"Polishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... food processing, diamond cutting and polishing, textiles and apparel, chemicals, metal products, military equipment, transport equipment, electrical equipment, miscellaneous machinery, potash ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... Grandmother, polishing her spectacles vigorously with a corner of the plaid shawl. "Your ma," she went on, to Rosemary, "was wearin' grey when your pa brought her here to visit us. They was a surprise party—both of 'em. We didn't even know he was plannin' marriage and I don't believe he was, either. We've always thought ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... himself; and this from the mouth of a rival, could not but have been sincere and well deserved, since our equals are always the best judges of our merit.[6] Insomuch as Mary was a foreigner, she expected to be criticised with severity, and therefore applied herself with great care to the due polishing of her works. Besides, she thought, as she says herself, that the chief reward of a poet, consists in perceiving the superiority of his own performance, and its claims to public esteem. Hence the repeated ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... sat upon the van tongues cleaning harness after the rain and mud of the afternoon before. The boys were polishing the coats of the beautiful ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... and polished his little powerful spectacle-lenses. He blew his nose like a salute of one gun in the course of his polishing. When we blow our nose, we hush our pocket-handkerchief back into its home, and ignore it a little. The Baron didn't. He continued polishing on an unalloyed corner through the whole of a very perceptible amount of chat about the tricks memory plays us, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... woman was Helen now-a-days. I deplored the necessity for the graceful French governess who was polishing her into a conventional manner and preparing her for the dull routine which other girls must follow. I never analyzed my impressions of Helen then, but I am sure I considered her far above any commonplace educational needs, for I knew that she was so wise, so disciplined, so true to all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... done so, when Alice's cry of joy brought him to the door, and from that together they went into their father's study. Ellen was left alone on the lawn. Something was the matter, for she stood with swimming eyes and a trembling lip rubbing her stirrup, which really needed no polishing, and forgetting the tired horses, which would have had her sympathy at any other time. What was the matter? Only—that Mr. John had forgotten the kiss he always gave her on going or coming. Ellen was jealous of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... at breakfast, alone, next morning (Sam being busily engaged in the cobbler's room, polishing his master's shoes and brushing the black gaiters) when there came a knock at the door, which, before Mr. Pickwick could cry 'Come in!' was followed by the appearance of a head of hair and a cotton-velvet cap, both of which articles of dress he had ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... authority of Pope, backed by Bacon, that there are some beauties which cannot be taught by method, but must be reached "by a kind of felicity." It is not the less interesting to notice Pope's skill in polishing these rather rusty sayings into the appearance of novelty. In a familiar line Pope gives us the view which he would ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... of those enormous piers, roofed over, dim and cool inside, I stood one day looking out on the deck of an East Indian freighter, where two half-naked Malays were polishing the brasswork. One of them was a boy of ten. His small face was uncouth and primitive almost as some little ape's, but I saw him look up again and again with a sudden gleaming expectancy. I grew curious and waited. Now the looks came oftener, his every move ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... plan, went the next morning to pay a visit to M. de Baisemeaux. It was the cleaning up or tidying day at the Bastille: the cannons were furbished up, the staircases scraped and cleaned; and the jailers seemed to be carefully engaged in polishing even the keys themselves. As for the soldiers belonging to the garrison, they were walking about in the different courtyards, under the pretense that they were clean enough. The governor, Baisemeaux, received D'Artagnan with more than ordinary politeness, but he behaved ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... exhibiting only a benighted intelligence, represent Aztecs and Toltecs who are supposed to have possessed a liberal share of art and culture; a people, whose astronomers were able to determine for themselves the apparent motion of the sun and the length of the solar year: who had the art of polishing the hardest of precious stones; who cast choice and perfect figures of silver and gold in one piece; and who made delicate filigree ornaments without solder? These are achievements belonging to quite a high state of civilization. The ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... country. The governors of these provinces were invested with great dignity and splendor. The gubernatorial courts, if they may so be called, established centers of elegance and refinement, which it was hoped would exert a powerful influence in polishing a people exceedingly rude and uncultivated. There were also immense advantages derived from the uniform administration of justice thus established. This new division of the empire was the most comprehensive reform ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... head sunk down between a pair of long lank thighs. He looked more like the stump of a tree dressed in dirt-coloured buckskin than a human being; and had his arms not been in motion, he might have been mistaken for such an object. Both his arms and jaws were moving; the latter engaged in polishing a rib of meat which he had ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... you could not have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event, and you will be made ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... this time that he harrowed my whole soul into painful agitation by a phrase that he let fall, without, I believe, attaching any particular importance to it at the time. He was occupied, as he so often was, in polishing and burnishing my faith, and he was led to speak of the day when I should ascend the pulpit to preach my first sermon. 'Oh! if I may be there, out of sight, and hear the gospel message proclaimed from your lips, then ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the small delicate rods of vitreous substance, with which the wonders of the art are achieved. But inside of the palace are some two hundred artisans at work,—cutting the smalts and glass into the minute fragments of which the mosaics are made, grinding and smoothing these fragments, polishing the completed works, and reproducing, with incredible patience and skill, the lights and shadows of the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of feathers, such pruning of coats, Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats, Such polishing bills, and such oiling of pinions, Had never been known in the biped dominions! The Tailor-Bird[2] offer'd to make up new clothes For all the young Birdlings who wish'd to be Beaux: He made for the Robin a doublet of red, And a new velvet cap for the Goldfinch's ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... the Cat, who had begun by washing herself and polishing her claws, calmly put out her paw to the ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... gathered around Culpeper. Its efficiency, confidence, and MORALE were never better. On June 7th the entire cavalry corps was reviewed on the plain near Brandy Station in Culpeper by General Lee. We had been preparing ourselves for this event for some days, cleaning, mending and polishing, and I remember were very proud of our appearance. In fact, it was a grand sight— about eight thousand well-mounted men riding by their beloved commander, first passing by him in a walk and then a trot. He writes to my ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... to her own dinner, she left Anne with something to think about. Washing the dishes in Aunt Susan's white sink, which was fitted to that very purpose, drying them upon a rack which held every dish apart from its neighbors, and, finally, polishing the quaintly shaped pieces upon Aunt Susan's checked towel, which remained dry and spotless; opening every drawer and cupboard to see that all was left in the dainty order she had found there, Anne had a clear vision of the blue and silver furnishings ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... choice of a Stone which naturally resists the Fire, not so soft as to rub away easily, nor so hard as to endure polishing. They cut it from 16 to 18 Inches broad, and about 27 or 30 long, and 3 in thickness, and hollowed in the middle about an Inch and a half deep. This Stone should be fix'd upon a Frame of Wood or Iron, a little higher on one side than the other: ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... Grey seemed a trifle indifferent. A good-looking man doesn't last long with a clever woman. I smiled to myself, polishing my spectacles gleefully. Yet, I had no idea why ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... to be the complement of the other. Steele's writings have not the polish or delicate humor of Addison's, but they have more strength and pathos. Addison had the greater genius, and he was also more willing to spend time in polishing his prose and making it artistic. From the far greater interest now shown in Addison, the student should be impressed by the necessity of artistic finish as well as ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... means for months at a time upon carbon, either by using the electricity from a Ruhmkorff coil or the current from a weak Daniell's battery. In both cases, he obtained on the platinum wires a black powder, in which were found very small octohedral crystals, having the property of polishing rubies rapidly and perfectly—a property ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... only composed tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as respects both his years and his style to the sixth rather than the seventh century, although his poetical activity falls within the latter. He composed on the whole after the manner of his countryman, uncle, and master Ennius. Polishing more carefully and aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was regarded by favourable critics of art afterwards as a model of artistic poetry and of rich style: in the fragments, however, that have reached us proofs ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... When we see our daughters well established, and stayed with wisdom and discretion, as corner-stones are fastened in the building; when we see them by faith united to Christ as the chief corner-stone, adorned with the graces of God's Spirit, which are the polishing of that which is naturally rough, and become women professing godliness; when we see them purified and consecrated to God as living temples, we think ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... endowed with the powers of reason, able to clothe their thoughts in language, and convey their notions to each other. They rise early in the morning, and are every day employed till sunset in rubbing two smooth stones together, or, in other terms, in polishing marble." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of them, the last great passage to the unknown or oblivion; the bated whispers in which they spoke; even Sir Henry's continuous and thoughtful examination of his woodcutter's axe and the fidgety way in which Good kept polishing his eyeglass, all told the same tale of nerves stretched pretty nigh to breaking-point. Only Umslopogaas, leaning as usual upon Inkosi-kaas and taking an occasional pinch of snuff, was to all appearance perfectly and completely ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... in military array on each side of it, and a few contributed magazines in mathematical piles between two student lamps; and last, Algernon's small charging desk, with its mysterious cards and rubber stamps under one of the bracket lamps, shining from the polishing Agnes had just ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... house in which Dick found shelter. The men were away fishing, of course, but two women were there, with their fair share of the children who swarm in the Cove. At once aprons were produced for the polishing of the two rough ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... get me a bottle for him," babbled Sarah as she emerged clean and damp from Winnie's polishing and joined Richard on the step. "Hugh is going to take her to Bennington this morning and she'll buy it then. And I can bring him up by hand and teach him tricks. His name is—what is a good name ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... work is extremely unequal, but when it is at its best it is full of sweetness and strength; and though he has carefully studied the artistic capabilities of language, he never makes his form formal by over-polishing. Beauty with him seems to be an unconscious result rather than a conscious aim; his style has all the delicate charm of chance. We have already pointed out his affinity to Blake, but with Burns also he may be said to have a spiritual kinship, and in the songs ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a Divine Force as we postulate, the whole development and perfecting of life on this planet, the whole production of man, may seem little more than to any one of us would be the chipping out, the cutting, the carving, and the polishing of a gem; and we should feel as little remorse or pity for the scattered dust and fragments as must the Creative Force of the immeasurably vast universe feel for the DISJECTA MEMBRA of perfected life on this planet. . ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... night, or he may not come for a year," she said to Susan very often, when Miss Trott was a little disposed to neglect some of her duties, in the way of dusting and polishing; "but mark my words, Susan, when he does come, he'll come sudden, without so much as one line of warning, or notice enough to get a bit of dinner ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... intellect ever been perfect enough for such an exertion, it would have soared high enough also to have abstained from it. It may have been that Cicero knew well enough beforehand what the day was about to produce, so as to have prepared his reply. It may well have been that he himself undertook the polishing of his speech before it was given to the public in the words which we now read. We may, I think, take it for granted that Piso did make an attack upon him, and that Cicero answered him at once with words which crushed him, and which ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the case I wore the evening away in my boyish literary attempts, forcing my poor invention in that unnatural kind, and rubbing and polishing at my wretched verses till they did sometimes take on an effect, which, if it was not like Pope's, was like none of mine. With all my pains I do not think I ever managed to bring any of my pastorals to a satisfactory ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of Split's nature—her intense occasional domesticity and the practical good sense that marked her home economies. She rose now, basin in hand. Her sleeves were rolled up, her bushy hair, a troublesome half-length now, was bound up in a towel. She had been scrubbing and polishing the zinc under the stove, and she was as happy as she was executive. She flew about trilling "The Zingara," with a smudge on her chin and a big kitchen-apron tied about her waist, looking like a dirty little slavey; yet putting the mark ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... woman-servant at the inn, is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in panto-mimic action, that in the single moment of answering my request to have a pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing the shoes up, and laying them at my feet. I smile at the brisk little woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in the inn yard. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... while he had been kept waiting. He knew that long before his arrival every detail of his reception had been prepared and planned, and that Porter had been instructed. The whole morning had been spent in dusting, sweeping, polishing and making ready the various dishes of dainty cakes and neatly-cut sandwiches which were being spread before him. He was certain that the kindly patronage of Maisie's way of addressing Porter was ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... us all over the fort,—up an inclined plane to the top of the ramparts, and into the Indian barracks on one of the wide walls, where we saw a lot of Cheyennes and Kiowas, and Indians from other tribes, sitting around and making bows and arrows, and polishing sea-beans to sell to visitors. At each corner of the fort was a "lookout tower,"—a little box of a place, stuck out from the top of the wall, with loopholes and a long, narrow passage leading to it, with a high wall on each side to protect ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... being the wiser for all the trouble he had taken. The Frenchmen were there; but first Tom Marline came below, and then Hartland, and then the black; and the Frenchmen sat on the lockers cutting out beef bones into various shapes and polishing them. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... before a savant of the Institut de France, Leon Foucault, had just invented means by which the polishing of object-glasses became very prompt and easy by replacing the metallic mirror by taking a piece of glass the size required and ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... enter?" And the boy made room for the stranger to pass through the narrow doorway. The shop was apparently empty, except for a middle-aged man who rose from his seat on a high stool near the window, where he was busily engaged in polishing a pair of razors. As he came forward, ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... invigorating swim in the Plum. Elizabeth had done herself proud in the way of pancakes this last morning, and the boys did full justice. It was almost eight o'clock before anyone returned to the hangar with any intention of working. After barely half an hour there, chiefly spent in polishing and tightening up nuts and draw-buckles, Mr. Fulton drove them all outdoors. "Chase off and play," he insisted. "Tod and I will give her the finishing touches; then you can all come back and help us push her out into the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... they were mighty glad she had come. She was taken into the drawing-room—full of soft chairs and sofas that anybody might sit on, and with a fire of clear coals in a grate that glittered with constant polishing. But everything in Peter's establishment seemed to shine with pure cleanliness; he took after his mother, who, modest in other things, was fond of offering a sovereign to anybody who would find a cobweb ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... place at all times was that great kitchen at Beaumanoir, with its huge fireplace like a smaller room opening off the larger, and put to many other uses besides simply that of cooking;—its black oak presses and dressers and shelves all aglow with much polishing, and bright with crockery and pewter; its great hanging rack under the ceiling, laden with hams and sides of bacon and a hundred and one odds and ends of household use; and the great table in the corner weighted now with piles of currant-cake—Aunt Jeanne's gache had ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... learned to polish the antique stick to a dazzling brilliancy, its snuffers and extinguisher as well, "in case we should have an evening call," being the weekly remark that accompanied the polishing. But till now the wick of the candle thus prepared had remained white as when removed from the mold, and Alfaretta's hand trembled as she now left her ambush of black serge and tried ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... porcelain-lined, should be kept well painted and enameled, white being preferable to any color. Faucets can be kept bright by rubbing with whiting and alcohol, followed by a vigorous polishing with a bit of flannel. It surely cannot be necessary to suggest the dangers arising from an untidy sink in which refuse of various kinds—tea leaves, coffee grounds, vegetable parings, and the like—is allowed to accumulate. Unsanitary conditions about the sink not only are unsightly, ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... having collected his little audience round him, began to descant with glowing countenance on the preciousness of some fragments of a reputed Druidical font lately dug up in the crypt, two naturalists, who should have been hanging on his lips, were busy polishing up the plates and the remnants of the repast, at the water's edge, and watching their chance for a "spin" up the ruined arch of the great window. That window in its day must have been one of the finest abbey windows in England. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... asleep beneath the royal canopy. We do not pretend to say that such rhetoric is always bad, and always scatters, in places where they have no right to grow, the flowers with which it embellishes and enlivens history. But we shall, on the present occasion, carefully avoid polishing the antithesis in question, but shall proceed to draw another picture as minutely as possible, to serve as foil and counterfoil to the one in the preceding chapter. The young prince alighted from Aramis's room, in the same way the king had descended from the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... union the sequel of the accident is sometimes a false joint, composed of mere flexible cartilage, a poor pseudarthrosis. The explanation of this appears to be that, first, the sharp edges of the ends of the bone disappear by becoming rounded at their extremities by friction and polishing against each other. Then follows an exudation of a plastic nature which becomes transformed into a cartilaginous layer of a rough, articular aspect. In this bony nuclei soon appear, and the lymph secreted between the segments thus transformed, instead ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... largest nails—this received the handle; a round button at one end of the hook served for the face of the hammer. A large pebble supplied the place of an anvil, and a couple of reindeer's horns made the tongs. By the means of such tools they made two heads of spears, and, after polishing and sharpening them on stones, they tied them as fast as possible, with thongs made of reindeer's skins, to sticks about the thickness of a man's arm, which they got from some branches of trees that had been cast on shore. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... barbarians lay chiefly in their swords, with which they laid about them in a rude and inartificial manner, hacking and hewing the head and shoulders, he caused head-pieces entire of iron to be made for most of his men, smoothing and polishing the outside, that the enemy's swords, lighting upon them, might either slide off or be broken; and fitted also their shields with a little rim of brass, the wood itself not being sufficient to bear off the blows. Besides, he taught his soldiers to use their long javelins in close ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar with a heavy wooden beetle or mallet. Often the beetle is fastened to a beam and worked by foot. Or the polishing apparatus may be driven by water, oil or steam power. Constantly in the country there are seen little sheds in each of which a small polishing mill driven by a water wheel is working away by itself. After the polishing, the mangoku doshi ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... furniture; and deep under the dusty surface of the glass Barrie saw her own figure dimly reflected, like a form moving stealthily in water beneath thin ice. It half frightened her, like seeing a spirit, and she brought the gliding ghost to life by polishing the glass. This gave her back suddenly the only friend she had, herself, and she was glad of the companionship. Close to the huddled furniture stood a large trunk, a Noah's Ark of a trunk. Perhaps it was old-fashioned, but compared to other luggage stored here in the garret it was new and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... breakfast Mrs. Hunter suggested that they scour the tinware, and the three women put in the spare time of the entire morning polishing and rubbing pans and lids. As they worked, Mrs. Hunter discussed tinware, till not even the shininess of the pans upon which they worked could cover the disappointment of the girl that her mother-in-law should have discovered it ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... said Jean Lafitte, apparently mollified, and soon was at my side again. So then, we had the information we sought. I was sure my own engineer, Williams, was busy as usual below, oiling and polishing his double sixties. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... right in, Poole?" asked Fitz, as he watched the excitement of the crowd on deck, where every one of Don Ramon's followers was busy polishing up his rifle, to the great amusement of the carpenter, who slouched up to where the lads were standing. "Just look at 'em," he said. "They thinks they're soldiers; that's what they have got in their heads. Rubbing up the outsides of them ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... days which elapsed before the memorable 22nd of June passed very quickly, and we were all more or less busy making preparations for the festival. His Majesty would insist upon polishing up his regalia himself in order to do honour to the occasion, and spent hours over his crown with a piece of chamois leather and some whitening till, though somewhat battered by the rough usage it had sustained, it shone quite brilliantly. Mrs. Putchy herself suggested making his Majesty some new ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... busy as a bee all the time, scrubbing the floors, cleaning the paint, and polishing the brass-work. When the boat was ready to return to Port Rock, she was in condition to receive her furniture. She was launched early in the morning, and Ethan proceeded at once to get up steam. Both of the boys were in the highest state of expectancy ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... shoes, and the haberdasher all the other articles necessary to complete my wearing apparel in the most up-to-date style. The barber, the manicurists, and even the chiropodist had visited me and taken extra pains in polishing me off. ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... have kept you waiting, Miss Peel," she said, "but my boots were so muddy that Miss Forbes insisted on polishing ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... whatever is in hand, are brought here after pressing, and put in to get well heated through again before they are given to the finisher. Fire-polishing they call it. Here you see one just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Spenserian stanza, generally considered to be his masterpiece. In August following he caught a chill which developed into a fever, and carried him off in his 48th year. Though T. was undoubtedly a poet by nature, his art was developed by constant and fastidious polishing. To The Seasons, originally containing about 4000 lines, he added about 1400 in his various revisions. He was the first to give the description of nature the leading place, and in his treatment of his theme he showed much judgment ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... tidying up the room, and polishing of shoes was attended to after breakfast, of course without undue haste and with plenty of pauses for conversation. The manufacturer found it all much more sociable and pleasant in company than alone; he began to have very friendly feelings toward his housemate, and to congratulate himself on the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... his friend, Patrick Henry, suave, tactful and popular, exerted himself to improve Jefferson's manners and fit him for general society, attaining at last very pleasing results, although there was a certain roughness in his nature, shown in his correspondence, which no amount of polishing ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... brisk at her work around the house, cleansing and polishing, finishing to her satisfaction the tasks which Peter's impatience had forbidden the night before. All of Aunt Tillie's blue china set was carefully restored to its shelves, the napery folded away, the shiny ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... ocean, is also a submerged valley, but it has had an entirely different history from that of San Francisco Bay. The valley was at one time occupied by a great glacier which came down from the Cascade Range and moved northwest through the sound and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, scouring and polishing the rocks over which it passed. A little island near Anacortes (Fig. 36) has been rounded by the action of the ice into a form like ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... in them. They are just as careful about clothing being aired and clean. Indeed, the main item of the Brazilian woman's housekeeping is the washing. The cooking is rather happy-go-lucky; and there is no use cleaning and polishing iron ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... the rays of a torrid sun worked with Niabon at dressmaking, for she had brought with her half a dozen bolts of print; and, as they sewed, they would sometimes sing together, whilst I and my two trusty men busied ourselves about the boat—scrubbing, scraping and polishing inside and out, cleaning and oiling our arms; or, when a shoal of bonita came alongside, getting out our lines and catching as many of the blue and marbled beauties as would last us for a day or two. But our chief relaxation, in which ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... deposit. Curiously the deposit was very dark, almost black, which could not be buffed or polished bright. But by using a very small quantity of the bisulphide mixture, the plated surfaces were so bright that the use of polishing mops or buffs could be almost dispensed with. When we consider the amount of labor required in polishing a nickel plated article, and the impossibility of finishing off bright an undercut surface, this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... hand, Julia, the slim chambermaid, who would have been delighted with such employment, and who would have undoubtedly refreshed herself on each excursion upstairs with a lengthened gaze from the window, was condemned to the polishing of silver and dusting of plates and glass in an obscure back pantry, which contained but one window, and that commanding a prospect of ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... work faithfully according to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon's instructions when they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3] Later editors have restored the omitted passages and scrupulously reproduced Clarendon's own words. But no edition has yet reproduced his spelling. In the characters printed in this volume ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... Germans knew they were beaten. The rage of the great defeat, of the incredible disappointment, was on them. Only a week before, they had passed through the same country-side crying "Nach Paris!" and polishing up buttons, belts, rifles, accoutrements generally, so as to enter the French capital in grande tenue. For whatever might have been the real plans of the German General Staff, the rank and file, as they came south from ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... author with a little more reverence and respects than commonly men reade profane and humane Workes: sometimes considering him by his actions and wonders of his greatnesse, and other times waighing the puritie and inimitable polishing and elegancie of his tongue, which (as Cicero saith) hath not onely exceeded all historians, but haply Cicero himselfe: with such sinceritie in his judgement, speaking of his enemies, that except the false colours wherewith he goeth about to cloake his ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... much stock. The new shelves showed a row of biscuit-tins, but little else, and from the ceiling hung balls of string. On the counter lay an inviting round of boiled beef. Odours of provisions and of fresh paint were strong in the air. Every thing gleamed from resent scrubbing and polishing; the floor only emphasised its purity by a little track where a child's shoes had brought in mud from the street; doubtless it had been washed over since the Sunday morning's custom had subsided. Wherever the walls would have confessed their bareness the ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... a mere puppet in his hands, leaving all state affairs to his guidance, while he himself passed his time in hunting, polishing muskets, writing military memoirs, or wandering from one palace to another in search of amusement. Perpetually surrounded by favourites, he valued them only as they contributed to his selfish gratification, and abandoned them ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... vessel with such implements—it being, legs and bowl, in one piece—must have taken long months. Then came the filing down with strips of shark skin, which had first been softened, and then allowed to dry and contract over pieces of wood, round and flat; then the final polishing with the rough underside of wild fig-leaves, and then its final presentation, with such ceremony, to the chief who had ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... has parts, but as I told you before, they want a little polishing. You must not take ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... man grinned at me and set to work polishing the knob of the wheel-house door, and not until that minute did I realize that he had come along with us in the Kut Sang. And he likewise reminded me at once that it was I who ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... Tally, "you've been polishing up the flames of hell for four days pretty steady. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a marksman of you in exchange for your—your trouble in teaching me how to use the gloves," he said, polishing furiously. There was a twinkle in his eyes, as if a moment before he had been laughing to himself. The gloves were on the table. He had been examining them again, and David found himself smiling at the childlike and eager interest he had taken in them. Suddenly Father ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as himself, and saying 'Rather early!'—just as you set me off by saying ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... up and about his room early. The odor of baking muffins and frying ham came up the stair-well, and the sound of Mike vigorously polishing the floor in the hall. Mixed with the odor of cooking and of floor wax was the scent of flowers from Lucy's room, and Mrs. Sayre's machine stopped at the door while the chauffeur delivered a great mass ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... after breakfast. The chill had been taken off, and by mid-day the sun was in its full power. Each sustained the other by a desperate cheerfulness. When they took their morning walk in the Luxembourg Gardens—what time the blue-aproned Jacques was polishing their waxed floors with his legs for broom-handles—they went into ecstasies over everything, drawing each other's attention to the sky, the trees, the water. And, indeed, of a sunshiny morning it was heartening to sit by the pond and watch the wavering ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... interrupted by the sharper rattle of some canal boat loading or disloading, or, perhaps, some fierce explosion when the cannon founders [qy: the proof-house] are proving their new-made ware. I have seen their rolling-mills, their polishing of teapots, and buttons and gun-barrels, and lire-shovels, and swords, and all manner of toys and tackle. I have looked into their ironworks where 150,000 men are smelting the metal in a district a few miles to the north: their coal mines, fit image, of Arvenus; their ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... McConkey's wife, assuming for the moment that he had not abstained from matrimony as he had from tobacco, shared his joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears, heartened him for his daily toil, would join no doubt in polishing the muzzle of the machine gun. So Lady Moyne in her gorgeous raiment, sustained Lord Moyne, her man. That was the suggestion of the possessive pronoun, and the audience was not allowed to miss it. Poor Moyne did miss it, for he was nearly asleep in a chair. But McConkey's wife ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... his plain ways are the disadvantages under which this type labors in social intercourse. He needs polishing and is not inclined to take it. His pugnacity is also a ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... necessary as care in the preparation of viands. Really successful hosts and hostesses take as much precaution against fatalities in conversation as against those which offend the palate. While attending carefully to the polishing of the crystal and to the preparing of the menu which will make their table a delight, they remember that the intellect of their guests must be satisfied no less than their ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... with his new friend till twelve o'clock. Then they went out into the yard, and finally Mr. Clinton stayed to luncheon. But I held my peace, and made Alice hold hers. Mr. Clinton went away in the afternoon, but Philip got the plate-powder and wash-leather, and occupied himself in polishing the silver fittings ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... coarse and fine gravel, so that it forms in reality a gigantic rasp, with sides hundreds of feet deep, and a surface thousands of feet wide and many miles in length, grinding over the bottom and along the walls between which it moves, polishing, grooving, and scratching them as it passes onward. One who is familiar with the track of this mighty engine will recognize at once where the large boulders have hollowed out their deeper furrows, where small pebbles have drawn their finer marks, where the stones ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... latter. It should, however, be recognized that much of the depth of colour of old oak panelling is really nothing but dirt, though the true dark brown tint of old age can be found underneath, and right to the centre of each piece. Spring-cleaning of the past consisted very much in polishing with beeswax and turpentine, without removing the dirt produced by smoky fires and constant handling, so that extraneous matter became coated with the polish and preserved beneath it. I have had occasion, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... received a fashionable education, and had mixed with society, and had lived in St. Petersburg, you would still have been just the kulak [26] that you are. The only difference is that circumstances, as they stand, permit of your polishing off a stuffed shoulder of mutton at a meal; whereas in St. Petersburg you would have been unable to do so. Also, as circumstances stand, you have under you a number of peasants, whom you treat well for the reason that they are your property; whereas, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... if he were so. He is the son of one of my father's friends; and as he is to be educated by my father for a civil post, he is boarded in our family. He is a kind of 'diamant brute,' and requires polishing in more senses than one; in the mean time I fancy his wild temper is in a fair way of being tamed. One word from our mother makes impression upon him; and he is actually more regardful of the ungracious demeanour of our little ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... unquestionably very ill. Sarah had been quite right in telegraphing so peremptorily to Hilda; and if she had not so telegraphed she would have been quite wrong. On the previous day she had been sitting on the cold new oilcloth of the topmost stairs, minutely instructing a maid in the craft of polishing banisters. And the next morning an attack of acute sciatica had supervened. For a trifling indiscretion Sarah was thus condemned to extreme physical torture. Hilda had found her rigid on the bed. She suffered the severest pain in the small of the back ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... taking note of everything as he went along. Here he saw a group of soldiers resting after some evidently heavy work. There another group were arranging their accoutrements and polishing their weapons as they rested in the shade of a broken wall that had withstood the heavy hammering of the immense German guns during the days ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... his stand at the foot of the bed. In the adjoining room sat Lennox Tudor, watching ceaselessly, expectantly, it seemed to Piers. Behind him moved a nurse, noiselessly intent upon polishing something that flashed like silver every time it caught ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... steel, and applied by the embossing press with a rapidity far exceeding that of the hand-work formerly executed by the gilders of books. But for choice books and select jobs, only the hands are employed, with such fillets, stamps, pallets, rolls, and polishing irons as may aid in the nice execution of the work. If a book is to be bound in what is called "morocco antique," it is to be "blind-tooled," i. e.: the hot iron wheels which impress the fillets or rolls, are to be worked in blank, or without gold-leaf ornamentation. This is a rich and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... in that matther. No; a bright Irish nag, with lots of heart, like Brien Boru, is the hoss to stand on for the Derby; where all run fair and fair alike, the best wins;—but I won't say but he'll be the betther for a little polishing ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... his new duties that he now felt extremely uncomfortable and ill-at-ease in a room that had been like home to him for thirty years. He seemed to feel that this was no place for the furnace-man, notwithstanding the scouring and polishing process that temporarily had restored him to a more exalted office,—for once more he was the smug, ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... to what?" muttered the husband, polishing off his watery highball. "—To a great big beautiful cloud of atomic fallout, that's what. Don't laugh either, because everything points that way and you know it. Sputniks and ICBMs zooming around, both sides stockpiling like crazy, half the world scrapping as it is. It's just a question of who ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... say that for ye, young shore-loafer, that you've learnt that the best part of polishing-paste is elbow-grease. It wasn't all parley-voo and the pianner ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the village he came upon California John. The old man had turned Star into the corral, and was at this moment seated on a boulder, smoking his pipe, and polishing carefully the silver inlay of his Spanish spade-bit. Thorne stopped and examined him closely, coming finally to the worn brass ranger's badge pinned to the old man's suspenders. California John did not cease ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... should be calcined. By means of this enormous engine I was enabled to send a powerful current of electricity continually through my great diamond, which it seemed to me gained in lustre every day. At the expiration of a month I commenced the grinding and polishing of the lens, a work of intense toil and exquisite delicacy. The great density of the stone, and the care required to be taken with the curvatures of the surfaces of the lens, rendered the labor the severest and most harassing ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... could hardly see you ourselves. You better drop a postcard next time. I was just in the middle of a dream that the trestle was done and I was cashing the check in Winnipeg in thousand-dollar bills, after polishing off a few bohunks for a real bang-up finale. Then in booms Conrad here and grabs the rifle, and I wake up with the feeling them bohunks are doing the polishing on me. I was mighty near scared. By the way, we wanted ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... every one until its rough unpleasant edges were all nicely smoothed away and it glittered and shone like the gem that it was. For Roger was an idealist. And so he would have liked to do here. What a gem could be made of Isadore with a little careful polishing. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... took his way toward the waterfront and into "Jack the Sailor's." Cooper, who had earned this nickname, stood behind a counter of rough boards polishing its top with a much soiled towel. He hailed the newcomer eagerly. "Hello, Alvin Potts! What brought you here? And how ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... first article of furniture which should be brought into the house is a well-equipped tool-chest, and the first room which should be fitted up is the workshop. A vast amount of labor will be saved thereby in unpacking, adjusting, repairing, and polishing the old and the new household articles, so that life in the new home be begun under the favorable auspices of the great household deity, the Goddess of Order. When it is further considered that often small repairs made by a carpenter cost more than a new article, the tool-chest will be valued ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... much of a letter; I meant to have written a lot—but I've been hemming four window curtains and three portieres (I'm glad you can't see the length of the stitches), and polishing a brass desk set with tooth powder (very uphill work), and sawing off picture wire with manicure scissors, and unpacking four boxes of books, and putting away two trunkfuls of clothes (it doesn't seem believable that Jerusha Abbott owns two trunks full of clothes, but she does!) ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... Joel, shaking his head. "'Tis 'witched he be! You'll mind what I told ye, Cap'n—the poor lady as died raving mad aboard the 'Delight,' how she died cursing him wi' life. And him standing by a-polishing o' that hook o' his—ah, Cap'n, I'll never forget the work o' that same hook ... many's the time ... Bartlemy's prisoners ... men and women ... aboard that cursed 'Ladies' Delight!' By cock, I dream on't sometimes and wake all ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... great contrition to the castle of Roche-Corbon and the first person he met was the seneschal, who was polishing up his arms, helmets, gauntlets, and other things. He was sitting on a great marble bench in the open air, and was amusing himself by making shine again the splendid trappings which brought back to him the merry pranks in the Holy Land, the good jokes, and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... up from the Refectory, Mary Antony chanced to be polishing the panelling around the picture of Saint Mary Magdalen, beside the door of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Sevres dinner-set was had out, which that traveler Timothy had brought from Paris among other things, and the best cut glass and rat-tailed silver. Old William, assisted by Hester and Priscilla, had been busy polishing most of the day—while the cook and the "young person from the village" were contriving wonders in the vast kitchen. And punctually at seven in broad daylight, the three Misses La Sarthe, the two elder in their finest mauve silk evening dresses, awaited their guests ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Fancy has here amused itself by composing interminable arabesques where the most fantastic figures wind and twine. All forms are here. The imagination is at last fatigued by this vast gallery of abnormal shapes, where in stormy weather the sea makes rough assaults which have ended in polishing all ruggedness. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... sloping from either side to the Channel, which convey'd the Water under Ground; they laid a Bed of Coal upon the first Mortar, and having beaten them well, they cover'd them with another Cement or Mortar made of Lime, Sand and Ashes, which they made smooth when it was dry with a Polishing-Stone. These Floors presently drank up the Water that fell upon them, that one might walk barefoot without being incommoded ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... door and found himself face to face with Da Souza's one clerk—a youth of unkempt appearance, shabbily but flashily dressed, with sallow complexion and eyes set close together. He was engaged at that particular moment in polishing a large diamond pin upon the sleeve of his coat, which operation he suspended to gaze with much astonishment at this unlocked-for visitor. Trent had come straight from Ascot, straight indeed from his interview with Francis, and was still wearing ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "the crystals, the Oriental fabrics, the gold and bronze medals, the lace for dowagers, the polychromatic sculpture, the painted porcelain," which had been produced in the workshops of his various colleagues. He pictured himself "in the corner of a vast factory of letters, mending old tapestry, or polishing up rusty halberds."—Such a conception of the artist as a good workman, thinking only of the perfection of his craft, was not without an element of greatness. But it did not satisfy Christophe: and while he admitted in it a certain professional dignity, he had a contempt for the poor quality ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... men and women did not move about, they looked as if they might, if they were only bigger. Overholt had seen the population in the window of a German toy-shop one day when he was in New York to get a new crocusing wheel for polishing some of the small parts of the engine. They were the smallest doll-people he had ever seen, and were packed by dozens and dozens in Nuremberg toy-boxes, and cost very little, so he bought a quantity of them. At ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... said Anne. "Gloves. You just ought to see her shoe-polishing her rusty finger-tips. And she looks like she likes herself so much better when she has a ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... mentioned, had already at this time become the home of the diamond industry. The art of cutting and polishing diamonds was a secret process brought to the city on the Y by Portuguese Jews, who were expelled by Philip II; and in Amsterdam their descendants still retain a peculiar skill and craftmanship that is unrivalled. Jewish ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... plan provided for and embraced the supplementing of agricultural work by a series of allied manufactures, such as naturally grew out of the needs of the farm: carpentering, blacksmithing, machine work and repairing, furniture making, turning, polishing, painting, staining and general wood working and finishing, pattern making, broom and brush making, a factory for spinning rope and cordage, basket and all kinds of osier weaving, brick making, pottery and all kinds of clay or porcelain work; together ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... mind then. Our meetings were not very frequent, I think. As I chiefly recall them, they occurred in the wide but rather dark entrance hall, and were accompanied by conversation confined to Amelia and my father. At such times he would be engaged in polishing his hat, sometimes with a velvet pad, and sometimes on his coat-sleeve. I used to hear ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... lighting, with every facility for flexibility and convenience in connecting and control, electricity may be absolutely depended upon today for washing, wringing, drying and ironing the clothes, for sweeping and dusting, for polishing, for cleaning silver and brightwork, for all cooking, for such culinary processes as beating eggs, mixing bread, grinding meat or coffee, turning the ice cream freezer or sharpening knives, or, on emergency, for heating or cooling the house. And (contrary to popular belief), in most of ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... This excellent stable has no flooring but a packed layer of chalk laid on the ground; and the wooden manger is all polished and shining, where it has been rubbed by the noses of ten thousand horses since the great war. That polishing was helped, perhaps, by the nose of Percy's horse, and perhaps by the nose of some wheeler who in his time had dragged the guns back aboard, retreating through the night after Corunna. It is in every way a stable that ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... drifted farther and farther from the Jewish creed, and at length openly abandoned it; this exposed him to a persecution which threatened his life, so that he left Amsterdam and finally settled at The Hague, where, absorbed in philosophic study, he lived in seclusion, earning a livelihood by polishing optical glasses, which his friends disposed of for him; his days were short; he suffered from ill-health, and died of consumption when he was only 44; he was a man of tranquil temper, moderate desires, purity of motive, and kindly in heart; his great work, his "Ethica," was published a year ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for she might have gained far more credit by concentrating her energies on a few, but for the ultimate good of the school it was undoubtedly far and away the best policy to pursue. The training of a number of recruits may not be as interesting as the polishing up of champions, but in time recruits become veterans, and a school in which the standard of the ordinary play is very high has a better general chance than one that depends on an occasional solitary star. So ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... is my duty to inform you that the man or woman who drinks water from that spring is swallowing millions of tiny flint knives, hard as diamond dust—indeed, diatomaceous earth is used commercially as a polishing powder." ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the more considerable business at the northern end of the desert; in other words, that we should shortly be on the move again. And for once the prophets were right, for suddenly there was a great to-do in the camp; such a polishing of guns and a burnishing of stirrup-irons and bits and chains, such a cleaning of harness and saddlery as had never ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... "Ah polishing one's plate—that's the torment of execution!" he exclaimed, jerking himself up and sitting forward. "The effort to arrive at a surface, if you think anything of that decent sort necessary—some people don't, happily for them! My dear fellow, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... conceits and ornamental fashion. Nor must we despise them when we reflect upon their power of accretion. The Gallionellae, invisible to the naked eye, can, of their heraldic shields and flinty armor, make two cubic feet of Bilin polishing slate in four days. By straining sea-water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illuminated by their play of self-generated electric light, has been collected. Humboldt and Ehrenberg speak of their voracity, their power of discharging electricity at will, and their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... again. Pringle's mind was made up. He would read the printed poem that very night, and before retiring to rest he would have Lorimer's verses complete and ready to be sent in for judgement to the examiner. But for the present he would dismiss the matter from his mind, and devote himself to polishing off the Charchester champions in the fifth and final test match. And in this he was successful, for just as the bell rang, summoning the players in to a well-earned tea, a sweet forward drive from his walking-stick ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... he that his fellows should thrive, While you are abusing him thus, even now He would help either one of you out of a dough; You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse But remember that elegance also is force; After polishing granite as much as you will, The heart keeps its tough old persistency still; Deduct all you can that still keeps you at bay, Why, he'll live till men weary ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... steamer is her machinery, and at all hours of the day men may be seen polishing it with balls of cotton "waste," till it shines like silver; but if you venture to touch the glittering surface, you find it burning hot, and scorch your fingers pretty smartly. One day Frank was polishing ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... glinted: "But if he likes it—and he has always acted as if he did—then why? why? why—?" She spread out the palms of her plump, white little hands, making the dramatic inquiry of Emily, who, with a black rag dipped in whitening, was polishing the "brights," as she called her ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... The instrument had been unpacked and placed in the living-room in Echo's absence. Mrs. Allen, Polly, and Jim rode over to be present at the presentation. The donors gathered in the living-room to admire the gift, which shone bravely under the energetic polishing of Mrs. Allen. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Landers always were to infringe upon the observance of the Sabbath, they were nevertheless compelled on Sunday, May 30th, to submit to the mortification of cleaning and polishing a sword and pistol, which were sent them for that purpose by the king, against the approaching mahommedan festival. Yarro shortly afterwards sent them a turkey, and one of his women presented them with a roasted badger, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... you have on your shoulders your beadle's robe, and spend all your time reading your breviary. But I give you warning that if in polishing your chapel utensils you forget how to brighten up my sword, I will make a great fire of your blessed images and will see that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wistfully, as he polished the young gentlemen's boots for the last time before their departure. The friends were smoking a last pipe by the kitchen fire of the cottage where Mrs. Archer lived in her husband's old parish, among the people who had loved him. Jack was polishing the boots close to them, pausing every now and then to exchange a word with his "wichel," whom he had nursed as an infant, petted and scolded as a schoolboy, and shielded from punishment on innumerable occasions. His "wichel" was now a huge young man, taller ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... compelled to lay claim to a poet's license. It must, however, be borne in mind that in a letter to me just before his death, he expressed his intention of going entirely through the work afresh, on receiving my prose, adding that it needed "a power of polishing." ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... has been cleaned with the brush it may be allowed to cool and finished to the desired shape, size and surface by filing and polishing. When filed, a very thin line of brass should appear where the crack was at the beginning of the work. If it is desired to avoid a square shoulder and fill in an angle joint to make it rounding, the filling is best accomplished by winding a coil of very thin brass wire around the ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... eighteenth century were Pope, Thomson, Collins, and Gray. Pope towers above all of them by a head and shoulders, because he was much more fertile than any, and because he worked so hard and so untiringly at the labour of the file— at the task of polishing and improving his verses. But the vein of poetry in the three others— and more especially in Collins— was much more pure and genuine than it was in Pope at any time of his life— at any period of his writing. Let us look at each of these writers ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... all up, and be polishing their plates like so many Tom-cats," Michael said, indicating their potential patronage by waving his hand toward the courtyard. "Here comes Miss Betty, now. She'll be after lending a ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... good bacon pig?" screamed Isel to a fat butcher, who was polishing a knife upon a ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... is ours. The Indian poet Calidas says in the Sacontala: "Perhaps the sadness of men on seeing beautiful forms and hearing sweet music arises from some faint remembrance of past joys, and the traces of connections in a former state of existence." As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music. That harmony which exists naturally between the hero's moods and the universe the soldier would ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pressure until the metal is completely cooled. The results are so much like those of tempering that he calls his process tempering by compression. The compressed metal becomes exceedingly hard, acquiring a molecular contraction and a fineness of grain such that polishing gives it the appearance of polished nickel. Compressed steel, like tempered steel, acquires the coercitive force which enables it to absorb magnetism. This property should be studied in connection with its durability; experiments have already shown that there is no loss of magnetism at the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... in his hand his pond'rous spear he bore, Twelve cubits long; bright flash'd the weapon's point Of polish'd brass, with circling hoop of gold. There in his chamber found he whom he sought, About his armour busied, polishing His shield, his breastplate, and his bended bow. While Argive Helen, 'mid her maidens plac'd, The skilful labours of their hands o'erlook'd. To him thus Hector with reproachful words; "Thou dost not well thine anger to indulge; In battle round ...
— The Iliad • Homer |
