Cassius Marcellus Coolidge A Friend in Need painting

Cassius Marcellus Coolidge A Friend in Need paintingEdvard Munch Puberty 1894 paintingEdvard Munch Madonna painting
number locked together in a sweaty chain to pull the bar this way, the others strove as gruntly to pull it that. "No, blast!" would yell Stoker; "Flunk-ay!" they would curse back; and some on both sides seeing what was amiss, each changed to pushing instead of pulling, with the same result. One team had fewer members, but all male; the other had more men but three brawny women as well, by whose presence less was gained in horsepower than was lost in horseplay. After two reversals of direction, moreover, the rhythm broke entirely; every man pulled, pushed, or stood fast as he listed, braying imprecations on the rest in any case -- and the bar stood still, but not the gauge-needle. Suddenly a man near the end of the longer line let go and fled -- or would have, had I not thrust out my stick with an oath and brought him crashing down.
"Yi hoo!" I cried, and in an access of mad spirit hurled the liquor-flask at the glass face of the gauge. Since our objective, clearly, was to stop the pointer before it reached the red, why did we not lay hold of it, I wondered, swing from it if need be, and check it where it was? Alack, the flask rebounded to the catwalk, barely having cracked what I meant to