"Husking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days—like a tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields all day, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled down over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to think ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... to the large part played by cornfields in my boyhood, that I cannot come upon one now in these New England farms without a touch of homesickness. It was always the autumn more than the spring that appealed to me as a child; and there was something connected with the husking and the shocking of the corn that took deeper hold upon my imagination than any other single event of the farm year, a kind of festive joy, something solemnly beautiful and significant, that to this day makes a field of corn in the shock not so much the substance of earth's bounty ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... abundantly: some from the village and its neighborhood, some from the University and the Institute, some from distant and unknown sources. The new Secretary was very busy with the work of examining these papers. After a forenoon so employed, the carpet of her room looked like a barn floor after a husking-match. A glance at the manuscripts strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened any young writer away from the thought of authorship as a business. If the candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection and elimination, he would have felt still more desperately. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... farmers in the state. They all drew pictures of the fun it was to work on a farm where you could get your work done and take your fish-pole and go off and catch fish, or a gun, and go out and kill game, and how you could ride; horses, and pitch hay, and smell the sweet perfume, and go to husking bees, and dances, and everything, and they got me all worked up so I wanted to go to work on a farm. Then an old deacon that belongs to our church, who runs a farm about eight miles out of town, he came on the scene, and said he wanted a boy, and if I would ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... when I was set upon by three young Samoan manaia (bloods) who began beating me with clubs—seeking to murder me. We fought, and I, knowing that death was upon me, killed one man with a blow of my tori nui{*} (husking stick) of iron-wood, and then drove it deep into the chest of another. Then I fled, and gaining the beach, ran into the sea so that I might swim to Savai'i, for there will I be safe from pursuit" "'Tis a ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... would sit idle at the hand-mill, a light in her eyes that I would have given kingdoms for. One ever memorable morning, early in the crisp autumn, a grizzled man strode up the trail, and Polly Ann dropped the ear of corn she was husking and stood still, her bosom heaving. It was Mr. McChesney, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... done by the aid of a machine but is more likely to be effected in the immemorial way, by one person pouring the roughly threshed ears from a basket or skep while another worker vigorously fans the grain. The result is what is known as paddy rice. The process which follows winnowing is husking. This is done in the simplest possible form of hand mill. Before husking the rice grain is in appearance not unlike barley and it is no easy matter to get its husk off. The husking mill is often made of hardened clay with many wooden teeth on the rubbing surface. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... advanced Rebecca showed less and less inclination to go in the village society. Her mother fairly drove her out at times. Once Rebecca, utterly overcome, sank down in a chair and wept when her mother urged her to go to a husking-party ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... estates of Costa Rica are possessed by the family of Montealegre and Don Juan Moira. The principal of these I have examined. They appear to be very carefully and judiciously managed, possessing good mills for cleaning and husking the coffee, worked by water power; and annually producing 500 tons. The entire produce of the year 1836, amounted to about 3,000 tons, and the crop of 1847 exceeded 4,000 tons, near which quantity it will probably continue, till the population gradually increases, the laborers, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... that was resting upon Popocatapetl, a little below its snow-covered summit. It was such weather as we have at "harvest home," and it was truly a "harvest home" throughout the whole Vega. Men were working in gangs in the different fields, gathering stalks, or husking corn, or cutting grain, or plowing with a dozen plows in company, or harrowing, or putting in seed. It was harvest-time and seed-time together. The full green blade and the ripened grain stood in adjoining fields in this region of perpetual sunshine. As I rode along between carefully ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... left hand as I write this.) Later, the cradle to cut small grain was introduced, though at first it was not popular, because it reduced the usual number of harvest hands required to "sickle the crop." Raking and binding wheat, rye, and oats were part of the hard work of the harvest field. Husking corn was a fall and sometimes winter occupation. Stock had to be cared for and fed. Flax for home-made garments was raised, pulled up by hand, spread, rotted, broken, skutched, hackled, etc. All this work of the farm I pursued with regularity and assiduity. My father ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... are adapted for the purpose of saving fodder in good condition for cattle. Intelligent farmers regard the fodder of much more value than the decrease in the weight of the grain. Corn thus cut up, and fed without husking, is the best possible way for winter-fattening cattle on a large scale, and where corn is abundant. To save the whole, swine should follow the cattle, changing yards ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... supper the lads and lasses go to a corn husking. The demijohn of old peach brandy is brought out and everything is ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... To dream of husking pied ears of corn, denotes you will enjoy varied success and pleasure. To see others gathering corn, foretells you will rejoice in the prosperity of friends ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... said, picking that bit of comic supplement slang deliberately to annoy him. "I don't believe our grandfathers and grandmothers were always such models of decorum as they tried, when they had grown old, to make us think. And the simple primitive joys ... I believe an old-fashioned husking bee, if they had plenty of hard cider to go with it, was just as bad as this—coarser if not so vulgar. After all, most of these people will go virtuously home to bed pretty soon and you'd find them back at work to-morrow morning not any ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... pressure on the market other than from shorts that a majority of traders are inclined to go slow in pressing the selling side on breaks until the situation becomes more clearly defined. The weekly forecast for cool weather is regarded as favorable for husking and shelling, and while there was evening up on the part of the pit operators for the double holiday, some of the larger local professionals went home short ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... country wants his crops well in and housed before he is ready to gush out with a round, outspoken Thanksgiving; but everybody knows, who knows anything about it, that the purple tops and the cow-horn turnips are, nine times in ten, left out till the latter days of November, and husking not half over. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... The one nearest to Lakamba repeated the call, after a while, over the rail into the courtyard. There was a movement of upturned faces below by the fires, and the cry trailed over the enclosure in sing-song tones. The thumping of wooden pestles husking the evening rice stopped for a moment and Babalatchi's name rang afresh shrilly on women's lips in various keys. A voice far off shouted something—another, nearer, repeated it; there was a short hubbub which died out with extreme suddenness. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... million dollars gone up in frippery and flowers, and the bedizened gang didn't get half the fun out of it that a party of country yaps will extract from a candy-pulling or a husking-bee. The Pompadours and DuBarrys didn't know how. Louis XVth went around by himself in droves, stiff and uncomfortable as a Presbyterian Sunday-school, wishing every time his rapier galled his kibes or tangled his royal legs that he had remained comfortably dead in that dog-hole at St. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... wood from the forest, that the old woman might boil her pot. He also worked in the corn-fields, hoeing and husking; and he fed the pigs and milked the four-horned cow that was ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... borrow a harrow from Farmer Barly. And next spring I'll plant corn here on the hill. Table corn, that is. Then we'll have a corn-husking, Jeminy; you and I, and the rest of the young ones." And he burst out laughing, in his high, ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... earth is soon going to sleep for the Winter, when nothing will grow in it. But it is time to get in your corn and beans, children. You must cut your yellow corn, Hal, and the other kind, too, and let the ears get dry, ready for husking." ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one of our horses with the neck-yoke. Leonard told your father, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... lazy fellow. His mother was a poor old woman, who earned their living by husking rice. What she earned each day was hardly enough to last them until the next. When a boy, Juan was left at home to watch over their hens and chickens. One day, as his mother went to work, she told Juan to take care of the little chicks, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... the immaculate canary are members of this large and flourishing family of birds. The distinguishing feature of the finches is a massive beak, admirably adapted to the husking of the grain on which the members of the family feed largely. In some species, as for example the grosbeaks, the bill is immensely thick. Only one species of grosbeak appears to be common in the Himalayas. This ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... and pretended to take an interest in all I saw. This pleased her much, and once or twice she smiled—but such a smile! After an hour's ramble we returned, and found the two servants very busy, one husking maize, and the other in the shed where the tobacco was dried. I asked some questions of her about the tobacco—how many casks or bales she made a year? She replied that she made it in bales, and sold it ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... winter upon the stalk without injury from the weather or apprehension of damage by disease, or the accidents to which other grains are subject. Neither smut nor rust, nor weavil nor snow-storm, will hurt it. After its maturity, it is also prepared for use or the granary with little labor. The husking is a short process, and is even advantageously delayed till the moment arrives for using the corn. The machinery for converting it into food is also exceedingly simple and cheap. As soon as the ear is fully formed, it may be roasted ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... accordingly brought them to a cleared part of the field, where the tall and thick cornstalks were laid on the ground. There, at some distance, they saw the group of workers, picking and husking the yellow corn, the farm wagon standing by. Little Winifred crept under the fence and went to them with her basket, and her companions stood at the fence looking. There were Mr. Landholm, and Asahel, Mr. Doolittle and another man, seen here and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Nina walking on the path that formed the only street in the settlement saw the accustomed sight of men lolling on the shady side of the houses, on the high platforms; of women busily engaged in husking the daily rice; of naked brown children racing along the shady and narrow paths leading to the clearings. Jim- Eng, strolling before his house, greeted her with a friendly nod before climbing up indoors to seek his beloved opium pipe. The elder children clustered round her, daring ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... ceremony of frightening the supposed monster from his attack on the luminary is not performed. This consists in shouting, in striking gongs, but, above all, in striking their stampers against the sides of the wooden mortars which are used by the villagers in husking their corn." [301] That the Indians of the continent regard the phenomena in question with more than ordinary interest is evinced by their resorting in large numbers to Benares, the ancient seat of brahminical learning and religion, on every occasion of an eclipse of the moon. Lord ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... electioneering measure, invited all his neighbors, far and near, to a very magnificent corn-husking frolic. There was to be a great treat on the occasion, and "all the world," as the French say, were eager to be there. Crockett and his family were of course among the invited guests. When Crockett got there he found an immense gathering, all in high ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... upon pork and beans, as well as the next man." He stood to his full height, displaying to the pale woman the outlines of massive muscular development. His hands were huge and callous, their grip the terror of his mates after a husking bee. He had measured his great strength but once; that was in the dead of winter, with the snow drifted five feet deep between the barn and the house. A heifer, well grown, had been taken sick, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... for more than sixty year back— Used to be somewhat older than him Fought him one night to a husking bee; Licked him in manner uncommon complete; Every one said 'twas a beautiful fight; Joe he wa'n't satisfied with it that way, Kept dinging along, and when he got through The worst looking critter that you ever see Were stretched on a bed rigged up in the hay— They ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... day distinctly, as much so as yesterday. Notwithstanding it was a holiday, I'd been husking corn all day steady, from dark until dark. There was snow on the ground, and I came in wet through, chattering cold, hungry, and dog-tired—to find the entire family had left to celebrate the evening with a neighbor. They did that often ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... that corn-husking came as near being monotonous work, as any I had ever done in the country. I presume in the great corn-fields of the West, where the husking goes on for weeks at a time, it probably does grow really monotonous. But I soon found that there was a curious counter-reward ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... vernal dews was his glistening plough-share, Birds, newly-returned, the merry nest-builders, bade him good morrow, Keenly wrought his scythe in summer, where fell the odorous clover, Clear was his song at autumn-husking, amid piles of golden corn. Winter saw him battling the drifted snows, with his oxen, Bearing to the neighboring town, fuel that gladden'd the hearth-stone. Deep in undisturbed beds then slept the dark-featured anthracite, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... men met together to rail at public abuses, groan over the evils of the times, and make each other miserable, there were joyous gatherings of the two sexes to dance and make merry. Now were instituted "quilting bees," and "husking bees," and other rural assemblages, where, under the inspiring influence of the fiddle, toil was enlivened by gayety and followed up by the dance. "Raising bees" also were frequent, where houses sprang up at the wagging of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... a time"—Peter sniffed the air. He was husking golden corn by the kitchen fire—"when I could calculate about the weather, but since the weather man has got to meddling he's messed things considerable. He's put in the Middle States, and what-not, until it's like doing subtraction and division—and by that time ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... people—were busily employed in preparations for cooking, some making ready an oven of red-hot stones, others putting up fish and chickens in leaf wrappers, and Malua and two Pikirami youths of his own age were husking numbers of ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the nuts off, but was only free of the windfalls. A little later they were all gathered, and on a certain night the girls and the young men of the village have the custom to meet and make a frolic of cracking them, as they used in husking corn with us. Then the oil is pressed out, and the commune apportions each family its share, according to the amount of nuts contributed. This nut oil imparts a sentiment to salad which the olive cannot give, and mushrooms pickled in it become the most delicious and ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... might screen the sun's hottest rays from the grain, and the golden-colored pumpkins which had been planted between the rows, that no land might be wasted, even left to ripen alone amid the withering corn-stalks. The neighbors from far and near had visited each other's houses in turn, for the "Husking frolic," when all joined to strip from the ear the long leaves in which it was wrapped, and which were to be stacked as fodder for the sheep and cattle. The apples had been sliced and dried in the sun, and then strung and suspended in festoons from the ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... one of them being at the time of hog-killing, which was an annual festival. In some parts of the south, in November or December, corn-husking bees were held, just as the white people held them on the frontier. When the corn was harvested, it was piled up in mounds fifty or sixty feet high. Then the slaves from neighboring plantations were invited to come and help husk the corn. One negro ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... experience, however dreadful, could dissuade individuals of the Dutch Colonists from supplying the natives with brandy. At Esopus, in August, 1659, a man by the name of Thomas Chambers employed eight Indians to assist him in husking corn. At the end of their day's work he insanely supplied them with brandy. This led to a midnight carouse in which the poor savages, bereft of reason, howled and shrieked and fired their muskets, though without getting into ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... horses and dogs, but are quite indifferent about the age of their servants, until they want to purchase. Then they are careful to select young persons, though not one in twenty can tell year, month, or day. Speaking of births,—it is the time of "corn-planting," "corn-husking," "Christmas," "New Year," "Easter," "the Fourth of July," or some similar indefinite date. My own time of birth was no more exact; so that to this day I am uncertain how old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... steal provisions from their masters' storehouses and bring to these hill-country people appetizing additions to their meager provisions. And the slaves were also known to mingle with them in the quilting, husking, barn-raisings, and other rural festivities, being undoubtedly made welcome. It requires no immoderate imagination to state here the likelihood of much racial intermixure, as we know, from testimony, of more than a few specific cases, and we have, in this rather strange ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... usually to be seen boiling water or sewing with a baby tucked into the back of her dress. A lucifer factory has recently been put up, and in many house fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches. In others they are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which the grain is pounded in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended wooden pestle attached to a long horizontal lever, which is worked by the feet of a man, invariably naked, who ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... athletic games and commonplace talk, enlivened by frontier jests and stories, formed the sum of social intercourse when half a dozen or a score of settlers of various ages came together at a house-raising or corn-husking, or when mere chance brought them at the same time to the post-office or the country store. On these occasions, however, Abraham was, according to his age, always able to contribute his full share or more. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... description of an old-fashioned autumn scene on a England farm. The huskers in the field merely jerked the ear of corn from its stalk, leaving the husk on the ear. The husks were afterwards removed in the barn at a big husking bee or picnic, in which the neighbors took part. Read the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... number of nuts on small plants, one may reasonably expect crops to average one-half ton of nuts per acre. The hybrids I have grown so far have been self-husking. The size of their nuts is good, some measuring an inch in diameter. For commercial purposes, however, the large size is not particularly ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various |
