"Ramrod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never for long, and whenever I woke I could see that there was a light in more than one of the officers' tents, and talking was going on in a low tone amongst the men, the snapping of a lock or springing of a ramrod sounding far in the still air, telling of preparation for the coming strife. A little after midnight we fell in as quietly as possible, and by the light of a lantern the orders for the assault were then read to the men. They were to the following purport: Any officer ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... were rising; had meanwhile taken the guns to pieces, and laid the pieces on the kitchen table; had piled up their oily cloths on the settle and on the chairs; had spilled oil from the lamp-filler, in trying to drop some into one of the ramrod sockets, and thus, by the time Margaret did come down, her kitchen and her breakfast both were in a very ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... wasn't Darcy's at all," said Sweeny firmly, standing as straight as a ramrod, with his hands behind his back, a picture of surly, wronged integrity. "And there's no man livin' can prove she was. Ask him now what way ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... about the decks in their gregoes. Indeed, come to look at it, what more does a man-of-war's-man absolutely require to live in than his own skin? That's room enough; and room enough to turn in, if he but knew how to shift his spine, end for end, like a ramrod, without disturbing ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was to hold up and load. The red skin was coming jogging along pretty well blowed out, about five hundred yards in the rear. Thinks I, here goes to load any how. So at it I went—in went the powder, and putting on my patch, down went the ball about half-way, and off snapped my ramrod!" ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Single barrel, with a flint lock, so that it never wants no caps, and it comes out of the stock quite easy, and the barrel unscrews in the middle, and the ramrod too, so that you can put it all in your pocket, and nobody knows ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... had blown or beaten them nearly all off the poor creature's back, and was in a fair way completely to disable my gun, the ramrod of which was already broken and splintered clubbing his victim. But a couple of shots from the revolver, sighted by a lighted match, at the head of ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... said the detective, "and don't stand holding yourself like a ramrod—like that gent out there with the ruff that must be taking the skin off his chin. I kinder thought I'd like to see the whole show, but we'd best go now and wait ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and caustic it as soon as you can. Or, for want of caustic, explode gunpowder in the wound; of else do what Mr. Mansfield Parkyns well suggests, i.e., cut away with a knife, and afterwards burn out with the end of your iron ramrod, heated as near a white heat as you can readily get it. The arteries lie deep, and as much flesh may, without much danger, be cut or burnt into, as the fingers can pinch up. The next step is to use the utmost ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the steel spindle, then the thread was run and spun on this shuck until it was full; then these were reeled off into hanks of thread, then spooled on to corn-cobs with holes burned through them. These were placed in an upright frame, with long slender rods of hickory wood something like a ramrod run through them. The frame held about one hundred of these cob-spools; the end of the cotton thread from each spool was gathered up by an experienced warper who carried all the threads back and forth on the large warping-bars; this was a difficult task; only ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... construction so similar that I had no difficulty in loading both barrels of the gun, and it seemed such easy work to just slip in a couple of little rolls of brown paper as compared to the way in which I had seen men load guns with a ramrod. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... had nearly run out, and Jabez, who had his eyes about him in every direction, had seen nothing of the ghost, when, as it had just gone seven bells, he fancied that he observed a dark object gliding about under the hammocks. He stood as upright and stiff as his own ramrod. So immovable was he, that any one might have supposed him asleep on his post; but his little black eyes were not the less vigilant. The dark object moved slowly and cautiously on till it reached the lockers, where the men's mess ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Drawing his ramrod, the man gave his dog such a beating that the poor creature had something worth howling for, because it might be the witch that he was thrashing. Then running to the shanty of the suspected woman he flung open her door and demanded to see her back, for, if she had really changed ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... from under his canvas shell and started to clean it out. It was what was called a bulldog pistol, because it had a blunt, short muzzle. Abe's forefinger was long enough to use as a ramrod for it. But before he began operations he snapped the trigger and, to his astonishment, the thing ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... thickly studded with freeholders, was a strong reason for her being paid every attention in Lord Callonby's power to bestow; Miss Betty O'Dowd—for so she was generally styled—was the very personification of an old maid; stiff as a ramrod, and so rigid in observance of the proprieties of female conduct, that in the estimation of the Clare gentry, Diana was a hoyden ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... exhibited the apparently naked character of his vessel. She appeared suspiciously full of corn for a boat homeward bound. There was an awkward smell about the closely-boarded forecastle which resembled that of unwashed negroes. Abd-el-Kader drew a steel ramrod from a soldier's rifle, and ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... telegram casts me to the Dragon, that I shall be in danger of getting eaten up. His Dragonship, among other stodgy defects, has that of eminent, well-nigh repulsive, respectability. He is as respectable as a ramrod or a poker, and very elderly, Ellaline says. From the way she talks about him he must be getting on for a hundred, and he is provided with a widowed sister, a Mrs. Norton, whom he has dug up from some place in the country to act as chaperon for his ward. All other women he is supposed to ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and a stock from another, and was a complete gun. But this took time; perhaps a month; for the gunsmiths would only work at it in their leisure; they were delinquent subscribers, and they did it in part pay for their papers. When they got through with it my boy's brother made himself a ramrod out of a straight piece of hickory, or at least as straight as the gun-barrel, which was rather sway-backed, and had a little twist to one side, so that one of the jour printers said it was a first-rate ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... looked like rainin'. An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An' send the insines skootin' to the bar-room with their banners, (Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water. Recollect wut fun we hed, you 'n I an' Ezry Hollis, Up there to Waltham plain last fall, ahavin' the Cornwallis? [Footnote: i halt the Site of a feller with a muskit as I do plze But their is fun to a Cornwallis I ain't agoin to deny it.—H.B.]This ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and in half an hour after he was found dead, the surgeon kneeling pale and grim over him, with his two thumbs sunk in his thigh below the wound, the grass steeped in blood. If he had put them two inches higher, or extemporized a tourniquet with his sash and the pistol's ramrod and a stone, he might have saved his friend's life and his own—for he shot himself ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... companion. As the smoke cleared away I saw the deer spring into the air and fall lifeless to the ground. The bullet had struck her in the very spot I intended. Charley rose to his feet, and I ran forward, anxious to ascertain if he was injured. Providentially, his ramrod alone was broken, and, except a bruise on the shoulder which caused him some pain, he ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... North America," said Jack, "who entice little antelopes towards them by merely wagging a bit of rag on the end of a ramrod." ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne |
