"Hobnailed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room, put on hobnailed boots, filled a canteen, and hurried back to the corral. Yaqui awaited him. The Indian carried a coiled lasso and a short stout stick. Without a word he led the way down the lane, turned up the river toward the mountains. None of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... a good hobnailed boot for ordinary service, but for work on the ice the heel of the boot is taken off, and an iron clamp with ice nails substituted. For mountaineering feats they often use scarpe da gatto, or cat shoes, made of string soles with felt uppers, which are more lasting than the Pyrenean ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... was at the bottom of it. Sergeant Fugler, the best marksman in the Company, was a hard drinker, with a hobnailed liver. He lay now in bed with that hobnailed liver, and the Doctor said it was only a question of days. But why should this so extraordinarily discompose Captain Pond, who had no particular affection for Fugler, and knew, besides, that all men—and ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave." The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool:— "Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool? I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolthead jest ye did That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid." Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace, For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Trembling as usual the child came and gave her the books, and then with stammering tongue began saying a chapter of sacred history, when Manin's entrance interrupted them. He came in with his eternal green jacket, short breeches and rough manners, making the floor tremble under his hobnailed boots. It was this costume, which even in the country was out of date, that chiefly gave rise to the notoriety and fame he had been supposed to have as a formidable bear-hunter. He entered with his head down as usual; he peered in ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... onrolling wave. Lodged in this strange pile was the body of a horse. Deep among the meshes a terrible spectacle presented itself. There were the bodies of three people—a woman, a child and a laborer with hobnailed shoes. They were beyond the reach of the workers who are clearing the wreck near to the bridge and the latter will be unable to reach the corpses until a considerable amount of blasting with dynamite ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... though for support,—only to perk her head with a sudden little motion of determination, to turn, and then with a laugh go on with her work. Presently he heard her singing above the clatter of kitchenware and the scuffling of the men with their heavy, hobnailed shoes. And he knew that it was a song of the lips, not of the heart, that she might lighten the burden of others ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... rattle, and when endless processions of ambulances drive in and deliver broken, ruined men, and then drive off again, to return loaded with more wrecks. The beds in the Salle d'Attente, where the ambulances unload, are filled with heaps under blankets. Coarse, hobnailed boots stick out from the blankets, and sometimes the heaps, which are men, moan or are silent. On the floor lie piles of clothing, filthy, muddy, blood-soaked, torn or cut from the silent bodies on the beds. ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... avalanches roared and thundered down the rocks, dashing the fragments of stone over the lower ice fields. We were not roped together like mountain climbers in the Swiss or Tyrolean Alps; we got the real thrills by using our own hands and feet without ice pick, staff or hobnailed shoes. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... gentleman and a small boy were slowly walking when a change of guard occurred. The new men took their posts without words while the relieved detail turned down a long corridor that for a moment echoed with the clatter of hobnailed boots on stone. Then all was surprisingly still. Even the boy was impressed into reluctant silence as he viewed the uniformed men, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... used what was left over from our African trip. Sun helmets are best in the open; slouch-hats are infinitely preferable in the woods. There should be hobnailed shoes—the nails many and small, not few and large; and also moccasins or rubber-soled shoes; and light, flexible leggings. Tastes differ in socks; I like mine of thick wool. A khaki-colored shirt ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... had him say his lines a hundred times until he had them pat. Then he was off, directing here, there, and everywhere, until the court was cleared of all that had no business there, and the last surreptitious small boy had been duly projected from the gates by Peter Hostler's hobnailed boot. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... not go out with hobnailed sandals,(111) nor with one sandal when there is no sore on his other foot, nor with phylacteries, nor with an amulet unless it be of an expert, nor with a coat of mail, nor with a helmet, nor with greaves; but, if he go out, he is not ...
— Hebrew Literature
... enveloped in a kind of overcoat which might have been black once but which was now of a greenish hue, the result of the inclemency of the weather; he gnawed his heavy moustache in silence and turned sombre, uneasy looks on all, including his companion in misfortune. He wore hobnailed shoes and carried a stout cudgel. He was more like a piece of the human wreckage one sees in the street corners of great cities than a genuine tramp. Instead of a collar, there was a variegated handkerchief round his neck. His name, he had told the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... gateway MY SECOND first arose, When Barnacles the freshman Was pinned upon the nose: Pinned on the nose by Boxer, Who brought a hobnailed herd From Barnwell, where he kept a van, Being indeed a dogsmeat man, Vendor of terriers, blue or tan, And ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... the Bishop came—came in knee-breeches, hobnailed shoes, and shovel hat, and the little church was decked with greens. The Bishop came from Paradise, little Jane used to think, and once, to be polite, she asked him how all the folks were in Heaven. Then the other children giggled and the Bishop spilt a whole cup of tea down the front of his best ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... a man, who, though clad as roughly as the others, yet had an individuality so distinct from them as to be noticeable even to a stranger. He wore an old soft hat and rough blouse, his trousers being tucked into a pair of heavy, hobnailed boots that reached to his knees. He was tall and stooped slightly, but there was none of the slouching figure and gait that characterized those around him. His movements were quick, and, when standing motionless, there was something in his very pose that conveyed an impression ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... was, had two distinguishing marks; a mole on the brow, and a pair of hobnailed shoes on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... slope of the Brenner, with its long, single street, zigzagged like a straggling path in the snow,—perhaps it was laid out in that way,—and its little open square, with shrine and rude stone fountain, surrounded by women in short skirts and hobnailed shoes, dipping their buckets. On both sides of this street ran queer arcades sheltering shops, their doorways piled with cheap stuffs, fruit, farm implements, and the like, and at the far end, it was almost the last house in the town, stood the ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sound on the far side of the cave. It came from the ladder; the sound of Eli's hobnailed boots, rung upon rung, as he climbed aloft towards the adit, to fasten ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... morning, as we loafed along, having a good time, other pedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides, and with the intent and determined look of men who were walking for a wager. These wore loose knee-breeches, long yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-laced walking-shoes. They were gentlemen who would go home to England or Germany and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book every day. But I doubted if they ever had much real fun, outside of the mere magnificent exhilaration ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the presence of the Burning Bush and hears the command, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." It seems a thousand pities that even college students rush into the presence of the Burning Bush in hobnailed shoes, shouting forth the college ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... my station, when I seized the lasso's end and braced myself as well as possible, intending, if he slipped, to haul in slack and help him as best I might. As he came slowly down from crack to crack, I heard his hobnailed shoes grating on the granite; presently they appeared dangling from the eaves above my head. I had gathered in the rope until it was taut, and then hurriedly told him to drop. He hesitated a moment and let go. Before he struck ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... His hands were those of an indefatigable worker,—large, thick, square, and wrinkled with deep furrows. His chest was of seemingly indestructible muscularity. He never relinquished his peddler's costume,—thick, hobnailed shoes; blue stockings knit by his wife and hidden by leather gaiters; bottle-green velveteen trousers; a checked waistcoat, from which depended the brass key of his silver watch by an iron chain which long ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the labourer does not get her shins smashed with heavy kicks from hobnailed boots, such as the Lancashire ruffians administer; but, although serious wife-beating cases are infrequent, there are few women who escape an occasional blow from their husbands. Most of them get a moderate amount of thrashing in the course of their lives, and take it much as they take the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... things he had intended keeping to himself. When he was through, McKenna went so far as to admit that he had been a trifle hasty in arresting Pierre Jarrett. Rand suspected that he was mentally kicking himself with hobnailed boots for his premature act. He also submitted, for McKenna's approval, the scheme he had outlined to Dave Ritter, and obtained ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... the foremost counting all things holy that were therein contained." The five bells which hang in the belfry are the same in which Bunyan so much delighted, the fourth bell, tradition says, being that he was used to ring. The rough flagged floor, "all worn and broken with the hobnailed boots of generations of ringers," remains undisturbed. One cannot see the door, set in its solid masonry, without recalling the figure of Bunyan standing in it, after conscience, "beginning to be tender," told him that "such practice was but vain," ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... semicircle around the entrance door. The vanguard were led by a drum and a violin. The expressions on the faces of the men were wild and haggard, most wore greasy bonnets of wool, some huge wooden shoes, some hobnailed ones, and over their shoulders or in their hands protruded their weapons—pitchforks, scythes, flails, knives, clubs, and rusty guns. All must have been several thousand, collected from every hamlet in his territory. They seemed like a legion of some spectre army of Hunger and Ignorance. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... didn't matter much where they went so long as they could go together. They rode out to South Chicago on the ill-smelling South Deering cars, crowded with men and women with foreign faces. One of the men trod on Kate's foot with his hobnailed shoe and gave an inarticulate grunt ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... morning, enough to soften the ground and wipe out the traces of the numerous parties that had made Deer Mountain the objective point of a tramp in the woods, and, mingled with her own small footsteps, Bessie soon found the marks of hobnailed feet, that must, she was sure, have been made ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... am idle and indolent because I don't care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?" said Lavender with impetuous contempt. "Well, be it so. She is welcome to her opinion. But if she is grieved at heart because I can't make hobnailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the character ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... food and accommodation that science and ingenuity can frame; it would be a portentous trip for the most accomplished modern pedestrian, assisted though he would be by roads, friendly wayside inns and farms, maps of the route, and hobnailed walking boots. La Salle undertook it with thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness before him, through tribes assumed to be hostile till they proved themselves otherwise, with doubtful and quarreling companions, and shod with moccasins of green hide. Even of the Frenchmen ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... second of confusion, worked fast and clearly. She examined the road and saw that a little way on the gravel had been violently agitated. She detected several prints of hobnailed boots. There were prints, too, on a patch of peat on the south side behind a tall bank of sods. "That's where they were hidin'," she concluded. Then she explored on the other side in a thicket of hazels ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the sorrows of human existence. All these floated along with the immense tide of population, whom mere curiosity had drawn together; and where the mechanic, in his leathern apron, elbowed the dink and dainty dame, his city mistress; where clowns with hobnailed shoes were treading on the kibes of substantial burghers and gentlemen of worship; and where Joan of the dairy, with robust pace and red sturdy arms, rowed her way onwards, amongst those prim and pretty moppets, whose sires were knights and squires. The throng and confusion was, however, of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... motor-cyclist carrying despatches could not understand that a conversation on a street crossing was a sacred ceremony. So they shouldered the conversationalists aside or splashed them with mud. It was intolerable. Had they stamped into a mosque in their hobnailed boots, on account of their faulty religious training, the Salonikans might have excused them. But that a man driving an ambulance full of wounded should think he had the right to disturb a conversation that was blocking the traffic of only the entire water-front ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... pushed through the swinging, glass door, stood with his hobnailed boots on the tesselated pavement inside the bank, and contemplated the Semitic face of the spruce clerk who, with the glittering gold-scales by his side, stood ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... his thick hobnailed boots and a stiff sukmana,[1] fastened a hard strap round his waist, and put on his high sheepskin cap. The heaviness in his limbs increased, and it came into his mind that it would be more suitable ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... roof of one of the little hotels that stand timorously and humbly, yet expectantly, between the imposing cream-stucco of the Grand Hotel at one end and the elaborate pink-stucco of the Grande Bretegne at the other. The hobnailed shoes of the Teuton (who wears his mountain kit all the way from Hamburg to Palermo) wore up and down the stairs all day; and the racket from the hucksters' carts and hotel omnibuses, arriving and departing from the steamboat landing, the shouts of the begging boatmen, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath |
