"Blade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... missionary enterprise in Africa is not to be measured by the years of effort it has cost, nor by the amount of money expended. Missionary records from other fields will fully justify this statement. In all such work we may expect to have the exemplification of nature's course, "first the blade, then the ear; after that, the full corn ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... many generations, plastered and papered ceilings and walls and ample windows gave to the inside of the house a modern air which its mistress deeply regretted, but accepted mournfully as a necessary evil. But she did not allow a weed or a blade of grass to be plucked from its roof; and upon the suggestion that the old brown adobe walls should be treated to a coat of gray plaster she frowned as if ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Sara," Jael said. "Could harm befall thee with Jael, the fisherman, nigh? Look thou at the strength of my arm and the keen edge of my tough fishing knife!" and he held forth his shining blade. ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... who had tried to Stand In with him when Things were coming his Way, were cutting off Street-Corners and getting down behind their Newspapers to escape the Affectionate Massage, beginning at the Hand and extending to the Shoulder-Blade. It was No Use. He remembered them all, and no ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... Ending.—And so HUGH, carrying a lamp in his right hand, and grasping the blade of his sword in his left, entered the cave of which he had heard so much. Will he ever return? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... deferentially and departed. Zara turned round, and I saw the jewel on her breast flashing with a steely glitter like the blade of a ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... he drew a little penknife from his pocket, opened the smaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then, choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his leg ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... seemed to demand gentle violence, and the unwavering water needed slight tremors to teach it the tenderness of its calm; then my guide used his blade, and cut into glassiness. We crept noiselessly along by the lake-edge, within the shadows of the pines. With never a plash we slid. Rare drops fell from the cautious paddle and tinkled on the surface, overshot, not parted by, our imponderable passage. Sometimes from far within the forest would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... this skeleton so ghastly, With its breath of foul miasma, With its desolating vengeance, With its greedy, fatal cravings, Laying hands upon the city. And the doomed victims yielded To the swift-distilling poison; White and black and high and lowly, Fell beneath the sweeping scythe-blade. On the air was borne the crying Of the hurrying, the fleeing, Through the air the sad lamenting Of the helpless and deserted, Cries of anguish and of terror, Wails of suff'ring and despairing. Some brave souls remained in peril, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... than from regard to the Romans, they received the Carthaginians into the city. The consuls led their legions from Beneventum into the Campanian territory, with the intention not only of destroying the corn, which was in the blade, but of laying siege to Capua; considering that they would render their consulate illustrious by the destruction of so opulent a city, and that they would wipe away the foul disgrace of the empire, from the defection of a city so near remaining unpunished for three years. Lest, however, Beneventum ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... part well, when an English knight came rushing up, having in his company a hundred men furnished with various arms. He wielded a northern hatchet with the blade a full foot long, and was well armed after his manner, being tall, bold, and of noble carriage. In the front of the battle, where the Normans thronged most, he came bounding on swifter than the stag, many Normans falling before him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Hotchkiss's astonishment, the stick separated in two pieces, leaving the handle and about two feet of narrow glittering steel in the Colonel's hand. The man recoiled, dropping the useless fragment. The Colonel picked it up, fitting the shining blade in it, clicked the spring, and then rising, with a face of courtesy yet of unmistakably genuine pain, and with even a slight tremor in his voice, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... already dead." This Moidel explained to us as he moved dejectedly forward. "Father, however, told him that our Olm was bad for goats. They not only slip from the rocks, but grow thin and weakly. Just the reverse of the cattle. Onkel Johann—there is no one so deep as he in cattle—says that every blade of grass on our Olm is worth half a pint of milk. And it's not the air, nor the water, nor the winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot understand. Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile sennerei an hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... from the sketch, it opens like a pair of scissors. Its blades are very sharp, and as it cuts the fruit, the blades pierce right through the flesh until they meet the pit in the center. The curves in the blade catch the stone and hold it fast, while the points and heels of the blades overlap until they have cut ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the young blade rip about the world for a year or two, squire," Rangsley's voice ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was scarce possible to keep from it; as first, the goats, and wild creatures which I called hares, which, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day, as soon as it came up, and ate it so close, that it could get no time ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the middle of the royal army, and the immediate effect of his pretty speeches. And now if he don't drub the allies, there is 'no purchase in money.' If he can take France by himself, the devil's in 't if he don't repulse the invaders, when backed by those celebrated sworders—those boys of the blade, the Imperial Guard, and the old and new army. It is impossible not to be dazzled and overwhelmed by his character and career. Nothing ever so disappointed me as his abdication, and nothing could have reconciled me to him but some such revival as his recent exploit; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... charge of five of their number, and as soon as it was dusk they commenced their stealthy approach to the camp. Sigenok and another young and active Indian undertook to look after me. Not a word was spoken after we set out—not a leaf was moved, scarcely a blade of grass was uselessly pressed down. On they crept slowly, and so gently that I could scarcely hear the footfalls even of my two companions. I imitated their way of walking, and as I had on mocassins I also was ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the sign of the Bell Liv'd JOBSON and NELL, And cobbling of shoes was his trade; They agreed very well, The neighbours did tell, For he was a funny old blade. ...
— The Entertaining History of Jobson & Nell • Anonymous
... hunt in dead earnest. We pulled up every blade of grass, felt in all the crevices of the rocks, and dug a toad out of his hole. He looked highly surprised and indignant, but he gave us no help ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... beech-wood across the valley. In the woodlands the greatest expert on the ways of voles was the brown owl. His noiseless wings never gave the slightest alarm, and never interfered with his sense of hearing—so acute that the faint rustle of a leaf or a grass-blade brought him, like a bolt, from the sky, to hover close to the earth, eager, inquisitive, merciless, till a movement on the part of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... almost, because I have known a person begin and finish a small bird with a pair of scissors); nearly any small knife will do to make the first incision, but experience has shown the most useful shape to be as in Fig. 11, which is the skinning knife; the blade, it will be observed, is long and narrow, 3 in. to 4 in. along the cutting edge, and half an inch across; the handle, which should be of box, lignum vitae, or any hard wood susceptible, of a high polish, is 3.5 in. in length, exclusive of a half-inch brass ferrule; the shape shown ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... production.'[329] Why 'not' and 'but'? If supply and demand corresponds to the whole play of motives which determines the bargain, this is like saying, according to the old illustration, that we must attribute the whole effect of a pair of scissors to one blade and not to the other. His view leads to the apparent confusion of taking for the cause of value not our desire for a thing, but the sacrifice we must make to attain it. Bentham[330] said, for example, that Ricardo confused 'cost' with 'value.' The denial that ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... has left none but traces of beauty behind," observed Harold, as they crossed the lawn. The loveliness of the early morning was indeed a pleasant sequel to the rude tempest of the preceding night. The dewdrops glistened upon grass-blade and foliage, and the bosom of the stream flashed ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Half a year ago this pear was deeper under ground than it is long and broad, and lay at the very end of the roots. These smallest and least observed creations are the greatest miracles. God is in the humblest things of nature—a leaf or a blade of grass." Two birds made their nest in the Doctor's garden and flew up in the evening, often frightened by passers-by. He called to them, "Oh, you dear birds! Don't fly away. I am very willing to have you here, if you could only ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... out, I did breake my blade this morning on foure that did waylay me: Ile goe fetch another, and then I am ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... on the bed's edge, trowel in hand, pink sun-bonnet fallen back neglected; and with blade and gloved fingers she began transferring the irresponsible larkspur seedlings to the confines of their proper spheres, patting each frail little plant into ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... plunge;—close to us is the great struggle, a heap of the mothers entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords, one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just torn away from a death grasp and clasped to her breast with the grip of a steel vice, falls backwards helplessly over the heap, right on the sword ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... back like a snail, and confident the others would do their part, Keith thrust his knife blade deep into the narrow crack, and began probing after the latch. In spite of all caution this effort caused a slight noise, and suddenly he started back, at the sound ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... plant had grown up the heath and strangled it, so that the tips turned brown and died. The runners extended in every direction across the ground, like those of strawberries. One creeper had climbed up a bennet, or seeding grass-stalk, binding the stalk and a blade of the grass together, and flowering there. On the ground there were patches of grey lichen; many of the pillar-like stems were crowned with a red top. Under a small boulder stone there was an ants' ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... this, men say that if the opportunity were once more given, the blade would be drawn in earnest, and the scabbard thrown away. It may well be so; there has been oppression and provocation enough of late to make the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... now. The sweat was pouring from his face, and his breast seemed like to burst in the effort after breath; yet he had enough strength for his purpose. He must have slackened his hold on his weapon, for when Rudolf's blade next struck it, it flew from his hand, twirled out of a nerveless grasp, and slid along the floor. Rupert stood disarmed, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... has said to me when speaking of his studies, "often have I made the most delightful voyage, floating on a word down the abyss of the past, like an insect embarked on a blade of grass tossing on the ripples of a stream. Starting from Greece, I would get to Rome, and traverse the whole extent of modern ages. What a fine book might be written of the life and adventures of a word! It has, of course, received various ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... at thy day's decline When came the shade from Appennine, And suddenly on blade and bower The fire-flies shed the sparkling shower, As if all heaven to earth had sent Each star that gems the firmament; 'Twas sweet at that enchanting hour, To bathe in fragrance of the Italian clime, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... in him. "Yesterday out on St. Joseph's Place, I was talking with one of your admirers, the fellow who shatters the wings of the stage with his ranting," he began with malice aforethought. "The blade had the nerve to say to me: 'You'd better hurry up and get Dorothea Doederlein a husband, or people will talk their tongues ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and employed the son of his former master as foreman of his mines. Finding that the wife of his former master was sick and without money, he gave her enough money to live on the balance of her life. He employs more men than any other man in Guatemala and is the wealthiest one there.—Maxton Blade. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... for another spring. On he came, but Henry knew enough to leap to one side. Not wishing to use his pistol, excepting as a last resort, he drew his hunting-knife, and, watching his chance, plunged it into the wolf's shoulder. Down went the beast, and a second stroke of the blade finished the creature. ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... flower! I haven't seen such a pretty flower in all my life. Here are forget-me-nots, and—and these I have picked for you," she added, taking from under the tansies a small bunch of cornflowers, tied around with a thin blade of grass; ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev
... or two Moulder could not answer him. The portion of food in question was the last on his plate; it had been considerable in size, and required attention in mastication. Then the remaining gravy had to be picked up on the blade of the knife, and the particles of pickles collected and disposed of by the same process. But when all this had been well done, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... it is to use a sharp shovel or how impossibly hard it can be to drive a dull one into the soil. Similarly, weeding with a sharp hoe is effortless and fast. But most new hoes are sold without even a proper bevel ground into the blade, much less with an edge that has been carefully honed. So after working with dull shovels and hoes, many home food growers mistakenly conclude that cultivation is not possible without using a rotary tiller for both tillage and weeding between rows. But instead of an expensive gasoline-powered ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... oysters, and was not very sharp. That was the reason Bunker gave it to Bunny. Bunker did not want the little boy to cut himself. With this old knife Bunny cut off a bit of clothes line. He had to saw and saw back and forth with the dull blade of the knife before ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... there was a certain recklessness in his actions—as though his every movement advertised a careless regard for consequences. She held her breath when he split a short log into slender splinters, for he swung the short-handled axe with a loose grasp, as though he cared very little where its sharp blade landed. But she noted that he struck with precision despite his apparent carelessness, every blow falling true. His manner of handling the axe reflected the spirit that shone in his eyes when, after kindling the fire, he stood ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... she had lain on her bier, I had looked secretly, and had found the brand of the bull on her shoulder blade, just as she had found it on that of her murdered boy. Allah alone knows how this last crime was wrought—how access to the women's quarters had been gained, and how the fatal seal of Siva had been impressed upon her flesh before she had been ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... his shin with the axe while felling a tree. As we did not carry a fifth wheel, it was not just the time or place to have any of our members crippled, and I had bodings of evil. But, thanks to the healing virtues of the balsam which must have adhered to the blade of the axe, and double thanks to the court-plaster with which Orville had supplied himself before leaving home, the wounded leg, by being favored that night and the next day, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... read these words the ambassadors threw a bundle of swords at his feet. The caliph smiled, and drawing his own sword, or cimeter (sim'e-ter), he cut the Roman swords in two with one stroke without injuring the blade, or even turning the edge of ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... blade of grass was sinful. Spitting in a handkerchief was allowed by one Rabbi, but the whole tribe were at loggerheads about spitting on the ground. Cutting one's hair or nails was a mortal sin. In case of fire on the Sabbath, the utensils needed on that day might be saved, and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... heavy hand, and his The service of the despot blade; His the soft answer that allayed War's ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the paddle from Forester's hand. He had never seen one before. He said that they always used oars, not paddles, in New York harbor. A paddle is shaped very differently from an oar. It is much shorter and lighter,—though the blade is broader. A paddle is worked, too, differently from an oar. An oar acts as a lever against the side of the boat,—the middle of it resting in a small notch called a row-lock, or between two wooden pins. But a paddle is held in ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... his weapon, and called loudly on the watch to help him, but I pulled him from his horse and had him up against the wall before he could cry again—yet not before he had pricked me in the arm with his blade. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... pole in his hand, to hop away as fast as they could. Then, too, she said there was a four-footed animal, called a cat, that caught little crickets to eat them up. After this they all chirruped together as she waved a blade of grass to keep time, then she rang a blue-bell and school was over. She put three little clover-leaf sunbonnets on them and sent them out into the ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... silent death in the dungeon of the lonely forerunner. The faint noise of revelry may have reached his ears, as he brooded there, and wondered if the coming King would never come for his enlargement. Suddenly a gleam of light from the opened door enters his cell, and falls on the blade of the headsman's sword. Little time can be wasted, for Herodias waits. With short preface the blow falls. The King has come, and set His forerunner free, sending him to prepare His way before Him in the dim regions beyond. A world where Herod sits in the festal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... readers of "Love and Pie" will readily discover for themselves. "The File-cutter's L'ament " (see below), which I have selected from Mr. Downing's volume, Smook thru' a Shevvield Chimla, will show that the Sheffield "blade" is doing his best to carry on the tradition set by Abel Bywater eighty years ago. Airedale still has its poets, among the most ambitious of whom is Mr. Malham-Dembleby, who published in 1912 a volume of verse entitled, Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire Dialect. Mr. F. J. Newboult ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... man's figure, unimposing in height, unremarkable in build, but straight, straight as his own sword-blade—had bounded from the car and scaled the intervening ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... if it must be brought into the house, as at night, the owner must take care that it points at no one while being handled. If one desires to draw a bolo from its sheath, he must draw it slowly, and if it is to be presented to another, the blade must be kept facing the owner's body and the handle presented to the other man. The same rule ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... released the better. Hobart had already revealed his plans, and might appear at any moment for the purpose of executing them. If escape was to be achieved, it must be accomplished at once. In the darkness his fingers could do nothing with the knot, but the sharp blade of a knife quickly severed the twisted cloth, and the gag was instantly removed from between the clinched teeth. The man moaned, breathing heavily, but made no other sound while West slashed at the cords lashing his limbs, finally freeing them entirely. Not until this ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... coolly—but I could not take my eyes off the shining blade of that man's axe, it was so very broad and ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... which latter may be done in a variety of ways. A man, for instance, kills himself under the compulsion of another man, who twists round his right hand, wherewith he happened to have taken up a sword, and forces him to turn the blade against his own heart; or, again, he may be compelled, like Seneca, by a tyrant's command, to open his own veins - that is, to escape a greater evil by incurring, a lesser; or, lastly, latent external causes may so disorder his ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Audrey of the garden, and Haward, smiling, drew his rapier and laid it in her hands. She looked at the golden hilt, and passed her brown fingers along the gleaming blade. "Stainless," she said, and gave it ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... vows, an exorbitant price, which only necessity extorts? How vividly we of the nineteenth century exemplify the wisdom of the classic aphorisms? Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. Have you no fear that you are seizing with bare fingers a glittering thirsty blade, which may flesh itself in the hand that dares to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... sunflower die, Let Gerald the geranium fade, And all the other plants that I Have hitherto displayed; The virgin grass within my plot May call for water—I will not Preserve a single blade. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... the land and scattered upon it; dead beasts stuck jammed in the low forks of trees; swine, sheep and calves appeared, cast up in fantastic places, strangled by the water; sandy wastes, stripped of every living leaf and blade, ran like banks where no banks formerly existed, and here and there from their midst stuck out naked boughs of upturned trees, fragments of man's contrivances, or the legs of dead beasts. Looking ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... is as silent as that of the dewdrop upon the blade of grass, but it is as real. God's voice is the still, small voice that ever speaks in quietness. The stillness of the moment at the mother's knee, the prayer repeated in the reverent, low tone of the mother's voice, the earnest prayer for him offered in his presence, the Christ-like ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... Hence, it resulted when d'Artagnan proceeded to draw his sword in earnest, he found himself purely and simply armed with a stump of a sword about eight or ten inches in length, which the host had carefully placed in the scabbard. As to the rest of the blade, the master had slyly put that on one side to make himself ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and weapons similar to those already found among the natives, he perceived others of a much superior kind. There were hatchets for cutting wood, formed not of stone but copper; wooden swords, with channels on each side of the blade, in which sharp flints were firmly fixed by cords made of the intestines of fishes; being the same kind of weapon afterwards found among the Mexicans. There were copper bells and other articles of the same metal, together with a rude kind of crucible in which to melt ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... my eyes I'd drift off into this other being. While I was dressing I thought I'd just try it and see what would happen. I was getting ready to shave and as I made up my mind, or, rather, took down my determination against it, I happened to look at the bright blade of my razor. It seemed as if my eyes fairly stuck fast to it for a moment ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... fill his place. Into the throat of this second Miki drove his fangs as the wolf came over the crest. It was the slashing, sabre-like stroke of the north-dog, and the throat of the wolf was torn open and the blood poured out as if emptied by the blade of a knife. Down he plunged to join the first, and in that instant the pack swept up and over Miki, and he was smothered under the mass of their bodies. Had two or three attacked him at once he would have died as quickly as the first two of his enemies had come to their end. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... carefully as they went, and had not gone far when Matt sprang forward with a scream of delight and picked up a clasp-knife. It was by no means a valuable one. It had a buckhorn handle, and its solitary blade, besides being broken at the point, was affected with rust and tobacco in ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... twisted themselves in mist. The waves made a sadder moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept out of the sea and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower, scarcely a blade of grass dared thrust itself toward the sky on that scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the nights, madame, were full of howls, of contending beasts—the nights were storms of demons let loose to beat ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... reasonably uniform and homogeneous and that in placing this mixture the spading next to the lagging shall be done in such a way as to pull the coarse stones back and flush the mortar to the surface. Spading forks are excellent for this purpose. A better tool is a special spade made with a perforated blade; this special spade ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... cast at length Her eyes upon the sluggard, when my beard 'Gan whiter fall beneath the barber's blade- Cast eyes, I say, and, though long tarrying, came, Now when, from Galatea's yoke released, I serve but Amaryllis: for I will own, While Galatea reigned over me, I had No hope of freedom, and no thought to save. Though many a victim from my folds went forth, Or rich cheese pressed ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... got well his lack of experience rendered it necessary for me to oversee his culinary operations. One day after returning to my tent from such supervision I had a curious adventure with a snake. It was a warm day about half past one. All was quiet and not a blade stirred. I paused near the tent opening, with my face toward the opposite side of the river, which could be seen through an opening among the trees. Standing motionless on the bank, which from there sloped gradually down toward the river, more than a minute had elapsed when my attention was distracted ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... knelt, and Valouse knelt behind him. Some moments after, the King made a sign to them; Valouse drew the sword from its sheath which he put under his arm, held the naked weapon by the middle of the blade, kissed the hilt, and presented it to the King, who, without uncovering himself, kissed the pommel, took the sword in both hands by the handle, held it upright some moments; then held it with one hand, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... commands were also drawing supplies of forage, or else it could only be gotten from Tullahoma out of the forage stored there for army consumption. Consequently, corn was rare at that time at Woodbury; two or three ears per day to each horse was the usual issue. Upon some days none was issued. Every blade of grass in the vicinity of the camp was eaten, and the trees were barked by the poor animals as high as ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... oar, and was, in fact, far superior to Aleck in point of skill; but his stroke was not well adapted to the choppy waves inshore. He had learned it on the sleepy Cam, where the long, gliding blade counts best. The men stayed ashore a long time, disappearing entirely beyond the clump of trees that screened the outbuildings. When they reappeared, an old man was with them, following them down to the boat. Then the white handkerchief ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the serene surface lay glinting there among the lesser stellar reflections, when a man, kneeling in a gully of the steep bank sloping to the "salt lick," leaned forward suddenly to gaze at it; then, with a gasp, turned his eyes upward to that flaming blade drawn athwart the peaceful sky. He did not utter a sound. The habit of silence essential to the deer-hunter kept its mechanical hold upon his nerves. Only the hand with which he grasped the half-exposed roots of a great sycamore-tree, denuded in some partial caving of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... then I got that stick of the bayonet, for there was such runnin' that we only thought of pelting after them as hard as we could; but ye see, there's nothin' so treacherous as a Highlander. I was just behind one, and had my sword-point between his blade-hones, ready to run him through, when he turned short about, and run his bayonet into me under the short ribs, and that was all I saw of the battle; for I bled till I fainted, and never knew more of what happened. 'Tisn't by way ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... gourds full of water, and collected a quantity of boiled corn. As soon as this was done, we set off again, and entered the desert. We were astonished and terrified when we looked around us, not a single vestige of herbage, not a blade of grass was to be seen—all was one wide waste of barren sand, so light as to rise in clouds at the least wind, and we sank so deep in walking through it that at last we could hardly drag one foot after the other. But we were repaid for our fatigue, for when ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... identified him without the aid of his insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Tennessee. Illustration of its shape by some familiar object is difficult, although various comparisons have been attempted. Some old Spanish geographers gave the island the name of La Lengua de Pajaro, "the bird's tongue." Mr. M.M. Ballou likened it to "the blade of a Turkish scimitar slightly curved back, or approaching the form of a long, narrow, crescent." Mr. Robert T. Hill holds that it "resembles a great hammer-headed shark, the head of which forms the straight, south coast of the east end of the island, from which the sinuous ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... out Max, stopping the use of his handy spruce blade, as he turned his head toward the one who appeared to be ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... beat up in the teeth of such threatening lines of iron lips. The Spanish ships swung sullenly back to leeward, and the fleet of Don Cordova was cloven in twain, as though by the stroke of some gigantic sword-blade. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... one of the canoes, which had been somewhat roughly handled on the road coming in. Then he began to tighten the tent-ropes, and hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of the stakes. Then he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, and cut it an inch too short. Then he went into the men's tent, and in a few minutes the sound of snoring told that he had sought refuge in sleep at eight o'clock, without telling a single caribou story, or making any plans ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... unable to get up again. One of the bullets must have most luckily reached a vital point in the region of his heart. He was floundering about unevenly, while the little Mexican boy sat and stared, still gripping that ridiculously small blade in his hand. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... lanyards was severed by the keen blade in Brook's hand. The others attached to the same shroud immediately began to render through the deadeye, throwing an extra strain upon the lanyards of the other shrouds, one of which immediately parted under Bob's knife; then ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... was Ceneri, the other Macari. The third man was a stranger to me. These three men were looking at a fourth man—a young man who appeared to be falling out of his chair, clutching convulsively the hilt of a dagger, the blade of which had been buried in his heart, clearly by Macari, who stood ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... nigger has only got to say Old Gadsden to him, and it's equal to fifty paddles. The mode of punishment most modern, and adopted in all the workhouses and places of punishment in South Carolina, is with the paddle, a wooden instrument in, the shape of a baker's peel; with a blade from three to five inches wide, and from eight to ten long. This is laid on the posteriors—generally by constables or officers connected with the police. Holes are frequently bored in the blade, which gives the application a sort of percussive effect; The pain ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... while, and then cast him down as one who would sleep hastily; but slept not forsooth, though he presently made semblance of it: as for Christopher, he drew together the brands of the fire, and sat beside it with his blade over his knees, until the first beginning of the summer dawn was in the sky; then he began to nod, and presently lay aback and slept soundly. Simon slept not, but durst not move. So they lay till ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... thought anything more about this chance speech of his, but I know I had not—when Phillis, who had been missing just at the last moment of our hurried visit, re-appeared with a little nosegay of this same flower, which she was tying up with a blade of grass. She offered it to Holdsworth as he stood with her father on the point of departure. I saw their faces. I saw for the first time an unmistakable look of love in his black eyes; it was more than gratitude for the little attention; it was tender ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sword shines in Nidud's belt, which I whetted as I could most skilfully, and tempered, as seemed to me most cunningly. That bright blade forever is taken from me: never shall I see it borne into ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... good sense is essential to success. Time and tide waits for no man. The tall sunflower and the little violet is turning its face to the sun. The mule and the horse was harnessed together. Every green leaf and every blade of ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... fop, fine gentleman; swell; dandy, dandiprat|!; exquisite, coxcomb, beau, macaroni, blade, blood, buck, man about town, fast man; fribble, milliner|!; Jemmy Jessamy|!, carpet knight; masher, dude. fine ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... impression he receives is of Nature ever straining after higher, perfection, ever striving to achieve a greater excellence, and create beings with higher and higher, modes of life. He sees her straining upward in the mountain, in the trees, in the climbers on the trees, in every blade of grass. He sees the whole of life, straining to achieve higher and higher forms, more perfect flowers, more intelligent animals, more spiritual men. He sees the life of the seas stretching up out of the seas on to the land. He sees the life of the land striving to reach the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... chide me," he exclaimed, "that my sword sleeps in the scabbard, while the enemies of the house of Home triumph." He drew his sword, and approaching the picture of his father, he pressed the weapon to his lips, and continued, "By the soul of my ancestors, I swear upon this blade, that the proud Albany and his creatures shall feel that one Home still lives!" He dashed the weapon back into its sheath, and approaching the stranger, drew him towards the lamp, and said, "Ye are Trotter, who was my cousin's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... cry of victory, and rushed upon the entangled youth, with knife and tomahawk. The utmost agility of Hard-Heart had not sufficed to extricate himself in season from the fallen beast. He saw that his case was desperate. Feeling for his knife, he took the blade between a finger and thumb, and cast it with admirable coolness at his advancing foe. The keen weapon whirled a few times in the air, and its point meeting the naked breast of the impetuous Sioux, the blade was buried to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that knife." He took it from my fingers, dug with its blade, and suddenly from the inside I saw a tiny hole appear in the frame of the sash beside the lock hasp. "Here we are!" He brought his upper half back into the room and held up a wooden plug, painted—dipped in paint—the exact color of the sash. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... braced her feet firmly and drove the long oar-blade deep into the jumping little waves. Those waves quickly became larger and "jumpier." A white wreath formed upon their crests. The shell in a very few seconds was in the ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... four grinning skulls, supposed to be those of her four husbands, issued from under Fitzford gateway with the shade of Lady Howard inside. A coal-black hound ran in front as far as Okehampton, and on the return journey carried in its mouth a single blade of grass, which it placed on a stone in the old courtyard of Fitzford; and not until all the grass of Okehampton had been thus transported would Lady Howard's penance end! The death-coach glided noiselessly along the lonely moorland roads, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... interfere with me, at least not to any noticeable extent. He accepted my suggestions, and carried them out, but with a stubborn sullenness, a secret want of faith; and he bent everything his own way. He prized extremely every idea of his own. He got to it with difficulty, like a ladybird on a blade of grass, and he would sit and sit upon it, as though pluming his wings and getting ready for a flight, and suddenly he would fall off and begin crawling again.... Don't be surprised at these comparisons; ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... about us. The fire still raged over part of the island, which was enveloped in thick wreaths of black smoke; but to the west we caught sight of the blue sea, sparkling brightly in the sunshine, the intervening space being free from flames, though presenting a surface of black ashes, not a blade of grass apparently having escaped the conflagration. We thought, too, that we recognised a point round which the schooner had come just before dropping us in the boat. This encouraged us to hope that ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Saxe, who also made a point of giving the unfortunate cretin an object which set his eyes rolling with delight every time it was taken out. This was a large knife with a collection of odds and ends stored in the handle: toothpick, lancet blade, tweezers, screwdriver, horse-hoof picker, and corkscrew, the latter being, as Saxe said, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... looks when it lies on the table in the sheltered great floor-space between house and kitchen, and the children gathered for the sacrifice and their mouths watering; I know the crackling sound it makes when the carving-knife enters its end, and I can see the split fly along in front of the blade as the knife cleaves its way to the other end; I can see its halves fall apart and display the rich red meat and the black seeds, and the heart standing up, a luxury fit for the elect; I know how a boy looks, behind a yard-long slice of that melon, and I know how he feels; for ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a terrible thrust. It was like a sword in the bones to the recipient of the cutting words. "Dodd" reeled under them as though smitten with a veritable blade of steel. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... boys had laid bare. He immediately confirmed Fred's opinion that the coin was Roman, and also said that it was of silver, and appeared to bear the name of Constantine. Fred's piece of old iron was unmistakably the blade of a sword, but almost completely eaten away, and the bones and two skulls were directly pronounced to be human; but they crumbled away to dust ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the knife a second time, and again Rogojin snatched it from his hand, and threw it down on the table. It was a plain looking knife, with a bone handle, a blade about eight inches long, and broad in proportion, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows;—draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! Labor is Life: from the inmost ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... more of the caressing little words in various tones with which she decked her conversation,—"my kitten," "my old darling," "my bibi," "my rat," etc. A "you," cold and sharp and ironically respectful, cut like the blade of a knife through the heart of the miserable old bachelor. The "you" was a declaration of war. Instead of helping the poor man with his toilet, handing him what he wanted, forestalling his wishes, looking at him with the sort of admiration which ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... to bend under the stream, and their eyes followed the lines of the woods and looked into the burning blue of the sky, striving to read the secret there. A rim of moist earth under their feet, and above their heads the infinite blue! The stillness of the summer was in every blade of grass, in every leaf, and the pond reflected the sky and willows in hard, immovable reflections. An occasional ripple of the water-fowl in the reeds impressed upon them the mystery of ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... that you should bloom a day, and fade for ever and ever. It seems hard and sad that you will die as ordinarily as I, and be buried; be food for roots and worms, be forgotten and come to earth, and grow up a mere blade of churchyard-grass and an ivy leaf. Then, Miss Graye, when I see you are a Lovely Nothing, I pity you, and the love I feel then is better and sounder, larger and more lasting than that I felt at the beginning.' Again an ardent flash of his ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... We afterwards learned that all four of the backfield wanted to carry the ball over. Crowther reached down and plucked three blades of grass and the halfbacks and the fullback each drew one with the understanding that the one drawing the shortest blade could carry the ball. Much to their astonishment, they found that all the pieces of grass were of the same length. Crowther, who made ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Bodkin so made, as the haft being hollow, the blade thereof may slip thereinto: as soone as you holde the poynt downeward, and set the same to your forehead, and seeme to thrust it into your head: and so (with a little sponge in your hand) you may wringe out blood or wine, ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... to the family, asked permission to use a harmless charm to learn if the expected infant would be male or female. Accordingly she joined the servants at their supper, where she assisted in clearing a shoulder of mutton of every particle of meat. She then held the blade-bone to the fire until it was scorched, so as to permit her to force her thumbs through the thin part. Through the holes thus made she passed a string, and having knotted the ends together, she drove in a nail over the back door and left the house, giving strict ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... whose throbbing bosom Is hid like a maid's in her gown at night, Wake out of her sleep, and with blade and blossom Gem her garments to please my sight? Over the knoll in the valley yonder The loveliest buttercups bloomed and grew; When the snow has gone that drifted them under, Will they shoot up ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of this, he forbore to draw the dagger from the wound, though he did not fail to give it the most careful attention before turning his eyes elsewhere. It was no ordinary weapon. It was a curio from some oriental shop. This in itself seemed to point to suicide, but the direction in which the blade had entered the body and the position of the wound were not such as would be looked for in a case ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green |
