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More "Whet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your great experience and your years Would have proved patience rather to your soul, Then with this frantique and untamed passion To whet their skeens; and, but for that I hope their friendships are too well confirmd, And their minds temperd with more kindly heat, Then for their froward parents soars That they should break forth into publique brawles— ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... findeth them wanting in those Ancient ones, and that doth not much more admire that smoothly equall neatnesse, continued sweetnesse, and flourishing comelinesse of Catullus his Epigrams, than all the sharpe quips and witty girds wherewith Martiall doth whet and embellish the conclusions of his. It is the same reason I spake of erewhile, as Martiall of himselfe. Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cuius locum materia successerat. [Footnote: Mart. Praf. 1. viii.] "He needed the lesse worke with his wit, in place ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and seem to find in such amusements the same fascination as himself. Your skill in games of chance excels his, as you proved at home where these pastimes lose their disreputable aspect by being openly enjoyed. Therefore I would have you whet this appetite of his by losing freely at first—he will take a grim delight in lessening the fortune he covets—then exert all your skill till he is deeply in your debt. He has nothing but what is doled out to him by Babie's father, I find; he dare not ask help there for such a purpose; ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it four-square, bleak, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dukes: Let high-born lechers eye the lively Presle Twirl her light limbs, that spurn the needless veil; Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow, Wave the white arm, and point the pliant toe; Collini trill her love-inspiring song, 630 Strain her fair neck, and charm the listening throng! Whet [97] not your scythe, Suppressors of our Vice! Reforming Saints! too delicately nice! By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save, No Sunday tankards foam, no barbers shave; And beer undrawn, and beards unmown, display Your ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... was thy dead chief's handmaid, Friends. Twelve months agone, I was with him Upon the battle-field alone. The Sioux were all around us; their Faces war-red painted; their cries Of vengeance filling all the air. He to his saddle caught me up. The Great Spirit strengthened his arm; The lightning whet his ax; the wind Speeded his pony's hoofs. Through walls Of human blood he cut our way, And on his tomb no single scalp The deed remarks, or notes the slain He left to whiten bones upon The plains. He saved my ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... now been working at his discoveries for twelve years, with little approbation from the generality of persons; the discovery of these islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, serving to whet his appetite for further enterprise, but not winning the common voice in favor of prosecuting discoveries on the coast of Africa. The people at home, improving upon the reports of the sailors, said that "the land which the Prince sought after was merely some sandy place like ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... humdrum that ceases to impress us as we grow old. Do we outgrow him?—or do we fall away from him? I cannot bear to hear Emerson spoken of as a back-number, and I should like to believe that the young men of to-day find in him what I found in him fifty years ago, when he seemed to whet my appetite for high ideals by referring to that hunger that could "eat the solar system like gingercake." But I suspect they do not. The world is too much with us. We are prone to hitch our wagon to a star in a way, or in a spirit, that does not sanctify the wagon, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... laughing, the dwarf grew all at once into a great giant, whose head was higher than the clouds, and whose long beard fell down to his knees. The giant began to whet his axe on a huge piece of rock, and before he had finished he had worn out six blocks of the hardest rock and seven of the softest sandstone. Then he strode up to the tree and began to cut it down. When the third blow had fallen the ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... the series of preliminary speeches in the canvass. But they only served to whet the moral and intellectual and political appetite of the public for more. It was generally conceded that, at last, in the person of Mr. Lincoln, the "Little Giant" ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... greatest bards, hail from the New World. The conclusion of the war will probably be the signal for an unusual hegira from America to Europe; and these notes of the actual condition, in A.D. 1863, of Scotland's famed shrines, may serve to whet the increasing appetite ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... miscarry, so on the other hand enough of them escaped to inform the rest, as well of what they had done, as of what happened to them; and to whet them on to another enterprise of the same nature, which they, it seems, resolved to attempt, with sufficient force to carry all before them; for except what the first man told them of inhabitants, they could say little to it of their own knowledge; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... solitude of La Granja, that wild boars from the neighbouring forests, and especially from the beautiful pine- covered mountain which rises like a cone directly behind the palace, frequently find their way into the streets and squares, and whet their tusks against ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... not endless discussions of Beethoven's works which the public—at all events, our public—demands. We wish his biography,—the history of his life. What has been given us does but whet the appetite. We wish to have the many original sources, still sealed to us, explored, and the results of this labor honestly given us. None of the writers above-mentioned have been in a position to do this, and their publications ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... better food than now, for many hogs were killed in the celebration of war expeditions — and the old men got the greater part of the meat. The Igorot is a natural head-hunter, and his training for the last sixty years seems to have done little more for him than whet this appetite. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... that noble knight, After he had so often wounded been, Could stand on foot now to renew the fight ... All was thro' virtue of the ring he wore; The which not only did not from him let One drop of blood to fall, but did restore His weakened powers, and his dulled spirits whet. Spenser, Faery ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... daughters should enjoy in peace a portion of his stores, he has left half to Nero. The man was a fool as well as a traitor. The peasant who throws a child out of the door to the wolves knows that it does but whet their appetite for blood, and so it will be in this case. I hear Prasutagus died a week since, though the news has come but slowly, and already a horde of Roman officials have arrived in Norfolk, and are proceeding to make inventories ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... said he, "to study only those portions of our holy literature on which they can whet their ingenuity. But from all writings which would promote piety and fear of God he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dimmed their interest in the father, it had only served to whet their keen curiosity over the girl, who, in the intervening eighteen years, had changed from a half-starved, half-clad child that flashed through the thickets like a wild thing, into a long slender-limbed creature with wide, duskily violet eyes and shimmering, tumbled hair—a ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... all the remnants of the victuals of the day before, leg of mutton, veal, and ham, encompassed by a fallen mass of transparent jelly which quivered like soft glue. They had all eaten too much already, but these viands seemed to whet their appetites afresh, as though the idea had come to them that nothing whatever ought to be left. The fat priest in the middle of the table, who had shown himself such a capital knife-and-fork, was now lingering over the fruit, having just got to his third peach, a huge one, which he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... barley bestow On the child of Apollo, the sleek sable crow; Or a trifle of whet, O kind friends, give;— Or a wee loaf of bread that ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... from behind.) O lud! he'll murder my poor boy, my darling! Here, good gentleman, whet your rage upon me. Take my money, my life, but spare that young gentleman; spare my child, if you have ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... appears to deserve no credit—Flamininus, whose restless vanity sought after new opportunities for great achievements, undertook on his own part to deliver Rome from Hannibal as he had delivered the Greeks from their chains, and, if not to wield—which was not diplomatic—at any rate to whet and to point, the dagger against the greatest man of his time. Prusias, the most pitiful among the pitiful princes of Asia, was delighted to grant the little favour which the Roman envoy in ambiguous terms requested; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... not come; hers is not yet a nation's manhood even; though now in childhood, she anticipates her youth, and lusts for empire like any czar. Yoomy! judge not yet. Time hath tales to tell. Many books, and many long, long chapters, are wanting to Vivenza's history; and whet history but is full ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... day, before dinner and supper, even whilst the dishes are cooling on the table, men and women repair to a side-table; and to obtain an appetite eat bread-and- butter, cheese, raw salmon, or anchovies, drinking a glass of brandy. Salt fish or meat then immediately follows, to give a further whet to the stomach. As the dinner advances, pardon me for taking up a few minutes to describe what, alas! has detained me two or three hours on the stretch observing, dish after dish is changed, in endless rotation, and handed ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of their desert, and are irritably conscious of a hunter's camp in an adjacent county. To these last, of course, Fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea-garden: a Rosherville on a by-day. But to the plain man it offers solitude: an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet for company. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not forget: this Visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.[1] But looke, Amazement on thy Mother sits;[2] [Sidenote: 30, 54] O step betweene her, and her fighting Soule,[3] [Sidenote: 198] Conceit[4] in weakest bodies, strongest workes. ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... they are wrought in God." Is this the way of slaveholders? Darkness they court—they will have darkness. Doubtless "because their deeds are evil." Can we confide in methods for the benefit of our enslaved brethren, which it is death for us to examine? Whet good ever came, what good can we expect, from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... deep, as the iron is driven, Base slaves! may the whet of their agony be, To think—as the damned haply think of the heaven They had once in their reach,—that they might ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... live! The sight! A burning world! And to be dead and miss it! There's an end Of all satiety: such fire imagine! Born in some obscure alley of the poor, Then leaping to embrace a splendid street, Palaces, temples, morsels that but whet Her appetite: the eating of huge forests: Then with redoubled fury rushing high, Smacking her lips over a continent, And licking old civilisations up! Then in tremendous battle fire and sea Joined: and the ending of the mighty sea: Then heaven in conflagration, stars like cinders Falling in ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... and before I left the room each separate and distinct ancestor had turned me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... dine with the Colonel, and his lady, and nieces: but I could not pass the afternoon with them, for the heart of me. There was enough in the persons and faces of the two young ladies to set me upon comparisons. Particular features held my attention for a few moments: but these served but to whet my impatience to find the charmer of my soul; who, for person, for air, for mind, never had any equal. My heart recoiled and sickened upon comparing minds and conversation. Pert wit, a too-studied desire to please; each in high good humour with ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... the story,[72] I have perfect faith in such a master-hand as yours; and I know that what such an artist feels to be terrible and original, is unquestionably so. You whet my interest by what you write of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... nephew of Madame Boyer, the cousin of Marie. He arrived at Marseilles on January 1, and received a cordial welcome. Of the domestic arrangements that ensued, it is sufficient to say that they were calculated to whet the jealousy and inflame the hatred that Marie felt towards her mother, who now persisted as before in parading before her daughter the intimacy of ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... do the deeds that set Old fighters' hearts afire; The edge of every spirit whet, And every arm inspire. Yet I have seen upon his face The tears that, as they roll, Show what a light of saintly grace May clothe ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... struck Malchus. He took off his belt and formed it into a running noose, and then waited until the wolves should summon up courage to attack again. It was not long. Furious with hunger, which the prey they had already devoured was only sufficient to whet, the wolves again approached and began to spring towards ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... makes an instrument of war. Tyrrheus, the foster father of the beast, Then clench'd a hatchet in his horny fist, But held his hand from the descending stroke, And left his wedge within the cloven oak, To whet their courage and their rage provoke. And now the goddess, exercis'd in ill, Who watch'd an hour to work her impious will, Ascends the roof, and to her crooked horn, Such as was then by Latian shepherds borne, Adds all her ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... a morning's walk: a shallow bay-window, with small, square panes of inferior glass; the familiar array of old books turn their mellow title-pages toward the light; a window designed for lingering. Three rows, or four, of books—and a few old prints—may be examined from the front; these whet the appetite. But two other rows are so set in the window as to necessitate sidelong inspection, and tempt the observer to take two steps around the corner. Here, to be at ease, one must stand with one foot on the first of the four stone stairs leading downward ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... with amulets and ornaments as a means of protection. But the result is quite other than that intended, and the ornaments which are meant to protect the children from the imaginary terrors of the evil eye, in reality merely serve as a whet to illicit cupidity, and expose them a rich, defenceless prey to the violence of the murderer ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the skipper, "place half a bottle of claret near Mr Rattlin. When your throat is dry, younker, you can whet your whistle; and when you come to any particular fine paragraph, you may wash it down with ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... objects made of iron. The material iron embraces the metal contained in them all; but we may say, "The cook made the irons hot," referring to flat-irons; or, "The sailor was put in irons" meaning chains of iron. So also we may speak of a glass to drink from or to look into; a steel to whet a knife on; a rubber for erasing marks; ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... that is practical and dry (Being sated with sensation in excess, With the vespertinal rumour and the matutinal lie Which adorn the lucubrations of the Press), Then I turn me to the columns where there's nothing to attract, Or the interest to waken and to whet, And I revel in a banquet of unmitigated fact In ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... work has been generously rewarded by a steady improvement in the general results now attained. Nor is the situation injured by a slight tinge of friendly rivalry among clubs, to lend an additional zest to their labors, and to whet the praiseworthy ambition of each to make every succeeding issue a little better than the last. There are many zealous bibliophiles who belong to two or three book clubs at once, finding it interesting to collect and compare the works produced ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... brings him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle (whet), mate?" "Waffle!" said the farmer, with a well-feigned stare of amazement, "O, about noon mebby." "Then," said the despairing spirit, "That thief of a Christian has done me;" and so saying, he disappeared and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... which told when Harding threw the first bits of "raw meat" into this gilded corral. I knew that he long since had cornered N.O. & G., and that he would whet the appetites of his victims as only he knew how, but I did not know that it was his day of reckoning for other "conspirators" equally as grasping as those with whom I had measured my ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... that an observer would be tempted to quote again from the same scene, 'Ha! Old Truepenny, canst thou mole so fast i' the ground?' Here, however, the comparison ceased; for, when Sir Elijah made his visit to Lucknow 'to whet the almost blunted purpose' of the Nabob, his language was wholly different from that of the poet—for it would have been totally against his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... whom he sprang; and they, idolising him for his dazzling exploits as a soldier, looked to him as their natural leader, and the creator of a new era. Indeed it needed no stimulus from without to whet his ambitious cravings. That seventh consulship which superstition whispered would be surely his he had yet to win; and in all his after conduct he seems to have been guided by the most vulgar selfishness, which in the end became murderous insanity. But while he hoped to use all parties ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... and simply expressed, was to Ralph Allen. As before, the "artful aid" of advertisement was invoked to whet the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... by three menials, now entered with wine and refreshments, which it was the fashion to offer as a whet before dinner; and when they were placed before the guests, Lady Ashton made an apology for withdrawing her husband from them for some minutes upon business of special import. The Marquis, of course, requested her ladyship ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... unceasing, ungrudging toil. He lists the weeds and blights, the pests and the vermin against which the farmer must contend. Indeed it is in the contemplation of a life of toil that he finds his honest philosophy of life: the gospel of salvation through work. Hardships whet the ingenuity of man; God himself for man's own good brought an end to the age of golden indolence, shook the honey from the trees, and gave vipers their venom. Man has been left alone to contend with an obstinate nature, and in that struggle to discover his own worth. The Georgics are ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... model of good sense and wide liberality,—all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth. The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased. I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain the heart ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain Beausire and Mme. Rosemilly, whom his father had brought home and engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea, and whose ideas also seemed to have been worn round, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... thou of great intelligence, the Rishis and Brahmanas and the deities, led by the authority of the Vedas, all applaud that religion which has compassion for its indication. But, O king, whet I ask thee is this: how does a man, who has perpetrated acts of injury to others in word, thought and deed, succeed in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... way. And what's the consequence to me? I've ceased to try and keep track of her. King Mena, too, is lost to me forever, through the over-conscientiousness of our late conductor, who says there never was a Mena, only several kings they've mixed into one. I seem to be the one who's most mixed up! To whet my appetite for Egypt now, I have to have something tasty. Where's the good of stuffing my mind with a string of names which I couldn't mention to any one at home, because I can't pronounce them? The word Dynasty (he pronounced it Die-nasty) makes me sick! ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... ever thinke thou durst not fence But at a complement; a glittering vapour, A thing of clothes and fitt for chambermaides To whet their witts upon, but now resolve Either to have your skin flead of or fight wo' me ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... tried to induce me to speak when delusions had tied my tongue, now, when I was at last willing talk, would scarcely condescend to listen; and what seemed to me his studied and ill-disguised avoidance only served to whet my desire to detain him ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... descends on the city, and it grows dusk. The soldiers being dismissed from duty, some young officers in a frolic of defiance halt, draw their swords and whet them on the steps of the FRENCH AMBASSADOR'S residence as they pass. The noise of whetting is ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which also I devoured, and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary growth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the sad occurrence it has just been my lot to chronicle—while the general was having his wounds dressed, slight ones, happily, but still he was not safe, as inflammation might ensue—while Mrs. Tracy was indulging in her third tumbler, mixed to whet her appetite for shrimps—and while Emily was deciphering, for the forty thousandth time, Charles's sanguine billet-doux—lo! a dusty chaise and smoking posters, and a sun-burnt young fellow springing out, and just upon the stairs—they ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... King Richard is in that bush?" [73] His cruelty to the Mahometans was the effect of temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier, so free and fearless in the use of his lance, would have descended to whet a dagger against his valiant brother Conrad of Montferrat, who was slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. [74] After the surrender of Acre, and the departure of Philip, the king of England led the crusaders to the recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of Caesarea and Jaffa were added to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... changes to get the kinks out of our minds, our nerves, our muscles—the cobwebs off our faces. We need them to whet again the edge of appetite. We need them to invite the mind and the soul to new possibilities and powers. We need them in order to come back with new implements, or with implements redressed, sharpened, for ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Encouragement, as great a Number as they can of supernumerary and insignificant Fellows, which they use like Whifflers, and commonly call Shoeing-Horns. These are never designed to know the length of the Foot, but only, when a good Offer comes, to whet and spur him up to the Point. Nay, 'tis the Opinion of that grave Lady, Madam Matchwell, that it's absolutely convenient for every prudent Family to have several of these Implements about the House, to clap on as Occasion serves, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... but served to whet his unrest. Every page of every book was a peep-hole into the realm of knowledge. His hunger fed upon what he read, and increased. Also, he did not know where to begin, and continually suffered from lack of preparation. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... than necessary, I brought three able mowers, who would cut the whole in about an hour; and, as the plat was nearly circular, set them to mow round, beginning at the outside. And now for sagacity indeed! The moment the men began to whet their scythes, the two old larks began to flutter over the nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they flew round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to touch their bodies, making a great chattering at the same time; but, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do for company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and some others had laid a plot against the king's life, and that morning it had been settled that when the barber shaved him he was to cut his throat with a razor. So after the barber had lathered his face he began to whet the razor, ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... the dais and the door behind it. In the inner room the women stirred and whispered, while a dozen of them, putting on their veils again, gathered around Yasmini, waiting in silence for her to give the cue. She waited long enough to whet the edge of expectation, and then nodded. Hasamurti opened the door wide and Yasmini stepped ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... had already devoured them with his eyes; he told his wife they would be delicate eating, when tossed up with good savoury sauce. He then took a great knife, and coming up to these poor children, whetted it upon a great whet-stone which he held in his left hand. He had already taken hold of one of them, when ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... stimulating, that it seldom enters into the food of European nations, except the swine, the Soland goose (Pelicanus Bassanus), and formerly the swan. Of these the swine and the swan are fed previously upon vegetable aliment; and the Soland goose is taken in very small quantity, only as a whet to the appetite. Next to these are the birds, that feed upon insects, which are perhaps the most stimulating and the most nutritive of our ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... bright steel, Sons of the White Dragon! Kindle the torch, Daughter of Hengist! The steel glimmers not for the carving of the banquet, It is hard, broad, and sharply pointed; The torch goeth not to the bridal chamber, It steams and glitters blue with sulphur. Whet the steel, the raven croaks! Light the torch, Zernebock is yelling! Whet the steel, sons of the Dragon! Kindle the torch, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... please all Night to stay, My Son shall put you in the way." Which offer I most kindly took, And for a Seat did round me look; When presently amongst the rest, He plac'd his unknown English Guest, Who found them drinking for a whet, A Cask of (h) Syder on the Fret, Till Supper came upon the Table, On which I fed whilst I was able. So after hearty Entertainment, Of Drink and Victuals without Payment; For Planters Tables, you must know, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... laboratory work should be well correlated with one another and with the systematic work on the text that guides the study, so that each shall whet the edge of the other and all together accomplish what ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... many, although of quarries they are ignorant, neither haue they vse of any store whereupon they should haue occasion to seeke any. For if euery housholde haue one or two to cracke nuts, grinde shels, whet copper, and sometimes other stones for hatchets, they haue ynough: neither vse they any digging, but onely for graues about three foote deepe: and therefore no marueile that they know neither quarries, nor lime-stones, which ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... biscuits, biiru (beer) and ramune (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus with ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... flesh was there left upon them. And the one, when the wolf came by, could scant stand on his legs, and the other was already dead and his skin ripped off and carried away. And as he looked upon them suddenly, he was first about to feed upon them and whet his teeth upon their bones. But as he looked aside, he spied a fair cow in an enclosure, walking with her young calf by her side. And as soon as he saw them, his conscience began to grudge him against both those two horses. And ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... died, and George II. became king. He published here his Henriade. He wrote here his "History of Charles XII." He read "Gulliver's Travels" as a new book, and might have been present at the first night of The Beggar's Opera. He was here whet Sir Isaac ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... would I be to devote the whole of my paper to Richard of Bury. I must, however, content myself with one other noble extract, which, I hope, will whet my reader's appetite for more: "Moses, the gentlest of men, teaches us to make bookcases most neatly, wherein they [books] may be protected from any injury. Take, he says, this book of the Law and put it in the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God. O fitting place and appropriate ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... temper of some metal, which is so molten that a stream of it is pouring out of the furnace. Another example of this literal interpretation, is in the Psalter of Edwin, where two men are engaged in sharpening a sword upon a grindstone, in illustration of the text about the wicked, "who whet ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... magic words, "Refreshments" and "Souvenirs," would hit 'em hard. In order to whet the public interest, I asked the papers where I advertised to give the thing some editorial or other reference. But they was very cold and said the best they could do was to send their dramatic critics to criticise ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes
... charitable visits of the niece. One day, when matters appeared to be at a very low ebb with him, and shortly after he had been put ashore, the sick mariner requested an interview with the deacon himself. The request had been reluctantly granted; but, during the visit, Daggett had managed so well to whet his visiter's appetite for gain, that henceforth there was no trouble in procuring the deacon's company. Little by little had Daggett let out his facts, always keeping enough in reserve to render himself necessary, until he had got his new acquaintance in the highest state ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... them vpon the necke of their launce haue an hooke, wherewithall they attempt to pull men out of their saddles. The heads of their arrowes are exceedingly sharpe cutting both wayes like a two edged sworde, and they alwaies carie a file in their quiuers to whet their arrowheads. They haue targets made of wickers, or of small reddes. Howbeit they doe not (as we suppose) accustome to carrie them, but onely about the tents or in the Emperours or dukes guards, and that only in the night season. [Sidenote: Their experience and cunning in warres.] They ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... many injunctions as to their safe-keeping, he went off to forage for the coffee, and presently returned, having been moderately successful. One egg apiece was hardly enough, however, to appease the craving of two strong men ravenous from long fasting. Indeed, it seemed only to whet the appetite, and we both set out on an eager expedition for more food. Before going far I had the good luck to meet a sutler's wagon, and though its stock was about all sold, there were still left four large bologna ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... obvious, but what I would infer is this— that in such an age it is possible some great genius may arise to equal any of the ancients, abating only for the language; for great contemporaries whet and cultivate each other, and mutual borrowing and commerce makes the common riches of learning, as it does of ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... in its proper bearings. Without going into too much detail, let me try to explain it to you. This settlement of my affairs that you speak of was forcibly done by the courts, in the interest of others, and to my great injury. The rascals set out to cut my throat—was it required of me to whet the knife for them? They set out to strip me of the last penny I had, and they had every advantage, despotic powers, with complete access to all my private papers. If the robbers overlooked something that I had, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... according to Justice. I hope my Call and Request will at last take place, and have a hearing with those who regard Nature, and have an earnest and longing desire to search out, and learn, whereby they may whet their Wits, open their Eyes, and let their Ears hear, and learn such a thing out of my Advice, which was never taken notice of, or learn'd before, and is to be found in this Spirit of Copper, internal and external. He that doth not observe, or truly understand my Writings, will not ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... socket chisel, the gouge, the hatchet, the adze, the drawing knife. Tools for knocking upon wood and iron are, the mallet and hammer. Implements for sharpening tools are the grinding stone, the rub stone, and the oil or whet stone.[5] ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... whet spears with eloquence, Fight, and kill beasts dry-handed with sweet words? Cease, or talk still and slay ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the trial of this experiment, turned his back, and fled with great precipitation; while the robber, whose horse had run away, mounted Gilbert, and rode off across the country. It was at this period, that two footmen, belonging to the coach, who had stayed behind to take their morning's whet at the inn where they lodged, came up to the assistance of the ladies, armed with blunderbusses; and the carriage proceeded, leaving Timothy alone in distraction and despair. He knew not which way to turn, and was afraid of remaining on the spot, lest the robbers should come back and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... largely from another both in point of wit and judgement. On a ship of war, for instance, [2] the ship is on the high seas, and the crew must row whole days together to reach moorings. [3] Now note the difference. Here you may find a captain [4] able by dint of speech and conduct to whet the souls of those he leads, and sharpen them to voluntary toils; and there another so dull of wit and destitute of feeling that it will take his crew just twice the time to finish the same voyage. ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... by the 'Druid.' The hussars taken on board that vessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the unfortunate Lewis—they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed with gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel, on which they whet their knives, to whet their swords with. It is reported that Hoche and Reilly (one of the admirals) are gone off to America with seven hundred thousand pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay the troops. Others think the vessel has sunk, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... he had heard it from a bibulous member of the Barred Horseshoe, and then added a little of torture as a sauce to whet their appetites ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... hints of the difficulty or impropriety of summoning the spirits in the presence of a stranger; or of one who might, perchance, have no other motive than the gratification of a vain curiosity: but they only meant to whet the edge of his appetite by this delay, and would have been sorry indeed if the Count had been discouraged. To show how exclusively the thoughts both of Dee and Kelly were fixed upon their dupe, at this time, it is only ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... scream on high, They whet their forked beaks: Raise—raise the battle cry, 'Tis fame our ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... found. I suppose it will be admitted that the language which supplies the meaning of a word has the fairest claim to be considered its parent language. What, then, is the meaning of "Hurrah," and in whet language? As a reply to this Query, allow me to quote a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... atmospheric trappings, and appear to lie within speaking distance of Hightower's door; the next, it would withdraw behind its blue veil, and seem far enough away to belong to another world. On Hightower's farm the corn was high enough to whet its green sabres against the wind. One evening Chichester, Hightower, and Babe sat on the little porch with their faces turned toward Kenesaw. They had been watching a line of blue smoke on the mountain in the distance; and, as the twilight deepened into dusk, they saw that ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... in the sharpening of a scythe, and it is worth describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you will see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet it. Then also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it is a good thing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all your day's mowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade pointing away from you, and you put your left hand firmly on the back of the blade, grasping ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... And he stooped to whet his beak on the stones of the coping; And when once more the shout came, in querulous tones he spake, "What I said was 'more's the pity;' if the heart be long past hoping, Let it say of death, 'I know it,' or ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... understand you; you wish to be revenged. You hope to rise high, and I am to whet your knife, and hold the ladder for you. Poor little man! there, sit down-drink a gulp of milk to cool you, and listen to my advice. Katuti wants a great deal of money to escape dishonor. She need only pick it up—it lies at her door." The dwarf looked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the classical market, Mrs Jarley made extraordinary efforts to stimulate the popular taste, and whet the popular curiosity. Certain machinery in the body of the nun on the leads over the door was cleaned up and put in motion, so that the figure shook its head paralytically all day long, to the great admiration of a drunken, but very Protestant, barber over the way, who ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... work. Meantime, with every secondary merit which such a work could possess this is replete; while its faults are only such as were inseparable from the conjunction of such ambitions with such powers. He may whet and wield his blade; but he puts no poison on its edge. He may disparage reverence; but he is not himself irreverent. He may impugn the convictions that most men love; but, while withholding no syllable of dissent and reprehension, he utters not a syllable that can insult ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sorts of prepared dishes—in short, a substantial and sumptuous dinner was served. The collation which had been taken at the commencement, called in the language of the country "Refresco," had been intended only to whet the appetites of the guests for what ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... this merely to whet my appetite," she said presently, unable to bear the unnatural silence. "Of course I know you have finished the picture at last. You have asked me to come here to see it. Then why on earth not let me see it? All this waiting can't come from timidity. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... it come more gradually and with less violence. I have always been convinced that the country was in no danger of revolution, and still believe that if one does come it will be from the passing of this Bill, which will introduce the principle of change and whet the appetites of those who never will be satisfied with any existing order of things; or if it follows on the rejection of this Bill, which I doubt, it will be owing to the concentration of all the forces that are opposed ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... solitary concert for the season, but, to whet the appetite of society, Diana was also to appear at a single big reception—"Baroni won't look at anything less than a ducal house with Royalty present," as Jerry banteringly asserted—and then, while the world was still ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... will but whet our zeal. You think of the campaign. Well, let it come. It was not I who first unsheathed the sword. I would have willingly prolonged the truce, And willingly have knit a closer bond, A lasting one—have given to my Sittah A husband worthy of her, ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... awoke, and when the song was ended the people thanked him for it; and it pleased many, as it was suitable to the time and occasion, and they called it the house-carle's whet. The king thanked him for the pleasure, and took a gold ring that weighed half a mark and gave it him. Thormod thanked the king for the gift, and said, "We have a good king; but it is not easy to say how long the king's life may be. It is my prayer, sire, that thou shouldst ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... days that was all that could be ascertained—just enough to whet curiosity to burning-point. Then in the solitude and seclusion of the ladies' cabin the maid servant became confidential with one of the stewardesses, and narrated, after the manner of maids, her mistress's history as far as she knew it. The stewardess ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Ausonia from her sleep. Forth swarm Footmen and horsemen, and in wild career Whirl up the dust. "Arm," cry the warriors, "arm!" With unctuous lard their polished shields they smear, And whet the axe, and scour the rusty spear. Their banners wave, their trumpets sound the fight. Five towns their anvils for the war uprear, Crustumium, Tibur, glorying in her might, Ardea, Atina strong, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... behind, as though it were no longer of any value whatever. No other trace of them had as yet been found anywhere in the known galaxy, but they had left enough material in Centaurus City to satisfy the curiosity of Mankind for years to come, and enough mystery and complexity to whet that curiosity to an ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... where the caribou fell. It was an ideal spot on the high bank above the river, being flat and thickly covered with white moss. The banks at this point were all sand drift; we could not find a stone large enough to whet our knives. George made a stage for drying while Hubbard and I dressed the deer. Our work finished, we all sat down and roasted steaks on sticks and drank coffee. The knowledge that we were now assured of a good stock of dried meat, of course, added to the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... as for thee, thou false woman, My sister and my fae, Grim vengeance, yet, shall whet a sword That thro thy soul shall gae: The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee; Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe Frae ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... it was plain the captain agreed with every interruption, and they seemed to whet his interest in the story he had undertaken ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... get through most work with his tools, if he stops from time to time to sharpen them up. The son of Sirach says, speaking of a carpenter—"If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct."—Ecclesiasticus. A small fine file is very effectual in giving an edge to tools of soft steel. It is a common error to suppose that the best ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... The odor is delectable enough to whet the appetite to as keen an edge as the wind hath. Robert, 'tis some time ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... to rock, Incessant bleatings run around the hills. At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed, Head above head: and ranged in lusty rows, The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears. The Seasons: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... vanished, then a public ball was given twice a week at the palace, and all the West of England invited. New faces brought new ideas; new figures brought new fancies. All were delighted with the young Duke, and flattery from novel quarters will for a moment whet even the appetite of the satiated. Simplicity, too, can interest. There were some Misses Gay-weather who got unearthed, who never had been in London, though nature had given them sparkling eyes and springing persons. This tyranny was too bad. Papa ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... more. These words did indeed whet his curiosity to the utmost, but the shame of acting the part of an "eavesdropper" was so great that, by a strong effort of will, he drew back and pondered for a moment what he ought to do. The unexpected tone and tenor of Gascoyne's remark ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... myself to the banquet with this torch in my hand according to custom. But why do you tarry, Blepyrus? Take these young girls with you and, while you are away a while, I will whet my appetite with some dining-song. I have but a few words to say: let the wise judge me because of whatever is wise in this piece, and those who like a laugh by whatever has made them laugh. In this way I address pretty well everyone. If the lot has ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... plot is intricate with mystery and probability neatly dovetailed and the solution is a series of surprises skillfully retarded to whet the interest of the reader. It is excellently written and the denouement so skillfully concealed that one's interest and curiosity are kept on edge till the very last. It will certainly be a popular book with a very ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... different from that on board the other, although it was nearly as bad. There were four of us in the second cabin; {128} we dined alone, and had a mulatto servant to attend upon us. Unfortunately, he was afflicted with elephantiasis, and his appearance did not at all tend to whet the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... else for it than to suppose that boys who are bred where they have no companions are prone to make the most of companionship when once attained to. And then, in regard to books, as of these I rarely got more than what might serve as a whet to the appetite, I might have the desire of those whose longings after what they would obtain are increased by the difficulties which interpose between them and the possession. One book which in school I sometimes got a glance of, I would have given anything to possess: this was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... greatly lacking in foresight. Hence the servants and stewards do not advise their master to procure any article until it is completely gone. Therefore when they say that there is no more sugar or no more oil, it is when there is not [oil] enough to whet a knife. [207] Consequently, great deficiencies and annoyances are suffered because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... questioning look upon his face whenever anyone surprised him in the daytime, Solomon Owl was the noisiest of all the different families of owls in Pleasant Valley. There were the barn owls, the long-eared owls, the short-eared owls, the saw-whet owls, the screech owls—but there! there's no use of naming them all. There wasn't one of them that could equal Solomon Owl's laughing and hooting and shrieking and ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... (cheerily indeed, for the voices of my followers were ever within my hearing, but yet), as it were, in solitude, for I had no comrade to whet the edge of my reason, or wake me from my noonday dreams. I was left all alone to be taught and swayed by the beautiful circumstances of Palestine travelling—by the clime, and the land, and the name of the land, with all its mighty ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... to succeed them. By this means a Member of the Everlasting Club never wants Company; for tho' he is not upon Duty himself, he is sure to find some [who [2]] are; so that if he be disposed to take a Whet, a Nooning, an Evening's Draught, or a Bottle after Midnight, he goes to the Club and finds a Knot of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to whet my curiosity. I was not long before I called on Raton, but not wishing to be duped by her I took due precautions. I told her that she must come and sup with me, and that I would give her the twenty-five louis if my happiness was complete, and that if I were unsuccessful ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... accomplish it without adventure. One morning, about a day's ride from his destination, he met two gay cavaliers, with finely caparisoned horses, speeding on their way to Paris. They saw the dust-stained horse, and dustier rider, and, thinking it would be fine sport to whet their blades on his clumsy sword, ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... and gain of victory to get, Wherefore, dear lord, be wise, take care that yet A like misfortune happen not to you. Still in their lair the cubs and she-bear,[Q] who Rough pasturage and sour in May have met, With mad rage gnash their teeth and talons whet, And vengeance of past loss on us pursue: While this new grief disheartens and appalls, Replace not in its sheath your honour'd sword, But, boldly following where your fortune calls, E'en to its goal be glory's path explored, Which fame and honour to the world ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... thus those pretious rayes withdraw To whet my dull beams, keep my bold in aw? Or, are you gentle and compassionate, You will not reach me Regulus his fate? Brave prince! who, eagle-ey'd of eagle kind, Wert blindly damn'd to look thine own ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... him; he went on to indite, stroke by stroke, the promised terrible article on Chatelet and Mme. de Bargeton. That morning he experienced one of the keenest personal pleasures of journalism; he knew what it was to forge the epigram, to whet and polish the cold blade to be sheathed in a victim's heart, to make of the hilt a cunning piece of workmanship for the reader to admire. For the public admires the handle, the delicate work of the brain, while the cruelty ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... pitched, and the stakes are set, 590 Ever sing merrily, merrily; The bows they bend, and the knives they whet, Hunters live ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... "You whet my curiosity, monsieur; and, of course, I am a dutiful niece. It follows that I shall ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... emblazoned air, while a breeze swells the sun-shot satin of every lady's skirt, and tosses the ringlets that hang like bunches of yellow grapes on either side of her brow, and stirs the plumes of her gallant. But the very breeze is laden with heat, and the fountain's noise does but whet the thirst of the grass, the flowers, the trees. The earth sulks under the burden of the unmerciful sun. Love itself, one had said, would be languid here, pale and supine, and, faintly sighing for things past or for future things, would sink into siesta. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... apprehensive. Master McLean iss coming back for supper, and we're going to make it a great affair, a real reunion for all of us. Caterina, helped by two stout colored women, has been cooking all the afternoon, and I hope that you two boys have had enough exercise and excitement to whet ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... governor of London, till the King arrive. He is a prime favourite at the Spanish Court, in proof whereof the Rata carries a crew of the noblest youth of Spain, committed to his care for this great venture. They are hungry for battle, but, alack! I fear we shall none of us get more than will whet our appetite. As for you and me, McDonnell, this business is like to settle scores between ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... hymn, "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?"] had just dedicated to the German people. When their passions had been excited to the highest pitch by dreams of victory, by wine and soul-stirring songs, they went in the evening to the residence of the French minister to whet their sword- blades on the pavement in front of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... between Will and Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether I might not dispense with that great labour, and concluded eventually that I might, and so ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... States," "Story of the Steam Engine," "A Brief History of Science," an "Essay on Early Man," "Great Artists," "Secrets of Success," etc. Each little book contained the evening's programme, the words and music of at least two national hymns, and "Owl Talks," a single page of crisp thoughts, to whet one's wits. At the close of each season the twenty pamphlets, continuously paged, were bound for fifty cents in two volumes with covers of red cloth. Thus the people got much for little, and they were benefited and pleased with their bargain. Encores and the discourtesy of stamping the feet and ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... nears me! It is ARTHUR's pet. Light ladder this; would capsize in a jiffy. His bristles he'd scrape and his tusks he would whet Against it, I wish he were drowned in the Liffey! Whisht! Get away! He's so heavy and big. There! round the ladder he's playing the fooler. Ah! there's the rub. PATRICK scumfish that Pig! If he doesn't mean deviltry ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... the sheriff. He felt that his first duty was to become friends with such an important official. Besides this, he wished to have an interview with the prisoner. He had arranged in his mind, on the way there, just how he would write a preliminary article that would whet the appetite of the readers of the Chicago Argus for any further developments that might occur during and after the trial. He would write the whole thing in the form of ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... vnresolued men, For to shewe causes of the deed decreed, This shall dispute for mee and tell him why, This heart, hand, minde, hath mark'd him out to die: If it be true that furies quench-les thirst, Is pleas'd with quaffing of ambitious bloud, Then all you deuills whet my Poniards point, And I wil broach you a bloud-sucking heart: 1580 Which full of bloud, must bloud store to you yeeld, Were it a peerce to flint or marble stone: Why so it is for Caesars heart's a stone, Els would bee mooued with my Countries mone. They say you furies ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... her sleep. Forth swarm Footmen and horsemen, and in wild career Whirl up the dust. "Arm," cry the warriors, "arm!" With unctuous lard their polished shields they smear, And whet the axe, and scour the rusty spear. Their banners wave, their trumpets sound the fight. Five towns their anvils for the war uprear, Crustumium, Tibur, glorying in her might, Ardea, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... mania with him. He had won it once, and would again despite all the Moores, all the Gray Dogs, all the undutiful sons in existence; on that point he was resolved. The fact of his having tasted the joys of victory served to whet his desire. And now he felt he could never be happy till the Cup was ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... no more. These words did indeed whet his curiosity to the utmost, but the shame of acting the part of an "eavesdropper" was so great that, by a strong effort of will, he drew back and pondered for a moment what he ought to do. The unexpected tone and tenor of ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... first did whet me against Caesar, 61 I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream: 65 The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of a man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... know your places. Let not one man's soul escape you. Appleyard was a whet before a meal; but now we go to table. I have three men whom I will bitterly avenge—Harry Shelton, Simon Malmesbury, and"—striking his broad bosom—"and Ellis Duckworth, by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the woodland wilderness and deserts of the deer Alecto drave the Queen around, with Bacchus' stings beset But when she deemed enough was wrought that rage of hers to whet, And that Latinus' rede and house was utterly undone, Forthwith away on dusky wings is borne that evil one Unto the bold Rutulian's wall: a city, saith the tale, Raised up by Danae for her Acrisian folks' avail 410 When ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... I did ever thinke thou durst not fence But at a complement; a glittering vapour, A thing of clothes and fitt for chambermaides To whet their witts upon, but now resolve Either to have your skin flead of or fight wo' me For troubling ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... already looked upon them as hors tie combat; and the frequent visits of the whisky bottle to the ugly mouth of their dam I hoped would soon reduce her to a like state. Judge of my astonishment, reader, when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large carving-knife and go to the grindstone to whet its edge. I saw her pour the water on the turning machine, and watched her working away with the dangerous instrument, until the cold sweat covered every part of my body, in spite of my determination to defend myself to the last. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... And the one, when the wolf came by, could scant stand on his legs, and the other was already dead and his skin ripped off and carried away. And as he looked upon them suddenly, he was first about to feed upon them and whet his teeth upon their bones. But as he looked aside, he spied a fair cow in an enclosure, walking with her young calf by her side. And as soon as he saw them, his conscience began to grudge him against both ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... The sight! A burning world! And to be dead and miss it! There's an end Of all satiety: such fire imagine! Born in some obscure alley of the poor, Then leaping to embrace a splendid street, Palaces, temples, morsels that but whet Her appetite: the eating of huge forests: Then with redoubled fury rushing high, Smacking her lips over a continent, And licking old civilisations up! Then in tremendous battle fire and sea Joined: and the ending of the mighty sea: Then heaven in conflagration, stars like cinders Falling ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... the threshold of the billiard room an hour ago, and seem to find in such amusements the same fascination as himself. Your skill in games of chance excels his, as you proved at home where these pastimes lose their disreputable aspect by being openly enjoyed. Therefore I would have you whet this appetite of his by losing freely at first—he will take a grim delight in lessening the fortune he covets—then exert all your skill till he is deeply in your debt. He has nothing but what is doled out to him by Babie's father, I find; he dare not ask help there for such a purpose; ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... rewarded by a steady improvement in the general results now attained. Nor is the situation injured by a slight tinge of friendly rivalry among clubs, to lend an additional zest to their labors, and to whet the praiseworthy ambition of each to make every succeeding issue a little better than the last. There are many zealous bibliophiles who belong to two or three book clubs at once, finding it interesting to collect and compare ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... selection, deliberateness, and personality. Good heavens, I reflected, are we mortals so cross-grained that we can thoroughly enjoy things only by contrast, and that a sort of mild starvation is needed to whet ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must lack ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... put upon his voice rippled it, "John, don't tamper with the affections of an old and infirm man. Drive me off the bayou plantation, compel me to acknowledge and to feel that I am a hypercrite and a liar, but don't whet a sentiment and then cut my throat with it. Be merciful unto a sinner who worships ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... will be king, or die.— Brother, thou shalt to London presently, And whet on Warwick to this enterprise.— Thou, Richard, shalt to the Duke of Norfolk, And tell him privily of our intent.— You, Edward, shall unto my Lord Cobham, With whom the Kentishmen will willingly rise. In them I trust; for they are soldiers, Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit.— While you ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... crowded city, the pedestrians jostling each other as they pass and repass; but soon as the hour of six arrives, all is still again, for youths and maidens are alike engaged in discussing that meal for which their long walk has served as a whet. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the sound abate? Lo, the next Hour of Fate Whetting her vengeance due On new whet-stones, for new ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... hussars taken on board that vessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the unfortunate Lewis—they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed with gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel, on which they whet their knives, to whet their swords with. It is reported that Hoche and Reilly (one of the admirals) are gone off to America with seven hundred thousand pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay the troops. Others ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... things—an' whit a wife's portion is, gin he should slip awa. An' ax him tae, whit ma rights 'll be. Ah've got a buggie, ye ken, an' a coo o' ma ain', foreby a settin' o' Plymouths, an' ah'm to have a horse, he says, to drive to Cheemaun—ah got that oot o' him in writin' an' he didna ken whet ah wes up to. But ah'd like to ken jist hoo much ah'm to expact. Ah'm no goin' ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Serfdom or slavery was abolished from 1861 to 1866; restraints upon newspapers, publishers, and schools were partly withdrawn. Natural resources were developed, factories established, and railroads built. But these measures only served to whet the appetite of the people for more liberal government. The activities of revolutionists and reformers were met by most severe measures on the part of the government. Thousands were transported to Siberia and many were executed. Even as late as 1903 five thousand ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... but hanging over all our heads already, and always ready to fall on us. Not knowing that it is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that "God is a righteous judge, strong and patient." "If a man will not turn, He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow, and made it ready," against those who travail with mischief, who conceive sorrow, and bring forth ungodliness. They dig up pits for their neighbours, and fall themselves into the destruction which they have made for others; not knowing that it is as true now ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... precipitation; while the robber, whose horse had run away, mounted Gilbert, and rode off across the country. It was at this period, that two footmen, belonging to the coach, who had stayed behind to take their morning's whet at the inn where they lodged, came up to the assistance of the ladies, armed with blunderbusses; and the carriage proceeded, leaving Timothy alone in distraction and despair. He knew not which way to turn, and was afraid of remaining ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... characters: the wilder and uglier the better. Try every combination of shaggy mane, and squinting eye, and mouth like a gaping volcano; build mountains upon your shoulders, or fatten yourselves into Falstaffs; and as a whet to your inventions, I hereby promise a kiss from the bride to the figure that would be the likeliest to make her miscarry. A wedding is such a strange event in one's life; the bride and bridegroom are so suddenly plunged, as it were by magic, head over heels into a new, unaccustomed element, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... tender debt Be paid by those I love in life. Why should the unborn critic whet For me ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "School of Velocity," which make you feel like employing the "velocity" you have acquired to run away as quickly as possible from the "school," whereas the Chopin etudes are so full of melody and of the rarest and the most beautiful musical effects, that to play any one of them suffices to whet the appetite for the others. The pianolist might well go through the entire two sets of twelve. It would open up a new musical world to him. Here I can only point out three. Opus 10, No. 5, is the "Black Key" etude, so called because all the notes of the right hand are on black keys. ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... straightened out, pickets detailed and posted, and the men, too tired even to swear, dropped where they were, and rapidly cooled down in the chilly dew. It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and a half bottle of water was issued, enough merely to whet the consuming thirst which gripped everybody. Tunics were disentangled from the damp congeries on our backs and we had a few ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... how poor Peterkin would have liked to be with us; and he sometimes expressed much regret at being unable to join us. I used to do my best to gratify him, poor fellow, by relating all the wonders that we saw; but this, instead of satisfying, seemed only to whet his curiosity the more, so one day we prevailed on him to try to go down with us. But although a brave boy in every other way, Peterkin was very nervous in the water; and it was with difficulty we got him to consent to be taken down, for he could never have ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... whom ye gave no commission; nor with the Samnites, with whom ye transacted no business. We are sureties to the Samnites; debtors, sufficiently wealthy in that which is our own, in that which we can offer—our bodies and our minds. On these, let them exercise their cruelty; against these, let them whet their resentment and their swords. As to what relates to the tribunes, consider whether the delivering them up can be effected at the present time, or if it must be deferred to another day. Meanwhile let us, Titus Veturius, and the rest concerned, offer our ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... telling only enough to whet his interest. "There's a clue, as I half expected, from New York, too. But we are so far away that we'll have to stick to my original plan. You can ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... hogs were killed in the celebration of war expeditions — and the old men got the greater part of the meat. The Igorot is a natural head-hunter, and his training for the last sixty years seems to have done little more for him than whet this appetite. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... You're welcome to my certain Knowledge; And if you please all Night to stay, My Son shall put you in the way." Which offer I most kindly took, And for a Seat did round me look; When presently amongst the rest, He plac'd his unknown English Guest, Who found them drinking for a whet, A Cask of (h) Syder on the Fret, Till Supper came upon the Table, On which I fed whilst I was able. So after hearty Entertainment, Of Drink and Victuals without Payment; For Planters Tables, you must know, Are free for all that come and go. While (i) Pon and ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... We can scarcely doubt that as certain forms of music tend to raise us above the sensuality of the animal, or the more degrading passion of material gain, and to transport us into the ether of higher thought, so other forms are directly calculated to awaken in us luxurious emotions, and to whet those sensual appetites which it is the business of a philosopher not indeed to annihilate or to be ashamed of, but to keep rigidly in check. This possibility of music to effect evil as well as good I have seen recognised, and very aptly expressed in some beautiful verses by Mr. Keble which I ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... son Should grudge his sire no days. I would not live To whet ambition's appetite. I'm old; And fit for little else than hermit thoughts. The day that gives my daughter, gives my crown: A ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... as to their safe-keeping, he went off to forage for the coffee, and presently returned, having been moderately successful. One egg apiece was hardly enough, however, to appease the craving of two strong men ravenous from long fasting. Indeed, it seemed only to whet the appetite, and we both set out on an eager expedition for more food. Before going far I had the good luck to meet a sutler's wagon, and though its stock was about all sold, there were still left four large bologna sausages, which I promptly purchased—paying ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... acetylene lamp, candle light, fire light and moonlight, we labored. We used up all our knives, and having neglected to bring our whet-stones, sharpened our blades on the volcanic boulders, about us. By assiduous industry for nine straight hours, we finished him after a fashion. His skin was thick and like scar tissue. His meat was all tendons and gristle. The hide was as ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... to take their afternoon nap, with their eyes half-closed; here the children come, with Bull, the House-dog; here also come the haymakers, at the hottest time of the day, to sit and take their meal and whet their scythes in the shade of the plane-tree; here the women pass up and down with their rakes, after the hay-harvest, to glean what they can on the niggardly carpet of the shorn meadow. It is therefore a very much frequented footpath, were it only because of the coming and going ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 'tis true; thus was Adonis slain: He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear, 1112 Who did not whet his teeth at him again, But by a kiss thought to persuade him there; And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine Sheath'd unaware the tusk in ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... also in the sharpening of a scythe, and it is worth describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you will see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet it. Then also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it is a good thing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all your day's mowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade pointing away from you, and you put your left hand firmly on the back ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether I might not dispense with that great labour, and concluded eventually that I might, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... them had as yet been found anywhere in the known galaxy, but they had left enough material in Centaurus City to satisfy the curiosity of Mankind for years to come, and enough mystery and complexity to whet that curiosity to ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... degree of hardship and vehemence and conflict into his very sports? Does not life without difficulty become insipid and joyless? Cannot a strong interest turn difficulty into pleasure? Let the love of truth, of which I have spoken, be awakened, and obstacles in the way to it will whet, not discourage, the mind, and inspire a new delight ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... he greeted him then with tentative friendliness, and went on with his work. "You lost?" he added carefully. A man walking down out of the barren hills, and carrying absolutely nothing in the way of camp outfit, was enough to whet the curiosity of any one who knew that country. At the same time curiosity that became too apparent might be extremely unwelcome. So many things may drive a man into the hills—but few of them would ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... Me and my wife here, we whet away and stayed two months. Was 5 feet in this house, and if it ever gets in here agin, we're goin down in Kentucky and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... surveillance. But he could not go himself, he had no one to send, and furthermore the delinquent seemed only too willing to escort himself there, free of government expense, as speedily as possible. All I had to do was to whet his perception that the sooner boatmen were got the sooner I should be on the right side of the law again. After some conflict with himself he went in search of ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... stone of the pavement. He was not thinking at all of the stones when he scrutinized them, still less was he thinking of them when he was accomplishing his task: he was whetting his knife. He was obliged to whet his knife so that he could cut the meat; but to me it seemed as though he were doing something to the stones of the sidewalk. Just so it appears as though humanity were occupied with commerce, conventions, wars, sciences, ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... to the King And Queene wassailing; And though, with ale, ye be whet here, Yet part ye from hence As free from offence As ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... piece of bread, and the same of meat, for each of us. This was seized and devoured almost instantly. I had received nothing to eat since breakfast the day before, and the little morsel I got only served to whet my appetite; but there was no more! We asked what time it was, and were told nine o'clock. We were also informed that we would get our meals only twice a day. This was rather discouraging information for persons as hungry as ourselves, but we ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... State Government; and its leaders were generally, if not always, the spokesmen of the State in national affairs. This position and these advantages were legacies of the constitution of 1776. The fact that they were in the minority in point of population served only to whet their appetites for more power. On the other hand, the leaders of the western section of the State had fought for twenty-five years to reform the constitution and the laws, to create new counties in order to secure proportionate representation, and to expand the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... ancestor had turned me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of one kind ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... avenging himself. A few of the ladies even taxed him with this, and tried, by random reproaches, to put him at least on his defence; but, merrily refusing to be inveigled, he made to all the same answer that when Mademoiselle Paleotti returned they would see. This served only to whet a curiosity already keen, insomuch that the door was watched by as many eyes as if a miracle had been promised; and even MM. Epernon and Vendome, leaving the King's side, pressed into the crowd that they might see the better. I ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... old women of all sorts here and at Nice do without such a choice temple of scandal to whet their teeth upon? Well, I suppose you and your precious daughter can take care of yourselves. There are the gardens, or you can tell Gregorio to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'em, though begotten By French Valets or Irish Footmen. Nor can the vigorousest course Prevail, unless to make us worse; Who still, the harsher we are us'd, 335 Are further off from b'ing reduc'd; And scorn t' abate, for any ills, The least punctilios of our wills. Force does but whet our wits t' apply Arts, born with us, for remedy; 340 Which all your politicks, as yet, Have ne'er been able to defeat: For when y' have try'd all sorts of ways, What fools d' we make of you in plays! While all the favours we afford, 345 Are but to girt you with ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... I met oncest at Bent's Fort on the Arkinsaw— a odd sort o' a critter he wur, an no mistake; he us't to go pokin about, gatherin' weeds an' all sorts o' green garbitch, an' spreadin' 'em out atween sheets o' paper—whet he called button-eyesin—jest like thet ur Dutch doctur as wur rubbed out when we went into the Navagh country, t'other ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... opposite of the summarizing lead is the informal, or suspense, lead. This type begins with a question, a bit of verse, a startling quotation, or one or two manifestly unimportant details that tell little and yet whet the appetite of the reader, luring him to the real point of interest later in the story. Such leads, sometimes known as "human interest" leads, are admittedly more difficult than those of the summarizing ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... he had brought the adventure to an end, The duke now sought the noble youths to stir, (Though of themselves that way their wishes tend, Nor they to whet that purpose need the spur) That they the Church from outrage to defend, And rights of Charles, the Roman Emperor, Would cease to war upon that Eastern strand, And would seek ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... rose-house. Strangely enough, the thought of his fiancee leaning on the shoulder of another man did not in the least diminish the ardor of Offitt. His passion was entirely free from respect or good-will. He used the story to whet the edge of Sam's ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... laborious and powerful work. Meantime, with every secondary merit which such a work could possess this is replete; while its faults are only such as were inseparable from the conjunction of such ambitions with such powers. He may whet and wield his blade; but he puts no poison on its edge. He may disparage reverence; but he is not himself irreverent. He may impugn the convictions that most men love; but, while withholding no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "To whet his tommyhawk, I make no doubt. Oh, elder, how ye have been deceived in people! Ye believe that every one is as good as one can be, or can be grafted to bear sweet fruit, but, hoe-down-hoe, elder, 'taint so. Yer ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... of the German Government a geographical description of the country has been published,[132] in which every detail of Belgium's wealth in minerals, agriculture, and so on, is described, with no other possible purpose than the desire to whet German Michael's appetite. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... must end, and all the ills of it, The axe of sharp Detachment ye would whet, And cleave the clinging snaky roots, and lay This Aswattha of sense-life ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... employ, that an observer would be tempted to quote again from the same scene, 'Ha! Old Truepenny, canst thou mole so fast i' the ground?' Here, however, the comparison ceased; for, when Sir Elijah made his visit to Lucknow 'to whet the almost blunted purpose' of the Nabob, his language was wholly different from that of the poet—for it would have been totally against his purpose ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... towards them. I see little else for it than to suppose that boys who are bred where they have no companions are prone to make the most of companionship when once attained to. And then, in regard to books, as of these I rarely got more than what might serve as a whet to the appetite, I might have the desire of those whose longings after what they would obtain are increased by the difficulties which interpose between them and the possession. One book which in school I sometimes got a glance of, I would have given ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... should be well correlated with one another and with the systematic work on the text that guides the study, so that each shall whet the edge of the other and all together accomplish what neither ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... have escaped the attentive eye, that I have, on the title-page, omitted those honorary appendages to the editorial name which not only add greatly to the value of every book, but whet and exacerbate the appetite of the reader. For not only does he surmise that an honorary membership of literary and scientific societies implies a certain amount of necessary distinction on the part ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and so, in order that Boadicea and his daughters should enjoy in peace a portion of his stores, he has left half to Nero. The man was a fool as well as a traitor. The peasant who throws a child out of the door to the wolves knows that it does but whet their appetite for blood, and so it will be in this case. I hear Prasutagus died a week since, though the news has come but slowly, and already a horde of Roman officials have arrived in Norfolk, and are proceeding to make inventories of the king's possessions, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... proceeding they are pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose arguments by precedents, proofs by assertions, and thus they very often obtain victory in minor matters of detail. They see and know with admirable penetration, when one of them presents to another a weapon which she herself is forbidden to whet. It is thus that they sometimes lose a husband without intending it. They apply the match and long afterwards are terror-stricken ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... collected gold. By now, within the Admiral's chest, in canvas bags, rested not a little treasure for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. And though it was forbidden, I knew that many of our seamen hid gold. All told we found enough to whet appetite. But still the Indians said south, and ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... China has come this stately game with the lure of Oriental mysticism to whet jaded appetites and with possibilities for study that challenge the ...
— Pung Chow - The Game of a Hundred Intelligences. Also known as Mah-Diao, Mah-Jong, Mah-Cheuk, Mah-Juck and Pe-Ling • Lew Lysle Harr
... jackets and knee-breeches made of skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded goats, ready to butt at every barking dog, and always seeking opportunities of flight. Farmers and parish priests in black petticoats feel the cattle and dispute about the price, or whet their bargains with a draught of wine. Meanwhile the nets are brought on shore glittering with the fry of sardines, which are cooked like whitebait, with cuttlefish—amorphous objects stretching shiny feelers on the hot dry sand—and prickly purple eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go about ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... very much,' I said. Now, this sort of thing, you know, makes you whet your Barlow on your boot leg. I did thank the suspender man for the tip but I made up my mind that I was going to do business with Andrews anyway. You know there's lots more fun shooting quail flying in the brush than to pot-hunt them ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... Ireland,' is, with due allowance for the difference between the tastes of the twelfth century and those of the nineteenth, just such a series of sketches as a special correspondent in our own day might send from some newly-colonised island in the Pacific to satisfy or whet the curiosity of his readers at home." The description aptly applies to all that Gerald wrote. If not a historian, he was at least a great journalist. His descriptions of Ireland have been subjected to much hostile criticism from the day they were written to our own times. They were assailed ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... move when there is no idea existing of bettering one's self, so here I'll roost until daylight, unless Doctor comes back to hunt me up!" I judged it was not far from 2 o'clock, A. M., and believed it possible that our venison might only whet a grizzly bear's appetite to follow up the pursuit and gormandize me!—A proper site for a roost was the next matter of importance, and a scrubby oak with a thick top, close by, offered an inviting elevation ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... been working at his discoveries for twelve years, with little approbation from the generality of persons; the discovery of these islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, serving to whet his appetite for further enterprise, but not winning the common voice in favor of prosecuting discoveries on the coast of Africa. The people at home, improving upon the reports of the sailors, said that "the land which the Prince sought after was merely some sandy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... been a subject of great controversy almost a century before. The practice had by no means been forgotten in the mean time, but it had gained little public notice. Now the dispossessors of the Devil came to the front again long enough to whet the animosity between Puritans and Anglicans in Lancashire. But this never became more than a pamphlet controversy. The other feature of the period was far more significant. The last executions for witchcraft in England were probably those at Exeter in 1682.[2] For a whole generation ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... not pass the afternoon with them, for the heart of me. There was enough in the persons and faces of the two young ladies to set me upon comparisons. Particular features held my attention for a few moments: but these served but to whet my impatience to find the charmer of my soul; who, for person, for air, for mind, never had any equal. My heart recoiled and sickened upon comparing minds and conversation. Pert wit, a too-studied desire to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... he, speaking quickly, and raising his gun with a gesture of menace, "pay 'tention to whet I'm 'beout to say. Look savagerous at me, an' make these yeer verming b'lieve you an' me's que'lling. Fo'most tell me, ef they've krippled ye 'beout the legs? I know ye can't speak; but shet yeer ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... series of preliminary speeches in the canvass. But they only served to whet the moral and intellectual and political appetite of the public for more. It was generally conceded that, at last, in the person of Mr. Lincoln, the "Little Giant" had met ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... confesses, conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he has let go by the acting of its command; but he does not plead that his conscience stood in his way. The Ghost itself says that it comes to whet his 'almost blunted purpose'; and conscience may unsettle a purpose but does not blunt it. What natural explanation of all this can be given ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... high noon Brynhild sent for Gunnar and sought to whet him to the slaying of Sigurd, for to such hatred was her ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... perplexed Cases of Conscience, than the wisest of the most learned Colleges in Italy! That men of the slightest learning, and the most ignorant of the common people, were mad for a new, or super, or re-reformation of Religion; and that in this they appeared like that man, who would never cease to whet and whet his knife, till there was no steel left to make it useful." And he concluded his letter with this observation, "That those very men that were most busy in oppositions, and disputations, and controversies, and finding out the faults of their governors, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... for you to whet your wits as well," Frode's daughter muttered scornfully, and somewhat rashly, since Elfgiva's wits had been sharp enough to guess the significance of her hand-maiden's interview with the young English noble, and the knowledge had given her a weapon ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... shoes, as if a thousand railroads had been made into it. With one impulse we are carried to the cabin of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him dart away under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately "the mower whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from the maple in the swamp. How many gay ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... eagles scream on high, They whet their forked beaks: Raise—raise the battle cry, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... are NOT TO BE ANSWERED, just as to say how delighted I am at the result of the doings of the Council of the Royal Society yesterday. Many of us were somewhat doubtful of the result, and the more ferocious sort had begun to whet their beaks and sharpen their claws in preparation for taking a very decided course of action had there been any failure of justice this time. But the affair was settled by a splendid majority, and our ruffled ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... been enraged for any strenuous cause, this incident would have operated merely as a preliminary whet to stimulate them to further bloodshed. But, as they were mostly actuated only by a natural desire for mischief, they were about as well satisfied with what had been done as if the Doctor himself were the victim. And besides, the fathers and respectabilities of the town, who had seen this mishap ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And may it never end in bloud as mine hath done. Weep not sweet Navarre, but revenge my death. Ah Epernoune, is this thy love to me? Henry thy King wipes of these childish teares, And bids thee whet thy sword on Sextus bones, That it may keenly slice the Catholicks. He loves me not the best that sheds most teares, But he that makes most lavish of his bloud. Fire Paris where these trecherous rebels lurke. ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... instruction, labor, and study tend to nothing else but to form that.... Conversation with men is of very great use, and travel into foreign countries;... to be able chiefly to give an account of the humors, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... friends are rather like old wine, and can never be too old. Yet who does not mark in the calendar those days wherein he has met a new rich soul, that has a physiognomy, a grace and expression, peculiarly its own? Even decided repulsions have also a use. We whet our conscience on our neighbors' faults, as sober Spartans were made by the spectacle of drunken Helots;—though he who makes habitual talk about his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge. If there be sermons in stones, no less is there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... fountain, its associations, and even its eatables; for some travellers have dwelt on the subject of its excellent bisque, or crayfish soup, and its eels, a solace, no doubt, to[34] that gentle degree of melancholy, which Fielding affirms to be a whet to the appetite. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... was a wife-hunting, probably from the circumstance of his having formed an extreme rash connection in early life which paved the way to all his after misfortunes, but there is an obstinacy in human nature which such accidents only serve to whet on to try again. Pleasure thus at two entrances quite shut out—I hardly know how to determine of Phillips's result of happiness. He appears satisfyd, but never those bursts of gaiety, those moment-rules from the Cave of Despondency, that used to make ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a pale green gown and a pair of tan-colored shoes were beginning to whet his curiosity. He wanted to see what the stranger was like, at ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... great experience and your years Would have proved patience rather to your soul, Then with this frantique and untamed passion To whet their skeens; and, but for that I hope their friendships are too well confirmd, And their minds temperd with more kindly heat, Then for their froward parents soars That they should break forth into publique ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... emptied. And there was a perfect massacre of cold meats, all the remnants of the victuals of the day before, leg of mutton, veal, and ham, encompassed by a fallen mass of transparent jelly which quivered like soft glue. They had all eaten too much already, but these viands seemed to whet their appetites afresh, as though the idea had come to them that nothing whatever ought to be left. The fat priest in the middle of the table, who had shown himself such a capital knife-and-fork, was now lingering over the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Johannes, pausing to whet his curious knife; "but that's how things are. One lives upon another. Birds, beasts, and fishes, they're all alike. But this will make a noble head when the skin's dressed, and a pair of glass eyes put in, and the whole stuffed ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... another both in point of wit and judgement. On a ship of war, for instance, [2] the ship is on the high seas, and the crew must row whole days together to reach moorings. [3] Now note the difference. Here you may find a captain [4] able by dint of speech and conduct to whet the souls of those he leads, and sharpen them to voluntary toils; and there another so dull of wit and destitute of feeling that it will take his crew just twice the time to finish the same voyage. See them step on shore. The first ship's company are drenched in sweat; but listen, they ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... immediately shown that a power of at least equal strength had taken her place, and was prepared to claim her inheritance. War begets war; and the successes of Cyaxares up to the present point in his career did but whet his appetite for power, and stimulate him to attempt further conquests. In brief but pregnant words Herodotus informs us that Cyaxares "subdued to himself all Asia above the Halys." How much he may include in this expression, it is impossible to determine; but, prime facie, it would seem at least ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... is won—the object of inquiry is found. I suppose it will be admitted that the language which supplies the meaning of a word has the fairest claim to be considered its parent language. What, then, is the meaning of "Hurrah," and in whet language? As a reply to this Query, allow me to quote a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, April ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... met us. Sober, aye! But what a light there was in his eyes! He was eager to be at the Huns. Tales of their doings were coming back to us now, faster and faster. They were tales to shock me. But they were tales, too, to whet the courage and sharpen the steel of every man who could fight ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... not do that. He gazed steadily into the face of the chairman. However, every specimen could not be expected to meet every requirement. No doubt of it—here was the made-to-order creature for clever manipulation; and there followed then the suggestion to visit New Ireland, with artful words to whet a fighting man's appetite for ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... club another came: Whate'er they catch or find, without their care, Their fury makes an instrument of war. Tyrrheus, the foster father of the beast, Then clench'd a hatchet in his horny fist, But held his hand from the descending stroke, And left his wedge within the cloven oak, To whet their courage and their rage provoke. And now the goddess, exercis'd in ill, Who watch'd an hour to work her impious will, Ascends the roof, and to her crooked horn, Such as was then by Latian ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... education and familiar with the history of my case. But this man, who had tried to induce me to speak when delusions had tied my tongue, now, when I was at last willing talk, would scarcely condescend to listen; and what seemed to me his studied and ill-disguised avoidance only served to whet my desire to detain ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... legislation in respect of matters which form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the determination of a local question, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... plashy meads, And fens of Scythia green with rustling reeds; From where the Danube winds through many a land, And Mareotis laves the Egyptian strand, To rendezvous they waft on eager wing, And wait assembled the returning spring. Meanwhile they trim their plumes for length of flight, Whet their keen beaks, and twisting claws, for fight; Each crane the pygmy power in thought o'erturns, And every bosom for the battle burns. When genial gales the frozen air unbind, The screaming legions wheel, and mount the wind. Far in the sky they form their long array, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... indicative of a desire to do so. For instance, in Mecklenburg on the first day of reaping, if the master or mistress or a stranger enters the field, or merely passes by it, all the mowers face towards him and sharpen their scythes, clashing their whet-stones against them in unison, as if they were making ready to mow. Then the woman who leads the mowers steps up to him and ties a band round his left arm. He must ransom himself by payment of a forfeit. Near Ratzeburg, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another—or abandon much of Asia to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... eggs—give me more eggs, or I'll scratch your eyes out,' shrieked the owl, and began to whet its beak on a beam in such a savage manner that the three cocks fled in terror to ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... approval it was plain the captain agreed with every interruption, and they seemed to whet his interest in the story he had undertaken to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... the Second Book, for we can afford but a few extracts; and, to whet you up, shall prate to you a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 'O thou of great intelligence, the Rishis and Brahmanas and the deities, led by the authority of the Vedas, all applaud that religion which has compassion for its indication. But, O king, whet I ask thee is this: how does a man, who has perpetrated acts of injury to others in word, thought and deed, succeed in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... able mowers, who would cut the whole in about an hour; and as the plat was nearly circular, set them to mow round, beginning at the outside. And now for sagacity indeed! The moment the men began to whet their scythes, the two old larks began to flutter over the nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they flew round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to touch ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... exceedingly helpful to me, was very well received, not only on that occasion in Dresden, but later on in other places. Besides this, I made use of the Dresden Anzeiger, by writing all kinds of short and enthusiastic anonymous paragraphs, in order to whet the public taste for a work which hitherto had been ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... cakes and biscuits, biiru (beer) and ramune (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... inspiration that made Joseph chorus to a drama that moves above good and evil. "'Thank Hivin for all!'" says Joseph. "'All warks togither for gooid, to them as is chozzen and piked out fro' the rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture sez.'" "'It's a blazing shame, that I cannot oppen t' blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to Sattan, and all t' flaysome wickednesses that iver were born ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... to have been in the army myself once; but I liked the commission I have better. Come, captain, let not your noble courage be cast down; what say you to a glass of white wine, or a tiff of punch, by way of whet?" ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... not only a flock of automobiles but a famous racing stable, rode to hounds, was a good field gun, patronized aviation and motor-boat racing, risked as many maximums during the Monte Carlo season as the Grand Duke Michael himself, and was always ready to whet rapiers or burn a little harmless powder of an early morning in the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... (Running forward from behind.) O lud! he'll murder my poor boy, my darling! Here, good gentleman, whet your rage upon me. Take my money, my life, but spare that young gentleman; spare my child, if you have ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... said Teezle, "much as ever that the critter didn't mutton you. She skipped like a painter, and whet up her teeth for a whalin' bite. But don't think on it now. Here, who'll tell a good story, and cheer up Fabens a little? Uncle Walt, tell one of your painter stories. That 'll ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... street-corner; a world inhabited by most marvelous men and women,—some amiable, and some detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now I miss the wonder of it all. You will presently discover, my dear, that youth is only an ingenious prologue to whet one's appetite for a rather dull play. Eh, I am no pessimist,—one may still find satisfaction in the exercise of mind and body, in the pleasures of thought and taste and in other titillations of one's ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... wilder and uglier the better. Try every combination of shaggy mane, and squinting eye, and mouth gaping like a volcano; pile mountains atop of your shoulders, or plump yourselves out into Falstaffs; and as a whet to your inventions I promise a kiss from the bride to the figure that would be the likeliest to make her miscarry. A wedding is such an out-of-the-way event in ones life; the bride and bridegroom are so suddenly plunged, by a sort of magic, head over heels into a new unaccustomed element, that it ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... a woeful path they found, and their sister's son wounded on a gibbet, wind-cold outlaw-trees,[122] on the town's west. Ever vibrated the ravens' whet: there to tarry ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite^; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate^, set, strop, grind; chip (flint). cut &c (sunder) 44. Adj. sharp, keen; acute; acicular, aciform^; aculeated^, acuminated^; pointed; tapering; conical, pyramidal; mucronate^, mucronated^; spindle ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... replied by hints of the difficulty or impropriety of summoning the spirits in the presence of a stranger, or of one who might perchance have no other motive than the gratification of a vain curiosity; but they only meant to whet the edge of his appetite by this delay, and would have been sorry indeed if the count had been discouraged. To shew how exclusively the thoughts both of Dee and Kelly were fixed upon their dupe at this time, it is only necessary to read the introduction to their ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... situation, in the best Government office in London, had been placed over the heads of a dozen others, who had been there before him, &c., &c., &c. And then Mr. Nogo ended with so vehement an attack on Sir Gregory, and the Government as connected with him, that the dogs began to whet their teeth and prepare for a ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... The picture of your selfe, but so defac'd And mangled by proud Spanyards it woo'd whet A sword to arme the poorest ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... was one banana to people who were on the very brink of perishing from starvation? It only served to whet their appetite for more. I would not, however, allow them to have any more just then; I was cruel to be kind, and resolutely turned a deaf ear alike to their entreaties and their reproaches, as I did to the cravings of my own ravenous hunger. I insisted that at least half an hour ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... print, or sell any unlicensed matter whatsoever would be liable to fine or imprisonment, and to whet the zeal of discovery one-half of the fine was to go to the informer. Every publication, from a book to a broadsheet, must bear the name of author, printer, and licenser. Neither of Neville's pamphlets of 1647 conformed to the requirements of this act, ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... while Wainamoinen was laughing, the dwarf grew all at once into a great giant, whose head was higher than the clouds, and whose long beard fell down to his knees. The giant began to whet his axe on a huge piece of rock, and before he had finished he had worn out six blocks of the hardest rock and seven of the softest sandstone. Then he strode up to the tree and began to cut it down. ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... Death his name; His might from God the highest came. Today his knife he'll whet, 'Twill cut far better yet; Soon he will come and mow, And we must bear ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... adjacent county. To these last, of course, Fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea-garden: a Rosherville on a by-day. But to the plain man it offers solitude: an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet for company. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Letters addressed to bogus firms were indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to the department as "fictitious" and "undeliverable," and many colluding postmasters were decapitated. Such petty measures of warfare served merely to annoy the vampires and to whet their diabolical ingenuity for the contrivance of new devices. Since the law of 1872 went into effect, however, the scoundrels have been compelled to travel a thorny road. Scores of arrests have been made, and in many cases the criminals have ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... would endanger the stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable Sambation!"—Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and grandam—all unite to whet our ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... is not endless discussions of Beethoven's works which the public—at all events, our public—demands. We wish his biography,—the history of his life. What has been given us does but whet the appetite. We wish to have the many original sources, still sealed to us, explored, and the results of this labor honestly given us. None of the writers above-mentioned have been in a position to do this, and their publications are but materials for the use of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "This bishop's prose shocks me; I want to eat eggs without being permitted. Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing myself. Besides, I'm not wasting myself, I'm getting a start; and if I tore down that charge, Hercle! 'twas only to whet my appetite." ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... he, "to study only those portions of our holy literature on which they can whet their ingenuity. But from all writings which would promote piety and fear of God he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is lost to me forever, through the over-conscientiousness of our late conductor, who says there never was a Mena, only several kings they've mixed into one. I seem to be the one who's most mixed up! To whet my appetite for Egypt now, I have to have something tasty. Where's the good of stuffing my mind with a string of names which I couldn't mention to any one at home, because I can't pronounce them? The word Dynasty (he pronounced it Die-nasty) makes me sick! Luckily I feel that nobody else will know ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and the stakes are set,— Ever sing merrily, merrily; The bows they bend, and the knives they whet, Hunters live so cheerily. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... start to talk about drinkin'. In fact, I've forgot what I did start to tell you. My mind is sorter addled now a days, anyhow, and I hav to jes let my tawkin' tumble out permiskuous. I'll take another whet at it afore long, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... and supper, even whilst the dishes are cooling on the table, men and women repair to a side-table, and, to obtain an appetite, eat bread and butter, cheese, raw salmon or anchovies, drinking a glass of brandy. Salt fish or meat then immediately follows, to give a further whet to the stomach. As the dinner advances,—pardon me for taking up a few minutes to describe what, alas! has detained me two or three hours on the stretch, observing,—dish after dish is changed, in endless rotation, and handed round with solemn pace to each guest; ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... steadily into the face of the chairman. However, every specimen could not be expected to meet every requirement. No doubt of it—here was the made-to-order creature for clever manipulation; and there followed then the suggestion to visit New Ireland, with artful words to whet a fighting man's appetite for that ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... at Liverpool last year after the great race had served only to whet his appetite and kindle ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... abashed, and weened he had been dead, and flew every one, and their enemies after and chased them, but they wist not that the emperor was there. And when the enemies were far pursuing the chase, the emperor hid him in a thick wood. And whet, they were come again from the chase, they went and sought the woods if any of them had been hid in the thick of the woods; and many they found and slew them anon. So it happened that as they went searching toward the place that the emperor was, they saw an owl sitting upon ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... discussed Octavia House and he assumed that she was merely one of the proteges of the mysterious wealthy backers of that unusual enterprise. He thought it very good business indeed that the clever young woman had known enough to disappear for a brief time that she might whet her audiences' appetite while she let her agents lift her prices. It didn't at all occur to him that she was actually abandoning such a career as her extraordinary success seemed to foretell. He had in mind a romantic play in which she should make her bow as a legitimate ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... just dedicated to the German people. When their passions had been excited to the highest pitch by dreams of victory, by wine and soul-stirring songs, they went in the evening to the residence of the French minister to whet their sword- blades on the pavement in front ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... ensued; and, upon the whole, I never passed a duller evening in my life — Yet, without all doubt, some of them were men of learning, wit, and ingenuity. As they are afraid of making free with one another, they should bring each his butt, or whet-stone, along with him, for the entertainment of the company — My uncle says, he never desires to meet with more than one wit at a time — One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish; but more than one serves only to spoil ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... creeturs bin flyin' 'roun' Brer Wolf's gal 'ceppin' it's ole Brer Rabbit, en w'en he year w'at kinder treatments de yuther creeturs bin ketchin' he 'low ter hisse'f dat he b'leeve in he soul he mus' go down ter Brer Wolf house en set de gal out one whet ef it's ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... into it. With one impulse we are carried to the cabin of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him dart away under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately "the mower whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from the maple in the swamp. How many gay warblers ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... be the solitary concert for the season, but, to whet the appetite of society, Diana was also to appear at a single big reception—"Baroni won't look at anything less than a ducal house with Royalty present," as Jerry banteringly asserted—and then, while the ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... little," answered the official with another smile. "But I won't rob him of the pleasure of telling you himself. You ought to be disappointed. However, I'll just tell you enough to whet your appetite for more—Drillford is confident that he's just arrested the real man! No—no more!" he added, with a laugh. "You'll run up there in ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... then to the King And Queene wassailing; And though, with ale, ye be whet here, Yet part ye from hence As free from offence As when ye ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... children, and cakes and biscuits, biiru (beer) and ramune (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... mild, questioning look upon his face whenever anyone surprised him in the daytime, Solomon Owl was the noisiest of all the different families of owls in Pleasant Valley. There were the barn owls, the long-eared owls, the short-eared owls, the saw-whet owls, the screech owls—but there! there's no use of naming them all. There wasn't one of them that could equal Solomon Owl's laughing and hooting and shrieking and ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... made, And his axe should elsewhere drive its trade. Oh, the oaks and firs that then might stand, A pride and a joy throughout the land, For their ancientness and glorious charms! The innocent Forest lent him arms; But bitter indeed was her regret; For the wretch, his axe new-helved and whet, Did nought but his benefactress spoil Of the finest trees that graced her soil; And ceaselessly was she made to groan, Doing penance ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... attractions present, meant to fill not the tables only, but the guests. The breakfast was by no means a matter of form. People had evidently come with more serious intentions, than merely to display new bonnets, and trifle with grapes and peaches. Sea-air gives a whet to even a lady's appetite, and if the performances that morning were any criterion of the effects of that of Glyndewi, the new Poor Law Commissioners, in forming their scale of allowances, must really have reported it a "special case." The fair Cambrians, in short, played very respectable knives ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... faithfully promise to keep the whole work sacred to your credit. And if ever I go into print—which is most unlikely—I'll refer to this essay in such a way as to whet public curiosity to a feather edge. Again, if anything should happen to this copy, you'll have mine to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... father's shares in one of those unlucky banks; and so it fell upon him one morning like a clap of thunder that he was responsible for about as much as the acres of Whitethorn would retrieve, besides the trifling morsel to whet his appetite in the loss of his loose thousands. Harry Jardine was likely to know himself as "landless, landless," ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... fruits and gain of victory to get, Wherefore, dear lord, be wise, take care that yet A like misfortune happen not to you. Still in their lair the cubs and she-bear,[Q] who Rough pasturage and sour in May have met, With mad rage gnash their teeth and talons whet, And vengeance of past loss on us pursue: While this new grief disheartens and appalls, Replace not in its sheath your honour'd sword, But, boldly following where your fortune calls, E'en to its goal be glory's path explored, Which fame ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... harmless and full of play put forth claw, and sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass. Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... after my retreating form and wish, in Heaven's name, that I had stayed! Better for the girl, I mean. For my own feelings—but I do not count. I am only giving a girl one of her rights in love. A few judicious obstacles but whet a man's appetite—if he is worth having. And I do not mind being a judicious obstacle once in a while—if I like ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... found a moment in Mrs. Haughton's widowed life so propitious to his chance of success. In her lodging-house at Pimlico, the good lady had been too incessantly occupied for that idle train of revery, in which the poets assure us that Cupid finds leisure to whet his arrows and take his aim. Had Lionel still been by her side, had even Colonel Morley been in town, her affection for the one, her awe of the other, would have been her safeguards. But alone in that fine new ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was enough to whet my curiosity. I was not long before I called on Raton, but not wishing to be duped by her I took due precautions. I told her that she must come and sup with me, and that I would give her the twenty-five louis if my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle (whet), mate?" "Waffle!" said the farmer, with a well-feigned stare of amazement, "O, about noon mebby." "Then," said the despairing spirit, "That thief of a Christian has done me;" and so saying, he disappeared and was never ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... could rise to flattery as deftly as the best of them. It was an art at which his tongue was wonderfully facile, considering the fact that he mingled so seldom with men in the outside doings of life. His wits had no foil to whet against and grow sharp, save the hard substance of his own inflexible nature, for he was born with that shrewd faculty for taking men "on the blind side," as they used to call that ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... However, some progress was made during the century. Serfdom or slavery was abolished from 1861 to 1866; restraints upon newspapers, publishers, and schools were partly withdrawn. Natural resources were developed, factories established, and railroads built. But these measures only served to whet the appetite of the people for more liberal government. The activities of revolutionists and reformers were met by most severe measures on the part of the government. Thousands were transported to Siberia and many were executed. Even as late as 1903 five thousand persons ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... practical and dry (Being sated with sensation in excess, With the vespertinal rumour and the matutinal lie Which adorn the lucubrations of the Press), Then I turn me to the columns where there's nothing to attract, Or the interest to waken and to whet, And I revel in a banquet of unmitigated fact In the Oxford ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... judge his wit apocryphal; Our laws for such affronts have forfeits made; He takes his life who takes away his trade. Were I myself in witness Corah's place, The wretch who did me such a dire disgrace, Should whet my memory, though once forgot, 670 To make him an appendix of my plot. His zeal to heaven made him his prince despise, And load his person with indignities. But zeal peculiar privilege affords, Indulging latitude to deeds and words: And Corah ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... wait they within that would snare me; There whet they their swords for my slaying. My bane they shall be not, the cowards, The brood of the churl and the carline. Let the twain of them find me and fight me In the field, without shelter to shield them, And ewes of the sheep should be surer To shorten ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... be prais'd, good-nature is ador'd; Then draw your wit as seldom as your sword; And never on the weak; or you'll appear As there no hero, no great genius here. As in smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set: Their want of edge from their offence is seen; Both pain us least when exquisitely keen. The fame men give is for the joy they find; Dull is the jester, when the joke's ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... tell the story of cruelty the like of which, it is to be hoped, for the credit of one's manhood, is not often repeated. And while it was telling, Jack "sat tight" and listened, storing up every vile word and every monstrous detail in his mind that he might have something to whet his vengeance upon when the time for vengeance should come. But his agitation was so evident, his distress so poignant, that Alvaros thought it would be very good fun to direct public attention to it; so, feigning to become ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... breeds; and, despite Peary to the contrary, he will eat anything. "He will not eat anything but meat," says Peary; "I have tried and I know." No dog accustomed to a flesh diet willingly leaves it for other food; the dog is a carnivorous animal. But hunger will whet his appetite for anything that his bowels can digest. "Muk," the counterpart of Peary's "King Malamute," has thriven for years on his daily ration of dried fish, tallow, and rice, and eats biscuits and doughnuts whenever he can get them. The malamute is affectionate and faithful and likes ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... waiting for certain people at the last day, thousands of years hence, but hanging over all our heads already, and always ready to fall on us. Not knowing that it is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that "God is a righteous judge, strong and patient." "If a man will not turn, He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow, and made it ready," against those who travail with mischief, who conceive sorrow, and bring forth ungodliness. They dig up pits for their neighbours, and fall themselves into the destruction which they have ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... have acquired to run away as quickly as possible from the "school," whereas the Chopin etudes are so full of melody and of the rarest and the most beautiful musical effects, that to play any one of them suffices to whet the appetite for the others. The pianolist might well go through the entire two sets of twelve. It would open up a new musical world to him. Here I can only point out three. Opus 10, No. 5, is the "Black Key" etude, so called because all the notes of the right hand are on black keys. This ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... to the king And queen wassailing: And though with ale ye be whet here, Yet part ye from hence, As free from offence As when ye ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... selection serves as a sort of preface to the novel "Vanity Fair." It is quite as remarkable for the things it leaves unsaid as for the things it says. Of course its object is to whet the reader's appetite for the story that is to follow; but throughout the author seems to be laughing at himself. In the last paragraph we see one of the few superlatives to be found In Thackeray—-he says the show has been "most favorably noticed" by the "conductors ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... only enough to whet his interest. "There's a clue, as I half expected, from New York, too. But we are so far away that we'll have to stick to my original plan. You can ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... on, a seedy-looking old gentleman came in, and I noticed that some younger officers rose and offered him a place, which he rejected, till a vacancy occurred, and then he quietly sat down, swallowed his two dozen of green oysters as a whet, and proceeded to dine with an appetite. By this time, my vis-a-vis had resumed his seat, and, after what had passed, I felt myself at liberty to ask him the favour of informing me who he himself was! I was soon answered. He was a Mr Parish, of Hamburg, whose prodigious commissariat engagements ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... sound abate? Lo, the next Hour of Fate Whetting her vengeance due On new whet-stones, for new ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... work should be well correlated with one another and with the systematic work on the text that guides the study, so that each shall whet the edge of the other and all together accomplish ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the most earnest interest in the mind of every one who has ever been attracted to the subject of the archaeology of the New World. This race, moreover, possessed an abundant literature, preserved in written books, in characters which were in some degree phonetic. Enough of these remain to whet, though not to satisfy, ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... Cup had become a mania with him. He had won it once, and would again despite all the Moores, all the Gray Dogs, all the undutiful sons in existence; on that point he was resolved. The fact of his having tasted the joys of victory served to whet his desire. And now he felt he could never be happy till the Cup was ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... was turned, I found myself speculating whether his words contained any hidden meaning; trying to recall something in his voice or manner which might guide me in discovering the real sense he attached to what he said. It seemed as if the most powerful whet to my curiosity, were supplied by my own experience of the impossibility of penetrating beneath the unassailable surface which this ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the age of thirty-five. He was here when George I. died, and George II. became king. He published here his Henriade. He wrote here his "History of Charles XII." He read "Gulliver's Travels" as a new book, and might have been present at the first night of The Beggar's Opera. He was here whet Sir ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... sell any unlicensed matter whatsoever would be liable to fine or imprisonment, and to whet the zeal of discovery one-half of the fine was to go to the informer. Every publication, from a book to a broadsheet, must bear the name of author, printer, and licenser. Neither of Neville's pamphlets of 1647 conformed ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... taken advantage of this privilege, and elected to pay tuition and place their children under his instruction, thus bringing together forty-nine energetic boys and girls to whet each other's ambition and incite class rivalry. Among the number were the five clever children of the Hon. Tod Robinson; three sons of Judge Robert Robinson; Colonel Zabriskie's pretty daughter Annie; Banker Swift's stately Margaret; General Redding's two sons; Dr. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... and shortly after he had been put ashore, the sick mariner requested an interview with the deacon himself. The request had been reluctantly granted; but, during the visit, Daggett had managed so well to whet his visiter's appetite for gain, that henceforth there was no trouble in procuring the deacon's company. Little by little had Daggett let out his facts, always keeping enough in reserve to render ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... reaper, Death his name; His might from God the highest came. Today his knife he'll whet, 'Twill cut far better yet; Soon he will come and mow, And we must bear the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... independence, if they were not immediately shown that a power of at least equal strength had taken her place, and was prepared to claim her inheritance. War begets war; and the successes of Cyaxares up to the present point in his career did but whet his appetite for power, and stimulate him to attempt further conquests. In brief but pregnant words Herodotus informs us that Cyaxares "subdued to himself all Asia above the Halys." How much he may include in this expression, it ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... Ville d'Orient,' taken by the 'Druid.' The hussars taken on board that vessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the unfortunate Lewis—they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed with gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel, on which they whet their knives, to whet their swords with. It is reported that Hoche and Reilly (one of the admirals) are gone off to America with seven hundred thousand pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay the troops. Others think the vessel has sunk, for neither of these ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... forenoon Sam managed to earn ten cents, and was forced to content himself with a very economical dinner. There was a place on Ann street, where, for this small sum, a plate of meat and a potato were furnished, but enough only to whet the appetite of a hearty boy like Sam. A suspicion did enter his mind as he rose from the table penniless once more, and his appetite still unsatisfied, that he had bought his liberty dearly, if his affairs did not improve. In the country he had enough to eat, a good bed to sleep ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... first point, it may be conceded, without deducting much from his sincere zeal in the cause, that the gratification of his thirst of fame, and, above all, perhaps, that supply of excitement so necessary to him, to whet, as it were, the edge of his self-wearing spirit, were not the least of the attractions and incitements which a struggle under the banners of Freedom presented to him. It is also but too certain that, destined as he was to endless disenchantment, from that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee, faw, fum! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have you trussed him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him and do him, not too brown, as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin to whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest like a gorilla; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the paste to bake them in! I pause in the description. I won't ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pedestrians jostling each other as they pass and repass; but soon as the hour of six arrives, all is still again, for youths and maidens are alike engaged in discussing that meal for which their long walk has served as a whet. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... me! It is ARTHUR's pet. Light ladder this; would capsize in a jiffy. His bristles he'd scrape and his tusks he would whet Against it, I wish he were drowned in the Liffey! Whisht! Get away! He's so heavy and big. There! round the ladder he's playing the fooler. Ah! there's the rub. PATRICK scumfish that Pig! If he doesn't mean deviltry ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... Soon he stood by Vidrik knight: "Whet your spears, and sharp your swords, For the King is bent ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... preach it to touch every feeling with refinement, to soften rudeness and enrich affections; we build the family with it; we sanctify love, and purge out lust; we polish every relation of life; we inspire a cheerful industry and whet the edge of enterprise, and then limit them by the bonds of justice and by the moderation of a faith which looks into the future and the eternal. We teach each man that he is a child of God; that he is personally ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... Byron, and to turn him away from worldly associations and topics into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast, indeed, is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree; and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds needs but a glance through the rich, glittering labyrinth ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... can compare with the jolly Town-Rake's, When in Youth his full Swing of all Pleasure he takes? At Noon, he gets up, for a Whet, and to dine, And wings the dull Hours with Mirth, Musick and Wine; Then jogs to the Play-house, and chats with the Masks, And thence to the Rose, where he takes his three Flasks. There, great as a Caesar, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... but moved excitedly on her seat, and then settled herself for an unwonted good time. For the new minister was undiscovered ground; an unexamined possession; unexplored treasure. One Sunday and two sermons had done no more than whet the appetite of the curious. Nobody had made up his mind, or her mind, on the subject, in regard to any of its points. So there were eyes enough that from Mrs. Starling's windows watched the minister as he dismounted and tied his ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... these tests, which were attended with some success. We occasionally received press news from land stations or from ships passing across the Tasman Sea, but it was only a brief summary of the cable news: enough to whet one's ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... spilt milk—it's no use to move when there is no idea existing of bettering one's self, so here I'll roost until daylight, unless Doctor comes back to hunt me up!" I judged it was not far from 2 o'clock, A. M., and believed it possible that our venison might only whet a grizzly bear's appetite to follow up the pursuit and gormandize me!—A proper site for a roost was the next matter of importance, and a scrubby oak with a thick top, close by, offered ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and powerful work. Meantime, with every secondary merit which such a work could possess this is replete; while its faults are only such as were inseparable from the conjunction of such ambitions with such powers. He may whet and wield his blade; but he puts no poison on its edge. He may disparage reverence; but he is not himself irreverent. He may impugn the convictions that most men love; but, while withholding no syllable of dissent and reprehension, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pity on them, had already devoured them with his eyes; he told his wife they would be delicate eating, when tossed up with good savoury sauce. He then took a great knife, and coming up to these poor children, whetted it upon a great whet-stone which he held in his left hand. He had already taken hold of one of them, when his wife ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... that is the night note of a little mouse-catching owl," said Addison. "Some term it the saw-whet owl, I believe. There are numbers of these little fellows about at night, in these woods. They catch lots of woods mice and such small birds ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... that much-wished-for event, I have not had news of thee, except in a way so vague, as to whet the desire to know more rather than to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... mails, with almost absolute impunity. Letters addressed to bogus firms were indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to the department as "fictitious" and "undeliverable," and many colluding postmasters were decapitated. Such petty measures of warfare served merely to annoy the vampires and to whet their diabolical ingenuity for the contrivance of new devices. Since the law of 1872 went into effect, however, the scoundrels have been compelled to travel a thorny road. Scores of arrests have been made, and in many cases the criminals have ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... if not always, the spokesmen of the State in national affairs. This position and these advantages were legacies of the constitution of 1776. The fact that they were in the minority in point of population served only to whet their appetites for more power. On the other hand, the leaders of the western section of the State had fought for twenty-five years to reform the constitution and the laws, to create new counties in order to secure proportionate representation, and to expand the suffrage in order that ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... them magic words, "Refreshments" and "Souvenirs," would hit 'em hard. In order to whet the public interest, I asked the papers where I advertised to give the thing some editorial or other reference. But they was very cold and said the best they could do was to send their dramatic critics to criticise the show afterward. A lot of good that would ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes
... conjoined with one of the bitter things which Ecclesiastes is fond of saying about those whom he calls 'fools.' It seems to repeat, under another metaphor, the same idea which has been presented in a previous verse, where we read: 'If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct.' That is to say, skill is better than strength; brain saves muscle; better sharpen your axe than put yourself into a perspiration, hitting fierce blows with a blunt one. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... valuable situation, in the best Government office in London, had been placed over the heads of a dozen others, who had been there before him, &c., &c., &c. And then Mr. Nogo ended with so vehement an attack on Sir Gregory, and the Government as connected with him, that the dogs began to whet their teeth and prepare for a tug ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... nothing," Iglesias repeated, "whether vital as of those far-away southern battle-fields, or fictitious and close at hand as of the stage. Not even the sting of poverty to whet appetite and give an edge to bodily hunger. Nothing, either of fear or of hope. The measure of my obscurity is the measure of my immunity from change of fortune, bad or good. I am worthless even as food for powder. Danger herself will have none of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... all these are obvious, but what I would infer is this— that in such an age it is possible some great genius may arise to equal any of the ancients, abating only for the language; for great contemporaries whet and cultivate each other, and mutual borrowing and commerce makes the common riches of learning, as it does of ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... will find the water," rejoined Nancy; "but, however, singing is dry work, and I am provided. Pass my basket aft, old gentleman, and we will find Mr Salisbury something with which to whet his whistle." The boatman handed the basket to Nancy, who pulled out a bottle and glass, which she ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... light, we took out our gentleman, dragged by an immense string of oxen, to introduce him to his future victims and whet his appetite by a taste. The Boer position lies some six miles to the north of the river. The most conspicuous feature of it is a hill projecting towards us like a ship's ram and dipping sharply to the plain. Magersfontein, they call it. The railway going ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... as for thee, thou false woman! My sister and my fae, Grim vengeance yet shall whet a sword That thro' thy soul shall gae! The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee; Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... as to an "austere regimen in scenery"; and such a discipline was then recommended as "healthful and strengthening to the taste." That is the test, so to speak, of the present essay. This discipline in scenery, it must be understood, is something more than a mere walk before breakfast to whet the appetite. For when we are put down in some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the ardour and patience of a botanist after a rare plant. Day by day we perfect ourselves ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under my charge, with many injunctions as to their safe-keeping, he went off to forage for the coffee, and presently returned, having been moderately successful. One egg apiece was hardly enough, however, to appease the craving of two strong men ravenous from long fasting. Indeed, it seemed only to whet the appetite, and we both set out on an eager expedition for more food. Before going far I had the good luck to meet a sutler's wagon, and though its stock was about all sold, there were still left four ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... old men had much better food than now, for many hogs were killed in the celebration of war expeditions — and the old men got the greater part of the meat. The Igorot is a natural head-hunter, and his training for the last sixty years seems to have done little more for him than whet this appetite. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... clover fields in the pastures? A tithe of the merry gambols they now so safely indulge in, would speedily bring about them a swarm of these infuriated insects. In all our rambles among the green fields, we should constantly be in peril; and no jocund mower would ever whet his glittering scythe, or swing his peaceful weapon, unless first clad in a dress impervious to their stings. In short, the bee, instead of being the friend of man, would be one of his most vexatious enemies, and as has been the case with the wolves and the bears, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... once be bundled back to Tokyo under police surveillance. But he could not go himself, he had no one to send, and furthermore the delinquent seemed only too willing to escort himself there, free of government expense, as speedily as possible. All I had to do was to whet his perception that the sooner boatmen were got the sooner I should be on the right side of the law again. After some conflict with himself he went in search of ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... causes which will hereafter be explained, they exhibited less than the usual plethoric satisfaction after the hospitality of the country, and were the first to welcome the appearance of a square black bottle, which went the rounds, with the observation: "Whet up ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... merriment and madness. Give your fancies free range in choosing your characters: the wilder and uglier the better. Try every combination of shaggy mane, and squinting eye, and mouth like a gaping volcano; build mountains upon your shoulders, or fatten yourselves into Falstaffs; and as a whet to your inventions, I hereby promise a kiss from the bride to the figure that would be the likeliest to make her miscarry. A wedding is such a strange event in one's life; the bride and bridegroom are so suddenly plunged, as ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... muster-roll of this great army be called, and could they come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering putrefaction? What heart could endure the groan of agony? Drunkenness! Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick-room; and the minister with his tongue thick into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... frowned upon him, would not vouchsafe him her company, but kissed Lamprius his co-rival, at the same time [5130]before his face: but why was it? To make him (as she telleth her mother that chid her for it) more jealous; to whet his love, to come with a greater appetite, and to know that her favour was not so easy to be had. Many other tricks she used besides this (as she there confesseth), for she would fall out with, and anger him of set purpose, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... literary sense,—even in the Boston Public Library, which is admitted to be a model of good sense and wide liberality,—all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth. The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased. I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict censure was better than the total absence ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... is sometimes very like amber, there is much sophistication indulged in, which none but an expert can guard against. In fashioning the nodules of amber, whether genuine or fictitious, into pipe mouth-pieces, they are split on a leaden plate in a turning lathe, smoothed into shape by whet-stones, rubbed with chalk and water, and polished with a piece of flannel. It is an especially difficult kind of work; for unless the amber is allowed frequent intervals for cooling, it becomes electrically excited by the friction and shivers into fragments; the men, too, are ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... that was all that could be ascertained—just enough to whet curiosity to burning-point. Then in the solitude and seclusion of the ladies' cabin the maid servant became confidential with one of the stewardesses, and narrated, after the manner of maids, her mistress's history as far as she knew it. The stewardess retailed it to the lady passengers, and the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... to narrative, criticism, and prediction. The strategy and tactics of the rival armies were everywhere discussed, and the fact that almost every single item of intelligence came from a Northern source served only as a whet to curiosity. The vast territory controlled by the Confederacy was so completely cut off from the outer world that an atmosphere of mystery enveloped the efforts of the defence. "The Southern States," ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... day Yeobright went to Humphrey's cottage, and borrowed of him leggings, gloves, a whet-stone, and a hook, to use till he should be able to purchase some for himself. Then he sallied forth with his new fellow-labourer and old acquaintance, and selecting a spot where the furze grew thickest he struck the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... smile of approval it was plain the captain agreed with every interruption, and they seemed to whet his interest in the story he had ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... those most deeply interested in Scotland's greatest bards, hail from the New World. The conclusion of the war will probably be the signal for an unusual hegira from America to Europe; and these notes of the actual condition, in A.D. 1863, of Scotland's famed shrines, may serve to whet the increasing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... invasion. George desired to master gunnery instantly, and Resmith soothed him with the assurance that he would soon be sent away on a gunnery course, which would give him beans. And in the meantime George might whet his teeth on the detailed arrangements for feeding and camping the Battery on Epsom Downs. This organization gave George pause, especially when he remembered that the Battery was a very trifling item in the Division, and when Resmith casually informed him that a Division ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... complications of this meeting. She knew the dull, mean nature of her aunt, and the utter hopelessness of all appeal to anything but her selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous essay of Corbin only an aggravation of her worst instincts. Even the dead body of her son would not only whet her appetite for pecuniary vengeance, but give it plausibility in the eyes of their emotional but ignorant neighbors. She had still less to hope from Julia Jeffcourt's more honest and human indignation but equally bigoted and prejudiced intelligence. It is ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... answered, with a laugh that had more of harshness in it than was usual with him. Then he glanced at me. "Mr. Middlebrook, there, from what he told me this afternoon, knows a bit about me and my affairs," he said. "But not much. Sufficient to whet your ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... gasthaus, after our arrival, resembles a popular meeting; for, although a few of the villagers have been to Belgrade and seen a bicycle, it is only within the last six months that Belgrade itself has boasted one, and the great majority of the Batainitz people have simply heard enough about them to whet their curiosity for a closer acquaintance. More-over, from the interest taken in my tour at Belgrade on account of the bicycle's recent introduction in that capital, these villagers, but a dozen kilometres away, have heard more of my journey than people in villages farther ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... He says that Mr. Crocker is one of the rare men of the time, and that only inexperience among the people here prevents him from being appreciated. That's what he goes to see him for. It isn't father that worries me, it's mother. I know just whet she'll say. She's got her heart set on my studying law, and she won't listen to anything else. I wouldn't object to the law if I cared for it, but I don't. That's what makes it ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... been staid—"indeed, Mr Lawson, we are friends and not foes; and, whilst our cattle, which are a little blawn, with the haste into which they were hurried by old Walter here—until the beasts bite, I say, and eat their corn, we will e'en thank God, and take a little whet of the creature. You know, such comforts are not forbidden in the laws of Moses, or, indeed, in any laws but those of this ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... a fellur as I met oncest at Bent's Fort on the Arkinsaw— a odd sort o' a critter he wur, an no mistake; he us't to go pokin about, gatherin' weeds an' all sorts o' green garbitch, an' spreadin' 'em out atween sheets o' paper—whet he called button-eyesin—jest like thet ur Dutch doctur as wur rubbed out when we went into the Navagh country, t'other side ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose arguments by precedents, proofs by assertions, and thus they very often obtain victory in minor matters of detail. They see and know with admirable penetration, when one of them presents to another a weapon which she herself is forbidden to whet. It is thus that they sometimes lose a husband without intending it. They apply the match and long afterwards are terror-stricken at ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Metellus had made him throw himself on the support of the people from whom he sprang; and they, idolising him for his dazzling exploits as a soldier, looked to him as their natural leader, and the creator of a new era. Indeed it needed no stimulus from without to whet his ambitious cravings. That seventh consulship which superstition whispered would be surely his he had yet to win; and in all his after conduct he seems to have been guided by the most vulgar selfishness, which in the end became murderous insanity. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... enough to make your prospect want to order, you must make it easy for him to order by enclosing order blanks, return envelopes, instructions and other "literature" that will strengthen your arguments and whet his desire; and more than that, you must reach a real climax in your letters—tell the prospect what to do and how ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... echoing back emptily. I knocked again. A door, creaking on rusty hinges, swung slowly inward, but no one peered out, inviting me to enter. I backed away from the yawning cavern, blacker than the starless night, into the open road. A little saw-whet owl, seeking, as I was, supper, swooped by on muffled wings, and sawed wood, saying nothing. I jeered back at him, and felt my courage rising. I stepped up resolutely to the next house and beat upon its door. There ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... occur incidentally in a record intended not for the public, but for the writer's own family, whose interest in her personal history needed no stimulant and called for no extraneous details. Here and there we find a passage calculated to whet if not to satisfy a more general curiosity, such as the account of a conversation with Wordsworth after his return from Italy in 1837, and some letters from Mazzini written soon after his first arrival in England, But even these belong not to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... for which he is to blame is that he spoilt his wife. To be sure he married for love; and from such love-matches no good ever comes," added the old lady, casting a side glance at Maria Dmitrievna. Then, standing up, she added: "But now you can whet your teeth on whom you will; on me, if you like. I'm off. I won't hinder you any longer." And ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... stewards attend only to the saloon and the eating department. At six A.M. a cup of tea or coffee is provided for those who like it. At seven to eight there is a light breakfast of tea, eggs, sardines, etc. At ten, Madeira, Gin and bitters are brought on deck as a whet for the substantial eleven o'clock breakfast, which differs from a dinner only in the absence of soup. Cups of tea and coffee are brought around at three P.M.; bitters, etc. again at five, a good dinner with beer and ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sir," said Jim, "but they didn't seem so lively. I don't give them any more than just enough to whet their appetites. At first they sat round the door begging for more, half the morning, and I had to stone them away; now they understand it. In a few minutes, they'll all be off; and you won't see much of any of them till to-morrow morning. ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... really been enraged for any strenuous cause, this incident would have operated merely as a preliminary whet to stimulate them to further bloodshed. But, as they were mostly actuated only by a natural desire for mischief, they were about as well satisfied with what had been done as if the Doctor himself were the victim. And besides, the fathers and respectabilities of the town, who ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Science," an "Essay on Early Man," "Great Artists," "Secrets of Success," etc. Each little book contained the evening's programme, the words and music of at least two national hymns, and "Owl Talks," a single page of crisp thoughts, to whet one's wits. At the close of each season the twenty pamphlets, continuously paged, were bound for fifty cents in two volumes with covers of red cloth. Thus the people got much for little, and they were benefited and pleased with their bargain. Encores and the discourtesy of stamping the feet ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... three menials, now entered with wine and refreshments, which it was the fashion to offer as a whet before dinner; and when they were placed before the guests, Lady Ashton made an apology for withdrawing her husband from them for some minutes upon business of special import. The Marquis, of course, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... practice—such as stoning disobedient dogs, and the like—and, when Pink rushed at him furiously, the herder caught him very neatly alongside the head with his stick. These little amenities serving merely to whet Pink's appetite for battle, he stopped long enough to thrash that particular herder very thoroughly and to his ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... vice; hence they interpret guidance of the people by oppression, polygamy by licentiousness, and maintenance of the faith by bloodshed. Relays of Arabs come, from time to time, under the guise of Koran expounders, to feed on the people and whet their ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... not propose to enter into details, but so it was that Roger Coverly died. Following a brief sojourn abroad, we presently returned again to the Bell House. This gratification of her bloodthirsty desires had done no more than to whet the feline appetite of Nahemah, and she forced me to impose new and almost insupportable conditions upon Sir Burnham, with the result, as is known, that from being a very wealthy man he ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... other once or twice a week without any word of love between them; and for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man can be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed, there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping fir-woods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to suppose that boys who are bred where they have no companions are prone to make the most of companionship when once attained to. And then, in regard to books, as of these I rarely got more than what might serve as a whet to the appetite, I might have the desire of those whose longings after what they would obtain are increased by the difficulties which interpose between them and the possession. One book which in school I sometimes got a glance of, I would have given anything to possess: ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... with horrible zest. "And there'll be delicate necks to prick to-night! Lord, I think I hear them squeal! You don't need it, sir?" he continued, again proffering the whetstone. "No? Then I'll give my blade another whet, in the name of our Lady, the Saints, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... place in utter innocence and ignorance, and yields to temptations to do things which he vaguely, if at all, realizes are wrong, and that only because a puzzling sort of instinct tells him so; or else he is given just enough information to whet his curiosity, usually in the shape of warnings against certain apparently harmless bodily acts, which he not unnaturally tries out of curiosity, and finds them very pleasant. It may be undesirable that a boy should have full ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... thee from sudden death, Giving thee leave to live, that thou might'st love? And dost thou whet me on to cruelty? Come, kiss me (sweet) ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... For drying, Albans are your safer fruit. 'Twas I who first, authorities declare, Served grapes with apples, lees with caviare, White pepper with black salt, and had them set Before each diner as his private whet. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... be with us; and he sometimes expressed much regret at being unable to join us. I used to do my best to gratify him, poor fellow, by relating all the wonders that we saw; but this, instead of satisfying, seemed only to whet his curiosity the more, so one day we prevailed on him to try to go down with us. But although a brave boy in every other way, Peterkin was very nervous in the water, and it was with difficulty we got him to consent ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... three gentlemen would be received in the unpartitioned parlour, and there treated to such lemon cakes as had been the ruin of La Sablerie; but in general the castle and the convent had little intercourse, or only just enough to whet the appetite of the prisoners for ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... collected round him, "is really a most insipid meal. If I did not make a rule of rising early and taking regular exercise, I doubt very much if I should be able to swallow a mouthful-there's nothing to whet the appetite here; and it's the same everywhere; as Yellowchops says, our breakfasts are a disgrace to England. One would think the whole nation was upon a regimen of tea and toast—from the Land's ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Betty. The odor is delectable enough to whet the appetite to as keen an edge as the wind hath. Robert, 'tis some time ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... that all the people should hear: "Sun's Road has come in. On the other side of the pile of bones he saw thirty bulls and a calf, and just below this he saw many buffalo. Gather in your horses. Get them up. Women, sharpen your knives. Men, whet your arrow points. Tie up your horses, and early in the morning we will go after buffalo. The camp will stay here. All will ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... might miscarry, so on the other hand enough of them escaped to inform the rest, as well of what they had done, as of what happened to them; and to whet them on to another enterprise of the same nature, which they, it seems, resolved to attempt, with sufficient force to carry all before them; for except what the first man told them of inhabitants, they could say little to it of their own knowledge; for they never saw one ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... whom, with his awful sense of the divine majesty, and his humble prostration in presence of it, such claims and such a demeanour must have appeared an impious and blasphemous usurpation of prerogatives that belong to God alone. And sometimes, we may suspect, lower motives concurred to whet the edge of the priest's hostility. He professed to be the proper medium, the true intercessor between God and man, and no doubt his interests as well as his feelings were often injured by a rival practitioner, who preached a surer and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... effective to whet hunger as this gentleman's expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its several noses—snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... very sports? Does not life without difficulty become insipid and joyless? Cannot a strong interest turn difficulty into pleasure? Let the love of truth, of which I have spoken, be awakened, and obstacles in the way to it will whet, not discourage, the mind, and inspire a new delight into ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... conscious of a hunter's camp in an adjacent county. To these last, of course, Fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea-garden: a Rosherville on a by-day. But to the plain man it offers solitude: an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet for company. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me more eggs, or I'll scratch your eyes out,' shrieked the owl, and began to whet its beak on a beam in such a savage manner that the three cocks fled in terror to the top of ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... I live! The sight! A burning world! And to be dead and miss it! There's an end Of all satiety: such fire imagine! Born in some obscure alley of the poor, Then leaping to embrace a splendid street, Palaces, temples, morsels that but whet Her appetite: the eating of huge forests: Then with redoubled fury rushing high, Smacking her lips over a continent, And licking old civilisations up! Then in tremendous battle fire and sea Joined: and the ending ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... is, gin he should slip awa. An' ax him tae, whit ma rights 'll be. Ah've got a buggie, ye ken, an' a coo o' ma ain', foreby a settin' o' Plymouths, an' ah'm to have a horse, he says, to drive to Cheemaun—ah got that oot o' him in writin' an' he didna ken whet ah wes up to. But ah'd like to ken jist hoo much ah'm to expact. Ah'm no goin' to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... part of various exalted personages, things were straightened out, pickets detailed and posted, and the men, too tired even to swear, dropped where they were, and rapidly cooled down in the chilly dew. It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and a half bottle of water was issued, enough merely to whet the consuming thirst which gripped everybody. Tunics were disentangled from the damp congeries on our backs and we had a ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... O, A whet of ale and brandy O, With a rumbelow and a Westward-ho! And heave, my mariners ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... which they now fall; or, filling some extensive concavity, have contributed, by successive depositions, to the formation of those marshes of which so much has been said. I regret extremely, that my defective vision prevents me giving a slight sketch to elucidate whet I fear I have, in words, perhaps, failed in ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Fathom-wide his eyes were parted, Fathom-wide his trousers measured; Round his knee the girth was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on which he whet it. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... traine ten thousand English to their side; Or, as a little snow, tumbled about, Anon becomes a Mountaine. O noble Dolphine, Go with me to the King, 'tis wonderfull, What may be wrought out of their discontent, Now that their soules are topfull of offence, For England go; I will whet on ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
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