"Piece of land" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at Mrs. Brede's knowledge of farming, she told me with a shake of the head that she herself knew very little about it, and had all her information from her husband. The fact was that every time these cotters wanted to buy a fresh piece of land from Paul, her husband had to give his consent. This was because of the mortgage, and this, too, was how they had learned of these matters. Manufacturer Brede, as a matter of fact, was most anxious to be released from his undertaking, but this was by no means easy. ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... or a piastre and a half; and the same sum for an orange or lemon tree. And heavily taxed as he is, the poor peasant is never safe in saying, "Such and such a thing belongs to me." The pacha may shift him to another piece of land, or drive him away altogether, if he thinks it advisable to do so; for a pacha's power in his province is as great as that of the Sultan himself ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Mr. Bradley had arrived in the new settlement he wrote a long letter to his wife in which he described the wonderful country in which he had found a new home. But he begged her to wait for some time until he had built a house, cleared a small piece of land, and made other preparations to welcome his ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... sticking the piece diagonally into the ground. Some, finding the cane has suffered in times of drought, have adopted other modes. It comes to perfection in a year, and they seldom have two crops from the same piece of land, unless the season is ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... banks, broad, light- coloured bands of pumice, with a few inches of rich, black, vegetable soil above, and several feet of black sea-sand below. During a freshet which occurred the first night I was at Shiraoi, a single stream covered a piece of land with pumice to the depth of nine inches, being the wash from the hills of the interior, in a course of less than ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... agriculture. Only the simple labors and manners of a farming people can hold a community together. Wherever we have departed from this rule to go into manufacturing, we have blundered." For his part, he would like to make a law for the whole country, that every man should own a piece of land and work on it. Moreover, a community, he said, should, as far as possible, make or produce all it uses. "We used to have more looms than now, but cloth is sold so cheaply that we gradually began to buy. It is a mistake; we buy more ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... to take me with him to Virginia, but he did not know where he should find a driver who would be so kind to the hands as I was. If I would stay ten years, he would give me a thousand dollars, and a piece of land to plant on my own account. "But," said I, "my wife and children." "Well," said he, "I will do my best to purchase them, and send them on to you." I now saw that my destiny was fixed: and that I was to spend ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the world to live upon? They knew not what they did. The stranger came, a timid suppliant, few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bearskin, and 15 warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchment over the whole, and says, "It is mine!" Stranger, there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... should lose yourselves? It is rather by not giving yourselves that you lose yourselves. Charity herself speaks to you by the mouth of Wisdom and upholds you against the terror which fills you at the sound of those words: 'Give yourself.' If some one wanted to sell you a piece of land, he would say to you: 'Give me your gold.' And for something else, he would say: 'Give me your silver, give me your money.' Listen to what Charity says to you by the mouth of Wisdom: 'My son, give me thy heart.' 'Give ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... solicitor, which, I think, is worth your hearing. "My father's solicitor, Mr. Ouvry," he says, "was a very well-known man, a thorough man of the world, and one in whose breast reposed many of the secrets of the principal families of England. On one occasion my father was in treaty for a piece of land at the back of Gad's Hill, and it was proposed that there should be an interview with the owner, a farmer, a very acute man of business, and a very hard nut to crack. It was arranged that the interview with him should ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... free trade in the agricultural mind; each county prohibits the import of able men from other counties. This is why eloquent sceptics—Bolingbroke and Disraeli—have been so apt to lead the unsceptical Tories. They WILL have people with a great piece of land in a particular spot, and of course these people generally cannot speak, and often cannot think. And so eloquent men who laugh at the party come to lead the party. The landed interest has much more influence than it should have; but it wastes that influence so much that the excess is, except ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of some size behind the house containing fruit trees, and permitting a certain amount of floriculture; and my father rented an additional piece of land close by as a vegetable-garden. Not infrequently I had to join in gardening—more frequently, indeed, than I liked. Often when I ought to have been busy at some task which my father had set to me, I was otherwise ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... some remorseful feeling; for when the will was opened, there was not found so much as the mention of his name. He was deeply in debt; in debt even to the estate of his deceiver, so that he had to sell a piece of land to clear himself. 'My dear boy,' he said to Charles, 'there will be nothing left for you. I am a ruined man.' And here follows for me the strangest part of this story. From the death of the treacherous aunt, Charles Jenkin, senior, had still some nine years to live; it was perhaps too late ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these commons, with a number of apples marked with similar figures, which were distributed by a boy to each of the commoners from a bag; at the close of the distribution, each person repaired to allotment with the figure corresponding with the one upon his apple, and took possession of that piece of land for the ensuing year. Four acres were reserved to pay the expenses of an entertainment at the house of the Overseer of the Dale Moors, when the evening was spent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... over bearing females and males, till they become a great matter. Then will I take my share and vent thereof what I will. The males I will sell and buy with them bulls and cows, which will also increase and multiply and become many; after which I will purchase such a piece of land and plant a garden therein and build thereon a mighty fine[FN69] palace. Moreover, I will get me robes and raiment and slaves and slave girls and hold a wedding never was seen the like thereof. I will ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fertile valley," a "square piece of country," bounded on the south by Cumberland House, and by the Athabasca Lake on the north. His own words are as follows:—"The sources of the Athabasca and the sources of the Saskatchewan include an enormous area of country; it is, in fact, a vast piece of land surrounded by water. When I heard Dr Livingstone's description of that splendid country which he found in the interior of Africa within the equator, it appeared to me to be precisely the kind of country which I am now describing. ... It is a rich soil interspersed with ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... new and valuable animals had been left at Otaheite, which would soon multiply, and furnish a sufficient number for the use of all the islands in the neighbourhood. He then signified to them that it was my earnest request, in return for all my friendly offices, that they would give him a piece of land to build a house upon, and to raise provisions for himself and servants; adding, that if this could not be obtained for him in Huaheine, either by gift or by purchase, I was determined to carry him to Ulietea, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... fulfilling the various duties of domestic and social life with reputation and fidelity as good citizens and pious men."[2] Directing their attention first to things practical the association purchased in 1839 a piece of land in Bristol township, Philadelphia County, where they offered boys instruction in farming, shoemaking, and other useful trades. Their endeavors, so far as training in the mechanic arts was concerned, ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... productiveness of a piece of land, it is necessary to distinguish three things,—its bearing-capacity, its capacity for cultivation, and its direct capacity to afford food to plants.(212) Plants grow by drawing a part of the elements which enter into their composition from the atmosphere, and a part from the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... advised the ensign. "But don't worry if they do not answer at once. This is a big piece of land, this island." ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... side of the mountain which rises above Port Louis, in the Mauritius, upon a piece of land bearing the marks of former cultivation, are seen the ruins of two small cottages. These ruins are not far from the centre of a valley, formed by immense rocks, and which opens only towards the north. On the left rises the mountain called the Height of Discovery, whence the eye marks ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... and Pennycuicks to feed it. "Their shepherds were killed by the blacks," said Deb, as she pushed the ponies up to the wall, and he rose in the carriage to look over the top, "and they buried them here, marking the place with a pile of stones. There were other deaths, and they enclosed the piece of land. Then a brother of Mr Dalzell's, and a girl; and Mr Dalzell himself wished to be put here, beside his brother. Not his wife, she wouldn't; she lies in the Melbourne cemetery. Then some of our babies, then mother. She was the last. I don't suppose there will be any ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... had permitted the temporary residence of the deposed count at Oron, and had granted to the countess the revenues of a small piece of land, the refugees soon left the "logis" which they found "si froid et si mal fourni de vivres," and repaired to Burgundy and the protection of their powerful de Vergy relatives. For many years the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... unexpectedly to me, we came upon an oasis in the dreary desert—a little hamlet with mud-walled hovels, but better than those at Ilo, and having patches of cultivated ground enclosed. The natives had reclaimed this piece of land by means of the waters of a moderate-sized stream, and lived in almost as great isolation as if they had been on Robinson ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... "What did Doubleday discharge him for?" he demanded. "What did the cattlemen blacklist him for? He's the best foreman this ranch ever had—or ever will have," added Bradley, summoning his scant courage to rub it in. "He fired him because he took up a little piece of land agin the Falling Wall and got together a few cows of his own. That's a crime, ain't it? Like ——. These cattlemen will learn a thing or two ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land. Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... religion is to them of all things the most serious, while it is precisely what they least examine for themselves. In pursuit of an office, a piece of land, a house, a place of profit; in any transaction or contract whatever, every one carefully examines all, takes the greatest precaution, weighs every word of a writing, is guarded against every surprise. Not so in religion; every one receives it at a venture, and believes ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... she, "I had a miserable piece of land, which only yielded me corn; I have sold it, and I have this mirror instead. Is not this excellent? Who would hesitate between corn ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the conquests of states which maintained standing armies. The invading hosts elected their chieftain, they and he had only a life use of the conquests. Upon the death of one leader another was elected, so upon the death of the allottee of a piece of land it reverted to the state. The GENIUS of FEUDALISM was life ownership and non-partition. Hence the oath of fealty was a personal obligation, and investiture was needful before the new feudee took possession. The state, as represented by the king or chieftain, while allowing the claim of ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... the full satisfaction of cultivating even a small piece of land at second hand. To be accepted as One Who Belongs, there must be ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... by warranty deed a piece of land over which there is a public or a private way, without conveying subject to such way; for if you do you may be called upon to make up the difference in value in the land with the incumbrance upon it and with ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... there was a lease upon the property, else of course they would in their estimate have deducted the $200,000, which the lease would cost. When, therefore, Mr. Bennett saw it stated in the newspapers that the sum which he had paid for a piece of land measuring only fifty-six by one hundred feet was more than was ever paid before in any city in the world for a tract of that size, he discovered the serious oversight which he had made; and the owner ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... brothers, Arthur Ruff, Dick Seymour, and John Nelson. To the last I have already referred. Each of these men had a squaw for a wife and numerous half-breed children. They lived in tents of buffalo skins. They owned a herd of horses and a few cattle, and had cultivated a small piece of land. Their principal occupation was hunting, and they had numbers of buffalo hides, which they had tanned in the ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... noblewoman's house was amply sufficient for the whole family, and there was always enough meal left to make mash for the cow. Their fuel they got free, and likewise the food for the cattle. In addition they were given a small piece of land on which to raise vegetables. They had a cow, a calf, and a number ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... undoubtedly working in the dark for years to accomplish this, and in his kinsman the lawyer he had found a willing helper. It was plain to see, too, that it would be to Peter and Paul Quethiock's advantage to try and take the Barton from me. It was a valuable piece of land, and would enrich them considerably. There was no difficulty, either, in seeing Richard Tresidder's motives. He had wronged me, and, as I said, it seems a law of life that a man shall feel bitterly toward one he has wronged; and besides all that, his safety lay in keeping me poor, and ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... session, to purchase the first town-clock erected in New York; and with the aid of his partner imported and presented to the city the first fire-engine that had been brought into the province. The De Lancey house, built by Etienne in 1700 upon a piece of land given to him by his father-in-law, is now the oldest building in the city of New York."[5] Mr De Lancey was buried in the family vault ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... The head man there has the old pueblo paper," said Father Gaspara. "He was showing it to me the other day. That will, it may be, save you there. But do not trust to it, son. Buy yourself a piece of land as the white man buys his. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... A Comfortable Message brought hither from the King concerning them. Placed there to punish the People tor a Crime. Weary of this Place. By a piece of craft he gets down to his old Quarters. Began the world anew the third time. Plots to remove himself. Is encouraged to buy a piece of Land. The situation and condition of it. Buys it. Builds an House on it. Leaves Laggendenny. Settled at his new Purchase with three more living with him. Their freedom and Trade. His Family ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... the mouth; a third looked over a very uninviting country inland, with the mountains of Cuba seen in the far distance, blue and indistinct; while, by looking through the fourth, we discovered that we were separated from the open sea by a piece of land little more than a mile in width. We could not, of course, see what was going forward close under the buildings, but we could observe the movements of people on shore at a little distance off. Our ears, however, helped us when our eyesight ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... land after they have gathered their crops. They seem to think that the land contains an inexhaustible supply of plant food. Another cause of this deficiency of the soil is the failure of the farmer to rotate his crop. There are farms being cultivated in the South today where the same piece of land has been planted in cotton every year for forty or fifty years. Forty years ago, I am told by reliable authority, that this same land would yield from one bale to one and a half per acre. And today it will take from four to six acres to produce ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... my past work had been invested in a piece of land which was sold to fit me out for my journey to West Point, including some inexpensive visits en route. I reported at the Academy on June 1, 1849, with less than two dollars in my pocket, which I conscientiously deposited with the treasurer, as required by the regulations. My reception was ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... debt. Already he had sent on stores and men to the West and the men were likely to starve if not followed by provisions. His chief property was in the West in the form of goods which would be plundered without his guardianship. To tide over the immediate future he sold the one small piece of land in Montreal which he had inherited from his father and threw this slight ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... living with her parents. He goes to Buenos Ayres or Monte Video. If, at the end of four, five or six years he has managed to increase the money so as to yield a small income, and if his wife behaves herself during his absence, he comes home again and buys a piece of land and builds a house. His friends do not fail to inform him of his wife's conduct, and he holds her dowry as a guarantee of her fidelity. But if he fails to enrich himself, or if she is unfaithful to him, he never comes back at all. It is thus clear that ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... decision was reached that the boys were to have a piece of land including the clearing to which Ree had referred, and as much of the river valley and adjacent hillsides as they reasonably needed, in exchange for articles to be selected from ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... if the worst comes to the worst, will grieve over my loss. I recommend my faithful servant to you. I should wish the balance of pay coming to me to be handed to him, as well as my camel and horse, and all other belongings. By the sale of these he would be able, at the end of the war, to buy a piece of land and settle down ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... ropes loose, I allowed the boat to choose its own course, and began to ram down my bullets. I tried two at a time. With a slight grating, the keel of the gig touched a sunken piece of land, and almost at the same time, its weigh was stopped entirely by the stem coming in gentle contact with ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... it was—as with savages. He started! But one minute's reflection showed him that it was in the very nature of the shore to pay rent: because one piece of land was better than another—City land, for instance—and those working on the better must pay for that benefit. Civilized land, therefore, was ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... taken up his position in a thicket which stood in the centre of a level patch of sand in the old bed of the river,—the bed it had used five years before and forsaken at the time of the big flood when it cut itself a new channel and made the U-bend which now surrounded this piece of land on three sides. Even now, during the rainy season, the thicket which sheltered Mr. Elkins was frequently an island ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... objected to solely because he was a sheep-man, while their sympathies were with the cattle-men, although they owned only a small bunch. To gain their consent the young man closed out his interest in sheep, at a loss, filed on a splendid piece of land near them, and built a little home for the girl he loved. Before they could get to town to be married Grandpa was stricken with rheumatism. Grandma was already almost past going on with it, so they postponed the marriage, and as that winter was particularly ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a "mint o' money." But Mr Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable than ever. He loved the farmer's ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... customary procedure, ranking them on a par with questions of family religious observances.(188) The deposit of some ancestor's bones in a certain field was occasionally a valuable link in the title to possession of that piece of land as private property;(189) and the possession of land at all was in part a guarantee of the pure native blood in the veins of the possessor.(190) It is a striking illustration of the truth of this that, throughout all the extant speeches of Isaeus dealing with the disposal of ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... until lately, almost all the travel of the country, has been upon the canals. There are private canals, too, as well as public. A farmer brings home his hay and grain from his fields by water, and when he buys a new piece of land he makes a canal to it, as a Vermont farmer would make a road to a new pasture or wood lot ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... imposed upon her sect, especially in keeping holy the Sabbath day. All her children were grown up, married, and, in the language of the time, "gone away." She was in truth a lone woman, busying herself in household and farming affairs. With a few negroes, and a miserably poor piece of land, she struggled in her widowhood with fortune, and contrived, with North Carolina frugality and industry, not only to make a decent living, but to lay up something for a rainy day, as she phrases it. In her visits to her fields and garden, I ran by her side and listened to stories of Tory ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... visited by the Rev. Mr. Mackey, the senior of the eight white men who inhabit this piece of land—a proper site for Robinson Crusoe—where, as the Yankee said of Great Britain, you can hardly stretch yourself without fear of falling overboard. He kindly undertook to be our guide over the interior, and we landed on the hard sand of the open western beach: here at times a tremendous ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... atmosphere. I enquired into the reason of the want of hedges hitherto, and their abundance here, and was told, that it arose from the greater subdivision of property as well as from the number of cows: that every man almost had his little piece of land, and his cow, pigs, hens, &c. and that they could not afford to have herds. The yoke of the bullocks here, is not, as in India, and in England, placed on the neck and shoulders, but on the forehead and horns: this, though to appearance the most irksome ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... an' de slaves taken out of dey bondage, some of de very few white folks give dem niggers what dey liked de best a small piece of land for to work. But de mostest of dem never give 'em nothin' and dey sure despise dem niggers what left 'em. Us old mars say he want to 'range wid all his niggers to stay on wid him, dat he gwine give 'em er mule an' er piece er ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... making it dangerous to cross over, particularly in small boats. While we were in the village of Bergen, a person came to us who was willing to take us up through the Northwest Kil, where we were inclined to go, because Jaques[175] of Long Island and his associates had bought for a trifle, a piece of land there of twelve thousand morgen,[176] and he had related wonders to us about it; and that above his land, and above the falls which are more than an hour's distance from it, there was another tract still better, which was corroborated by almost every one, especially in Bergen, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... for "gringoes," my compatriots. They had offered him a whole peso a day if he would not get married. But "he and she both wanted," so "que quiera uste'"? They had started farming on a little piece of rocky ridge. He would point it out to me when we came nearer. By and by he had bought another piece of land for fifty pesos and then poco a poco for forty pesos some more. Then for twenty-four pesos and fifty centavos he had bought a cow, and the vaca before long gave them a fine calf and twelve cuartillos of milk a day. So that he was able to buy another heifer and then an ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Staphylinidae, and others allied to Pselaphus, and minute Hymenoptera. But the most characteristic family in number, both of individuals and species, throughout the more open parts of Chiloe and Chonos is that of Telephoridae.) In Tierra del Fuego trees grow only on the hillsides; every level piece of land being invariably covered by a thick bed of peat; but in Chiloe flat land supports the most luxuriant forests. Here, within the Chonos Archipelago, the nature of the climate more closely approaches that of Tierra del Fuego than that of northern Chiloe; for every patch of level ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... here united, and only 200l. was left to support them for the six months until remittances could be obtained from England; but all were used to cottage fare, and were not so dependent on servants as most Europeans in India. A piece of land attached to the house became, under Mr. Carey's care, a beautiful botanic garden. The press was set up under the care of Ward, and on the 18th of March, 1800, the first sheets of the Gospels in Bengalee were struck off. Mr. and Mrs. Marshman opened two boarding schools ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... very good circumstances; and so, in spite of my years, she seemed to take very kindly to me, and I made up my mind I would marry her the approaching autumn. I had some money, and there was a house with a piece of land for sale near the town. This I planned to buy, and to settle down as an agriculturist. ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... the village behind. Jack was highly pleased with the paces of his new acquisition, and soon saw that he should be able to push on over the ground at far greater speed than when he had his own steady-going nag under him. In a short time, coming to a fine open, grassy piece of land, he could not resist the temptation of putting spurs to the animal's side, and starting off for a gallop. Pearson shouted after him to stop; but Jack found it no easy matter to rein in his steed. On turning his head, he found ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... to "The Humble-Bee" and "The Titmouse!" Nor let the reader who thinks the poet must go far to find a fitting theme fail to read the singularly impressive home-poem, "Hamatreya," beginning with the names of the successive owners of a piece of land in Concord,—probably the same he owned after the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 13th of Vendemiaire, that day which opened for Bonaparte his immense career, he addressed a letter to me at Sens, in which, after some of his usually friendly expressions, he said, "Look out a small piece of land in your beautiful valley of the Yonne. I will purchase it as soon as I can scrape together the money. I wish to retire there; but recollect that I will have nothing to do with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of trial by battle. The aim of the burgesses was to regain their old justice, and in this a touching incident at last made them successful. "It chanced that two kinsmen, Nicholas the son of Acon and Geoffrey the son of Nicholas, waged a duel about a certain piece of land concerning which a dispute had arisen between them; and they fought from the first to the ninth hour, each conquering by turns. Then one of them fleeing from the other till he came to a certain little pit, as he stood on the brink of the pit and was about to fall therein, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... do what he can to start a sheep trade, so he wanted to talk it all out with the people. He is keen upon improvements. Amongst other points he suggests that only a few cattle should be kept and that food should be grown to supply them in winter; and that a piece of land be railed off for the pigs which do so much havoc to the turf. He has won the men's confidence and I believe they will do what he wishes. He hopes if all goes well to send a schooner next January to take off the sheep, which will probably have to be sold at a low price. Had ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... California for gold, and now that this cheaper and quicker method of making a well had been invented, there was almost as much of a rush to Pennsylvania for oil. With every penny that they could beg or borrow, people from the East hurried to the westward to buy or lease a piece of land in the hope of making their fortunes. A song of the day ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... real skill and strength to keep the line even, and to avoid the stones. Sometimes the plough struck a hidden stone, and then the man was jerked almost off his feet. But he only laughed, and said, "Tough piece of land; it will be ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... great variety of fruit was successfully cultivated, and good farming was a source of pride to the people. The Romans considered it, as Washington did, the most honorable and useful occupation. Each Roman citizen was allotted a piece of land of from five to fifty acres by the government, and in after times, when annexations were made, up to five hundred acres were allotted. The land was generally closely and carefully cultivated, and the most distinguished citizens considered it their greatest ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... wit' them a while. They mak' moch fun. Call me ol' black Joe. Feed me ver' good. We talk after. They say gov'ment goin' measure all the land at the head of lake this summer and give away to farmers. So they come to get a piece of land. They are the first of many to come. Four strong men, and anot'er who cooks for them. They got wait over there till ice on the shore melt so ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... only forty days' warning given before Martinmas. No doubt that may be well enough for tenants town like Lerwick, who hold nothing except a room to live in, but it is very disagreeable for a tenant holding a small piece of land as we do. As soon as our crop is taken in, we must start work immediately, and prepare the land for next season. We have to make provision for manure, and collect our peats, and prepare stuff for thatching our houses, and perhaps by Martinmas we have expended from 6 worth of labour and ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Province of Mohilev, have supplied themselves with machine guns. The village of Little Nieshnov, for instance, has decided to order fifteen machine guns and has organized a Red Army in order to be able better to defend a piece of land taken away from the landlord and, as they say, that 'the neighboring peasants should not come to cut our hay right in front of our windows, like last year.' When the neighboring peasants heard of the decision they also procured machine guns. They have formed an army and intend to go ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... days later the Markhams, with their "po' white trash," left The Forge—Bob rebelliously struggling in the baggage car. A certain piece of land high up among the hills had been purchased by Markham and the deed rested secure in his pocket. He knew what he was about, and if a certain fool of a boy thought well of a proposition to be made to him—there might be a future for himself ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... ago; and that immediately on his return he was seized with a severe attack of pneumonia—the result of a neglected cold—and was now lying seriously ill at his house in Sedgehill. In order to complete the purchase of a piece of land for the enlargement of the works, which Mr. Thornley had arranged to buy before he went away, it was necessary (the clerk went on to say) to see the plans of the Osierfield; and these were locked up in the private safe at the manager's house, to which only Christopher and Elisabeth possessed keys. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... itself to the Sacred Genius; it being a house which the Syracusans had selected for him, as a special reward and monument of his brave exploits, granting him together with it the most agreeable and beautiful piece of land in the whole country, where he kept his residence for the most part, and enjoyed a private life with his wife and children, who came to him from Corinth. For he returned thither no more, unwilling ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as the establishment of savings banks for instance; but the principal, the desideratum in fact, is the facile procuration of cheap land. A man should be able at any moment to go to the survey office, or some local agent, and select a piece of land that would be suitable for agriculture; and be at liberty at once to take possession, and commence cultivation. Such would be the best means of ensuring thriftiness; and, until we obtain some such system, I fear we may labour in vain to ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... in a truly lamentable plight. Their father was a farmer but on such a small scale that what he got from his small piece of land was insufficient for the needs of his family. He was conscripted but sent back because he was the father of six children. He had never been strong, and during the prolonged stay at the front tuberculosis developed, from which he died on ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... had come a long distance between the barb wires, this emergence upon the free, open common was very much as if he had been following a stream which, after long confinement to its course, opens out suddenly into a lake. This piece of land was not different from the prairie it had always been, except that the houses which faced it on all sides, as if it were a lake of the summer-resort variety, gave it an importance which was not its own. It was no more nor less than a square of primeval prairie whose ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... a 10-1/2 acre piece of land, 16 miles southwest of Rochester for the purpose of planting a chestnut orchard. This land had not been worked for about twelve years. The soil is heavy and fertile, typed as Poygan clay loam. Bed rock is sixty feet below the surface. The following spring, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... boat. On the tenth day of May, 1810, he went to his mother and asked for the money with which to buy it. There was a very rough piece of land on the parental farm which had never been plowed. His mother told him that if he would plow, drag and plant that field to corn within seventeen days, she would buy the boat for him. It was a hard job, doubtless, the mother considered it an impossible one. Vanderbilt, however, seemed never ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... verified poor, those who are registered and are helped, or should be, that is to say 2,470,000 persons;[4211] but, again, others, by hundreds of thousands, whom the municipal council judges incapable of paying.—Even when people possess but a small piece of land, they are also relieved of the land tax and of the numerous additional centimes which increase it. Such is the case with those who are infirm or burdened with a family. The exchequer, so as not to convert them into beggars and vagabonds, avoids expropriation, selling out their concrete hovel, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... later they made Dawson City. The streets were filled with half-melted snow, through which a mixed humanity trudged, laden with all kinds of gear and provisions. Tents were pitched on every available piece of land. Saloons were filled with mobs clamoring for drink and food. Around the Yukon agent's office were crowds waiting to register "claims" that might or might not make their owners millionaires. All the creeks within miles of Dawson had been staked long since, and late-comers were staking likely ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... more acres in dat old plantation. It sho' was a big piece of land, and it was plumb full of Niggers—I couldn't say how many, 'cause I done forgot. You could hear dat bugle de overseer blowed to wake up de slaves for miles and miles. He got 'em up long 'fore sunup and wuked 'em in de fields long as dey could see how to wuk. Don't talk 'bout dat overseer whuppin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... found a suitable place for a battle, at a spot known as the Plains of Abraham, from a pilot of that name who had owned a piece of land there, in the early days of the colony. It was a tract of grass, with some cornfields here and there, and studded by clumps of bushes. On the south, it was bounded by the steep fall down to the Saint Lawrence; on the north, it sloped gradually down ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... regulations to secure proper sanitation, although it might be more profitable to build without any regard whatever for the health of the prospective tenants. Of course, it may not always be possible to set aside a portion of any given piece of land which is sold for building, but in that case the landowner should contribute an equivalent value out of the proceeds of the land which he sells towards providing the allotments or open spaces required elsewhere in the neighbourhood. ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... There is a piece of land for sale adjoining my garden, which would suit me exactly. Flowers bring a good price in Paris, and that business would please my wife. Fruit, also yields a ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... father's story instead of my own. You seem to like hearing about it though, and you can't understand one without the other. However, when my father was made commander, he married, and bought, with his prize-money and savings, a cottage and piece of land, in a village on the south coast, where he left his wife when he went on his last voyage. They had waited some years, for neither of them had any money; but there never were two people who wanted it less, or did more good without it to all who came near them. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... however, was Yin to gain possession of this particular piece of land that after considerable negotiations during which it seemed as though the old father would never be moved from his settled purpose, it was finally agreed that his daughter should be married to Yin's eldest son, Shung, and ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... saw it first." For the Nester who wanted a way through these fences out into the open public lands, he cherished a bitter resentment. And yet the Nester must in time win through, must eventually find the little piece of land which he was seeking. ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... or a tax assessor's or a conveyancer's description of a piece of land. Then describe the land through figures of speech which will vivify its outward appearance or its emotional significance to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... its store does a very large and thriving business. New cottages are being erected and it is destined ere long to be a stirring pleasure resort town, for, as the delights of Tahoe become more widely known, every available piece of land will increase in value and where there is now one summer home there will be ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... rates on all of the railroads, and made it a holiday. Porter's great military band, then touring the country, was secured for the afternoon and evening. Thousands of people came in on the excursions and it seemed like a carnival. Out at the piece of land platted as the Herald Addition, whither people were conveyed in street-cars and carriages during the long afternoon the great band played about the stands erected for the auctioneer, who went from stand to stand, crying off the lots, the precise ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... the creator marked off a piece of land for the five tribes, Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, Gros Ventres, and Sarsis, and said to these tribes, "When people come to cross this line at the border of your land, take your bows and arrows, your lances and your war clubs and give them battle, and ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... some land of their own, lads of fifteen or sixteen years of age, hire themselves as labourers to the farmers, and receive wages, out of which, and their mode of living, they save enough money in a few years, to buy a piece of land. If the land is fit for it, they plant it with vines; for the vineyards of France yield an abundant harvest, and well repay the labour bestowed on them. The French wines are among the finest and most expensive in ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... fund, the story of the little girl. The man was not one of our church, nor in fact, was he a church-goer at all, but he listened attentively to the tale of the fifty-seven cents and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead and sell us that piece of land for ten thousand dollars, taking—and the unexpectedness of this deeply touched me taking a first payment of just fifty-seven cents and letting the entire balance stand on ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... tree according to Mr. Wilkinson never missed a crop. While I was there they took me to a tree that had 600 pounds one year. It was on a cheap piece of land that was bought for $425.00. The year we were there it produced 250 pounds, a light crop. Another lady told us of a family that bought a piece of land that had about 50 pecans scattered over it. That kept them ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... half dead with thirst, but the new occupation to which their sturdy commander urged them, the hope of victory, and the great value of the prize: a piece of land at the foot of the sacred mountain, rich in springs and palm-trees, wonderfully strengthened ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... now easy to yoke the bulls, and to harness them to the plow, which had lain rusting on the ground for a great many years gone by; so long was it before anybody could be found capable of plowing that piece of land. Jason, I suppose, had been taught how to draw a furrow by the good old Chiron, who, perhaps, used to allow himself to be harnessed to the plow. At any rate, our hero succeeded perfectly well in breaking ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... larger island is Poroiunu or Tahiti-nui (big Tahiti), and the smaller Taiarapu, or Tahiti-iti (little Tahiti). Tahiti-nui is almost round; and Tahitiiti, oval. Both are volcanic, distinct in formation. They are united by a sedimentary piece of land long after they were ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... is a sign that success will attend the journey.[110] If, however, it points to the left, in front, or in back, the Mandaya knows that the omen bird is warning him of danger or failure, and he delays or gives up his mission. The writer was once watching some Mandaya as they were clearing a piece of land, preparatory to the planting. They had labored about two hours when the call of the limokon was heard to the left of the owner. Without hesitation the men gathered up their tools and left the plot, explaining ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... here," said the Senator. "I've got to settle a quarrel between two neighbors and visit a sick friend and make a short address to the Northern New York Conference at the Methodist Church and look over a piece of land that I'm intending to buy, and discuss the plans for my new house with the carpenter. I expect to get through about six o'clock and right after supper I could ride up to your place with you and walk back early in the morning. We could talk things ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... any rate, he was not a man to oppose, and in his previous life had given no hint that he might become a trouble maker. Nothing happened for several months. But one day on which I had occasion to interview Mr. Jason on a little matter of handing over to the Railroad a piece of land belonging to the city, which was known as Billings' Bowl, he inferred that Mr. Greenhaige might prove a disturber of that profound peace with which the city administration had for many years ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said he dreamed that Hendrick presented him with a certain piece of land which he described. It consisted of about five hundred acres, of the most valuable ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... see?" he said, "we floated over on this piece of land. The tree where we hung our coats was on the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... with us from New York a variety of garden seeds, which were put in the ground in the month of May, 1811, on a rich piece of land laid out for the purpose on a sloping ground in front of our establishment. The garden had a fine appearance in the month of August; but although the plants were left in the ground until December, not one of them came to maturity, with the exception of the radishes, the turnips, and the potatoes. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... least two-thirds of their value. Out in the suburbs ground-rents are still low—very low indeed in comparison with the selling value. The reason of this is, that it pays to buy a house with a large piece of land attached, and to cut the land up and sell it in building allotments a few years afterwards. If you can get a fair rent for the house, the land ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... ranchers and Billee kept on for another mile, to top a certain high piece of land, over which they could have a good view, as they thought from this vantage point they might see some signs to guide them. But from the eminence they only viewed an endless rolling prairie with here and there a clump of trees. They saw bands of roving cattle and a few horses—their ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... will you go, Stepanych? Leave well enough alone. Here you have a house, warmth, a little piece of land. Your wife is ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... the chances were in your favour, as they might have been a year ago and as they were in mine from the beginning. They are against you now, because it is too late, and they are against me. I would as soon buy a piece of land on credit at the present moment, as give the whole sum in cash to the first man I met in ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... good is described in Kulhwych as the only husbandman who could till or dress a certain piece of land, though Kulhwych will not be able to force him or to make him follow him.[379] This, together with the name Amaethon, from Cymric amaeth, "labourer" or "ploughman," throws some light on his functions.[380] He was a god associated ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... are interested in the work of helping you along; and to give a little help, I leave to Mr. and Mrs. Turner eight hundred dollars—two hundred is in the box in one dollar gold pieces—to build a school-house with. You know I own a piece of land next to yours, and here in this plot of two acres I want you to put up this school-house. Give Mr. Brown the work, and let him draw up the plan with Mr. Turner; I've figured it out, and I think there's enough to build a good, substantial building such as you ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... that valley below. For at the extreme edge of the lake, outside the enclosed piece of land, I perceived one, a tiny thing, far under me, and yet ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... women came humbly to the place where Declan was and they told him—what he himself foreknew—how miserably the others had died. They themselves did penance and they bestowed on Declan a suitable site whereon he built a monastery and he got another piece of land and had the dead buried where he built the monastery. The name of that monastery is Cill-Colm-Dearg. This Colm-Dearg was a kind, holy man and a disciple of Declan. He was of East Leinster, i.e. of the Dal Meiscorb, and it is from him ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... it in that closet! 'You'll never go to the ball with her,' I said, 'if I have to keep her away.' I set my trap. To-day I hunted up Joseph Holden. 'Come by the office, as you are on your way to the party to-night,' I said. 'I want to talk to you about a piece of land. Come early; then we can go together.' When he came—just before you did—I said, 'Look here, did you know that Amy wouldn't be at the ball? She lost her clothes as she was coming to town the other day, and somebody ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... at the least some one of those painful travellers which of purpose have passed the confines of both countries, with intent only to discover, would, as it is most likely, have gone from the one to the other, if there had been any piece of land, or isthmus, to have joined them together, or else have declared some ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... rolling up and turn over, as the knife passed it. She could see that it took real skill and strength to keep the line even, and to avoid the stones. Sometimes the plough struck a hidden stone, and then the man was jerked almost off his feet. But he only laughed, and said, "Tough piece of land; be a ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... her hand would go many a broad gold ducat, and heritage of the wide old gray stone house, and many an old jewel and old brocade that were kept there in dusky sweet-smelling cabinets, and also more than one good piece of land, smiling with corn and fruit trees, outside the gates in the lower pastures to ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... the lake, which had to be lined with porcelain to retain it. The cave was then built of brick, and covered with consummate art with stalactites, as in nature. The visitor is rowed in a boat about this most curious piece of land and water. In other parts there are a multitude of surprises, in unexpected jets of water, and in beautiful peeps of scenery no larger than a picture. Attendant, 1fr.; ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... sketch of the chief, I proceed to give an equally rapid one of our dealing with his people, the Bakena, or Bakwains. A small piece of land, sufficient for a garden, was purchased when we first went to live with them, though that was scarcely necessary in a country where the idea of buying land was quite new. It was expected that a request for a suitable spot would have been made, and that we should have proceeded to occupy it as ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not to ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... now; but the shore of the island was not far away. The trio hugged it closely in encircling the wooded and hilly piece of land. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... given that the industrious poor, both single and married of this parish, who are desirous of hiring a small piece of land, are desired to apply at the Vestry Room on the Fish Hill, to have their names entered to ascertain what each ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston |
