"Thresh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1666, Corporal George Deanes and three other soldiers set upon an old man in the clachan of Dairy and demanded the payment of his fines. On the old man's refusing to pay, they forced a large party of his neighbours to go with them and thresh his corn. The field was a certain distance out of the clachan, and four persons, disguised as countrymen, who had been out on the moors all night, met this mournful drove of slaves, compelled by the four soldiers to work for the ruin of their friend. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aware of every source in Coralio from which a glass of rum, a meal or a piece of silver could be wheedled. Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered it with all the thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst lent him for the task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of hope from the chaff of his postulations. He had played out the game. That one night in the open had shaken his nerves. Until then there had been left to him at least a few grounds upon ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... aw'd thresh him, Wol th' skin coom off his back; Aw'd cure him teein door-snecks, Then givin th' door a whack. Aw'd leearn him to draw th' shape o' me Wi' chalk on th' nessy door, An mak mud pies o' awr front steps An leeav 'em thear bi ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... 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 coal-oil is the cheap fuel. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... master for instructions, when the old man gave him a bag of barley, saying, "I will give you a holiday to-morrow, and you may sleep as long as you like, but you must work hard to-night instead. Sow me this barley, which will spring up and ripen quickly; then you must cut it, thresh it, and winnow it, so that you can malt it and grind it. You must brew beer of this malt, and when I wake to-morrow morning, you must bring me a jug of fresh beer for my morning drink. Take care to follow my instructions ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... 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
... earn his cream-bowl daily set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten day lab'rers could not end; Then lies him down, the lubber[56] fiend, And stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And cropful out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Battle rises from the Old Land You shall see the Tyrant down! You shall see her lifted crown Wears another peerless jewel won with bold hand; She shall thresh her foes like corn, They shall eat the bread of scorn; We will sing her song of triumph in ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... 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
... Here the future Bishop of Dromore was visited by Dr. Johnson 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 ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the 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 eyes ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 grace, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 every man ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... come from Raoul's party. Peleton's attempt to murder me was merely the outcome of personal spite, and had nothing to do with this fresh adventure. Yet, on one point, the message was clear. Some peril threatened me, and my best chance of safety lay in flight. But why? I sat down to thresh the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... where he lived, but afterwards he was not surprised when Dave Black's folks did not appear to expect them. They kept on, and did as the blacksmith told them, and soon enough they got to a two-story log-cabin, with a man in front of it working at a wheat-fan, for it was nearly time to thresh the wheat. The man said he was Dave Black's father; he did not act as if he was very glad to see them, but he told them to put their horses in the barn, and he said that Dave was out in the pasture ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... "make-believe" blow would have 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 hereticorum; 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
... Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1759. His childhood and youth were spent in poverty on his father's farm, where he learned to plough, reap, mow, and thresh in the barn, but where opportunities for education were such only as Scottish peasants know. In 1784 his father died, and he attempted to manage a farm of his own at Mossgiel. The experiment proving to be a failure, he resolved to leave Scotland, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... brothers had met to thresh out the situation; and a day came when Raymond lunched with his friend and fellow sportsman, Arthur Waldron, of North Hill House, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... I've come 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 ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... 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
... thicket without starting a bird. Sky cloudless; heat intense. Suddenly dog's tail begins to beat half-seconds; up whirrs a bird, who is out of sight in a moment; so is the dog, who indulges in an animated chase. You shout yourself hoarse; at length succeed in catching dog, and try to thresh him with decayed sticks. A little while after, dog comes to a point again. This time he stands beautifully. You walk slowly up, trembling with excitement, both barrels cocked. Why don't the bird get up? You glance inquiringly around, and at length ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... heard, and even more; for they would hear the tale of those lovers' journeys over the changing waters, and their return time and again to the unchanging plot of earth that kept their secrets. Until in the end they were together delivered up to the millstones which thresh the immortal grain from its mortal husk. But this was after long years of gladness and a life kept young by the child which each was always re-discovering in the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... letting her father thresh the matter out in his slow, thorough way. Finally her young impatience conquered her restraint. "Well—what do you think, popsy?" ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... general; don't be alarmed." At this moment the landlord appeared upon the thresh-hold ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... candle flickered behind her bedroom window-blind in the gable of the house. I waited for Beverly to go, determined never to mention what I had seen, when I caught the clear low voice whose tones could make my pulse thresh in its walls. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... in quick succession were fired through the door, then 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, ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... 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 then to be in time.' Koshchei galloped off ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... dragging hours, Cadman would laugh softly; and if there had been silence for long, the warning snarl would come back. The breath of it shook the air and the thresh of the tail kept the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... And dwell in the pure measure of God in thee, and there thou wilt see the Lord God present with thee. For the bringing forth many out of prison art thou there set; behold the word of the Lord cannot be bound. The Lord God of Power give thee wisdom, courage, manhood, and boldness, to thresh down all deceit. Dear Heart, be valiant, and mind the pure Spirit of God in thee, to guide thee up into God, to thunder down all deceit within and without. So farewell, and God Almighty keep you.'—GEORGE FOX, to a friend ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... a reluctant leave, for he wished to thresh out the matter into absolute chaff, 'you know best, so I shall follow ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... are preparing 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 depth of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... have to talk any more. He could read my mind and I knew well enough how his worked. We didn't have to discuss wages or hours, or any of the myriad matters that human bargaining agents have to thresh out. We just walked back to my Copter, and when we got ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... wishes of the client should be most strictly ascertained beforehand; all possibility of midway criticism and alteration prevented. Thresh the thing well out in the preliminary stages and start clear; as long as it is raw material, all in solution, all hanging in the balance—you can do anything. It is like "clay in the hands of the potter," and you can make the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... exactly as she used to in the old days, and I don't doubt felt like it, too. No wonder she resented being forced back into the role of Madame Zattiany, or Graefin—countess—as he calls her. You must let her thresh ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Filipino's sensitiveness to picking somebody else's chestnuts out of the fire, not inappropriate to be told here. The agent of the Kelly Road Roller Company had made an agreement with a number of Filipinos in the Maraquina Valley to take up a rice thresher and to thresh their crops for one-twelfth of the output. As this was cheaper than the usual cost of rice-threshing, they accepted the offer, but they were anxious to compare the new machine with their own system. One way of threshing ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... 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 unsavory ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... should at least be as valuable as those of a college professor who has been secluded from it. It is really about this volume I propose to write that I want to consult you. I have made a memorandum of a few points I should like to thresh out ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... 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 ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... take back what 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 it out now, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... trades instead of one, it forced him to divide his capital into two parts, of which one only could be employed in cultivation. But if he had been at liberty to sell his whole crop to a corn merchant as fast as he could thresh it out, his whole capital might have returned immediately to the land, and have been employed in buying more cattle, and hiring more servants, in order to improve and cultivate it better. But by being obliged ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of humility and of profit, that, duly improved, would both chasten the heart and strengthen the feeble-minded man in his course. It is a blessed consolation to be able to lay the misdoubtings of our arrogant nature at the thresh old of the dwelling-place of the Deity, from whence they shall be swept away, at the great opening of the portal, like the mists of the morning before the rising sun. It teaches us a lesson of humility, by impressing us with the imperfection ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... not thresh with flails. The material is strewed over a round and smoothed floor of dried mud in the open air and threshed by different connivances. In Egypt the favourite is a chair-like machine called "Norag," running on ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... to thresh it out.... What people say matters nothing to me. In any case, nobody knows that Mr Riviere is ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... of this psychological 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 ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... He would thresh, and thereto dike and delve, For Christe's sake, for every poore wight, Withouten hire, if it lay ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... one 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 ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... was growing or grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted, to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure or carry it home, thresh, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it in; and all these things I did without, as shall be observed; and yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to me too; but all ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... tail, and snapped so fiercely with its tremendous jaws, that we had to keep a sharp look out lest it should catch hold of a leg. At last its tail was cut off, the body cut open, and all the entrails taken out, yet even after this it continued to flap and thresh about the deck for some time, and the heart continued to contract for twenty minutes after it was taken out and pierced with ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... Mr Gallup," Miss Buttermish said kindly, at the same time getting up and seating herself afresh on a corner of the sofa. "We've got to thresh this matter out, and you've got to make up your mind whether you are for or against us. You are young, and I think that you hardly realise the forces that will be arrayed against you if you join hands with ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Behold I will make thee [make thee to be] a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... husbandman might be counted very simple, that for the ominous shreekes of an unluckie, hoarce-voist, dead-devouring night-raven or two, or for feare of the malice of his worst conditioned neighbors, would neglect either to till and sowe his ground, or after in due time to reape and thresh out his harvest, that might benefite so many others with that, which both their want might desire, and their thankfulness would deserve. So did I intend my first seede, so doe I my harvest. The first fruites onely reserved ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... bringing salvation to Israel because he was a good son. His old father feared to thresh his grain on account of the Midianites, and Gideon once went out to him in the field and said: "Father, thou art too old to do this work; go thou home, and I shall finish thy task for thee. If the Midianites should surprise me out here, I can run away, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Spicy Nut-brown Ale, 100 With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat, She was pincht, and pull'd she sed, And he by Friars Lanthorn led Tells how the drudging Goblin swet, To ern his Cream-bowle duly set, When in one night, ere glimps of morn, His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn That ten day-labourers could not end, Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend. 110 And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And Crop-full out of dores ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... than night From heav'n fell on us, and, at ease reposed Along the margin of the sea, we slept. But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn, Look'd rosy forth, drawing our galleys down Into the sacred Deep, we rear'd again The mast, unfurl'd the sail, and to our seats On board returning, thresh'd the foamy flood. Once more, at length, within the hallow'd stream 700 Of AEgypt mooring, on the shore I slew Whole hecatombs, and (the displeasure thus Of the immortal Gods appeased) I reared To Agamemnon's never-dying fame A tomb, and finishing it, sail'd again ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... 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
... E'en twining out a thread with little din, And beeking my cauld limbs afore the sun. What brings my bairn this gate sae air at morn? Is there nae muck to lead? to thresh nae corn? ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... preceded the change. On the first, the southwesterly wind still holding, we sallied forth into Augustenburg Fiord, 'to practise smartness in a heavy thresh,' as Davies put it. It was the day of dedication for those disgusting oilskins, immured in whose stiff and odorous angles, I felt distressfully cumbersome; a day of proof indeed for me, for heavy squalls swept incessantly over the loch, and Davies, at my own request, gave me no rest. Backwards ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... O tis 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 ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... give such counsel, for every boy there had almost at the same instant fired at the giant grizzly which stood below them. He fell with a great roar, and began to thresh about in the bushes. No sight of him for a moment could be obtained. All four now sprang erect, waiting eagerly for the crippled game to break cover. John and Rob even started down the slope, until Alex called out to them peremptorily to come back. ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... way," said he, squaring his shoulders doggedly. "Father will thresh me if I run away, and Master Brunswood will thresh me if I don't. I'll not be birched four times a week for merely tripping on a word, and have nothing to show for it but stripes. If I must take a threshing, I'll have my good ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... 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 in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... in a revolt of misery and despair, he formed the crazy resolution to get out of that. And he began to thresh about with his arms and legs. But as soon as he commenced his wretched struggles he discovered that he had become somehow mixed up with a face, an oilskin coat, somebody's boots. He clawed ferociously ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... dogma. 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 ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Barber Kid 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 noises, ...
— The Road • Jack London
... commented, "and you are wonderful. Let's break the rule, though, for once, and thresh this thing out. I want your opinion on this Graham matter, really. Tell ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... 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
... 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 ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... 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 of misunderstanding ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... active, when the disturbed state of civil 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 and the Nominalists, which was ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am, as it were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant, I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar militant. I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her cause. Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your soldiership, the earl is her liege lord, and she is his liege lady. I am her father confessor and ghostly director: I have taken ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... at harvest-time, the poor man left his wife and went to reap and thresh out his little plot of wheat, but the Wind came and swept all his corn away down to the very last grain. The poor man was exceeding wrath thereat, and said, "Come what will, I'll go seek the Wind, and I'll tell him with what pains and trouble I had got ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... between me and the huts, a strange lame figure, leaning on a stick, with a few rags of clothing bound about him. His head, with its matted thick hair, was bare to the thresh of the sun; he was thick-set, shortish, slow-moving, a sorrowful and laborious figure. I saw the shine of his bare skin, and even the droop and sorrow of his heavy face. I stood and watched him for perhaps a minute in the shadow under those great masts of palms; ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Parrot, by Manet. Here continence in nervous force, expressed by low relief and restraint in tone, is carried to its ultimate point. I should call this an imagist painting, made before there were such people as imagist poets. It is a perpetual sermon to those that would thresh around to no avail, be they orators, melodramatists, or makers of ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... have you bones, To risk their breaking? I have half a mind To thresh you from your motley coat! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... 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 horses, ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... and I'll give you a little bit of news,' she called out. Slimak was just going off to thresh, but he sat down again and asked his wife to bring the vodka, for he knew that the old woman usually knew what she was ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Clement Thresh, of Rappahannock, in his will declared that all his estate should be responsible for the outlay made necessary in providing, during three years, instruction for his step-daughter, who, being then thirteen years of age, had, no doubt, already been going to school for some length of time. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that he was good-humouredly ready to "thresh out," for her sentimental satisfaction, a question which, for his own, Time had so conclusively dealt with; and the sense of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... value evidence, or thresh out bushels of statistical tables, Coleridge could not, any more than he could ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... bringing forth any great encrease. Now if it be so that you haue a crop of Wheate of your owne, so that you haue no need of the market, you shall then picke out of your choisest sheafes, and vpon a cleane floare gently bat them with a flaile, and not thresh them cleane, for that Corne which is greatest, fullest, and ripest, will first flie out of the eare, and when you haue so batted a competent quantitie you shall then winnow it and dresse it cleane, both by the helpe of a strong winde and open ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... 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 let ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho! "Will ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I heard a 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 ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... thresh their way from the great house to a hostelry where the remaining portion of the pageant is awaiting their arrival. Let us stand a little on one side and view the procession. The threshers lead the way, singing and plying their flails as they advance, thus effectually ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 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 his ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... growing in 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 a sufficient Quantity, pass it through ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... 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 only while the grain comes freely, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Wheat-ears, as you think your use shall require, and cut the straw about a foot long besides the Ears, and from the Ear Lime the straw Six inches; the warmer it is, the less discernable it will be: Then to the Field adjacent, carrying a bag of Chaff, and thresh'd Ears, scatter them twenty Yards wide, and stick the lim'd Ears (declining downwards) here, and there; Then traverse the Fields, disturb their Haunts, they will repair to your Snare, and pecking ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... me with a smile. "That is the important question—what is it all about! But we can't discuss it here in the street. Besides, I want to think it over, Lester; and I want you to think it over. If I can, I'll drop in to-night to see you, and we can thresh it out! ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... to their clamorous petitions a one-o'clock dinner was promised, and Aunt Annie was to accompany them on a nutting expedition with Jeff as pioneer to thresh and club ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... 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
... were undermining it and hammering it to pieces. Already tilted down the slope of sand, its end was imminent. Here and there in the cocoanut trees people had lashed themselves. The trees did not sway or thresh about. Bent over rigidly from the wind, they remained in that position and vibrated monstrously. Underneath, across the sand, surged the white spume of the breakers. A big sea was likewise making down the length of the lagoon. It had plenty ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... sacrifice were offered to the Lord—a lamb full of blemish? If the church were weak, and it were really beyond her ability to do more than she does at present, then God would accomplish great victories by the feeble means. He can save by few as well as by many. He would make the "worm Jacob to thresh mountains." But since God has blessed the American church with numbers, and with great and peculiar advantages, he requires of her efforts that accord with her ability. The poor widow's mites accomplish much; but the wealthy man's mites, or the wealthy nation's thousands, when she ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... answered; "at least I have a trade at my finger-ends. I can drive a plough. I can thresh a mow. At a pinch I can even shoe a horse. But you—you ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... far unworthy of Ramsay, or your book. My song, "Rigs of Barley", to the same tune, does not altogether please me; but if I can mend it, and thresh a few loose sentiments out of it, I will submit it to your consideration. The "Lass o' Patie's Mill" is one of Ramsay's best songs; but there is one loose sentiment in it, which my much-valued friend, Mr. Erskine, will take into his critical consideration. In Sir J. Sinclair's ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 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 ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... 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, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... rice, and witnessed its harvest by the Chippewas, which 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, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... 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, for then, though the leaven ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... vertebrae of the neck, sickness, fearful pains, and so on. She was brought to me. She was moaning and groaning and praying for death, and yet she looked at the man who brought her and muttered: "Let the lentils go, Kirila, you can thresh them later, but thresh the oats now." I told her that she could talk about oats afterwards, that there was something more serious to talk about, but she said to me: "His oats are ever so good!" A managing, vigilant woman. Death comes easy ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... wife lived thirty-two years, and eight years after her death, at the age of one hundred and twenty, he married again. Until his one hundred and thirtieth year he performed his ordinary duties, and at this age was even accustomed to thresh. He was visited by Thomas, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and was persuaded to visit the King in London. His intelligence and venerable demeanor impressed every one, and crowds thronged to see him and pay him homage. The journey to London, together with the excitement and change of mode of living, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... if they kin, a-settin' among the live coals.' But that Red Eagle, wise old chief 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 to ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... within himself was a glorious thing to explore. And that had oriented him outward to the real world—he had felt wind and rain and sunlight, the pride of high buildings and the surge of a galloping horse, thresh of waves and laughter of women and smooth mysterious purr of great machines, with a fullness that made him pity those deaf and dumb and blind ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... fifth season between the rising of the Dog Star and the autumn equinox thresh your straw and rick it, continue the harrowing of your fallow land, prune your fruit trees, and mow your irrigated ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... our natures free, Although it break to recombine again The atoms of each state. Send down thy pulsing tongues of burning truth; Fire our souls with love of human kind; Let hate consume itself; let war thresh out The brutal part of man, and fit us for The last long period ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... philosophy is not mine. My curiosity sees in a stage accomplished no 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, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... six years it would even be visible to the naked eye, so that the race, or what remained of the race, 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, just voiceless ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... 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
... a hint that you don't need my company any longer," retorted Grosvenor. "All right, old chap, pray don't apologise. I know I'm a bit of a duffer in such matters as this, so I'll leave you to thresh it out alone, and turn in for a good ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... leave the roots in the ground for some time, as the soil was dry, but that the grain would soon spoil; so we made the corn our first care. When it was all cut and brought home, our next task was to thresh it. The floor of our store room was now as hard as a rock, for the sun had dried it, and there was not a crack to be seen. On this we laid the ears of ripe corn, from which the long straw had been cut, and sent the boys ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... 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 the long ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... barn; and all the men of a pioneer community contributed their labor in building the community church or schoolhouse. This was a simple form of cooperation. It may be seen now at threshing time, when neighboring farmers combine to thresh the grain of each, the same group of men and the same threshing machine doing the work for all. The United States Department of Agriculture ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... 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
... heavy boom of the storm without, the thresh of the rain upon the lattice casement, and the irregular whipping gusts which shook the house, the soft wheeze of the engrossing quill could be heard, the crackle of the burning logs and the heavy regular breathing of the couchant she-wolf being ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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 ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker |
