"Tinker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wagon of singular appearance drew up before my windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy, convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness: his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... does report, a young duke keeps a court, One that pleases his fancy with frolicksome sport: But amongst all the rest, here is one I protest, Which will make you to smile when you hear the true jest: A poor tinker he found, lying drunk on the ground, As secure in a sleep as if ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... Leddy; it's juist the lassie's clavers, for Jean cam' in frae the stable, where she had nae right to be, except to be seein' her lad—they ha'e lads on the brain the lassies noo—and greetin' that young Dan had shamed her before the men, and a' because o' a tinker body like Belle here, although the great folk will treat her so kindly; no' that I mean her any harm," she added (erring on the safe side, for Belle's eyes had begun to glow finely); "and then in came Kate and Leezie wi' a tale o' a wean, tied in a tartan shawl, lying in a biss in the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... seemed to favour such an idea. But she knew that he had been reading from The Pilgrim's Progress, a book which Mrs. Churton had put in her hands, and helped her to understand. She did not know that he was putting an interpretation of his own on the allegory which might have made the glorious Bedford tinker clench his skeleton fist and hammer a loud "No—no!" on ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... despair, the thunder and the shouting of the distant bookmakers under the stands, the quiet of the ten thousand free-lance bookmakers who were, I suppose, breaking the law in the open spaces; the dust, the sun, the smell, faces smeary with fruit, the cunning tinker in an old khaki hat with striped ribbon, who was selling some twopenny instrument that was supposed to imitate either the bark of a dog or the song of a nightingale—one could not tell which from the noise he made with ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Nobleman, gallant and bold; O was an Oysterman, who went about town; P was a Parson, and wore a black gown; Q was a Quack, with a wonderful pill; R was a Robber, who wanted to kill; S was a Sailor, who spent all he got; T was a Tinker, and mended a pot; U was an Usurer, a miserable elf; V was a Vintner, who drank all himself; W was a Watchman, who guarded the door; X was Expensive, and so became poor; Y was a Youth, that did not love school; Z was a Zany, a poor ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... some bacon," pursued Deborah, "only I don't know whether to cut the new flitch so soon; and there be some cabbages in the garden. Should I fry or boil them, Mistress Rose? The bottom is out of the frying-pan, and the tinker ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enthusiastically. For the next few months he wrote with almost incredible swiftness, and by the time the theatre was opened, on August 23, 1722, he had finished five of his best plays, among which were Jeppe of the Hill (Jeppe paa Bjerget) and The Political Tinker (Den politiske Kandestober). During the six years in which the company eked out its precarious existence, Holberg produced twenty-six comedies, most of which were successfully performed. His literary fecundity seems ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... and great. A wise doubtfulness prompts conservative minds to throw every mover for change upon the defensive, when liturgical interests are at stake. So many men are born into the world with a native disposition to tamper with and tinker all settled things, and so many more become persuaded, as time goes on, of a personal "mission" to pull down and remake whatever has been once built up, esteeming life a failure unless they have contrived to build each his own monument upon a clearing, that lovers of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... remarked kindly. "Them shoulders o' yours'll give you particular hell to morrow. Why, you're like a boiled crawfish now. Hides like that o' yours," she added, testing with her finger and thumb the integument on my near flank, as I hastily placed my bare foot in the stirrup, "ain't worth a tinker's dam for standin' the sun." (For the information of people whose education may unhappily have been neglected, it will be right to mention that the little morsel of chewed bread which a tin-smith of the old school places ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the gambler. "I don't even know what the fight was about, and I don't care a tinker's whoop either. I got you here to give you a chance to put Van Buren out of commission and make a ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... care a tinker's dam for me," said Farwell bluntly. "That's not saying what I think of her. I'm no ladies' man—don't pretend to be. Let that go. I suppose I'll be blamed for young McCrae's arrest. Well, I didn't know a thing about it. I've tried to give the family ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of the Heaven-born fiddler by Pate Bailey, a gypsy tinker and celestial violinist. Being asked for a test of proficiency on that instrument, he replied that no man is a fiddler "till he can gar ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... was a master of a tavern he married the daughter of a tinker, by whom he had three children. This marriage, according to the republican regulations, had only been celebrated by the municipality at Ajaccio; Fesch, therefore, upon again entering the bosom of the Church, left his municipal wife and children to shift for themselves, considering ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and the Tanner of Tamworth" is a ballad of a kind once popular; there were "King Alfred and the Neatherd," "King Henry and the Miller," "King James I. and the Tinker," "King Henry VII. and the Cobbler," with a dozen more. "The Tanner of Tamworth" in another, perhaps older, form, as "The King and the Barker," was printed by Joseph Ritson ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... will cost me another ten to put it in shape, but after that it will do all right. Will you deliver it to a man that I send after it? I'll take it down to the Riverton shops and work on it. They let me tinker things there whenever ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... the old saucepan that had been laid by until the tinker's next visit, and gave it to the Hillman. He ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... tinker's dam for the law," I continued. "Good enough! We'll take a leaf out of his book. To-morrow night you have an engagement—to ransack the ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... strong desire to lift his aunt and her children to a little higher plane. To this, hitherto, he had found an obstacle in the pride of her husband. Henry Martin was a tinsmith who had come to the city to work in a great factory for a little higher wages than he could get as a journeyman tinker in a country town. He did not refuse to let the children accept presents from "Cousin Charley," but he was not willing "to be beholden to any of his wife's folks," as he expressed it. He resented the fact that even in Cappadocia he had been somewhat outstripped by his brother-in-law, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... strapped the bamboos to his back, the apex of the angle downwards, and one of the ends just peeping over each shoulder. In this way he would have provided himself with a water-vessel that for strength and lightness—the two great essentials—would have been superior to anything that either tinker or cooper could construct. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... the churchwoman, he related how, when imprisoned for popping a toad into the soup, he had escaped over the leads, and had beaten a drum outside the barn, during a discourse of the godly tinker, John Bunyan, tramping and rattling so that all thought the troopers were come, and rushed out, tumbling one over the other, while he yelled out his "Ho! ho! ho!" from the haystack where he ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the world was made, and had been misunderstood from the beginning. He used the simplest means. His experiment was in a different way daily performed for him by nature. He was philosophically daring, indifferently a tinker with nature's terrific machinery; a knocker at the door of an august temple that men were never known to have entered; a mortal who smiled in the face of inscrutable and awful mystery, and who defied the lightning in a sense not ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... is, violent blowing. Cairding however, is not unlikely the proper word, a caird being in Scotland the name of a tinker.—Ed.] ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... arts, bicycling, auto racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting, sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating (ice and roller). Hackers' delight in techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty complicated equipment that they can tinker with. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... stretched over it, which makes a particularly bulgy, uneven surface to stand dressing-tables and things on. The straw, too, is apt to stick out where it is least expected, and gives one rather the feeling of being a tinker sleeping in a barn. At night a tent is an awesome place. It is terrible to have no door to lock, and to be entirely at the mercy of anything that creeps and crawls; to have only a mosquito-net between you and an ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... wild by-ways of Donegal or Connemara, meet a procession composed of Patsy McCann the Tinker and the Ass and Mary with Finaun the Archangel, Caeltia the Seraph, Art the Cherub, Eileen ni Cooley (a savage lady of easy morals), Billy the Music, the Seraph Cuchulain and Brien O'Brien, a lost soul who had a threepenny-bit stolen on him by Cuchulain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... you another touch or coup de grace ... He really sometimes puts me in mind of Gil Blas; but he has not the sneer of the Frenchman, nor does he gild the bad. He has a touch of Bunyan, and, like that enthusiastic tinker, hammers away, a la Gitano, whenever he thinks he can thwack the Devil or his man-of-all-work on earth—the Pope. Therein he resembles my friend and everybody's friend—Punch—who, amidst all his adventures, never spares the black one. However, I am not going to review him now; for ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... hallalloo of fire in every street! Odsbobs! I have a mind to hang myself, To think I should a grandmother be made By such a rascal!—Sure the king forgets When in a pudding, by his mother put, The bastard, by a tinker, on a stile Was dropp'd.—O, good lord Grizzle! can I bear To see him from a pudding mount the throne? Or can, oh can, my Huncamunca bear To take a ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... twenty hearts to lose, I never could spare a bit of one of them for that good, gray, square, severe man. But different people have different tastes, and here is that little imp of a gipsy-tinker ready to turn slave for my master; and, odd enough, my master,—who, I should have said beforehand, would have made short work of imp, and imp's family, and have sent Hall, the Bang-beggar, after them in no time—my master, as they tell me, is in his way quite fond of the lad, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he could talk, but not at all in French, but he was glad that the tinker spoke German, because otherwise he would not be able to understand ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... wonder at you, Mr. Burns, and the way you go about admiring every tinker-peddler who tosses a rhyme together. Ye've no sense of your own value at times. Do you know," she went on, fair glorious to see in her enthusiasm glowering down at him—"Do you know that when this man Shenstone's grave is as flat to the earth as my hand, and his ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... observed at Zacatecas which recalled far-away Hong Kong, China. This was the prosecution of various trades in the open air. Thus the shoemaker was at work outside of his dwelling; the tailor, the barber, and the tinker adopted the same practice, quite possible even in the month of March in a land of such intense brightness and sunshine. We wandered hither and thither, charmed by the novelty and strangeness of everything; ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... travelling tinker. He would do a little gardening and farming at home for a while, and then go off about the country for a few days, mending people's pots and pans and kettles. Usually Sym left Emily Ann at home to keep the Little Red House company, but now and then Emily Ann ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... being a Dom is "Domnipana." In English gypsy, the same words are expressed by Rom, romni, and romnipen. D, be it observed, very often changes to r in its transfer from Hindoo to Romany. Thus doi, "a wooden spoon," becomes in gypsy roi, a term known to every tinker in London. But, while this was probably the origin of the word Rom, there were subsequent reasons for its continuance. Among the Cophts, who were more abundant in Egypt when the first gypsies went there, the word for man is romi, and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... his fair face crimsoning with vexation. "She seems to me one of those shallow women who would sooner flirt with a tinker than pass unnoticed by the male sex. I don't like her," he concluded, with ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... cunningly that it cannot be misinterpreted in terms of his will, he will denounce it as seditious blasphemy, or else disregard it as either crazy or totally unintelligible. Parliaments and synods may tinker as much as they please with their codes and creeds as circumstances alter the balance of classes and their interests; and, as a result of the tinkering, there may be an occasional illusion of moral evolution, as when the victory of the commercial caste over ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... come to the blessed truth that Christian morality does not say to us, 'Now begin, and work, and tinker away at yourselves, and try to get up some kind of excellence of character, and then come to God, and pray Him to accept you.' That is putting the cart before the horse. The order is reversed. We are to begin with taking our personal salvation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... inside of the dog's collar. The next thing was to get Chance started on the road to the Concho. He rolled down his sleeves and strolled to the doorway. A Mexican sat smoking and watching the road. Sundown stepped past him and began to tinker with the gas-engine. Chance stood watching him. Presently the gas-engine started with a cough and splutter. Sundown walked to the door and seemed about to enter when the Mexican called to him and pointed ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a weary stoop under the afternoon's sunshine. There was a flock of sheep straggling about the road, with a dog running himself into a fever in the endeavor to keep them decently together. There were some bricklayers just released from work—a tinker mending some kettles by the roadside; there was a dog-cart dashing down the road, carrying the master of the Audley hounds to his seven o'clock dinner; there were a dozen common village sights and sounds that mixed themselves up into a cheerful bustle and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... far off are we from a revival of Danton's beautiful doctrine that, in order to consummate the regeneration of society, all conditions imposed upon the eligibility of citizens to act as judges ought to be immediately abolished, so that a tinker, or a butcher, or a bootblack, or a chiffonnier might be made a French magistrate just as well as a trained student of the laws? As you know, one of the first things Danton, as Minister of Justice, did was to carry through ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... it. But all the other things which we have laid out you may bring to me today or tomorrow." And he gave his name and address. Then he went back to the table to finish his beer. Only one of his former companions was sitting there, a master-tinker. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... which habitually rises and fills the cavity of the mouth does so in response to a wrong mental concept of cause. The only way to correct this condition is to change the cause. The rigid tongue we see is effect, and to tinker with the effect while the cause remains is unnecessarily stupid. An impulse of tension has been directed to the tongue so often that the impulse and response have become simultaneous and automatic. The correction lies in directing an ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... pudding, and popped him into the pot to boil. The hot water made Tom kick and struggle; and his mother, seeing the pudding jump up and down in such a furious manner, thought it was bewitched; and a tinker coming by just at the time, she quickly gave him the pudding; he put it into ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... wardrobe and turned every pocket inside out. It was not really a light; it made this light by flashing about so quickly, but when it came to rest for a second you saw it was a fairy, no longer than your hand, but still growing. It was a girl called Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... disguised infidel, she was exposed to the temptations of a Moorish spy, and convicted mainly on the evidence furnished by certain Mussulman habits to which she adhered. Llorente reports a similar specimen case, vol. i. p. 442. The culprit was a tinker aged 71, accused in 1528 of abstaining from pork and wine, and using certain ablutions. He defended himself by pleading that, having been converted at the age of 45, it did not suit his taste to eat pork or drink wine, and that his trade obliged him to maintain cleanliness by frequent washing. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the disgusted skipper of the Wireless. "No use in my trying to tinker with the job. It will take a practical machinist to overhaul the plagued contraption. I guess you'll have to give us a tow to Memphis, where I can put a man to work getting this engine ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... travelling umbrella-mender, fagoted on the back like the man in the moon of the nursery rhyme-book. He is followed at a short distance by a travelling tinker, swinging his live-coals in a sort of tin censer, and giving utterance to a hoarse and horrible cry, intelligible only to the cook who has a leaky sauce-pan. Then comes the chamois-leather woman, bundled about with damaged skins, in request for the polishing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... back and we had found a bed-room for our visitor in Essex Street, he told us all of it. His name was Magwitch—Abel Magwitch—he called himself Provis now—and he had been left by a travelling tinker to grow up alone. "In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail—that's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend." But there was a man who "set up fur a gentleman, named Compeyson," and this Compeyson's business was swindling, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... cobbler it should be my pride The best of all cobblers to be; If I was a tinker, no tinker beside Should mend an old kettle ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... "this wounded leg, these crusted lips, this anxious, weary mind. Come away for a time, until your body becomes more habitable." And so she coaxes the mind away into the Nirvana of delirium, while the little cell-workers tinker and toil within to get things better for its homecoming. When you see the veil of cruelty which nature wears, try and peer through it, and you will sometimes catch a glimpse of a very homely, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dear! its ma is making patty-cakes; and put it up there to be out of the way of Tom Tinker's dog. I'll soon hush it up," said the old woman; and, trotting it on her knee, she began ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... madam?" said the dame. "Was not my man yonder, Rob, the tinker's son, whom my father and brethren, the smiths down yonder at Buxton, thought but scorn of, but we'd taken a sup together at the Ebbing Well, and it played neither of us false, so we held out against 'em all, and when they saw there ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the porch Mrs. Hudson mounted grimly, followed by Babe. Sylvester stayed to tinker with the car, and Sheila, after a doubtful, tremulous moment, went slowly up the icy path after the ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Mary Ellen, "I don't want to hurt ye, but it do make me heart-sick to see ye bashin' aitch other wid pokers for the sake av a bit girl that's not worth a tinker's curse to ye! Now thin—here's a piece of cowld puddin' to each av ye—sit on the durestep where the missus won't see ye, an' git ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Tibbards Richard Tibbet George Tibbs Henry Ticket Harvey Tiffman Andrew Tillen Jacob Tillen Peter Tillender Thomas Tillinghast David Tilmouse John Tilson Nicholas Tilson Grale Timcent George Timford Jeremiah Timrer Alexander Tindell James Tinker William Tinley Joseph Tinleys Anthony Tioffe Samuel Tippen Jean Tirve Stephen Tissina Michael Titcomb Moses Titcomb James Tobin Thomas Tobin (2) John Todd William Todd Thomas Tolley Francis Tollings Henry Tollmot Thomas Tomay James Tomkins Charles Tomped Benjamin Tompkins William ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe me a pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! Ask Tinker if I aynt. Mrs. Tinker, Miss Sharp; Miss Governess, Mrs. Charwoman. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... account in getting a few extra dimes. They put a big chunk of iron in the mould and poured in the melted solder which enclosed it completely, so that when they presented the bright silvery bar to the old tinker he paid the price agreed upon and they divided the money between them, and then, in a secure place, they laughed till their sides ached at the good ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... lives is still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is he the patron only? Have they indeed forgotten nature's voice? or are those moments snatched from courtiership when they touch noses with the tinker's mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives? Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils of a profession and the pleasures of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... find fault with that dispensation in particular. It was one of our calling that the Emperor so honoured, after all, when he might have anointed a tinker, or a ragman, or a street woman's pensioner even. Who knows but that we should have been king's too, but for my crooked legs and your ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the calendar in Part Five. Yet those on the inside knew why very well. It was because Tom long ago, in his prehistoric youth, had learned that the way to secure verdicts was to appear not to care a tinker's dam whether the jury found the defendant guilty or not. He pretended never to know anything about any case in advance, to be in complete ignorance as to who the witnesses might be and to what they ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the spray of brilliant vermilion berries she fancied, saying meanwhile, "I wonder what he is? Tinker, tailor, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of peasants was established at Heilbrunn. The counts of Lowenstein were taken prisoners, dressed in a smock-frock, and then, a white staff having been placed in their hands, they were compelled to swear to the twelve articles. "Brother George, and thou, brother Albert," said a tinker of Ohringen to the counts of Hohenlohe who had gone to their camp, "swear to conduct yourselves as our brethren, for you also are now peasants; you are no longer lords." Equality of rank, the dream of many democrats, was established ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... derives it from the same root with the other jog, which means to shake, ("A. S. sceac-an, to shake, or shock, or shog.") Shog has nothing whatever to do with shaking, unless when Nym says to Pistol, "Will you shog off?" he may be said to have shaken him off. When the Tinker in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" says, "Come, prithee, let's shog off," what possible allusion to shaking is there, except, perhaps, to "shaking stumps"? The first jog and shog are identical in meaning and derivation, and may be traced, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... noticed, seated in the great chimney, a very tall old woman clad in a red cloak and a slouched bonnet, having all the appearance of a gipsy or tinker. She smoked silently at her clay pipe, while the doubtful-looking ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... "You saucy tinker's apprentice, if you don't cease your jaw, I'll——" But here she gasped for breath, unable to hawk up any more words, for the last volley of O'Connell had nearly knocked ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... drawing his moral with his provoking imperturbability, "those men looked at each other, as they dripped, and said with the one voice: 'Ain't this a lesson? Don't swap horses crossing a stream!'"—(Heard by Superintendent Tinker, war telegrapher.) ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... not know, indeed, why we troubled our heads about the matter at all,' said the man in black; 'but when you talk about perverting the meaning of the text, you speak ignorantly, Mr. Tinker. When He whom you call the Saviour gave His followers the sop and bade them eat it, telling them it was His body, He delicately alluded to what it was incumbent upon them to do after His death, namely, to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... out into the inclement darkness, and up to the topmost bough of the tree, which he must "touch" ere he can rest; and now, in the gloom of the memorable dingle, the horror of fear falls upon the amateur tinker, the Evil One grapples terribly with his soul, blots of foam fly from his lips, and he is dashed against the trees and stones. An adventure, truly, fit to stand with any of mediaeval legend, and compared with which the tremendous combat with Blazing Bosville, the Flaming Tinman, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... not, disconnect the ground wire and examine all connections. Also press the sounder of each instrument down and see if it springs back readily. It may be that some screw is too tight, or too loose, or that a spring has come off; tinker awhile and see if you cannot make the instrument work. If you are unable to do so, ask ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... Frank Brangwyn may fall upon unresponsive ears; yet he has a Continental reputation and is easily the foremost English impressionist. New York has seen but little of his work; if we mistake not, there was a large piece of his, a Gipsy Tinker in the open air, hung several seasons ago at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Mr. Kennedy shows extraordinary etchings of his at the Wunderlich Galleries. We call them extraordinary not alone because of their size, but ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... ingenuity of analogy, and in his forcible quaintness of style, as completely as he did in social status and in personal surroundings. In complete contrast to the romantic productions of the self-educated tinker of Bedford, the works of Walton and Evelyn were at any rate influenced by, though they can hardly be said to have been moulded upon, the style of the preceding age of old English prose writers ending with Milton. The influence of the latter is, indeed, plainly noticeable both in the diction and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... operate one of the best known American cars everybody was enthusiastic to see him carry off the honors of the event in which he was entered. He was standing by the door of his garage watching his attendants tinker with his machine, when the scouts came up. The lads pushed their way through the crowd to reach the rope railing about the entrance to the garage, and when the tall racer saw them, he ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous^, pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; low-toned, low in tone; of the deepest dye. black as jet &c n., black as my hat, black as a shoe, black as a tinker's pot, black as November, black as thunder, black as midnight; nocturnal &c (dark) 421; nigrescent^; gray &c 432; obscure &c 421. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... picked out a few here," said Clark. "You know Kentucky breeds explorers. I have a good blacksmith, Shields, and Bill Bratton is another blacksmith—either can tinker a gun if need be. Then I have John Coalter, an active, strapping chap, and the two Fields boys, whom I know to be good men; and Charlie Floyd, Nate Pryor, and a couple of others—Warner and Whitehouse. We should get the rest at the forts around St. Louis. I want to take my boy York along—a negro ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... 'Tain't likely any one can git their jar in afore hern. I wouldn't advise nobody to nerve themselves up to it. There's been rumors," added Mr. Pawket, gravely—"there's been rumors as some one is tryin' to git up a rockery fer the vanilla. Now I wouldn't advise 'em to. The lady will want to tinker with that herself. But if everybody is itchin' to help, why don't they take up a nice collection er white door-knobs to trim ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Tom's mouth, and prevented him from crying; but, on feeling the hot water, he kicked and struggled so much in the pot, that his mother thought that the pudding was bewitched, and, pulling it out of the pot, she threw it outside the door. A poor tinker, who was passing by, lifted up the pudding, and, putting it into his budget, he then walked off. As Tom had now got his mouth cleared of the batter, he then began to cry aloud, which so frightened the tinker that he flung down the pudding and ran away. The pudding being broke to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... begin to read the passage, where Mansie, simple soul that he was, was described as going into the byre in the morning to learn if the cow had calved during the night, and finding, on opening the door, the donkey of a traveling tinker, he turned and ran into the house, crying: "Mither! Mither! The coo has calved, an' it's ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... was not sleepy at eight o'clock; he had been flying about while the others had been yawning before the fire. He would like to sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid it would become as the night went on; he wanted to tinker his skates, to mend his sled, to finish that chapter. Why should he go away from that bright blaze, and the company that sat in its radiance, to the cold and solitude of his chamber? Why did n't the people who were sleepy go ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... place singularly favourable to every kind of intrigue and amusement; while the mild temper of the people and the watchfulness of the police prevented the public disorders that such license might have occasioned. These seeming anomalies abounded on every side. From the gaming-table where a tinker might set a ducat against a prince it was but a few steps to the Broglio, or arcade under the ducal palace, into which no plebeian might intrude while the nobility walked there. The great ladies, who were subject to strict sumptuary laws, and might not display their jewels or try the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... hardships were surmounted and we were on the good and promised land, felt that a just tribute of respect to the day ought to be paid. There were in all, including women and children, 50 in number. The men under Capt. Tinker, ranged themselves on the beach and fired a Federal Salute of 15 rounds, and then the 16th in honor of New Conn. Drank several toasts. Closed with three cheers. Drank several pints of grog. Supped ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... a case of individual need is brought before them will hire girls at less than any one could exist on in decency. When they meet these same girls in the hall or when they come directly into contact with them in their work they may be polite enough, but their politeness is not worth a tinker's curse. Justice must come first. Only if the employer pays a fair day's wage can he expect a fair day's work. "Even then," he protests, "I can't get it." And this is, unfortunately, in large measure true. As Kipling said some few years ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... of a wayside cross with a flock of geese feeding around him. Next I passed a bare-footed cantonnier breaking stones, and he told me that if I made haste I might reach Neuvic before dark. On the outskirts of a village—Roche-le-Peyroux—a wandering tinker and his boy were at work by the side of the road with fire and bellows, and I felt a trampish or romantic desire to stay with them awhile in the cheerful glow; but thinking of the coming night, I smothered ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... put on enough voltage to burn your brain out. Remember, I can read your dead brain as well as though it were alive, but I want your thoughts, as well as your knowledge, and I'm going to have them. If you give them voluntarily, I will tinker up a lifeboat that you can navigate back to your own world and let you go; if you resist I intend getting them anyway and you shall not leave this vessel alive. You may ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... benevolent dictatorships. The trouble with them is that it's up to the dictators to decide what's benevolent. And almost always, nepotism rears its head, favoritism of one sort or another. How long will it be before one of your moderate monks decides he'll moderately tinker with the tests, or whatever, just to be sure his favorite nephew makes the grade? A high I.Q. is no guarantee ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... known, he was describing a particular characteristic of the Duke. Wellington, when in action, was the dumbest of dumb things, and it would have required a moral earthquake to get more than some curt order out of him. Even a "tinker's curse" or "a tuppenny damn" would have seemed loquacious in him on such an occasion. The not very sensational "Up Guards and at 'em!" was in later life disputed by the Duke. Under great pressure, the most he would admit was that he might ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... year, an old woman, named Marion Haw, was returned upon that, her native parish, from Glasgow. She had led a migratory life with her son—who was what he called a bell-hanger, but in fact a tinker of the worst grade—for many years, and was at last returned to the muckle town in a state of great destitution. She gave the parishioners a history of the Mysterious Bride, so plausibly correct, but withal ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... communications from Mark Twain that year deserve to be remembered. One of these; unsigned, was published in the Century Magazine, and expressed the need for a "universal tinker," the man who can accept a job in a large household or in a community as master of all trades, with sufficient knowledge of each to be ready to undertake whatever repairs are likely to be required in the ordinary household, such as—"to put in windowpanes, mend gas ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... parentage, his father being a tinker. At one time he was in the Parliamentary Army, and in 1645, was present at the siege of Leicester. Having left the army, he married. Then after a time of great spiritual agony and doubt, with quieter intervals, he became a member and then minister of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. His ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... (sledge) in front was a single thong of sealskin with a loop on its end. This was called the "bridle." Each dog had an individual trace, its end passed through the loop in the bridle and securely tied. Tinker, the leading dog, was fully thirty-five feet from the komatik when his trace was stretched to its full length. He had the longest trace of all. He was trained to respond to shouted directions, turning to the right when "ouk" was called, or left for "rudder," ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... pieces when notified to pay your license-tax; if you can feel a quiet sense of pleasure when driving on a rough and hilly road, and never move a muscle of your visage when underneath you hear a tire explode; if you can plan a pleasant week-end journey and tinker at your car a day or so, then thrill with joy on that eventful morning to find no skill of yours can make it go; if you can gather up your wife and children, put on your glad rags, and start off for church, then have to wade around in greasy gearings and spoil the best of ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... rumor, as she is wont in such cases, had adorned his early history with so many myths and portents, that Niebuhr himself could hardly have distinguished between the fable and the truth. It was said and believed that he was a foundling—a Gipsy's son, a wandering beggar, a tinker. Others had seen him in rags, selling pencils at the steps between the Pont-Neuf and the Pont-au-Change. Others, again, maintained that he had for years filled the canine office of guide to an old blind mendicant, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... than justice, my good Master Heriot," continued the duke, in the same tone of irony; "you have a marvellous court-faction, to be the son of an Edinburgh tinker. Have the goodness to prefer me to the knowledge of the high-born nobleman who is honoured and advantaged by ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... | Porter Barber | Chinaman Coffeeman | Founder Porkshop-keeper | Grave-digger Cartwright | Tradesman Tinker, a brasier | Stockingmender Nailer ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... strongly recommend the audience to give their days and nights to the study of Bunyan and M'Cheyne. "Bunyan by all means," said I to myself, "but who is M'Cheyne that one should be mindful of him and put him for importance alongside of the immortal tinker?" ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Ambrose inwardly wondered where the man could be hiding. Billingsfield was not, he believed, an easy place to hide in, for every ploughman knew his fellow, and a new face was always an object of suspicion. Not a gipsy tinker entered the village but what every one heard of it, and though tramps came through from time to time, it would be a difficult matter for one of them to remain two days in the place without attracting a great deal of attention. It was ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... into, sir. I found the garage all right, left her safe and sound, came back here, but after dinner thought I'd go round again to tinker a bit at the car in case of an early start to-morrow. When I got to the place there were three new fellows on duty, and they seemed astonished when they saw I intended to work on the Gloria. The chauffeur who looked after ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the morning upon the Introduction to the Chronicles; it may be thought egotistical. Learned a bad accident had happened yesterday. A tinker (drunk I suppose) entered the stream opposite to Faldonside with an ass bearing his children. The ass was carried down by the force of the stream, and one of the little creatures was drowned; the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... sentiment to take sides, and the bitterest of feeling was engendered. The raids of passing soldiers was the excuse for the organization, by both sides, of bands who claimed they were "Home Guards"—the Federals under "Tinker" Beaty, and the Confederates under Champ Ferguson. These bands, each striving for the mastery, soon developed into guerrillas of the worst type the war produced, ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... is still more remarkable than the play itself: a drunken tinker, removed in his sleep to a palace, where he is deceived into the belief of being a nobleman. The invention, however, is not Shakspeare's. Holberg has handled the same subject in a masterly manner, and with inimitable truth; but he has spun ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... been fool enough to fill the kettle before tramping off to the 'Ring of Bells'?" the good woman broke in. "Lord knows 'tisn' his way to be thoughtful, and when he tries it there's always a breakage. When I'd melted the ice, the thing began to leak like a sieve; and if this tinker fellow hadn't come along—by Providence, as you may call it—though I'd ha' been obliged to Providence for ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Lucius was a shiftless creature. It had long been the consensus of opinion—freely expressed throughout Tinkletown—that he did not amount to a tinker's dam. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... "I do want them—every tinker of them. Poor old girl, you never knew the fun of keeping a lot of men in a continual squirm. However, I think possibly what you call the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... pitiful to see the hay afloat like water-weeds, and the green oats scarcely showing above the black floods. In two minutes after starting I was wet to the skin, and I thanked Providence I had left my little Dutch Horace behind me in the book-box. By three in the afternoon I was as unkempt as any tinker, my hair plastered over my eyes, and every fold of my coat ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the close of our day-watch on deck, he approached Handy Solomon. It was at the end of ten days, on no one of which had the seaman failed to tinker away at his steel claw. Darrow balanced in front of him with ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... trades, as they have their bodies, he says, marred by their vulgar businesses, so they have their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. And if one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek self-culture and philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald little tinker,[117] who has scraped together money, and has got his release from service, and has had a bath, and bought a new coat, and is rigged out like a bridegroom about to marry the daughter of his master who has fallen ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... former relations with the other sex. What was most unusual for him, he was alarmed and depressed, at moments irritable. He regretted the capricious and apparently accidental impulse that had made him pretend to tinker with his automobile that day by the canal, that had led him to the incomparable idiocy of getting rid of Miss Ottway and installing the disturber of his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was a tinker—a travelling tinker. He would do a little gardening and farming at home for a while, and then go off about the country for a few days, mending people's pots and pans and kettles. Usually Sym left Emily Ann at home to keep the Little Red House company, ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... is aluminum," said he, "or it wouldn't be worth a tinker's dam after all this time. But as it is, it's taken no harm that I can see. Wire braces all gone, rusted out and disappeared. Have to be rewired throughout, if I can find steel wire; if not, I'll use braided leather thongs. Petrol ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... justice of the peace; "you can shut up your school at five o'clock every night, and every cheesemonger and tinker in the place can do the same; but we've got no time we can call our own. Pull your chair up to the fire, old fellow. Let's see, what were we saying?" The servant appeared again at this point, and said—"Please, sir, they've got a couple ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... three or four years, 1899-1902 were passed between Paris and Ireland; Paris in the winter and spring and Ireland in the other seasons. He was at work on The Aran Islands, and on his three early one act plays, The Tinker's Wedding, Riders to the Sea, and The Shadow of the Glen. He came to London in the winter of 1902-3, where I saw him as I have described. London did not suit him and he did not stay long. He gave up his room in Paris at this time, with some searching of the heart; for at thirty one clings ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... seriousness—for others, but never for himself. Tranquillity was to him instead of it. This philosophical levity of tranquillity, so to speak, is shown in his easy variety of pursuits. Printer, postmaster, almanac maker, essayist, chemist, orator, tinker, statesman, humorist, philosopher, parlor man, political economist, professor of housewifery, ambassador, projector, maxim-monger, herb-doctor, wit:—Jack of all trades, master of each and mastered by none—the type and genius of his land. Franklin was ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the - in - do you mean by taking their gold-leaf? My -, are we a set of pirates to scrape the guts out of a Levantine bumboat? Look contrite, you butt-ended, broad-breeched, bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a tinker, you! My Soul alive, can't I maintain discipline in my own ship without a blacksmith of a boiler-riveter putting me to shame before a yellow-nosed picaroon. Get off the staging, Mr. Davies, and go to the engine-room. Put down that leaf first, though, and leave the books ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... don't care a tinker's dam how you do it," he said. "Drink it all, if you want to. I'll take the biggest—that one under the milk-house." Whereat they jeered at him for wanting to be ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... well acquainted with you as he is with his dishas intimate as one of the beasts familiar to man which signify love, and with which his own trade is especially conversant. Who is he?why, he has gone the vole has been soldier, ballad-singer, travelling tinker, and is now a beggar. He is spoiled by our foolish gentry, who laugh at his jokes, and rehearse Edie Ochiltree's good thing's as regularly as ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... very hungry indeed. He had been going from place to place with his master, and now it was two long days since he had eaten a good dinner. His master was a poor tinker who traveled about the country and never stayed long in one place. Rover would have liked this if his master had been kind to him, but the dog was used only to ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... tinker fell asleep, Robin made haste away, And left the tinker in the lurch, For the great ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... fetid atmosphere of taverns. There was an Allen-a-Dale in Robin Hood's gang; it was in the Bell Inn, at Gloucester, that George Whitefield, the most gifted of popular orators, was reared; and Bunyan's Muse found him at the disrespectable trade of a tinker, and amidst the clatter of pots, and pans, and vulgar curses, made her whisper audible in his ear, "Come up hither to the Mount of Vision—to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... almost any day, an old man may be seen pushing a tinker's barrow. The small carriage is gay with yellow, red, and blue paint and bright with polished brass, and on a conspicuous place appear the words, 'Where will you spend Eternity?' The barrow-man has a pleasant, bearded face, and steady-gazing, merry, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... it was for scientific reasons that I persuaded the old "Badger" to stand in with me in the matter. So we will tinker at the conduit-pipes a little, and dig up a little bit of the shore, and it shan't cost the town a sixpence. That will ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... way. I know you don't care a tinker's damn for me in the way I care for you. But you can't deny that you do like me some. You wouldn't talk to me like you do and let me do things for you if you didn't. What I want you to promise is that whenever you ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... joined in having a good time at the tinker's expense, and pronounced him "the prince of good fellows." ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... use and object of piston and cylinder and crank and joint and condenser—in short, fully to understand the underlying principle of its construction. He took it to pieces for cleaning whenever it was needful; he made working models of it after his old childish pattern; he even ventured to tinker it up when out of order on his own responsibility. Thus he learnt at last something of the theory of the steam-engine, and learnt also by the way a great deal about the general principles of mechanical science. ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... ain't ashamed of owning that my father was just a travelling tinker, and when I was a little fellow I used to go round with him and see him do most things. It was from travelling through the country I learned to love it so. And my father, he was a thoughtful man, and when I used to ask where the tin came ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... assuredly take your orders," the landlady answered, bustling in with her hands full of leathern drinking-cups. "What is it that you drink, then? Beer for the lads of the forest, mead for the gleeman, strong waters for the tinker, and wine for the rest. It is an old custom of the house, young sir. It has been the use at the 'Pied Merlin' this many a year back that the company should drink to the health of the last comer. Is it your pleasure to ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle |
