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Anvil   Listen
verb
Anvil  v. t.  To form or shape on an anvil; to hammer out; as, anviled armor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books



... jumping-jack, the wooden sword, the whip and the doll,—all these are household friends in the humblest American homes. But not so the frog which jumps with a spring, the wooden hammers which fall alternately on their wooden anvil by the simplest of contrivances, and the horseman without legs, whose horse has a whistle instead of a tail. How any one of these articles could be sold for a sou passed my comprehension until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... went, nor into how familiar country he rode, the shapes of illusion offered always variety. One day the Chiricahuas were a tableland; next day a series of castellated peaks; now an anvil; now a saw tooth; and rarely they threw a magnificent suspension bridge across the heavens to their neighbours, the ranges on the west. Lakes rippling in the wind and breaking on the shore, cattle big as elephants or small as rabbits, distances that did not exist and forests ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... the molten metal and cooled and dropped into the distant hills. No wonder the miners go ever westward for the precious gold, to Colorado and Nevada and California, to Sitka and the Copper River, to Anvil City and the Nome beach and across the straits to Siberia. Never a clear night falls but they see the alchemy at work and the precious element going down in dust and nuggets and wide lodes behind the peaks and into the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... withered skin. He gazed over the scene of his former activities and misfortunes, and waited without impatience till some one should come who would give him a light for his cigar-stump. Shrill hammering from a workshop, the distant ring of the anvil in a smithy, the low rumbling of a far-away wagon came up to his heights with a little dust from the road and thin smoke from chimneys of all sizes, to show him that down in the town people were bravely toiling and sweating, while Karl Huerlin sat peacefully untroubled ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... so valuable as arms, of whatever style and fashion they might be. The bellows blew, and the hammer clanged continually upon the anvil, while the blacksmiths were repairing the broken weapons of other wars. Doubtless some of the soldiers lugged out those enormous, heavy muskets which used to be fired, with rests, in the time of the early Puritans. Great horse-pistols, too, were found, which would go ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the Cylinder through the Pipe: Two of these Trunks or Cylinders are placed so nigh together, that a Man standing between them may work them both at once alternately, one with each Hand. They have neither Vice nor Anvil, but a great hard Stone or a piece of an old Gun, to hammer upon: yet they will perform their work making both common Utensils and Iron-works about Ships to admiration. They work altogether with Charcoal. Every Man almost is a Carpenter, for they can work with the Ax and Adds. Their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... a wakeful spirit.... Be thou wise as the serpent in all things, and harmless always as the dove.... The time requireth thee, as pilots require winds, or as a storm-tossed mariner a haven, so that it may find God.... Be sober, as God's athlete.... Stand firm as an anvil under the stroke of the hammer. It becomes a great athlete to endure blows and to conquer.... Show thyself more zealous than thou art.... Let nothing be done without thy consent, neither do thou anything without God's consent, as indeed ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... sagest knot is generally at the blacksmith's, to whom the passing of the coach is an event fruitful of much speculation. The smith, with the horse's heel in his lap, pauses as the vehicle whirls by; the Cyclops round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers, and suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in brown paper cap, labouring at the bellows, leans on the handle for a moment, and permits the asthmatic engine to heave a long-drawn sigh, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... cry—a cry of agony it seemed to him. He bent low, and made his way back into the plantation, plunging through the undergrowth until he reached a narrow and little frequented footpath. He was deaf to all sounds, for the thumping in his ears had become now like a sledge-hammer beating upon an anvil. He was not sure that he saw anything. His feet fled over the ground mechanically. Only when he reached the borders of the wood, and crossed the meadow leading to the main road, he drew himself a little more upright. He must remember, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... business, Sherman went back at once, resisting the urgent invitation of General Banks, whose military duties seem to have been somewhat hampered by civil calls, to remain over the 4th of March and participate in the inauguration of a civil government for Louisiana, in which the Anvil Chorus was to be played by all the bands in the Army of the Gulf, the church bells rung, and cannons ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 'Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand?'— 'I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant greenwood.' Kindness fadeth ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows Are never heard: he may work in a lady's chamber, As here for proof. What rests but I reveal All to my lord? O, this base quality Of intelligencer! Why, every ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... shuttle's song; There's triumph in the anvil's stroke; There's merit in the brave and strong Who dig the mine or ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... to be crushed 'twixt hammer and anvil," quoth Sir Hacon, tightening the lacing of ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... sending deft blasts on every side, now to aid his labour and now anon howsoever Hephaistos willed and the work went on. And he threw bronze that weareth not into the fire, and tin and precious gold and silver, and next he set on an anvil-stand a great anvil, and took in his hand a sturdy hammer, and in the other he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... removed to the further part of the rock, where he kept his eye steadily upon the progress of the vessel. While the artificers were at work, chiefly in sitting and kneeling postures, excavating the rock, or boring with the tools, and while their numerous hammers, and the sound of the smith's anvil continued, the situation of things did not appear so awful. In this state of suspense, with almost certain destruction at hand, the water began to rise upon those who were at work on the lower parts of the sites of the beacon and lighthouse. From the run of the sea upon ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... likely than that she had been detained by her grandmother? How could he expect it? Indeed, he told himself he did not expect it. He had come out here because it was a fine night, and the night air cooled his brain for his studies. His heart, hammering on his life's anvil, contradicted him. He could not have repeated the Hebrew alphabet. His head, bent a little forward in the agony of listening, whirled madly round; the ambient ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little anvil and charcoal furnace, with a few tools, rivets, nails, and horse-shoes, Tibble coolly returned that he needed no such gay birds; but if Giles chose to be ready in his leathern coat when Stephen Birkenholt came home at midday, mayhap ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... morning I saw more activity among Negroes than I had ever seen before in my life. Not only was everybody at work, but every soul seemed to be in earnest. I heard the ringing of the anvil, the click of machinery, the music of the carpenters' hammers. Before my eyes was a pair of big fat mules drawing a piece of new and improved farm machinery, which literally gutted the earth as the mules moved. Here was a herd of cattle, there a herd ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... out beyond the iron and inflamed and suppurated, so that the leg for a considerable distance above and below the iron, was a mass of putrefaction, the most loathsome of any wound he had ever witnessed on any living creature. The slave lay on his back on the floor, with his leg on an anvil which sat also on the floor, one man had a chisel used for splitting iron, and another struck it with a sledge, to drive it between the ends of the hoop and separate it so that it might be taken off. Mr. Lyman said that the man swung the sledge over ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the dragon and win for him the Nibelung treasure. The drama opens in Mime's hut in the depths of the forest. The dwarf is engaged in forging a sword for Siegfried, complaining the while that the ungrateful boy always dashes the swords which he makes to pieces upon the anvil as though they were toys. Siegfried now comes in, blithe and boisterous, and treats Mime's new sword like its predecessors, blaming the unfortunate smith for his incompetence. Mime reproaches Siegfried for his ingratitude, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... themselves, have everywhere ranked among the luxuries of a refined cultivation. It is the most brilliant of stones, and the hardest known body. Pliny says it is so hard a substance, that, if one should be laid on an anvil and struck with a hammer, look out for the hammer! [Mem. If the reader have a particularly fine diamond, never mind Pliny's story: the risk is something, and Pliny cannot be reached for an explanation, should his experiment fail.] By its own dust only can the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... full of unbelief. These very godless ones the Lord will punish, he says, because their preaching is shameless and presumptuous, for they stick ever to their own wilfulness; do not permit themselves to be swayed at all, and are as hard as an anvil, to condemn and revile continually. Thus has Enoch struck in this passage at the very estate which before the last day should be in the world, as we now see it before our eyes. ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... actions of the people are unfamiliar,—that their work is done in ways the opposite of Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after surprising methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a hammer such as no Western smith could use without long practice; the carpenter pulls, instead of pushing, his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong; and keys must be turned, to open ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain, On that red anvil where ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... youth to manhood, for that a man must needs live, Beltane builded him a hut beside the brook, and set up an anvil thereby whereon he beat out bill-hooks and axe-heads and such implements as the charcoal-burners and they that lived within ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... tubes. The little air balloons are made in Paris (their value is $300,000) by Brissonet from English Mackintosh cloth. Powdered soapstone is strewed over it in cutting. The edges are united by hammering on a horn anvil, or by machinery through simple adhesion, and the cut ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... loose stuffing of feathers thickly set round the piston so as to act as a valve, and produce a regular blast. Both cylinders communicate with the same nozzle, one piston rising while the other falls. An oblong piece of iron on the ground was the anvil, and a small vice was fixed on the projecting root of a tree outside. These, with a few files and hammers, were literally the only tools with which an old man makes these fine guns, finishing then himself from the rough ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... ten to one, will not tell me the real translation. I think the first hour of the morning is also favourable to the bodily strength. Among other feats, when I was a young man, I was able at times to lift a smith's anvil with one hand, by what is called the horn, or projecting piece of iron on which things are beaten to turn them round. But I could only do this before breakfast, and shortly after rising. It required my ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... and fearless Governor Wolcott, who seemed to have been expecting some such outcome of the battle, gave his answer clear as an anvil-blow: ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... the corridor on tip-toe, pushed the envelope under his door, then knocked very gently and darted back to her own room. Listening, with a heart that beat like a sledge-hammer falling on an anvil, she heard him open the door, heard it close again; she waited almost; breathlessly, and presently his step crossed the corridor, and a piece of paper slid to her feet. She picked it up ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... been, his brains must have been dashed out. According to the tradition, it was safer for him to strike on his head than on his shins. Certainly he was not badly injured, and if reduced to extremity he might have let out his head for use as a blacksmith's anvil. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... man in the blue cap, of whom we have spoken; then, with a furious bound, overturning three or four prisoners who separated him from Germain, he sprung upon Skeleton, and struck him on his head, between the eyes, such a torrent of blows with his fists that the sound was like a hammer upon an anvil. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... like Uhland and Heine, get rid of them as much as possible, and succeed thereby, every word striking and ringing down with full force, no cushion of an epithet intruding between the reader's brain-anvil and the poet's hammer to break the blow. In Uhland's "Three Burschen," if we recollect right, there are but two epithets, and those of the simplest descriptive kind: "Thy fair daughter" and a "black pall." ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the "Plow, the Loom and the Anvil," upon the strength of materials, and especially upon bridge-building, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied into the English "Practical Magazine." They served at any rate to raise Philip in the opinion of his friends the contractors, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... side; that the paths which lead to these beautiful walks can only be entered by the road of experience, the portals of which are alone opened to those who apply to them the key of truth: this key is of very simple structure, has no complicated intricacy of wards, and is easily formed on the anvil of social intercourse, merely by not doing unto others that which you would not wish they ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... man, hunted with him, died with him a thousand times of old? Had they not stood shoulder to shoulder, and back to back, in many a desperate venture in the past that haunted him? Had he not tried him time and again on the anvil of hard experience, always to find that he rang true? Would he fail him now at his need, this old comrade, who had never failed him before? No. That old sense of the familiarity of all experience swept in on ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... per minute, day and night. So long as Billy Warlock can keep himself above ground, so long will that old house keep him company, and so long will his forges blow fiery sparks in the cellar, while he hammers and hums and hums and hammers on the anvil ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... Onondaga County area. It roughly exceeded Types B, D and E by a 2:1 ratio. Type C exceeded Types B, D and E with a ratio of about 7:5 in frequency of occurrence. Types B and D were the two most easily cracked nut forms when using a hammer and anvil for a cracking device. It should be noted at this time that all of the abnormal fruit types were found in conjunction with normal fruit types. Thus, one individual tree used as a collection might produce ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... surprise, and no one more so than her father, when the girl took up with Martin Blake, the son of the blacksmith in the next village, who might be seen most days with a smutty face and leathern apron hammering away at the glowing red metal on the anvil. It would have been well for him if he had only been seen thus, with the marks of honest toil about him; but Martin Blake was too often to be seen at the 'Crown,' and often in a state that anyone who loved him would have grieved to see; ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... They that have power are royal; and those base That live at the devotion of another. What birth gave Ptolomy, or fortune Caesar, By Engines fashion'd in this Protean Anvil I have made mine; and only stoop at you, Whom I would still preserve free to command me; For Caesar's frowns, they are below my thoughts, And but in these fair Eyes I still have read The story of ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... so that an impression of device or of legend appeared only on one side. The other side bore an indent which is known as the punch-mark. This mark is commonly a square figure divided into four smaller squares by lines resembling somewhat a right cross. It is the indent of the spike in the anvil on which the ball of metal was laid when being struck. Later, the coins were made thinner, and were struck with double dies. From that time both sides of the coin received an impression. The upper side continued to show the greatest ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... past the Forum, past the Coliseum, in view of St. Peter's. Soon we entered a dusty road. The houses were small now, broken and old. At last we drew up into an open space surrounded by little buildings: a blacksmith's shop where the anvil was ringing, little bakeries, markets where vegetables and bologna were vended. Ragged Italian children, gay and soiled with healthy dirt, were playing in the dust, turning somersaults, chasing each other, laughing. Beyond us was the Campagna, the ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... she came to the little old mill near her own home. There was Alfred hard at work, for he had hired himself out as a miller's boy. Her mother was weeping beneath the willow by the river, and her father was hammering at his anvil. How pleasant his great, glowing fire looked to Rosamond, after her ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... so well known to visitors to that city. The people of Rouen who have spread out into the enormous suburb of St. Sever, on the left bank of the Seine,[42] are busy by thousands in the manufactories,—the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with the thinnest boots, who never ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... speeches, the Dwarfs who were in the forge took up the bar of fine gold and flung it into the fire. Then taking it out and putting it upon their anvil they worked on the bar with their tiny hammers until they beat it into threads that were as fine as the hairs of one's head. But that was not enough. They had to be as fine as the hairs on Sif's head, and these were finer ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... of a miner had cloven it. On a rock of sardonyx he strove to break it then, but Durendala remained unharmed. A third time he strove, and struck a rock of blue marble with such force that the sparks rushed out as from a blacksmith's anvil. Then he knew that it was in vain, for Durendala would not be shattered. And so he raised Olifant to his lips and blew a dying blast that echoed down the cliffs and up to the mountain tops and rang through the trees of the forest. And still, to this day, do they say, when the spirit of the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... grey-green, cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep that visited him, and held him for the best part of ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... wch cometh to 500ll every month; so in toto yearelye 4,000ll;" and a proviso that "The workes already buylt onlye granted, wth no power to remove them, but bound to mayntayne and leave them in good case and repayre, wth all stock of hammers, anvil's, and other necessarys received att the pattentees' entrye," as also that "libertye for myne and synders for supplying of the workes onlye, to be taken by delivery of the miners att the price ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... that battle, murder and sudden death were a relief from the inactivity of sluggish peace; a state in which the mind was no longer a moving power in man, but only by turns the smelting pot and the anvil of half-smothered passions that now and then broke out with fire and flame and sword to slash and burn the world with ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... this ode, and reproduced it at Covent Garden, with deserved success. Not often do such a poet and such a musician meet at the same anvil. The great German also set the former ode, which is known as "The Ode on St. Cecilia's Day." Dryden himself told Tonson that he thought with the town that this ode was the best of all his poetry; and he said to a young flatterer at Will's, with honest pride—"You ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... things that men do—the decent things—William did. He could run like the wind. When he was twelve he won a first prize in a race; an inkstand of glass, shaped like an anvil. It stood proudly on the dresser, and gave Mrs. Morel a keen pleasure. The boy only ran for her. He flew home with his anvil, breathless, with a "Look, mother!" That was the first real tribute to herself. She took it ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... from the nature of his argument against the Utilitarians. In his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of Hartley, Tucker, Godwin, and especially Paley. He scarcely refers to Bentham.[194] Paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school. Now he agrees, as I have said, with Paley's view of natural theology and entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' The same theory becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. We may perhaps say that Stewart's view is in substance an ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... have a loosened horseshoe replaced, and while waiting picked up a newspaper. Don Caesar seldom read the papers, but noticing that this was the "Record," he glanced at its columns. A familiar name suddenly flashed out of the dark type like a spark from the anvil. With a brain and heart that seemed to be beating in unison with the blacksmith's sledge, he ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... fell like strokes of a hammer upon an anvil. Eli intended to shoot. He was a man of his word. He made no threat that he was not prepared to execute, and Indian Jake knew that Eli would shoot on ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... nature all; thy art, My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His heart doth give the fashion: and, that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou! Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... continues its barking a hundred yards behind us—the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy scream of force and fury—a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side. "It's a gran'pa, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... interesting I certainly never paid. If self-sustaining strength can be acquired from example, I ought to have got good. But my nature is not hers; I could not make it so though I were to submit it seventy times seven to the furnace of affliction, and discipline it for an age under the hammer and anvil of toil and self-sacrifice. Perhaps if I was like her I should not admire her so much as I do. She is somewhat absolute, though quite unconsciously so; but she is likewise kind, with an affection at once abrupt and constant, whose sincerity you cannot doubt. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... such strange relief as Gilliat. The great circle of sea-birds that come wonderingly around him on the night of his arrival, strikes at once the note of his pre-eminence and isolation. He fills the whole reef with his indefatigable toil; this solitary spot in the ocean rings with the clamour of his anvil; we see him as he comes and goes, thrown out sharply against the clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example; indeed, no two books could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... one of the psalms, interrupted by blows of the hammer—an infernal deed beating time to celestial songs. One might have supposed himself near a smithy, except that the blows were dull, and manifested to the ear that the anvil ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... heard it before? Music in the hammer on the anvil, in the throb of the engine, in ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... and flooded the space with perfect light. An iron ladder swung from the skylight and was hooked up against the ceiling by a hasp fastened to a staple over a work-bench. On one side of the room was a tiny blacksmith's forge, an anvil, hammers and a complete set of tools for working in rough iron. A small gasoline engine supplied the power which turned his lathe and worked the drills, saw and plane. On the other side of the room was arranged a fairly complete chemical laboratory with several retorts, and an oxyhydrogen ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon

... including Tom Quartz, the cat. On rainy days they would gather about the big, open fire and Jim Gillis, with his back to the warmth, would relate diverting yarns, creations of his own, turned out hot from the anvil, forged as he went along. He had a startling imagination, and he had fostered it in that secluded place. His stories usually consisted of wonderful adventures of his companion, Dick Stoker, portrayed with humor and that serene and vagrant ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... handle of the pestle to pass through. When the two substances are well mixed, grind heavily with the pestle, when rapid detonations will ensue; or after the powder is mixed, you can wrap it with paper into a hard pellet, and explode it on an anvil with a ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... strike hard—strike quick and heasy, right that place every time;" and taking the glowing iron from the fire, he laid it on the light anvil. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... the cleer-fac't day, So doth she hate me and returne my woes Like a steeld Anvil backward on my selfe. She is all hate, yet such a lovely foe That I must kisse the sword that wounds ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... Under the shadow of Anvil Mountain, the motor boat ran up to a little wharf, almost completely hidden in greenery, and there Cecil and the boy landed. Stuart did not fail to observe that the motor boat engineer needed no directions as to the place of landing. Evidently this ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... condition, however, that the curse should be assumed by Regin, who, also, in order to fitly equip the young man for the coming fight, should forge him a sword, which no blow could break. Twice Regin fashioned a marvellous weapon, but twice Sigurd broke it to pieces on the anvil. Then Sigurd bethought him of the broken fragments of Sigmund's weapon which were treasured by his mother, and going to Hiordis he begged these from her; and either he or Regin forged from them a blade so strong that it divided the great anvil in two ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... was not acted upon. But he went on inventing in other directions. He thenceforward devoted himself entirely to mechanical pursuits. Mr. Buckle has said of him:—"The rising sun often found him, after a night spent in incessant labour, still at the anvil or turning-lathe; for with his own hands he would make such articles as he would not intrust to unskilful ones." In 1799 he took out a patent (No. 2340), embodying some very important inventions. First, it included ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... side with his hand on her neck. In this way they came to a small village, and here the nag turned up a by-road and halted outside the blacksmith's forge. The smith's Lad stood within, clinking at the anvil, the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... children. My mother was a female blacksmith of Old Hill, who for four shillings and sixpence a week worked sixteen hours a day for the fogger, hammering hot iron into nails. The scar upon my forehead—look! it is shaped like the red-hot nail that one day leapt upon me from her anvil, as I lay asleep in my swing above her head. I would not lose it for all the diadems of all the monarchs of this world. She was much too poor to educate us. When the wolf is at the door, Mr. Aylwin, and the very flesh and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... tier, were five thousand school children of the city, dressed in white with ribbons and sashes of the national colors, while many thousands of the citizens were gathered as spectators. Patriotic songs were sung by the little folks; five hundred musicians filled the air with sweet sounds, and in the anvil chorus which was sung, fifty sons of Vulcan kept time on as many veritable anvils; while some half dozen batteries of artillery came in heavy on the choruses. These were fired simultaneously by an electrical arrangement; and the whole was under ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman

... indispensable to the dynasty, and to none more than his father and mother, who were often unkind to him; he had his smithy in Olympus in the vicinity of the gods, and the marvellous creations of his art were shaped on an anvil, the hammer of which was plied by 20 bellows that worked at his bidding; in later traditions he had his workshop elsewhere, and the Cyclops for his servants, employed in manufacturing thunderbolts for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with a heavy difficulty. He is fashioning a sword for Siegfried,—still another sword, after ever so many,—realising even as he works that no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... increase: kine that low, When milk unto their calves they owe; The hammer on the anvil's brow, The ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... yellow tips, were clustered as close together as the cells in a great honeycomb, and into the shafts and out of them bobbed hurrying, eager creatures. The whirring of windlasses, the clatter of nail-keg buckets, the incessant calls, 'Look up below!' and the distinct ringing of hammer on anvil, blended into a quaint symphony of labour. The swish, swish, swish, of the wet dirt in the cradle-hoppers and the rattling of the tailings thrown from the shovels providing an unvarying substratum of sound. There were tents everywhere, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... its bathing machines and its gasometer faded away. King Rufus was out a-hunting as they passed over the New Forest, and from Salisbury Plain, as they looked down, the pixies waved their hands and laughed. Later, they heard the clang of the anvil, telling them they were in the neighbourhood of Wayland Smith's cave; and so planed down sweetly and without a jar just ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... smith, He that smoothed with the hammer Him that smote on the anvil; Saying of the solder, It is good; And fixing the idol with ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... spread so wide that it became a danger. The rustic left the plough: the blacksmith his anvil: the carpenter his bench: all left their wives and their children in order to tramp across the country on pilgrimage to some shrine. By day they marched together: at night they sat round the fire in ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... had mastered these, Laura entered upon a new world of delight. Her taste in music was as yet a little immature—Gounod and even Verdi were its limitations. But to hear, responsive to the lightest pressures of her finger-tips, the mighty instrument go thundering through the cadences of the "Anvil Chorus" gave her a thrilling sense ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen recesses ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... mists thickened, and a look of unreality came over familiar objects. And then through the wavering gloom there suddenly towered a great dark mass topped by something which rose against the wild dimness like a colossal blacksmith's anvil. It might have been Vulcan's own forge, so strange and fabulous a thing it seemed! The boy's heart leaped with his pony's leap. His imagination spread its swift wings ere he could think; but in another ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... into my horse and hurled myself against him; then at the very moment my horse struck his with a tremendous shock, I brought down my iron whip-handle with all the force that was in me upon his head. The blow rang as if I had struck upon an anvil, while at the same moment he, without swerving, clutched my cloak with both hands. I could feel that they were bony, hard hands, armed with long, crooked, sharp talons like an eagle's, which pierced through my cloak into ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... easily burn through, and around each of them a kind of bower of faggots open to the front. Moreover, to the posts hung new wagon chains, and near by stood the village blacksmith and his apprentice, who carried a hand anvil and a sledge hammer for the ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... kept it up in a way to win them fame. When Earl Haakon's ship drew up beside that of Bue, two of the viking champions, Haavard the Hewer and Aslak Rock-skull, leaped on deck and made terrible havoc. In the end an Icelander picked up an anvil that was used to sharpen their spears and hurled it at Aslak, splitting his skull, while Haavard had both legs cut off. Yet the indomitable viking fought on, standing on ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... at Four Corners, brought his anvil, an' the men made the women folks give up their clotheslines. Then they went out on the hole in the old ferryboat, and let down the anvil. There was two hundred feet of line in all, an' when half of it were out the men lost their grip. The ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes may be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... legend inscribed on the cross at Leeds. Volund, who is the same mysterious person as our Wayland Smith, is seen carrying off a swan-maiden. At his feet are his hammer, anvil, bellows, and pincers. The cross was broken to pieces in order to make way for the building of the old Leeds church hundreds of years ago, but the fragments have been pieced together, and we can see the swan-maiden carried above the head of Volund, her wings hanging down and held by two ropes ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... yook Good man. Gyami Bad (cam. Gaelic). Probably the origin of the common canting term gammy, bad. Ishkimmisk Drunk (misgeach. Gaelic) Roglan A four-wheeled vehicle. Lorch A two-wheeled vehicle. Smuggle Anvil. Granya Nail. Riaglon Iron. Gushuk Vessel of any kind. Tedhi, thedi Coal; fuel of any kind. Grawder Solder. Tanyok Halfpenny. (Query tani, little, Romany, and nyok, a head.) Chlorhin To hear. Sunain To see. Salkaneoch To taste, take. Mailyen ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... for the plaintiff, opened the case. He was a great, big, bald-headed man, who laid down the law as a blacksmith hammers an anvil, in a clear, forcible, resounding manner, leaving the defense—as everybody declared—not a leg ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... string it and put it 'round a baby's neck it will cut teeth easy. A tea made out of dog fennel or corn shucks will cure chills and malaria. It'll make 'em throw up. We used to take button snake root, black snake root, chips of anvil iron and whiskey and make a tonic to cure consumption. It would cure ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... The matted sward with spade and share, And those whose sounding axes gleam Beside the lonely forest-stream, Till its broad banks lie bare; And him who breaks the quarry-ledge, With hammer-blows, plied quick and strong, And him who, with the steady sledge, Smites the shrill anvil all day long. Sprinkle the furrow's even trace For those whose toiling hands uprear The roof-trees of our swarming race, By grove and plain, by stream and mere; Who forth, from crowded city, lead The lengthening street, and overlay Green orchard-plot and grassy mead With pavement ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... when he came down from McCloskey's office, and for perhaps twenty minutes he had been seen lounging at the lunch-counter in the station end of the Crow's Nest. At about eleven one witness had seen him striking at the anvil in Hepburn's shop, the town marshal being the town blacksmith in the intervals of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... Is not a time for settling or admitting. Mighty things are on the anvil. The house Of Hapsburg must wax powerful; what the Father Gloriously began, the Son must forward: This people is a stone of stumbling, which One way or t'other ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... increased a hundred-fold, when what we would tell, partakes of the wonderful. Who can truthfully describe a juggler's trick? Who would hesitate to affirm that a watch, which never left the eye-sight for an instant, was broken by the juggler on an anvil; or that a handkerchief was burned before our eyes? We all know the juggler does not break the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief. We watched most closely the juggler's right hand, while the trick was done with his left. The one minute circumstance ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... dulness, still maintain, 40 Legions of factious authors throng at once, Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. To 'Hamilton's[84] the ready lies repair— Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there— Thence, on maturer judgment's anvil wrought, The polish'd falsehood's into public brought. Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford; And reputation bleeds in every word. A critic was of old a glorious name, Whose sanction handed merit up to fame; 50 Beauties as well as ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... Arnold of Brescia when he appeared in the city, and who would have torn down stone walls with their bare hands at his merest words, as they would have faced the barons' steel with naked breast. At such times men left their tasks—the shoemaker his last, the smith his anvil, the crooked tailor his bench—to follow the northern monk to the Capitol, or to some church where he was to speak to them; and after the men came the women, and after the women the children, all drawn ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... indescribable variety, displaying all kinds of contrivances, some so portable as easily to go into the pocket, and containing instantaneous light on touching a spring, with pens, ink, seal and wax. Amongst the endless number of paper presses is one with a blacksmith, who, when light is required, strikes the anvil and fire appears; abundance of cigar stands with matches are arranged after a variety of whimsical methods, some of them very tasteful, and having quite an ornamental effect. Fortunately, Madame Merckel has in a great degree met with the reward her ingenuity merits, receiving the greatest ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... mines from the beginning. The old Teutonic Pan was far more musical and awe-inspiring than his Grecian counterpart The Noon-spirit of the North was more wild than that of the South. How all the ancient North was alive in its Troll-haunted hillocks, where clanged the anvil of the faery hill-smith, and danced and banqueted the Gnome and Troll,—and in its streams and springs, musical with the harps of moist-haired Elle-women and mermaids, who, ethnic daemons though they were, yet cherished a hope of salvation! The myth-spirits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... Hammers on the anvil rest, Dews upon the gowan's breast; Young hearts heave with tender thought, Low winds sigh, with odours fraught, Stars bedeck the blue above, Earth is full of joy and love; Row, lads, row; row, lads, row; Let ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... had not taken this attitude of your godmother, whom she has always found supple to her will, as a personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they have now arrived at such a point that Mademoiselle Brigitte is packing her trunks ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... been shaped by the furnace, the bellows, the hammer and the anvil, cried: "It is not each of you alone, that keeps up the smithy, but ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... thinking that he'll be caught between the hammer and the anvil of Lee and Jackson, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... was the best of smiths, to forge him a sword. Two were made, but both broke at the first stroke. The broken pieces of Gram were then obtained, and out of them Regin forged a blade that clave the anvil in the smithy, and cut a lock of wool borne down to it by a stream. Armed with Gram, and mounted on Gran, his steed, which Odin had instructed him to choose, Sigurd rode to the Glistening Heath, dug a pit in the dragon's path, and slew him as he passed over him on his way to drink ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... was as empty as usual. There was Grader's cat in the window, a dog asleep on a step, and a few chickens picking about in front of the carrier's, while the only sounds were the clink, clink of the blacksmith's hammer upon his anvil, and the brisk tapping made by Chakes, as he neatly executed repairs ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... me for five years and he hasn't caught up with me yet. Every time he's had a chance he's tossed a few sneers in my direction, so I made up my mind the other day I'd coax him down to the foundry and throw the anvil at him. If ever I do cut loose on that Birmingham gent he'll think he has swallowed one of his own harpoons. He's a case of Perpetual Grouch because it gets the dough for him ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... varying conditions of temperature (-10 deg. to 50 deg. C.) for several months. It cannot be exploded by flame, nor by heating it in an open vessel. It is only slightly decomposed by strong percussion on an anvil. A fulminate detonator produces the best explosive effect with tri-nitro-toluene. It can be used in conjunction with ammonium nitrate, but such admixture weakens the explosive power; but even then it is stated to be stronger than an equivalent mixture ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... wide awake indeed when it was time for meals. One day his master pretended to be disgusted at this, and when he had thrown him a bone as usual, he said, "What on earth is the good of a lazy cur like you? When I am hammering away at my anvil, you just curl up and go to sleep: but no sooner do I stop for a mouthful of food than you wake up and wag your tail ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... good anvil, let him deal sound blows on the irons for the pier, repeated and strong, and the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... was allowed to see and photograph the process, my wife was at all times prevented from doing so. The forge differs in no material respects from that used by the brass casters, except that hollowed out logs replace the bamboo tubes, and that a metal anvil and iron hammers are used. After an iron knife or spear head has been roughly shaped, the smith splits the edge to a slight depth and inserts a band of steel. The iron is pounded down on the harder metal and the whole is brought to a white heat in ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... The giant's ponderous hammer rings on the anvil of destiny. Enter, thou massive figure, Bismarck, and in deadly earnest take thy ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... landing-place; but, without waiting to push her off, he leapt upon the rock, and making his way hastily to the spot which had privately given him alarm, he had the satisfaction to ascertain that he had only been deceived by the peculiar situation and aspect of the smith's anvil and block, which very completely represented the appearance of a lifeless body upon the rock. The writer carefully suppressed his feelings, the simple mention of which might have had a bad effect upon the artificers, and his haste passed for an anxiety to examine the apparatus ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his arbitrary prorogation of the parliament at Edinburgh, a thing which the best and bravest of the Scottish monarchs had never before dared to do without the consent of the States then assembled, the thud and murmur of warlike preparation was renewed both on anvil and in hall. And when it was known that the King, fey and distempered with his own weak conceits and the instigations of cruel counsellors, had, as soon as he heard that the Covenanters were disbanded, renewed his purposes of punishment and oppression, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... unsatisfied, Eager each new effect to try, The solemn artist cast aside, Rainbow and shell and butterfly, As some stern blacksmith scatters wide The sparks that from his anvil fly. ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... man-of-all-work. The king spoke and the intendant transformed his words into action. As the sovereign's great interest in the colony moved him to speak often, the intendant's activity was prodigious. Ordinances, edicts, judgments and decrees fairly flew from his pen like sparks from an anvil. Nothing that needed setting aright was too inconsequential for a paternal order. An ordinance establishing a system of weights and measures for the colony rubs shoulders with another inhibiting the ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... planned and ready to be put into execution. The iron is red on the anvil. At least five hundred men are pledged to me, and I have on my memorandum books, the names of as many thousands who will join us when wanted. Every man is to receive one hundred acres of the Bastrop land, besides his regular pay. All are to present themselves ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... that we no longer study it in quest of the Guaith Voeths, but to trace out some of the secrets of descent and destiny; and as we study, we think less of Sir Bernard Burke and more of Mr. Galton. Not only do our character and talents lie upon the anvil and receive their temper during generations; but the very plot of our life's story unfolds itself on a scale of centuries, and the biography of the man is only an episode in the epic of the family. From this point of view I ask the reader's ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the truth? This gentleman would have stayed on in his parish, happy in his hopeless incompetence, until his parishioners might have sent in a third request for his retirement, had not the irony of circumstance broken him upon its unyielding anvil. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... exclaimed. "And I shall never forget your 'Conundrum of the Anvil' which appeared in it. How often have I laughed at that most wonderful conceit, and how often have I put it ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... or not the French book maketh no mention, all the estates were long or day in the church for to pray. And when matins and the first mass was done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone; and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus:—Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England. Then the people marvelled, and told it to the Archbishop. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... business, I forthwith set about my work. Selecting a piece of iron which I thought would serve my purpose, I placed it in the fire, and plying the bellows in a furious manner, soon made it hot; then seizing it with the tongs, I laid it on my anvil, and began to beat it with my hammer, according to the rules of my art. The dingle resounded with my strokes. Belle sat still, and occasionally smiled, but suddenly started up, and retreated towards her encampment, on a spark which I purposely sent in her direction alighting on her knee. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... and brave, Whose shores two mighty oceans lave: Your cultured fields, your marts of trade, Keels by the hand of genius laid, The shuttle's hum, the anvil's ring Echo your voice that God ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Smith. He carried a hammer of stone in one hand and tongs of 15 bronze in the other, and a song of peace was upon his lips. On a green hillock, where the south wind blew, he built him a smithy, and in it he placed the tools of his craft. His anvil was a block of gray granite; his forge was carefully built of sand and clay; his bellows was made of the 20 skins of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... Birmingham, where it is to be set up in a public park. Its height is 56 feet, and its weight a little more than 60 tons. The head was cast in one piece and weighed over 17,000 pounds. There were 20 casts in all, including the anvil and anvil block. The statue, which was intended to show forth the colossal iron deposits of Alabama, representing primitive man at the time he discovered the method of hardening iron into steel. Vulcan held ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... against the cabin of his boat, look about him to see what hell he had escaped into. The sun was shining somewhere, blinding his eyes, which were already seared. A river coiled by, every ripple a blistering white flame. He heard birds and other music which sounded like an anvil chorus performing in the narrow confines of a head ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... assembled, and when the mass was over and they passed out into the churchyard, there they beheld a large block of stone, upon which rested a heavy anvil. The blade of a jeweled sword was sunk ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... true self, though subdued to be what he quaintly styles 'the devil's quilted anvil,' on which 'all sins are fashioned and the blows never heard,' continually rebels against this destiny. Compared with Flamineo, he is less unnaturally criminal. His melancholy is more fantastic, his despair more noble. Throughout the course of craft and cruelty on which he is goaded ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the room, and into the other room; and when it did not hurle the glasse at their heads, it did strike upon the tables, as if many smiths, with their greatest hammers, had been laying on as upon an anvil; sometimes it thumpt against the walls as if it would beat a hole through; then upon their heads, such stamping, as if the roof of the house were beating down upon their heads; and having done thus, during the space (as was conjectured) of two hours, it ceased and vanished, but with a ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... care, And don't abuse your privilege to stare. But if your eyes may probe him overmuch, Beware still further how you rudely touch; Don't clutch his carpus in your icy fist, But warm your fingers ere you take the wrist. If the poor victim needs must be percussed, Don't make an anvil of his aching bust; (Doctors exist within a hundred miles Who thump a thorax as they'd hammer piles;) If you must listen to his doubtful chest, Catch the essentials, and ignore the rest. Spare ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions climbing ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... almost starved, did not come to the armies. Vast stores of provision and supplies were blocked on the roads, while speculators' ventures passed over them. This, the soldiers in the trench and the laborer at the anvil ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... William Throup the postman, Tommy Thwaite the "Colonel," so called for his willingness to place his advice at the service of any of the Allied Commanders-in-Chief, and Owd Jerry the smith, who knew how to keep silent, but whose opinion, when given, fell with the weight of his hammer on the anvil. He refuted his opponents by asking them questions, after the manner of Socrates. The subject of conversation was the village school-mistress, who had recently been placed in charge of some thirty children, and was winning golden opinions ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... nor the cook ever seems to remember when the day comes round. This is a matter which you must see to personally. Contrast with this the case of the Nalbund, the clink of whose hammer in the early morning tells that the 15th of the month has dawned. His portable anvil is already in the ground, and he is hammering the shoes into shape after a fashion; but he is not very particular about this, for if the shoe does not fit the hoof he can always cut the hoof to fit the shoe. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... mercies of the whipster. But, since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be hoped that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities,—and that to the savages who still belabor his poor carcass with their blows (considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon,) he might in some sort, if he could speak, exclaim, with the philosopher, "Lay on! you beat but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... ravine, but could see no sign of the bordermen. As it was now broad daylight he felt convinced that further watch was unnecessary, and went in to breakfast. When he came out again the villagers were astir. The sharp strokes of axes rang out on the clear morning air, and a mellow anvil-clang pealed up from the blacksmith shop. Colonel Zane found his brother Silas and Jim Douns near ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... being repeatedly heated in a forge, the heat of which is urged by a pair of double bellows of a very simple construction, being made of two goats' skins; the tubes from which unite, before they enter the forge, and supply a constant and very regular blast. The hammer, forceps, and anvil, are all very simple, and the workmanship (particularly in the formation of knives and spears) is not destitute of merit. The iron, indeed, is hard and brittle, and requires much labour before it can be made ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... certainly equipped the galleys which lay at Rachrin during winter. This story, too, of Greenleaf, about arms being procured for a new insurrection, tallies strangely with the appearance of that savage-looking forester at the hunt; and all tends to show, that something is upon the anvil which it is my duty to provide against. I will, therefore, pass over no circumstance by which I can affect the mind through hope or fear; but, please God to give me light from any other source, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... back to his smithy; he reeled like a drunken man; His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was brooding a plan. Straight to his anvil he hurried; started his furnace aglow; Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and masterful blow. Sparks showered over and round him; swiftly under his hand There at last it was finished—a hideous ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... set up their forge and anvil; and we commenced unloading corrugated iron sheets to form our magazines. Fortunately, I had a number of wall-plates, rafters, &c., that I had brought from Egypt for this purpose, as there is no straight wood in ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... work! In "Siegfried," for instance, there is no chorus at all. The first act ends with Siegfried's cleaving of the anvil with the sword which he has just forged before the eyes of the audience; and the third ends with the love duo. In these cases there are only two persons on the stage; and at the end of the second act Siegfried ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... Moor broke like matchwood. Both leaped to earth, sword in hand, and rushed at each other like lions. Many lusty strokes were given and taken, and from their armour flew sparks like those from a smith's anvil. Then the Moor, grasping his sword with both hands, made ready to strike a mighty blow, when swift and trenchantly Morvan thrust his blade far into the arm-pit and the heart and the giant tumbled to the earth like a falling tree. Morvan placed his ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... ancient Pistol for 'palabras', and holding that the best right that a man can have is to be happy after the way that pleases him the most. And that the Jesuits rendered the Indians happy is certain, though to those men who fudge a theory of mankind, thinking that everyone is forged upon their anvil, or run out of their own mould, after the fashion of a tallow dip (a theory which, indeed, the sameness of mankind renders at times not quite untenable), it seems absurd because the progress of the world has gone on other lines — lines which prolonged indefinitely ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... on the ground with his face downwards, the officers of justice sent away two of their number, who speedily returned with a blacksmith's anvil and forehammer. On this they placed one of their victim's ankles, and Flaggan now saw, with a sickening heart, that they were about to break it with the ponderous hammer. One blow sufficed to crush the bones in pieces, and drew from the man an appalling ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... but down he slides to enjoy an hour's rest in the cool lower world of the barn-floor. And when the Fourth of July comes, and the farm-boys gather at The Corners and fire off old shot-guns, pistols, an anvil, a cannon and empty thread-spools, then and there is the poetry of the whole harvest-season for the boy. The harvest-moon, bringer of hot days and "bammy" nights to glaze the corn, may be the admiration of many, but is not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... the behaviour of the song-thrush when it takes a wood-snail in its beak and hammers it against a stone, its so-called anvil. To a young thrush, which she had brought up by hand, Miss Frances Pitt offered some wood-snails, but it took no interest in them until one put out its head and began to move about. The bird then pecked at the snail's horns, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... with a beard, and hair neglected; half naked; his habit reaching down to his knee only, and having a round peaked cap on his head, a hammer in his right hand, and a smith's tongs in his left, working at the anvil, and usually attended by the Cyclops, or by some of the gods or goddesses for whom ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... measure assuaged. In the push and drive of the industrial world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making flash lights, and T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college girl is not as yet transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into work on the anvil, as is the university woman in England, but she has demonstrated her manual strength and skill on the farm with ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... was the youngest's turn to watch, he went to the village blacksmith and got him to make an iron club weighing two hundred and sixty pounds; so heavy was it that the blacksmith and his assistants could hardly turn it on the anvil. In order to test it, Niezguinek whirled it round his head and threw it up in the air, and when it had nearly reached the ground he caught it on his knee, upon which it was smashed to atoms. He then ordered another weighing four hundred and eighty pounds, and this the blacksmith and his ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... in his head. Something seemed hammering there, with regular strokes—a red-hot sledge upon an anvil of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England



Words linked to "Anvil" :   auditory ossicle, tympanic cavity, middle ear, smithy, forge, tympanum, incus



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