"Tack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tack this to my other fragment, and then, I trust, I shall not be a defaulter in correspondence. I own I am become an indolent poor creature: but is that strange? With seventy-five years over my head, or on the point of being so; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... tack, of course her sisters were silenced. They quited her a little, and then went down and searched the house ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the catch refused to catch, so he was compelled to shut the window and leave the swinging blind at the mercy of the wind. He then improvised a screen from a high-backed chair and an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon—or should I say alarm the angel?—of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the slumber of the just, undisturbed by ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... his eyes on the moving rays as he held the launch on her seaward tack. The light was moving nearer, but its beams were paling. The cutter evidently had not moved from her anchorage. Doubtless she would be kept fully occupied at the goose-neck. The next instant the fog-wall ahead dripped in ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... were of her list, and had agreed to be patronesses, when lo and behold! Lady Conyngham, not having been sent to by the Duchess of Richmond, took offence, and set up a new list, placing the King at the head, whom she commanded to go, and all these ladies turned tack directly, abandoned the Duchess, and are now of the new Government—a pretty semblance of what might occur in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... considerate or even kind. But she challenged him—perhaps unconsciously—and once or twice had come near making him feel small.—Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant—such at least was his experience—where a personable youth is concerned. It only ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... now,' said he soothingly, holding up his hand, 'don't do that! You're on the wrong tack, Mister, 'deed you are. There's another guess a comin' to you. It ain't money we want this time, no, siree! Money don't cut no ice this trip, though it is a mighty handy thing to have a jinglin' in your jeans—ain't it? No, it ain't the "sinews," as Jim McGubbin calls ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... harangue the Duke from the opposite side lifted up his finger, and said loud enough to be heard, 'Now take care what you say next.' As if panic-struck, Brougham broke off, and ran upon some other tack. The House is so narrow, that Lords can almost whisper to each other across it, and the menacing action and words of the Duke reached Brougham at once. This odd anecdote rests upon much concurrent evidence. Alvanley told it ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the tiger comin', for he turned as pale as death; but he didn't look at him, and never stirred tack or sheet. He stuck right on to the spokes, and steered her as true as a die; and well he did, for if he hadn't, we'd a broached to in five seconds, and that would a been wuss than the tiger. Well, the cussed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... larboard tack, and, for the last half hour, it was perceived that the tide had turned, and was setting to the northward; this was our last and only chance, for the rocks were not more than half a mile under our lee, and as it was necessary to get the ship's head round ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... look at me? Would I have dared to speak to him? If I know him, it is only because I have seen him, from afar off, walk the quarter-deck with the other officers, a cigar in his mouth, after a good meal, while we in the forecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten hard-tack." ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... mast was easily dragged down again to the beach to be once more a mast, and in nervous haste, yet with skill and thoroughness, the tent was ripped up and remade into a sail, and even a rude centreboard was rigged in order that one might tack against ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... product-tables arrange pieces of sugar cane, samples of raw, loaf, granulated, and powdered sugar, and of molasses. If possible to secure the stalks of sugar cane, have short lengths to be sold for consumption—as in Puerto Rico. Near the table, tack up pictures of sugar plantations and mills. Have the coffee-berry and beans, ground coffee, cups of coffee prepared as a drink, and pictures of the tree, fruit, and coffee plantations; also secure specimens ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... does not lie that way; for what should she do at the coast of Africa in this latitude, which should be as far south as Congo or Angola? But as soon as it is dark, that we would lose sight of her, she will tack and stand away west again for the Brazil coast and for the bay, where thou knowest she was going before; and are we not, then, running away from her? I am greatly in hopes, friend," says the dry, gibing creature, "thou wilt turn Quaker, for I see ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... all, for had I, my letter would have been too late. He said nothing about the cabinet, but offered me a high post in his government, provided I could secure my seat. That was impossible. During the month I was in town I had realised that. I thought it best, therefore, at once to try the other tack, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Papistical books, and learn such tricks from them?" It was in vain for Gratian to endeavour to explain. Miss Prateapace had but one notion of the Romans—that there never was one that had not kissed the Pope's toe. So here he very wisely took another tack, and drawing her a little aside, as if he would not have even the very hedges hear him, and with no little affected caution, looking about him, he said, in a half whisper—"Now let me, my dear young lady, tell you a bit of a secret. All this is an idle tale, and is just as I have told ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... second long, long weeks and months of the new year. An unspoken horror was staring them all in the face: navigation did not open when expected, and supplies were running low, pitifully low. The smoked and dried meats, the canned things, flour, sealed lard, oatmeal, hard-tack, dried fruits—everything was slowly but inevitably giving out day upon day. Before and behind them stretched hummocks of trailless snow. Not an Indian, not a dog train, not even a wild animal, had set foot in that waste ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... wanting some pictures," said she. "Tack these up somewhere. They'll brighten up the room and ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... wind so exactly as to be able to form in a line ahead when required, especially in a dark night with a strong breeze; and it must be evident that any ship which advanced at all ahead of the others could never get into the line of battle when the signal was made to form it on either tack. Moreno seems to have been fully aware of the probability of the ships firing into each other, yet he made arrangements of all others the least likely to prevent it. Had he formed into two lines ahead, with the disabled ships in advance, he would have obviated ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... this, pinning it up carefully with a drawing-tack and then after making sure that everything was secure I started off for ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... with its long passages and large rooms, was full of those nameless sounds which fill the air in the quiet of night. He heard his father's footsteps as he paced up and down in his study, he heard the tick-tack of the old clock on the stairs, the bureau creaked, the candle spluttered, but there was no human voice to break the silence, With a yawn he rose, stretching his long legs, and, throwing back his broad shoulders, made his way ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... couldn't give him up no easier than I could. And I'll tell the world to its face that if anybody gets this kid now they've pretty near got to fight for him. It ain't right, and it ain't honest. It's stealing to keep him, and I never stole a brass tack in my life before. But he's mine as long as I live and can hang on to him. And that's where I stand. I ain't hidin' behind no kind of alibi. The old squaw did tell me his folks was dead; but if you'd ask me, I'd say she was lying when she said it. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... comrade to escape, when, looking over the ramparts, I beheld the enemy so close that I could see their teeth as they bit the cartridges, and General Pike, on the right wing, cheering them on—so gallant and bold. I was a-feared I would be nabbed as a prisoner, and sent to eat Uncle Sam's hard-tack in the hulks at Sackett's Harbour, when, all of a sudden, the ground trembled like the earthquakes I have felt in the West Indies; then a volcano of fire burst up to the sky, and, in a minute, the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... east, the wind was at southwest. We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather braces and lifts; we set in the lee braces, and hauled forward by the weather bowlings, and hauled them tight and belayed them, and hauled over the mizzen tack to wind-ward and kept her full and by, as near as she ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... left, the men took the opposite tack and were very fulsome in their praise of Jim. Wanted him to drink with them and all that sort of cheap comradeship, but he would have none of their game and got out as soon ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... was begun the language of the seas. Upon the Italian main the words "tack" and "sheet," "prow" and "poop," were first heard; and those most important terms by which the law of the marine highway is given,—"starboard" and "larboard." For if, after the Italian popular method, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... much of late?" he asked, that being a natural question to follow her reference to her studio. He was, indeed, relieved that the conversation had got on so definite a tack and that she had not alluded to his avoidance of her family or reproached ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... replied Brass, in a very grave manner, 'he'll not serve his case this way, and really, if you feel any interest in him, you had better advise him to go upon some other tack. Did I, sir? Of course I ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... know; for no ship is always in the same tack. Men change their minds as often as girls; and if you coax the old boy handsomely, when you bid him good-night, my compass to your distaff, he'll ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Trimmers the more moderate sort of tories. It seems those politicians are odious to both sides; for neither own them to be theirs. We know them, and so does he too in his conscience, to be secret whigs, if they are any thing; but now the designs of whiggism are openly discovered, they tack about to save a stake; that is, they will not be villains to their own ruin. While the government was to be destroyed, and there was probability of compassing it, no men were so violent as they; but since their fortunes ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... as all mankind Beats up against that universal wind Whereon like withered leaves all else is blown Down one wide way to death: the soul alone, Whether at last it wins, or faints and fails, Stems the dark tide with its intrepid sails. Close-hauled, with many a short tack, struggled and strained, North-west, South-west, the ships; but ever Westward gained Some little way with every tack; and soon, While the prows plunged beneath the grey-gold noon, Lapped by the crackling ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... came as grateful as water to a thirsty land—or, to use a parallel which those who had been accustomed to living on board ship will readily appreciate, as pleasant to the taste as fresh bread, or "soft tack," when one has been eating nothing but hard sea biscuits for some ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the tragedies of Shakespeare; the effect indeed may be seen by comparing, with some of the noblest speeches of the latter, the few couplets which he seems to have considered himself bound by custom to tack on to their close, at the end of a scene ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... at the hour of noon the happy signals indicating the sight of land were to be seen. Soon the charming coast of Long Island came into the view of all and great shouts of joy were wafted across the waters towards it from this swimming city. Carefully did the fleet tack during the night because the water was becoming ever more shallow. On the next morning, the 12th of August, an English squadron of 24 vessels was seen from the ocean and this, after a few hours, united with the ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... for the larboard tack. I can see what she's been doing. She's been re'ching close in to avoid the flood tide, as the wind is to the sou'-west, and she's bound down; but as soon as the ebb made, d'ye see, they made sail to the west'ard. Captain Hardy may be depended upon for that; he knows every current ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... on her knees, her calico dress sleeves, patched and darned, but absolutely clean, rolled back, uncovering a pair of plump, strong arms, a saucer of tacks before her, and a tack hammer with a claw head in her hand. She was taking up the carpet. Grace Van Horne, Captain Eben Hammond's ward, who had called to see if there was anything she might do to help, was removing towels, tablecloths, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Noah's ark, as there is no one to take the place of Noah. In other lines trade may follow the flag, but in the Noah's ark industry it follows a belief in Noah and is known to every flag that has ever waved, paying allegiance to no particular banner. Before these fatiguing divines drive even a tack into Noah's coffin, let them provide us with a personage of equal interest and influence. If they are not permitted to move further in their scheme of destruction until they do this, Noah is safe. They can only try to ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... immediately made, and each of the British cruisers started off in pursuit of one of the strangers. Our concern is with the Vincejo, a brig of eighteen guns, commanded by Captain Long, which happened, from her position, to be the most advanced in the chase. She was standing off-shore on the larboard tack, with her head to the south-west, when the chase was discovered somewhat to leeward, standing nearly due west, with the wind on her starboard-quarter. The latter was a smart-looking ship of 600 or 700 tons, displaying no colours; though from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... him the lie; but he ran at the same time to the bulwarks, and so did they all. I have never seen so many drunken men struck suddenly sober. The cruiser had gone about, upon our impudent display of colours; she was just then filling on the new tack; her ensign blew out quite plain to see; and even as we stared, there came a puff of smoke, and then a report, and a shot plunged in the waves a good way short of us. Some ran to the ropes, and got the Sarah round with an incredible swiftness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them lie—they are Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but one brave man among them—he appeared a Roman—a youth who turned back, though wounded. They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... method in his madness. It was not his intention to rush upon destruction, so certain as that would have been; and before the Pandora had sailed three cables' length in its new direction, she was seen to tack round, till the wind lay upon her beam and her bowsprit once more pointed ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... his personal affairs. He believes that the greatest crime in the world is to be found out, whether in business or in love. There was nothing perhaps to hide in a biography of his daily work, but it was the wrong tack ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Ocean Star, swung his main-yard aback and hailed; but while the bold buccaneer was doing this, Captain Lane had performed an equally sea-manlike manoeuvre. He caught his sails aback, and his vessel having stern way, he shifted his helm, backed her round, and, filling away on the other tack, stood ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... why you always do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... through town to our house, where I went in, leaving him outside so as not to disturb mother. There I got me a hammer and nails with the heavy lead sinker offen my fishnet, and it wasn't long before the finest tick-tack you ever saw was working against the Spiegelnails' parlor window, with me in a lilac-bush operating the string that kept the weight a-swinging. Before the house was an open spot where the moon shone full ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water)—the fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the unavoidable, as we sat at our evening meal, that man, whose slightest movement I dreaded, after putting down the dishes ran up on deck busily. This could not be dangerous. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... realizing sense of what the devil is doing for it. To see BISMARCK feeding on shrimps with anchovy sauce, and drinking champagne, while TROCHU and JULES FAVRE fight domestic treason within the walls, and the Prussians without, upon stomachs that feebly digest Parisian "hard tack" and gritty vin ordinaire, is enough to make the spirit of liberty lay over the mourner's bench and perpetrate a perfect Niagara of tears. When FLOURENS bagged the whole government at the Hotel ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... fresh bread was issued with our rations, which was a luxury to the boys so long kept on "hard tack." February 19th, fired a rousing salute on hearing of the occupation of Charleston by the Union forces. On the 22d, celebrated Washington's ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy
... feet and snapped his fingers rapidly. Had he sat on a tack his rebound could not have been more sudden. This last ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... rocks. It was the most beautiful yet fearful sight I ever beheld; and the sea was surging over our little vessel so as to threaten to fill her: but the hatches were battoned down; we were lying-to on a right tack, and a hawser had been passed round the bits in order to sustain the foremast, in case we lost our bowsprit, as we expected to do every instant. But in twenty minutes the gale moderated, and we bore up for Falmouth, which we reached ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... buy strawberries in baskets very cheap, partly because the baskets cost very little for labor. The man who tacks them together uses a magnetized tack hammer. This magnetic tack hammer picks up the tacks of its own accord, and the man drives them in the basket as fast as he can touch the magnet to the heads of the tacks and strike ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... stands engraved, was to be in action from the beginning to the end, and in a continued subject, which in my opinion, afforded very agreeable representations. But when I proposed this idea at the opera-house, nobody would so much as hearken to me, and I was obliged to tack together music and dances in the usual manner: on this account the divertissement, although full of charming ideas which do not diminish the beauty of scenes, succeeded but very middlingly. I suppressed the recitative of Jelyotte, and substituted my own, such as I had first composed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of them said. "We can only just lay our course now, and it will be dead against us in some of the reaches. Still, I think we shall manage to make down to sea with only a tack or two, but when we are once fairly out of the river it will be a long leg and a short one, and going up round the Texel it will be dead against us. Except that it would be a bit worse if it had a little more east in it, it is about as foul a wind as ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... he said, grimly, as he went back to his work. "I didn't put it out just the way I had it in my head, but she 'peared to sense enough of it to call me a Piute for butting in. If that don't work on her I'll tack a warning on the major which nobody ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... on every tack, just as it's wanted. But there was Moffat, yesterday, in a room behind the milliner's shop near Cuthbert's Gate; I was with him. The woman's husband is one of the choristers and an elector, you know, and Moffat went to look for his vote. Now, there was no one there when we got there but the three ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... to the eastward, hugging the shore with the wind on her starboard quarter. About three miles east of the entrance of the harbour she came over on the port tack. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... Peachy for short. Oh, yes, I knew all about you beforehand, although you happen to be the newest girl. Dad wrote me a whole page—wonderful for him!—and said he'd stayed at your house in London, and I was to tack myself on to you and show you round, and see you didn't fret and all the rest of it. Are you wanting a crony, temporary or otherwise? Then here I am at your service. Link an arm and we'll parade the place. I guess by the time we've finished there's not much you won't ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... really willing to surrender his kingdom for some swift means of getting away from that desperate scene of carnage. But if the cigarette boy had been faced pointblank with the proposition I do not believe he would have agreed to give up his kingdom for the "coffin tack." ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... I've a prologue here, He'll never tack his bottle of oil to this: No man is blest in every single thing. One is of noble birth, but lacking means. ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... may not I smile at some jest between myself and my pipe, but thou must tack more meaning to it than Brewster says hung on Lord Burleigh's nod? And yet in sober sadness, Myles, 't is marvel to me how thou, born to a great name and to such observance as awaits the children of wealthy houses, and then, when hardly more than a boy, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind's eye, for it was not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it was above little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour might be lost if I struck the outer layers at some ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... middle watch, the captain came on deck, and took to walking up and down with the second mate. The night was clear, though dark. The Chrysolite was close-hauled on the starboard tack, and was making good headway under a clinking breeze. She was an old-fashioned, frigate-built, full-rigged ship, such as one seldom happens on now, her quarter-galleries, chain-plates, to' gallant bulwarks, and single topsail-yards being all out ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... an accident," shouted the other, suddenly off on another tack. "It was awful. Trina was in the swing there—that's my cousin Trina, you know who I mean—and she fell out. By damn! I thought she'd killed herself; struck her face on a rock and knocked out a front tooth. It's a wonder she didn't kill herself. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... competition with the clear and ringing tones of his voice; at other times, he has cheered with "The American Flag," "Old Ironsides," or "The Union," audiences shivering with cold and famishing on a short allowance of hard-tack. He has seen the American soldier under all circumstances, and practically understands all the avenues to his heart and brain. Many of the poems in the volume which have obtained a national popularity were originally written at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Bottle.—When you purchase a bottle of poison run a brass-headed tack into the top of the cork. It serves as a marker, and children will be more cautious of the marked bottle. If the label comes off or is discolored, the marker remains as a warning ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the home counties as "luke," the largest as "great," and the intermediate sizes as "long small," "threepenny" and "middleboro." White and buff rods are more carefully sorted, the smallest, about 2 ft. or less, being known as "small tack," and rising sizes as "tack," "short small," "small," "long small," "threepenny," "middleboro" and "great." Rods of two to three years' growth, known as "sticks," are used to form the rigid framework of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... think, then?' he demanded, in some alarm. 'You know I can't take to the pious tack. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come along last week a ranger and started to tack up a sign bold as brass that read: 'Property of the United States.' Property ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... over crooked arm. List to starboard, like a postman. Approaches directly toward us. We prepare to render our service. Perceives something in his path (us) just in time to avert a collision, swerves to one side. Takes an oblique tack. But speaks (always particular to avoid seeming to slight us) in a very friendly fashion. Though gives you the impression that he thinks you are some one else. A pleasant, unaffected man to talk to. Somewhat dazed, however, in effect. Curious ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... somewhere. If you had dumped it out of the box into a sack, the box must be somewhere. You hadn't had time to burn it before the stage got back. I drifted back to your kindling pile, where all the old boxes from the store are lying. I happened to notice a brass tack in one near the end; then the marks of the tack heads where they had pressed against the wood. I figured you might have substituted one box for another, and inside of ten minutes I stumbled against your wash-stand and didn't budge it. Then I didn't ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... announced, "she's wild as a hawk, and a perfect torment. One day she'll come strollin' in and beseechin' me for a bunch o' flowers, and the next she'll be here after dark scarin' me out o' my seven senses. She rigged a tick-tack here the other night against the window, and my heart was in my mouth. I thought 'twas a warnin' much as ever I thought anything in my life; the night before my mother died 'twas in that same room and against that same winder there came two or three raps, and my sister ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the sake of the young folks who may yet have some leeway to make up, I shall indulge myself a little by quoting it: and, since I am on that tack, follow it by another which presents Stevenson in his favourite guise of quizzing his own characters, if not for his own advantage certainly for ours, if we would in the least understand the fine moralist- casuistical qualities of his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... he took a ship bound to London, to whom he gave out, that he designed to go to the southward; which Colonel Rhet hearing, sailed over the Bar the 15th with the two Sloops, and went after the Pirate Vane; but not meeting with him, tack'd and stood for Cape Fear, according to his first Design; and on the 26th following he entered the River, where he saw Bonnet, and the three Sloops his Prizes, at anchor; but the Pilot running ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... month Fielding's inexhaustible energies were off on a new tack, producing, in startling contrast to Miss Lucy, a classical work, executed in collaboration with his friend the Rev. William Young, otherwise Parson Adams. The two friends contemplated a series of translations of all the eleven comedies of Aristophanes; ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Tree, her daughter Hilma and another woman were inside the barn cutting into long strips bolt after bolt of red, white and blue cambric and directing how these strips should be draped from the ceiling and on the walls; everywhere resounded the tapping of tack hammers. A farm wagon drove up loaded to overflowing with evergreens and with great bundles of palm leaves, and these were immediately seized upon and affixed as supplementary decorations to the tri-coloured cambric upon ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who pokes his nose in our packing room, but they are Tom, Dick, and Harry to her. It is not being called by your first name that makes the rub. It is being called it when you must forever tack on the Mr. and the Mrs. and the Miss. Annie is in awe of no human being. Annie is the fastest packer in the room and draws the most pay. Annie sasses the entire factory. Annie never stops talking unless she wants to. Which is only now and then when her mother has had a bad spell and Annie ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Moniteur to the effect that, although public opinion had been agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,' as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war; there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned in the Tuileries. These assurances were given more ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Hoskins got in the oar with which the mainsail was boomed out. "Now, Jack, brail up the sail as she comes round. Haul in the sheet as fast as you can, Tom, and pay it out again handsomely as it comes over. That is the way. Now fasten the sheet and throw off the main-tack and trice the sail up ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... the headland, lost steerage, and fell out of their sight behind the promontory. The sloop of war crowded all sail to pursue, but she had stood too close upon the cape, so that they were obliged to wear the vessel for fear of going ashore, and to make a large tack back into the bay, in order to recover sea-room enough ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... starvation, but steady, living hunger that stalked about the decks, slept in the forecastle; the tormentor of waking moments, the disturber of dreams. We looked to windward for signs of change. Every few hours of night and day we put her round with the hope that she would come up on that tack at last! She didn't. She seemed to have forgotten the way home; she rushed to and fro, heading northwest, heading east; she ran backwards and forwards, distracted, like a timid creature at the foot of a wall. Sometimes, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... came with intense deliberation. There was no mistaking their significance. Henson deemed it wise to try another tack. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... he said again; but she did not mind it in the least. With a sweep of her bare arm she had put the tiller hard aport, intending to tack back to Peel, but the wind had freshened and the sea was rising, and by the swift leap of the boat the boom was snapped, and the helpless sail came napping down upon the mast. Then they tumbled into the trough, and Glory had not ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... water from seventeen to ten fathom; and knowing that we were not far from the small islands and rocks which we had seen before dark, and which I intended to have passed before I brought-to for the night, I thought it more prudent to tack, and spend the night under Mowtohora, where I knew there was no danger. It was indeed happy for us that we did so; for in the morning, after we had made sail to the westward, we discovered a-head of us several rocks, some of which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... abundant and excite no remark; but to the woodsman each article possessed a separate and particular value. The tent, an iron kettle, a side of bacon, oatmeal, tea, matches, sugar, some canned goods, a box of hard-tack,—these, in the woods, represented wealth. Wallace's rifle chambered the .38 Winchester cartridge, which was unfortunate, for Thorpe's .44 had barely a ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... was a powerful one, of the semi-rotary type, and they had nearly two miles of smoother water before they stretched out of the bay upon the other tack. When they did so, Carroll, glancing down again through the scuttle, could not flatter himself that he had reduced the water. It was comforting, however, to see that it had not increased, though he did not expect that state of affairs to last. When they drove out into broken water, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... them better when I should come to talk with them. So the next morning I weighed and stood towards the fort. The winds were somewhat against us so that we could not go very fast, being obliged to tack 2 or 3 times: and, coming near the farther end of the passage between Timor and Anabao, we saw many houses on each side not far from the sea, and several boats lying by the shore. The land on both sides was pretty high, appearing very dry and of a reddish colour, ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... was defying Judge Babson, and to rush up a camera man right off in a taxi, and to look her up in the morgue for a front-page story. O'Brien glanced uneasily at Babson. Possible defiance on the part of this usually unassuming lady had not entered into his calculations. The judge took a new tack. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... leeboard was fitted and secured to the hull with a short piece of line made fast to the centerline of the boat. With this arrangement the leeboard could be raised and lowered and also shifted to the lee side on each tack. This took the strain off the sides of the canoe that would have been created by the usual leeboard fitting.[3] Construction of such canoes ceased in the 1870's, but some remained in use ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... Frankland went on, in a meditative tone, looking out of the window and steering now upon a home tack—"I hope that I can serve in some way the cause of the poor you have so much at heart. Missions like yours languish for funds. If I could be the means of bringing people of great fortune to consecrate their wealth, it might fill many a thirsty channel of benevolence with ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... tack is the same as westerly Variation. Leeway on the port tack is the same as easterly Variation. This is apparent from ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... she "flew like a Tigris" at his face. The physician offered her money and tried to persuade her that her familiar was nothing more than a toad. When he found that this did not pacify her he took another tack and told her that he was the king's physician, sent to discover if she were a witch, and, in case she were, to have her apprehended. With this explanation, Harvey was able to get away. He related ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... had publicly stigmatized the Bolshevists as cutthroats; one had pledged itself never to have relations with them, but the Prinkipo invitation bespoke a resolve to cancel these judgments and declarations and change their tack as an improvement on doing nothing at all. The scheme was also an error in substance, because the sole motive that could warrant it was the hope of reconciling the warring parties. And that hope was doomed ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... sympathetically familiar with the peculiar qualities of his boat which differentiate it from every other boat that was ever built and rigged. He must know how to gentle her about, as one instance of a myriad, and to fill her on the other tack without deadening her way or allowing her to fall off ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... being on the same side, were absolutely useless during the greatest part of the voyage. The adventurers, however, assert that they made them work from eight to nine minutes with the greatest ease, making use of them to tack to the south-east. ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... sleep through that long hot day that they did not see the cutter run out through the passage and head south, close-hauled on the southeast trade. Nor was the cutter ever sighted on that long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beat from there to Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with a wealth of rifles and tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before. But he did not stop there. He had taken a white ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Bucklaw, "because I am a fool, who have gambled away my land in thse times. My grand-aunt, Lady Girnington, has taen a new tack of life, I think, and I could only hope to get something by a change of government. Craigie was a sort of gambling acquaintance; he saw my condition, and, as the devil is always at one's elbow, told me fifty lies about ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... men to Speak to them in the Pania and mahar Languages first neither of which they could understand I then derected the man who could Speak a fiew words of Seioux to inquire what nation or tribe they belong to they informed me that they were Tetons and their Chief was Tar-tack-kah-sabbar or the black buffalow This Chief I knew very well to be the one we had seen with his band at Teton river which band had attempted to detain us in the fall of 1804 as we assended this river and with whome we wer near comeing to blows. I told those Indians that they had been deef ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... from point to point, now rising to a hurricane and then dying away to a dead calm. But alike by night and day, whether the sky be black with clouds, or bright with radiant sunshine, in the teeth of the wind or in a favourable gale, he presses forward to his distant haven. He will tack to the right or to the left, availing himself to the utmost of every favourable current and every passing breeze, supremely indifferent to all accusations of inconsistency, or of deviating from the straight line from the port which he left to the port for which he is bound, if so ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... wherein he could best be concealed from the fury of his persecutors. He married a second wife, one Janet Millar from Eglesham (whose father fell at Bothwel-bridge), by whom he had six children, who continued still to possess the farm of Meadow-head and Artnock in tack, until the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... keeping company with the Frenchmen. Being to leeward, and desirous of obtaining the weather-gage, as the safest situation for his own ship, he carried a heavy press of sail, and in the night of the 14th, having stretched on, as he thought, sufficiently for that purpose, put the Loire on the same tack as they were. About two A.M., it being then exceedingly dark, he found himself so near one of the largest ships as to hear the officer of the watch giving his orders. As the noise of putting about would have discovered the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... coaxin' hurry of her own—an' indeed I was so myself, too. Augh, Mrs. Doran! Be gorra, sir, she put her comedher an me entirely, so she did. Well, be my sowl, I'll be the flower of a husband to her anyhow. I hope your Reverence 'll come to the christ'nin'? But about the clo'es;—bad luck saize the tack I have to put to my back, but what you see an me, if we ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... train this exceptional man! We can do much, but the chief thing is to prevent anything being done. To sail against the wind we merely follow one tack and another; to keep our position in a stormy sea we must cast anchor. Beware, young pilot, lest your boat slip its cable or drag its anchor before ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... we drop, lad. Come, 'Brick,' my boy," and the scout gripped the Sergeant's shoulder, "you 're not the kind to lie down. We 've been in worse boxes than this and pulled out. It 's up to you and me to make good. Let's crunch some hard-tack and go on, afore the whole three of us ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... place by two wooden pins. The head-log is fastened the same way, except that it goes against the inside of the back posts; and the frame is complete. Round off all sharp angles or corners with knife and hatchet and proceed to spread and fasten the cloth. Lay the roof on evenly and tack it truly to the front cross-rod, using about a dozen six-ounce tacks. Stretch the cloth to its bearings and tack it at the back end in the same manner. Stretch it sidewise and tack the sides to the side poles, fore and aft. Tack front and back ends of sides to the ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... brought in the dessert, which consisted of canned currant-jelly, served in the can. Each guest helped himself from the original package, using a "hard tack" for a dessert-plate, more antiquo. Washington was bidden to help himself. Before doing so, however, he wished to test the substance placed before him, and, taking a little on the end of his spoon, he carried it to his lips. Then an expression of intense enjoyment overspread ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... tack remembrances to Mrs. Williams and your daughters and Miss Kavanagh to all my letters, because that makes an empty form of what should be a sincere wish, but I trust this mark of courtesy and regard, though rarely expressed, is always ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that—until I saw how it turned out. I know I'm not half good enough for Linda. But so long as she thinks I am and I try to live up to that, why we've as good a chance to be happy as anybody. We all make breaks, us fellows that go at everything roughshod. Still, when we pull up and take a new tack, you shouldn't hold grudges. If we could go back to that fall and winter, I'd do things ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Wapping, observing that most part of his audience were in the seafaring way, very naturally embellished his discourse with several nautical tropes and figures. Amongst other things, he advised them "to be ever on the watch, so that on whatsoever tack the evil one should bear down on them, he might be crippled in action." "Ay, master," said a son of Neptune, "but let me tell you, that will depend upon your having the weather gage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... finding out to whom she was alluding, but I imagined she meant her master, who was certainly looking a little thin, and then she went off on another tack. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... made, one day, the strange observation that the dog, when on the poop, would always walk on the windward side; and afterwards, when the brig was at sea and under sail, this singular animal would shift his position to the other side after every tack, so as to be windward, as the captain of the Forward ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... irate face of his companion, in which the crow-feet of forty years were distinctly visible, and perceived that he had gone on a wrong tack. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... shots broke out from the kitchen. Bangs disappeared for a moment, gun in hand, and I watched our guest trying to make himself six inches narrower and three feet shorter. I don't know when I ever saw a chap so anxious to melt right down into a corner and be mistaken for a carpet tack. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... carpet well; tack it down, and wash it upon the floor; the floor should be very clean; use cold soap suds; to three gallons add half a tumbler of beef-gall; this will prevent the colors from fading. Should there be grease spots, apply a mixture of beef-gall, fuller's-earth, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... then set, its sheet being slackened until Dick slipped the buoy marking the yacht's moorings overboard; when, the tack being hauled aft, and the mainsail peaked, the bows of the cutter paid off and she walked away close-hauled, standing out towards "No Man's Fort," ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... now on the dealing tack, commenced in the poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion. Having deposited his hat on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward rub with his right ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... was nothing for her to unmoor a boat, enter it, and lift the oars, not pausing to observe that it was the Arrow. Just then, however, a little wind ruffled down and shook the sail, a wind not quite favorable, but in which she could tack across and back; she drew in the oars, put to the proof all her new boat-craft, and recklessly dashed through the dark element that curled and seethed about her. She had to make but two tacks in that hour's impetuous progress, before the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... shoulder—yard-arm and yard-arm—and throw a flap-jack as handy as an old woman would toss a johnny-cake! It's unreasonable to think of wearing ship without room; but give me room, and I'll engage to get round on the other tack, and to luff into the line again, as safely as the oldest cruiser among 'em, though not quite so quick. They do go about ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... float off, and I looked out for some passing boat or vessel to pick us up. We were drifting steadily out to sea, while I was signaling to a boat about three miles off, toward Saucelito, and saw her tack and stand toward us. I was busy watching this sail-boat, when I heard a Yankee's voice, close behind, saying, "This is a nice mess you've got yourselves into," and looking about I saw a man in a small boat, who had seen us upset, and had rowed out to us from a schooner anchored ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... a little too rigid; it overlooks the shades and instincts by help of which we are able to tack when in a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a game of seven-up going on in the cabin, and the sun striking down the companionway was bothering Andie Howe. He began to complain. "Hi, up there to the wheel! Hi, Eddie—can't you put her on the other tack?—the sun's in my eyes. How can a man see the cards with the ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... Then I tried another tack. My father was exceedingly skeptical concerning the desirability of amateur photography, and flatly refused to furnish the necessary funds. It was October then, so I conceived a plan by which I would ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... misfortune heretofore unheard of, that I, your present petitioner, have been altogether forgotten by the Muse. Instead of being able (as I naturally expected) to measure my ideas into six- foot lilies, and tack a rhyme at each of their tails, I find myself, this blessed morning, the same simple proser that I was yesterday, and shall probably be to-morrow. And to my further mortification, being a humble-minded little sinner, I feel ...
— Time's Portraiture - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs. But by her still halting course and winding, woful way, you plainly saw that ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... The horses were saddled; the riders were equipped with flannel shirts and leather leggings; the saddle-bags were stuffed with clean linen, and novels, and sonnets of Shakespeare, and other baggage, it would have been well if they had been stuffed with hard-tack, for in real life meat is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... skipper, chocking his axe viciously into a sapling birch and leaving it there, "I'll fill away on another tack." ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... he gets the worst of it any way, for there is a pin in that rose, and if he goes to smell the mayflowers underneath he will find a thorn to pay for the tack he put in my rubber boot. I know he will play me some joke to-night, and I mean to be first if I can," answered Molly, settling the artificial wreath round the orange-colored canoe ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... nature. There are evidently two actions in it; but it will be clear to any judicious man, that with half the pains I could have raised a play from either of them; for this time I satisfied my humour, which was to tack two plays together; and to break a rule for the pleasure of variety. The truth is, the audience are grown weary of continued melancholy scenes; and I dare venture to prophecy, that few tragedies, except those in verse, shall succeed in this age, if they are not lightened with a course of mirth; ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... well when they a'n't agin common sense an' the rights o' natur; but you see, George Tucker, folks will go 'cordin to natur an' reason, ef there's forty parlamints an' kings in tow. Natur's jest like a no'west squall; you can't do nothin' but tack ag'inst it; and no men is goin' to stan' still and see the wind taken out o' their sails, an' their liberty flung to sharks, without one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... traveled about two miles we saw the smoke arising from our old camp. The Mormons after taking what goods they wanted and could carry off, had set fire to the wagons, many of which were loaded with bacon, lard, hard-tack, and other provisions, which made a very hot, fierce fire, and the smoke to roll up in dense clouds. Some of the wagons were loaded with ammunition, and it was not long before loud explosions followed ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... Sophron or Xenarchus and a Socratic Conversation; and we should still be without one even if the imitation in the two instances were in trimeters or elegiacs or some other kind of verse—though it is the way with people to tack on 'poet' to the name of a metre, and talk of elegiac-poets and epic-poets, thinking that they call them poets not by reason of the imitative nature of their work, but indiscriminately by reason of the metre they write in. Even if a theory of medicine or physical philosophy be put forth ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... had finished what they had come to Sunkhaze to do. They climbed aboard the huge ice-craft. The sheet was paid off, and with dragging peavey-sticks instead of centerboard to hold the contrivance into the wind, the boat moved away on its tack across ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... he, filling his pipe. 'Davy will have to take the helm himself, if he would keep you on the right tack. Clear the decks now, and be off to your bed. If the gale lulls, I shall sail ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... for that night. I grasped the handle of the Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap or mouth at the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the carpet, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... attention to the brig's helmsmen. If you can render it impossible for the men to stand at the wheel, we will make mincemeat of this fellow in no time. Directly I have fired our port broadside, I am going to bring her up into the wind on the opposite tack, and give him the starboard broadside at close quarters. Don't fire until we have gone about, and then pick off the helmsmen, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... let either of them worry him. He had enough confidence in his own personality and abilities to be able to take his own tack no matter which ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... jam," burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical look: "There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on this tack?" ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... th' way, my Lady Plyant's coming, and I shall never succeed while thou art in sight. Though she begins to tack about; but I made love a great ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... while I was helping Timmy Finbrink out of his difficulties, and afterwards tried to fool you with the fake window-breaking, some of the Central fellows had been down at Ritchie's playing tick-tack on one of his front windows. Tick-tack is a stupid game, and it got me into ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... won't do—it won't do!" Ransom went on, laughing. "You are on the wrong tack altogether. Do you really take the ground that your sex has been without influence? Influence? Why, you have led us all by the nose to where we are now! Wherever we are, it's all you. You are at the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... had on a big gray cloak of her mother's that covered her all up. It had a hood, too, so she didn't need a hat. For fun I had drawn a large placard, with 'Votes for Women' on it in big letters. I meant to tack it to a tree or something if I got a chance, but Kitty ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... she said resignedly. "The Queen will have to tack with the wind for a while until ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... said Scattergood. "Never walk off with suthin' on your mind. Apt to give ye mental cramps. What was that there tack hammer an excuse for ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... the cottage, though rugged, was not cheerless. In the long winter evenings they would gather around a smoking fire of peat, while Tennyson read aloud the Idylls of the King to the rude old cottager. Not to show his rudeness, the old man kept awake by sitting on a tin-tack. This also kept his mind on the right tack. The two found that they had much in common, especially the old cottager. They called each ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock |
