"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a candy sucker from a baby. 'Curly' let go of that 'six' like he was plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over the ear just oncet. Then he turned on the room; and right there my heart went out to him. He took in the line up at a sweep ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... reason, think of wives And children ere they risk their lives. Over the balustrade has bounced A mere instinctive dog, and pounced Plumb on the prize. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... other strongholds, his evil fortune would have it that he should be killed while attempting to measure certain heights at a difficult point; for when he had put his head out beyond the wall in order to let a plumb-line down, a priest who was with the enemy (who feared the genius of Cecca more than the might of the whole camp) discharged a catapult at him and fixed a great dart in his head, insomuch that the poor fellow died on the spot. The fate and the loss of Cecca caused great grief ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... upon four parts, the mountain bare Seemed fashioned with the plumb, by builder's skill Nor upon any side was path or stair, Which furnished man the means to climb the hill. The castle seemed the very nest and lair Of animal, supplied with plume and quill. And here the damsel knows 'tis time to slay The wily dwarf, and take ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... empires, till, O, like the swirl of dust Around their marching legions, that dim cloud Of doubt closed round him. Was there any man So sure of heart and brain as to record The simple truth of things himself had seen? Then who could plumb that night? The work broke off! He knew that he was wrong. I knew it, too! Once more that stately structure of his dreams Melted like mist. His eagles perished like clouds. Death wound a thin horn through the centuries. The grave resumed his forlorn emperors. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to me to ease off the larboard stay. Now, I might know something about mince pie, but a larboard stay is not my long and hasty. Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... confirm the impression that the drawing was made after, but not by Bewick. In the cuts scattered throughout the text the same difference in execution and portrayal of the little schoolmistress is noticeable. Margery, upon her rounds to teach the farmers' children to spell such words as "plumb-pudding" "(and who can suppose a better?)," presents her full face in the Newbery edition, and but a three-quarter view to her ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Congress became interested. Senator Plumb made a thorough study of the entire subject, and, with the foresight of statesmanship, gave his energies to the work of securing an appropriation of $50,000 for the development of the sugar industry, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... think she was running away from me. It did look that way, when she stopped as soon as she met him; I can't swear right now whether Tejon was running away, or whether he was just simply running!" He laughed ruefully. "She's an awful little tease—just plumb full of the old Nick, even if she does look as innocent and as meek as their pictures of the Virgin Mary. She had us both guessing, let me tell you! He was pretty blamed insulting, though, and I'd have licked the stuffing out of him right then and there, if she hadn't swung in and played the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... was unspeakably decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates—to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his preamble that I was going to be sent up to regulate the clock, or see if the tower was still plumb; but all it simmers down to is that I'm to take a leather document case, hunt up Mr. Ellins, who's attendin' a directors' meetin' over there, and deliver some papers that he's forgot to have his private secretary ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... a pause: "I don' hear how dat wretch, Black Jim, was stricken, by God-a'mighty's justice, on The Way, las' night. He was found plumb dead under a tree whar ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... with the grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed, look like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show architectural forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative, and all are arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to brighten. They are not placed in regular rows in line with the river, but "a' through ither," as the Scotch say, in lavish, ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... dear Sir, Madame George Sand must be gratified this time! Your article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... look like Peterson," answered the doctor's son. "Besides, Peterson isn't so plumb crazy as ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is an honor ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... purpled. "Say, are you plumb bugs? Why—" Vic gulped and stuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it, sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to get it too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salary that'll make ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... with disgust. "I sabe what you are hintin' at when you gas of morals—which I'm a heap acquainted with because I ain't got none to speak of. But I'm plumb flabbergasted when you go to connectin' a battleship with anything that's got a whole lot to do with morals. Accordin' to my schoolin', a monitor is a thing which blows ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... no chance of hit or miss—it is inevitable as life—it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... upon him no power for being or doing what it required. It is like a looking-glass placed before a child to show him that his face is soiled, but having no power to cleanse that face. It was like a plumb- line applied to a leaning wall, which shows how far it deviates from the perpendicular, but which has no power to make it upright. Nay, it even comes to pass that in consequence of inbred sin, the law multiplies offences. It causes sin to abound. We find even in most children a ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... beauty of this chaste, undecorated surface seems to me to be due to the fact that the wall was built under the eye of a master mason who knew not the straight edge, the plumb rule, or the square. He had no instruments of precision, so he had to depend on his eye. He had a good eye, an artistic eye, an eye for symmetry and beauty of form. His product received none of the harshness ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... right to home!" laughed the cow-boy. "You just light down and we'll trail over to Chola Charley's and prospect a tub of frijoles. The dinner-bell when you are broke is plumb correct. Got any more of that ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... was all in vain. He could see a long way, and sometimes it almost seemed as if he saw farther than at others; but lower down there was always that purply transparent blackness into which his eyesight plunged, but could not quite plumb. ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... whether the shootings forth of the affliction (now going out for the offence committed) be not too strong, too heavy, too hot, and of too long a time admitted to distress and break the spirit of this Christian; and if it be, he applies himself to the rule to measure it by, he fetches forth his plumb line, and sets it in the midst of his people, (Amos 7:8; Isa 28:17), and lays righteousness to that, and will not suffer it to go further; but according to the quality of the transgression, and according to the terms, bounds, limits, and measures which the law of grace admits, so ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... has been hailed as an exquisite artist, one of the few truly great and permanent English figures not only of fiction but of letters. But in the most recent years, again a change has come: the pendulum has swung back, as it always does when an excessive movement carries it too far beyond the plumb line. Dickens has found valiant, critical defenders; he has risen fast in thoughtful so well as popular estimation (although with the public he has scarcely fluctuated in favor) until he now enjoys a sort of resurrection ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... "Wow! but it's plumb dark in here, though!" protested Lil Artha, after he had knocked his shins twice against some projection, and even slammed into a post that chanced to ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... heard him answer. "What? Rubano? Why you can't talk to him. He's a convicted man. Here? How do you know he's here? No—I wouldn't let you talk to him if he was. Who are you, anyway? What's that—you threaten him—you threaten me? You'll get us both, will you? Well, I want to tell you, you can go plumb—the deuce! The fellow's ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... plumb for'ard to the pens now," grunted Crump. "She's fitten to go like a match all along when ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... conical forms, and built one upon another to a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a mountain; and the tout ensemble compose an enormous mass of the Lundus Helmonti, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in circumference, and what the Spaniards call two leagues in height. As it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... oil!" Chow said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... the line of the level roof runs along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible red, or green, or tapestry curtains, mere sashes. There are no flowers in ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... were handsomely domiciled at St. Lawrence Hall. Our room was large and airy, and our bed stood in one of those quaint old alcoves so peculiar to the English bed-chamber; while the table d'hote, with its savory roast beef, plumb pudding, etc., was equally characteristic ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... creature, absolutely into my power. Every thing made for me. Her brother and uncles were but my pioneers: her father stormed as I directed him to storm: Mrs. Howe was acted by the springs I set at work; her daughter was moving for me, yet imagined herself plumb against me: and the dear creature herself had already run her stubborn neck into my gin, and knew not that she was caught, for I had not drawn my sprindges close about her—And just as all this ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the clean surface of this one. Looks as if it had been done with a knife, doesn't it? Alpine crags seem vertical but are nearly always inclined; their primary rock, you know, cannot flake off abruptly like this tufa. This is a genuine precipice. Plumb!" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... after Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth Notion of private property in truth Only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas Opinions Out of plumb when they sit side by side Overestimate of our special individuality Pathological piety Perpetual insult to mediocrity Plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world Presumption in favor of any particular belief Pseudo-science Question everything Saying one thing about ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... day of his accession King George has been confronted with trials and troubles enough to daunt the stoutest heart, and none of us can plumb the depth of anguish that must have been his through the awful years of the Great War. He has been tried and proved in the fierce fires of adversity, and has emerged ennobled by pain, and dowered by sorrow with a gift of expression that has placed ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... that I'll be leavin' here in a hurry. Didn't the old man tell you I could stay here a year? What's the use of me goin' now, just when you're goin' to start to reform me? Why," he finished, surveying her with interest; "I reckon the old man would be plumb tickled to see the way you're carryin' on—obeyin' his last wishes." He rested his head on his arms ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, penurious, sordid, Storm, tempest, whirlwind, hurricane, tornado, cyclone, typhoon Straight, perpendicular, vertical, plumb, erect, upright. Strange, singular, peculiar, odd, queer, quaint, outlandish. Strong, stout, robust, sturdy, stalwart, powerful. Stupid, dull, obtuse, stolid, doltish, sluggish, brainless, bovine. Succeed, prosper, thrive, flourish, triumph. Succession, sequence, series. Supernatural, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Finance I don't presume to plumb; So year by year my back they shear, Sure that they'll find me dumb. But the oft-trodden worm will turn; "Demand Notes" never slack; And "Schedule D" fast at twice three, Breaks the wage-earner's back. So please give me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such reckoning ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... were wise—which God knows we are not— (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours—these delicate spinal clusters— Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... an' Flint Kreeger an' the rest. I tell yuh, I'm dead sick of being spied on, an' plotted against, an' never knowin' when yuh may get a knife in the back, or stop a bullet. I hate to leave Bud, but he's so plumb set on—" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... am," she insists. "I'm plumb scared at the thought of mixin' with folks like that—just plumb scared. And, as you know, Mr. Leavitt, it's the first time in my life I've ever ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... mountains like a channel. They were instantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above thirty feet wide; the walls stretched upward on both sides for many hundred feet. It was as cool as an ice chamber. When Maskull attempted to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw nothing but ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... love them. I say love, because the life in them, the presence of the creative one, would ever be plain to him. In the Perfect, would familiarity ever destroy wonder at things essentially wonderful because essentially divine? To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... Dr. Wangbanger once had an audience with Mr. William Whiffletree in regard to one of Mr. Whiffletree's molars which Bill thought had a "speck" on it, he soon convinced the victim that the said molar not only was specked, but out of the dead plumb of its nearest neighbor at least the 84th part of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... miles of Buckhorn, with glass door-knobs and a laundry-chute, and a brood to rear, and a hard-working husband to cook for. And as the kiddies get older, I imagine, I'll not be troubled by this terrible feeling of loneliness which has been weighing like a plumb-bob on my heart for the last few days. I wish Dinky-Dunk didn't have to be so much away ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... shan't, you shan't, you little beast, Percy!" as I tried to pull up her skirts: but we got her down on the straw, and soon exposed all her private affairs in spite of struggles and kicks, then turning her over on her face, they held her firmly, whilst I gave her lovely plumb buttocks such a slapping that she screamed under it, begging to be let go, promising to do anything and ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, I guess." ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... had my reasons, George. But I don't mean to go into 'em. All that's dead and gone. There was a pack of fellows then on my shoulders—I was plumb tired of 'em. I had to get rid of—I did get rid of 'em—and you, too. I knew you were inquiring after me, and I didn't want inquiries. They didn't suit me. You may conclude what you like. I tell ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... jest lived fer Jimmy. They'd lost three, an' he was all there was left. They wasn't very well-to-do, but nothin' was too grand fer Jimmy, and when the boy begun ter draw them little pictures of his all over the shed an' the barn door, they was plumb crazy. There wan't no doubt of it—Jimmy was goin' ter be famous, they said. He was goin' ter be one o' them painter ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... said, "I reckon that'll do! You kin pull up short! I kin see what's the matter with you; you're jest plumb tired, tuckered out, and want to turn in! So jest you sit that quiet until I get supper ready and never mind me." In vain Hemmingway protested, with a rising color. The girl only shook her head. "Don't tell me! You ain't keering to talk, and you're only playin' Sacramento statistics ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... down all right," nodded Lieutenant Danvers, thoughtfully. "The risky part is in trying to run over that derelict's sunken hull in order to locate it and make your soundings. Now, you run a big chance of running plumb on to some other stump of a mast. The 'Hastings' may easily get an injury, from the stump of another mast, that may tear a real hole in our plates and send ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... othah time o' yeah. De bacon smell ez callin'-like, de kittle rock an' sing, De same way in de wintah dat dey do it in de spring; Dey ain't no use in mopin' 'round an' lookin' mad an' glum Erbout de wintah season, fu' hit's des plumb boun' to come; ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... right," answered Rube. "I've had me eye on it a lot. It's plumb sure t' be fine. Birds are flyin' high; flowers ain't got much scent in 'em; the sheep are grazin' with their heads to the wind; cattle are quiet. Mother's clothes line's saggin' betwixt the poles; spiders' webs are slack, too, an' thar's crowds of 'em on every bush. This mornin', when ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... heaved up the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't have ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... been here over nine months now, and I'm just beginning to realize what a rube I am. I haven't no—" Again, he broke off, and laughed at himself. "I mean, I haven't any idea of proper manners, and so I'm, as we would say down home, 'plumb ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Italian colored man, black bearded, and shaped like Caruso, only more so, if that is possible; and he sang, because he was a singing machine, but he couldn't have talked. I'll bet on that. He was too plumb afraid. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Wilbur's new acquaintance, "but even s'posin' that you did scare up a pony, how did you dope it out that you would hit up the right trail? This here country is plumb tricky. And the trail sort of takes a nap every once in a while and forgets ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... big rip in the back of the shoulder where the padding is sticking through and your cuffs are frayed and your necktie's got a hole worn plumb through it where the wing of your collar rubs. You don't look like a tramp, of course, because you look clean and decent. It would be all right if you had to be like that. Only it's all so darned unnecessary. You could make good money if you'd only live like a regular ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... "Thar war a man along, though. An' 'pears ter me thar war powerful leetle jestice in thar takin' off, ef Roger Purdee be 'lowed ter stan' up thar in the face o' the meetin' an' lie so ez no yearthly critter in the worl' could b'lieve him—'ceptin' Brother Jacob Page, ez 'peared plumb out'n his head with religion, an' got ter shoutin' when this Purdee tuk ter tellin' the law he read on them rocks—Moses' tables, folks calls 'em—up ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... eat your dinner that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... stick to my opinion. She's as loony as she can be. And I am plumb against insulting our Ida May by letting the girl come up here. What do ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... current columns of the daily press that "Professor Plumb, of the University of Chicago, has just invented a highly concentrated form of food. All the essential nutritive elements are put together in the form of pellets, each of which contains from one to two hundred times as much nourishment as ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... got me," he said softly; "but maybe she'll get tired and won't call no more. She ain't plumb mad yet. ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... up the country means that men are going to be shot for going to bed at dark and asleeping till sun-up, all I've got to say is that things ain't like they used to be. We were all plumb peaceful here till your colony came, Miss Hallman. Why, the sheriff never got out this way often enough to know the trails! He always had to ask his way around. If your bunch of town mutts can't behave themselves and leave each other alone, I don't know what's to be ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... the seed that is dropt in those furrows of fear, Will lift to the sun neither blade nor ear. Down it drops plumb, Where no spring times come; And here there needeth no harrowing gear: Wheat nor poppy nor any leaf Will cover this ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... robber threw the rope over an oak limb, and directed The Lifter to stand 'plumb under.' Murfrey now tightened the rope but he could not raise The ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... knowledge, and then to study the art and science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All we can do is to define clearly the true ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... fresh-water sewing-circle like Plato College, where an imitation scholar teaches you imitation translations of useless classics, and amble-footed girls teach you imitation party manners that 'd make you just as plumb ridic'lous in a real salon as they would in a lumber-camp, why——Oh, sa-a-a-y! I've got it. Girls, eh? What girl 've you been falling in love with to get ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... much, for they were both spacious and well-situated—on the side of the promenade nearest to the bath. Diphilus had placed the columns out of the perpendicular, and not opposite each other. These, of course, he shall take down; he will learn some day to use the plumb-line and measure. On the whole, I hope Diphilus's work will be completed in a few months: for Caesius, who was with me at the time, keeps a very sharp ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... boasted. For disorder and confusion never kept Celestina awake nights or prevented her from partaking of three hearty meals a day as it would have Abbie Brewster or Deborah Howland. So long as things were clean, their being an inch or two, or even a foot, out of plumb did not worry the new inmate of the gray house an iota. And when Willie was balked in an "idee" that had "kitched him," and left half-a-dozen strings and wires swinging in mid-air for weeks together, Celestina would patiently duck ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... between the football match in the first part and the cricket match in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... next couple of hours. 'Cordin' to my reckonin' they was years and we'd ought to have sailed plumb through the broadside of the Cape, and be makin' a quick run for Africy. But at last we got into smoother water, and then, right acrost our bows, showed up a white strip. The fog had pretty well blowed clear and I ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... play something," a man they called Day interpreted. "Hen's loco on music. If you can sing and play both, Hen'll set and listen till plumb daylight and ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... great little coach," said Cowan, "and a nice chap when you get to know him; no frills on him, you know. And he's plumb full of pluck. They say that once when he played here at half-back he got the ball on Robinson's forty yards and walked down the field and over the line for a touch-down with half the Robinson team hanging on to his legs, and said afterward that ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a rather alarming theory, particularly if it be true, as it is said to be, that since 1880 the towers have perceptibly come out of plumb. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and I'm goin' ter take ye up on the proposition, young feller. I ain't had ary bite since noon, an' then 'twas a snack only. Coffee—why, I've plumb forgot how she tastes, fact, it's been so long since I had a cup. An' stew, my, that smells prime. Say, it was a mighty lucky streak that made me come along the river here, headin' fur the post. Thought I'd keep right along ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... knowed worth trubblin' about was a woman. Used ter knit while she watched the woollies. Knit me a sweater—plumb useless waste of time an' yarn. If I'd taken it I'd have had to take her along with it. Wimmen is sure persistent. Seems like I must look like a dogie to most of 'em. They're allus wantin' to marry me an' mother me. I sure hope this one don't turn out to be a she-herder. 'P' might ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... serenely down the eternities! But by-and-by there is a kink. You find, that, though the line runs off so fast, it does not go down,—it only floats out. A current has caught it and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the mark than to say that Will tried to take advantage of Maga's youth and savagery. Fred and I had shared a dozen lively adventures with him without more than beginning yet to plumb the depths of his respect for Woman. Only an American in all the world knows how to meet Young Woman eye to eye with totally unpatronizing frankness, and he was without guile in the matter. But not so she. We did not know whether or not she was Gregor Jhaere's daughter; whether or not ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... puff—odzooks, man! I know not What women call the hanks o' hair they wear! But that same curl, beau-catcher, love-lock, frizz. (Perchance hot-ironed—perchance 'twas bandolined; Mayhap those rubber squirmers gave it shape— I wot not.) But that corkscrew of a curl Hung plumb, true, straight, accurate, at mid-brow, Nor swerved a hair's breadth to the right or left. Aught of her other tresses none may know. Now go we straitly on. And undertake To sound the humor of the Little Girl. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... the tones they gave out. He gathered knowledge like a true and indefatigable political bee. This walking Bayle dictionary did not act, however, like that famous lexicon; he did not report all opinions without drawing his own conclusions; he had the talent of a fly which drops plumb upon the best bit of meat in the middle of a kitchen. In this way he came to be regarded as an indispensable helper to statesmen. A belief in his capacity had taken such deep root in all minds that the more ambitious public ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the endless green like tiny gems, the stupendous face of the Wall, stretching from north to south and sheer as a plumb line for a thousand feet, was fretted with a myriad of tiny seams and ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... pa gwine whop him fo' tellin' a fib 'bout dey ain' no ghosts whin yiver'body know' dey is ghosts; but de school-teacher, whut board at Unc' Silas Diggs's house, she tek' note de hair ob li'l' black Mose's head am plumb white, an' she tek' note li'l' black Mose's face am de color ob wood-ash, so she jes retch' one arm round dat li'l' black boy, an' she jes snuggle' him ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... submersion; plummet, sound, probe; sounding rod, sounding line; lead. bathymetry. [instrument to measure depth] sonar, side-looking sonar; bathometer^. V. be deep &c adj.; render deep &c adj.; deepen. plunge &c 310; sound, fathom, plumb, cast the lead, heave the lead, take soundings, make soundings; dig &c (excavate) 252. Adj. deep, deep seated; profound, sunk, buried; submerged &c 310; subaqueous, submarine, subterranean, subterraneous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... not, have been one of the fifteen. I'm not quite clear on that point. Indeed I'm somewhat muddled in the main; but I suspect the SQUIRE is up to some deed of infamy, and I have done my best to plumb its slimy depths." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the world's coarse thumb And finger fail'd to plumb, So pass'd in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... But in one have been expell'd. Hapless mariners are they, Who beguil'd (as seamen say), Deeming him some rock or island, Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, Anchor in his scaly rind; Soon the difference they find; Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; Does to ruthless ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... shoulders back!" Now I confess I was walking, and thinking as I walked, with shoulders bent and head forward. At once I straightened up and looked about to see who was speaking. It was the voice of a pine tree, growing hard by the path, tall and straight as a plumb line. "Thank you," I said ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... as the spring, And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise, And then as though some fowler's shaft had pierced it It comes plumb down in such a dead, dead fall.' —FROM ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... all persons interested in horticulture and forestry to be present. A large number of papers and reports are to be read, followed by discussions. These reports are by persons who possess a thorough practical acquaintance with the subjects presented, including such men as Peter M. Gideon, J.C. Plumb, Dr. T.H. Hoskins, Prof. C.W. Hall, Prof. J.L. Budd, Dr. F.B. Hough, H.J. Joly, J.F. Williams, and others. A number of premiums are offered for apples, grapes, plants, and flowers, vegetables, seeds, and miscellaneous ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... as he turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you're plumb crazy. But all the same—Well, it's got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you're meat just the same, an', by the great Geewhillikins! you'll be dead meat, an' digested meat at that, before you're an hour older, my son, if I know anything ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... saying that I don't think she's too good for you—and even if she were she'd have to marry somebody, you know—and when you put it, put it straight, and let Paris and everything else you're worrying about go plumb to hell! ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... accommodations—three stewards and a woman! What's that to look after thirty-five passengers? Half the time I have to wait an hour to get something to eat—such as it is. And my bunk wasn't made up yesterday until plumb night. That bunch in the steerage must be having a ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... between the monkey and the man, and the transition seemed to have been easy and natural. In a word, he looked like a monkey in the face, while no one could possibly have suspected that he was one. Above his mouth his face abruptly receded, so that the end of his nose was not far from plumb with his lips. In the middle of his forehead the hair seemed to grow down to the bridge of his nose. A stranger, who was not of a melancholy turn of mind, could hardly have refrained from laughing when looking at him for the first time. But Bobtail did not laugh, for Monkey was a friend, ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... don't see as it's any use, Fisbee," he said, morosely, after a series of efforts that littered the floor in every direction. "I'm a born compositor, and I can't shift my trade. I stood the pace fairly for a week, but I'll have to give up; I'm run plumb dry. I only hope they won't show him our Saturday with your three columns of 'A Word of the Lotus Motive,' reprinted from February. I begin to sympathize with the boss, because I know what he felt when I ballyragged ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... this pattern-producing faculty a severe training is necessary. The art student must begin by painting china, crockery, and 'still life' generally. He should rule his straight lines and employ actual measurements wherever it is possible. He will also find that a plumb-line comes in very useful. Then he should proceed to Greek sculpture, for from pottery to Phidias is only one step. Ultimately he will arrive at the living model, and as soon as he can 'faithfully represent any object that he has before him' he is a painter. After this there ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... room, as she put her bonnet and shawl away. "Now you're here I'd like it if you would put on the teakettle and make me a good strong cup of coffee. Jane O'Grady gave me a pound, all parched and ground. I haven't had any before to-day for weeks. I'm plumb tuckered ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... inches by 8 inches, halved at the ends or corners, and nailed together with large nails. Having laid the sills upon the foundation, the next thing in order is to put up the studding. Use 4 by 4 studs for corners and door posts, or spike two 2 by 4 studs together, stand them up, set them plumb, and with stay laths secure them in position. Set up the intermediate studs, which are 2 by 4 inches, and 16 inches between centres, toe or nail them diagonally to the sill. Then put in the floor joists for first floor, each joist to be placed alongside ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... muttered. "You're dead right, sister. We got in wrong. I'm sorry. These other fellows, they're sorry, too. We made it up together to tell you we was sorry. Give us a chance to show you we ain't plumb rotten." ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, 140 So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... awkward little conference, an impromptu affair, at the mess the morning after the alarm of fire. Willett stock had been running down before that episode, and went "plumb out of sight" for several hours. It was held by Bonner, Bucketts, Briggs and Strong a most womanish thing on his part to have raised such a row and then "wilted." It was Bentley, the most disgusted man at the post, who now ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... his mother sarcastically rejoined. "'Pears ter me like the chile hain't never hed good sense; afore she could walk she'd crawl along the floor arter ye, an' holler like a squeech-owEL ef ye went off an' lef' her. An' ye air plumb teched in the head too, Birt, ter set sech store by Tennie. I look ter see her killed, or stunted, some day, in ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... think. He hated half measures. For a certain space he had to live on earth, and he wanted to discover what life really was. What lay beyond the grave he did not know, "sufficient for the day were the day's evil things." But he felt that he must try and plumb the depth or shallowness of the day's interests. He could not bear the idea of a contentment ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... longer ate snails, they were quite extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the mastery over them—it was a whole forest of burdocks. Here and there stood an apple and a plumb-tree, or else one never would have thought that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two last venerable ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... right. No one asks you to do nothin'. There's a heap as you can do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have. I mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we f'und there. Anyways, he never come back to deny it. You've turned up, plain, plumb providential for all concerned. I mistrust, though, there's ruther few things you kin do. Ain't ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Ecole des Beaux Arts can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... sufficiently daunting while it lasted. Late in the afternoon I thrust my head up for a look around. We were weltering along in horrible forty-foot seas, over which our bulwarks tilted at times until from the companion hatchway I stared plumb into the grey sliding chasms, and felt like a fly on the wall. The Lady Nepean hurled her old timbers along under close-reefed maintopsail, and a rag of a foresail only. The captain had housed topgallant masts and lashed his guns inboard; yet she rolled so that you would not have trusted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... If he dare venture; hang him, plumb porredge, He wrastle? he rost eggs! Come, lets ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... ladder. The man in front of Nat ducked his head; Nat ducked too; but the body slid sideways before it reached them and dropped plumb—the inert lump which had been Dave McInnes. His shako, spinning straight down the ladder, struck Nat on the shoulder and leaped off it down ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... consisting chiefly of fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse porphyroid gray trachyte; very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte. Chimborazo is very likely not a solid mountain: trachytic volcanoes are supposed to be full of cavities. Bouguer found it made the plumb-line deviate ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... be found by the intersection of the dial surface with the vertical plane which contains the style; and the most simple way of drawing it on the dial will be by suspending a plummet from some point of the style whence it may hang freely, and waiting until the shadows of both style and plumb-line coincide on the dial. This single shadow will be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... declamatory kind of Lady Macbeth who had stepped into the role flatly on a No. 7 last, rather than from a Juliette who had fattened into the part; that congenial stateliness now thrown completely out of plumb by a violent limp, which, resulting from a railway accident, threw out her entire left ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... "'Er? Plumb daft! Of course, as Mother 'Oward says, there 's times when she 's straight—but they don't last long. And, if she 'd given 'er testimony in writing, Mother 'Oward says it all might 'ave been different, and we 'd not 'ave 'ad anything ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper |
