"Wedge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grand-stands or large halls, but we have also pointed out that the ladies of the royal family and their female friends formed an exception to the rule. It was, as it were, the dawn of women's freedom—the insertion of the small end of that wedge which Christianity and civilisation were destined to drive ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... came downstairs next morning there was a stranger in the kitchen—a little old man, huddled in a blanket before the great fireplace, where a line of clothes hung drying. Humility was stooping to wedge a sand-bag under the door. She looked up at Taffy with a wan ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the verandah, the mission-boat was shooting for the mouth of the river. She was a long whale-boat painted white; a bit of an awning astern; a native pastor crouched on the wedge of the poop, steering; some four-and-twenty paddles flashing and dipping, true to the boat-song; and the missionary under the awning, in his white clothes, reading in a book, and set him up! It was pretty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was graduated from Harvard College he was elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature on a reform ticket. His election was made the occasion for great rejoicing on the part of the good people of Philadelphia. And well might they rejoice. They had at last driven a wedge into the sinister political machine that had brought the city of brotherly love into disrepute ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... intent on a day's picnic by the sea, and soon after they had arrived, Mr. Quinn itched to be in the water. They had stripped on the beach, and clambered over the rocks to a place where a deep, broad pool was separated from the Irish Sea by a thick wedge of rock, covered by long, yellow sea-weed. There was a swell on the sea, and so Mr. Quinn decided to swim in the pool. "This is a good place for a dive," he said, standing on the edge of the flat rock and looking down ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... 1856, James King, editor of the "Evening Bulletin," was shot by Jas. P. Casey on the corner of Washington and Montgomery streets. He lingered along for a few days and died. This was too much for the people and proved the entering wedge for a second vigilance committee. During the first 36 hours after the shooting there were 2,600 names enrolled on the committee's books. Of that number, I am proud to say, I was the 96th member, and the membership increased until it ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... the wife. As the remaining statements have no reference to the laws, I may excuse myself from telling how strangely beneath the dignity of truth they seem to me. That they were urged in connection with a bill asking for divorce for drunkenness suggests that such a plea was made an entering wedge for the radical divorce measures that have been advocated in Suffrage conventions. Any State would, at that time, grant legal separation for a wife from a drunken husband, and would compel the husband to support the wife to ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... his magic had come to him, he used his power, and put Pitcher with her back against a tree; and there she stayed, stuck to it, unable to get away. But the chief and Sable went to the camp. Now Pitcher had a hatchet and wedge, and with much ado she cut herself away, and the Black Cats heard her pounding and chopping all night long. And in the morning she came to them, and there was a great piece of wood sticking to her back, and they laughed her to scorn, and sang ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... The city gates were gorged with pilgrims so that my men did lead their beasts to the far side of the city wall where the small gates are. Here, when the camel would have walked under, he could not for the bales of silk that did wedge against the stones. Then did we strip the beasts, yet were their frames too large. Then did we get them on their knees and while some did pull, others did push. I stood with those in the rear and most mightily did I push until sweat did drop from ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... feared, it was not what was needed. It cracked the rock, but did not disintegrate it, and that was what was needed. The hard rock must be broken up into fragments that could be easily handled. Merely to crack it necessitated further explosions, which would only serve to split it more and perhaps wedge it fast ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... darker green that marked the forest on the "map" below me, they adopted a wedge formation, and playing their pencil rays ahead of them, they began to beam a path for themselves through the forest. In my ears sounded the ultrophone instructions of my executives to the long-gunners in the forest, and one by one I heard the ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... but the prospect of at least getting on the edge of a bear chase is great inducement when once you become a little excited, and I scrambled through. The hill was steep and thickly strewn with windfalls about which the new growth had sprung up. Its top was like the thin edge of a wedge, and the farther side dropped, a steep sand-bank, to the stream which flowed at its foot. When we were hardly more than half-way up, there was the sound of a shot and a funny, little shrill cry from Job. Bruin had been climbing the sand-bank, ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... eager to get as near as possible to the honey, even if they may not taste it. A drop falls on one and a hundred fly on him and lick it off. The air is alive with those who are circling about waiting for an advantageous chance to wedge in between their comrades. They will, with one accord, sting to death any hapless creature who ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... many annoyances and pardoned one another in a brotherly way. "In war times, war measures," they would always say as a last excuse. And each one was pressing closer to his neighbor in order to make a few more inches of room, and helping to wedge his scanty baggage among the other bundles swaying most precariously above. Little by little, Desnoyers was losing all his advantage as a first comer. These poor people who had been waiting for the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fellow moved, and as his dark figure rose Jim became alert. The Indian was looking fixedly ahead, but Jim could see nothing in the gloom. He noted mechanically that the rock had vanished; its location was marked by a wedge-shaped streak of foam. He signed to the Indian, who ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Somme, the real consequences of which were not completely visible till the German recoil on the Siegfried line took place in March, 1917. While the first battle of Flanders had closed the gates of Dunkirk and Calais against the Germans, and marked the end of their invasion, the second one drove a wedge at Ypres into the German strength, made formidable by three years' daily efforts, secured the Flemish heights, pushed the enemy back into the bog land, and threatened Bruges. In the first battle, the French under Foch ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... merest lies, The glorious hair of Venice was a beam Made within Titian's eye. The sunsets seem, The world is very old and nothing is. Be still. Thou foolish thing, thou canst not wake, Nor thy tears wedge thy soldered lids apart, But patter in the darkness of thy heart. Thy brain is plagued. Thou art a frighted owl Blind with the light of life thou'ldst not forsake, And Error loves and nourishes ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Minneapolis, to hear Theodore Thomas' orchestra, the Wagner trio and Christine Nilsson. The Coliseum is a large rink just out of Minneapolis, on the road between that city and St. Paul. It can seat 4,000 people comfortably, but the management like to wedge 4,500 people in there on a warm day, and then watch the perspiration trickle out through the clapboards on the outside. On the closing afternoon, during the matinee performance, the building was struck by lightning and a hole knocked out of the Corinthian duplex that surmounts the oblique portcullis ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... brought some of them to Pancho, with a dish of beans and red chile sauce. Pancho sat down on a flat stone under the fig tree to eat his breakfast. He had no knife or fork or spoon, but he really did not need them, for he tore the tortillas into wedge-shaped pieces and scooped up the beans and chile sauce with them, and ate scoop, beans, chile sauce, and all in one mouthful. The chile sauce was so hot with red pepper that you would have thought that Pancho must have had ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... hedge against cavalry, he found a remedy for the disadvantages of the ground, which afforded no protection to either of his flanks. After advancing in these two lines Alexander manoeuvred his troops into a phalanx, or wedge-shaped figure, and this wedge he drove into the masses of the enemy to force the wings asunder. In spite of local reverses in parts of the field, the depth and weight of the main attack carried it through the enemy's forces: the survivors were captured ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... what the Look-Up Club is for. It is an organized flying wedge of one hundred thousand salesmen who have picked each other out for driving into the attention ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... had been a buttress to the left flank of that handful of adventurous infantry in their forward sweep into the heart of the Turkish position. It was now that Graham and the 56th Rifles checked the counter-attack, which threatened to drive a wedge between the Leicestershires and the river. The whole front was now connected up, and, in face of an attacking army, British and Indians dug themselves in. The 51st sent along some ammunition. The sun was setting, and in the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... straight. It is a good plan to flatten the surface slightly on one side with the axe to furnish a better resting place for the pots and pans. If the logs roll or seem insecure, make a shallow trench to hold them or wedge them with flat stones. The surest way to hold them in place is to drive stakes at each end. Build your fire between the logs and build up a cob house of firewood. Split wood will burn much more quickly than ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... hard, gained many a yard, place-kicked and charged successively; He turned the edge of the flying wedge, and interfered aggressively! ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... the bird, by a wedge-like motion, gives a forwardly-propelling action, and as the rear margin has more or less flexure, its action against the air is less during its upward beat, and this also adds to the upward lift of the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... adjust to the moccasins—terribly heavy, clumsy rat-trap affairs they looked, but they served us well on the higher reaches of the mountain and are, if not indispensable, at least most valuable where hard snow or ice is to be climbed. The snow-shoes, also, had to be rough-locked by lashing a wedge-shaped bar of hardwood underneath, just above the tread, and screwing calks along the sides. Thus armed, they gave us sure footing on soft snow slopes, and were particularly useful in ascending the glacier. While thus occupied at the base camp, came an Indian, his wife ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... constructions built of wedge-shaped blocks, which by reason of their shape give support one to another, and to the [Sidenote: Arches.] super-imposed weight, the resulting load being transmitted through the blocks to the abutments upon which the ends of the arch rest. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... struggling with brute material in the infancy of his trade or calling. No, my friend! I am glad not to be coeval with Pericles. I am glad to recognize Hellenic achievements at their true worth. I am glad to profit by that wedge of time which has enabled me to reverence things fair ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was flat. The shaft, about thirty inches long, was of the best malleable iron, so soft that it would tie into a knot and straighten out again without fracture. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... unanimous that they knew that Austria was losing the war and that they prayed to God that her downfall might be soon. He was further alleged to have said that it was doubtful how Europe would be divided after the war, but that in any case the Czecho-Slovak countries would be made independent as a wedge between Germany and Austria, and that if Germany won the Czechs would be germanised, like the Poles in Germany. The accused admitted that he did speak about the reorganisation of Europe, but not in the words used by the prosecution. But, as the Arbeiter Zeitung said, even if he did say ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... with a round backed wedge, which is pushed in from the side of the breech, and forced firmly home by a screw provided with handles; the face of the wedge is fitted with an easily removable flat plate, which abuts against a Broad well ring, let into a recess in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... Alexina and Alice Thorndyke (who grasped the entering wedge with both ruthless white little hands) went to France. Aileen was not strong enough to nurse so she bade a passionate good-by to her friends and engaged herself to Bob Cheever. Jimmie Thorne went to France as an ambulance driver, and Bascom Luning to join the Lafayette Escadrille. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... meet enemies in this lonely spot, but rather from an instinct of long frontier training. I had advanced possibly a hundred yards, when I approached a small clump of stunted evergreens, so closely woven together I could not wedge a passage between. Rounding their outer edge, my footsteps noiseless on ground thickly strewn with their soft needles, I came to a sudden halt within five paces ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... into the fray. The artful Lacy, he who had played such a clever game as shortstop in the baseball tournament the preceding season, snapped the ball to Snodgrass, who plunged straight for the middle of the Columbia line backed up by a solid wedge that seemed capable of carrying the heavy ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... of adultery, and bloody murder. Take heed, therefore, brethren, 'lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin' (Heb 3:12,13). And remember, that he that will rend the block, puts the thin end of the wedge first thereto, and so, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... she looks quite like a screen picture behind her piled-up cakes, ornamented with little posies. We will take shelter under her roof while we wait; and, to avoid the drops that fall heavily from the waterspouts, wedge ourselves tightly against her display of white and pink sweetmeats, so artistically spread out on fresh and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... must bear a part of the woe with us. When Achan sinned the children of Israel lost a victory. Sin is progressive. In the seventh chapter of Joshua and the twenty-first verse, we read, "When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and behold they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it." And you will notice that, first he saw, then he coveted, then he took. It is always thus; a sinful imagination will lead to outbreaking ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... forearm should be bandaged from below upward to the elbow. The bone is put in place by grasping the patient's elbow and pulling directly down in line with the arm, which is held slightly away from the side of the patient, while an assistant steadies and pulls up the shoulder. Then a wedge-shaped pad, long enough to reach from the patient's armpit to his elbow (made of cotton wadding or blanketing sewed in a cotton case) and about four inches wide and three inches thick at one end, tapering up to ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... twenty-seven minutes past two yesterday afternoon, were few and simple. He doubled Mr. Kilburn up, after the fashion of an ordinary jack-knife, and placed him in the barrel, wedge-extremity first, remarking, as he did so, "She is, is she?" He then rammed Mr. Kilburn carefully home, and put ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... hundred men. Captain Cook tells us that the ingenuity of these people appears in nothing more than in their canoes. They are long and narrow. One that he measured was sixty-eight and a half feet long, five feet broad, and three feet and a half deep. The bottom was sharp, with straight sides like a wedge. Each side consisted of one entire plank sixty-three feet long, ten or twelve inches broad, and an inch and a quarter thick. The bottom part of the canoe was hollowed out, and these planks were lashed ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... reverberation of their rifles had not died away when the impact came. But the shattering crash that Craven had expected did not occur. Giving way before them and scattering to right and left a break came in the ranks of the opposing force, through which they drove like a living wedge. Then with fierce yells of execration the enemy rallied and the next moment Craven found himself in the midst of a confused melee where friends and foes were almost indistinguishable. The thundering of horses' hoofs, the raucous shouting ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... spring, were partaken of most sociably and Al Stevens didn't always smoke. How good everything tasted! I don't believe I have ever really enjoyed apple pie with a fork as I enjoyed it sitting on a log with a generous wedge in one hand and a hearty morsel of ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... by the German invasion. Before the landing of the English in Britain the Christian Church stretched in an unbroken line across Western Europe to the furthest coasts of Ireland. The conquest of Britain by the pagan English thrust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of this great communion and broke it into two unequal parts. On one side lay Italy, Spain, and Gaul, whose churches owned obedience to and remained in direct contact with the See of Rome, on the other, practically cut off from the general body of Christendom, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... up the valley, but across the wedge of foothills which divided the South Y.D. from the parent stream. The assent was therefore much more rapid than the trails which followed the general course of the stream. Huge hills, shouldering together, left at times only wagon-track room ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the bay, he saw, by pinching a small chunk out of the huge cone of the volcano. The bay was a watery wedge cutting into the mountain to a depth of about twelve hundred yards, a half-mile wide at the entrance, and narrowing down to a bare half hundred yards of narrow beach at the point ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... bending to be considered in the truncated portion intersected? Not even the bending should be considered, except in the case of relatively shallow members, but simply the tendency on the part of the wedge-shaped section to slip out on the 45 deg. planes, thereby requiring sufficient reinforcement at the crossing of these planes of principal weakness to take the component of the load on this portion, tending to shove it out. This reinforcement, of course, should ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... were no twelve men in the mountains who would dare. And so the Tollivers decided to await the outcome of the trial and rest easy. But they did not count on the mettle and intelligence of the grim young "furriners" who were a flying wedge of civilization at the Gap. Straightway, they gave up the practice of law and banking and trading and store-keeping and cut port-holes in the brick walls of the Court House and guarded town and jail night and day. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... blew hard, and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge and my wedge I have knocked off her edge. If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon be ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... Henry arrayed his little army (about 1000 men-at-arms, 6000 archers, and a few thousands of other foot). It is probable that the usual three "battles'' were drawn up in line, each with its archers on the flanks and the dismounted men-at-arms in the centre; the archers being thrown forward in wedge-shaped salients, almost exactly as at Crecy (q.v..) The French, on the other hand, were drawn up in three lines, each line formed in deep masses. They were at least four times more numerous than the English, but restricted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his captors with his knowledge and potential. Trained to act as contact man with other races, there was a chance that Gordon had saved himself from whatever fate had been planned for the prisoners the Foanna had claimed. If that happened, Ashe could be their opening wedge in the Foanna stronghold. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... consort almost cried as such a horrid thought entered her head. In her ideas any feeling short of absolute enmity to a servant of the Church of Rome was an abandonment of some portion of the Protestant basis of the Church of England. "The small end of the wedge," she would call it, when people around her would suggest that that the heart of a Roman Catholic priest might possibly not be altogether black ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... were placed smooth strips of wood, well greased, called "ways,'' to facilitate the sliding in of the book. Two long, heavy spars, called steeves, made of the strongest wood, and sharpened off like a wedge at one end, were placed with their wedge ends into the inside of the hide which was the centre of the book, and to the other end of each straps were fitted, into which large tackles[1] were hooked, composed each of two huge purchase blocks, one hooked to the strap on the end ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... table in a downtown cafe there came to him a figure in khaki, wearing a short, close-fitting jacket with an odd emblem on the left sleeve—a young fellow who hailed Thompson with a hearty grip and a friendly grin. He sat himself in a chair vis-a-vis, laying his funny, wedge-shaped ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... legal process, he countered by instituting a score of suits against the company within the week. These had to do with wills, insanity cases, extra lateral rights, mine titles, and land and water rights. Wherever Ridgway saw room for an entering wedge to dispute the title of the Consolidated, he drove a new suit home. To say the least, the trust found it annoying to be enjoined from working its mines, to be cited for contempt before judges employed in the ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... the old hag. "Come and drive a wedge in the crack so I can get my nose out. Here I have stood for twice a hundred years, and no Christian soul has come ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... ascertain if he were safe from missiles from the loops. Assured of this fact, he stole round to the gate, and had a consultation with the Mohawk chief, on the subject of springing the mine. The cord was found in its place; and, hauling on it gently, Joel was soon certain that he had removed the wedge, and that force might speedily throw down the unhung leaf. Still, he proceeded with caution. Applying the point of a lever to the bottom of the leaf, he hove it back sufficiently to be sure it would pass inside of its fellow; and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed the backbone of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... commisar in Russia to-day is a Jew. Publicists are accustomed to speak of Russia as if it were in disorder, but the Jewish government of Russia is not. From a mass of underlings, the Jews of Russia came up in a perfect phalanx, a flying wedge through the superinduced disorder, as if every man's place had ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... began; and the "boomer" did not stop until he had inserted an opening wedge, in the shape of the purchase and opening to settlement of a vast area right in the heart of the prairie wilderness. When the first opening took place it seemed as though the supply would be in excess of the demand. Not so. Every acre—good, bad, or indifferent—was ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... inhabitants of the mountains are far superior in stature and independence of manners to those of the plains. Their houses are, however, inferior in many respects; they are built of planks roughly split from trees with a wedge, while their posts are formed of the camarina equally roughly squared. The roof is composed of reeds or shingles. The interior consists of but one room, with a square fireplace of brick at one end, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... family settled on Wedge's Prairie in the early part of this year. His house was immediately opened for religious meetings. But before I could arrange my plans to visit the neighborhood, my father, who was always on the alert ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... herself if perhaps she had not done more harm than good? And times again, when with the rebound of her naturally buoyant nature, she allowed herself to hope that she had succeeded in inserting the thin edge of the wedge; in 'making,' as she had expressed it to Francie, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... taken up a position of vantage to the north of the bridge, having both streams between his army and the town. He had arrayed his troops in a compact mass in the form of a wedge or triangle, whose narrower point was opposite to the roadway of the bridge. The men occupying the outer lines stood with their large shields locked together so closely that they made a strong rampart or shield fortress, behind which the archers and spearmen might remain in safety while assailing ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... in the kitchen. First off, this statement is likely to create the false impression that there was an ordinary grain here, a wedge of base hemlock in the citron. Not so. She ate in the kitchen because she could not yet face that vacant chair in the dining room without choking and losing her appetite. She could not look at the chair without visualizing ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... tactics. I knew he was creeping on me, inch by inch, and I could not tell from where. And then—he caught me. He held his hand over my mouth, and I bit him. I was helpless, strangling,—and some one was trying to break in the mantel from outside. It began to yield somewhere, for a thin wedge of yellowish light was reflected on the opposite wall. When he saw that, my assailant dropped me with a curse; then—the opposite wall swung open noiselessly, closed again without a sound, and I was alone. The ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... methinks is dismal, yet I see Over yon hill one bright and steady star Divide the darkness with its fiery wedge, And sprinkle glory on the lap of earth. Even so, above the still homes of the dead The benedictions of the living lie. Gatherers of waifs of beauty are we here, Building up homes of love for alien hearts That hate us for our trouble. When we see The tempest hiding from us the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... realise his visions; but I was by nature unadventurous and uninitiative: to divert me from all former paths and send me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force external to myself must be exerted; Destiny herself must use the fitting wedge; and little as I deemed it, that tool was already ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... chin which was a family characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to drive their way through life like a wedge. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... passers-by, he found himself in one of the side streets leading off Piccadilly, and there at the end of the street, a large house was blazing furiously. He worked his way vigorously through the spectators, now so densely gathered as to form a living wedge in the narrow street and block it against all traffic, and at length found himself in a position to see clearly the ruin that had already been wrought on ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... long ships was suddenly rising from the neighborhood of the central building, the tallest of the group. They went in a compact wedge formation and shot swiftly down along the wall of the invisible cone until they were directly over the low building nearest the Ancient Mariner. There was a sudden shimmer in the air. In an instant, the ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Romans beyond the Apennines begins with the laying out of the strong fortress of Atria (Atri) in the year 465, on the northern slope of the Abruzzi towards the Picenian plain, not immediately on the coast and hence with Latin rights, but still near to the sea, and the keystone of the mighty wedge separating northern and southern Italy. Of a similar nature and of still greater importance was the founding of Venusia (463), whither the unprecedented number of 20,000 colonists was conducted. That city, founded at the boundary ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... seed they would peck under the foot, but the nuthatch makes a vise to hold it of the bark of the tree, and one act is just as intelligent as the other; both are the promptings of instinct. But when man makes a vise, or a wedge, or a bootjack, he uses his individual intelligence. When the jay carries away the corn you put out in winter and hides it in old worms' nests and knot-holes and crevices in trees, he is obeying the ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the primary aim is the good deed, but are not the kind tone, word and polite bow fully as necessary? Are they not the entering wedge and do they not appeal to the higher nature in the same way that the thought of being of service ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... solid, acutely pointed characters which are known as wedges, and the larger, more obtuse characters, somewhat like our government broad arrows, and called arrow-heads. The names are rather unfortunate, as both forms are wedge-like and both resemble arrow-heads. The script reads from left to right, like our own writing, and unlike that of the Semitic peoples and the primitive Greeks; and the rule for the placing of the characters is that all the 'wedges' point to ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... pastry had occasioned, and more than a little fearful of the consequences if the truth ever should transpire; but the pie in hand was compensation for many such intangible difficulties in the future, and I was making great inroads on a wedge of it, when I thought I heard a sound outside the window, which the cook had masked with a ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... shore meadows he turned and watched the many flocks of birds that were flying over the sea. All were shrieking their coaxing calls—only one goose flock flew silently on as long as he could follow it with his eyes. The wedge was perfect, the speed good, and the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Mississippi here being south, while that of the Ohio is southwest, the southern part of Illinois projects like a wedge between the two other States. At the extreme point of the wedge, where the rivers meet, is a low point of land, subject, in its unprotected state, to frequent overflows by the rising of the waters. On this point, protected by dikes ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... the brittle silence, with a sharp report; and at intervals throughout the taut boreal night you could hear a hollow rumbling running down the length of the pond—the ice being split with the wide iron wedge ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... master is urgent, overriding the claims of kindred blood. Force and Violence, full of hatred, hold down the god who has stolen fire, Hephaestus' right, and given it to men. They bid the Fire-God make the chains fast and drive the wedge through Prometheus' body. When the work is done they leave him ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... committee of management, and name a treasurer and dispenser of supplies, were the most urgent steps. Julius suggested applying to a Nursing Sisterhood, but Mr. Truelove, without imputing any motives to the reverend gentleman, was unwilling to insert the thin end of the wedge; so the telegram was sent to a London Hospital, and Mr. Whitlock, the mayor-elect, undertook to be treasurer, and to print and circulate an appeal for supplies of all sorts. Those present resolved themselves into a committee, and consulted about a fever hospital, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rensselaers, for at that time the 'troubles' were confined to their property, who were the aggrieved parties. This false step has done an incalculable amount of mischief, if it do not prove the entering wedge to rive asunder the institutions of ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... The wedge point may not strike back at the hammer that drives it. Close packed behind Fracasse's company was a seemingly limitless mass of soldiery, palpitant with their short breaths, a steamy, sickening odor rising from their water-soaked clothes. Here were men so wet, so tired, so ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... hard, and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge, And my wedge, I have knocked off her edge! If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... O sovran Blanc? The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... running from St. Julien practically due west for about a mile, whence it curved southwestward before turning north to the canal near Boesinghe. Broadly speaking, on the section of the front then occupied by us the result of the operations had been to remove to some extent the wedge which the Germans had driven into the allied line, and the immediate danger ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... gradually toward the shoulders, both parts being unencumbered with superfluous flesh. The same general form extends backward, the fore quarters being, light the shoulders thin, and the carcass swelling out toward the hind quarters, so that when standing in front of her it has the form of a blunted wedge. Such a structure indicates very fully developed digestive organs, which exert a powerful influence on all the functions of the body, and especially on the secretion of the milky glands, accompanied with milk-veins and udder partaking of the same character ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... so loved, on her instruments, when they reached home, he soon could have come to recognize them, and so an evening at the opera with her would have meant pleasure to himself instead of stolid endurance. Ultimately it might have meant an effective wedge with which to pry against the waste of time, strength and money on the sheer amusement of herself in society. Once he started searching for them, he found many ways in which he might have made his life with his wife different, ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... over to the wake. They'll have a hell of a time." And the event fully redeemed the promise. The whole Gap turned out to do the dead bully honor. I have not heard from the Gap, and hardly from Hell's Kitchen, in five years. The last news from the Kitchen was when the thin wedge of a column of negroes, in their up-town migration, tried to squeeze in, and provoked a race war; but that in fairness should not be laid up against it. In certain local aspects it might be accounted a sacred duty; as much so as ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... curious little girl's disgust, her elder sister and her girl friends had quickly closed the door of the back parlor, before she could wedge her small self in ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... a very good answer, for every time he made it he drove a wedge into the coalition against him. Lady Moyne was bound to admit that all Irishmen outside Ulster are blackguards, and that the atmosphere of Dublin is poisonous. Clithering, on the other hand, was officially committed ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... facts with a vivid outpouring of exhortation, and an unsparing flow of sarcasm against the scorners of all classes. He and the Rev. J. Smith[338] (ante, 1854) are the most thoroughgoing universalists of all the writers I know on spiritualism. If either can insert the small end of the wedge, he will not let you off one fraction of the conclusion that all countries, in all ages, have been the theaters of one vast spiritual display. And I suspect that this consequence cannot be avoided, if any part of the system be of truly spiritual origin. Mr. Howitt treats the philosophers either as ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... our faithful regiments. Their ardor may no longer be curb'd in. They entreat permission to commence the attack; And if thou wouldst but give the word of onset, They could now charge the enemy in rear, Into the city wedge them, and with ease O'erpower them in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... used and their shape was also a matter of immemorial ordinance. Each piece was about a cubit long, about the length of the forearm of an average adult, measured from elbow to finger-tips. Each piece must be wedge-shaped, with the bark on the rounded side and the other two sides meeting at a sharp edge where had been the heart of the trunk or branch from which it had been cut. Each piece must have been clean cleft with a strong sweep of the axe. The pieces varied from sections of stout trunks to mere ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... a little thing caught hold of his dreaming mind. Continually as he ran on, black, silent birds rose startled out of the dust of the road before him, and fluttered noiselessly beyond his double wedge of light. What sort of bird could they be? Were they night-jars? Were they different kinds of birds snatching at the quiet of the night for a dust bath in the sand? This little independent thread of inquiry ran through the texture of his mind ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... ordered away to Van Diemen's Land. The Colonial-office had long projected making the Cape a penal colony, and it was supposed that political convicts would not be objected to. The colonists believed that this was merely the plan of insinuating the thin edge of the wedge, which would ensure the whole being driven home. John Mitchell was among the convicts; that gentleman having suffered at Bermuda from the climate, the government desired in mercy to place him in one more salubrious for persons afflicted with pulmonary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... All that was slightly grotesque in his outer man, the broad flat head, the red hair, the sharp wedge-like chin, disappeared for Constance in the single impression of his eyes—pale blue, intensely ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... WEDGE. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., the man whose name is the last on the list of honors in the voluntary classical examination, which follows the last examination required by statute, is called the wedge. "The last man is called the wedge" says Bristed, "corresponding to the Spoon ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... from among the best men that the country boasted, the very pick of strength and endurance and daring. And these, when the word was given, would swarm up with mallet and lock-pin over their half of the allotted work, in the race to drive home the last spike and wedge into place the last scantling. For days now with a grave sort of satisfaction which he hardly understood himself, Young Denny had time after time put all his strength against a reluctant log, skidding timber back on the hillside, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... so at the Conciergerie, in the presence of Presidents, Counsellors of the Parliament, Great Noblemen of the Court, and other Dignitaries, the Poor Thing was put into the Brodequins, or Boots, and wedge after wedge driven in between his Legs—already raw and inflamed with the Devilries of the President Michault—and the Iron Incasement. He rent the air with his Screams, until the Surgeons declared that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... is understood that a cutting tool in a lathe is simply a form of wedge which peels off a definite thickness of metal, the importance of proper grinding and correct position in the ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the mistaken idea that they, too, were for the orphan, all rushed at the same instant for the same portal, and jammed together between the door-posts. The Duke of Wellington, still grasping the rescued pipe, threw herself upon the human wedge and drove it, helter-skelter, down the steps; and simultaneously there arose, loud and clear, not from Cameron's Crossing, some miles distant, but just from the ravine bridge, scarcely a quarter of a mile away, the shrill whistle of ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... words, the British host poured like a deluge on their foes. But the Roman arms and discipline proved far too much for barbarian courage and ferocity. The British were repulsed, and, rushing forward in a wedge shape, the legions cut their way with frightful carnage through the disordered ranks. The cavalry seconded their efforts. Thousands fell. The rest took to flight. But the wagons of the British, which had been massed in the rear, impeded their flight, and a dreadful slaughter, in which ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... bark of no other tree, is in the construction of canoes. To procure proper pieces, the largest and smoothest trunks are selected. In the spring two circular incisions are made, several feet apart, and two longitudinal ones on opposite sides of the tree; after which, by introducing a wooden wedge, the bark is easily detached. These plates are usually ten or twelve feet long and two feet nine inches broad. To form the canoe, they are stitched together with fibrous roots of the white spruce about ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... the West End, and a seat in Parliament. Knowing also, as he did, that his friend Lopez was intimate with the Duchess of Omnium, he had much immediate satisfaction in the intimacy which these relations created. He was getting in the thin edge of the wedge, and would calculate as he went home to Ponder's End how long it must be before he could ask his friend to propose him at some West End club. On one halcyon summer evening Lopez had dined with him at Ponder's End, had smiled on Mrs. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... said brusquely. "Never mind the fee, and take these coppers. They may be of some use to you. Good-bye!" He bowed her out, and closed the door behind her. After all she was the thin edge of the wedge. These wandering people have great powers of recommendation. All large practices have been built up from such foundations. The hangers-on to the kitchen recommend to the kitchen, they to the drawing-room, and so it spreads. At least he ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is this whilom capital of the tiny feudal kingdom; topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, coated of many colours are its zig-zag little streets, one house tumbling on the back of its neighbour, another having contrived to wedge itself between two of portlier bulk, a third coolly taking possession of some inviting frontage, shutting out its fellow's light, air, and sunshine; here, meeting the eye, breakneck alley, there aerial terrace, and on all sides architectural reminders of the Souvigny passed away, the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... road and turned into a loaning that came down the mountain-side, a thing that once might have been a road, if there had been any need for it, or energy to make it. But now it was only a wedge of common land bounded on both sides by a low stone wall. Inside one wall was a path, and inside the other a little rill, and betwixt the two of them were firm moss and stones. And here the moss was yellowish-green and there red as blood. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... direction of their main force. Instead of proceeding to the west of Paris they swung round steadily to the southeast in order to keep their armies away from the enveloping movement of the French and English and drive their famous wedge-like formation southward for the purpose of dividing the allied forces of the west from the French Army of the East. The miraculous had happened, and Paris, for a little time at least, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... a wedge of pie at Mrs. Hill's insistence, "now they've made the wrong move. Burning Sinclair's property and attacking an officer of the Solar ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... possession of the potatoes, with which he proceeded to defend himself. Only two balls were pitched, but they held the enemy in check until Harry's deputies had rushed out of the club-house. A flying wedge scattered the crowd. No further violence was needed. The ruffians saw that he meant business and had the nerve and muscle to carry it through, and nothing more was ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... saw him again. The archway to street sent toward us a deep wedge of shadow. He had a cloak which he wrapped around him and a large round hat which he drew low over his gray-blue eyes. With a firm step he crossed to the archway where the ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... pickthanke, but you must not bee discouraged by theyr talke, for the most part of those beggerly contemners of wit, are huge burlybond butchers like Aiax, good for nothing but to strike right downe blowes on a wedge with a cleauing beetle, or stande hammering all daie vppon barres of yron. The whelpes of a Beare neuer grow but sleeping, and these bearewards hauing big limmes shall bee preferd though they doe nothing. You haue read stories, (He bee sworne he ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... discussing bird intelligence with Mr. Herbert D. Atkin, keeper of our Eagles Aviary and the cranes and water birds in the Flying Cage, he called to my attention two species of birds which had very much impressed him. Afterward he showed me all that he described. Keeper Atkin regards the wedge-tailed eagle, of Australia, as the wisest species with which he has to deal. In the first place, all four of the birds in that flock recognize the fact that he is a good friend, not an enemy, and each day they receive him ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... divisive and internecine spirit of all Balkan history. The fate and future of Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro now depend on the issue of the great European conflict. The same thing is true of Turkey, into which meanwhile Russian forces, traversing the Caucasus, have driven a dangerous wedge through Armenia towards Mesopotamia. Roumania has thus far maintained the policy of neutrality to which she adhered so successfully in the first Balkan war—a policy which in view of her geographical situation, with Bulgaria to the south, Russia ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... were set singly. The line by which they were lowered and hauled up, and which also served as a buoy line, was fastened to one of the end frames of the bottom or sill, as it is called, at the intersection of the hoop. The buoys generally consist of a tapering piece of cedar or spruce, wedge-shaped, or nearly spindle shaped, and about 18 inches long. They are usually painted in distinctive colors, so that each fisherman may easily recognize his own. Small kegs ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... with the chair into the hall and slammed the door. Then I jammed a wedge under it," he chuckled. "That will hold it better than any lock. Every push ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... sunk down on the floor sobbing, after making that practical suggestion; and, casting about for burglarious implements to aid me, I found the spit and a wedge-shaped piece of hard wood. These I inserted just above and below the lock, and, forcing back the door on its frame, I soon had the satisfaction of seeing the ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of weapons, they'd have to learn to make them, and once they began studying technology, they found that they had to study science. Weapon-making was the entering-wedge; after that, they found that they could use the same skills to make anything else they wanted. Give them another century or so and they'll be one of the great races ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... hangman; work for the hammerman, not in building. The very Houses of Aristocrats, we say, are doomed. Paralytic Couthon, borne in a chair, taps on the wall, with emblematic mallet, saying, "La Loi te frappe, The Law strikes thee;" masons, with wedge and crowbar, begin demolition. Crash of downfall, dim ruin and dust-clouds fly in the winter wind. Had Lyons been of soft stuff, it had all vanished in those weeks, and the Jacobin prophecy had been fulfilled. But Towns are not built of soap-froth; Lyons Town is built of stone. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... shelling corn of the different colors as if on a wager. Each man made a figure of moist clay, about four or five inches across the base. Some of these were in the form of two mammae, and there were also many wedge and cone forms, in all of which were embedded corn kernels, forming the cloud and other of the simpler conventional figures in different colors, but the whole surface was studded as full as possible with the kernels. Each man brought down ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... all probability," suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out." ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... escape, from the house-tops, and from the darkened windows, they opened fire with rifle and artillery. But our men had seen the dead faces of their leaders and comrades, and they were frantic, desperate. They charged like madmen. Nothing could hold them. Our wedge swept steadily forward, and the guns sputtered from the front and rear and sides, flashing and illuminating the night like ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the wedge like the stroke of a hammer. Sometimes they drove it: oftener the wedge stayed still where it was. But it never slipped back. When it was stubbornest, and the days seemed to lose their weight, when Valerie's hold seemed indefeasible, when the woods were quick with memory, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... until it expressed concisely and pointedly exactly what Bassett wished to be said at this point in the convention's proceedings. Interruptions, of applause or derision, were to be reckoned with; but the speaker did not once drop his voice or pause long enough for any one to drive in a wedge of protest. He might have been swamped by an uprising of the whole convention, but strange to say the convention was intent upon hearing him. Once the horde of candidates and distinguished visitors on the platform had been won to attention, Harwood turned slowly ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... him, beaming the Survey Station at the edge of Syrtis Major, the great equatorial wedge of blue-green growths on the floor ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... for a supposed reflex disease) swept the whole country during the eighties and threatened the unsexing of the entire female population. The ovaries had the reputation of causing all the trouble that the flesh of woman was heir to. Oophorectomy was the entering wedge, since then everything contained in the abdomen has become liable to extirpation ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... critics would have been better satisfied with this. But, on the principle of the little elephants sacrificing themselves in the passage of a river, Mr. Fields and I determined to start the smallest word first, and thus to drive a gentle wedge into the close chasm of the public favor. Sensitive, however, as I am, dear Ingham, to your criticism, I will at the earliest opportunity consult with him as to a ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... and denuded of its bones, and let the front steel be exchanged for a very flexible one, and let the stays, above all, be very loosely laced. We feel we are weak in conceding thus much even, but we look upon it as the thin end of the wedge, which represents the fulfilment ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... in time of heavy weather special appliances are necessary, which, of course, must be easily operated from the deck. Wedge-shaped pieces with rails attached may be driven down by screws upon the sides of the vessel, thus having the effect of gradually narrowing the amplitude of the rocking motion until a condition of stability with reference to the hull has ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... minutes to seven, I was in readiness on the scene. There was a recess with a curtain in front of it a few yards from the door, and there I waited, fondling my little wedge, for Harold to walk up and allow the proceedings to start. It was almost pitch-dark, and that made the time of waiting seem longer. Presently—I seemed to have been there longer than ten minutes—I heard steps approaching. They came past where I stood, and went on into the room. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... and had split off the West Welsh of the south-western peninsula. AEthelfrith had to do with the Kymry, whose territories stretched from the Bristol Channel to the Clyde, and who held an outlying wedge of land then known as Loidis and Elmet, which now together form the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... than the diameter of the hollow in the bullet. It may be easily understood that although this compound bullet was smaller than the bore of the rifle, a blow with the ramrod after loading would drive the conical bullet upon the larger diameter of the boxwood cone, which, acting like a wedge, would expand the lead, thus immediately secured within the barrel. The expansion when fired drove the boxwood into the centre of the bullet, which of ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... them. This little straggling town, of not more than six thousand and odd inhabitants, possesses a public library of ten thousand volumes, a natural history museum, and a theatre, and other resources. It is eminently Catholic, but I was glad to find that the thin edge of the Protestant wedge is being driven in there, a Protestant service being now held once a month, and this will doubtless soon develop into some regular organization. Protestantism means cleanliness, education, and domestic morality, and Catholicism the reverse; so no wonder that ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... or gorge—a sort of gigantic split in the earth— lying between two parallel ranges of hills at a depth of several hundred feet, shaped like a wedge, and so narrow below that there was barely standing room. The gold all lay at the bottom, the slopes being too steep to afford it ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hungarian frontier, which was mainly directed by successive heads of the family of Babenberg (971-1246), first as Margraves and afterwards as Dukes of Austria. The Hapsburg power, like that of the Hohenzollerns, is partly an inheritance from medieval frontiersmen who drove a German wedge into the heart of ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... several undarned holes and discoloured places, and in the centre stood a tarnished cruet which contained mustard, pepper, vinegar, and three ambiguous dried-up bottles. The bread was on an ample board with a pious rim, and an honest wedge of cheese loomed disproportionate on a little plate. Mr. and Mrs. Lewisham were seated facing one another, and Mrs. Chaffery sat in the broken chair because ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... soberness. He was overwhelmed with the kindness he had experienced. He did not expect any speedy result from the Expedition, but he was sanguine as to its ultimate benefit. He thought they would get in the thin end of the wedge, and that it would be driven home by English energy and spirit. For himself, with all eyes resting upon him, he felt under an obligation to do better than he had ever done. And as to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... vault of the roof has one peculiarity, perhaps worthy of notice (and seen in the preceding woodcut, Fig. 9). The central keystone of the arch has the form of a triangular wedge, or of the letter V, a type seen in other rude and primitive arches. Interiorly, a similar keystone line appears to run along the length of the vault, but not always perfectly straight; and the whole figure of the arch distinctly affects ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... and horn and chose a seat close to the river. Before her was a gap in the knotted grapevine heaps that clung along the brink of the bank; through it, veiled only by some tendrils that swung wishfully across, lay a wedge-like vista of muddy water, bottom-land, bluff, and sky. The mid-morning sun glinted upon the treacherous current, upon the wet grass of the bottom-land, upon the green-brown bluff and the Gatling at its top, upon the far, curving ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... ancient belief as to the original source of the Phoenician alphabet, but divided scholars between two opinions: the one contending that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were the source upon which the Phoenicians drew; and the other contending with equal fervor that the Babylonian wedge character ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of men arranged in the form of a wedge, i.e. narrow in front and widening towards the rear; hence peculiarly adapted to break ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... and an archangel shall signify as much as the complete history of a planet, from the time when it curdled to the time when its sun was burned out. And yet, when a strong brain is weighed with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against a wedge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... morals.' Neither ministerial allurements, nor ministerial threats can subdue the cantankerous spirit of these bigots. They are all but frantic and certainly not without reason, for the Irish Colleges' Bill is the fine point of that wedge which, driven home, will shiver to pieces their 'wicked political system.' Whatever improves Irish intellect will play the mischief with its 'faith,' though not at all likely to deteriorate its 'morals.' Let the people of Ireland be well employed as a preliminary to ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... forward, roaring. Mrs. Derrick was swept back, pushed to one side. Her husband no longer belonged to her. She paid the penalty for being the wife of a great man. The world, like a colossal iron wedge, crushed itself between. She was thrust to the wall. The throng of men, stamping, surrounded Magnus; she could no longer see him, but, terror-struck, she listened. There was a moment's lull, then a vast thunder of savage jubilation. Magnus ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of gold and quicksilver remaining at the bottom, in consequence of its weight. This amalgam is then put into a linen bag, and pressed very hard, by which the greatest part of the mercury is strained off, and the remainder is evaporated off by the force of fire, leaving the gold in a little wedge or mass, shaped like a pine-apple, whence it is called a pinna. This is afterwards melted and cast in a mould, to know its exact weight, and to ascertain the proportion of silver that is mixed with the gold, no farther process of refining being done here. The weightiness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the guide, who gravely affirmed, after we had parted, that there must be two sorts of Americans, as these we had just left did not at all resemble those he had conducted to the convent. May this little incident prove an entering wedge to some new ideas in the Valais, on the subject of the ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... such simple amusements in a sort of general category as "works of the Devil," and turn deaf ears to every invitation to point out any evil results, being satisfied with their own statement that it was the "thin edge of the wedge." This good man, however, was very obviously driving a wedge into the hearts of many of his poor neighbours who in those days found no opportunity for relief in innocent pleasures from the sordid ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... more moped at being in the house so much, and pestered Christopher to take her out, and he declined: and, being a man hard to beat, took to writing on medical subjects, in hopes of getting some money from the various medical and scientific publications; but he found it as hard to get the wedge in there ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Gad, wedge or spike of iron, Gainest, readiest, Gar, cause, Gart, compelled, Gentily, like a gentleman, Gerfalcon, a fine hawk, Germane, closely allied, Gest, deed, story, Gisarm, halberd, battle-axe, Glaive, sword, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... lock," said Chet, getting to his feet and rumpling up his hair thoughtfully. "I'll have to get a hammer and a wedge of some sort." ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... contrivance made from long, slender branches of willow, which grew on the banks of most of the streams. One of these branches would be cut, and after sharpening the butt-end to a point, split a certain distance, and by a wedge the prongs divided sufficiently to admit a fish between. The Indian fisherman would then slyly put the forked end in the water over his intended victim, and with a quick dart firmly wedge him between the prongs. When secured there, the work of landing him took but a moment. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... better I would not get as far as Chicago. I am a man of family and contemplated that with my Hudson could drive to Chicago by land in 8 days, but as you advise leaving my family I consider you knows best, tho at present I dont see any enducements at all. $3.00 per day is carpenter wedge in this part of Louisiana for 10 hours and $4.00 machinest. But our chances are so slim. Causes me to be disgusted at the south. Our poll tax paid, state and parish taxes yet with donations we cannot get schools. What do you think of conditions here? Thanking ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... the cobbles, sniffed with recognition and unstiffened his mind as he gazed along the dreary street. He was here, on his own ground; somewhere in the recesses of those gaunt houses he would sleep that night, and next day he would wedge himself back into his place in that uneasy waterside community and all would be as before. He shivered under the lee of the sheds as he stood, looking, scarcely thinking, merely realizing the scene in ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a tough job before he could move it. Twice over he was about to give it up, for when at last he managed to make it move a little it kept slipping back into its place, and seeming to wedge itself farther in. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... said, "let each pick up one of these blocks of stone which have fallen from the wall. We will wedge the door from behind, and can then sleep secure ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty |
