"Weeding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Decameron, three volumes, in the original binding. Suffice it to say that, including this charming book, my purchases did not amount to L13, and I had pretty well a cart-load of books for my money—more than I wanted much! Having brought them home, I 'weeded them out,' and the 'weeding' realised four times what I gave for the whole, leaving me ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... views regarding the Incarnation, or Infant Baptism, or the Apostolic Succession, or Ordination by Elders, or the Perseverance of the Saints; and while both Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics were openly or secretly weeding out of university faculties all who showed willingness to consider fairly the ideas of Darwin, a movement was quietly in progress destined to take instruction, and especially instruction in the physical and natural sciences, out of its old ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... down" in the tricky sand of the adjacent water holes and die before help came, and to fend off any encroachments of the smaller cattle owners—though these were growing fewer year by year, thanks to the weeding-out policy of the Sawtooth and the cunning activities of such ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... college there. The first year was a difficult one, swamped as I was by the excessive number of pupils, a set of duffers kept out of the more advanced classes and all at different stages in spelling and grammar. Next year, my school is divided into two; I have an assistant. A weeding-out takes place in my crowd of scatterbrains. I keep the older, the more intelligent ones; the others are to have a term in the preparatory division. From that day forward, things are different. Curriculum there is none. In those happy times, the master's personality ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... pleasures; that there enters into them a great proportion of effort and boredom; at the very best that we do not enjoy (nor expect to enjoy) them at all in the same degree as a good dinner in good company, or a walk in bright, bracing weather, let alone, of course, fishing, or hunting, or digging and weeding our little garden. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... slaves to the large plantations further south. Few new slaves had been imported into Virginia in the last one hundred years. The center of slavery thus moved southwest because of changing economic conditions, not because of any inherent opposition to the system. This gradual weeding out of the slaves in Virginia may very possibly account for the general esteem in which Virginia negroes have been held. To indicate the character of those sold South, Bracket[2] gives a quotation from a Baltimore paper of 1851 which advertised some good ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... of work IS play, and I get bits of fun all along. I always have a good swing when I go for the cows, and pick flowers with the dandelions. Weeding isn't so nice, but berrying is very pleasant, and we have good times ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... good helps at the raising; and in the course of a few weeks they had the comfort of seeing a more commodious dwelling than the former one put up. The finishing of this, with weeding the Indian corn, renewing the fence, and fishing, and trapping, and shooting partridges and ducks and pigeons, fully occupied their time this summer. The fruit season was less abundant this year than the previous one. The fire had done ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... "It was here father's church used to stand; it's gone, now," he said. "It was a wood church, painted a kind of gray; mother had a bonnet the same color, and she used to say she matched the church. I bought it with the very first money I earned. Part of it came from weeding, and the weather was warm, and I can feel the way my back would sting and creak, now! I would want to stop, often, but I thought of mother in church with that bonnet, and I kept on! There's the place where Seeds, the grocer that used to ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... most kinds of garden work, like weeding, cultivating, tilling, and turning compost heaps is not as difficult or nearly as time consuming as most people think if one has the proper, sharp tools. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to use hand tools has largely ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... housewifery concerns, her share in Barby's cares or difficulties, her sweet countenancing and cheering of her aunt, her dinner, her work;—then when evening came, budding her roses or tying her carnations or weeding or raking the ground between them, (where Philetus could do nothing,) or training her multiflora and sweet-briar branches;—and then often after all, walking up to the mill to give Hugh a little earlier a home smile and make his way down pleasant. No wonder if the energies which ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... connected with gardening that is a bug-bear. That is hand-weeding. To get down on one's hands and knees, in the blistering hot dusty soil, with the perspiration trickling down into one's eyes, and pick small weedlets from among tender plantlets, is not a pleasant ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... the modern gigots. Although I was manifestly an intruder, the old man greeted me respectfully, and passed on to his work. Three boys tended a drove of black hogs in the stubble, and some women were so industriously weeding and hoeing in the field beyond, that they scarcely stopped to cast a glance upon the stranger. There was a grateful air of peace, order, and contentment about the place; no one seemed to be suspicious, or even surprised, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Malines—Mons—Mezieres—Soissons—Verdun—Belfort, I immediately made off due South-West for a reason I may not give. I managed with the utmost difficulty to find someone to carry my kit, but at length persuaded an old peasant whom I found weeding (probably the last weeds he would ever dig) to act as my courier, and even then I had to resort to the vulgar strategy of pretending to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... to us strange indeed to see women cleaning the streets; huge broom in hand they marched about and swept the paths, while a whole gang of female labourers were weeding the roadways. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... to bring his flock to a right faith, and then to confirm them in the same faith: now casting them down with the law, and with threatenings of God for sin; now ridging them up again with the gospel, and with the promises of God's favour: now weeding them, by telling them their faults, and making them forsake sin; now clotting them, by breaking their stony hearts, and by making them supplehearted, and making them to have hearts of flesh; that is, soft hearts, and ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... made a journey to town together, and came back laden with sundry parcels; and notwithstanding all this business, Henry found time to be very industrious in weeding the flower-beds, for which my father paid him so much an hour—and I noticed that he was uncommonly punctual in presenting his bills. Without being very penetrating, we discovered that the scheme, whatever it might be, was one that required a great deal ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... moment. When the others reached the room in which Father Ricardo kept his treasures, however, they were surprised to find the cabinets comparatively speaking bare, and with great gaps on the shelves as if someone had been weeding them indiscriminately. The good Father looked very blank at first; but the windows were wide open, and before he could think what had happened, a noise on the lawn below attracted everybody's attention, and on looking out ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... towards them. 'Now swing round into position. Keep your ground, left flank, and let the others pivot upon you. So—as hard and as straight as an Andrea Ferrara. I prythee, friend, do not carry your pike as though it were a hoe, though I trust you will do some weeding in the Lord's vineyard with it. And you, sir, your musquetoon should be sloped upon your shoulder, and not borne under your arm like a dandy's cane. Did ever an unhappy soldier find himself called upon to make order among so motley a crew! Even my good friend the Fleming cannot so avail here, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have all to yourself today. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a civil reformer from the inside. Jesus taught the necessity for the moral and spiritual regeneration of men before much could be done by the state in weeding out its evils. He saw plainly the folly of trying to transform the character of the state solely by the coercive power of law. "Satan tempted Him to take the short cut,—seize power over men and then change the character ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... cannon to make a big hole for his cavalry, my brother says; and weeding his infantry for the Imperial Guard he postponed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Abner was weeding onions. He stared after the captain curiously. "Looks like squally weather," he commented. "I wonder what's sent Enoch on ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... at the rate of four pounds to the acre, about the middle of May. The difference between sowing on the fifteenth of May and on the tenth of June in New England is said to be nearly one-third in the crop on an average of years. In weeding, a little wheel hoe is invaluable, as with it a large part of the labor of cultivation is saved. A skillful hand can run this hoe within a half an inch of the young plants without injury, and go over a large space ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... somewhere, and just as lovely as they could be, instead of the old ones, I spoke to the man; but he did not know anything about it, and said he had not had time to do anything to the flowers, whereas I had been giving him credit for ever so much weeding and cleaning up. Then I supposed that Mr. Barker, who is just as kind and attentive as he can be, had done it; but I could hardly believe he was the sort of man to come early in the morning and work ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... flings forth its appeal to every wayfarer. And I like it. I like my garden to "get notice." As people drive by I hope they enjoy my phlox. I furtively glance to see if they have an eye for the foxglove. I wonder if the calendulas are so tall that they hide the asters. And if, as I bend over my weeding, an automobile whirling past lets fly an appreciative phrase—"lovely flowers—" "wonderful yellow of—" "garden there,"—my ears are quick to receive it and I forgive the eddies of gasolene and dust that are also left by ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... is planted and has grown a little, and the time of weeding draws near, the family remove to the little hut put up in the paddy farm. When the weeding is done, the family return to the long Dyak house and remain there for about two months. Then they go back to their hut to watch the ripening paddy, and guard it ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... of washing, cooking, knitting, weeding the garden, picking geese, etc., and of many visits to her friends. She dipped candles in the spring, and made soap in the autumn. This latter was a trying and burdensome domestic duty, but the soft soap was ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... condition of bad breeding also; and bad breeding is indispensable to the weeding out of the human race. When the conception of heredity took hold of the scientific imagination in the middle of last century, its devotees announced that it was a crime to marry the lunatic to the lunatic or the consumptive to the consumptive. But pray are we to try to correct our ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... mother or my father, if I ever knew it, I have quite forgotten it. I had myself no name. My adopted parents called me the Parisian. I was happy, nevertheless, with these kind people, and treated exactly like their own children. In winter, they sent me to school; in summer, I helped weeding the garden. I drove a sheep or two along the road, or else I went to gather violets and strawberries through ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... was begun without further delay. Because Phil's time was so fully occupied with his four-footed pupils, the Dean himself became the stranger's teacher, and all sorts of odd jobs about the ranch, from cleaning the pig pen to weeding the garden, were the text books. The man balked at nothing. Indeed, he seemed to find a curious, grim satisfaction in accomplishing the most menial and disagreeable tasks; and when he made mistakes, as he often did, he laughed at himself ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... but the entire species of the tree had fallen off—had dwindled, and pined, and become stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded with it.' Olive-gathering, it will be felt, is a slow affair. The getting in this harvest is 'as business-like and unexciting as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants—the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed—were clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had spread ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... longer in rows. There were some vegetable gardens, and German women were weeding in them; then tracts of rather rocky land, wild and unimproved. After a while it began to grow more diversified and beautiful—country residences and well-kept grounds full of shrubbery at the front and vegetables in the rear, with barns ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... no advice to give! Rules only make it hard to live. And where's the good of having been Well taught from seven to seventeen, If, married, you may not leave off, And say, at last, 'I'm good enough!' Weeding out folly, still leave some. It gives both lightness and aplomb. We know, however wise by rule, Woman is still by nature fool; And men have sense to like her all The more when she is natural. 'Tis true, that if we choose, we can Mock to a miracle the man; But iron in the fire red hot, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... carpenter's wife was glad to cook for the men when the busy days of planting and weeding and harvesting came, and the colony grew and grew. Two or three other men came down with their families, and helped the carpenter to build them little houses, with a bit of garden back, and a bed of flowers in front. They could see the ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... turn is already made the rule, and has long been so: but, by a wise regulation, it does not come into operation before the rank of post-captain be attained. Antecedent to this point, there must occur ample opportunities of weeding out those persons, who, if the rule of mere seniority were adopted, would exceedingly embarrass the navy list." We fully agree with this writer respecting the evils of a system of exclusive seniority, but not respecting the best means of remedying these evils. In England, where the wealthy ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... English operatives of the cutlery works, as Basil boldly asserted). They looked down from their car-window on a young lady swinging in a hammock, in her door-yard, and on an old gentleman hoeing his potatoes; a group of girls waved their handkerchiefs to the passing train, and a boy paused in weeding a garden-bed,—and probably denied that he had paused, later. In the mean time the golden haze along the mountain side changed to a clear, pearly lustre, and the quiet evening possessed the quiet landscape. They confessed to each other ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... good training followed so quickly after them that they were able to take part in the battle. Lenoir says the number was only five or six hundred. The modern accounts generally fail to notice this Green River weeding out of the weak men, or confuse it with what took place at the Cowpens; hence many of them greatly exaggerate the number of Americans who fought in the battle.] In the afternoon they passed by several ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... or the greedy clutching at more and more of earthly good, has its roots in us all, and unless there is the most assiduous weeding, it will overrun our whole nature. So Jesus puts great emphasis into the command, 'Take heed, and keep yourselves,' which implies that without much 'heed' and diligent inspection of ourselves (for the original word is 'see'), there will be no guarding against the subtle entrance and swift growth ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Sir? Yes, indeed. It made a great noise in Knaresbro'—there were many suspicions of foul play about it. For my part, I too had my thoughts, but that's neither here nor there;" and the old man recommenced weeding ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... activity. Here opportunity lies close at hand. It may be swinging a golf club or going fishing. It may be such unorganized methods of stretching muscles and increasing breathing as pushing a lawn mower, raking leaves or weeding the delphinium border. All these sports and homely out-of-door duties and pleasures are nearby, many of them just the other side of the front door. Those classed as sports may require a country club membership but even this is on a more ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... for dogs love to be with people and to watch what is going on; and he sat down near Bobby and cocked up his ears and wagged his tail and seemed to take a great interest in the weeding. Once in a while he would rush away to chase a butterfly or bark at a beetle that crawled through the garden, but he always came back to the boy and kept near ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... through and round one of these particles within a few hours. Belt supposed that this process was performed by the small workers above-mentioned, but it is not so, as we have just seen. The small workers perform the function of weeding the garden, and this is so well done that a portion of it removed and grown in a nutrient solution gives a perfectly pure culture, not ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... tenant on an estate has a house and land from the owner (hacienda) of the estate. For this he binds himself to work for two to four days a week, at from 28 to 36 cents per day, women and children obtaining 16 to 21 cents per day. Thus the planting, weeding, etc., during the first two years is but nominal in expense; after this period the trees may be left ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... the earth and bury itself, it uses the fore-edge of its head, a sort of weeding-hoe with the two mandibles for points. The legs take part in this work, but far less effectually. In this way it contrives to dig itself a shallow pit. Then, bracing itself against the wall of the pit, with the aid of wriggling movements which are favoured by the short, stiff hairs ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... is changed. The world will not believe a man repents: And this wise world of ours is mainly right. Full seldom doth a man repent, or use Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch Of blood and custom wholly out of him, And make all clean, and plant himself afresh. Edyrn has done it, weeding all his heart As I will weed this land before I go. I, therefore, made him of our Table Round, Not rashly, but have proved him everyway One of our noblest, our most valorous, Sanest and most obedient: and indeed This work of Edyrn wrought upon himself ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... desired, it is possible to produce approximately that type. Thus have originated all the breeds or varieties of domestic plants and animals. Now, Darwin conceived that nature also exercises a selection by weeding out those individuals that are not adapted to their environment. In other words, nature, though unconscious, selects in a negative way the stronger and the better adapted. Animals vary in nature as well as under domestication ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... which his principal poems were composed, have been related: the "Lament of Mailie" found its origin in the catastrophe of a pet ewe; the "Epistle to Sillar" was confided by the poet to his brother while they were engaged in weeding the kale-yard; the "Address to the Deil" was suggested by the many strange portraits which belief or fear had drawn of Satan, and was repeated by the one brother to the other, on the way with their carts to the kiln, for lime; the "Cotter's Saturday ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... lines of plants, and those who can write can give in short, simple sentences the main things noticed from day to day. They should give the day and date when the seeds were planted, when plants came up, when rain storms occurred, when work in weeding, thinning, and cultivating was done, when the plants were fit to use, and how they were disposed of, etc. This will serve as profitable seat work in writing, drawing, and language. Simple problems based upon dimensions of plots and the value of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... negroes with more heart and more sense than many generals, had to some extent earned his reputation among the Republicans. Thus of those volunteer generals who never became good soldiers he is said to have been the only one that escaped the constant process of weeding out. To the end he kept confidently claiming higher rank in the Army, and when he had signally failed under Grant at Petersburg he succeeded somehow in imposing himself upon that, at first indignant, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... is altogether of such an acrid nature, that the hands of persons employed in weeding crops and reaping, are often so blistered and corroded as to prevent their working. It also has been known to blister the mouths and nostrils of cattle when feeding ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... weeding.} {SN: Of stone gathering.} Your Barley being thus laide smooth, you shall then follow your other necessary businesses, as preparing of your fewell, and other needements for houshould, vntill the beginning of Iune, at which time you shall beginne to Summer-stirre ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... "weeding." Then said Mr. Cobb: "Well, all right, all right. I'll think it over and then I'll drive across to East Wellmouth, have another look at the property, and let you know. I'll see you day after tomorrow forenoon. Where you ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... places, "I know a good many people on the ship, but most of them are Nobodies, and I do not intend to be troubled with them, nor do I think that the Duchess would care to have me let Betty mix herself up with anybody and everybody. I shall do a great deal of weeding and select ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... just left her; had that instant been rejected by her for his sake; had been summoned to aid her, in weeding out error from his mind. She shewed me it was a noble task, and communicated to me her own divine ardour. Yes, Oliver; I came from her, with a warmed and animated heart; participating all her zeal. The most rigid, the most ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of this, for I had been talking in a low voice to Morgan about the garden, and whether it was worth while to do anything, seeing that beyond a little weeding nothing ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... may be said to have done the greatest work of his life upon that farm. It was while one day weeding the "kailyard," or garden, with his brother, that he first decided, after they had talked it carefully over, to be an author, and to write verses that would "bear publishing." It is to be noticed that from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... as a garden, with frequent digging, weeding, turning, &c., for that which was in one age convenient, and, perhaps, necessary, becomes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... Connor was already weeding in the garden when he went out; and the dull surprise in the Irishman's sunburnt visage sent a swift and painful colour ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... portrait-painting as a branch of art, or has it benefited it by weeding out the feeble? The Memorial Exhibition will assist in determining. It will, we hope, allow the best living painters in this department to be fully represented by the side of their predecessors. We shall then see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... young officer who was studying when his friends were at polo or tennis, was under no illusions as to the havoc which an over-accentuation of the sporting and social side of life was playing with the officers' work. Nowadays, like Kitchener, he is bent on producing the professional and weeding out the "drawing-room" soldier. No wonder that his favourite authors are those acutest critics of English social life and English foibles, Dickens and Thackeray. The former's "Bleak House" and the latter's "Book of Snobs" are the two books he places ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... is everywhere so fertile that it requires no more than turning over and weeding, in order to yield the most abundant harvests; yet the Papuans are so lazy and understand so little of the art of agriculture, that the growth of food plants is often allowed to be choked with weeds. The inhabitants belong to several races. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... least intelligent, least efficient and the mentally deficient will be unaffected. It must be apparent that after a very few generations of such weeding out of the best, with the continuous multiplication of the worst type of citizen, the general standard of efficiency, enterprise and executive skill of the nation would be seriously impaired. Such, briefly stated, is the problem before the public at ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an arm or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... into fine society. I expect great changes, and I desire them. But I don't expect them to come in a hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A Hercules with a big besom is a fine thing for a filthy stable, but not for weeding a seed-bed, where his besom would soon make ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the weeding of the Governor's party is very entertaining. If you do not understand the consular exceptions, I do; and it is right that a man of honour, and a woman of probity, should find it so, particularly in a place where there are not 'ten righteous.' As to nobility—in England none are strictly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... their investments; operations and credit became restricted, fresh projects were abandoned and a persistent withdrawal of capital set in. Trade and prosperity were progressively waning, accompanied with still more ominous portents for the Uitlanders' future. It all meant a very extensive weeding out of investments under enormous losses, except such as stood in relation with dividend-paying mines. England, though apparently apathetic and inactive, was not inattentive to the situation. Whoever had a stake, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... spread the carrot, swede, and turnip fields of the Food Company, vegetables that were the basis of a thousand varied foods, and weeds and hedgerow tangles had been utterly extirpated. The incessant expense of weeding that went on year after year in the petty, wasteful and barbaric farming of the ancient days, the Food Company had economised for ever more by a campaign of extermination. Here and there, however, neat rows of bramble standards and apple trees with whitewashed stems, intersected the fields, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... wished for a new type to be added to his characters of the Inferno, he might have chosen Boxtel during the period of Van Baerle's successes. Whilst Cornelius was weeding, manuring, watering his beds, whilst, kneeling on the turf border, he analysed every vein of the flowering tulips, and meditated on the modifications which might be effected by crosses of colour or otherwise, Boxtel, concealed behind a small sycamore which he ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... if Fleming still had them two days before he was killed, then somebody's been weeding out the collection since. Doing it very cleverly, too," he added. "You know how that stuff's arranged, and how conspicuous a missing pistol would be. Well, when I was going over the collection, I found about two dozen pieces ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... life and snap into the business. We have strong competition. A big syndicate is taking over the other steamship properties, and we must hustle to keep up with the procession. I'm laying off freighters that are not showing a proper profit—I'm weeding out the moss-covered captains who are not up with the times. That's why I'm putting you on the Montana in place ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... clearly formulated—Circular 124 continued in effect with only minor changes until 1950—the new policy was based on the substantially different proposition that segregation would continue indefinitely while the staff concentrated on weeding out poorly qualified Negroes, upgrading the rest, and removing vestiges of discrimination, which it saw as quite distinct from segregation. At the same time the Army would continue to operate under a strict 10 percent quota of Negroes, though not necessarily within every occupation ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... well as they might. They need your tender care. I don't have much time to pet them along. The onions are doing pretty well, but they need weeding badly. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... really an ornament now, Nan; this sage-bed needs weeding,—that's good work for you girls; and, now I think of it, you'd better water the lettuce in the cool of ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... weeks lettuce-like leaves were peeping through the ground, and Jason and Mavis stretched canvas over the beds to hold in the heat of day and hold off the frost of night. Three weeks later came the first ploughing; then there was ploughing and ploughing and ploughing again, and weeding and weeding and weeding again. Just before ripening, the blooms came—blooms that were for all the word like the blooms of purple rhododendron back in the hills, and then the task of suckering began. Sometimes Mavis would help ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... was threefold. First, the weeding out from our circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy. Second, the organizing of the Fighting Groups, and outside of them, of the general secret organization of the Revolution. And third, the introduction of our own secret agents into every ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Culture. Weeding and occasionally stirring the soil, and sticking such as require support, is all the cultivation necessary for annuals. If it be desired to save seed, some of the earliest and most perfect blossoms should be preserved ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... to go about in ball dresses for the rest of the summer," said Chrystie, giggling hysterically. "How nice you'll look weeding the garden in an ermine stole and white ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... "do the weeding first," as being the least agreeable business, and so set to work; I in a leisurely manner, befitting the heat of the day, and Eleanor with her usual energy. She toiled without a pause, and accomplished about treble the result of my labours. After we had worked for ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... formed an ideal standard in his own mind and then endeavored, first by a wide selection and a judicious and discriminating coupling, to obtain the type desired, and then by close breeding, connected with rigorous weeding out, to ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... her. "And you're the gal I took from your mammy and promised I'd bring up a decent woman. You've got none o' her blood in you—not a drop. You're the brat of that damned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was weeding ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... ten times her impetuosity. He instructed the black woman to go at once and inform Madame Lebrun that Mrs. Pontellier desired to see her. The woman grumbled a refusal to do part of her duty when she had not been permitted to do it all, and started back to her interrupted task of weeding the garden. Whereupon Victor administered a rebuke in the form of a volley of abuse, which, owing to its rapidity and incoherence, was all but incomprehensible to Edna. Whatever it was, the rebuke was convincing, for the woman dropped her hoe and ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... rest to-night," said the kind man. "To-morrow he shall have his first lesson in weeding the beds and ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... an easy matter to expand them, but I did not want these lectures to become erudite dissertations, nor the ideas which are the essential part of a sketch like the present to be overwhelmed by a multiplicity of facts. In general I have therefore limited myself to weeding out certain errors that were overlooked, or ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... been a hard one. Her parents had been hideously poor. Her marriage had scarcely bettered her condition. She had laboured in the fields always, hoeing and weeding and reaping and carrying wood and driving mules, and continually rising with the first streak of daybreak. She had known fever and famine and all manner of earthly ills. But now in her old age she had peace. Two of her dead ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... other hand, various circumstances have already been suggested that cooeperated, already prior to the days of Hammurabi, in weeding out the superfluity of deities, at least so far as recognition of them in the official inscriptions of the rulers were concerned. Deities, attached to places of small and ever-diminishing importance would, after ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... here when I bolted from the ship— an' I begun to bethink myself that she could see how I was keepin' my promise; so I braced-up, an' laid a bit closer. Lord knows, I gev her worry enough while she was alive, without follerin' her up any furder." I have taken some trouble in weeding the language of Jack's confession, so as ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... man, who was weeding with his hands a bed of dwarf roses and marguerites, was indignant at seeing a horse thus traversing his sanded and nicely-raked walks. He even ventured a vigorous "Humph!" which made the cavalier turn round. Then there was a change of scene; for no sooner had he ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... result of negligence and that which was due to the mere pleasure of destroying, the unfortunate idea arose that collections might be systematically weeded, those documents only to be preserved which were "interesting" or "useful," the rest to be got rid of. The task of weeding was entrusted to well-meaning but incompetent and overworked men, who were thus led to commit irreparable havoc in our ancient archives. At the present day there are workers engaged in the task, one ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... correct grammar than to speak slang, and it is no more difficult to write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just as in every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behave rudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping and raking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are all postulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods into exact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when every element has been brought under ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... home she was afraid that May might be disappointed, not only of her ribbon, but of her flowers and garland as well, for she found Mrs. Stevens, the Squire's wife, had called and asked Mrs. Risdon to send Alice to the Lodge to help with some weeding. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the valley. On the sides of the enclosing ranges there were many cultivated patches, and we saw whole families, men, women, and children, weeding amongst the maize. A few showers had fallen during the night and given them some hopes of saving their crops. We passed a village called Apanas and then struck across the plains, and on the other side reached low flat-topped ranges covered with small trees and brushwood, amongst which ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... days after this Bunny and Sue again went out to the barn to look at the circus trapezes, and play. Bunker Blue and Ben were not with them this time, as the two older boys were weeding the garden ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... breeds, no one who will study what has been written on this subject—for instance, Mr. Spooner's paper—will dispute; but to produce uniformity in a crossed breed, careful selection and "rigorous weeding," as this author expresses it, are indispensable. (3/95. 'Journal of R. Agricult. Soc. of England' volume 20 part 2, W.C. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... through a fertile and pleasant country, which suggests to the passer-by that the time and labour needed in weeding and chopping down must be almost greater than that spent in sowing and growing plants. The number of orchards here has perhaps given rise to a proverb, said to be peculiar to South Devon, but calling to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... "except the weeding birds of whom I have told you. When we have a piece of ground too small for our electric ploughs, we sometimes set them to break it up, and they certainly reduce the soil to a powder much finer than ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... weeding in the vegetable garden, Collie was put to work repairing fence. There were many miles of it, inclosing some twenty thousand acres of grazing-land, and the cross-fencing of the oat, alfalfa, fruit, and vegetable acreage. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and work I dearly loved the country and a farm, but did not know its duties, nor had I the strength for heavy labor, so I assisted in work in and about the houses in the early hours of the day, and in some of the lighter farming, as planting, hoeing, weeding and driving the oxen, horses and cows; in fact, taking a lad's place in the farm and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... great weeding out of the Herd; it was like the sweep of the fire breath that bares the prairie only to make the grass come up stronger and sweeter again. Longingly we waited for our friend, the gentle Chinook, to come up out of ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... as they display themselves in Saxony; and I am bound to add that, in Bohemia, the same system is pursued, and the very same results produced. Besides a large portion of the field-work, such as hoeing, weeding, digging, planting, &c., it has fallen to the Bohemian women's share to be the bearers of all burdens; whether fire-wood be needed from the forest, grass, butter, eggs, and other wares required in the market-place, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... stackyard and the stacks thatched, and all that summer Belle and her wean stayed with us, the lass working at the weeding and the harvesting, and the wean well cared for, for the mistress remained not long abed after the spaewife's coming. Belle's wean might be "a tinker's brat" in whispered corners in byres and hay-sheds, where the wenches could claver ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Monotony? Was that cry true? What work now performed by humble men was less monotonous than work on the land? What work was even a tenth part so varied? Never quite the same from day to day: Now weeding, now hay, now roots, now hedging; now corn, with sowing, reaping, threshing, stacking, thatching; the care of beasts, and their companionship; sheep-dipping, shearing, wood-gathering, apple-picking, cider-making; fashioning and tarring gates; whitewashing walls; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Smith called at Mrs. Garfield's house, to ask James to help him in weeding the peppermint, adding at the same time, that he had engaged twenty boys for this especial purpose. Mrs. Garfield said that her son was at that time very busy, and she thought that the farmer would have enough ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... the province of Chung-Chong-Do as the Italy of Korea, but its beauty and prosperity required seeing to be believed. It afforded an amazing contrast to the dirt and apathy of Seoul. Here every one worked. In the fields the young women were toiling in groups, weeding or harvesting. The young men were cutting bushes on the hillsides, the father of the family preparing new ground for the fresh crop, and the very children frightening off the birds. At home the housewife ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... who has gathered into her dainty salons the fruit of many years' careful study and tireless "weeding" will ask anxiously if you are quite sure you like the effect of her latest acquisition—some eighteenth-century statuette or screen (flotsam, probably, from the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to your verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by contract, with ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... managed to struggle along fairly well. Lastly, there was a minority to whom it was little more than discomfort. They were the seasoned veterans of the trail to whom its trials were all in the day's work. It was as if the Great White Land was putting us to the test, was weeding out the fit from the unfit, was proving itself a land of the Strong, a ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... now worked out and David Dunster, the miner, now worked at a mine right over the hills in Miller's Dale. He was seldom at home, except at night, and on Sundays. His wife, besides keeping her little house, and digging and weeding in the strip of garden that lay on the steep slope above the house, hemmed in with a stone wall, also seamed stockings for a framework-knitter in Ashford, whither she went once or ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... enemy to wreak his vengeance, according to the recognized laws of Manboland. The women and girls dig up the camotes with a bolo or with a small pointed stick, and get a little rice from the granary.[27] After performing any necessary work such as weeding and planting, they return and prepare the meal, the men taking no part except to clean and quarter the game or other meat that may ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... seemed moving, and the earth was parched by the broiling sun. Even the bees had stopped humming, and the butterflies had hid themselves under the broad leaves of the burdock. Without a morsel of dinner, the poor child was put in the garden, and set to weeding it, her arms, neck, and head completely bare. Unaccustomed to toil, Clotelle wept as she exerted herself in pulling up the weeds. Old Dinah, the cook, was a unfeeling as her mistress, and she was pleased to see the child made to work ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... shysters," he says. "Been weeding them out for six weeks. Now I have got rid of that nobleman I can look the rest of the Company in the face. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... What before was done in the light of experience is nowadays done in the light of knowledge. Even the earliest forms of intensive cultivation demand the practice of the fundamental processes of husbandry—ploughing, manuring, sowing, weeding, reaping. It is the improvements in methods, implements and materials, brought about by the application of science, that distinguish the husbandry of the 20th century from that of medieval and ancient ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... then, of course, like a fool and a woman, must wait dinner for me and make a flurry of herself. Her day so far." Again he writes: "The guid wife had bread to bake, and she baked it in a pan, O! But between whiles she was down with me weeding sensitive[36] in the paddock. Our dinner—the lowest we have ever been—consisted of an avocado pear between Fanny and me, a ship's biscuit for the guid man, white bread for the missis, and red wine for the twa; no salt horse, even, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Marque—as he now called himself—had become exquisitely simple; eating, sleeping, driving a lawn mower—these three manly sports so entirely occupied the twenty-four hours that he had scarcely time to do much weeding—and no time at all to sympathise with himself because he was too busy by day and too ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... were plodding back and forth in the purple furrows. Peace had descended here at least, and, with a smile, he detected Betty's abounding energy in the moving spirit of the place. He saw her in the freshly swept walks, in the small negroes weeding the blue-grass lawn, in the distant ploughs that made blots upon the meadows. For a moment he hesitated, and laid his hand upon the iron gate; then, stifling the temptation, he turned back into the white sand of the road. Before he met Betty's ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... fewness &c. adj.; paucity, small number; small quantity &c. 32; rarity; infrequency &c. 137; handful, maniple; minority; exiguity. [Diminution of number] reduction; weeding &c. v.; elimination, sarculation|, decimation; eradication. V. be few &c. adj. render few &c. adj.; reduce, diminish the number, weed, eliminate, cull, thin, decimate. Adj. few; scant, scanty; thin, rare, scattered, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... under the care of the farm-bailiff, to do such odd jobs about the place as might be suited to his capacity and love of out-door life. And now John Broom's troubles began. By fair means or foul, with here an hour's weeding and there a day's bird scaring, and with errands perpetual, the farm-bailiff contrived to "get some work out of" the idle little urchin. His speckled hat and grim face seemed to be everywhere, and always to pop up when John Broom ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs. Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was walking and running about and digging and weeding like the others, the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and content. Fears for the Eggs became things of the past. Knowing that your Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the fact that you could watch ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wandering, they did not get enough to make it a very arduous task, and now I find that they want weeding. If children read nothing but a multitude of stories rather beneath their capacity, they are likely never to exert themselves to anything beyond ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a curious look, and then walked on beside him, Macey repeating all he knew as they went along toward Bates' cottage, where they found the constable looking singularly unofficial, for he was in his shirt-sleeves weeding his garden. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... gradual retrogression. Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial epoch and a spread of polar climatal conditions over the whole globe. The operation of natural selection under these circumstances would tend, on the whole, to the weeding out of the higher organisms and the cherishing of the lower forms of life. Cryptogamic vegetation would have the advantage over Phanerogamic; Hydrozoa over Corals; Crustacea over Insecta, and Amphipoda and Isopoda over the higher Crustacea; Cetaceans ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... strenuous than the work an individual normally does. But work means human energy expended for the sole purpose of accomplishing some end. And an end involves the deliberate shutting-out of every impulse which does not contribute to its fulfillment. A man weeding a garden may tire of the weeding long before he is really physically exhausted. One response is being repeatedly made, while at the same time a dozen other impulses are being stimulated. When Tom Sawyer, under the compulsion of his aunt, is whitewashing a fence, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... sun, went into the garden, and commenced weeding, intending to do my quota of work before breakfast, and then devote the day to reading and conversation. I was presently joined by Shelldrake and Mallory, and between us we finished the onions and radishes, stuck the peas, and cleaned the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... operations. The early days of the war enabled those of doubtful value to be eliminated, the result being that those machines which are now in use represent the survival of the fittest. Experience has furthermore emphasised the necessity of reducing the number of types to the absolute minimum. This weeding-out process is being continued and there is no doubt that by the time the war is concluded the number of approved types of aeroplanes of military value will have been reduced to a score or less. The inconveniences and disadvantages arising from the utilisation ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... of Phoenician colonies who were natural allies of the Carthaginians, and aided them in every way in their power. Before advancing through the passes of the Pyrenees Hannibal still further reduced the strength of his force by weeding out all those who had in the conflict among the mountains shown themselves wanting in personal strength or in military qualities. Giving these leave to return home he advanced at the head of fifty thousand picked infantry and ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... for the event of the war. Still we laboured on, dividing the armies into regiments after the fashion of Europe, and stationing each in its own quarter drilling them to the better use of arms, provisioning the city for a siege, and weeding out as many useless mouths as we might; and there was but one man in Tenoctitlan who toiled at these tasks more heavily than I, and that was Guatemoc the emperor, who did not rest day or night. I tried even to make powder with sulphur which ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... most susceptible to alcohol has gone into the mills of the gods. When all is summed up, the clearance at the bottom is not less significant than the loss at the top of the social scale. Natural selection works as effectually in toning up the species by weeding out the worst as 'natural selection reversed' works for degeneracy through the removal of the best. This purgation has been overlooked; whether it offsets the injury in the highest stratum is a fair question, but obviously no man is wise enough ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... his wife as he passed one day and stopped to watch the children at work, some, just arrived, getting their tools from the toolhouse in one corner of the lot, others already hard at work, some hoeing, some on their knees weeding, all as contented as ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... but expressing her best wishes, without venturing to hint at her services, she arose, and they all took their leave;—Belfield hastening, as they went, to return to the garden, where, looking over the hedge as they passed, they saw him employed again in weeding, with the eagerness of a man who pursues his ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... or two after the gentlemen had been down to see us, we found it necessary to resume the task of weeding between the rows. The drought at the beginning of the season had been succeeded by copious rains, with warm southerly winds, under which the weeds were making an alarming growth, notwithstanding the trampling which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... yet unelected enter into competition. The matter is settled by a reference to the whole of the voting papers. If any unelected candidate now stands first on an absolute majority of all these papers he is elected. But if not, then the weeding-out process is applied until an absolute majority is obtained. The candidate who gets the absolute majority is elected. Should there be another seat, the same process is repeated. If an absolute majority of ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing, as exotic fruits and flowers. The vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge (every branch of which is entertaining), and the longest life is too short for the pursuit of it; which, though in some regards confined to very strait limits, leaves still a vast variety of amusements to those capable ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... presumably through an incalculable period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today appears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with the advance of population, of culture and of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... age with his stealing steps; since then, as before then, I know not what it means. But I know pleasures still; pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of them with scratching nails. High among these I place the delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And take my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside down—I would not change my circumstances, unless it were to bring you here. And yet God knows perhaps ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... injured, downtrodden, mocked, and insulted. The laws were unequal, and gave him no security; game of the most destructive kind was permitted to run at large through the fields, and yet the people were not allowed to shoot a hare or a deer upon their own grounds. Numerous edicts prohibited hoeing and weeding, lest young partridges should be destroyed. The people were bound to repair the roads without compensation, to grind their corn at the landlord's mill, bake their bread in his ovens, and carry their grapes to his wine-press. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... endless course, environment is sure to crystallize the American nation. Its varying elements will become unified and the weeding out process will probably leave the finest human product ever known. The color, the perfume, the size and form that are placed in the plants will have their analogies in the composite, the American ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Philadelphia, 460 troops, as they were called, though they came "almost entirely without arms." In Massachusetts, Governor Andrew, an anti-slavery leader, enthusiastic, energetic, and of great executive ability, had been for many months preparing the militia for precisely this crisis, weeding out the holiday soldiers and thoroughly equipping his regiments for service in the field. For this he had been merrily ridiculed by the aristocracy of Boston during the winter; but inexorable facts now declared for him and against the local aristocrats. On April 15 he received ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... forms the side of a forecourt flanked by grandiose outbuildings—estate offices, stables, and a great frescoed ballroom. Elsewhere round the house was a very untidy flower garden, which half the old women of the little town spent, so it seemed to me, most of their days in weeding—herein reviving my recollections of Dartington Hall and Denbury. Indeed, throughout my whole stay at Koermend country life in Hungary was constantly reminding me of what country life was during my own early days in Devonshire. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... went home that night, after a long afternoon of weeding an old lady's garden and whitewashing a long-suffering chicken house, Emma Campbell spread before him, on a hot platter, and of a crispness and brownness and odorousness to have made St. Simon Stylites slide down his pillar and grab for a piece ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... she kept both herself and her child by day labour in the fields, weeding and sowing potatoes, and following at the tail of the reapers, for sixpence a day dry days, and fourpence all weathers. She might have badgered the heir of Ballawhaine, but she never did so. That ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... was weeding in the fields she found a malapad, [20] and after a little she found another, and so on until she had a sec-apat. [21] With this she returned home and bought rice, but she was afraid to tell her husband lest ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... house, while the children set to work weeding the rest of the flower-bed. They were very careful not to pull up any of the flowers with the weeds. When they had finished, the flower-bed looked beautiful, cleared as it was of all ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... but one hour in the day, and one day in the year. When Aubrey happened to be walking behind Montague House at twelve o'clock on Midsummer day, he relates how he saw about twenty-two young women, most of them well dressed, and apparently all very busy weeding. On making inquiries, he was informed that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put beneath their heads that night, when they would not fail to dream of their future husbands. But, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... is the Justice of the Peace, who in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' goes disguised 'for the good of the Republic in the Fair and the weeding ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... race itself, as it now exists, free choice, aided by natural selection, is actually improving every good point, and is for ever weeding out all the occasional failures and shortcomings of nature. For weakly children, feeble children, stupid children, heavy children, are undoubtedly born under this very regime of falling in love, whose average results I believe to be so highly beneficial. How is this? ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... carnivorous quadrupeds. Our butterflies have been protected in a different way, but quite as effectually; and the result has been that as there has been nothing to escape from, there has been no weeding out of slow flyers, and as there has been nothing to hide from, there has been no extermination of the bright-coloured varieties, and no preservation of such as tended to assimilate with ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... nine years old, "nearly ten," and would feel offended if we left that out. But here she comes from Grannie Burt's, so we must stop talking about her. She is coming by the lane just as we did, running at first, then a little slower, till at last she stops, for her sister Mary is weeding one of the pretty borders ...
— Nanny Merry - or, What Made the Difference • Anonymous
... the garden. It was such a beautiful garden; so beautifully kept by Monsieur Benoit, and withered old Mere Michele, who did the weeding and helped Rose once a week in the laundry. There were such pretty trellises, covered with roses and clematis; such masses of bright flowers and sweet mignonette; such tidy gravel walks and clipped box edges; such floods of sunshine; so many butterflies and lizards basking in it; the birds singing ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Steadfast was busy weeding the little patch of barley that lay near the ruins of the old farm house with little Ben basking round him. The great carefulness as to keeping the ground clear had been taught him by his father, and was one reason why his ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... radical weeding as alone would satisfy the rector's conscience, was my detestation; and, moreover, just at the time of being called upon to weed, there was sure to be something else of engrossing importance which my nimble little wits had set ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... me a moderate task of weeding onions, I soon became tired of crawling on hands and knees under a scorching sun, inundating the earth with perspiration and tears, so I substituted a hoe for fingers, tearing up onions with the weeds that I might ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... translation of the Linnaean system of vegetation into English from the Latin. His illustrious coadjutors exacted of him fidelity to the sense of their author, and they corrected Jackson's inelegant English, weeding it of its pompous coarseness. Darwin had already conceived the design of turning the Linnaean system into a poem, which, after he had composed it, was long handed about in manuscript; and, I believe, frequently revised ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the two boys on Erskine Field. Mills was a hard taskmaster, but one that inspired the utmost confidence, and as a result of some ten days' teaching the half hundred candidates who had survived the first weeding-out process were well along in the art of football. The new men were coached daily in the rudiments; were taught to punt and catch, to fall on the ball, to pass without fumbling, to start quickly, and to run hard. Exercise in the gymnasium still went on, but ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... weeding her seed onions and very sensibly let Nanny help. Nanny's fingers flew in and out and because she dared not tell her own heart troubles she told Grandma about Jocelyn and David and the foolish bit of gossip that ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... goal. Blind desires may easily defeat their own ends; wealth does not necessarily accumulate in proportion to a man's miserliness; the ardent but unenlightened philanthropist may do his fellow-man more harm than good. Long views are of no little service in weeding out inconsistent actions and introducing order ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... in the susceptibility to infection in the different races of man. If a race be confined to one habitat with close intercourse between the people, such a race may acquire a high degree of immunity to local diseases by a gradual weeding out of the individuals who are most susceptible. A degree of comparative harmony may be gradually established between host and parasite, as is the case in wild animals. These have few diseases, the weak die, the resistant breed; they harbor, it is true, large numbers ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... THE LAND The draining of the land Trenching and subsoiling Preparation of the surface The saving of moisture Hand tools for weeding and subsequent tillage and other hand work The hoe Scarifiers Hand-weeders Trowels and their kind ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... warrant was in effect obsolete save as an instrument authorising one man to deprive another of his liberty in the king's name. Even the standard of "able bodies and capable" had deteriorated to such an extent that the officers of the fleet were kept nearly as busy weeding out and rejecting men as were the officers of the impress ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... hands, as if she were making the most business-like arrangements for going dramatically distracted, would enter on the household affairs of the day. Such weighing and mixing and chopping and grating, such dusting and washing and polishing, such snipping and weeding and trowelling and other small gardening, such making and mending and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above all such severe study! For Mrs J. R., who had never been wont to do too much at home as Miss B. W., was under the constant necessity of referring for advice ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Charles the Advancement in its new Latin dress. "It is a book," he says, "that will live, and be a citizen of the world, as English books are not." And he fitted it for continental reading by carefully weeding it of all passages that might give offence to the censors at Rome or Paris. "I have been," he writes to the King, "mine own Index Expurgatorius, that it may be read in all places. For since my end of putting it in Latin was to have it read ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... fourteen years old there occurred an important event in his life. In a commendable effort to increase his income he had laid out a small vegetable garden in the rear of his father's house, and here on a Saturday morning, while down on his knees weeding carrots, he chanced to look up and discovered a young lady gazing at him through the picket fence. She was a few years his junior, and a stranger in Sequoia. Ensued the following conversation: ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... don't expect extravagant entertainments at a vicarage! The children and I can undertake the weeding, and when that is done the dear old herbaceous borders will look charming! The lawn is not big, but there is delightful shade beneath the beech-trees, and we can draw the piano up to the drawing-room window, and get a few people to sing for us—Maud Bailey and Mrs ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were more in the habit of campaigning with one another, rather than (6) shoulder to shoulder with Lydians, Phrygians, Syrians, and barbarians from all quarters of the world, who form the staple of our resident alien class. Besides the advantage (of so weeding the ranks), (7) it would add a positive lustre to our city, were it admitted that the men of Athens, her sons, have reliance on themselves rather than on foreigners to fight her battles. And further, supposing ...
— On Revenues • Xenophon
... spring great preparation was made for tapping the maple-trees and boiling the sap down to sugar, which was always an agreeable employment for young Daniel. Another occupation of the boy on the farm was in weeding, pulling, and spreading flax, which boys generally ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... might prefer. The next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the British flag, reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and solacing pieties. The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and explained that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to further his political projects. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Sam was busy. Sam was weeding the "inguns," and "inguns was more consekens than the nasty wopses." So Sam had to be coaxed and cajoled; but Sam would not be either coaxed or cajoled, for he was very grumpy indeed; and the reason was, that he had had the lawn to mow that morning, and ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the library of this Sunday- school was carefully examined and weeded. Every book was read by competent persons, and the poorest books were put out of the library. This weeding process has gone on year by year; as new books have been added others not representing a high standard of merit have been removed from the shelves. Great care has been taken to examine conscientiously new books before putting them into the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... office, the manager stopped at the secretary's desk and added: "We must win this strike. The directors meet to-day and those English share-holders are getting nervous. They can't understand that this fight is necessary—that we are fighting for peace hereafter; weeding out a pestilence that threatens, not only the future of railway corporations, but the sacred rights of American citizens—the right to engage in whatever business or calling one cares to follow, and to employ whom he will at whatever wages the employer and employed may agree ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... which the indefatigable author has pressed, somewhat at hazard, the sheaves of his predecessors. Most of the time he inserts them just as they are, confining himself to the work of harvesting them and weeding out the tares. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier |
