"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soldiery surged up from the south, overflowed the barricades to the north, and swept the last of the Russians out of the streets like so much chaff. All the hundred streams converged upon Muswell Hill, and joined the ranks of the attacking force, and so the night fell upon the last struggle of the world-war. Even the Tsar himself now saw that the gigantic game was virtually over, and that the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... slay, the dogs to tear and fight over the corpse, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field; for who will have pity on thee, O Jerusalem? Thou hast rejected me. I am weary of relenting. I will scatter them as with a broad winnowing-shovel, as men scatter the chaff on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... palm-leaf fan and a large handkerchief, to say I might keep all the shade his tall house and trees dropped on my side of the fence. And presently what does the simple fellow do but begin to chaff the three of us on the absence ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... or 'Light-as-Chaff', was the nickname of Epicrates, Aeschines' brother-in-law (not the Epicrates of Sec. 277). as a reveller, no doubt in some Dionysiac revel, in which it was not considered decent to take part without a mask. (The original purpose of masks, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... by the way in which most men converse; where their thoughts are found to be chopped up fine, like chaff, so that for them to spin out a discourse of any length ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... given the quantity of wheat per acre, the weight of straw cut close to the ground to the acre, and also that of the chaff. These researches show, that from ninety-three to one hundred and fifty pounds of soluble flint are required to form an acre of wheat; and I will add from my own investigations, that three-fourths of this silica is demanded ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... matter? But it happened so long ago while I was courting your mother, to be exact. My father-in-law, rest his soul, was an atrocity at table. The viands, my son, scattered from his knife over the board, like chaff before the flail. Yet, will you believe it? Any time he chose to speak his mouth was always full. I watched him, watched him with wonder—or was it horror?—I cannot remember which. And I resolved to go, to go anywhere, but never to do likewise. ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... grandfather was the grandson of Tormaid Mor, who held the whole east side of Lochow from Ford to Sonachan, and we have at home the four-posted bed that Tormaid slept on when the heads of the house of Argile were lying on white-hay or chaff. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I. He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Those are great words for you to think of now, and during this long Trinitytide which is symbolical of what one might call the humdrum of religious life, the day in day out sticking to it, make a resolution never to say mechanically The ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... yields reluctantly to novitiate and culture; he yearns for action. His masters tell him that the world is coy, must be approached cautiously, and with something substantial in the hand. The old bird will not be caught with chaff. He does not yet understand the process of accumulation and transmutation. The fate of the Danaides is his, and he draws long with a bottomless bucket. But at last his incompetency can no further be concealed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... wit to choose, Who house the chaff and burn the grain; Who hug the wealth ye cannot use, And lack the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the constables in town emergencies, and he shouted. 'Cock Robin crowing' provoked a jolly round of barking chaff. The noise in a dense ring drew Fleetwood's temper. He gave the word to Kit Ines, and immediately two men dropped; a dozen staggered unhit. The fists worked right and left; such a clearing of ground ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but they hemmed him in, and, dazed by what seemed to him the luxury on every side, he hesitated and was lost. For, just then, a group of the younger people surged by and wrapped him around in a whirl of merry chaff. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... pure and generous; their subject is the future of his children. In midwinter, instead of trapping and "murthering" the quail, "often in the angles of the fences where the motion of the wind prevents the snow from settling, I carry them both chaff and grain: the one to feed them, the other to prevent their tender feet from freezing fast to the earth as I have frequently observed them to do." His love of birds is marked: this in those provinces of which a German traveller wrote: "In the thrush kind America is poor; there is only ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... fingers and laughed, and they passed on together with careless jesting and friendly chaff. Saltash had always been kind to young Bernard Brian. The boy had been a helpless cripple in his childhood, and he had developed a keen appreciation for all kindness during those days which nothing could now efface. Whatever Saltash's morals, he was a friend, and as such Bunny never failed ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... him, pursuing him with chaff till he was out of hearing. The boy was a game youngster, and he knew how to lose. Moreover, it was generally believed that he could afford ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... government will within a limited period be more successful in China than in some European countries; and that the Chinese with their love of well- established procedure and cautious action, will select open debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority. Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee. Interpellations ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... of Russia have already frequently attempted to sow discord in these good and sincere relations, but such efforts are vain. The Russian truth-loving national soul, sensitive of any display of mendacity or insincerity, was able to sift the chaff from the wheat, and faith in our friends is unshaken. There is not a single cloud on the clear horizon of our lasting allied harmony. Heartfelt greetings to you, true friends, rulers of the waves and our companions in arms. May victory and glory ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... do to get a graff Of this unspotted tree? For all the rest are plain but chaff Which seem good ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of offering to a lady a brooch or a pair of earings in a truss of hay. The house-door of the person to be complimented is pushed open, and there is thrown into the house a truss of hay or straw, a sheaf of corn, or a bag of chaff. In some part of this "bottle of hay" envelope, there is a "needle" as a present to be hunted for. A friend of mine once received from her betrothed, according to the Christmas custom, an exceedingly large brown paper ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... time a woman who had three daughters, two of whom were so unlucky that nothing ever succeeded with them, all their projects went wrong, all their hopes were turned to chaff. But the youngest, who was named Nella, was born to good luck, and I verily believe that at her birth all things conspired to bestow on her the best and choicest gifts in their power. The Sky gave her the perfection of its light; Venus, matchless beauty of form; Love, the first dart of his ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... his regard For's private friends: his answer to me was, He could not stay to pick them in a pile Of noisome musty chaff: he said 'twas folly, For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt And still to nose ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... far as Chatelherault, Loches, Vendome, and Blois. This said man, an old fox, perfect in his business, never lighted lamps in the day time, knew how to skin a flint, charged for wool, leather, and feathers, had an eye to everything, did not easily let anyone pay with chaff instead of coin, and for a penny less than his account would have affronted even a prince. For the rest, he was a good banterer, drinking and laughing with his regular customers, hat in hand always before the persons ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... detailed it with two swift strokes of a knife, flicked out its internal arrangements with a third, and case it into a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... condescending under chaff. "But we're quite.... Skipper, he's called. You don't call him captain. He's just like me. He's no ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... livers; some that turned their back to God, that is, had forsaken all true religion; and some that lived a most abominable life, as Ezekiel saith in his vision; and yet there were some godly, as a few wheat-corns, oppressed(8) and hid among the multitude of chaff: now, according to this diversity, the prophet keeps divers purposes, and yet in most ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... as the down noon express was leaving H—— yesterday a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the already full palatial car. Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go into the car where she belonged. Thereupon a young sprig, from the East, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... suspected his new acquaintance of a desire to chaff him: but as at the same time the Alien drew from his pocket a sort of combined compass and chronometer which he gravely consulted for his geographical bearings, Philip came to the conclusion he must be either a seafaring ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... to the wall of the shed is a cattle crib—a kind of big square box or trough on legs, in which hay or chaff is put for the cattle. The shed is not very high, and by standing on the crib we can scramble on to the roof. Here is the ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... therefore, like all that is in God and of God, good and not evil, a blessing and not a curse. We believe that that fire is for ever burning, though men are for ever trying to quench it all day long; and that it has been and will be in every age burning up all the chaff and stubble of man's inventions; the folly, the falsehood, the ignorance, the vice of this sinful world; and we praise God for it; and give thanks to Him for His great glory, that He is the everlasting and triumphant foe of evil and misery, of whom it is written, that our God ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of every one, his shins had in consequence been barked against a sharp piece of rock. All the sympathy that ought to have been devoted to the wounded man he diverted to himself by the tremendous fuss he made about his injured shins, and this, and the chaff he had to sustain in consequence, quite rounded off the affair, and we all went home in high good humour, and the wounded man for years afterwards used to show his ear-to-ear scar with considerable satisfaction. ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... What follows? Chaff follows, a kind of intimacy, a supper, perhaps, after the play, if an actor seems to be good company. This is quite natural; the most modish young gallants are not so very dainty as to stand aloof from any amusing company. They ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... the Viceroy. The former saw no hope, under the conditions, of saving either stores, cannon, or provisions. "The Army," said Nelson in a private letter to Jervis, with something of the prejudiced chaff of a seaman of that day, "is, as usual, well dressed and powdered. I hope the general will join me cordially, but, as you well know, great exertions belong exclusively to the Navy." After the evacuation, however, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... his wit? What had become of his disputatious and learned associates that not one of them stood up to plead for the life of Socrates now? Why, the first breath of adversity had blown them away as though they were but mist; and, with these false friends scattered like the coward chaff they were, grim old Socrates ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... with their heads all in the same direction, the binders which held them together loosened, and the corn spread out. Two men were generally employed in this occupation, one standing opposite the other, and the corn was separated from the straw and chaff by knocking the heads with sticks. These sticks, or flails, were divided into two parts, the longer of which was about the size of a broom-handle, but made of a much stronger kind of wood, while the other, which was about half its length, was fastened to the top by a hinge made of strong leather, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and Albania. Rumania and Greece had joined with Servia and bound the Balkans into a temporary brotherhood. Together with Russia and Italy at Haskoi they had scattered the crazy Turkish army like chaff and swarmed on to the Bosphorus. The allied fleet drove a withering wedge of steel and fire through ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the stage, and Richardson is undoubtedly hard reading for the general consumer of novels. It is true, also, that fine morals do not always go with fine manners, and that Lovelace had a fascination of address which John Knox lacked. The chaff and slang of the Bayard of to-day are at least decent, and his morals probably purer than those of the courtly and punctilious old Sir Roger de Coverleys. Possibly; but it has been wisely said that hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue. The good manners ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... simply bad taste in me to chaff him, Tavy. But you're wrong. This man takes more trouble to drop his aiches than ever his father did to pick them up. It's a mark of caste to him. I have never met anybody more swollen with the pride of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... xli. 14th verse; but more especially the 15th and 16th verses. The prophet, speaking of Jacob, saith: "Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff; thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Mr. Crow began operations at once. He went home and for nearly an hour worked over the list of subscribers to the fund, aided by his wife and daughters. Among them they separated the wheat from the chaff. At least twenty per cent. of the contributors were set aside in a separate group and labelled "no good." Ten per cent. were designated as "fairly good," and the remainder as "good." It must not be assumed that the division had anything to do with the Loop mystery. Mr. Crow ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... the mountains of chaff there may be a grain worth preserving, as where I read that at Haddon Hall the old lady who showed the house, and who boasted that her ancestors had been servitors of the possessors of it for more than three hundred years, pointed out to me the portrait of one of them, who had ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... consorts with a religion of rules and limitations. If the faith of Israel was to fulfil its mission to the world it was necessary that some one should come who could purge this threshing-floor, burning the chaff and gathering up the wheat to be the seed of ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... a fellow not to put up with a little mild chaff of that sort. He looked at the horizon, where the faint streaks of another dawn were beginning ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... front—detached themselves and came towards the group of likely youths. These wavered a little, were silent, sniggered, stood their ground—the khaki-clad figures passed among them. Hackneyed words, jests, the touch of flattery, changing swiftly to chaff—all the customary performance, hollow and pathetic; and then the two figures re-emerged, their hands clenched, their eyes shifting here and there, their lips drawn back in fixed smiles. They had failed, and were trying to hide it. They must not show contempt—the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Loos and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our foot broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-tower sprang white, And 'Gallop,' cried Joris, 'for Aix ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the afternoon, when most of the boys out for practice had become more or less tired from their exertions, they gathered here and there in little bunches to exchange "chaff," and express their opinions concerning various matters that had a bearing on the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... is a cross—I allow that—and whatever I may think, I ban't so small-minded as to fall foul of them as think differ'nt. My awn mother be a church-goer for that matter, an' you'll look far ways for her equal. But of coourse I knaw what I knaw. Me an' Hicks talked out matters of religion so dry as chaff." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... dreams were scatter'd, As chaff is toss'd by the wind, The faith has been rudely shattered That listen'd with credence blind; Things were to have been, and therefore They were, and they are to be, And will be;—we must prepare for The doom we are bound ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... still "a thing of hope and change;" and would eagerly avail himself of every means afforded him to regain the position he had lost; the other, true to his "order," will "die game." For the separation of the wheat from the chaff, a process by no means difficult, the colony of New South Wales was formerly well adapted. The ticket of leave granted to the deserving convict was one of the most perfect of reformatory indulgences; each individual being known to the authorities, and liable, on the least misconduct, to be ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... was a sudden silence, the boys were astonished. Then some began to bully and try and stop him; others stood up for him. But the battle was won. The better minded boys saw what cowards they had been to give up what they knew was right for fear of chaff—one by one they gradually followed his example, and before that lad left school it was the rule and not the exception for the boys ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... life's joys and gains? What pleasures crowd its ways, That man should take such pains To seek them all his days? Sift this untoward strife On which thy mind is bent, See if this chaff of life Is ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... through the tall mustard, managed to take up an enfilading position as the Harrisons advanced to break in the door. A threatening shout from the ambuscaded partisans caused them to hurriedly fall back towards the rear of the barn. There was a pause, and then began the usual Homeric chaff,—with this Western difference that it was cunningly intended to ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... in position, perhaps seventy-five or a hundred, who kept blazing away at the Confederates, rising a little to kneel and fire, Grover's Division, and all we could see of that of Ricketts, had gone to pieces, swept away like chaff before a whirlwind. Not a Union flag now in sight, but plenty of the "Stars and Bars!" Our sputtering fire checked some directly in front; but most of the on-rushing masses were deflected by the ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... have sustained him alive, in those baleful Historic Acherons and Stygian Fens, where he has had to dig and to fish so long, far away from the upper light!—Let me request all readers to blow that sorry chaff entirely out of their minds; and to believe nothing on the subject except what they get some ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... N.H. Training School, Manchester, N.H. You have "Out-Heroded Herod." It is the best of any educational paper I have ever read. I cannot see how you get so much together, and not a grain of chaff. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... 4 Like chaff with every wind disperst:(1) (1) "Dispurst," [rhyming with "curst"] Pronounce this ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... his chaff, promising a bouquet for the young lady the next day, but declaring that he could not disappoint his cousin. He was interrupted by Rischenheim, who, looking round on the group of bystanders, now grown ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... none of these things. The provincial boy was quite equal to the occasion, though his return "chaff" smacked ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... taken up with the celebration of the blessedness and fruitful, stable being of the man who loves the Law of the Lord, as contrasted with the rootless and barren life of the ungodly, who is like the chaff. The second is occupied with the contemplation of the divine 'decree' by which the coming King is set in God's 'holy hill of Zion,' and of the blessedness of 'all they who put their trust in Him,' as contrasted with the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the forests, like wild beasts, I smote. Their carcasses filled the Tigris, and the tops of the mountains. At this time the troops of the Akhe,[4] who came to the deliverance and assistance of Comukha, together with the troops of Comukha, like chaff I scattered. The carcasses of their fighting men I piled up like heaps on the tops of the mountains. The bodies of their warriors, the roaring[5] waters carried down to the Tigris. Kili Teru son of Kali Teru, son of Zarupin Zihusun, their King,[6] in the course of their ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... And wool-knit slippers, comfortable and pretty, To the radiant breakfast table trotted down, Inclined to have some frolic and be witty (As frolicsome as any in the City) And chaff his daughters in his usual style; Minutiae omitted in this ditty, For to relate 'twould not be worth the while, I therefore must, my reader, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... occasions will be abused with all the calumnious epithets which the ingenuity of angry men can devise, because he is exercising that ingenuity the possession of which on his part is the foundation of fox-hunting. There you will remain, nursing your horse, listening to chaff, and hoping. But even when the fox does go, your ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... quick, darting flames. "What mediaeval nonsense we do stuff into the school-children's head. What an infamous advantage we take of the darlings' trust in us and their docility to our purposes! My dear little daughter with her bright face of desire-to-do-her-best! What wretched chaff she is getting for that quick, imaginative brain of hers! It's not so bad for Paul, but . . . oh, even for him what nonsense! Rules of grammar, names of figures of speech . . . stuff left over from scholastic ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... May war and storm scatter them as the chaff! My liege, my royal master," continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering voice, "why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before? Why stood so many between Warwick's devotion and a king so worthy to command it? How poor, beside thy great-hearted ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dirt. And there were boughs of holly spread over the floor, whereof the cattle had browsed the sprigs. When they came to the hall of the house, they beheld cells full of dust, and very gloomy, and on one side an old hag making a fire. And whenever she felt cold, she cast a lapful of chaff upon the fire, and raised such a smoke, that it was scarcely to be borne, as it rose up the nostrils. And on the other side was a yellow calf-skin on the floor; a main privilege was it to any one who should ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... fair—and though I buy this Knowledge at the vast Price of all my Repose; yet I must own, 'tis a better Bargain than chaff'ring of a Heart for feign'd Embraces—Thou hast undone me—yet must have my Friendship; and 'twill be still some Ease in this Extreme, to see thee yet repent, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the peninsula, or of such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight fit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... and I'll show you as handsome a thing as is made this side of Jordan. Wal, that might be a little child, we'll say; if there's a thing handsomer than a field o' wheat, it's a little child. But bimeby comes reapin' and all, and then the trouble begins. First, it's all in the rough, ain't it, chaff and all, mixed together; and has to go through the thresher? Well, maybe that's the lickin's a boy's father gives him. He don't like 'em,—I can feel Father Belfort's lickin's yet,—but they git red of a sight o' chaff, nonsense, airs, and what not, for him. Then it comes ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Hundred idea as a logical system was broken by the quality of some of its members. Compared to the society I have previously mentioned it was as chaff. There was a total lack of intellectuality. Degeneracy marked some of their acts; divorce blackened their records, and shameless affairs marked them. In this "set," and particularly its imitators throughout the United States, the divorce rate is appalling. Men leave their wives and obtain ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... consumed by an elephant in captivity is calculated at 200 lbs; besides thirty-six pails of water. It consists of turnips, rice, chaff, bran, hay, and sea biscuit. Straw is allowed for his bed, which is generally consumed before morning; besides which, when they are in menageries they receive no small quantity of dainties from visitors. I never could enter the Rotunda in the Paris menagerie, without being ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... still sobbing, "I'm such a devil. All my life I've been trying to see what I could get. I set out to make everything and everybody pay me, and I never got anything but chaff; money and jewels and applause—all chaff. The only happiness is giving, and I want to give, give, give to you. That's what I been longing to do ever since I loved you, and all I could do was to call you names—a quitter and a shirker." She wept afresh. "And the worst of it is ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... artillery and infantry was deadly. Men fell by the hundreds, were mowed down like chaff before the wind by the accuracy of the British fire. In the English ranks men also were dropping on all sides, but the gaps were filled up immediately and the British, singing and cheering, ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... joyous chaff as it fluttered round her, not half understanding it any more than if it had been a strange tongue, and not always guessing the cause of the fits of laughter, chiefly at Lord Ivinghoe's misadventures, over ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... my kingdom, and if thou art not able to enforce them thou art no sheriff for me. So look well to thyself, I say, or ill may befall thee as well as all the thieving knaves in Nottinghamshire. When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff." ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... hardly any series of misfortunes could have reduced the Duchess of Omnium,—but inclined to quiescence by feelings of penitence. She was less disposed than heretofore to attack him with what the world of yesterday calls "chaff," or with what the world of to-day calls "cheek." She would not admit to herself that she was cowed;—but the greatness of the game and the high interest attached to her husband's position did in some degree dismay her. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... numerous resignations, have assumed the reins of government, and, in spite of three votes of want of confidence, persist in retaining the seals of office. Let me add to this, that he is considered the best hand at quiet "chaff" in the House, and is allowed, both by his supporters and opponents, to be an honourable man, and a right ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... cause; when you can make it appear, that in the course of this administration, since the Queen thought fit to change her servants, there hath one step been made toward weakening the Hanover title, or giving the least countenance to any other whatsoever; then, and not until then, go dry your chaff and stubble, give fire to the zeal of your faction, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... chaff upon the wind before him, and impregnable Sicilian castles fall into his power by impossible feats of arms, or incredible stratagems. A Greek empress, "the mature Zoe," as Gibbon calls her, falls in love ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... 4, '88. DEAR WILL,—I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves, examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings —unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not uninfluenced ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... would be sure to chaff him about it.... "Oh, not yet!..." he began, but he was too late. Ninian had come up to them, grumbling, "I thought you two'd started to ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... be of my opinion, or rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that "Happy low-lie-down!" is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some old song, and means, "Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw bed or chaff pallet ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... matter of course, we had one especial individual who was commonly regarded as the butt of the room—a good-natured, heavy man, with a dull face and a duller comprehension; but, he seemed proud and pleased always when singled out as a mark for our chaff:—he took it as an honour, I think, ascribing our ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is bovine, their outlook crude and rare; They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw; But the straw that they were tickled with—the chaff that they were fed with— They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... joys, they have neglected guard; and, in the midst of their festivities, they are suddenly set upon from all sides; the sharp cracking of rifles, with the quick detonation of repeating pistols, soon silences their cacchinations, scattering them like chaff. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the chaff and fun of the day Joe was unhappy and restless. What he had read in the paper from home about ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... grinding with a shuddering noise which covered all country night sounds. But so accustomed was the miller to this lullaby that he fell asleep on his chaff cushion directly, without his usual review of the trouble betwixt La Vigne and himself. He was sensitive to his neighbors' claims, and the state of the country troubled him, but he knew he could endure La Vigne's misfortunes better than any ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... all our rites defiled, Our temples sullied, and, methinks, this man, With his new ordinance, so wise and mild, Is come, even as He says, the chaff to fan And sever from the wheat; but will his faith Survive the ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... Everard, M.D., going by rail to Malbourne. Everard asleep; manly, cheerful, intellectual, healthy in body and mind. Cyril awake; consumed by unspeakable sorrow. Everard wakes; Cyril suddenly becomes gay in response to his friend's high spirits. They chaff each other. Cyril preaches to Everard, when Henry scolds him for fasting, and his laxity of faith and practice. They pass Belminster, when Cyril betrays unconscious ambition at Everard's jesting prophecy ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... hollin souples, that were sae snell, His back they loundert, mell for mell, Mell for mell, and baff for baff, Till his hide flew round his lugs like chaff.' ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... enterprises. You are swindled nine times out of the ten—as a matter of fact you are not, the public is a match for anybody, but say that you are swindled, and only one affair turns out well (by accident!—oh, granted!—it was not done on purpose—there, chaff away!). Very well, the punter that has the sense to divide up his stakes in this way hits on a splendid investment, like those who took shares in the Wortschin mines. Gentlemen, let us admit among ourselves that those who call out are ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... awfully absurd at times," said Scott. "You see, I didn't know much about milking or babies. They'll chaff my head off, if the tale ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... "Millions of the ignorant, led by demagogues! Bah! The Hohenzollerns will scatter them like chaff!" ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... poor and humble toil that we may have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him, in return, that he may have light and guidance, freedom, immortality?—these two, in all their degrees, I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... distance coming onwards upon every road,—if too surely thou wilt work for me and others irreparable wrong and suffering, work also for us a little good; this way turn the great hurricanes and levanters of thy wrath; winnow me this chaff; and let us enter at last the garners of pure wheat laid up in elder days for our benefit, and which for two centuries have ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." For what purpose is this fiery baptism with the Holy Ghost? Most certainly that it may consume the inbred sin of our nature, as fire consumes the chaff, or destroys the alloy that the gold ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... things lively in this vale of human tears; An' may I live a thousan', too—a thousan', less a day, For I shouldn't like to be on earth to hear you'd passed away. And when it comes your time to go you'll need no Latin chaff Nor biographic data put in your epitaph; But one straight line of English and of truth will let folks know The homage 'nd the gratitude 'nd reverence they owe; You'll need no epitaph but this: "Here sleeps the man who run That best ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... laid all her cockaloft marlocks(3) 'Fore th' Almighty's mercy-seat. When I looked for her tears o' repentance, I jaloused(4) that I saw her laugh; An' she said that t' Powers o' Justice Would scatter my words like chaff. ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... they are storehouses of material, not digested treatises. True it is, that their great size sometimes defeats its object—the valuable portion of the material is sometimes buried under the comparatively worthless heap that surrounds it—the golden grains lost amid the chaff. But in a case of this kind, the error of redundancy is one on the safe side; let a subject in all its bearings be thoroughly and fully brought up, and it is the fault or failing of him who sets ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... a loud burst of laughter at the fore part of the steamer, Nigel went forward to see what was going on. He found a group of sailors round his comrade Moses, apparently engaged in good-natured "chaff." ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... criminal, any jealous murderer who was driven along by devilish passion. How the devil had played with him too!—with him, who was dedicated by the most solemn and sacred vows! And he had been as stubble before the wind—as chaff that the storm ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... gladder!" said Lord James, gripping the bony hand of Griffith. "Don't let Tom chaff you. My name's ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... including the "prisoners," eleven rupees. Nor may it be inappropriate to mention that Rasul Khan was a brother of that same ressaldar Fatteh Khan, who only the month before with a handful of the Guides' cavalry had scattered as chaff before the wind the flower of Diwan Mulraj's horsemen, and chased them ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... soil, thus maintaining its supply of soluble silicates, and increasing its amount of organic matter. After taking the seed heads from the standing straw and grasses, it thrashes them, blows out the chaff, separates the different kinds of seeds, and discharges them into bags ready for market. It consists of a car containing the machinery; to this may be attached any required number of horses. The inventor affirms that it has ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... nation was in its death-throes. He had neither valour nor goodness, and so little did he understand the forces at work in his times that he held by the rotten support of Egypt against the grim power of Babylon, and of course, when the former was driven like chaff before the assault of the latter, he shared the fate of his principal, and Judaea was overrun by Babylon, Jerusalem captured, and the poor creature on the throne bound in chains to be carried to Babylon, but, as would appear, discovered by Nebuchadnezzar ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to chaff Chris, but he had slipped away at the first words of the explanation. Soon he reappeared with an armful of dry wood. His face was still ashen, but his teeth had ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... adjutant-general, a very kind and excellent friend of mine. Mrs. Norton and Lord C——, who were among the guests, both came late, and after we had gone into the dining-room, where they were received with a discreet quantity of mild chaff, Mrs. Norton being much too formidable an adversary to be challenged lightly. After dinner, however, when the men came up into the drawing-room, Theodore Hook was requested to extemporize, and having sung one song, was about to leave the piano in ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... it in their power to exercise hospitality. I entreated the countryman to give me some dinner, offering to pay for it: on which he presented me with some skimmed milk and coarse barley—bread, saying it was all he had. I drank the milk with pleasure, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but it was not very restorative to a man sinking with fatigue. The countryman, who watched me narrowly, judged the truth of my story by my appetite, and presently (after having said that he plainly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... story. One may almost be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit. But there can be little that is more tedious than the dry chaff of theological discussion which is here threshed for us over and over again. Believers in the Trinity had as little reason as believers in Episcopacy to rejoice in Cooper's advocacy of their faith. There (p. 260) was nothing original in his ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... agencies he was deeply interested. When a newspaper writer commented that a "consensus of opinion among biologists" would probably rate Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the consensus idea. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... means relied, as the world foolishly imagined, on the seeming opulence and secret funds of Welbeck. These were illusions too gross to have any influence on him. He was too old a bird to be decoyed into the net by such chaff. No; his nephew, the supercargo, would of course receive the produce of the voyage, and so much of this produce as would pay his debt he had procured the owner's authority to intercept its passage from the pocket of his nephew to that of Welbeck. In case of loss, he had obtained a similar ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... vehicles with perfect composure; and on those occasions when, the traffic being interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to the door of Solomon ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... around him beguiled the tedium of waiting with good-humoured chaff. One great creature with a shaggy mane and a sanguinary voice came up, bottle in hand, saluted the downcast head with a mixture of deference and familiarity, then climbed to the box-seat beside the driver, and in deepest bass began ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... sounding afar off. At all events, neither knee-halters nor other devices are of any avail. They get back to the old lines somehow at feeding-time, and it is pitiful to see them standing patiently, in a row, waiting for the corn or chaff that is not for them, trying by a soft whinny to coax a little out of the hands of soldiers who pass them, or sidling up to an old stable chum who is better fed because better fit for work, in the hope of getting a share of his forage for the sake of auld lang syne. Those who know how ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... brothers! As we go, O'er the mountains, Under the boughs of mistletoe, Log huts we'll rear, While herds of deer and buffalo Furnish the cheer. File o'er the mountains—steady, boys For game afar We have our rifles ready, boys!— Aha! Throw care to the winds, Like chaff, boys!—ha! And join in the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... away." He had become so weary and disheartened that his pride was failing him, and he was ready to plead for the chance of a little rest. Therefore he opened the door, and invited the landlady to enter in the most conciliating manner. But no such poor chaff would be of any avail with one of Mrs. Gruppins' experience, and looking straight before her, as if addressing no one in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the product of a long line of erroneous theory and zigzag development, but the wheat has largely been sifted and the chaff thrown to the winds of antiquity. Its therapeutic and psychological value is ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... beaker to drain, Then reeled to the linhay for more, When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain - Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi' might and wi' main, And round ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... was getting tired, and bored with the whole business, and stifled with the close atmosphere—laden with every graveolent horror; besides, I had not escaped from London "chaff" and Parisian persiflage, to be mocked by a wild Virginian. So ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... by reason of a fierce flame which issued out and came from before him, a convenient distance betwixt him and them, as betwixt the Judge and the Prisoners at the bar. I heard it also proclaimed to them that attended on the Man that sat on the Cloud, Gather together the Tares, the Chaff, and Stubble, and cast them into the burning Lake. And with that, the bottomless pit opened, just whereabout I stood; out of the mouth of which there came in an abundant manner, smoke and coals of fire, with hideous noises. It was also said to the same persons, Gather my Wheat into the Garner. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... keep in a cool open shed until freezing weather; then keep where they can occasionally have good air, and in as cool a place as possible, without danger of freezing. Of all the methods of keeping apples on shelves, buried as potatoes, in various other articles, as chaff, sawdust, &c., this is, on the whole, the best and cheapest. Wrapping the apples in paper before putting them into the barrels, may be an improvement. Apples gathered just before hard frosts, or as they are beginning to ripen, but before many have fallen from the trees, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... to fit a shoe to his own diabolical hoof. The saint promptly whipped up the leg, and it was not until this simple devil found himself in the clutches of the saint, that he fully comprehended the prodigious powers of the holy personage he had ventured to chaff. In spite of his howls and frantic efforts to escape, the iron shoe is remorselessly fitted, and nail after nail driven into the quick. Imagine the sufferings of that poor devil; observe his comically distorted countenance as ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... speaker led the laugh which followed this recital! And the chaff! Was it possible that Caesar dared to chaff a man who was supposed to have the peace of Europe in his keeping? And, by Jove! ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... this rapidly, as only the mind knows and comprehends in moments of stress and crisis; and before her knowledge, all ideas save one fell away like chaff before the wind. At all costs—in face of every obstacle—she must warn ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... quite unaware that there had commenced a movement in the brain of France, which was going to liberate terrific forces—forces which would sweep before them the work of the Richelieus and the Mazarins and the Colberts as if it were chaff. ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... lofty, the high-minded Leicester, and was more proud of depending on him than he would be of commanding thousands. But the abject lord who stoops to every adverse circumstance, whose judicious resolves are scattered like chaff before every wind of passion, him Richard Varney serves not. He is as much above him in constancy of mind as beneath ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... partially roused, he drives across the street to us. DAUBINET directs him, and on we go, lumbering and rattling through the town, meeting only one other voiture, whose driver appears infinitely amused at his friend having obtained a fare. Some chaff passes between them, which to me is unintelligible, and which DAUBINET professes not to catch, but I fancy, whatever it is, it is not highly complimentary to our cocher's fares. In one quarter through which we drive, they are setting up the booths and roundabouts for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... drinks from a god's gold fountain Of art or music or rhythmic song Must sift from his soul the chaff of malice, And weed from his heart ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and Lemuel Laugh Are two little fairies bright; They're always ready for fun and chaff, And sunshine ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... queen on an outspread buffalo robe, the tin plates and mugs, knives, forks, and kettles, to say nothing of the whisky-keg, and general debris of a finished feast, and at the same time heard the steady, drenching rain descending round us, he might have wondered at the laughter, fun, and chaff in which ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... of a good deal of chaff that night at mess. The Rajah was being entertained, and he was the only man who paid the young officer any compliments on the matter of his achievement on the racecourse. Everyone else openly declared that the horse, and not its rider, was ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... midst of the barn-yard, he came down, In a wonderful whirl of tangled strings, Broken braces and broken springs, Broken tail and broken wings, Shooting-stars, and various things, Barn-yard litter of straw and chaff, And much that wasn't so sweet by half. Away with a bellow fled the calf; And what was that? Did the gosling laugh? 'Tis a merry roar from the old barn door, And he hears the voice of Jotham crying, "Say, D'rius! how do you like flyin'?" Slowly, ruefully, where he lay, Darius just turned and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various |
