"Picking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought that they were to be kept idle, like cats watching a rat-hole. At last Capt. Worden, who was there with his redoubtable monitor "Montauk," determined to destroy the privateer, despite the torpedoes and the big guns of the fort. He accordingly began a movement up the river, picking his way slowly through the obstructions. The fort began a lively cannonade; but Worden soon found that he had nothing to fear from that quarter, as the guns were not heavy enough to injure the iron sides of the little monitor. But, as he went up the river, the "Nashville" took the alarm ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... was unlawful to sell firearms and ammunition to the Indians. This I told Friday. He then said, "Well, let's trade on the sly." This I declined to do. But after a few days, I got permission, and took Friday into Cheyenne, to select the pistol. After picking out a good one, he then begged for bullet-mould, lead, powder, and caps. A trade is never complete with an Indian as long as he sees anything he can ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... subjects in America.[133] The soldiers, as has been said, were more eager to fight the Spaniards than to plant, and opportunities were soon given them to try their hand. Admiral Penn had left twelve ships under Goodson's charge, and of these, six were at sea picking up a few scattered Spanish prizes which helped to pay for the victuals supplied out of New England.[134] Goodson, however, was after larger prey, no less than the galleons or a Spanish town upon the mainland. He did not know where the galleons were, but at the end of July he seems ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... dry. In its bed, among muddy pools of water and ice-scoured rocks, he wandered, picking up fat nugget-gold. The weight of it grew to be a burden to him, till he discovered that it was good to eat. And greedily he ate. After all, of what worth was gold that men should prize it so, save that it ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... beheld him deprived of wealth, installed in the observance of the vow of mendicancy, resolved to abstain from inflicting any kind of injury on others, free from vanity of every kind, and prepared to subsist upon a handful of barley fallen off from the stalk and to be got by picking the grains from crevices in the field. Approaching her lord at a time when no one was with him, the queen, endued with great strength of mind, fearlessly and in wrath, told him these words fraught with reason: 'Why hast thou adopted a life of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... upper bridge, Foley ran the boat ashore and abandoned it. Picking up the exhausted and benumbed child, he led his two companions along the causeway and over the road ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... could not fail to create suspicion. She was questioned by her neighbours, and at length intrusted her secret to their keeping. History says, that notwithstanding this, she was not robbed, and was allowed to enjoy her good fortune in peace. It is difficult to credit such a miracle in this land of picking and stealing, but rny authority ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... on its hinges, and a light step and voice became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the dockman. Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging his shoulders, left the window and regained his seat, picking up his sketch ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... we were blessed with favouring winds and made a good passage, picking up the North-East Trades shortly after we said "good-bye" to Funchal, with its pretty white villas nestling on the hillside amid a background of greenery; and then, meeting with strong westerly breezes instead of calms, on getting further south into ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... loneliest ways he could find, and directed his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was afraid of pursuit; he probably had little money; and considering his ill health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still loved him, his interview with her was in all ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... to help his father and mother as soon as he could, picking berries, dropping seeds and carrying water for the men to drink. The farm at Knob Creek seems to have been a little more fertile than the other two places on which his father ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... us to go greatly, and ours would have been every possible comfort that one can have while traveling, ... but the tyrant Anne thought that as I was picking up a bit it was wrong to change conditions, and I yielded, hardly against my judgment, but ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... paused in the middle of the room, all fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around. I thought he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye, but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken. By this time he was picking his way among some dangerous 'breaks' abreast the woodyards; therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I stepped softly to the high bench ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his wife were quite helpless with excess of happiness. The latter moved about in a happy daze, making ineffectual efforts to assist her friends, picking up articles and putting them down ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... changed. There came a day when I heard, in my native town, a Republican mayor publicly proclaim that "municipal ownership was a fixed American policy." And in that day I found myself picking up in the world. No longer did the pathologist study me, while the really decent fellows did not mind in the least the propinquity of myself and their sisters in the public eye. My political and sociological ideas were ascribed to the vagaries ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... deeply. Picking up a stone absent-mindedly, he threw it to the bottom of the canyon. Then he stared pensively into the abyss, watching ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... know. I'm sure we've read about them in adventure books; they always come with storms, and sailors think they build their nests on the wave. But they don't, Jack, so you mustn't think so. They make burrows in the sand, and all day they are out on the wing, picking up what the storms toss to the top, and what the cooks throw overboard, and then they go home, miles and miles and miles at night, and feed their young. They don't take the trouble to make houses if they can find any old rabbit-burrows near enough to the sea, Mr. Wood ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... called the dog from her vigil. As usual she came to the jewel; by chance I pressed the gem against her head. It was a mere trifle; yet it was of consequence. A few minutes before I had dropped a handkerchief on the opposite side of the room; I was just thinking about picking it up. It was only a small thing, yet it put us on the track of the gem's strangest potency. The dog walked to the handkerchief. She brought it back in her mouth. At first I took it for a pure coincidence. I repeated the experiment with a book. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... quite as fat, and very bony; the largest fish is a sort of white salmon, which is of very good flavor, and quite as large; it has white scales; the heads are so full of fat that in some there are two or three spoonfuls, so that there is good eating for one who is fond of picking heads. It seems that this fish makes them lascivious, for it is often observed that those who have caught any when they have gone fishing, have given them, on their return, to the women, who look for them anxiously. Our ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... you what it would be!" said Gloomy, picking himself up and speaking in an injured tone, as though he blamed everybody else for his ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... into the room for the second time, Vendale discovered his envelope case overthrown on the floor, and Obenreizer on his knees picking up the contents. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... fate, captain of my soul, be dashed! Old Jujube, with his bone-pointed hunting spear, began determining a couple of hundred years ago what I should be in this year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four. J. Webb Davis, senior, added another brick to this structure, when he was picking cotton on his master's ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... picking his way through the outskirts of the camp, he encountered one of his night foremen, and was surprised to see that the fellow was leading a trail-dog by a chain. Now these malamutes are as much a part of the northland as the winter snows, and they are a common sight in every community; but the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... war suffer more than other troops, on account of their stationary positions. It is here that the dreaded sharpshooter comes in for glory, by picking off ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... waiter withdraw into the kitchen, whereupon PHILIP, after watching their departure, deliberately closes the big doors. ROOPE, who has been picking at his nails nervously, rises and steals away to the left, and SIR RANDLE, advancing a step or two, exchanges ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... do with him?" replied Aristide, picking the child up in his arms—the three were strolling on the common—"Parbleu! I would use him to strike the staff of Dulau & Company green with envy. Do you think the united efforts of the whole lot of them, from the good Mr. Blessington to the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... all three hunters stuck close together, but they soon separated, each picking out for himself what seemed to be choice places in the little wood. Yielding to the incessant firing the birds began to desert their roosts in great flocks until at last but few lingered on the barren limbs. Charley was about ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... hounds; the deep, though distant baying of the pack; the half-heard cries of the huntsmen; the half-seen forms which were discovered, now emerging from glens which crossed the moor, now sweeping over its surface, now picking their way where it was impeded by morasses; and, above all, the feeling of his own rapid motion, animated the Master of Ravenswood, at last for the moment, above the recollections of a more painful nature by which he was surrounded. The first thing which recalled ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... muttered. Dazed, we followed them. They had taken possession of the shop. Women were sitting on the floor, some with papooses strapped to their backs. Men with hair hanging loose, or braided down their backs, tied with red string, were picking up everything in the print shop, playing like ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... said I'll show you the way," said Aunt Em'ly, picking up a great hat box and a Gladstone bag. "I'll he'p you carry up some er these here bags ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... orange, or smoothing back every now and then the rebellious locks which will stray, do what she will, beyond the boundaries assigned to them. Presently Wallace was ill-advised enough to ask her which pictures she had liked best at the Private View; she replied by picking out a ballroom scene of Forth's and an unutterable mawkish thing of Halford's—a troubadour in a pink dressing-gown, gracefully intertwined with violet scarves, singing to a party of robust young women in a "light which never was on sea or land." "You could count all the figures in the first," she ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in it; but as I looked closer at its shores, I saw that they were covered with children at play. A soft white sand formed its beach, and there these children played. I saw no grown people among them; but the children were all busy—some picking up shells; some playing with the bright-coloured berries of a prickly dwarf-plant which grew upon those sands; some watching the waves as they ran up and then fell back again on that shore; some running after the sea-birds, which ran with ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... knocks"; this phrase is now obsolete: it alludes to a dog at table, who while picking up the crumbs, often gets a bite and a buffet or knock with it, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... records made by definite and indefinitely sentenced men, without becoming a warm advocate of the indeterminate sentence. The longer the maximum sentence of the man sent here, the greater is his effort to travel along the straight and narrow path, picking up such advantages as offer him through his stay in this institution. The longer the maximum the stronger the motive, the smaller the maximum, the smaller effort to earn a release. For example, men sent here with two or two and a half years ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... to marry his daughter, Clementina, to a certain Cardinal, who has offered to renounce the scarlet hat for love of her. When she piques her lover by her evident unwillingness to wed, Don Jaques packs her off to a convent at Viterbo. By picking up a copy of verses Clementina becomes acquainted with Signiora Miramene, who relates the history of her correspondence with the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Picking up the range is still as difficult as ever. The practice followed by the Germans serves to indicate the Teuton thoroughness of method in attacking such problems even if success does not ensue. The favourite German ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... did not appear to attach much importance to Fandor's words. Peaceably, without haste, he put on his overcoat and hat. Then, picking up his cane, he moved ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... themselves, and three or four youngsters of the spring's whelping. Beavers' good parents, an' the family holds together long's the youngsters needs it. Now I'm off. See you here at noon, fer grub!" and picking up his axe he strode off to southwestward of the camp to investigate a valley which he ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... they drew upon when they wanted money for buying and circulating humane literature. Mrs. Wood said that the fund was being added to, and the children were sending all over the State leaflets and little books which preached the gospel of kindness to God's lower creation. A stranger picking one of them up, and seeing the name of the wicked Englishman printed on the title-page, would think that he was a friend and benefactor to the Riverdale people—the very opposite of what he gloried ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... up the ax, and one by one hacked off poor biddies' heads; but when it came to the picking process, they found it was slow work for small, inexperienced fingers, and gave up in despair when the third nude body lay in the ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... themselves for the good of their subjects. "The mode of carrying the king and queen is with their legs hanging down before, seated on the shoulders and leaning on the head of their carriers, and very frequently amusing themselves with picking out the vermin which there abound. It is the singular privilege of the queen, that of all women, she alone may eat them; which privilege she never fails to make use of." Such hunting excursions are surely much more commendable, because much ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... himself alone. They needed no second bidding, these young madcaps, to whom nothing could be more to their liking than such wild sport. So at it they went; and after a deal of chasing and racing, heading and doubling, falling down and picking themselves up again, and more shouting and laughing than they had breath to spare for, they at last succeeded in driving the panting and affrighted young animal into a corner. Here, by some means or other (it was difficult to tell precisely how), they managed ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... you what a pathetic force there is in Peter's picking out that word 'denying' as the shorthand expression for all sorts of sins? Who was it that thrice denied that he knew Him? That experience went very deep into the Apostle; and here, as I take it, is a most significant ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fire, Colonel Talbot was mixing bread in a pail, to be baked in the ashes for the men. I had never seen a man so employed, and it made a lasting impression upon my childish memory. My next recollection of him was his picking a wild goose, which my father had shot, for my mother to dress for dinner. Thus commenced an acquaintance which lasted until ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... slightest connection between one paragraph and another—so overburdened and confused the memory that when one was questioned, it was impossible to give even a tolerable account of what one had read. The mind became a jumble of "politics, religion, picking of pockets, puffs, casualties, deaths, marriages, bankruptcies, preferments, resignations, executions, lottery tickets, India bonds, Scotch pebbles, Canada bills, French chicken gloves, auctioneers, and quack doctors," of all of which, particularly as the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... the story of the witch of Schornstein, who is given to eating little children, and they both hurry off to bring Haensel and Gretel home. Meanwhile, out in the forest the children amuse themselves with picking strawberries and making flower garlands, until the approach of night, when they find to their horror that they have lost their way. They search for it in vain, and at last, completely tired out, they sink down upon the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... "You've got me picking the pea in this game, all right," responded Hopalong, dropping back on the bench. "But lemme tell you one thing; Command or no command, devine or not devine, I know when a man has lived too long, an' when he's going to try to get me. An' all the gospel sharps ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... thrives at an elevation of three or four thousand feet. It is bush-like in form, and trimmed to within three feet of the ground, both for the purpose of throwing down the strength of the growth into the berry, and for the convenience of picking. There are other sorts of coffee raised, but this has formed the staple of the island. Experiments are being tried with several other kinds just now, cuttings growing with good promise in nurseries, which were brought from the West Indies ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... after Bertha had said she knew of a better wife for him, that Daniel looked at Doome, who, picking up that pipe of his, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a manner, Terence. And it is a bad habit that you have got of picking up your supayrior officer's words and throwing them into his teeth. You will come to a bad end if you don't break yourself of it; and the worst of it is, you are corrupting the other lads, and the young officers are losing all ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... vocabulary for the one word he wants, as the long, slender bill of those birds dives deep into the flower for its drop of honey. Here is a passage showing admirably the two different conditions: wings closed and the selective instinct picking out its descriptive expressions; then suddenly wings flashing open and the imagination in the firmament, where it is always at home. Follow the pitiful inventory of insignificances of the forlorn being ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... their troop of servants killed one man each. Nevertheless they did not succeed in forcing the army away from the south of the citadel, not even when all together, Judah and his brethren, made an united attack upon the enemy, each of them picking out a victim and slaying him. And they were still unsuccessful in a third combined attack, though this time each ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... entrance and, getting so close under the cliff that it became impossible for the Russians to depress their heavy guns sufficiently to reach us, would boldly engage the forts with our quick-firers, and even with rifle-fire, picking off any gunners that were foolhardy enough to expose themselves, and not unfrequently dismounting or otherwise putting out of action a few of their lighter guns. It was the good fortune of the Kasanumi, on one occasion, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... distrusted them as I do all young people of today, who are materialistic and without ideals. The District Zemstvo, the Peasant Courts, and all the local institutions, inspired in me not the slightest desire to appeal to them for assistance. I knew that all these institutions who were busily engaged in picking out plums from the Zemstvo and the Government pie had their mouths always wide open for a bite at any other pie that might ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... two street-urchins were playing and wading in the gutter, picking up old nails, pennies, and such things. It was rather dirty work, but it was a great ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... Margaret. "I shall go and leave you right away," she finished tremulously, picking up the tray and hurrying from ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... weatherbeaten by the wind, the rain, the frost, the snow, the fog, and the great sun, that they end by looking very much like the old statues of cathedrals. They are all friends of mine, and I scarcely ever pass by their boxes without picking out of one of them some old book which I had always been in need of up to that very moment, without any suspicion of the fact ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... distinction is found in their habits. Both feed on warm-blooded animals, and neither will eat carrion. In this respect the hawks and falcons are alike. Both take their prey upon the wing; but herein lies the difference. The hawks capture it by skimming along horizontally or obliquely, and picking it up as they pass; whereas the true falcons 'pounce' down upon it from above, and in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... upon me, mixed with pity too And love; for where hope is, there love will be For the abject multitude. And when we chanced One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl, 510 Who crept along fitting her languid gait Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands Was busy knitting in a heartless mood 515 Of solitude, and at the sight my friend In agitation said, "'Tis against 'that' That we are fighting," I with him believed That a benignant spirit was abroad Which ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Bolungo of Western Africa. A man accused of murder or theft walks down a trench full of live charcoal and about a spear's length, or he draws out of the flames a smith's anvil heated to redness: some prefer picking four or five cowries from a large pot full of boiling water. The member used is at once rolled up in the intestines of a sheep and not inspected for a whole day. They have traditionary seers called Tawuli, like the Greegree-men of Western Africa, who, by inspecting ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Had orders been obeyed and carried out at Spring Hill, there never would have been a fight at Nashville. By some misunderstanding, the Yankee army was allowed to cross at the above-named place without being attacked. We followed on their tracks to Franklin, picking up stragglers and prisoners all along the way, to the amount of ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... lucky three in the Scholarship competition I wouldn't appear on the scenes at all, I vow I would not, with that horrid bit of cottony cherry-colored ribbon—yes, I vow I wouldn't. Why, Kitty, how you have stained your dress; you must have knelt on a cherry when you were picking them just ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... intentions, Rhymer," said Ned, picking up the biscuit and continuing to eat the duff on ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... should not benefit the Hun. At the appointed time eight instead of fifty were surrendered to the officer on duty. On the morning of the twelfth of June a number of German soldiers set to work with poles and hooks to drag the pools for submerged helmets. By and by they succeeded in picking out quite a number of those steel fish, every additional one landed calling forth a subdued cheer from the onlookers. In the afternoon, having nothing to do but kill time, I strolled out of a barrack, my hands in my pockets, with no immediate ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... they passed the shops they now extended their hands and pilfered a prune, a few cherries, or a bit of cod. They also provisioned themselves at the markets, keeping a sharp look-out as they made their way between the stalls, picking up everything that fell, and often assisting the fall by a ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... he has wittily implied, were a necessity to his nature; and he seems to have valued friendship (a thing never really valuable, in itself, to a really vain man) as just the needful foundation for future enmity. Quarrelling and picking quarrels, he went his way through life blithely. Most of these quarrels were quite trivial and tedious. In the ordinary way, they would have been forgotten long ago, as the trivial and tedious details in the lives of other great men are forgotten. But Whistler was great ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... comes on Is a gentleman's son; - A gentleman's son he was born; For mutton and beef, You may look at his teeth, He's a laddie for picking a bone! ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... to—Ah, Malachi—you are nearest. Pass that to Mr. Latrobe, Malachi—Yes, that's the one. Now tell me how you like it. It is a little pricked, I think, and may be slightly bruised in the handling. I spent half an hour picking out the cork this morning—but there is no ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... be without them, and a governor or two. Here, this is a well-tied lot," said Tom, picking out half a-dozen. "You never know when you may not kill with either of them. But I don't know the Fairford water; so my opinion ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to behave yourself?" said Corentin, insolently, addressing Laurence, and picking up his dagger, but not committing the great fault of threatening ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... bestowed upon the smiles of a girl who stood in the doorway and moved, with conspicuous civility as he passed. He stalked around to the corner of the porch where stood his long boots, for which he exchanged his low ties of russet leather, and, picking up fishing-tackle and crabbing nets, started off at a brisk pace for the shore of the pond, leaving Marsden to follow with the pail ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... is miles from Beltravers Castle. How tired and hungry you must be." She removed a lettuce from the kitchen chair, dusted it, and offered it to him. (That is to say, the chair, not the lettuce.) "Let me get you some milk," she added. Picking up a pail, she went out to ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... runnin' out of rye and brandy," he said, setting his glass in the bucket under the counter, and picking up Charlie's. "Guess I need 10 brandy and ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... time to git off those kid gloves, and then hustle, damn you, hustle!' The soldiers took delight in picking out the best dressed men and keeping them at the brick piles for long terms. I passed them in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid that even my pass would not save me. Two men are reported shot because they refused ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... They permitted the natives to steal by night, and the swarms of small birds destroyed an incredible quantity by day. These innumerable and ruinous pests do not consume the entire grain, but they nibble the soft sweet portion from the joint of each seed, neatly picking out the heart; thus the ground beneath is strewed with their ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... recollection of the excitement and variety of the year of the Mutiny was still fresh upon me, and I had no wish to leave the Quartermaster-General's Department. I therefore started for Allahabad, picking up my ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... drip of falling snow from the drooping leaves. He took one more cautious step forward and found himself slowly sinking. Black mud was oozing up through the snow where he had set his feet. He was just able to scramble back. Picking his way with great caution, he commenced a leisurely perambulation of the whole of the outside ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... grocer who had known Mary Jane ever since she first appeared at the grocery in her big, well-covered cab—she was then about two months old; it meant telling Mr. Shover, the grocer, just what they wanted and picking out the sorts of things they liked best. But marketing in Chicago was very different. In the first place there wasn't a person around they had ever seen before; and then everything was so big and there was so much food. Mary Jane thought there couldn't possibly be enough folks in Chicago to eat ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... got no mother, if you understand what I mean, sir," replied Carthew, pushing back his chair, stretching out his legs, and picking ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... abundant lap; it munched and gobbled and asked for more. It was a riot of a high old time. Even the birds were hopping about as near as they dared, picking up the crumbs, and the squirrels had peanuts to throw ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... center of the clearing. The prisoners, now unbound, washed and happy, were seated in the place of honor on each side of the chief. A huge pot of miscellaneous food was set down in the midst, and they all began to eat with their fingers, the chief picking out the tid-bits for his guests and putting them in their mouths. They were so much delighted with the results of the day's work that they ate heartily and asked no questions. When the meal was over, Cleary turned to the chief and thanked him in a little oration, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... being disappointed of a room to stand in at the Coronacion. Then to my father's, and there staid talking with my mother and him late about my dinner to-morrow. So homewards and took up a boy that had a lanthorn, that was picking up of rags, and got him to light me home, and had great discourse with him how he could get sometimes three or four bushells of rags in a day, and got 3d. a bushell for them, and many other discourses, what and how many ways ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to be truthful. There's no such thing, you know, as picking out the best woman; it's only a question of comparative ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... how to do. His way took him along the gorge close to the gulch in which he had left Schneider, and, yielding to a natural curiosity, he scaled the cliffs and made his way to the edge of the gulch. The tree was empty, nor was there sign of Numa, the lion. Picking up a rock he hurled it into the gulch, where it rolled to the very entrance to the cave. Instantly the lion appeared in the aperture; but such a different-looking lion from the great sleek brute that Tarzan had trapped there two weeks ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... army now hastily descended the steep sides of the sierra; and notwithstanding every effort of their officers, they moved in so little order, each man picking his way as he could, that the straggling column presented many a vulnerable point to the enemy; and the descent would not have been accomplished without considerable loss, had Pizarro's cannon been ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... can follow that plan, taking down the leading positions, selecting some of the chief examples or illustrations, giving short headings of chapters and paragraphs, and thus making a synopsis, or full table of contents. All this is useful. The memory is much better impressed through the exertion of picking, choosing, and condensing, than by copying verbatim; and the plan or evolution of the whole is more fully comprehended. But, if a work does not easily lend itself to a methodical abstract, the task of the beginner is much harder. To abstract the treatises ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... fleet and mostly invisible, and knew the desert well. So, while the year turned, and the heat came, held sway, and went, the ragged troopers on the frontier were led an endless chase by the hostiles, who took them back and forth over flats of lime and ridges of slate, occasionally picking off a packer or a couple of privates, until now the sun was setting at 4.28 and it froze at any time of day. Therefore the rest of the packers and privates were glad to march into Boise Barracks this morning by ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Farnese was the lady of the house, but where she trailed her cloth of gold the chickens now scamper between your legs over rotten straw. It is all inexpressibly dreary. A stupid peasant scratching his head, a couple of critical Americans picking their steps, the walls tattered and befouled breast-high, dampness and decay striking in on your heart, and the scene overbowed by these heavenly frescoes, moulering there in their airy artistry! It's poignant; it provokes tears; it tells so of the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... cultivated. In the summer time you may see two or even three crops growing up together. If they had potatoes on last, they got them up in the most slovenly way, leaving half the crop in the ground. They just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the small ones in the ground. Oats or something else will be seen half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. The slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. Of course they are all Home Rulers ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... she's never here just when I want her most. V'la le picbois et la grive—see the woodpecker and the robin—eating the cherries, eating every one of them, and that girl running off somewhere instead of staying here and picking them," she railed in answer to the young man's polite inquiry. "I haven't seen her these four hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're up to some mischief, I'll ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... moment all was desolation. It was like being ordered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Dense everglades, swamp-fevers, malaria in the air, poisonous underbrush, and venomous reptiles and insects, and now and then a wily unseen foe picking off the men, one by one, as they painfully cut out roads through the thickets,—these were the features of military life in Florida at that period. Men who would have marched boldly to the cannon's mouth, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... a moment at the tall, handsome girl picking her way across the pebbly path. Then she threw down her knitting and went to meet her, and Elizabeth was pleased and flattered by her protegee's complaints and welcomes. "I thought you would never send me a message or a letter," almost sobbed Denas. "I never hoped you would come. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... he will go on to New Zealand, stay perhaps six weeks in New Zealand, or it may be two months; so that with the time occupied by his voyage from Lifu to New Zealand, 1,000 miles and back, he will be away from Lifu about two and a half or three months. Then, picking me up (say about September 12), we go on at once to the whole number of our islands, spending three months or so among them, getting back to New Zealand about the end of November. So that I shall be in Melanesia, D.V., from the beginning of May to the end of November. I shall be able to ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Faith, picking up the kitten and smoothing its pretty head. "I named it 'Bounce' because it never seems to walk. It just ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... Cargrim to venture into, since many sights therein must have displeased his exact tastes; yet two days after the reception at the palace the chaplain might have been seen daintily picking his way over the cobble-stone pavements. As he walked he thought, and his thoughts were busy with the circumstances which had led him to venture his saintly person so near the spider's web of The Derby Winner. The bishop, London, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... machine-drill under show conditions may be anything up to ten or twelve feet of hole per hour on rock such as compact granite; but in underground work a large proportion of the time is lost in picking down loose ore, setting up machines, removal for blasting, clearing away spoil, making adjustments, etc. The amount of lost time is often dependent upon the width of stope or shaft and the method of stoping. Situations which require long drill columns ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... murder in the case, only a nice little game of lock-picking and so on. No backing out now, and beforehand we must all take this oath: that if any one of us is nabbed, and should by any chance suffer the penalty of the law, he shall not implicate any ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... of bringing up. Here we see the thick skulled plodding Dane, making a wooden dish; or else some of the most ingenious making a very clumsy ship: while others submitted to the dirtiest drudgery of the hulk, for money; and there we see a Dutchman, picking to pieces tarred ropes, which, when reduced to its original form of hemp, they call oakum; or else you see him lazily stowed away in some corner, with his pipe, surrounded with smoke, and "steeping his senses in forgetfulness;" while here and there, and every where, you find a lively ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... have a triumph and a triumph that has not turned back. The praise given to him is not a priggish fiction of our conventional history, though such fictions have illogically curtailed it. The Nonconformists have been rather unfair to Penn even in picking their praises; and they generally forget that toleration cuts both ways and that an open mind is open on all sides. Those who deify him for consenting to bargain with the savages cannot forgive him for consenting to bargain with the Stuarts. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... and down the track, as far as they could see on either side the steel rails glittered on into gradual dimness. There were patches of the field before them, white with bursting cotton which scores of negroes, men, women and children were dexterously picking and thrusting into great bags that hung from their shoulders and dragged beside them on the ground; no machine having yet been found to surpass the sufficiency of five human fingers for wrenching the cotton from its tenacious ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... The Doctor gave "particular attention to observations and investigations respecting coffee culture in Liberia." "I have frequently seen," he says, "isolated trees growing in different parts of Liberia, which yielded from ten to twenty pounds of clean dry coffee at one picking; and, however incredible it may appear, it is a fact that one tree in Monrovia yielded four and a half bushels of coffee in the hull, at one time, which, when dried and shelled, weighed thirty-one pounds. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... has not fallen in with our plan, and as one ought not to be picking and pulling, or for ever introducing new elements among the conditions of our lives, I think it better to bear, and to conquer as I can, even the unpleasant impression that my daughter, who knows very well that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Flinders, constantly on the alert as he always was for anything approaching an outlet or river mouth, would scarcely have missed one here. As for any knowledge of the interior that was gained, of course there was none, even the conjectures of a worn out, starving man, picking his way painfully around the sea shore, would have scarcely been of much value. Eyre has, however secured for himself a name for courage and perseverance, under the most terrible circumstances that could well beset ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... cloud, the most lovely cloud ever seen, resting like a bar along the horizon, stretching southward. She cried out to her father, 'O father, come and see this beautiful [bright?] cloud!' He did so.... Next day the daughter took a basket and went out into the plain to gather clover to eat. While picking the clover she found a very pretty arrow, trimmed with yellow-hammer's feathers. After gazing at it awhile in wonder she turned to look at her basket, and there beside it stood a man who was called Yang-wi'-a-kan-ueh (Red Cloud) who was none other than ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... it must be," exclaimed Margaret. "Is there no way of stopping a career of vice like this? While Mrs Plumstead gets a parish boy whipped for picking up her hens' eggs from among the nettles, is Maria to have no redress for slander which takes away her peace ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Mr. Bradbury, in the course of a morning's excursion, shot nearly three hundred with a fowling-piece. He gives a curious, though apparently a faithful, account of the kind of discipline observed in these immense flocks, so that each may have a chance of picking up food. As the front ranks must meet with the greatest abundance, and the rear ranks must have scanty pickings, the instant a rank finds itself the hindmost, it rises in the air, flies over the whole flock ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... that Miss Carmichael did not possess, and I began to consider that she would be throwing herself away upon him. "They seem to get on well together, however—monstrously well. I wonder what star he is picking to ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... shop in garments carefully selected from my pre-wardrobe and wearing a vacant expression. Picking up a piece of china I examined it carefully, turning it upside down, as though to search for a pottery mark, which I probably should never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... horse's head, boy!" exclaimed the elder of the gentlemen, addressing Owen in an imperious tone, while he was picking himself up. "Reginald, are ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... the expression of her physical pain; when he heard her cries, rising and falling, piercing the calm autumn night, he went into the garden and tried to stop his ears, but the thin poignancy of those cries still rang in them. He went back to the parlour, and picking up the body of poor Wanda, carried it out to a spot of the garden where the sun fell the longest, and there, beneath a rambler rose bush, began to dig her grave furiously. Suddenly it struck him as rather awful that it should be a grave he was busy over at such a moment, and he ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... forest to the eel-pond and eel-weir, on the estate of Silkborg, and sometimes even to the distant town of Randers. There was no one under whose care he could leave Little Christina; so she was almost always with him in his boat, or playing in the wood among the blossoming heath, or picking the ripe wild berries. Sometimes, when her father had to go as far as the town, he would take Little Christina, who was a year younger than Ib, across the heath to the cottage of Jeppe Jans, and leave her there. Ib and Christina agreed together in everything; they ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... where the bailiff had put the trap, he remembered what the weasel had told him, and going to the cart-house wall by the drain, found the trap and the weasel in it: "Oh! you false and treacherous creature!" said Bevis, picking up a stone, "now I will smash you into seventy thousand little pieces," and he flung the stone with all his might, but being in too much of a hurry (as the snail had warned him) it missed the mark, and only knocked a bit of mortar out of the wall. He looked round for a ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... with one hand which they had just given me with the other. This evil, one of the chiefs undertook to remove, and with fury in his eyes made a show of keeping the people at a proper distance. I applauded his conduct, but at the same time kept so good a look-out as to detect him picking my pocket of a handkerchief, which I suffered him to put in his bosom, before I seemed to know anything of the matter, and then told him what I had lost. He seemed quite ignorant and innocent, until I took it from him; then he ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... in a casual way a loose leaf fell to the floor. Upon picking it up, there was found to be written on one side in ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... to come, it wore an air of peaceful inactivity. At a table a maitre d'hotel was composing the menu for the evening, against the walls three colored waiters lounged sleepily, and on a platform at a piano a pale youth with drugged eyes was with one hand picking an accompaniment. As Wharton paused uncertainly the young man, disdaining his audience, in a shrill, nasal tenor raised his ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... making notable history ever since 1620, and in picking out here and there a few of the influences which have tended to develope her material resources, we would not be unmindful of those Christian influences which are also a part of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... common on the hides of thick-skinned animals, by means of the red-beaked rhinoceros birds, Buphaga erythrorhynca, a dozen or more of which may be seen partly perched on its horns and partly moving about on its back, and picking up the ticks on which they feed. The hunter is often guided by these birds in his search for the buffalo, but oftener still they give timely warning to their host of the dangerous proximity of the hunter, and have thus earned the title of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... far from being the only person from the outside world who has experienced what Wallace describes as "the Lure of the Labrador." It was a genuine surprise to me one morning to find ice on deck—a scale of sparkling crystals most beautifully picking out the water-line of our little craft. It was only then that I realized that October had come. The days, so full of incident, had passed away like ships in the night. Whither away was the question? We could not stay even though we ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... excitement. She passed the hours after breakfast in restless riding over the barley stubble, where the sheep, led by a black bell-wether who sought the fields because they were forbidden ground, were mincing and picking their way. At eleven she happily welcomed a gallop to the farthest end of the farm to carry doughnuts and ginger-beer to the big brothers. At dinner-time her appetite was again poor, but later, after making enough hay-twists for her mother's ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... on the tray where he had placed it. With a yawn, he had just thrown aside the paper and was reaching for the thick, dark beverage—his hand thin and nervous—when, glancing without, he caught sight of the actress in the crowd. Obeying a sudden impulse, he arose, picking up his hat which lay on a chair ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... when they are to be planted, what breeds of animals to raise and how to feed them. But no scientific interest has thrown light on his own activity in planting the seed and gathering the harvest, in picking the fruit and caring for ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... advanced on tiptoe to the door, where she saw the parrot picking at some buttons on the sofa, which she had often been forbidden to touch. Much amused at the sight, she listened to an imitation of her own voice, ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie
... afraid of him," George declared. "I'll let him pinch this stick," he went on, picking up one, and holding it out toward the lobster, which was slowly waving its "feelers" to and fro, and moving its big eyes, that looked like shoe buttons sticking out from ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... to say it three times afore they understood 'im, and then they went down on their knees and burnt their fingers picking up bits o' paper that 'ad fallen in the fireplace. They found six pieces in all, but not one with the number they was looking for on it, and then they all got up and said wot ought to be ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... we send mediocrity and idiocy to college, gilded and crowned. For three hundred years we have denied black Americans an education and now we exploit them before a gaping world: See how ignorant and degraded they are! All they are fit for is education for cotton-picking and dish-washing. When Dunbar and Taylor happen along, we are torn between something like shamefaced anger ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... apparent that tuberculin should be applied only by or under the direction of a competent veterinarian, capable not only of injecting the tuberculin but also of interpreting the results, and particularly of picking out all clinical cases by physical examination. The latter observation is extremely important and should always be made ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... she would not find Hannah, and the people would have to hunt for her too. But Ann had quick wits for an emergency. She had actually carried those cards, with a big wad of wool between them all the time, in her gathered-up apron. Now she began picking off little bits of wool and marking her way with them, sticking them on the trees and bushes. Every few feet a fluffy scrap of wool showed the road ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... useful than at present, must always be restricted within a limited circle of operations. Nor would any number of combination-letters obviate the necessity of composition by hand. The printer would still be obliged to stand at the case, picking up type after type, turning each one around and over, and so arranging the words in his "stick." Every one knows this process,—a painfully slow one in view of results, although individual compositors are sometimes wonderfully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... a sheep breeder would he be who should content himself with picking out the worst fifty out of a thousand, leaving them on a barren common till the weakest starved, and then letting the survivors go back to mix with the rest? And the parallel is too favourable; since in a large number of cases, the actual poor and the convicted criminals are neither the weakest ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... H.J. Ruffier, warden of the House of Detention, dreamed there was a jail delivery on, a general effort to escape from the prison was frustrated. Forty prisoners confined in one big room, on the Tulane avenue side of the building, were detected working at the bars of a window and picking at brickworks under another ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... throw out one foot and bring the Jemtlander flat on his face, his dagger flying from his hand. After looking for a moment in astonishment at their fallen guide, his would-be victim burst out laughing, and picking up the dagger, handed it back ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... every direction—crisp, brown, freshly fried doughnuts. And Grunty Pig showed that he was thoughtful. He went to the trouble of picking them all up off the floor. But he forgot to drop them back into the pan. Instead, he put every one of them into his ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... America, preaching every Sunday for months, could have done very much in the way of seriously touching the imagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectual degradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing that nearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, and making that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought out what it would lead to, and how monstrous and absurd ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... could have cut a hole for air and then perhaps enlarged it and broken out a board. He found a spike on the floor and began tapping round the walls for a place that sounded thin; but they all sounded thick—how thick he had no idea. He began picking splinters away at the juncture ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... at ten o'clock on the morning of Sunday, August 10, the porch was covered with wounded people. Some fierce sunbeams were gliding under the roof, shining in the poor fellows' eyes, and they were stirring wearily, though asleep. Picking my way among the prostrate figures, I resorted to the pump in the rear of the tavern for the purpose of bathing my face. A soldier stood there on guard, and he refused to give me so much as a draught of water. The wounded needed every drop, and there were but a few wells ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the first class relates to the avoidance of all disgusting or offensive personal habits: such as fingering the hair; obtrusively using a toothpick, or carrying one in the mouth after the needful use of it; cleaning the nails in presence of others; picking the nose; spitting on carpets; snuffing instead of using a handkerchief, or using the article in an offensive manner; lifting up the boots or shoes, as some men do, to tend them on the knee, or to finger them: all these tricks, either at home ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... racing after me. Half of them had flung away their coats in the fierce heat, and their shirts clung soaked and dripping. Swinging them into some semblance of line, each man barely within sight of his neighbor, and picking up others as we advanced, we made the crest of the hill, and entered the open country beyond. Looking back, as the clouds broke, we could see the long lines of infantry forming in the valley below, with black specks here ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... full bloom and drew itself back into the night. "A flare," we were told; and another white flower bloomed out farther down. Below us, the roofs of Cassel slept their provincial sleep, the moonlight picking out every leaf in the gardens; while beyond, those infernal flowers continued to open and shut ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Nelka had gone to our cabin, and when she entered she also heard the alarm. So picking up the two cats and a life belt, she hurried on deck. I likewise picked up the two dogs ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... among the branches of the trees, upon which the rain kept up such an endless, dismal patter as became unendurable after a time—a continual dropping, the water dripping off the long branches, drizzling through the leaves with incessant monotonous downfall. The Wilberforces came picking their way through the little pools which alternated with dry patches along all the approaches to the house, their wet umbrellas making a moving glimmer of reflection in the damp atmosphere. Inside, the rooms were all dark, as if it had ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... be understood that to the pastimes mentioned above as originating in military times must be added others bequeathed from previous eras. Principal among these was "flower viewing" at all seasons; couplet composing; chess; draughts; football; mushroom picking, and maple-gathering parties, as well as other minor pursuits. Gambling, also, prevailed widely during the Muromachi epoch and was carried sometimes to great excesses, so that samurai actually staked their ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... be a wise provision of nature by means of which the bear conserves his flesh and strength during extreme weather. When the ground is covered several feet deep with snow, it will readily be seen that berry-picking would be difficult, and nuts and roots would be hard to find, as would the ants and grubs under logs and stones, with which the bear varies his diet in fine weather. The chipmunks and mice have also denned up, so there is not much for bruin ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... knowing whither they were going. At length they saw an opening through the woods, and were shortly afterward delighted to find themselves on the borders of a large lake. Here the elder brother busied himself in picking the seed pods of the wild rose, which he reserved as food. In the mean time, the younger brother amused himself by shooting arrows in the sand, one of which happened to fall into the lake. Panigwun,[82] the elder brother, not willing to lose the arrow, waded in the water to reach it. Just as he ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Southwark at three pounds a hundred a few days before I left London. The Farnham hops may bring double that price; but that, I think, is as much as they will: and this is ruin to the hop-planter. The tax, with its attendant inconveniences, amounts to a pound a hundred; the picking, drying, and bagging to 50s. The carrying to market not less than 5s. Here is the sum of L3 10s. of the money. Supposing the crop to be half a ton to the acre, the bare tillage will be 10s. The poles for an acre cannot cost less than L2 a year; that is another 4s. to each hundred of hops. This ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... "Yes, sir." Hugh was picking out the design in the rug with the toe of his shoe and at the same time unconsciously pinching his leg. He pinched so hard that he afterward found a black and blue spot, but he never knew ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... They were continuous, and like all the snow I saw at this season, the surface was honeycombed into thin plates, dipping north at a high angle; the intervening fissures were about six inches deep. A thick mist here overtook us, and this, with the great difficulty of picking our way, rendered the ascent very fatiguing. Being sanguine about obtaining a good view, I found it almost impossible to keep my temper under the aggravations of pain in the forehead, lassitude, oppression of breathing, a dense ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... before her, she dropped her glove, perhaps not undesignedly, and on his picking it up, graciously desired him to keep it. He caused the trophy to be encircled with diamonds, and ever after at all tilts and tourneys bore it conspicuously placed in front of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... they are as like the sheep as possible, though with longer legs, and resembling greyhounds in the drawn-up belly and long slender snout; they seem content with wondrous little, and keep about the road sides, picking up ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the stems of strawberries, and the peach pitter, Fig. 2, for removing the stones from clingstone peaches. For placing the food to be canned into jars, both forks and large spoons are necessities. A large spoon with holes or slits in the bowl is convenient for picking fruits and vegetables out of a kettle when no liquid is desired, as well as for skimming a kettle of fruit. For packing foods into jars, a long-handled spoon with a small bowl is convenient. Still another useful small utensil is ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... put a mark on this tree," she said, stooping down and picking up a sharp fragment of rock at its base. "If you ever forget what you have said to me this night, I will lead you to this spot, and show you ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the afternoon of Saturday at Keneh, where I dined with the English Consul, a worthy old Arab, who also invited our captain, and we all sat round his copper tray on the floor and ate with our fingers, the captain, who sat next me, picking out the best bits and feeding me and Sally with them. After dinner the French Consul, a Copt, one Jesus Buktor, sent to invite me to a fantasia at his house, where I found the Mouniers, the Moudir, and some other Turks, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon |
