"Thresh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up a field that I've been trying to get into for some little time, Mac," the superintendent began, after the half-hour had elapsed and the trainmaster had returned to the private office. "Sit down and we'll thresh it out. Here are some figures showing loss and expense in the general maintenance account. Look them over and ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... is the invention of Mr. O. Hussey, and will no doubt prove a useful addition to our agricultural implements. Mr. J. C. Ludlow suggested that it would be good economy of time and labor to take a threshing machine into the field and thresh out the grain as it is reaped, thereby saving the binding and hauling to the barn or stack. We think the suggestion a ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... shout to let his neighbors know he was in the field. Councill, with a fork over his shoulder, was on his way down the lane to help a neighbor thresh. Ike jovially shook the reins above his colts and Bradley followed close behind, and the two wagons went crashing through the forest of corn. The race started the blood of the drivers as well as that of the teams. The cold wind cut the face ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... different; there the farmers are obliged to expose themselves because our army needs bread. But your corn and buckwheat and pumpkins and apples can be left for a week or two until we see how this thing is going to end. Be sensible; stack what you can, but don't wait to thresh or grind. Bury your apples; let the cider go; harness up; gather your cattle and sheep; pack up the clock and feather bed, and move to Johnstown with your families. In a week or two you will know whether this country is to be given to the torch again, or whether, by God's ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Agnosticism has no quarrel. On the contrary, the Agnostic, knowing too well the influence of prejudice and idiosyncrasy, even on those who desire most earnestly to be impartial, can wish for nothing more urgently than that the scientific theologian should not only be at perfect liberty to thresh out the matter in his own fashion; but that he should, if he can, find flaws in the Agnostic position; and, even if demonstration is not to be had, that he should put, in their full force, the grounds of the conclusions he thinks ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... But we must argue this out in comfort. It is our supper hour, and I'm not the man to fight against accomplished facts. We have intermarried. There it is. You must stop to supper—and you and I must thresh these things out. We've involved ourselves with each other and we've got to make the best of it. Your wife and mine will spread the board, and we will go on talking. Why not sit in that chair instead of leaning on the back? This is a home—domus—not a debating society—humble in ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... killed." In some parts of Bavaria the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is said to have killed the Corn-man, the Oats-man, or the Wheat-man, according to the crop. In the Canton of Tillot, in Lorraine, at threshing the last corn the men keep time with their flails, calling out as they thresh, "We are killing the Old Woman! We are killing the Old Woman!" If there is an old woman in the house she is warned to save herself, or she will be struck dead. Near Ragnit, in Lithuania, the last handful of corn is left standing ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... wildcats. Dinky-Dunk's nose bled and his lip was cut. But he knocked the other man flat, and when he tried to get up he knocked him again. It seemed cruel; it was revolting. But something in me rejoiced and exulted as I saw that hulk of an animal thresh and stagger about the hay-stubble. I tried to wipe the blood away from Dinky-Dunk's nose. But he pushed me back and said this was no place for a woman. I had no place in his universe, at that particular time. But Dinky-Dunk ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... woods, but night alters the most familiar places. It was so dark in vaults and tunnels of trees and thickets that I might have burrowed through the ground almost as easily as thresh a path. The million scarcely audible noises that fill a forest surrounded me, and twigs not broken by me cracked or shook. Still I made directly toward the woman's voice which guided me more plainly; but left off running as my ear detected that ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... would thresh, and thereto dike and delve, For Christe's sake, for every poore wight, Withouten hire, if ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of that? That is going to an extreme! Not to feel a thing like that it's necessary to have a rhinoceros-hide instead of skin on one's back! You come here, enjoy my hospitality, thresh out a few of your thread-bare phrases, turn my sister-in-law's head, go on about old friendship and other pleasant things, and then you tell me quite coolly: you're going to write a descriptive pamphlet about the local conditions. Why, what do you take me to be, anyhow? ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... straight in front of her. But the women are going; and she rises with a groan, and drags herself after them. And this will go on in July also, when the peasants, without obtaining sufficient sleep, reap the oats by night, lest it should fall, and the women rise gloomily to thresh out the straw for the bands to tie the sheaves; when this old woman, already utterly cramped by the labor of mowing, and the woman with child, and the young children, injure themselves overworking and over-drinking; and when neither hands, nor ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that, With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the flat. "Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at five-stone-ten! But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... threshing-time was an era of prosperity, and twenty-five or thirty men would band together and buy a threshing-machine. They owned plenty of horses, and they would go from ranch to ranch with this machine, and thresh the grain. Now, this threshing-time being of short duration, it drew into it men whose occupations were entirely different at other times of the year. Hence, the bartenders, hold-up men, cowpunchers—whom it would be fatal to ask where they came ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... threshing, &c. I have known the women go into the barn as soon as they could see in the morning, and work as late as they could see at night, threshing rice with the flail, (they now have a threshing machine,) and when they could see to thresh no longer, they had to gather up the rice, carry it up stairs, and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... advantage. I was pleased at the praise which you received. I was vain of having such a correspondent. I thought I did not envy you a bit, and yet, I don't know, I felt somehow, as if I could like to thresh you pretty heartily: however, I have one comfort, in thinking that all this praise would not have availed you a single curl of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's periwig,[26] had not I generously reported it to you: so that in reality you are obliged to me ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... flock. It will be best to work the houses across to the far side and let that portion near the middle fence head up. As the old grain gets too tough for green food strips of ground should be broken up and sown in oats. The grain that matures will not be cut, but the hens will be allowed to thresh it out. The straw may be cut with mower or scythe for use as ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... afraid; The tempest of waters passeth by; The deep uttereth his voice, And lifteth up his hands on high; The sun and moon stand still in their habitation At the light of thine arrows as they go, At the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou dost march through the land in indignation, Thou dost thresh the nations ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... that day they had settled themselves in the comfort of the Princess's boudoir, content with each other and content with the weather. Patsy had been teaching her companion such phrases as "a blatter o' sleet," an "on-ding o' snaw," and a "thresh o' rain." ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... enclosure; the talk of barbarians, persistent, steady, repeating itself in the soft syllables, in musical tones of the never-ending discourses of those men of the forests and the sea, who can talk most of the day and all the night; who never exhaust a subject, never seem able to thresh a matter out; to whom that talk is poetry and painting and music, all art, all history; their only accomplishment, their only superiority, their only amusement. The talk of camp fires, which speaks of bravery ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... being farmers, we turn gleaners, gleaning The scanty but right-well thresh'd ears of truth; And, gentle reader! when you gather meaning, You may be Boaz, and I—modest Ruth. Farther I 'd quote, but Scripture intervening Forbids. Its great impression in my youth Was made by Mrs. Adams, where she ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... corn; and children, with huge sticks, played hockey upon the ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals with lighted pipes in their lips, to growl, in regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to take the air, and thresh the grain spread out in the barn. At last the snow began to melt, and the ice slipped away: but Peter remained the same; and, the more time went on, the more morose he grew. He sat in the cottage as though nailed ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... equally well to the chaff of the threshing-floor? It is more satisfactory to us, then, to attribute a part of the words given above to the Gothic dragan, (L. trahere, G. tragen,) to drag, to draw, and a part to Goth. thriskan, to thresh. The conjecture of Diez, (cited by Diefenbach,) that the Italian trescare (to stamp with the feet, to dance) should be referred to the same root, is confirmed by the ancient practice of threshing grain by treading it out with cattle. We might, indeed, refer all ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Then they couldn't thresh by sixes any more, said Joggeli, if he took a man from the threshing, and when they all cut wood together they could do a lot ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... sang, "thresh for yourselves, O oxen, thresh for yourselves, for yourselves— Bushels for yourselves, bushels ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... had no knowledge who I was, though I had known her before her marriage. She did not ask me in, but pointed out a barn, where she said I would find George. I went over and he was there threshing, so I said, "Well, friend, do you thresh by the day or the quarter?" He answered, "By the quarter, but I cannot do much of it." He stared at me, for I had on my regimentals, but I did not yet make myself known. Then I asked him if there was a public-house handy. He ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... did learn something about our young human rose at a farmhouse a mile or so farther on. While a motherly housewife prepared us some lunch, all a-bustle with expectancy of an imminent inroad of harvesters due to thresh the corn, and liable to eat all before them, a sprightly young daughter, who attended the same school, and whom we had told about our call at the schoolhouse, entertained us with girlish gossip of the neighbourhood. ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... grown up; the time is come for working bravely: she must cut the corn, thresh the wheat, carry the bundles of flowering clover or branches of withered leaves to the farm. If her toil is hard, hope shines like a sun over everything and it wipes the drops of sweat away. The growing ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... thresh that day, said the squire; the other twelve men were already busy at it. There were twelve threshing-floors, and the twelve men were at work on six of them—two on each. Hans must thresh by himself all that was ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... bones, To risk their breaking? I have half a mind To thresh you from your motley ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... to be deloused. We had nothing but Serbian barrels for clothing disinfectors at that time. Reported that a thresh delouser had been started for ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... yes, yes!" interrupted Jane. "You can thresh all that out some other time. The point is, if this fellow is your nephew, I don't see what we can do. We'll have to ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... your friend. Let me always thresh out the truth with you, and then I'll warrant I shall ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... to study the views of Wright's contemporaries as to the causes of his defeat.[363] One thought he should have forced the convention and veto issues in the campaign of 1845, compelling people and press to thresh them out a year in advance of his own candidacy; another believed if he had vetoed the convention bill a canal appropriation would not have passed; a third charged him with trusting too much in old friends who ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... years ago, on our farm in the south of England, two men with flails used to begin threshing wheat in the long barn about 1st November, and used to thresh till 1st April. They got eight shillings a week with us, but in adjoining counties seven shillings (and even six) were winter wages. Now the steam threshing- machine will empty that long barn in two short days' work. It takes half a dozen men to do the work, and they get ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... threw down some sheaves of wheat,—as many as he thought would be necessary to produce the quantity of grain which the farmer had ordered. He then descended the ladder, and got a flail, and began to thresh them out. ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... and others. What a pity that with only five miles separating them Cowper and Johnson should never have met! Would Cowper have reconsidered the wish made when he read Johnson's biography of Milton in the Lives of the Poets: "Oh! I could thresh his old jacket till I made his pension jingle in ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... up to my rooms," suggested Rushford, rising. "We'll be free from interruption there, and can thresh ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... She was pinch'd, and pull'd, she said; And he, by friar's lantern led. Tells how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down the lubber fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And crop-full out of door he flings, Ere the first cock his matin ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... a very heavy heart that he went to his work that day; but he had to go, for he was helping one of the neighbors to thresh, and every dry day was precious, and ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... is a most interesting and picturesque scene. They tie it in sheaves with a straw before it is ripe enough to gather to prevent the wind from shaking out the grains, and when it has matured, they thresh it with sticks into their canoes. We estimated that there were about 1,000 families of the Chippewas, and that they gathered about twenty-five bushels for each family, and we saw that in so doing they did not make any impression whatever on the crop, leaving thousands of acres ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the field where the year has shot her yield, And the ricks stand gray to the sun, Singing: — "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover, And your English summer's done." You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song — how long! how long? Pull out on ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Essex, which sells the best in the Markets. But from whatever Place we have it, regard should be chiefly had to its being free from Mustiness, which happens from the gathering the Seed wet, or in the Dew, and laying it close together before it is thresh'd. When this Seed is dry and sweet, grind it in a Mill, such as a Coffee-Mill; but the Mill must be fresh, and free from any Flavour or Taint: it should not indeed be used with any other thing. When you have ground ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... girl letting her father thresh the matter out in his slow, thorough way. Finally her young impatience conquered her restraint. "Well—what do you think, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... would have plenty of time to think things over and put its house in order. Then, of course, we'd go up like a singed feather. And there'd be no more breakfasts to worry over, and no more wheat to thresh, and no more school fires to start in the morning, and no more children to make think you know more than you really do, and not even any more hearts to ache. There would be just Emptiness, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... and carried to the threshing floor, which was usually a wide, level space of hard ground or rock. Oxen were driven back and forth across the grain on the floor, drawing a heavy weight, until all or nearly all the kernels were shaken or crushed out of the heads. It usually took several days to thresh all the grain from an average-sized field. Then the straw was raked away, and the grain was left mixed with chaff and dust. The next windy day the winnowers, with large "fans," or wooden shovels, ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... position of the magazine, the remarkable respect which its readers had for it, and the confidence with which parents placed the periodical on their home tables—all this was, after all, Bok thought, the more reason why he should take up the matter and thresh it out. He consulted with friends, who advised against it; his editors were all opposed to the introduction of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... in this fashion we passed a spot on the highroad where a man was getting ready to thresh his wheat. He had prepared the place by spreading over it a layer of cow-dung, and levelling it with his bare feet until it was quite smooth and hard. It is in this way that the threshing-floors ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... big harvesters that cut and thresh the wheat are drawn by a traction-engine instead of horses. In running a fifty-horse-power engine high-priced coal had to be burnt but now the coal grates are replaced by petroleum burners, and crude ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... fathers sowed their little fields by hand, And reaped with bended sickles and bent backs; By hand they bound the sheaves of wheat and rye; With flails they threshed and winnowed in the wind. Now by machines we sow and reap and bind; By steam we thresh and sack the bounteous grain. These are but few of all the million ways Whereby man's toil is lightened and he hath gained Tenfold in comfort, luxury and ease. For these and more the millions that enjoy May thank the wise and wealthy ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however, had gone off earlier than usual ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... hangs on and drags backward. Over the man goes, and down under the heap. Barber Kid changes the position of his own body, but never lets go. While some of the kids are "going through" the victim, others are holding his legs so that he cannot kick and thresh about. They improve the opportunity by taking off the man's shoes. As for him, he has given in. He is beaten. Also, what of the strong arm at his throat, he is short of wind. He is making ugly choking ...
— The Road • Jack London
... drama was visible to Cardington it would be impossible to say, but apparently he was lost to his surroundings, for he allowed the others to thresh out the Emmet incident without the assistance of his own able flail. Not until the conversation turned to Bermuda did he arouse himself from his reverie and take the lead. The topic suggested to his mind the influence of climate upon architecture ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... little thing that the mere fact of meeting with no other ship should have ground down the edge of the spirit. But let the incredulous—bound upon such a hazard as ours—sail straight into nothingness for sixteen days on end, seeing nothing but the sun, hearing nothing but the thresh of his own screw, and ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... already filled, and the new husbandmen, their children, have in their turn come into the field, to eat of the fruit they sowed, to sow in turn a seed of which they themselves shall not see the harvest, whose sheaves others shall bind, whose ears others shall thresh, and of whose corn others shall make bread after them. With our eyes we may yet see the graves of two hundred generations of men, whose tombs serve but to mark that boundary more clearly, whose fierce warfare, when they fought ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... to hasten from the spot he caught a glimpse of something white across the gully at the thresh-hold of the girl's cabin. For a second this was terrifying, but he quickly regained poise. The bridge was gone. She could not reach the side of the endangered man to save him, she could not reach the mainland to pursue him and discover ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... any villany. We must thresh this matter out to-morrow, Ned. Had I known you were coming I would have had no guests here to-night. We could have had a quiet evening together, and I could have shown you over my new establishment. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... followed a tremendous punching with a log, the door gave way, and with a fiendish yell an Indian was about to spring in, when the unerring rifle fired by the old lady stretched his lifeless body across the thresh-hold of the door. The remaining, or more properly the surviving Indian fired at random and ran, doing no injury. "Now" said the old heroine to her undaunted daughter "we must leave." Accordingly with the rifle and the axe, they went to the river, took the canoe, and without ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... my brothers in the lumber woods of Wisconsin down among the yellow pines of the Arizona Desert. All that was back in the decrepit and languid and hopesick nineties. It was then you could see the skies of Southern Manitoba luridly aflame at night with wheat stacks it didn't pay to thresh. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... that he is, will up an' say: 'They haven't got through. They couldn't without bein' seen by our scouts an' watchers. An' since they haven't passed, it follers that they're somewhar inside the ring. So, we'll jest thresh out ev'ry inch o' ground in thar, ef it takes ten years ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. No!—hammer away, like Charles Martel; "fillip me with a three-man beetle;" be to me a malleus hreticorum; come like Spenser's Talus—an iron man with an iron flail, and thresh out the straw of my logic; rack me; put me to the question; get me down; jump upon me; kick me; throttle me; put an end to me in any way ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly get, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lays him down the lubber-fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And crop-full, out of door he flings Ere the first ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... 'Twas a fancy so strange the maid had: but was yet so true and reverent and usefully efficient—so high in leading to her who led us with her into pure paths—that I must smile and adore her for it. 'Twas to no purpose, as I knew, to thresh over the improbability of the communication: Judith's eyes were round and clear and unwavering—full of most exalted truth, concern, and confidence. There was no pretence anywhere to be descried ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... all this far-stretching field there is a harvest of experiment, a harvest of observation, which only needs laborers to cut and carry, to thresh and winnow it. The reality, the extent, the importance of the phenomena which lie around us, unnoted and unexplained, are more fully recognized as each year's work adds at once to our knowledge and to our corresponding consciousness of ignorance. Such recognition, I say, is beginning to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from the steel ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... three-quarters of an hour to get into an empty house where there looked as if there might be something to drink, and we'd just got the door open when the owner turned up from behind a tree with a shot-gun. It was a little difficult to explain. As a matter of fact, we never did what you might call really thresh the matter out thoroughly in all its aspects, and you'd be surprised what a devil of a time it takes to pick buck-shot out of a fellow. There was a ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... as though she was on the point of bursting into tears, while Mrs. Dean was unusually grave. A delicate task lay before her and she was wondering as she poured the coffee how she had best begin. Still she had determined to thresh the matter out speedily, and as soon as Delia had served the breakfast and retired to the kitchen, she glanced from one to the other of the two principals and said, "Now, girls, I am waiting ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... to thresh their corn, and I was interested in observing all the details of their process. They had scattered yesterday evening the full ripe grain in its dry stalks over the ground, in the form of a large circle, to the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... half-way across the continent to thresh this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain question, and I'd like to have an equally ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... than ever did that powerful tail thresh the water, until the foam seemed like soap bubbles. Bellow after bellow made the air tremble, or at least pulsate. And amid all this racket the shrill screams of delight on the part of the excited and pleased swamp lad could be heard pealing forth like ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... more than the preparation for a new stage towards the retreating unknown. My partner, therefore, leaves me. Henceforth, I am alone, alone and wretched. There is no one left with whom I can sit up and thresh the subject out in exhilarating discussion. There is no one near me to understand me, no one who can even passively oppose his ideas to mine and take part in the conflict whence the light will spring, even ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... praise is heard and sung, And busts and marble-heads my deeds unfurl To multitudes that knew me not in flesh? Not when I'm gone care I for Renown's dawn, Now, whilst I labour at Fame's lowest rung, Let me reap dame Approval's brightest pearl And sip its olpe as I my battles thresh. ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... is possible to sow wheat, to wait till it grows up, to reap it and thresh it, to grind it to flour, to make five pies of it, to eat those pies, and then to start in pursuit—and even ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... up must have been those which had been roasted most. But in the end the laugh was against the Koeri, for the few seeds of the barber's which germinated, produced such fine plants that when he came to thresh them out he had more grain than the Koeri, and so in 3 or 4 years the barber became the richer man of ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... day, said the squire; the other twelve men were already busy at it. There were twelve threshing-floors, and the twelve men were at work on six of them—two on each. Hans must thresh by himself all that was lying upon the other six floors. He went out to the barn and got hold of a flail. Then he looked to see how the others did it and did the same, but at hte first stroke he smashed the flail in pieces. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... his hat and went to the door. Just as he opened it, Fabio's servant confronted him on the thresh old. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by; I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel. Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky. Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... so that the plants may have plenty of moisture to fill the pods, then let them dry and die. Gather the dry plants before the pods open much, and let them dry on a clean, smooth piece of ground or on the barn floor. When they are well dried, thresh with a flail, rake off the straw, sweep up the beans and clean by winnowing in the wind or with a fanning mill with ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... freedom. You must slide smilingly down to the bottom or, in horror at that eventuality, creep up again and reach out pathetically for a resting-place at the top. To insist on this rather obvious situation, as exhibited for instance in the Anglican Church, would be to thresh straw and to study in Protestantism only its feeble and accidental side. Its true essence is not constituted by the Christian dogmas that at a given moment it chances to retain, but by the spirit in which it constantly challenges the others, by the expression it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a vexing sight to see a man, Out of his way, stalke proud as hee were in; Out of his way, to be officious, Observant, wary, serious, and grave, Fearefull, and passionate, insulting, raging, 120 Labour with iron flailes to thresh downe ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... "I prefer to thresh it out.... What people say matters nothing to me. In any case, nobody knows that Mr Riviere ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Lake. A gale, cold as ice, blew off the water from the north. Half a dozen huge pine trees stood on the only level ground near at hand. "Nielsen, fire—pronto!" I yelled. "Aye, sir," he shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with hurry and bustle to get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my tingling fingers, and press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few minutes before ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... he went with a threshing crew, working among labourers and eating with them in the fields or about the crowded tables of farmhouses where they stopped to thresh. Each day Sam and the men with him worked in a new place and had as helpers the farmer for whom they threshed and several of his neighbours. The farmers worked at a killing pace and the men of the threshing crew were expected to keep abreast of each new lot of them day after day. At ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... latter followed her with an expression of perplexed, questioning sorrow that, had Marjorie noted and interpreted as such, might have caused her to doubt what seemed plain, thresh the matter out frankly with Constance, and thus save them both many weeks ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... after he left you and found them in the height of a quarrel. You know that Adele is a wretch. She is my sister, to be sure, but she is a wretch all the same. As to Lantier—well, you know him, so I need not describe him. But for a yes or a no he would not hesitate to thresh any woman that lives. Oh, they had a beautiful time! Their quarrels were heard all over the neighborhood. One day the police were sent for, they made such ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... The meaning seems to be, If Hob is allowed nothing more than a smock-frock of coarse hemp, he will not come again either to thresh ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... stronger than a whip of steel, and who are quite closely related to the barnacle and mollusc to which the tide regularly brings tit-bits out of the ocean, whilst the more mercurial eel has to go out and thresh about in the mud for what it requires to keep it going ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... custom at these meetings to discuss any matters which affected the well-being of the community, to listen to any item of interest pointing the prosperity of the local gold industry, to thresh out complaints. In fact, it became a sort of Local Government Board, of which the storekeeper was president, and such men as Wild Bill, Sandy Joyce and one or two of the more successful ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... both of threshing and thatching. He said, it was very difficult to determine how to agree with a thresher. 'If you pay him by the day's wages, he will thresh no more than he pleases; though, to be sure, the negligence of a thresher is more easily detected than that of most labourers, because he must always make a sound while he works. If you pay him by the piece, by the quantity of grain which he produces, he will thresh ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... it only remained now to get together and thresh out the details. A strong committee was appointed to conduct negotiations with the Government and there was prepared a memorandum of the plan which the farmers recommended the Government to follow. This was presented on ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... flour, and there ain't but a handful of corn meal, and mighty little sugar, white or brown.—I did say something to Mis' Rossitur, but all the good it did was to spile her appetite, I s'pose; and if there's grain in the floor there ain't nobody to carry it to mill,—nor to thresh it,—nor a team to draw it, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... and said: "You are not even four feet high, less than thirty years of age, and weaponless, and yet you venture to make such a commotion." Said Sun Wu Kung: "I am not too small for you; and I can make myself large at will. You scorn me because I am without a weapon, but my two fists can thresh to the very skies." With that he stooped, clenched his fists and began to give the devil a beating. The devil was large and clumsy, but Sun Wu Kung leaped about nimbly. He struck him between the ribs and between the wind and his blows fell ever more fast and furious. In ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... got any ideas we'll thresh them out. Emperor will be willing. He'll say yes to anything you suggest. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... heard the tale. The Theologian said: "Indeed, To praise you there is little need; One almost hears the farmers flail Thresh out your wheat, nor does there fail A certain freshness, as you said, And sweetness as of home-made bread. But not less sweet and not less fresh Are many legends that I know, Writ by the monks of long-ago, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... moment that we almost despaired of. The tariff was one of them. I felt convinced that the tariff question would never be settled. The grandchildren of every generation will always be discussing it, and thresh out the same old straw which the Democrats and Republicans were discussing before them. When I was a boy only eight years old the tariff was discussed just as warmly as it will ever be. Like my friend Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, I was a Free Trader. Politics were so mixed up it was difficult ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... and over the corn Pale shadows flee from us as if from their foes. Like a snake we thresh on the long, forlorn Land, as onward ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... the power of the moon is very evident. For trees that are cut in the full of the moon carpenters refuse, as being soft, and, by reason of their moistness, subject to corruption; and in its wane farmers usually thresh their wheat, that being dry it may better endure the flail; for the corn in the full of the moon is moist, and commonly bruised in threshing. Besides, they say dough will be leavened sooner in the full, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the serpent at one shot, as to merely wound it might mean that in its agony it would thresh about, and seriously injure, ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... the thing fast in his jaw with the boat, for he suddenly awoke. He lifted himself, wagging his sword, showing his great silvery side. Then he began to thresh. I never felt a quarter of such power at the end of a line. He went swift as a flash. Then he leaped sheer ahead, like a porpoise, only infinitely more active. We all yelled. He was of great size, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... middle of the day they had managed to get some winks of sleep, but now the farmer's men began to thresh in a barn close by, making noise enough to wake the dead, so there was small chance of well-organized fowls being able to sleep ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... t' sort," said Matthew. "He used to pommel and thresh her up and doon, and that's why she cut away frae him, and that's why ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... dive into, delve into, go deep into; make sure of, probe, sound, fathom; probe to the bottom, probe to the quick; scrutinize, analyze, anatomize, dissect, parse, resolve, sift, winnow; view in all its phases, try in all its phases; thresh out. bring in question, bring into question, subject to examination; put to the proof &c (experiment) 463; audit, tax, pass in review; take into consideration &c (think over) 451; take counsel &c 695. question, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to know the truth! If you don't think you can stand it, go out into the hail while I thresh this matter out with Taylor!" But Evelyn did not leave her place at ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... held in the autumn, after the fruits of the field have been garnered in the storehouses, according to the words of the Bible, "The Feast of Tabernacles shalt thou hold for thyself seven days when thou hast gathered in the produce of thy thresh-floor ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Argus, riding overland to Adelaide about 1848, was amazed to see from Willunga onward fenced and cultivated farms, with decent homesteads and machinery up to date. The Ridley stripper enabled our people to reap and thresh the corn when hands were all too few for the sickle. He said he felt as if the garden of Paradise must have been in King William street and that the earliest difference in the world—that between Cain and Abel—was about the advantages of the 80-acre ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... of the twenty-fifth of July closed in stormy; and Robin, in an old cloak he had found placed in the but for his own use, made haste to attend to what was necessary, and hurried back as quickly as he could. He sat a while, listening to the thresh of the rain and the cry of the wind; for, up here in the high land the full storm broke on him. (The hut was wattled of osiers and clay, and kept out the wet ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... your bones, up with your rotten regiment, and be gone; I had rather thresh, then be bound to kicke these raskals, till they cride hold: Bessus you may put your hand to them now, and then you are quit. Farewell, as you like this, pray visit mee againe, twill keepe me in ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... size and the import of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... great question of the Duma elections, for one thing. To boycott or not to boycott. And if not, which candidates shall we support? Then there is the question of Jewish autonomy in the Russian Parliament—that is our great principle. Moreover, as a comparatively new Party, we have yet to thresh out our relations to all the existing Parties. With which shall we form blocs in the elections? While most are dangerous to the best interests of the Jewish people and opposed to the evolution of historic necessity, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... attended, happier made At each new minist'ring. Then silence brake, Amid th' accordant sons of Deity, That luminary, in which the wondrous life Of the meek man of God was told to me; And thus it spake: "One ear o' th' harvest thresh'd, And its grain safely stor'd, sweet charity Invites me with the other ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... when it rained six inches to the month, and the women went abroad as little as might be. Wynn's flying chariot visited them several times, and for two mornings (he had warned her by postcard) Mary heard the thresh of his propellers at dawn. The second time she ran to the window, and stared at the whitening sky. A little blur passed overhead. She lifted ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... of all his schemes, the great truth began, to dawn upon Clare that he was destined, notwithstanding all his friends and patrons, to remain a farmer's drudge and poetical pauper; destined to plough and thresh for others, and, in his spare hours, to make pretty songs for ladies and gentlemen—something better than a clown, and something less than a lackey in uniform. Clare was meek and accustomed to suffering, yet for a long time he could not reconcile himself to the thought that this was part ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... "So you wanted that affidavit, did you? Now we have the place to ourselves; and we'll thresh this ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... splash, and quick as a flash I knew he could not swim. I saw him whirl in the river swirl, and thresh his arms about. In a queer, strained way I heard Dick say: "I'm going after him," Throw off his coat, leap down the boat — and then I gave a shout: "Boys, grab him, quick! You're crazy, Dick! Far better one than two! Hell, man! You know you've got ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Huey replied; "if the damn threshing machine gets around to thresh out the oatstack in ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... beating. I'll trim his jacket; I'll thresh him. To be trimmed; to be shaved; I'll just step and ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Ver. 13. "Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion, for I make thine horn iron, and thy claws brass; and thou crushest in pieces many people, and I consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their strength to the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... didn't know what was meant by the thresh. I knew that I had been "thrashed" a great many times, and inferred from that fact that I must have had the disease at some time or other in ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... I did this morning, and I wouldn't if I could," he said, falling in beside Mrs. Spofford. "I know you are displeased with me. Can't we thresh ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... we shall have to thresh this out! It is naturally a shock, but Miss Gifford's acquaintance with this person is very slight. She took a violent dislike to him at first sight, so you need not fear that she will feel any personal distress. That is so, isn't ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... blown away. If all other means failed, two stout arms at either end of a blanket or a sheet would move the sheet as a fan to clean the wheat. Now we see the great combination harvester garner thirty acres a day, and thresh it as well and sack it ready for the mill or warehouse. There is no shocking, no stacking or housing: all in one operation, the grain ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... accepted without a question both his fever and his chill, and the only thing he showed any subtlety about was this convenience of my friendship. He doubtless told me his simple story, but the matter comes back to me in a kind of sense of my being rather the mouthpiece, of my having had to thresh it out for him. He took it from me without a groan, and I gave it to him, as we used to say, pretty hot; he took it again and again, spending his odd half-hours with me as if for the very purpose of learning ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... "we must thresh this subject out and settle what's to be done. I suppose you left a message for the Trents. What did ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... heretic Scots are racking your brains to devise how to thresh corn by machines, these pious people, in simple obedience to the injunction, 'Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn,' are treading out their corn with unmuzzled oxen. What think you of that, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... credited to its chief. The hidden merit or demerit of many statesmen has constantly lain in the power, or the lack of it, of guiding their colleagues and being guided in turn. If we tried to be exact in saying Lincoln, or Lincoln's Cabinet, or the North did this or that, it would be necessary to thresh out many bushels of tittle-tattle. The broad impression, however, remains that in the many things in which Lincoln did not directly rule he ruled through a group of capable men of whom he made the best use, and whom no other chief could have induced ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... life, the mephitic atmosphere engendered by the dominant ecclesiasticism, and the almost total neglect of natural knowledge, might well have stifled it. And, finally, it should be remembered that scholasticism really did thresh out pretty effectually certain problems which have presented themselves to mankind ever since they began to think, and which, I suppose, will present themselves so long as they continue to think. Consider, for example, the controversy of the Realists ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley |
