"Shears" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Peer now spreads the glitt'ring Forfex wide, T' inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide. Ev'n then, before the fatal engine clos'd, A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd; 150 Fate urg'd the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain, (But airy substance soon unites again) The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, for ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... in answer to the inquiries of Pentheus, not as Dionysus, but simply as the god's prophet, [69] in full trust in whom he desires to hear his sentence. Then the long hair falls to the ground under the shears; the mystic wand is torn from his hand, and he is led away to be tied up, like some dangerous wild animal, in a dark place near ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... English for foreign customs, dresses, and languages, is not an affair of to-day or yesterday—it is of very ancient date, and was very properly exposed nearly three centuries ago by one Andrew Borde, who, under the picture of a "Naked man with a pair of shears in one hand, and a roll of cloth in the other," {313} inserted the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... sweet, Free from that solemn vice of greatness, pride; I meant each softed virtue there should meet, Fit in that softer bosom to abide. Only a learned and a manly soul, I purposed her, that should with even powers, The rock, the spindle, and the shears control Of destiny, and spin ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... In theory he is supposed to slow down in crossing the Banks; in fact his great 12,000-ton ship rushes through at eighteen miles an hour. If she hits a dory and sends two men to their long rest, no one aboard the ocean leviathan will ever know it. If she strikes a schooner and shears through her like a knife through cheese, there will be a slight vibration of the steel fabric, but not enough to alarm the passengers; the lookout will have caught a hasty glimpse of a ghostly craft, and heard plaintive cries for help, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... her as clearly and manifestly nebrundiated and billibodring it, as if I should show it in the fountain of the temple of Minerva near Patras. By coscinomancy, most religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans. Let us have a sieve and shears, and thou shalt see devils. By alphitomancy, cried up by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria. By alentomancy, mixing the flour of wheat with oatmeal. By astragalomancy, whereof I have the plots and models all at hand ready for the purpose. By tyromancy, whereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... approach along the winding path. What a handsome young figure of manhood he made in his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, the close-fitting deerstalker cap showing the light chestnut hair, from which no barber's shears could succeed in banishing the natural kink and curl. No one would suspect, to look at him, that he cherished poetical ambitions! Margot was English enough to be thankful for this fact, illogical as it ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of female converts, the breasts were amputated, either with a red-hot knife or a pair of red-hot shears (Kudrin trial, Moscow, 1871; testimony of physicians and examination of the accused) which served the double purpose of checking haemorrhage, as would a thermo-cautery, and avoiding infection. Another method consisted in ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... which renders the hollies prickly in Needwood Forest only as high as the animals can reach them, may arise from the lower branches being constantly cropped by them, and thus shoot forth more luxuriant foliage: it is probable the shears in garden-hollies may produce the same effect, which is equally curious, as prickles are not thus produced on ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the General Council of all Christendom then gravely and learnedly debated whether to use shears or a razor to remove the tonsure. Finally they decided for the shears, and his hair was cut to leave bare the form of a cross. Next his head was washed, to remove the oil of anointing, by which he had ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... the mate. "Sharks without doubt. Look here, the twisted wire is regularly cut through, as if by a pair of shears," he continued, as he held up the end of the line he had drawn in. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... perhaps sits a maiden like Fate, who with abhorred shears fashions strange shapes and borderings of foliage unknown to mere nature. And further still, in yonder obscure and shadowy corner, is one who by her art can penetrate the future and outstrip the foot of Time himself. For see, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... country. We multiply, instead of enlarging these enterprises. The want of concentration of talent compels those who manage them to resort to the scissors instead of the pen; and it is almost as necessary for an American editor to be expert with the shears, as it is for a tailor. Thus the public is compelled to receive hashes, instead of fresh dishes; and things that come from a distance, notoriously possessing a charm, it gets the original cookery of London, instead of that ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... would not be callees if they did not: I have known a Gitana gain twenty ounces of gold, by means of the hokkano baro, in a few hours, whilst the silly Gypsy, her husband, would be toiling with his shears for a fortnight, trimming the horses of the Busne, and yet not be a dollar richer at ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... thumbs and toes tied across into a pond, and if she sink not then is she certainly a witch. Other trials there are, as that by scalding water—sticking knives across—heating of the horseshoe—tying of knots—the sieve and the shears; but the only ordeals safely to be relied on, are the swimming and the stool before mentioned, and from these your witch shall rarely escape. Above all, be sure and search carefully for the witch-mark. I doubt not we shall find it fairly and legibly writ in the devil's characters on Mother ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... war that I met General Sherman, and it was on the line of the Union Pacific Railway, at one of those justly celebrated eating-houses, which I understand are now abandoned. The colored waiter had cut off a strip of the omelette with a pair of shears, the scorched oatmeal had been passed around, the little rubber door mats fried in butter and called pancakes had been dealt around the table, and the cashier at the end of the hall had just gone through the clothes ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... them, earnest all and blithe, Would Michael exercise his heart with looks Of fond correction and reproof bestow'd Upon the child, if he dislurb'd the sheep By catching at their legs, or with his shouts Scar'd them, while they lay still beneath the shears. ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... immortality, immensity, eternity. Others admit of no singular; as, scissors, tongs, vitals, molasses. These words probably once had singulars, but having no use for them they became obsolete. We have long been accustomed to associate the two halves of shears together, so that in speaking of one whole, we say shears, and of apart, half of a shears. But of some words originally, and in fact plural, we have formed a singular; as, "one twin died, and, tho the other one ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... greatly discomposed, and perhaps seriously injured about the base of the wings. I was rather surprised that they were not cut quite off, for a leaf-cutting bee can use its teeth as deftly as a tailor can his shears. ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... miles off, up on the mountain. Half-a- dozen chairs from the factory-man; half-a-dozen brooms from the other storekeeper at the Deepwater settlement; a carpet for the best room from the ladies of the township, who had clubbed forces to furnish it and a home-made concern it was, from the shears ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of the Fates, was quickly turning with her left hand a spindle, while her right hand was leading a fine thread which the third sister, Atropos by name, used to cut with a pair of sharp shears at ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... is, we all agreed to go shears when the voyage was made up. Greenleaf was to have a third, the Dutchman a third, and Williams and M'Lellan a third, to be divided between Mr. C—Colonel Jones, I should say—Captain Sawyer, and myself. But, the moment Greenleaf was out of the way, the Dutchman grew sulky, and insisted ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... dark, coarse cloaks and slippers which were worn by slaves and people of the lower classes. These changes were quickly made, but valuable time was wasted while Antonius—who, as a bit of a dandy, wore his hair rather long[147]—underwent a few touches with the shears. It was now necessary to get across the Tiber without being recognized, and once fairly out of Rome the chances of a successful pursuit were not many. On leaving the friendly shelter of the Temple buildings, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... morning, which formed a shade as impenetrable as the roof of any house. The branches did not spread far, nor any one branch much further than another; on the outside it was like a green bush shorn with shears, but when we sate upon a bench under it, looking upwards, in the middle of the tree we could not perceive any green at all; it was like a hundred thousand magpies' nests clustered and matted together, the twigs and boughs being so intertwined that neither the light of the mid-day sun nor ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... frantycke or demonyacke, to be kepte in safegarde in some close house or chamber where there is lytell light; and that we have a keeper the whiche the madde man do feare." The remainder is conceived in quite a kindly spirit. The patient is to have no knife or shears; no girdle, except a weak list of cloth, lest he destroy himself; no pictures of man or woman on the wall, lest he have fantasies. He is to be shaved once a month, to drink no wine or strong beer, but "warm suppynges three tymes a daye, and a lytell warm meat." ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... theirs with difficulty and many struggles. The July sunshine seemed to hold the scene as it held the Marsh in a steep of shining stillness. The silence was broken by many small sounds—the clip of the shears, the panting of the waiting sheep and of the dogs that guarded them, and every now and then the sudden scraping scuttle of the released victim as it sprang up from the shearer's feet and dashed off to where the shorn sheep huddled naked and ashamed ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Borax, Saltpetre, Crucibles and Black Led Potts, Money Scales, large ditto to weigh Silver, Piles of Ounce Weights, Penny Weights & Grains, Coral Beeds, Stick ditto for Whistles, Forgeing Anvils, Spoon Teats, plain ditto, small raizing Anvils for Cream Potts, fine Lancashire Watch Plyers, Shears and Nippers, Birmingham ditto, with sundry other Articles, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... shearing mechanism and have chosen to show it thus elaborately in the place of use he had in mind, or he may have designed a new counter or a new oil-cup or a new power transmission, or even a new motor, and have given his invention this elaborate setting. The shears, the counter, the oil-cup, the power transmission, and the motor are separately classifiable in widely separated classes. How shall the application be diagnosed for determining its place in the office classification? ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... on the bank cower down and go as noiselessly as we can. Sometimes the rope dips on the water, and the huge snout and staring eyes immediately disappear. At length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... his shears and tape; and being installed in a little room, where he was sure of not being interrupted, took my measure, and set to work, under the major's directions, to cut out and stitch a coat and breeches in what was considered approved nautical fashion. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Phantom Vessel To my Misery O Long the Way To the Fortune Seeker My Youth In the Wilderness I've Often Laughed Again I Sing my Songs Liberty A Tree in the Ghetto The Cemetery Nightingale The Creation of Man Journalism Pen and Shears For Hire A Fellow Slave The Jewish May The Feast of Lights Chanukah Thoughts Sfere Measuring the Graves The First Bath of Ablution Atonement Evening ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... barber in Newark, N. J., thought he could make an improvement on shears for cutting hair, and invented "clippers" and became very rich. A Maine man was called from the hayfield to wash out the clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to wash before. He invented the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... rupees, graded lists, and tinsel honours; we try to feed our lungs on its typhoidal effluvia. Aroint[T] thee, Comptroller and Accountant-General with all thy grisly crew! Thou art worse than the blind Fury with the abhorred shears; for thou slittest my thin-spun pay-wearing spectacles, thrice branded varlet! [There is a lily on my brow with anguish moist and fever-dew, and on my cheeks a fading rose fast withereth too, and for these emblems of woe thou shalt ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... to keep them warm," said Kind. "The east wind still blows sometimes." But Clutch was off to the cottage for the bag and shears. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... set out to manufacture gloves, usually only a few dozen pairs, he cut out a pattern from a shingle or a piece of pasteboard, laid it upon a skin, marked around it, and cut it out with shears. Pencils were not common, but the glovemaker was fully equal to making his own. He melted some lead, ran it into a crack in the kitchen floor—and cracks were plentiful—and then used this "plummet," as it was ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... the parlour tonsorial, Knight of the razor and shears, Who have from time immemorial Snipped it too short ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... green basket, lifted the shears she found lying in it, and went hesitatingly up and down the borders. "What ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... man measured with his stick, so that he knew just where the place was, and with a pair of tin shears he cut a section from the pipe and ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... cut the wire with a pair of shears and it had still hung, unsupported, in the air, unchanging within the shimmer that constituted something no man had ever ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor's shears. ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... size, formed of logs as large as a frigate's foremast. These are intended for conveying goods to Paita, and other places along-shore. The balsa generally carries only one large sail, which is hoisted to what we call a pair of shears, formed by two poles crossing at the top, where they are lashed together. It is obvious that it would be difficult to step a mast securely to a raft in the manner it is done in a ship. It is truly astonishing to see how fast these singular vessels go through the water; but it is still ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these again a pair of shears for lifting the third, and the shears a triangle for raising the fourth. Having thus got four of the six principal beams set on end, it required a considerable degree of trouble to get their upper ends to fit. Here they formed the apex of a cone, and were all together mortised into a large piece ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dolly opened upon him her blue eyes, humid as twin stars at dawn, he placed her little scissors in her hand, and with head bowed low, in an ecstatic agony of self-renunciation bade her do her duty. The little scissors could not do it this time, though. It took the shears. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... its wiggly ears; They trimmed its frisky whiskers with a pair of hard-boiled shears; They donned their rubber mittens and they took it by the hand And 'lected it a member of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... beam set with iron spikes The women do the sowing and planting. The harvest succeeds the planting in four months. The rice ears are cut short off, sometimes by a small sickle, and sometimes by an instrument which produces the effect of shears. Threshing consists in beating the ears with thick sticks to loosen the husks, after which the padi is carried in baskets to platforms ten feet above the ground, and is allowed to fall on mats, when the chaff is driven away by the wind. It is husked ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... be done?" he continued, staring straight before him and giving as little heed to my interruption as a hunter riding at a stiff fence would pay to a remark about the weather. "When a man cannot get a knife, he breaks in two an old pair of sheep-shears, and with one of the blades makes himself an implement which has to serve him for a knife. This is how it is with Dona Demetria; she has no one but her poor Santos to speak for her. If she had asked me to expose my life in her service, that I could easily have done; ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... spread the chintz out upon the bed and with trembling fingers set about her task. The bright shears clipped the edge and tore off the lengths exultantly as if in league with the girl. The bees hummed outside in the clover, and now and again buzzed between the muslin curtains of the open window, looked in and grumbled out again. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... itself was unique—on a lofty bluff overlooking the confluence of the Saulteau River with the Lesser Slave—a bold and beautiful spot, the woods at the angle of the two rivers, down to the water's edge, showing like a gigantic V, as clean-cut as if done by a pair of colossal shears. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... not know why, but I felt that someone was there who wished to see the young monk's grave. For a moment I stood there. Then I went to the house where I kept my tools for my work in the cemetery, and got a shears which I used for lopping the cypress trees. I took a ladder quickly, set it against the wall, mounted it, and from the cypress I had seen moving I lopped some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As the boughs fell down from the tree I saw a woman's face, tear-stained, staring at ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... like a bell-wether, cursing his wife who had betrayed him. Mr. Carew, like a brave man, to whom every soil is his own country, ashamed of his cowardice, gave the tailor to the devil; and, as he knew he could not do without them, sent his shears, thimble, and needle, to bear him company. Wherefore all these wailings? said our hero: have we not a fine country before us? pointing to the shore. And indeed in this he was very right, for Maryland not ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... brother), falls into passionate first-love. Smith is just as badly if more soberly hit, and recognising the impossibility of the situation (quite apart from demonstrations by the alarmed Broughtons) decides to take his tape and shears to his London house of business. The date of all this being about the time of the misguided Panther's fateful ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... each year by the cows, as a hedge with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... his God. As long as any one of us holds the ballot in his hand, he is truly, what we sometimes vaguely boast, a sovereign,—a constituent part of Destiny; the infinite Future is his vassal; History holds her iron stylus as his scribe; Lachesis awaits his word to close or to suspend her fatal shears;—but the moment his vote is cast, he becomes the serf of circumstance, at the mercy of the white-livered representative's cowardice, or the venal one's itching palm. Our only safety, then, is in the aggregate fidelity to personal rectitude, which may lessen the chances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... a pair of long-bladed shears and fold a piece of cardboard once to lie astride your own or some one else's finger. Put the finger, protected by the cardboard, between the two points of the shears. Then squeeze the handles of the shears together. See if you can bring the handles together hard enough to ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... Trimmer, Brush. A shears for cutting off evenly and squarely the ends of copper dynamo brushes. The brushes when uneven from wear are removed from the brush holders, and their ends are sheared off in ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... affair and Boyton had but little confidence in it and that confidence was considerably lessened when the inventor himself refused to go down in her. However, it was decided to try her. Having managed all the details of her construction, Boyton ordered her swung under a big pair of shears and from their support hung the boat on chains, so that in case she would not run to the surface by her own power, she could be hoisted by the machinery above. She was then lowered to the water. Paul and two of his ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... slip an expression which shows that the investigators were in one room, the But, while the Fiend was diverting himself in the other room, the Ben! The Fiend (nobody going Ben) next chaffed a gentleman who wore a fashionable broad-brimmed hat, "whereupon he presently imagined that he felt a pair of shears going about his hat," but there was no such matter. The voice asked for a piece of bread, which the others were eating, and said the maid gave him a crust in the morning. This she denied, but admitted that ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... all unaware of the future now beginning to overshadow him, was out in the stable considering the case of a lame horse and inveighing against the general irksomeness of rural conditions. He threw back his abundant hair as he rose from the study of a dubious hoof,—a Samson unconscious of the shining shears that threatened him. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... it—the Architect acting as chief director. In a very short time, the children acquired a kind of character. It was found easy to mold them into what was desired; and they went through their work not without a sort of manoeuvre. As they marched along, with their garden shears, their long-handled pruning-knives, their rakes, their little spades and hoes, and sweeping-brooms; others following after these with baskets to carry off the stones and rubbish; and others, last of all, trailing along the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... herein the invention of one of the late poets is proper, and doth well enrich the ancient fiction. For he feigneth that at the end of the thread or web of every man's life there was a little medal containing the person's name, and that Time waited upon the shears, and as soon as the thread was cut caught the medals, and carried them to the river of Lathe; and about the bank there were many birds flying up and down, that would get the medals and carry them in ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... God hath Unto each prescribed His destined path, Which the happy one Runs o'er swiftly To his glad goal: He whose heart cruel Fate hath contracted, Struggles but vainly Against all the barriers The brazen thread raises, But which the harsh shears ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... shall I do?" she cried again. "Do you think that I have come from my parents' home merely to return again without help? You alone in the world must tell me. Look at me! I have kept all my hair just as God gave it me. It has never been touched by the shears. Should I, then, do anything to please my husband? I am no wife. I will not be a wife! Tell me, tell me, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... his feet, walked to a shelf, and took down a small glass, a pair of shears, a shaving cup, and a razor. While Langford watched, staring at him with fearful, wondering eyes, Dakota deftly snipped off the mustache with the shears, lathered his lip, and shaved it clean. Then he ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... as to hold the blades firmly in place. A wire of comma section, as shown at A (Fig. 59), is then strung through the punches near the outer ends of the blades and upset or turned over as shown at the right in Fig. 58. This upsetting is done by a tool which shears the tail of the comma at the proper width between the blades. The bent-down portion on either side of the blade holds it rigidly in position and the portion retained within the width of the blade would retain the blade in its radial position should it become loosened or broken ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... personified. Another evil deity was Taour or Taourt, who is represented as a hippopotamus standing on its hind-legs, with the skin and tail of a crocodile dependent down its back, and a knife or a pair of shears in one hand. Bes seems also to have been a divinity of the same class. He was represented as a hideous dwarf, with large outstanding ears, bald, or with a plume of feathers on his head, and with a lion-skin ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... apart, and the ends of the windlass are inserted into them so that the axles may turn freely. Close to each end of the windlass are two holes, so adjusted that handspikes can be fitted into them. To the bottom of the lower block are fastened shears made of iron, whose prongs are brought to bear upon the stones, which have holes bored in them. When one end of the rope is fastened to the windlass, and the latter is turned round by working the handspikes, the rope winds round the windlass, gets taut, and thus it raises ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... ay, there's the thing, I've a World on't. I shou'd go and bespeak a Pair of Mittins and Shears for my Hedger and Shearer, a pair of Cards for my Thrasher, a Scythe for my Mower, and a Screen-Fan for my Lady-Wife, and many other things; my Head's full ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... conjointly, fearing his former communications might not have reached us, and briefly recapitulating their purport. I afterwards heard at Deniliquin that he had successfully performed a surgical operation. A shearer had run the point of his shears into the neck of a sheep, and opened the carotid artery. My son having a small pocket case of instruments, secured the vessel and saved the animal. I remember when it was considered a triumph in practice to effect this on a human subject. The letter I am now alluding to concludes ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... creator as a moulder, designer, and architect originated with her, or was suggested by her. The three Fates, Clotho, who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, who fixes its prolongation; and Atropos, who cuts this thread with remorseless shears, are necessarily derived from woman's work. The mother-goddess of all peoples, culminating in the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, is an idea, either originated by women, or devised to satisfy their ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... woman, and tell you that nothing can render a man absolutely safe but the protection of Heaven, yet, if a hair from the head of Sir William Wallace would please you, and a glance from his eye gratify your mother, both shall be satisfied," and lifting up the old woman's shears, which lay on a working-stool before him, he cut off a golden lock from the middle of his head and put it into the hand of Jeannie. At this action-which was performed with such noble grace that not one of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... deadened imagination again began to stir, she fancied that she was struggling with a huge crab, which was cutting her foot with shears. The little elf was urging it on, as the huntsmen cheer the hounds. The pain and hate she felt would have been intolerable if Lienhard had made common cause with the terrible child. But he reproved her conduct, and even struggled with the kobold who tried ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "and how long do you think a finance minister must be in office before he can lay his shears on the flock to get wool enough ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... all the ways of inflicting punishment in China would be to fill a volume. Punishment is one of the fine arts, and a man who can skin another elegantly is entitled to rank as an artist. The bastinado and floggings are common, and then they have huge shears, like those used in tin shops, for snipping off feet and arms, very much as a gardener would cut off ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Should thy throbbing heart then tell thee, that the veteran worn and grey Curbed the course of Bonaparte, rolled the thunders of Assaye— Let it tell thee, stranger, likewise, that the goodly garb he wears Started into shape and being from the DOUDNEY BROTHERS' shears! Seek thou next the rooms of Willis—mark, where D'Orsay's Count is bending, See the trouser's undulation from his graceful hip descending; Hath the earth another trouser so compact and love-compelling? Thou canst find it, stranger, only, if thou seek'st the DOUDNEYS' ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... persuades him to tell the truth. He says: "If you should take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should be powerless and in the hands of my enemies." Samson sleeps, and that she may not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the East have such a skillful way of manipulating ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... her by the bakester, undertook for everything, and was hired by the twelvemonth, going off in high glee at the variety and diversion she expected to enjoy at the sign of the "Sheep and Shears," though clinging with much tenderness to ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the one shown, draw one-half of it, then fold along the center line and rub the back of the paper with a knife handle or some other hard, smooth surface, and the other half of the design will be traced on the second side. With the metal shears, cut out four pieces of copper or brass of No. 22 gauge and with carbon paper trace the shape and decorative design on the metal. Then cut out the outline and file the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the back, a tiny forge with bellows; on the right, a vice screwed against the wall under an etagere, where were iron tools piled up; on the left, in front of the window, was a small table covered with pincers, magnifying glasses, tiny scales and shears—all dirty and greasy. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... virgin who suffered martyrdom at Palermo under Decius in 251; represented in art as crowned with a long veil and bearing a pair of shears, the instruments with which her breast were cut off. Festival, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... time. I'll widen this one a little. Remember this trunk must not go in the hold of the ship. Have it marked "Wanted" and "This end up." I will lie with my head this way. I'll put the shears in here, and I can cut another hole from the inside if it ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... the end of the Flemish rising of 1467 against Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy. The weavers returned to their looms, the armourers to their forges, and the glove-makers and leather workers to their shears. Peace was restored; and to see that it was kept, Charles appointed military governors of his confidence where he deemed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... former vice, and contended with women in their long haires." Henry, the King, appears to have been quite uninfluenced by the dreams of others, for even his own would not induce him a second time to undergo a cropping from priestly shears. It is said, that he was much troubled at this time by disagreeable visions. Having offended the church in this and other respects, he could get no sound refreshing sleep, and used to imagine that he saw all the bishops, abbots, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... spreads the glittering forfex wide, To inclose the lock; now joins it to divide. Even then, before the fatal engine closed, A wretched Sylph too fondly interposed; 150 Fate urged the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain, (But airy substance soon unites again) The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, for ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... even now, after twelve years of married life, was still a handsome woman. Her dark eyes shone with the same bewitching fire; her beautiful hair had, in accordance with the orthodox Jewish custom, fallen under the shears on the day of her marriage, but the silken band and string of pearls that henceforth decked her brow did not detract from her oriental beauty. Hirsch was proud of her and he would have been completely happy if God had vouchsafed her a son. Like Hannah, she prayed night and morning to the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... a morning paper, and his method of dealing with it was characteristic. The paper was laid on the table after breakfast, together with a blue pencil and a pair of office shears. A preliminary glance through the sheets enabled him to mark with the pencil those paragraphs that were to be read, and these were presently cut out and looked through, after which they were either thrown away or set aside to be pasted in ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... and all the steels he may see in cold blood, and with his grandmother or his sweetheart beside him at Kensington, that he will from going into Dixon's foundry at Govan, and seeing the half-naked men toiling in that place of flame and energy and din—watching the mighty shears and the Nasmyth-hammers, and the molten iron kneaded like dough, and planed and shaved like wood; he gets the dead and dissected body in the one case; he sees and feels the living spirit and body working as one, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... season had come into its full bloom and luxuriance. Roses were opening their sweet buds all around Brierley Cottage; the honeysuckles made the porch into an arbour; the garden was something of a wilderness, but a wilderness of lovely, old-fashioned things. One warm afternoon, Dolly with a shears in her hand had gone out into the garden to cut off the full-blown roses, which to-morrow would shed their leaves; doing a little trimming by the way, both of rose-bushes and other things; the wildering of the garden had been so great. And very busy she was, and enjoying it; "cutting in" ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... bright color. These turbans give the room the appearance of an industrious Turkish harem. Short, sharp scythe blades, like Turkish scimeters, gleam above all the girls' benches. When a sorter wishes to cut a rag, she pulls it across the edge of this blade, and is not obliged to hunt for a pair of shears. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... which now suddenly overspread the whole of the old man's face, and seemed to quickly stiffen the rugged and wrinkled fingers that had at first trembled in drawing a pair of shears from a ragged pocket, appeared to satisfy Paul's curiosity for the present. But after a few moments' silent snipping, during which he could detect in the mirror some traces of agitation still twitching the negro's face, he said ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... in those old towns that had formerly been the exclusive markets, or, as they were called, 'staples' of wool. The wool, safely received, was handed over to the sorters, who rigorously applied their gauge of required length of staple and mercilessly chopped off by shears or hatchet what did not reach the standard as wool fit for the clothing trade. The long wool thus passed into the hands of the combers, and, having been brought back to them into the combed state, was again carefully packed and strapped on the back of the sturdy horse, to be taken into ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... put through another ordeal, to which after a brief struggle they quickly resigned themselves. Father did the shearing, while I at times held the animal's legs. Father was not an adept hand with the shears and the poor beast usually had to part with many a bit of her hide along with her fleece. It used to make me wince as much as it did the sheep to see the crests of those little wrinkles ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... spiers:[322-15] The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet; Each tells the uncos[322-16] that he sees or hears; The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view; The mother, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;[322-17] The father mixes ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... it was. That was the hard knot in my thread. Nothing wouldn't go past that. Some, when they git things in a tangle, they just reach for the shears an' cut the thread. I wa'n't brought up that way. I was taught to leave the shears alone. So I went on stringin' one year after another. But they wouldn't join on to them that went before. There ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... have been made, and are transported to their destination. It is no simple undertaking (even in these days) to raise (otherwise than hydraulically) a weight of 350 tons, which is the weight of the blocks with which Mr. Stoney deals. But he does this by means of pulley-blocks attached to shears built on the vessel which is to transport the block, and he contrives to lift the weight without putting upon his chains the extra strain due to the friction of the numerous pulleys over which they pass. The height of the lift is only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... the term. Judge Wilkinson had a difficulty with a tailor in Louisville, Kentucky, who attempted an imposition upon him to which he would not submit. A quarrel ensued, and the knight of the needle and shears determined on revenge. Collecting about him his ready associates, they went to the hotel where Wilkinson lodged, and waylaid him at the door between the dining-parlor and the reception-room, and attacked him on his coming in from supper. In the rencontre three of the assailants were killed, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... a high shelf at the foot of the ladder, I discover'd a couple of loaves and some milk, and also, lying hard by, a pair of shepherd's shears, which I took also, having a purpose for them. By this time, being sick enough of the place, I was glad to make ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... rate, over Milly's companion the whole week, and Kate Croy's handsome face smiled out of it, under bland skylights, in the presence alike of old masters passive in their glory and of thoroughly new ones, the newest, who bristled restlessly with pins and brandished snipping shears. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... lump of what looked like lead. It was a small piece, about the size of an ordinary loaf of sugar and had no particular marks on it, except that it looked as if it might have been cut from a larger piece with shears or some such instrument. He dropped in into the middle of the slab of wood, and squatted in front of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... added Mr. Clare; "they, at least, are inoffensive pets. I dreaded the shears without your superintendence, but Joe insisted that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... none anywhere Under the earth or above the air?— Come, sad woman, whose tender throat Has a red-lipped mouth that can sing no note! Child, whose midwife, the third grim Fate, Shears in hand, thy coming did wait! Father, with blood-bedabbled hair! Mother, all withered with love's despair! Come, broken heart, whatever thou be, Hasten to help this misery! Thou wast only murdered, or left forlorn: He is a horror, a hate, a scorn! Come, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... familiar to the patient, while the words that persist longest in the wreckage of the speech-centers are generally words that do not designate the things of sense. A tailor loses the power to name his chalk, measure, shears, although he can long talk fluently of what little be may chance to know of God, beauty, truth, virtue, happiness, prosperity, etc. The farmer is unable to name the cattle in his yard or his own occupations, although he ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the pine-trees grow mast-high. Does it not seem as if the young wood outside ought to be ashamed at the sight of them? And there are hedges there, quite grown beyond their keeper's hands, blooming and sending forth shoots without thought of shears or knife. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... said, with some proper show of respect at last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles. You may beat me to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... two-handed Highland sword. Cleckin, a brood. Cleed, to clothe. Cleek, to snatch. Cleekit, linked arms. Cleg, gadfly. Clink, a sharp stroke; jingle. Clink, money, coin. Clink, to chink. Clink, to rhyme. Clinkin, with a smart motion. Clinkum, clinkumbell, the beadle, the bellman. Clips, shears. Clish-ma-claver, gossip, taletelling; non-sense. Clockin-time, clucking- (i. e., hatching-) time. Cloot, the hoof. Clootie, cloots, hoofie, hoofs (a nickname of the Devil). Clour, a bump or swelling after a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... about the garden snipping faded roses with Miss Emily's garden shears, when I saw Maggie coming swiftly toward me. When she caught my eye, she beckoned to me. "Walk quiet, Miss Agnes," she said, "and don't say I didn't warn ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not go with his dragoon's uniform in the least. Why, he would look like a Kazak! Impossible, utterly!" He was sternly commanded not to consider his hair; this was not the city, with spectators. When he finally appeared, in full array, we saw that he had applied the shears to his locks, in a hasty effort to compromise between war and peace without losing the cut. The effect was peculiar; it would strike his commanding officer dumb with mirth and horror. He blushed in a deprecating manner whenever we ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... hear the humble symphony of the hundreds of bees drawing their treasure from the golden hearts of the roses; and did not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in hand, with which he had been cutting out dead blossoms, gazing at her with that hungry, admiring, speculative look with which he had regarded the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... shears, in insect guise Behold us at your revel! That we may tender, filial-wise, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... original Designer of his person no doubt intended, a razor would never have touched his face. But men, like other animals, are subject to crotchets, and are wont to imitate superiors, so when some big-bug like Peter the Great introduced the shears and razor, men appeared soon after with cropped heads and clean chops. I do not remember that I ever saw a man with a full beard until after I had passed manhood for some years, except on one occasion when I was a youngster at school in the old school house on the concession. A ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... a soft faraway jingle was heard. Then an old man came slowly around the corner of the house. His bare head was quite bald. He wore a short canvas apron and carried pruning-shears in one hand. Without a word of greeting to his mistress or scarce a glance at her half recumbent form, he mounted the steps of the piazza and assisted Phibbs to lift the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... and tearing it away in great shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth that were still larger, but shorter and broader, and shaped more like notched knife-blades. Those of the lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears, and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks into pieces small enough to go down his throat. By the time he got through with a partridge there was not much left of it but a puddle of brown feathers. His claws, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... ornamented with much greater richness and elaboration, and inscriptions were added, and also some device which showed the trade, rank, or profession of the departed. Thus the chalice and paten denoted a priest; a sword showed the knight; an axe, a forester; an ink-horn, a notary; shears, a ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... Banneker a glance which proclaimed an utter lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of the Springfield Republican. Tommy Burt led the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Here at any rate the man would expect to be still his own master, acting for himself and independent of all outer control. Our English Hodge, when taken from the plow to the camp, would, probably, submit without a murmur to soap and water and a barber's shears; he would have received none of that education which would prompt him to rebel against such ordinances; but the American citizen, who for awhile expects to shake hands with his captain whenever he sees him, and is ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... stray members of the household. Not even a servant was visible. He passed beyond the vine draped arbour before she realized his approach, and straightened up, a freshly cut rose in one gloved hand, the pruning shears in the other, welcoming him with a little laugh, her ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... stronger jaws than any other animals in the world. They have a large tooth at each side of the upper jaw, which bites against the keen edge of a tooth like it on the lower jaw, thus forming a pair of shears sharp enough to cut paper and strong enough to crack ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... now spreads the glittering forfex wide, To inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide. Even then, before the fatal engine closed, A wretched sylph too fondly interposed; Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain (But airy substance soon unites again), The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... N. J., thought he could make an improvement in shears for cutting hair, invented clippers, and became rich. A Maine man was called in from the hayfield to wash clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to wash before. Finding the method slow and laborious, he invented the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... by hand. In the spring bands of traveling shearers came from ranch to ranch and sheared the flocks for so much a day. Sometimes these men were Mexicans, sometimes Indians. As they made a business of shearing and nothing else they became verra skilful with the shears and could turn off many fleeces a day. It is an art to shear a sheep. Many a try must you have before you can do it. The smaller ranches still shear by hand, for it does not pay to run a power plant ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... mares, all white! their manes Like mace-reed of the marshy plains Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears: And when the fiery squadron rears Bursting at speed, each mane appears Even as the white scarf of a fay Floating upon their necks along ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he was out of it, the mystery was solved and he could go his way in peace of mind. It was a fortunate ending, come just in time. There was no need now for any more folly or philandering. They were cut off short, romance snipped by Fate's shears, a full stop put at the last word of the sentence. He had no fears of Pancha, she knew too much to make trouble, and anyway there was nothing for her to make trouble about. He had treated her with a consideration that was nothing short of chivalrous. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... been used on these dropping terraces, so populous with slabs and so closely set with turfed mounds and oblongs of early flowering annuals and bedding plants. Mr. Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears, to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks. Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether to ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... have to meet, but he did not bring any word of seeking parents. The nearest he came to mentioning the subject was after supper, when the baby was asleep and Bud trying to cut a small pair of overalls from a large piece of blue duck that Cash had brought. The shears were dull, and Lovin Child's little rompers were so patched and shapeless that they were not much of a guide, so Bud was ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... be impossible to traffic undetected. But there must be a way out. There shall be! And will your excellency kindly let us see the cargo? I am sure there is much we sadly need: cloth, linen, cotton, boots, shoes, casks, bottles, glasses, plates, shears, axes, implements of husbandry, saws, sheep-shears, iron wares—have you any ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... attempt it. Were I able to paint the picture, there would be no space. My memoir is nearly ended. The threads of the woof are nearly spun out, and the loom is going to stop. Death stands ready with his shears to cut the ravelled thread, knit up the seam, and put his ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck clinging to the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... garden, into which its old windows look, has probably put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his rusty shears and took his departure. The present Master's name is Harris; he is a descendant of the founder's family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Established Church, as the regulations of the hospital require ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the taylor, it is John Drakes' the shoemaker, who will have it made of the self-same fashion that yours is made of! 'Well!' said the knight, 'in good time be it! I will have mine made as full of cuts as thy shears can make it.' 'It shall be done!' said the taylor; whereupon, because the time drew near, he made haste to finish both their garments. John Drakes had no time to go to the taylor's till Christmas-day, for serving his customers, when he hoped to have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... carefully planned a head for each tree. Quite a bunch of sprouts had started from near the top of each stub, and were growing luxuriantly. Out of each bunch I selected three or four to form the head; the rest were rubbed off or cut out with a sharp knife or pruning shears. It surprised me to see what a growth some of these sprouts had made; sixteen or eighteen inches was not uncommon. Big roots and big bodies were pushing great quantities of sap ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... throne," said he, clapping his hands with exultation, "and now you may buy it for firewood. But you are an aristocrat, and of course a slave; while we have got liberty, equality, and a triumvirate that shears off the heads of traitors at a sign. Suspicion of being suspected is quite sufficient. Away goes the culprit; a true patriot is ordered to take possession of his house until the national pleasure is known; and thus every thing goes on well. Of course, you have heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Pruning Shears. These are very handy, and with them the work can be done quicker, and with less labor, as but a slight pressure of the hand will cut a strong vine. Fig. 22 will show the shape of one for heavy pruning. They are made by J. T. HENRY, Hampden, Connecticut, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... you together through the key-hole of the closet one night, like Saul and the witch of Endor, turning the sieve and shears, and pricking your thumbs, to write poor innocent servants' names in blood, about a little nutmeg grater which she had forgot in the caudle-cup. Nay, I know something worse, if ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... Barber shears, soap and clean linens restored Terry to his usual nattiness, and he delighted the cook with the zest with which he approached a good dinner after the weeks of the crude and undiversified fare of the Hillmen. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... from the whites, are used for cutting: their metal after it is wrought into thin plates. The metal saw and metal shears do not seem as yet to have been imported for their benefit. Some of the more poorly provided smiths use their scissors also for tongs, regardless or ignorant of consequences, and when the shears lose their temper and become loose-jointed and blunt, the efforts of the Indian ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... was duly measured and had given the tailor his promise to call for the garments at the expiration of five days, when the man of shears disturbed the serene current of his meditations by suggesting that the lieutenant should pay one half of the price of the suit ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... what have I done? I give him my supper because he was hungry, and he ate it all, and called me a crop-eared rebel for my pains. So after that I washed his face for him and cut his hair, and made him look decent, but I didn't crop his ears, though the shears went very near them two or three times. But ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of woolen shreds. At sunset, summer or winter, Aunt Mercy sprinkled water on the unpainted floor, and swept it. While she swept I made my thumb sore, by snipping the bits of cloth that were scattered on the long counter by the window with Grand'ther's shears, or I scrawled figures with gray chalk, where I thought they might catch his eye. When she had finished sweeping she carefully sorted the scraps, and put them into boxes under the counter; then she neatly rolled up the brown-paper curtains, which had been let down to exclude the afternoon sun; ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Cursed girl! Ah, deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take advantage of it. She'd cut her father's throat! Good God! you've given our fortune to that ne'er-do-well,—that dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my father! I can't disinherit you, but I curse you,—you and your cousin and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was to Charles—but, no; it's impossible. What! has that wretched ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... nursery garden. It was like a forgotten garden of the last century, as pretty as the gentle smile of an old lady. Thick hedges divided the narrow regular paths,—peaceful paths between two walls of carefully trimmed foliage. The gardener's great shears were pruning unceasingly these leafy partitions, and here and there one came across beds of flowers, lines of little trees looking like schoolboys out for a walk, companies of magnificent rose bushes, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Months (so Nature's choice ordains,) And Lady of the Summer still she reigns. In spite of April's youth, who charms in tears, And rosy June, who wins with blushing face; July, sweet shepherdess, who wreathes the shears Of shepherds with her flowers of winning grace; And sun-tanned August, with her swarthy charms, The beautiful and rich; and pastoral, gay September, with her pomp of fields and farms; And wild November's sybilline array;— In spite ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... head of Napoleon Buonaparte; then a female genius, representing BRITANNIA, in a bending posture, with one hand holding out one wing of the vulture, and with the other clipping it with a large pair of shears; on the one half of which appears either the word 'WELLINGTON,' or the word 'ARMY,' and on the other, either 'NELSON,' or else 'NAVY;' I should prefer WELLINGTON and NELSON, but that I fear Wellington may be a word of too many letters. Behind Britannia, and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Emir with a giant's strength Smites Carle upon the helm of burnished steel, Which splits in twain beneath the ponderous blow, Cuts through the silky hair, shears from the scalp Fully the breadth of a man's palm and more, Baring the skull. Carle staggers, nearly falls, But God willed not that he should die or yield. Saint Gabriel, with eager flight once more Descends, demanding:—"What ails thee, ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... Bec, is thy nativity; Had Fate a luckier one, she'd give it ye. She chose a thread of greatest length, And doubly twisted it for strength: Nor will be able with her shears To cut it off these forty years. Then who says care will kill a cat? Rebecca shows they're out in that. For she, though overrun with care, Continues healthy, fat, and fair. As, if the gout should ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... plan to allow a hedge of any kind, especially an evergreen one, to run a number of years without trimming. If a hedge is neglected so long, and then severely pruned, it will look stubby and shabby for a year or two after. With a pair of sharp hedge-shears, a person having a straight eye will make a good job ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... arranged. Each shearer has a trap-door close to him, out of which he pushes his sheep as soon as the fleece is off, and there are little pens outside, so that the manager can notice whether the poor animal has been too much cut with the shears, or badly shorn in any other respect, and can tell exactly which shearer is to blame. Before this plan was adopted it was hopeless to try to find out who was the delinquent, for no one would acknowledge to the least snip. A good shearer ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... kitchen she found her mother and the visitor cutting carpet rags. Old clothes were falling under the snip of the shears into a peach basket, ready to be sewn together, wound into balls and woven into rag carpet by the local carpet weaver on ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... stripped of its ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... give this to Dame Betsy for her eldest daughter's bridal dress, she will let you go," said the princess. She took a pair of silver shears out of the trunk and cut off a bit of the robe under a flounce. "Show that to Dame Betsy," said the princess, "and tell her you will give her the dress made of the same material, and she will let you go. Now you had better run home. I shall stay ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... that first trucklebed (in Joan of Arc's country) where thy mother bore thee, with tears, to an unnamed father: forward, through lowest subterranean depths, and over highest sunlit heights, of Harlotdom and Rascaldom—to the guillotine-axe, which shears away thy vainly whimpering head! Rest there uncursed; only buried and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... detaining hand, and ran behind the counter. From a lower shelf he snatched a red bandanna kerchief. From another he dragged a rubber poncho, and buttoned it high about his throat. He picked up the steel shears which lay upon the counter, and snipping two holes in the red kerchief, stuck it under the brim of his sombrero. It fell before his face like a curtain. From his neck to his knees the poncho concealed his figure. All that was visible of him was his eyes, laughing through the ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... to describe Elzevirs of the first flight, let it be remembered that the "taller" the copy, the less harmed and nipped by the binder's shears, the better. "Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is," says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original form. The Elzevirs we have may be "dear," but ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Kennicott was trimming the grass along the walk with sheep-shears, Bresnahan rolled up, alone. He was now in corduroy trousers, khaki shirt open at the throat, a white boating hat, and marvelous canvas-and-leather shoes "On the job there, old Will! Say, my Lord, this ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... section has done blooming, cut back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be promptly removed; weeds ought not to be allowed to grow a second pair of leaves—much less to flower—before being exterminated. Trailing and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... things that cannot be shown in any easily intelligible way surpass in importance the items that can be shown. The sheep shears, which anyone can understand, represent less to the farmer than do the sheep. Sheep shears, no matter how sophisticated and no matter how necessary, do not explain sheep husbandry. The shears tell little about the wool industry, and nothing much about ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... forget you ain't got a pair of shears in your right hand, Aaron," the professor said, "and listen to what I am telling you, in two years' time you are making more money than all the garment cutters together. All you got to do is ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... in mountain-ridges round her edges, flags in festoons, in slanting clothes-lines, in trophy-groups, on bandroled poles, bedecking her; some scaffolding still round her; and three running derricks, capable of wielding guns and boilers of 140 tons, craned their shears about her. A temporary stair under flags ran right up to a ledge above the waterline: from which ledge little steel steps led here and there to the roof; round the edge of roof and ledge running two balustrades, surrounding the hulk; and ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... his face grew white, He dropped the shears and turned away. It ran, 'Your wife took bad last night; Come home at once — no time to write, We fear she ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Himself obedient to death and to the death of the Cross, submitting Himself in His Passion to the most sinful and degraded of the earth, uttering not a cry, even as a lamb under the hand of him who shears it and slays it. It is by this universal obedience to every creature that we become all things to all men in order that we may win all to Jesus Christ. It is by this that we take our neighbour, whoever he may be, for our superior, becoming servants ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking—in fact, a kind of blond Samson, whose corn-colored silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and suits and fringes. You have a great deal of talk of them.... Have you e'er a needle around you, or a shears? ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... within the second-rates, exclusive of two unrated classes—namely, hulks and shallops or row-barges. The former were used either to lodge the officers and crews of vessels undergoing repair, or were fitted with shears to erect or remove masts. In the course of a few years after this, sloops, bombs, fire-ships, and yachts are spoken of as among the unrated classes; but in the sixth-rate were comprised vessels mounting only two guns. Towards the end of the century ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Leverian Museum, and a swallow's nest in a pair of garden-shears; and I was afraid I was to have a catalogue of curiosities, for which I have little ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the furnace and soon the gas-jet which made attendance upon it possible. This lit, I could set my candle down, and yet see plainly enough to work. I had shears in my pocket. I have had a man's training in the handling of tools and felt quite confident that I could pry this brick out if it was as easily loosened as Bess had given me to understand. My first thrust at the ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... that prim garden, which hitherto had known no more warlike sound than the click of clipping shears; and presently the upper part of an old lady's body was projected out of a window upstairs. She tossed her arms above her white cap, scolding in a cracked voice. The gardener remained glued to the tree, his toothless mouth ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... more tender—two put their arms around me and pinioned me, while the other fifteen drew large shears from their pockets, and, under pretence of getting a lock of hair for each, they left me as bare as a goose-egg. Indians couldn't have scalped me closer. I made Samson-like my escape from these Delilahs ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... product of his land into such a shape that it will bear transportation. For instance, he feeds out his hay to his sheep, attending them with care and skill all the winter. In the spring he shears off their fleeces; and now he has got something which he can send to market. He has turned his grass into wool, and thus got its value into a much more compact form. The wool will bear transportation. Perhaps he gave a whole load of hay to his sheep, to produce a single ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... of shears were to clip the city somewhere below these windy gutters would there not be a dearth of poems in the spring? Who then would be left to note the changing colors of the twilight and the peaceful transit of the stars? Would gray beech trees in the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... on a goat, and he carried his shears and the goose he ironed with. He balanced himself pretty well until a bird sat on his queue, and that bent him over backward so that ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... military strength, their towers and battlements telling of feudal times. The groves by which they were surrounded were for the most part clipped into regular walls, and pierced with regularly arched passages, leading in various directions, and the trees compelled by the shears to take the shape of obelisks and pyramids, or other fantastic figures, according to the taste of the middle ages. As we drew nearer to Paris, we saw the plant which Noah first committed to the earth after the deluge—you know what ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of heavy wrapping-paper draw the deck plan full size, that is, 22 inches long by 5 inches at its widest point. Next cut out along the pencil line with a pair of shears. Now lay the paper outline on a plank and mark out the pattern on the wood. Repeat this process with three more planks. When this is done, cut out the boards with a ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates |
