"Pair of tongs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Also a bowl containing a quantity of ash with fragments of half-burned charcoal and a few minute particles of charred opium. By the side of the bowl were a knife, a kind of awl or pricker and a very small pair of tongs, which I believe to have been used for carrying a piece of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... are plenty of people in Manchester that you would not touch with a pair of tongs who, if they could be got hold of, would make far more earnest and devoted Christians than you are. The very strength of passion and feeling which has swept them wrong, rightly directed, would make grand saints ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in India. Sonneratt says:—"The Indian smith carries his tools, his shop, and his forge about with him, and works in any place where he can find employment. He has a stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus is a pair of tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file. This is very much like Gipsy tinkers," &c. It is usual for Parias, or Suders, in India to have their huts outside the villages of other castes. This is one of the leading features ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... with a pair of tongs and throw it out of the window. I tell you there's a nasty trick done up in that paper; and if you're going to keep it, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... good deal of powder upon the purse, and then made a train from that which he had thrown loose upon the purse. The train reached about two yards. After this he goes in a third time and fetches out a pair of tongs red hot, and which he had prepared, I suppose, on purpose; and first setting fire to the train of powder, that singed the purse and also smoked the air sufficiently. But he was not content with that, but he then takes ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... piece of gold had been cooled suddenly by being cast into the "pickle," and was now subjected to another severe hammering, after which it was drawn, by means of a gigantic pair of tongs fixed to the windlass of a bench by a long leather strap through graduated holes in a strong steel plate. Next, it was branded, by means of certain steel punches, with the goldsmith's private marks, and afterwards it was bent with pliers ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... city employed themselves, and how skilful they were in craftsmanship. Amongst other things we find axes, chisels, files for setting saws, hammers, a large plane, and other carpenters' tools; an anvil, a pair of tongs, and blacksmiths' implements; shoemakers' anvils, very similar to those used in our day, a large gridiron, a standing lamp, safety-pins, such as ladies use now, and many other ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... for the fuze hole or a pair of rings at each side of the hole for easier handling (fig. 41). In later years, however, such projections were replaced by two "ears," little recesses beside the fuze hole. A pair of tongs (something like ice tongs) seized the shell by the ears and lifted it ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs—the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... for any thinking circuits.' I think that's a perfect description of what I estimate Svant mentality to be. Take these bronze knives, and the musical instruments. Wonderful; the work of individuals trying to express feeling in metal or wood. But get an idea like the wheel, or even a pair of tongs? Poo! How would you state the First Law of Motion, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in tickle-pinch-rub terms? Sonny could grasp an idea like that. Sonny's handicap, if you call it that, cuts him off from feel-thinking; he can think logically ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... arranged, and strangers invited; yet the morning of that day was the homeliest, when only the family and the author of this memoir, who had written a merry song for the occasion, which was still wet on the paper, placed themselves outside the artist's door, each with a pair of tongs, a gong, or a bottle on which they rubbed a cork, as an accompaniment, and sung the song as a morning greeting. Thorwaldsen, in his morning gown, opened the door, laughing; he twirled his black Raphael's cap, took a pair of tongs himself, and accompanied us, while he danced round and joined ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... cast a good deal of powder upon the purse, and then made a train from that which he had thrown loose upon the purse (the train reached about two yards); after this he goes in a third time, and fetches out a pair of tongs red hot, and which he had prepared, I suppose, on purpose; and first setting fire to the train of powder, that singed the purse, and also smoked the air sufficiently. But he was not content with ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... said he, "Trimalchio's wife, her name Fortunata, she measures money by the bushel; but what was she not long since? Pardon me sir, you would not have touch'd her with a pair of tongs, but now, no one knows how, or wherefore she's got into heaven; and is Trimalchio's all in all: In short, if she says it is mid-night at mid-day, he'll believe her. He's so very wealthy, he knows not what he has; but she has an eye every ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of his philosophical method, or would it be the particular little book known as 'The Doctor: his Logic,' price 5s., bound in calf, and which you might be very shy of touching with a pair of tongs, for fear of dimming their steel polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your motions? The same ambiguity affects many other cases. For instance, if you heard a man say, 'The rhetoric of Cicero is not fitted to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... fiercely that Jock whispered to Jean, "If I poked my finger at him I believe he'd gobble," and made her almost laugh aloud. When they passed Mr. Craigie, who held the plate for people to drop their money in, Jean whispered to Jock, "He looks for all the world like a pair of tongs in his blacks, he's that tall and thin," and then Jock certainly would have laughed outright if he hadn't seen ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... such excursions. "Professor," said the Lord, "will you be so good as to permit me to do a little work at your forge?" "Why not? it is at your service," replied the flattered smith. "What do you wish to make?" "That you will soon see," said the Lord, and took up a pair of tongs, with which he seized Peter and held him in the forge until he was red-hot. Then he drew him out and hammered him on all sides, and in less than ten minutes the old bald-headed apostle was forged anew into a wonderfully handsome youth ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... flung it on an anvil, and furiously belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs uninjured. With a cry of horror the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the ferret off, but never touched the rabbit. I took the rabbit with a pair of tongs; the others had handled their baits and pug crept round 'em and nosed the trick. I poured twenty drops of croton oil into the little hole ferret had made in bunny's head, and I dropped him in the grass near pug's track. Next morning rabbit had been drawn about twenty yards ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... a fire, except an old pair of tongs, which travels through the house, and is likewise employed to take the meat out of the pot, for want ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... is carefully arranged. A pan of live coals is brought, and strewn with juniper-berries and wormwood: the aforesaid papers are held over it and well smoked, then taken by the inspector with a pair of tongs, read from as great a distance as possible, and afterward returned. Nothing wrong, apparently, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... been told by the sweet soul herself," responded Nancy. "She wrote me a letter which would have put another girl in such a rage that she would never have touched any one of you again with a pair of tongs. But that's not Nancy King. For when Nancy loves a person, she loves that person through thick and thin, through weal and woe. I came to-day to try to find one of you dear girls. I have found you. What is the matter with you, Paulie? You do ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... where you got them. Wretch that you are, have you no care for your soul?" "Well then," says the thief, "if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me?" "Melt them down!" answers the silver smith, "that is quite another matter." He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver, thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the thief, who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty. The young servant stares at this strange scene. But the master very gravely resumes his lecture. "My son," ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of a pair of tongs is pivoted a platen or bed, B, having a hole through its center, which is continued through the jaw for the passage of the drillings. The upper jaw is formed with a circular flange on which is mounted the circular or disk-like base, C, of the drill frame, D. This, with ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... with a pair of tongs? You may as well pull in with us, and help us kick the others. It'll be a change after the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed |
