet which still hung from a nail. Here, too, was a bedstead with a rat-ruined mattress. And upon a shelf over the bed was ranged a row of books, perhaps two dozen volumes, which the rats had somehow respected,—except for sundry gnawing at ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... greetings Harry made some awkward apology as to his intrusion at the sick man's bedside. "Why, I ordered them to bring you in here," said the squire; "you can't very well call that intrusion. I have no idea of being shut up from the world before they nail ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... was amazing how much tobacco I sold that evening. Men who usually bought tobies bought the best cigars, and when Mr. Jennings came up, scowling, and I handed him the brand he'd smoked for years, she took one, clipped the end of it as neat as a finger nail and gave it to him, holding up ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... what he admired most was that of reading and writing, and he long deliberated with himself whether it was a natural or an acquired talent. In order to determine this, he desired one of the soldiers, who guarded him, to write the name of God on the nail of his thumb. This he showed successively to several Spaniards, asking its meaning, and to his amazement, they all, without hesitation returned the same answer. At length Francisco Pizarro entered, and on presenting it to him, he blushed, and with some confusion was obliged to acknowledge ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... and arms, and especially the finger nails, of the surgeon, assistants, and nurses should be well scrubbed with hot water and soap, by means of a nail brush, immediately before the operation. The patient's body about the site of the proposed operation should be similarly scrubbed with a brush and cleanly shaved. Subsequently the hands of the operator, assistants, and nurses, and the field of operation should be immersed in, or thoroughly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... his head and neighed to him, seemingly inquiring after his knightly achievements and reminding him of them, or when his coat-of-arms sternly shone upon him from the embroidery of his saddle and the caparisons of his horse, or when his sword happened to fall from the nail on which it was hanging in the cottage, and flashed on his eye as it slipped from the scabbard in its fall, he quieted the doubts of his mind by saying to himself, "Undine cannot be a fisherman's daughter. She is, in all probability, ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... disappointing is that passage about the murderer, the sensualist, the liar, and the coward; but of what use would it be to remind my correspondent of Judith who went into the tent of Holofernes to lie with him, and after the love feast drove a nail into the forehead of the sleeping man. She is in Scripture held up to our admiration as a heroine, the saviour of our nation. Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat in his bath, yet who regards Charlotte ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... I've got a soft thing on?" Jake took off his apron, and hung it on a nail. "Shan't want that, for a month or two anyway." Then he faced the "boss" with, "Equal whacks, you old bandicoot. I'll find the tucker, and we'll ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... it's the other chap I'm after now—perhaps you'll be so obliging as to tell me where I can put my paws on him. I hung the duck from this nail—the cord was good and strong, and it couldn't have broken loose. You see it ain't there now. So the question is did the blamed bird come to life again and skedaddle off, or was one of your friends the foxes aboard while we snoozed, to make way with my fat duck? Anyhow, it's gone, ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... cream-tinted ground, sprinkled with Dresden nosegays gaily dashed with pink and delicate green color, eight cents a yard. Four grades of delicate pink silesia and two and one-half yards of unbleached muslin for interlining, made an item of fifty cents. Hinges and corners and nail-heads of brass, satin ribbon and tacks, by considerable calculation, can be pressed into the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... gratitude to her for having "honour-ed him with her love." They were married, and the song ends with a picture of the young farmeress milking the cow, and the young farmer going whistling to plough. The fact that they lived and grafted on the selection proves that I hit the right nail on the head when I guessed, in the first place, that the ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... the borders, dig all loose ground, turn the manure, plant suckers from old roots, roll green and gravel walks, gather seeds on fine days, cut away old wood, nail fruit trees, prepare hot-beds, get matting to put over tender plants during the frost, look over seeds, and see that they are dry and properly put away and make all clean, nice, and ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... was laughing softly as a boy in the midst of a prank, and busily throwing off the robe of serge. Fumbling through the night he located the shirt and trousers he had seen hanging from a nail on the wall. Into these he slipped, and then went out under ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... It is singular that it should have no substance in the interior of its trunk, though the outside to the thickness of a couple of inches makes the finest of boards, and when seasoned is so hard as to turn a board-nail at a single stroke of the hammer. It is remarkable also that a palm tree which grows so high has such tiny, thread-like roots, which, however, are innumerable. The top of the palm yields a vegetable which is used as food and when boiled is nutritious and palatable, resembling our cauliflower. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... of either sex and of every age—humanity lapsing into animality through lack of even indispensable things, through indigence of so complete a character that men, women, and children fought even with tooth and nail for the very crumbs swept from the tables of the rich. And the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness, with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... half-moon; and as they passed he let fly at them. His powerful tail came "flap" against the nearest, and it was pitched several yards, where, after a kick or two, it lay upon its side as dead as a herring, a door-nail, or ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... perspicuous manner, and with words which admitted of no doubt. But before he told the story he had excluded all but himself and the groom. He and the groom had taken the horse out of the stable, it being the animal's nature to eat his corn better after slight exercise, and while doing so a nail had ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... life for the common cause. Each man passed round the bowl, which he first put to his lips, repeated the oath, and thus pledged himself to the compact. The wallet next went the rounds of the whole assembly, and was finally hung upon a nail driven into the wall for the purpose; and gazed on with such enthusiasm as the emblems of political or religious faith, however worthless or absurd, never fail to inspire in the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan |
