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Tongs   Listen
noun
Tongs  n. pl.  An instrument, usually of metal, consisting of two parts, or long shafts, jointed together at or near one end, or united by an elastic bow, used for handling things, especially hot coals or metals; often called a pair of tongs.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tongs" Quotes from Famous Books



... within credible bounds. "Tall and slightly but elegantly formed," was the only approved recipe for making a hero. So that a black snake walking erect upon his tail, provided he had two of them, or an old-fashioned pair of kitchen tongs, with a face hammered out upon the knob by the blacksmith, would convey a tolerably correct idea of the proportions of the Beverleys, and Mortimers, and Hargraves, of a certain class of novels. Sir Walter Scott, Mr. James, and most of the best writers, have ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... the very primitive method used by the Indians before they had kettles in which to make sugar. Several large, nearly round stones were washed clean, then heated very hot in the fire. With improvised tongs they were then lifted into a large keg of cold sap. As this operation was constantly repeated, the sap ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... to be taken to pickle a Tadpole as a specimen for the school museum. The following is a recipe for this. Take the ugliest, dirtiest, noisiest, and most ignorant specimen that can be found. Lift it carefully with a pair of tongs into a bath full of vinegar. Close the lid and let it remain there to soak for a week. At the end of that time lift it out and scrape it well all over with a sharp substance, to get off the first coating of grime. Soak again for another week and scrape again, and so on till the ninth or tenth ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... forward shyly and shamefacedly; and showed me the cockpit of the duck boat pretty well filled. The boy had, it seems, found a reef of these in a brackish arm which made inland, and dug them by the simple process of stooping down below the surface of the water, since he had no oyster tongs. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... fast and furious," exemplified by dance, song, and revelry, interspersed with practical jokes, recriminative abuse, and consequent pugilistic exercise, where science and strength alternately prevailed; and in deficiency of other missiles, poker, tongs, coffee-cups, saucers, and plates, were brought into active requisition.—The scene was a striking illustration of "Confusion worse confounded." Luckily our two observers were in a situation without the reach of injury; they therefore "smiled at the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... probably acquainted by experience with the mode in which her mother was wont to confer her maternal benedictions, slipt out of arm's length with great dexterity and quickness. The hag then started up, and, seizing a pair of old fire-tongs, would have amended her motion, by beating out the brains either of her daughter or Jeanie (she did not seem greatly to care which), when her hand was once more arrested by the man whom they called Frank Levitt, who, seizing her by the shoulder, flung her from him ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... us have a dance,' said the fire-tongs; and then how they danced and stuck up one leg in the air. The chair-cushion in the corner burst with ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last manifestation as by far the most alarming, by reason of its threatening his prolonged stay on the premises, necessitated vigorous measures. Eugene picked up his worn-out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his head, and, taking him by the collar—all this at arm's length—conducted him down stairs and out of the precincts into Fleet Street. There, he turned his face westward, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... for the Prince and the Lady Gycia, I don't believe they spoke a word the livelong day, though they walked together. That is the way with these grandees. When you and I quarrel with our wives, it is hammer and tongs for five minutes, and then kiss ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... was left unpainted to be kept as white as a clean sea-beach by applications of soap and sand. Probably a good deal of this hand-and-knee work fell upon the unfortunate Silvy, as well as the polishing of the pewter plates, the brass fenders, andirons, tongs, shovels, door-knobs, knockers, and the various brazen ornaments which bedecked the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... as thin as a whippin' post. His skin looked like a blown bladder arter some of the air had leaked out, kinder wrinkled and rumpled like, and his eye as dim as a lamp that's livin' on a short allowance of ile. He put me in mind of a pair of kitchen tongs, all legs, shaft and head, and no belly; a real gander-gutted lookin' critter, as holler as a bamboo walkin' cane, and twice as yaller. He actilly looked as if he had been picked off a rack at sea, and dragged through a gimlet hole. He was ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degree of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His anger redoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that what you call being under her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... rollers, and when this was a little along, a third was brought. Continuously fresh threads came crawling over the floor, like hissing snakes. The boy was dazzled by the iron. But he found it more splendid to watch the workmen who, dexterously and delicately, seized the glowing snakes with their tongs and forced them under the rollers. It seemed like play for them to handle the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... tea?' cried Violet, starting up. He has put in six shellfuls for three people, and a lump of sugar, and now was shutting up the unfortunate teapot without one drop of water!' And gaily driving him away, she held up the sugar-tongs with the lump of sugar in his face, while he laughed and yielded the field, saying, disdainfully, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... good luck that had enabled these youngsters to make a good showing. A new-style device for women, consisting of heater and tongs for curling the hair, was on the market this year. Electric current was required for the heater, but both Laura and Belle had electric light service in their homes. This new-style device was one of the fads of this Christmas season. The retail price was eight dollars ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... less than a chisel could have cut the mortar that way. Miss Killigrew is right." He went back, and with the aid of the tongs poked into the cavity. The wall of bricks was four deep, yet the tongs went through. This business had been done ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... altar, whose length was twenty cubits, and its breadth the same, and its height ten, for the burnt-offerings. He also made all its vessels of brass, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons; and besides these, the snuffers and the tongs, and all its other vessels, he made of brass, and such brass as was in splendor and beauty like gold. The king also dedicated a great number of tables, but one that was large and made of gold, upon which they set the loaves of God; and he made ten thousand more ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... first to the banks of the Yperlee Canal and subsequently to take part in the counter attack along with the rest of the Canadian Division. By three o'clock in the morning all the Canadian troops that were in reserve were up and at it, "hammer and tongs," driving back the Germans and trying hard to reconstitute the broken line from St. Julien ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we now should call Japanese sunshades; the perruquier here, too, must have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and curling tongs; the trim abbe in his short cassock, even the truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign of the trade, which combined ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... in the corn-patch Whistling negro songs; Pussy by the hearth-side Romping with the tongs; Chestnuts in the ashes Bursting through the rind; Red leaf and gold leaf Rustling down the wind; Mother "doin' peaches" All the afternoon,— Don't you think that autumn's Pleasanter ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... the party'. Simple as the toilets were, there was a great deal of running up and down, laughing and talking, and at one time a strong smell of burned hair pervaded the house. Meg wanted a few curls about her face, and Jo undertook to pinch the papered locks with a pair of hot tongs. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... neighbor?" said he, as he held his big tongs in his hands and opened his little eyes as ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... which was as prosaic a place as all furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory, separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of patchouli, cold cream, burned horn and burned ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... good!" Agelan roars in my ear, and I nod assent. Now the hot stones are removed with bamboo tongs, and the great flat object, wrapped in banana leaves, is taken out. Mrs. Agelan throws back the leaves and uncovers the beautifully cooked golden lap-lap. Her lord looks at it critically, and returns to his corner silent, but evidently satisfied. His ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... know that M. le Comte Maxime de Trailles would wait till he was insulted, so as to fire first and kill his man. Eugene was a sportsman and a good shot, but he had not yet hit the bulls's eye twenty times out of twenty-two. The young Count dropped into a low chair by the hearth, took up the tongs, and made up the fire so violently and so sulkily, that Anastasie's fair face suddenly clouded over. She turned to Eugene, with a cool, questioning glance that asked plainly, "Why do you not go?" a glance which well-bred people regard as a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... the help of one of their largest nails—this received the handle; a round button at one end of the hook served for the face of the hammer. A large pebble supplied the place of an anvil, and a couple of reindeer's horns made the tongs. By the means of such tools they made two heads of spears, and, after polishing and sharpening them on stones, they tied them as fast as possible, with thongs made of reindeer's skins, to sticks about the thickness of a man's ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... 'did anybody tell you to say all this?' and I said 'No,' because my mistress had instructed me. She taught me on shipboard what to say if I was taken to court. She beat me with thick sticks of firewood. She beat me with the fire tongs. One day she took a hot flatiron, removed my clothes and held it on my naked back until I howled with pain. (The scab was on her back when she came to the Mission.) My forehead is all scars caused by her throwing ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... to the bit of it he'd gi' me, and the ould chap begins bowin' and scrapin', and said something or other about a long tongs.[D] ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... and festoons of flowers, was of Adam's design, and so also was the dado and the cornice. The walls were painted a pale warm pink. A high brass fender, pierced, surrounded the fireplace, and there were a poker, tongs, and shovel to match, and a small brass scuttle still full of coals. There were ashes in the grate, too, as if the room had only lately been occupied. The boards were bare, but white and well-fitting, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... figure of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs—the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, in their nocturnal ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... weight of this lining had pulled the skirts aside, disclosing a dingy-hued flannel waistcoat beneath. With something of a coxcomb's manner, Fraisier fastened this refractory article of dress, tightening the girdle to define his reedy figure; then with a blow of the tongs, he effected a reconciliation between two burning brands that had long avoided one another, like brothers after a family quarrel. A sudden bright idea struck him, and ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... fire, except an old pair of tongs, which travels through the house, and is likewise employed to take the meat out of the pot, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... confess, but yelled out with such horrible cries, even as it had been a Divill or some tormented soul in hell...and though he deserved ten times more, yet humane nature might inforce us to pity his distress. After this with tongs and iron pincers made extreme hot in the same furnace, the executioners pinched and seared his breasts, his arms, and thighs and other fleshy parts of his body, cutting out collops of flesh and burned them before his face; afterward into the same wounds thus made, they poured ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... alone. Among our very successful novelists there are many like him in what I will roundly term intellectual sluggishness, though there is, perhaps, none with quite his talent. Have these men entered into a secret compact not to touch a problem even with a pair of tongs? Or are they afraid of being confused with Hall Caine, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli, who anyhow have the merit of being interested in the wide aspects of their age? I do not know. But I think we might expect ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... only sadder, because he knows how much he falls below what is expected of him, and what he expects of himself. Lip-flattery makes a real man feel as though his sex had been mistaken, he feels as though he had been given curling-tongs instead of a razor for his morning toilet. These pompous flatteries that pass between Germany and England to-day, make both sides self-conscious and a little ashamed to write and to speak them, and to ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... you my most cherished and respectable friend, one who is better acquainted with Gypsy ways than the Chef des Bohemiens a Triana, one who is an expert whisperer and horse-sorcerer, and who, to his honour I say it, can wield hammer and tongs, and handle a horse-shoe with the best of the smiths amongst ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... then threw themselves frankly upon reproductions, which they bought in the native wood and ordered painted, the settles and the spindle-backed chairs in the cool gray which she decided was the thing. In the same spirit they bought new brass fire-irons and new shovel and tongs, but all very tall and antique-looking, and then they got those little immoral mirrors, which Margaret Green attached with her own hands to the partitions of the shelving. She also got soft green silk curtains for the chimney windows and for the sash ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... and rubbing against the tongs, knocked them down with a clatter. Pennington awoke. Louise was beside him in a moment. "Ah, it's ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... deposit some little article as a forfeit, to be redeemed by some sportive penalty, imposed by the "Crier of the Forfeits" (usually a bonnie lassie). The "crying of the forfeits" and paying of the penalties creates much merriment, particularly when a bashful youth is sentenced to "kiss through the fire-tongs" some beautiful romp of a girl, who delights playing him tricks while the room rings ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... customary to shake hands with his friends more than twice in each term, once at the beginning, and again at the end of the term. If he is a Cambridge man, he will cut the tassel of his academical cap short; at Oxford he will leave it long; but at both he will discover that sugar-tongs are never used, and that the race of Dons exists merely to plague him and his fellows with lectures, to which he pays small attention, with enforced chapels, which he sometimes dares to cut, and, with general disciplinary ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various

... time during the day it commenced to unbend, and if you have had that melancholy, damp appearance many hours. Perhaps it is as well that you did not know before, for it could not have been rectified; you cannot bring a pair of tongs and a spirit-lamp out of your pocket and begin operations in public! Still it is exceedingly aggravating if you think you have been making an impression, and you return home to confront such a dejected-looking spectacle as ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... as far as I'm concerned,—not as long as the pokers and tongs are about." And then there was silence ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... believe in the school of Verboeckhoeven. Slick and shiny Verboeckhoeven, "the mechanic," he would call him, with his fists closed tight, who painted the hair on every one of his sheep as if it were curled by a pair of barber's tongs—not dirty and woolly and full of suggestions as, of course, he —the great Waller, alone of all living animal-painters —depicted it. All of which, to Waller's credit, it must be parenthetically stated, these same "idiots" learned to recognize in after years as true, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... finished my dandy client. I had brushed his hair to a nicety and had even curled his forelock with heated tongs. With a sigh of relief I took off the cloth and waited for him to rise. But he rose not. Stroking his cheek critically he decided that he wanted shaving, and, cursing him in my heart, ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession halted, and a champion of morality accused the broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had committed and for which he was now about to be burned alive. The culprit, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... it is that some men have succeeded who have seemingly drifted about. Dr. Adam Clark has said: "The old adage about too many irons in the fire conveys an abominable lie. Keep them all agoing—poker, tongs and all." But Dr. Clark seems to forget that the most of the people who try to follow his advice, either burn their fingers or find their irons cooling faster than they can use them. We cannot all be Clarks if we try, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... their way up the chimney in fantastic shapes, became bold warriors in mortal combat with emigrants on their way to the golden West, and even after she had gone to bed it seemed to her that "everything in the room, from the high old-fashioned bedposts down to the shovel and tongs, was transformed into the dusky tribe in paint and feathers, all ready for a war-dance" as they loomed large out of shadowy corners. She would hide her head under the clothes, scarcely daring to wink or breathe, then come boldly to the surface, face her shadowy foes, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... hard work, an' they marchin' out forenenst 'em like three images, so stiff an' so sthraight, an' never spakin' a word. I'm afeard it's here they're comin.' An' I give ye my word she has a child on her back, tied to a boord; no wondher for 'em to be as stiff as a tongs whin they grows up, since the babies is rared ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Gerald's red coals with the tongs inside his lantern, and he started back to the castle. He had gone only a few steps, though, when he saw that the coals had turned cold and gray, so he had to throw them beside the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... driven into pieces of wood built into the structure for the purpose, were the long-handled frying-pan, the pot-hook, the boring iron, the branding iron, the long iron peel, the roasting hook, the fire-pan, the scoop-shaped fire-shovel, with a trivet or two. The stout slice and tongs lean against ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... the stepmother, and she gnashes her teeth, and they make a noise like clattering tongs. "Hold your tongue," she says. "Didn't I tell you you are to go to-day to your dear little aunt to ask for a needle and thread to ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome

... there. Another visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan's reality. "Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith's tongs. It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him." Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever. So famous ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... back window; telling somebody below to upset the slop-barrel and rain-water hogshead at the same time. Of course, you will attend to the mirror. The further it can be thrown, the more pieces will be made. If anybody objects, smash it over his head. Do not, under any circumstances, drop the tongs down from the second story; the fall might break its legs, and render the poor thing a cripple for life. Set it straddle of your shoulder, and carry it down carefully. Pile the bedclothes carefully on the floor, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... choosest, but who gave thee the right to calumniate My children of Israel and call them 'a people of unclean lips'?" And Isaiah heard God bid one of the seraphim touch his lips with a live coal as a punishment for having slandered Israel. Though the coal was so hot that the seraph needed tongs to hold the tongs with which he had taken the coal from the altar, the prophet yet escaped unscathed, but he learned the lesson, that it was his duty to defend Israel, not traduce him. Thenceforth the championship of his people was the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... foolish if they did!" Mr. Aylett picked up the tongs to mend the fire. "And very unnatural did they not rejoice at being rid of a burden. The old place has been going to destruction all these years, and it could not be sold while she cumbered the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... voluptuary in Mr. Pepys, but it is Mr. Pepys, the promiscuous amourist; stringing his lute (God forgive him!) on a Sunday, that is the outstanding figure in the Diary. Mr. Pepys attracts us, however, in a host of other aspects—Mr. Pepys whose nose his jealous wife attacked with the red-hot tongs as he lay in bed; Mr. Pepys who always held an anniversary feast on the date on which he had been cut for the stone; Mr. Pepys who was not "troubled at it at all" as soon as he saw that the lady who had spat on ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... be candid with you, Blaine. We know quite well who the murderer is. At the right moment we shall land on him hammer and tongs. But you see—we need to choose the right moment, for political reasons. Now—technically speaking—all evidence in criminal cases ought to go to the police, and the police might act too ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... on Nevada, and cultivated the three ex-miners; mothers ransacked cook-books and old trunks; Ladies' Companions were industriously searched for pleasing patterns; crimping-irons and curling-tongs were extemporized, and the demand for ribbons and trimmings became so great that the storekeeper hurried to the city for a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... of a regular set-to, hammer and tongs, between us, the French fighting with the utmost courage and determination, and playing havoc with our rigging, which they cut up so severely that half a dozen of our people were kept busy aloft knotting and splicing. At length, however, when the fight had thus been raging for ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... kept her lips tight-closed so as not to forget that she must remain fasting. She slowly pulled on her new stockings and stretched out her hand to the bench on which the white slippers lay. She took off her sleeping-jacket and her little skirt and stood waiting in her shift. When the tongs were well warmed, Mam'selle Julie seized the little paper twists in the hot iron and opened them out. From each fold a curled tress came rolling down; and at last, combed out and bound up with blue-silk ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... Gothic carving, and several beautiful stained-glass windows. One in particular, which Monica pointed out, was in memory of a member of the Courtenay family. There was a chained Bible, besides a black-letter Prayer Book, a pair of tongs for turning dogs out of church, and several other curiosities shown by the old verger; so time passed rapidly, and everyone was quite surprised when Miss Russell looked at her watch, and announced that they ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... for a single thing, not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned it once, and the next day Mademoiselle gave me a very pretty pair, also those nice tongs you see me ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... considerable, but if he kills them, nothing is added to his usual pay; yet such is the fury of their desperation, that three out of four are of necessity destroyed in the attempt to secure them, though the officers are provided with instruments like large tongs, or pincers, to lay hold of them without coming within the reach of their weapon. Those who happen to be taken alive are generally wounded, but they are always broken alive upon the wheel, and if the physician who is appointed to examine their wounds thinks ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... 'That's Captain Tongs,' observes Miss Simperley, 'in the blue. I remember dancing with him at Bath, and he did nothing ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... the revelation of his infidelities was a crushing blow. The tears that he shed, the indignities that he endured, are not to be measured. A vulgar woman, and now justly incensed, Mrs. Pepys spared him no detail of suffering. She was violent, threatening him with the tongs; she was careless of his honour, driving him to insult the mistress whom she had driven him to betray and to discard; worst of all, she was hopelessly inconsequent, in word and thought and deed, now lulling him with reconciliations, and ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... down the tray, you may go, and don't let me see you in that filthy cap again, not fit to be touched with a pair of tongs; and don't go up to Mrs. Newson in that slipshod fashion, don't Betsey; and when you have taken up tea come here, I have an errand for you to go. Shut the door gently. ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... a whisper, "put the tongs over the cradle; it's a pity to tempt the fairies. And, Grannie, I wouldn't lave it alone to go out to the cow-house—the lil people are shocking bad ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... played "Catch who catch can" on the immortal occasion of the gardener's wife marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop's letter he got up and—ignoring the poker and tongs—kicked the fire with a savagery that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization. And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and grateful—without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing his library floor, hurling his thoughts broadcast, since there was no ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... Here we are among a people who go stark naked with no more sense of shame than we have with our clothes on. The women have more sense and go decently. You see great he-animals all about your camp carrying their indispensable tobacco-pipes and iron tongs to lift fire with, but the idea of a fig-leaf has never entered the mind. They cultivate largely have had enormous crops of grain, work well in iron, and show taste in their dwellings, stools, baskets, and musical instruments. They are very hospitable, too, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... shot out an arm nearly three-quarters of an inch long, bearing on its end two horrible things which were not exactly claws, nor fingers, nor teeth, but which partook of the nature of all three, and which came together on the infant's soft, helpless little body like a pair of tongs or the jaws of a steel trap, and drew him in to where the real jaws were waiting to make mince-meat of him. Our friend fled so precipitately that he did not see the end of the tragedy, but neither did he ever see that baby again. Before the summer had passed, the dull, lumpish-looking creature ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... here, in the passage, and spoke to me ever so seriously. 'Come in,' I said, 'and see Bell packing the pokers and tongs.' 'I will go in,' he said, 'but don't come with me.' He was ever so serious, and I'm sure he had been thinking of ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... her sugar-tongs in the act of transferring a lump of sugar to her cup, quite unconscious of the slight absurdity of the gesture, while Sybil stared in amazement, for it was not often that her sister waved the stars and stripes so energetically. Whatever their silent criticisms might be, however, Mrs. Lee ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... reply, As another glance he throws: "'Gainst the shield I ill shall fight Which the tongs and ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... equal to a Turkish kebob. We wonder if in Australia the long-forgotten Scotch collop has been revived? It requires no cooking-vessels. It may be held to the fire on a twig, or laid on the coals and turned by a similar twig—bent into a collop-tongs—or even by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... entered his house, and threw himself into a seat, but he sat only a moment. Something seemed to be wanting. A restless impatience possessed him. He took up the tongs and begun to alter the disposition of the sticks of wood. He could not suit himself, and finally abandoned the fire to itself, after having filled the room with smoke. He went to the bookcase, and took down a book, and commenced reading. But ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people to take any thing from the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... you away. Don't I know why you're up here in these woods, with your pretty clothes and your English talk? A-ha! You bet I do! You're hiding, and you're wanted,"—he dropped his voice to a whisper,—"the tongs would pay head-money for you. If you don't give it to me, I'll put every fiend in ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... pipe on the mantel-shelf and, when he had found it, lit it with a coal which he picked out of the fire with the tongs. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... reply I, bluntly, lifting my grave gray eyes to his face, and to the hair which sweeps thick and waved above his broad brown forehead. (Tongs indeed!) ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... thought the Grecian lady of the bed-chamber, "that I am not called to a toilet where smiths' hammers and tongs are like to be the instruments ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... a colour to their idleness the gipsies employ themselves in working in iron, and you may always see them hawking pincers, tongs, hammers, fire-shovels, and so forth, the sale of which facilitates their thefts. The women are all midwives, and in this they have the advantage over others, for they bring forth without cost or ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... return to the figure of the building—the wind finds its way through chinks; the floors creak and the general impression is that of bare homeliness. House and Home go together upon tongue and upon pen as naturally as hook-and-eye, shovel-and-tongs, knife-and-fork,—yet the coupling is rather a trick learned through habit than an act of reason. The words are not synonyms of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... napkin-ring bore malignant witness to her loving aunt, Eliza Judd, laughed irrepressibly: she had more sense of humor than her sister. It was she who, though she had assisted in polishing the old copper kettle subsequently utilized as a holder for the tongs and shovel, had refused to consider the yet older wash-boiler in the light of a possible coal-scuttle, greatly to the relief of her aunt, who blushed persistently at any ...
— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam

... lease. Tacket, shoe-nail. Tae, to. Tae, toe. Tae'd, toed. Taed, toad. Taen, taken. Taet, small quantity. Tairge, to target. Tak, take. Tald, told. Tane, one in contrast to other. Tangs, tongs. Tap, top. Tapetless, senseless. Tapmost, topmost. Tappet-hen, a crested hen-shaped bottle holding three quarts of claret. Tap-pickle, the grain at the top of the stalk. Topsalteerie, topsy-turvy. Targe, to examine. Tarrow, to tarry; to be reluctant, to murmur; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... on whom this good advice had no effect, lost not a moment in destroying all the pleasure and enjoyment of her infancy. Her hair, which before hung down in careless ringlets, was now twisted up in paper, and squeezed between a burning pair of tongs; that fine jet, which had hitherto so happily set off the whiteness of her forehead, was lost under a ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... a solid substance, the following method of procedure is adopted. A preliminary experiment is first made, in order to obtain some idea as to the degree of energy of the reaction, by bringing a little of the solid, placed upon the lid of a platinum crucible held in a pair of tongs, near the mouth of the delivery tube of the preparation apparatus. If a gaseous or liquid product results, and it is desirable to collect it for examination, small fragments of the solid are placed in a platinum tube connected to the delivery tube by flexible platinum tubing or by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various

... but it wanted some wit, if I may say so, to do that, and Dick just goes at it hammer and tongs: anybody could do it. It's intellect I miss in Ricardo. How am I to know whether he could make a good fight for it without all these fairy things? I wonder what the young rogue is about to-day? He'll be late ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... articles. Among these are included the tools of carpenters, coopers, gardeners, butchers, glaziers, farriers, saddlers, tinmen, shoemakers, weavers, wheelwrights, as well as corkscrews, sugar- tongs, sugar-nippers, boot-hooks, button-hooks, door-scrapers, calipers, printing-irons, dog-collars, chains, whistles, tinderboxes, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... to your request.' But she still pleaded so earnestly, that he deemed it best to leave her abruptly. There was a large hibachi—a brazier of glowing charcoal—in the room where she found herself alone. She heated the iron tongs of the brazier till they were red, and with them horribly pierced and seamed her face, destroying her beauty forever. Then the priest, alarmed by the smell of the burning, returned in haste, and was very ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... detectives fired point-blank at the monster and both shots took effect with a ringing, metallic sound. But they did not halt the Automaton an instant. Locke, reaching the fireplace, seized a pair of old tongs and threw firebrand after firebrand in the path of ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... which ran millions of sparks. But it was a long, a never-ending task; for when several pages were thrown on at a time, they would not burn; it was necessary to move them and turn them over with the tongs; the best way was to stir them up and then wait until they were in a blaze, before adding more. The women soon grew skilful at their task, and the work ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... me a thousand dollars; he deserved it well, the dishonourable scamp! We were now in Trinity, we had done five miles in less than twelve minutes; but Miss Lambton was so angry, and the old gentleman so bitter cold and stiff—a pair of fire-tongs is nothing compared to him—Couldn't be helped, however. Honor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... nobleman, by his helping himself to olives with a fork. He might have applied the test to a vast many other things. Yet, on the other hand, a gentleman would lose his reputation, if he were to take up a piece of sugar with his fingers and not with the sugar-tongs. ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman

... with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow of red heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs the image that she had made of Eustacia, she held it in the heat, and watched it as it began to waste slowly away. And while she stood thus engaged there came from between her lips ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... folds in circles on its face they beat. These from the windy bellows force the air, These hissing copper for the forge prepare, Dipt in the trough. The cavern floor below Groans with the anvils and the strokes they bear, As strong arms timed heap measured blow on blow, And, turned with griping tongs, the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... altogether shake it off. Debates of Senates dreadfully in earnest are seldom given frankly to the world; else perhaps they would surprise it. Did not the Grand Monarque himself once chase his Louvois with a pair of brandished tongs? But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a foam with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent of life and death, one is struck rather with the degree of continence they manifest in speech; and how in such wild ebullition, there is still a kind ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... frying-paps, poker and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls horns, &c. beaten upon and sounded ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... beginning of things American and has never been exploited, will fetch him at a hand-gallop. Add a hint that we have our own brand of family spook, and you couldn't keep him away if you tried. The only trouble is that he may walk off with your brass tongs up his trouser-leg, or a print or ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... while he held office, as Mr. Balfour was the first member of a British Cabinet who ever went to the United States while he held office. The great governments of the English-speaking folk have surely dealt with one another with mighty elongated tongs. Governments of democracies are not exactly instruments of precision. But they are at least human. But personal and human neglect of one another by these two governments over so long a period is an astonishing fact in our history. The wonder is that we haven't ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... brazen confusion on the red-brick hearth. When my Uncle Peter has mounted his favourite metaphysical theory, I know that nothing can make him dismount but physical violence. I apologized for the poker and the shovel and the tongs (practising a Stevensonian omission in regard to my own share in the catastrophe), arranged the offending members in their proper station on the left of the fire-place, and took the bellows to encourage the dull fire ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... they had been dragged in by a horse, who drew them right up to the wide stone hearth. But we did not use Lord Beaconsfield for this work. For one thing, he would have been too big to get through the door; besides, we were strong, and liked the job. We had two pairs of ice-tongs, and we would put on our rubber boots, and take the tongs, and go out into the snow, and fasten to a log—one at each end—and drag it across Captain Ben's iron door-sill, and lift it in and swing it across the stout andirons with a skill that improved with each day's practice. They were good, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... in his mind, he struck match after match and peered about the cellar. Against the opposite wall he noticed a stick with curved tongs on one end of it, manipulated by a thin metal bar running to the other end. It was one of those handy implements used to lift cans down from high shelves. It stood among other articles, a rake, an old broom, but the deft little mechanical hand on the ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... And why are you afraid? Because you are one of those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want woman to be a mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl until it pleases you in your high-and-mightiness to take her in the tongs and drop her into the coffee of your existence, to sweeten what would otherwise not please your taste—and like most men you prefer two or three ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... such government, and would not permit her to strike me; she used shovel, tongs and broomstick in vain, as I disarmed her as fast as she picked up each weapon. Infuriated at her failure, my opposition and determination not to be whipped, Mrs. Mitchell declared she would report me to Mr. Mitchell and have ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney

... allow any other hand to do it. "But now about our young friend here. Surely, with all that we know by this time of the character of that Bony, we can see that this peace is a mere trick of his to bamboozle us while he gets ready. In six months we shall be at war again, hammer and tongs, as sure as my ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... Sardinia. He rejected the bold propositions of Frederick entirely, and said, in justification of himself, that since the alliance between the powers of France and Austria, he had his head between a pair of tongs, which were ever threatening to close and crush him. Baron Cocceji was not more fortunate in Naples, and after many vain efforts he was forced to return home, having accomplished ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... with you," said Mr. Glanbally, — "but I've been riding till I'm as stiff as the tongs — Winthrop, are you too tired to walk home with this young lady? — as her father has brought you a letter you might do ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... The watchers had left the corpse alone, and were dining in the adjoining room, when a terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death. None dared enter; the minister was sent for, and passed into the room. He emerged, asked for a pair of tongs, and returned, bearing in the tongs A BLOODY GLOVE, and the noise ceased. He always declined to say what he had witnessed. Ministers were exorcists in the last century, and the father of James Thomson, the poet, died suddenly in an interview with ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince. Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved "a week under" and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of Cardinal Mazarin without his chin-tuft and moustaches. He was ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he couldn't go in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer and tongs, so changed his tactics completely in the third round. He now fights cautiously, getting away from and parrying the Slogger's lunging hits, instead of trying to counter, and leading his enemy a dance all round the ring after him. "He's funking; go in, Williams," "Catch him up," "Finish him off," ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... girl with malicious eyes. "The kitchen and the cellar still have to be examined, and if thou hast forgotten anything thou shalt not escape thy punishment." But the fire was burning on the hearth, and the meat was cooking in the pans, the tongs and shovel were leaning against the wall, and the shining brazen utensils all arranged in sight. Nothing was wanting, not even a coal-box and water-pail. "Which is the way to the cellar?" she cried. "If that is not abundantly filled, it shall ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... warned them of the day of the Lord that was coming upon all the wicked; exhorting them to leave their wickedness and to turn to the Lord in time. While I was thus speaking to them the priest and the clerk broke out into a rage, and got up the tongs and fire-shovel at us, so that had not the Lord's power preserved us we might have been murdered amongst them. Yet, for all their rudeness and violence, some received the truth then, and have stood ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... once the fires; Just as the god directs, now loud, now low, They raise a tempest, or they gently blow; In hissing flames huge silver bars are roll'd, And stubborn brass, and tin, and solid gold; Before, deep fix'd, the eternal anvils stand; The ponderous hammer loads his better hand, His left with tongs turns the vex'd metal round, And thick, strong strokes, the doubling ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... of yours should be taken notice of by a young lady of the Miss Kathleen O'Hara type. She's a splendid girl; and, to tell you the honest truth, none of you are fit for her to touch you with a pair of tongs." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... five shillings, Say the bells of St. Helen's. When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey. When I grow rich, Say the bells of Shoreditch. Pokers and tongs, Say the bells of St. John's. Kettles and pans, Say the bells of St. Ann's. Half-pence and farthings, Say ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous

... Sherring and Thomas Hillary were there, James Sherring sat down in the chimney to fill a pipe of tobacco. He used the tongs to lift a coal to light his pipe, and by-and-by the tongs were drawn up the stairs and were cast upon the bed. The same night one of the maids left her shoes by the fire, and they were carried up into the chamber, and the old man's brought down and set in their ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... strong with thyme the new-made honey smells. So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat, When with huge strokes the stubborn wedge they beat, And all the unshapen thunderbolt complete; Alternately their hammers rise and fall; Whilst griping tongs turn round the glowing ball. With puffing bellows some the flames increase, And some in waters dip the hissing mass; 220 Their beaten anvils dreadfully resound, And AEtna shakes all o'er, and thunders under-ground. Thus, if great things we may with small compare, The busy swarms ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... the butt. He tore my shirt off, after I would not pull it off; he ordered me to cross my hands. I didn't do that. After I wouldn't do that he went and got his gun. and broke the breech of that over my head. He then seized up the fire-tongs and struck me over the head ever so often. The next thing he took was the parlor shovel and he beat on me with that till he broke the handle; then he took the blade and stove it at my head with all his might. I told ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... way. But I needn't warn you. You know how to take care of yourself. Still, maybe you don't realize how set up he'd be over being noticed by a girl in your position. And if you gave him the notion that there was a chance for him to marry you, he'd be after you hammer and tongs. The idea of getting hold of so much money'd ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... thoroughly antiseptic. Dirt was a stranger there; germs found life within its portals a hazardous business—what with the vitrified walls, the glass shelves, and enameled plumbing. Even the towels were handled with tongs; the nickel-plated steamer in which they were heated to an unbearable temperature seemed to puff its cheeks with a consciousness of painful and almost offensive cleanliness. The men who worked here had hard, black eyes, but their hands were soft and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... They spun round and round. Their fantastic shapes were marked against the wall. The miller showed Sabine's little girl how to make shadows with her hands. The child laughed and was not altogether at her ease. Sabine leaned over the fire and poked it mechanically with a heavy pair of tongs: she was a little weary, and smiled dreamily, while, without listening, she nodded to her sister-in-law's chatter of her domestic affairs. Christophe sat in the shadow by the miller's side and watched Sabine ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... out of life, Without some small attempt at strife, Our nature will not grovel; One impulse mov'd both man and dame, He seized the tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses fast and fervent; And first burst in the frantic cat, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... it; and now hear my plan. You know Brooks, the jailer, and his bulldog brother-in-law, Tongs? I saw you talking with both ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... words had not the sympathy of the sailors been with Gordon. This angered the other boy in the dispute, and he called Gordon a liar. This, according to Gordon's code, was a cause of war. He slapped Ferdy in the mouth, and the next second they were at it hammer-and-tongs. So long as they were on their feet, Ferdy, who knew something of boxing, had much the best of it and punished Gordon severely, until the latter, diving into ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... comfort of the domestic hearth, who could not keep his hands for a moment from the fire-irons. Perhaps he might be justified if he said that they had been very much troubled of late in that House by gentlemen who could not keep their fingers from poker and tongs. But there had now fallen upon them a trouble of a nature much more serious in its effects than any that had come or could come from would-be reformers. A spirit of personal ambition, a wretched thirst for office, a hankering after the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Hank would have described as "considerable of his twilight" in the open. He noticed, during the process, that Punk had meanwhile gone back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Defago were at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with patches of alternate red and black; ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... with the slamming of a door and a healthy footfall across the room. The piano is opened. Then some occasional noises—the falling of a piece of music behind the piano, perhaps, and its extraction by means of the tongs—I know it is tongs she uses by the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, and La Belle Dame is ready to play. She puts both her hands upon the key-board, and the treble shrieks apprehensively, and the bass roars like a city in revolt. After that this ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... especially for him after his own description—handcuffs, collars and belts, chains, branding irons, a block and fall, muzzles of different sizes, corkscrew picket-pins for holding the turn of a rope, and a nondescript article shaped like a huge pair of tongs, for which I feel sure there is no name in any trade, but which looked to be a handy implement for clamping the jaws of a beast. To have these things made according to specifications took time and an endless amount of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... cakestand in three storeys. And Leonora, manoeuvring her bangles, commenced the ritual of refection with Harry as acolyte. 'If he doesn't come—well, he doesn't come,' she thought of her husband, as she smiled interrogatively at Arthur Twemlow, holding a lump of sugar aloft in the tongs. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... however, were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and those ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... and gives out more heat than a deeper one. A false back of brick may be put up in a deep fireplace. Hooks for holding up the shovel and tongs, a hearth-brush and bellows, and brass knobs to hang them on, should be furnished to every fireplace. An iron bar across the andirons aids in keeping the fire safe and in good order. Steel furniture is neater, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... silken ears and coat smartly curled, as if he had just paid a visit to Truefitt's, and been manipulated by the dexterous hands of one of the assistants at that celebrated establishment, armed with the crinal tongs and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... got more wrinkles in it than there are in a fake mermaid's tail. Do you know what kind of a game they've gone to work and rigged up on your friend, the human curling-tongs? The widder has got him to doin' chores again. It seems that she was always strong on keepin' him doin' chores. He's peckin' away at that pile of wood that's fitted and lays at the corner of the barn. He's luggin' it into the woodshed, and three sticks at a time make his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... bookseller, sobered by reflection, called on the doctor, confessed his sin of the previous day, humbly asked for absolution, and offered him the book at an immense loss on the sale price. 'If you were,' replied the doctor, 'to bring the book at my door for nothing, I would take it with a pair of tongs and drop it into the gutter.' It was a puzzle to everyone what the little doctor did with all his purchases, which were limited chiefly to classical books. At his death, however, it transpired that he bought for the various Universities of the United Kingdom. The doctor's son, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... that the milk spurted down into the room. The woman clasped her hands, at which the Duckling flew down into the butter tub, and then into the meal barrel and out again. How it looked then! The woman screamed, and struck at it with the fire tongs; the children tumbled over one another, in their efforts to catch the Duckling; and they laughed and screamed finely! Happily the door stood open, and the poor creature was able to slip out between the shrubs into the newly fallen snow; and there ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... laughed Rudolf. "I don't want it, I would not touch it with the tongs if I could ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... three bags full this morning. Bead bags. Do you mind putting some coal on the fire? If there aren't any tongs, use the telephone." ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... shop-fronts, you must understand, are all open, and at the height of the floor, about two feet from the ground, there is a broad ledge of polished wood on which you sit down. A woman everlastingly boiling water on a bronze hibachi, or brazier, shifting the embers about deftly with brass tongs like chopsticks, and with a baby looking calmly over her shoulders, is the shopwoman; but she remains indifferent till she imagines that you have a definite purpose of buying, when she comes forward bowing to the ground, and I politely rise and bow too. Then I or Ito ask the price of a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant's breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the window, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... screamed [Jimmy Crow]. "Fire! Fire!" screamed [Pepper]. "Jack! Jack!" screamed [Grandma]. She was trying to pick up the bunch with the [fire tongs], when [Jack] ran in. He threw a [rug] over the [string of firecrackers], gathered them up in it, and threw all out of the [window]. [Grandma] sat down in her arm-[chair] very pale. Jack kissed her. "I'm sorry we scared ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster



Words linked to "Tongs" :   pair of tongs, ice tongs, chain tongs, plural, coal tongs, fire tongs, device



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