"Plucked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too severe. His wrists cracked; he swooned, and was thought to be dead, and in his swoon he dreamed a dream which seemed to him like the dreams of the prophets of old. He saw, in a lovely meadow, a tree laden with fruit; the fruit was being plucked by birds; the flights of the birds were guided by a youth of heavenly beauty, and the tree was guarded by three men whose faces he seemed to know. What meant that dream to Gregory and his Brethren? It was a vision of the good time coming. The tree was the Church ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... of the scene fascinated man and beast. The streaming lines of people raced on, and the horse snorted and plunged into the mass. Now the crackling as of paper burning in a brisk wind could be heard. There was a shout from the crowd. The flames had gained the Peristyle—that noble fantasy plucked from another, distant life and planted here above the barbaric glow of the lake in the lustrous atmosphere of Chicago. The horseman holding his restive steeds drove in a sea of flame. Through the empty arches the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... reconciliation or treaty of peace between the Muskigon Indians of James's Bay and the Esquimaux of Hudson's Straits. The Muskigons are by no means a warlike race; on the contrary, they are naturally timid, and only plucked up courage to make war on their northern neighbours in consequence of these poor people being destitute of firearms, while themselves were supplied with guns and ammunition by the fur-traders. The Esquimaux, however, are much superior to the Muskigon Indians physically, and would have ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a fellow of a literary turn; and an immense quill, plucked from a distended albatross' wing, which, nailed against the bowsprit bitts, had long formed an ornament of the forecastle, supplied ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... I plucked a quince or not. Wilbur kept insisting that I go to the table every time they turned in an alarm, and I was sorta holding off, 'cause I didn't want to lance the poor boy for all his change on the way over, but he kept insisting that I eat ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... when the white balls with crimson spots faded away and a lot of beautiful ripe peaches took their place. With a cry of mingled surprise and delight Trot reached out and plucked a peach from the bush and began to eat it, finding it delicious. Cap'n Bill was somewhat dazed at the girl's wish being granted so quickly, so before he could pick a peach they had faded away and bananas took their place. ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... He plucked the rose which Caine had touched, held it to his lips and breathed on it. The next instant the withered leaves fell to the ground, and lay there dry and shrivelled. The stalk was brown and dry. As he released Caine's ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani's stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Following it along with my eyes to the halfway point, I saw the red roofs of the village which we had so often looked at from a distance. Our balloon was in its usual place. It looked like a yellow plum, and no larger than one; but ripe, ready to be plucked. ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Three hundred scullions, a hundred cooks, and fifty stewards set to work, under the superintendence of the famous Bouchibus, the chief of the royal kitchens. Pigs were killed, sheep cut up, capons larded, pigeons plucked, and turkeys spitted; it was a universal massacre. It is impossible to have a feast worthy of the name without the help ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... that old play David plucked my sleeve to ask what I was looking at so deedily; and when I told him he ran eagerly to the window, but he reached it just too late to see the lady who was to become his mother. What I told him of her doings, however, interested him greatly; and he intimated rather shyly that he was acquainted ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Never, you would refuse to believe me," said Lousteau, who remained standing, or walked about the room, chewing the flowers he plucked from the flower-stands full of plants that scented ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the ocean-foam, Swift skating to my Iceland home Upon the ocean-skates, fast driven By gales by Thurse's witch fire given. For from the falcon-bearing hand Harald has plucked the gold snake band My father wore—by lawless might Has taken what is mine ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... snow! the snow! Whoop! Hooray! Ho! Ho! Plunge in the deep drifts and toss it up so! Rollick and roll in the feathery fleece Plucked out of the breasts of the marvelous geese By the little old woman who lives in the sky; Have ever you seen her? ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... struck the warriors of all the nations, and he could have chosen wives from the Pawnees, the Omawhaws, and the Konzas; but he looked at the hunting grounds, and not at his village. He thought a horse was pleasanter than a Dahcotah girl. But he found a flower on the prairies, and he plucked it, and brought it into his lodge. He forgets that he is the master of a single horse. He gives them all to the stranger, for Mahtoree is not a thief; he will only keep the flower he found on the prairie. Her feet are very tender. She cannot walk to the door of her father; she will stay, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Now Saya Chone plucked out his heavy revolver, and, leaning over the edge of the howdah, began to fire swiftly into the head and body of the savage "rogue." But though the bullets cut deeply into the flesh, and the blood spouted freely, the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... dogs and cats have eaten them." When my master heard this, the light in his eyes became darkness and he lost command of his senses and his reason, so that he could not stand upon his feet, for he was as one taken with the rickets and his back was broken. Then he rent his clothes and plucked out his beard and casting his turban from his head, buffeted his face, till the blood streamed down, crying out, "Alas, my children! Alas, my wife! Alas, what a misfortune! To whom did there ever happen the like of what hath befallen me?" The other merchants, his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... all that time, cheek by jowl with Blackbeard himself, with only a thin shell of tinder wood to keep him from me, and now had thrust my hand into his coffin and plucked away his beard. So that if ever wicked men have power to show themselves after death, and still to work evil, one would guess that he would show himself now and fall upon me. Thus a sick dread got hold of me, and had I been a woman or a girl I think I should have swooned; ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... he said, halfamused, "ony gate ye're a good plucked un." And his wizened countenance looked at her almost kindly from beneath ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... things heaped together, till the house could hardly hold the vast aggregate of pots and kettles, spinning-wheels and cradles, bedsteads and beds, harrows and ploughs, chairs and gridirons, rakes and hoes, silhouettes and picture-frames, hand-made quilts of calico and pillows of home-plucked geese feathers, fishermen's nets and oars—whatever made the substance of living in an old country without minerals and manufactures, in the early part of the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... woman went to a back door of the room, and opening it, plucked a branch from a great rose-bush that ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... and his followers Upon a Sabbath morn Were walking by a wheat field They plucked ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... around it. Harborne gardeners have long been famous for growing gooseberries, the annual dinner of the Gooseberry Growers' Society having been held at the Green Man ever since 1815. But Harborne has plucked up heart latterly, and will not much longer be "out of the running." With its little area of 1,412 acres, and only a population of 6,600, it has built itself an Institute (a miniature model of the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... care of Sam's hull till then, and we'll lie together till the angel blows that there trumpet; and then we'll go aloft together, and, as soon as ever we have made our scrape to our betters, we'll both speak a good word for you and the lady, a very pretty lady she is, and a good-hearted, and the best plucked one I ever did see in any distressed craft; now don't ye cry, miss, don't ye cry, your trouble is pretty near over; he said you was not a hundred miles from land. I don't know how he knew that, he was ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... with glory, and old Duncannon patted Billy on the shoulder, and beamed, but Harricutt arose with menace in his eye and advanced on the young intruder. However, before anyone could do anything about it a strong firm hand reached out from the doorway and plucked Billy ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... oarsman, a pedestrian, a pugilist, a first-class cricketer, bicyclist, student, artist, or literary man, must abstain from self-pollution and fornication. Thousands of school boys and students lose their positions in the class, and are plucked at the time of their examination by reason of failure of memory, through lack of nerve and vital force, caused mainly by draining the physical frame of the seed which is the vigor of ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... possessor indifferent to everything else. For a man without this heavenly stamp to engage in literature was simply for him to rush upon his fate, and become a public nuisance. Literature in its very nature is precarious, and must be plucked from the brink of fate, from the mouth of the dragon. The literary man runs the risk of being destroyed in a thousand ways. He has no track laid, no instituted aids, no specified course of action. The machineries of life are not for him. He enters into no one of the departments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... crisis through which she had passed, Jacqueline resumed the life of every day, she had in her sad eyes, around which for some time past had been dark circles, an expression of anxiety such as the first contact with a knowledge of evil might have put into Eve's eyes after she had plucked the apple. Her investigations had very imperfectly enlightened her. She was as much perplexed as ever, with some false ideas besides. When she was well again, however, she continued weak and languid; she felt somehow as if, she had come ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... until his wife plucked his sleeve, and whispered something in his ear. In an instant his face became at once mysterious and demure. "I owe you an apology," he said, turning to Rand, but in a voice ostentatiously pitched high enough for Miss Euphemia to overhear: "I see I have made a mistake. A resemblance—only a mere ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... vain, and he boasted of his triumphs on the Bourse; it was he who guided Recquillart in the dealings he had with Spaniards, in which they had plucked various ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the city of roses, for I stopped to look at them. I have quite forgotten the objective point of my stroll; I recollect the roses. When we were riding out from Florence on a tram-car to see the ancient Fiesole I plucked a branch from an olive-tree from the platform of the car. On that branch were at least a dozen young olives, the first I had ever seen. I have but the haziest recollection of the old theatre and the subterranean passages where Catiline and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... other place," said she, with a giggle, and crushed him under the feeling that she envisaged him as the devil of that particular Hades, instead of as an unfortunate sinner plucked up by the heels and soused into ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... funny looking person he is," scoffed Jane McCarthy. Her companions, Hazel Holland, Margery Brown and Grace Thompson, giggled. Harriet Burrell plucked the sleeve ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... when they told the Syren Tales (All ears were open then!) And the harps were afire with plucked desire For the white ash oars again— For oars and sail, and the open sea, High prow against pure blue, The good sea spray on eye and lip, The thrumming hemp, the rise and dip, The plunge and the roll of a driven ship As the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... a share of the bread beside him; but she put out her tongue, as if to tell him that her mouth was parched with thirst. He gave her water, which she drank readily, and then ate some bread. After midnight he ventured out of the cave. All was still. He plucked an armful of grass and cut some tender twigs, which the goat accepted with signs of great joy and thankfulness. The prisoner took a great deal of comfort in having a living creature in his dungeon, and he caressed and fed her tenderly. The man ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... defence of the second hurt her ten times more, as it appeared to indicate a hardness of heart, a daring to make light of a most solemn subject, and one to which she had given much serious thought, and she hastily plucked away the arm Miss Holdup had taken, and would have retired, but she was hemmed in by a circle, and could not escape. The young lady replied to her advocate, in a fawning voice—"Ah, dear Miss Holdup! you are fond of defending any body you take a fancy for; but I am certain, if you were really ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... Was THIS the fay of whom the voice had warned him? With that, there befell him the mystery of last night. He did not remember, but it was as if he lived again, dimly, the highest hour of happiness in a life a thousand years ago; perfume and music, roses, nightingales and plucked harp-strings. Yes; something wonderful was ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... but he knew that if he died to-night his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop. He wondered, somewhat grimly, what it would do when so much that had clothed it round—pride of life, love of pleasure, desire, ambition—should be plucked away. Poor soul! Surely it would feel itself something shrunken, stripped of warmth, shiveringly bare to all the winds of heaven. The radiance of the moon usurped the sky, but behind that veil of light the invisible and multitudinous stars ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... things as I am going to tell you about could happen in our day—once upon a time there lived, in a lonely house by the side of a deep, dark forest, a lonely man, to whom the fairies had once given a magic feather, plucked from the wing of a fairy goose; and whenever he touched paper with this quill, lo, the paper was turned into gold! So he amassed great wealth; but no one loved him when he went abroad, because, though he had gold, he had no titles and he was sharp of ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... sniffed the sweet-smelling breezes. He thrust his great hands into the sunbeams. He reached down and plucked one of a bunch of white flowers that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came from them and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and strong. He knew! It couldn't ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... attain." this, my longing for his When I heard their words, company redoubled and my desire for his company I implored God to reunite redoubled and I implored me with him. Whilst I the Almighty to reunite me was standing on Arafat, with him. Whilst I was one plucked me from behind, standing on Arafat one so I turned and pulled me from behind, so behold, it was Abou Jaafer. I turned and behold, it At this sight I gave a loud was my man. At this cry and fell down in a sight I cried out with a swoon; but when I came loud cry and fell down ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... be very thoroughly dried before they are used. For this reason they should not be packed away in bags, when they are first plucked. They should be laid lightly in a basket, or something of that kind, and stirred up often. The garret is the best place to dry them; because they will there be kept free from dirt and moisture; and will be in no danger of being blown away. It is well to put ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... the tempest into dead calm, as our old and dear Corneille puts it, had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of his pillar, and would, no doubt, have remained invisible there, motionless, and mute as before, had he not been plucked by the sleeve by two young women, who, standing in the front row of the spectators, had noticed his colloquy ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... where the daffodils were plucked, I'd like to swear to that. Look, they were all pulled together by one hand. Somebody leaned over and pulled ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... shift her to better soil; "I ne'er meddle with ghosts or goblins. Why, an there be such things, should they wish me harm? O' my word, my brain is no more troubled with ghosts, black or white, than our gracious Queen's"—here I doffed my cap—"is with snails and slugs;" and here I plucked a slug from a vine-leaf and ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... Mohammed's banner ever float On Salem's ruins? Shaft her sacred dust Where Christ has shed His blood, by infidels Be ever trodden down? Shall her temple Prostrate lie, to cause the impious mock Of Mussulmen for ever? It may not be. Ere many years wane in eternity, That banner shall be plucked from its proud height— Those tow'ring minarets shall fall to earth And God again be worshipp'd thro' the land. David's fair city shall be then rebuilt; Her pristine beauty shall be far surpassed By more than mortal splendour; her temple Point high its turrets to the skies—and He, The God of Hosts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... corner of Ireland, where I never should have thought to hear her gentle name? Walking on that very Urrisbeg Mountain under whose shadow I heard Ottilia's name, Mackay, the learned author of the "Flora Patlandica," discovered the Mediterranean heath,—such a flower as I have often plucked on the sides of Vesuvius, and as Proserpine, no doubt, amused herself in gathering as she strayed in the fields of Enna. Here it is—the self-same flower, peering out at the Atlantic from Roundstone Bay; here, too, in this wild lonely ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of my heart? No one, monsieur, can convince me that love may be renewed, for I neither can nor will accept love from any one. A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over. You, who are a florist, you know whether it is ever possible to restore the broken stem, to revive the faded colors, to make the sap flow again in the tender vessels of which the whole vegetative function lies in their perfect ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... 'This is very, very kind of you, Mrs. Wilson,' said she. Those were her words. 'Mayhap it is,' says I; and my heart felt like lead. Mother made a sign to your mamma that she should not hurry me. I saw the signal, for I was as quick as she was; but I never let on I saw it. At last I plucked up a bit of courage, and I said, 'Let me see it.' So mother took you from the girl that held you all wrapped up, and mother put you on my knees; and I took a good look at you. You had the sweetest little face that ever came into the world, but all peaked and pining for ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... each other, and must be carefully weeded and supplied with water, so that the soil is always covered two or three inches. In about three years the plants begin to produce, and ever afterwards, in the month Bhadra, give an annual crop. The heads, which spring up among the leaves, are plucked, and, at the same time, old withered stems and leaves and weeds are carefully removed. The capsules are then separated, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... tell what natural laws of ours you would not be subject to, but this is one of them." A gesture of irritation seemed to come from him. "Some laws hold good in all the universes we have thus far investigated. The orange-ray, for instance, picked you up as it would have plucked one of us from the surface of Kygpton. But on Xlarbti, which is composed entirely of Sthalreh, your atomic nature and physical constitution are so different from ours that they were unaffected by the energy that ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... which is glued a vaulted back, forming a body having a triangular base, enabling it to stand upright. To the body is added a fretted neck strung with two, three or four strings, generally so tuned as to produce a minor chord when sounded together. The strings are generally plucked with the fingers, but the peasants obtain charming "glissando" effects by sweeping the strings lightly one after the other with the fingers or side of the hand. The Balalaika is common to the Slav races, who use it to accompany their folk-songs and dances. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe 'that milked her; but she would, while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the drunken sleepy grooms. And with the velour of her tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... day set for the funeral Sophy washed her face until it shone, combed and brushed her hair with painful conscientiousness, put on her best frock, plucked her yellow roses, and, tying them with the treasured ribbon her teacher had given her, set ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... humbled himself; he crawled in the dust; he shut the doors and windows; and excluded every ray of light from his soul; and he delayed not a day to repair the walls of his own prison; and from the garden of the human heart they plucked and trampled into the bloody dust the flowers and blossoms; they denounced man as totally depraved; they made reason blasphemy; they made pity a crime; nothing so delighted them as painting the torments ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... moulds; for they were half-jars, each containing a whole shamble of flesh; and entire sheep were sunk and swallowed up in them, as commodiously as if they were only so many pigeons. The hares ready cased, and the fowls ready plucked, that hung about upon the branches, in order to be buried in the caldrons, were without number. Infinite was the wild fowl and venison hanging about the trees, that the air might cool them. Sancho counted above threescore skins, each of above twenty-four ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Veitch states that the Japanese ladies "all objected to our whiskers, considering them very ugly, and told us to cut them off, and be like Japanese men." The New Zealanders have short, curled beards; yet they formerly plucked out the hairs on the face. They had a saying that "there is no woman for a hairy man;" but it would appear that the fashion has changed in New Zealand, perhaps owing to the presence of Europeans, and I am assured that beards are now admired by the Maories. (64. On the Siamese, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... reposing on a divan, low, with soft cushions on it, and close to the portico, he looked upon the green leaves and listened to the trickle of the fountain, while Fatima brought him a glass of delicious lemonade, squeezed from the fresh-plucked fruit; and the fatigues of the journey were forgotten, and he fell into a long and refreshing sleep. His curiosity, however, had not been one whit aroused; he took everything as a matter of course. Perhaps he was a ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that of his new shipmates. Instead of making an unexpected fortune he had lost a berth, and he was besides disgusted with the rations, and really appalled at the condition of the schooner. A stateroom door had stuck the first day at sea, and Mac (as they called him) laid his strength to it and plucked it from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grandmother," shot back the insolent retort, whereat the lordly house detective plucked the young man ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... after a disordered walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glenalmond's dining-room, where he sat with a book upon his knee, beside three frugal coals of fire. In his robes upon the bench, Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness: plucked of these, it was a may-pole of a man that rose unsteadily from his chair to give his visitor welcome. Archie had suffered much in the last days, he had suffered again that evening; his face was white and drawn, his eyes wild and dark. But Lord Glenalmond greeted him without the least mark of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the North shall be made to flee, And his feather be plucked for his pride, That he shall almost curse the day that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet. On its white leaves there hung three drops of clear dew. And the dwarf shook them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand. "Cast these into the river," he said, "and descend on the other side of the mountains into ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... old widow." A trembling hand plucked at his sleeve, and he swung to face a woman in worse rags than the others, her eyes dull and unfocused, her lips mouthing the words only by habit. "Help the ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... of swooning, but recovered to a deep sense of disgust and discouragement; and settled to go back to Holland at peep of day. This resolution formed, he plucked up a little heart; and being faint with hunger, asked one of the men of garlic whether this was not an ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... plucked, upstarted sheer As phantom from the pane thereby A corpse-like countenance, with eye That iced me by its baleful peer - Silent, as from a ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... looked the live-long day In dull despair at Julie Claire, as white like death she lay. And sometimes he would seem to pray and sometimes seem to curse, And bent above, with eyes of love, yet ever she grew worse. And as we plunged and leapt and lunged, her face was plucked with pain, And I could feel his nerves of steel a-quiver at the strain. And in the night he gripped me tight as I lay fast asleep: "The river's kicking like a steer . . . run out the forward sweep! That's Hell-gate Canyon right ahead; I know of old its roar, And . . . I'll be damned! THE ICE ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... She plucked the shawl out of that frozen clutch. The dead are dead. Why should the living freeze? She touched the cold flesh that she feared to touch Kneeling ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... was to conquer a passion, but of one who, by that same self-constituted code, now burns to atone for a disappointed crime. There is no one to help her against him or against herself. Jane had no friends to stand by her at the altar, and she has none to support her now she is plucked away from it. There is no one to be offended or disgraced at her following him to the sunny land of Italy, as he proposes, till the maniac should die. There is no duty to any one but to herself, and this feeble reed quivers ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... he couldn't get his left eye to look at God. It would look at earth and mammon and that chit of a girl, Miss Popularity. He ought to have done as God told him, and plucked it out. But he said that was too much to ask of any man, and besides he wanted the best of both worlds. He had a hearty desire to die the death of the righteous, but he wasn't willing to pay the price of a righteous life. He hadn't the pluck to curse God's people, so he made ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... whispered. "No, 'tain't. But you see, child, we've been going through a pretty bad time—worse nor I should ever have let you know of, my dear. Ellen's just feeling it now—that's what it is. She didn't say nothing, for Ellen's a good plucked one, but it's told on her—it's ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... some day to meet her there, And as in days of yore We plucked the lilies, pure and fair, Up there we'll ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... only because they were not imitations but the very same blossoms, which had grown old. And as each new character is merely a metamorphosis from something older, in these little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time; but beyond all else the rosy, moony, tender glow which lit up the blossoms among the frail forest of stems from which they hung like little golden roses—marking, as the radiance upon an old wall still marks the place of a vanished fresco, the difference between ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and, wandering again through the garden-paths, she brushed the dew with her trailing festal garments, and plucked the great blue convolvuli to crown her forehead. Soon, on a plot of Roman violets, screened by tall trees and trellises, we breakfasted. One might have said that the cloth was laid above giant mushroom-stems, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... her eyes with a wet little wad of linen. Bruce plucked a clean handkerchief from his pocket and tucked it ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... the fine white handkerchief that on first waking up he had plucked from his face. And he knew by its soft thin feeling and its delicate scent of violets, Bee's favorite perfume, that it was her handkerchief, and she had spread it as a veil over his exposed and feverish, face. That little wisp of cambric was redolent of ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a grain of corn from his pocket, placed it between his teeth, and with a grin on his face got down on his knees and held his mouth near the bars of Sam's cage. The rooster plucked out the grain of corn, and Bob, watching the performance, began to prance about in jealous rage. "Never you mind, Bob," said the old man, getting up and dusting his knees. "I know your tricks. Held one out to ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... My son Rustem is wounded almost unto death, and I am so helpless that I can do him no good." He then brought forward Rakush, pierced by numerous arrows; upon which the wonderful Bird said to him, "Be under no alarm on that account, for I will soon cure him;" and she immediately plucked out the rankling weapons with her beak, and the wounds, on passing a feather over them, were ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... seeing no wood there but a stick here and a stick there, about the bigness of a man's arm, growing in the sand, it caused me to marvel how so many camels should be loaded in that place. The wood was juniper; we needed no axe nor edged tool to cut it, but plucked it up by strength of hands, roots and all, which a man might easily do, and so gathered together a little at one place, and so at another, and laded our camels, and came home about seven of the clock that night following: because I fell ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... had bare spots here and there, and patches of creamy—fur? Or was it hair which hung in strips, as if the creatures had been partially plucked in a careless fashion? The necks were long and moved about in a serpentine motion, as though their spines were as limber as reptiles'. On the end of those long and twisting necks were heads which also appeared ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... curious lightness of a man spring-footed. His gaze held the other's shifting eyes as he plucked the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... naterally replied, and amost xpected he was a going to arsk me, "who gave me that name," but he didn't. So he larfed, and he said, "But there are so many of that name about, that you must tell me somethink more." So I plucked up my curridge, and I says, boldly, "Please, Gennelmen, I am ROBERT the City Waiter!" Well, I thinks as I never seed such a change as cum over them too highly respectabel City Gents! They larfed quite out loud, and they both got up and shook hands with me, and then they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... slowly and with difficulty over to the darkest part of the deep wood, for the light hurt his eyes dreadfully and he could hardly see. And as he flew the little birds flew around him in a great cloud and plucked out his feathers and tormented him for he could not ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... pleasant in the forest. She watched the flash of a bird, as blue as the sky, from limb to limb; she listened to the elfin waterfall; she drew herself with hand and arm across the leaves to the edge of the pale brown ring, plucked a honeysuckle bough and brought it back to the silver column of the beech; and lastly, glancing up from the rosy sprig within her hand, she saw a man coming toward her, down the path that she had thought hidden, holding his arm before him for shield ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... her name! A bed of stones is soft enough for me If she but rock to sleep,—a crust to-day, To-morrow none, and at her board I'm fed. But when I look on you, my traitor blood Flies from her service. Oh, to see these hands That plucked no beauty ruder than the rose, So meanly laboring in the basest needs! Your gentle body resting on cold earth, Glad of a blanket 'tween you and the sod, While in your bed the foreign robber sleeps! This shakes my loyalty till I could hate The fair, ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped, whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets, execrations ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the savages construed this act of ours into an admission that we did not consider ourselves invulnerable, and plucked up courage accordingly, for they began again to advance towards us, though with hesitation. I now saw that we should be compelled to fight for our lives, and deeply regretted my folly in advising Peterkin to fire over their heads; ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Debra Tabor to Checheo, such was the daily routine of the reduced host of Theodore,—harnessed to waggons, in place of the horses and mules now so scarce in the camp; constantly on the alert, as the country was all up in arms against them; with no supplies available, only the unripe barley plucked by the wayside; no peace by day nor rest at night: in a word, a march unequalled in the annals ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... spread, the walls were hung, with silken fabrics fine, And arabesque and lotus-flower bore each the broidered sign Of jewels plucked from land and sea, and red ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... were spoken as with the vehemence of prophecy, the miserable woman made no answer, but plucked her hand sharply from her sister's earnest pressure, and quitted the room with a flash of anger. My grandfather then conveyed the mournful Elspa back to the house of Lucky Kilfauns, and returned ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... suppose you will think so. There is a brand I want plucked from the burning—a Royal Commission saved from ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... momentary hesitation under the walls of Mantua had left on his character. Finally, Murat so powerfully contributed to the success of the day at Aboukir that Bonaparte, glad to be able to carry another laurel plucked in Egypt to France, forgot the fault which had made so unfavourable an impression, and was inclined to efface from his memory other things that he had heard to the disadvantage of Murat; for I have good reasons for believing, though ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... desires begin to reinforce the clamors of the children, they will start out at the eleventh hour to find an errand or an odd bit of work. There may be a single squash on the roof vine waiting to be plucked and to yield its few centavos, or they can go out to the beach and dig a ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the pure, the virtuous, the heroine of unstained faith, unblemished purity, what can you have to fear from the world or its proudest minions? It is E. whose life is once more in your hands—it is E. whom you are to save from being plucked of her borrowed plumes, discovered, branded, and trodden down, first by him, perhaps, who has raised her to this dizzy pinnacle!—The enclosure will reach you twice a-year—do not refuse it—it is out of my own allowance, and may be twice as much when you want it. With you it ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was nothing happy before him in the whole prospect of his life. Of course he loved Mary. He loved her very dearly. He loved her so dearly, that to have her taken from him would be to have his heart plucked asunder. So he swore to himself;—and yet he was in doubt whether it would not be better that his heart should be plucked asunder, than that she should be made to live in accordance with those distasteful pictures which his uncle had drawn ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to temper it—for it is this that gives strength to the iron—and it makes a great hiss as he does so, even thus did the Cyclops' eye hiss round the beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We ran away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore from his eye, and hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain, shouting as he did so to the other Cyclopes who lived on the bleak headlands near him; so they gathered from all quarters round his cave when they heard him ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... turn my steps towards the suburbs, I find that change, too, has been there. I miss the woods and fields where once, with the gay companions of early years, I spent many a summer hour. Beautiful dwellings have sprung up, it seems to me as if by magic, where but yesterday I plucked fruit from overladen branches, or flung myself to rest among the tall grass or ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... rased its walls to the ground, then, no doubt, Israel, Judah, the Philistines, Edom, and Ammon, seeing it fully occupied in its own defence, might have forgotten the ruthless severity of Hazael, and have plucked up sufficient courage to struggle against the Damascene yoke; as it was, Bamman-nirari did not return, and the princes who had, perhaps, for the moment, regarded him as a possible deliverer, did not venture on any concerted action. Joash, King of Judah, and Jehoahaz, King of Israel, continued ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rugged grew the whole land. Once, stopping hard by a hamlet, I had sat down to munch such food as I carried, and was sharing my meal with a little brown herd-boy, who told me that he was dinnerless. A few sheep and lean kine plucked at such scant grasses as grew among rocks, and herbs useless but sweet-scented, when suddenly a horn was blown from the tower of the little church. The first note of that blast had not died away, when ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... in the crowd that blinked appreciation. Quizzical wrinkles deepened in his broad face. He plucked a cigar from his waistcoat-pocket and held it ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... all others with whom I would like to worship to-day," I thought; "and I hope that that rotund old lady, whose face beams under the shadow of her deep bonnet like a harvest moon through a fleecy cloud, will feel moved to speak." I plucked a few buds from the sweet-briar bush, fastened them in my button-hole, and promptly followed the old lady into the meeting-house. Having found a vacant pew I sat down, and looked around with serene content. But I soon observed that something was amiss, for the men folk looked at ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... such a brilliant, and on my finger; and from Amelia! Death itself should not have plucked it hence. It is not the costliness of the diamond, not the cunning of the pattern—it is love which constitutes its value. Is it not so, Amelia? Dearest child, you are weeping. Woe be to him who causes such precious drops to flow from those heavenly eyes; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Meanwhile Will plucked Hamnet now blubbering on his stool, by the doublet. But Hamnet, turned sullen, shook him off. Perhaps he did not know that Will and Judith had not laughed. But since Hamnet saw fit to shake him off, Will was glad that just then, with a rush of cold air ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... Then she plucked a feather from her wing and dipped it in the dewey elixir, which was then applied to the shriveled scalp, and lo! it became pliable and fresh as if just removed. Now it would fit, but there must be a healing power to cause the flesh to unite, and ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... he replied with a smile, "that you are sprinkled with. And yet in my sleep I thought my own throat was being cut, and felt some pain in my neck, and fancied that my very heart was being plucked out. Even now I am quite faint; my knees tremble; I stagger as I go, and feel in want of some ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thick, and so tough that a sharp knife could scarce cut it, in which we found the head and bones of a hippopotamus, the hairy lips of which were still sound and not putrified, and the jaw was also firm, out of which we plucked a great many teeth, two of them eight inches long and as big as a man's thumb, small at one end, and a little crooked, the rest not above half so long. The maw was full of jelly, which stank extremely. However, ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... boughs are burnished, as if every twig had been touched by the hand of an enchanter, whilst there, under his shade, bends a mountain ash, smeared with the crimsoned berries of the preceding summer, now ice-coated bon-bons eagerly plucked by troops of roseate grosbeaks resting on the whitened branches. How lovely ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... married he will give her "a feather bed and a cow," and feel that her claim upon him has been handsomely met. The gift of a feather bed is rather interesting, too, when you consider that it is the daughter who has raised the geese, plucked them, and made the bed-tick. But "father" gives it to her just the same. The son, for a corresponding term of service, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... Orthon came again, and plucked away the pillow, the Knight asked him from whence he came? 'From Prague, in Bohemia,' answered Orthon. 'How far is it?'—'Sixty days' journey.' 'Hast thou returned thence in so short a time?'—'I travel as fast as the ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mithradatic war—he could never expect to obtain from the voluntary bestowal of the senate: in their own well-understood interest the oligarchy could not permit him to add to his Africa and European trophies those of a third continent; the laurels which were to be plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved at all events for the pure aristocracy. But if the celebrated general did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there remained— for neither was the time ripe, nor was the temperament of Pompeius at all fitted, for a purely personal ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bureaucrats—nay, that he had even, in a very hard season, written court poetry for the Morning Post; but all these little peccadilloes he carefully veiled in that kindly mist which hung over his youthful years. He had been a medical student, and got plucked, his foes declared, in his examination. He had set up a savings-bank, which broke. He had come over from Ireland, to agitate for "repale" and "rint," and, like a wise man as he was, had never gone back ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... eyes were dry and hard. Knowing the servants, he undertook to tell them what had happened to their master. Their noisy grief throughout the house brought a dreary sense of disorder. Sextus Pompeius arrived and characteristically out of the chaos of grief plucked the need of practical preparation for the long journey. He brought out maps and went over each stage of the way. Only the sea journey from Brindisi to Corinth would be familiar to Ovid, but Pompeius had ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... and was about to leave when Boyd reached forth suddenly and plucked the fellow's sheath-knife from its scabbard. With a startled cry, Constantine whirled, his face convulsed, his nostrils dilated like those of a frightened horse; but Emerson merely fingered the weapon ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... precious things—life and time and money and "smartness" and the early freshness of purpose; and he had addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy. He was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was his dogged resolution and his lively perception of ends and means. Exertion and action were as natural to him as respiration; a more completely healthy mortal had never ...
— The American • Henry James
... (tusks) through the body, and then tear it in pieces and throw it limb from limb;" but a Kandyan chief, who was witness to such scenes, has assured me that the elephant never once applied its tusks, but, placing its foot on the prostrate victim, plucked off his limbs in succession by a sudden movement of the trunk. If the tusks were designed to be employed offensively, some alertness would naturally be exhibited in using them; but in numerous instances where sportsmen have fallen into ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... flowers in baby's garden, Flat on the ground they lie, Two hyacinths, a withered pair, Plucked from the pile of rubbish, where They had ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... Some of them, in early life, drilled in the German army. Some of them were accustomed at Lyons or Marseilles or Paris to see on the street Victor Hugo and Gambetta. Some chased the chamois among the Alpine precipices. Some plucked the ripe clusters from Italian vineyard. Some lifted their faces under the midnight sun of Norway. It is no dishonor to our land that they remember the place of their nativity. Miscreants would they be if, while they have some ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... they laid him in the bottom of the canoe,—so well shaken that some last shreds of consciousness were aroused. He opened his eyes and whispered hoarsely, "Jacob Welse . . . despatches . . . from the Outside." He plucked feebly at his open shirt, and across his emaciated chest they saw the leather strap, to which, doubtless, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the crags were shining above us like gnarled moons, and almost lit the gloom. Louder and louder came the Irillion's song, and the sound of her dancing down from the fields of snow. And soon we saw her white and full of mists, and wreathed with rainbows delicate and small that she had plucked up near the mountain's summit from some celestial garden of the Sun. Then she went away seawards with the huge grey Yann and the ravine widened, and opened upon the world, and our rocking ship came through to ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than to remain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if little red dancing shoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tight heartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... and innocent; but as I bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the squirrel knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen much of the cruelty of lads, and above all of peasants; but what I now beheld struck me into a passion of anger. I thrust the fellow aside, plucked the poor brute out of his hands, and with swift mercy killed it. Then I turned upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of my indignation, calling him names at which he seemed to wither; and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nor geese should be plucked until after the laying season is over, which will be in July. Just before the moult, when the feathers begin to loosen, they may be plucked again. Those most considerate of their birds make only this latter plucking, which does not ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Oriental carpet to the feet, while scattered about were hundreds of magnificent trees, mostly oak and poplar. Dotting the sward were numerous little white balls on long stems,—dandelions gone to seed. These Salome plucked constantly, and, filling her cheeks with wind, would blow like Boreas, until her face was purple. When I inquired the purpose of this queer performance, I was shyly informed that it was to tell if her sweetheart loved her. If she blew every one of the pappus ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... delusion by the fidelity of his wife. Many a good man has been ruined because his wife listened to the siren voice of the tempter, and desired to explore and explain this mystery. The forbidden fruit ever grows upon the tree beside her. Those who would be wiser than that which is written, have plucked and eaten it, and have given to others that which is so destructive. Witchcraft is a womanly profession. The heathen divinities were nearly all ministered unto by woman, and mystery was the influencing cause. We know the result in the case of Eve. It led her away from God. It caused her to listen ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... gentleman, "how charming and delightful is this green shade! I am much obliged to you for having that dry and ugly stump plucked up, which I found so much fault with when we were here last, and for putting in its place this beautiful plant; I suppose you did it in order to give me an agreeable surprise. How delightful and tempting the fruit looks! What fine grapes! ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... to him that plucked him out, and said, Sir, wherefore, since over this place is the way from the City of Destruction to yonder gate, is it that this plat is not mended, that poor travellers might go thither with more security? And he said unto me, This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... isn't the worst of the believer's danger. Would he but keep his legs and arms together, and spare his own eyes and limbs; he doth by that very mercy to himself damn his eyes and limbs—and hath Christ's assurance that it would have been profitable for him rather to have plucked out his eyes, and chopt off his limbs, and so to have wriggled and groped his way through the 'Straight gate and the narrow way that leadeth unto life,' than having two eyes and two arms, or two legs, to be cast into Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their 'worm dieth ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... indicating a lack of tender white meat. The skin should be a clear color (yellow being preferred in the American market) and free from blotches and pin feathers; if it looks tight and drawn, the bird has probably been scalded before being plucked. The flesh should be neither flabby nor stiff, but should give evenly and gently when pressed by ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... cockatoo," assented Mr. Lehmann, referring to the story of the unhappy bird which was left for a short while alone with a monkey, and which, when the owner returned to the room and found his bird clean plucked of its feathers by the monkey—all but a single plume in the tail—looked up dejectedly, and croaked in tones of almost voiceless horror, "I've been having a doose of a time!" The remarks were caught at by Mr. Burnand as a happy thought, and the new idea was tossed like a ball from ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... yet awakened) Adam saw that her lips were red and her arm white and rounded and he whistled a soft, low whistle with a sort of "O-won't-you-stop-a-moment?" cadence in the music, and Eve looked up; and I think at that moment he plucked a flower and offered it to her; and of course she did not understand it all, but Nature, not intelligence, asserted her power, and she reached out her hand and took the rose—and then for the first time in the world a woman blushed and smiled; and I suspect it was at that very moment that ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... commenced; the "rain-makers," who pretend to have control over the clouds, invoked the storms and the "stone-showers," as the blacks call hail, to their aid. To compel them to do so, they plucked leaves of all the different trees that grow in that country, and boiled them over a slow fire, while, at the same time, a sheep was killed by thrusting a long needle into its heart. But, in spite of all their ceremonies, the sky remained clear and beautiful, and they ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... been abominably frightened; I was shocked besides: my delicacy was in arms, like a lady to whom violence should have been offered by a similar monster. I plucked myself from his horrid contact, I snatched the pistol—even discharged, it was a formidable weapon—and menaced him with the butt. 'Spare ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in all his playing. Now he ran to the front and plucked out his spear, a winner, then doubled and ran back beside the pathway to mingle with the central body of travelers, having in mind only to keep in the heart and forefront of as many contests as possible. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the whole field of daisies at one fell sweep, when we were once allowed to touch their upturned faces. A contract was then made on the spot: we were permitted to pluck the daisies on condition that we plucked but one every day. The field was not large, and long before the blasts of autumn had hushed the voices of the flowers, not a single daisy remained. Advancing spring threw lavish handfuls once more on the grass, and on these we sported anew with ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the Commonwealth, while the interior of the sacred fabric underwent every sort of desecration and mutilation,—while stones were torn from the pavement, and monumental brasses from tombs,—while carved stalls were burnt, and statues plucked from their niches,—a similar fate attended the portico. Shops were built beneath it, and the sculptures ornamenting its majestic ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said Fred, sulkily, taking up his hat and whip. His complexion showed patches of pale pink and dead white. Like many a plucked idle young gentleman, he was thoroughly in love, and with a plain girl, who had no money! But having Mr. Featherstone's land in the background, and a persuasion that, let Mary say what she would, she really did care for him, Fred was not ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... disposition of the Petrick family that the satisfaction which ultimately settled in Timothy's breast found nourishment. The Petricks had adored the nobility, and plucked them at the same time. That excellent man Izaak Walton's feelings about fish were much akin to those of old Timothy Petrick, and of his descendants in a lesser degree, concerning the landed aristocracy. To torture and to ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn at the first view of the Holy City) on the capture of that city. Murder was mercy, rape tenderness, simple plunder the mere assertion of the conqueror's right. Children were seized by their legs, some of them plucked from their mother's breasts, and dashed against the walls, or whirled from the battlements. Others were obliged to leap from the walls; some tortured, roasted by slow fires. They ripped up prisoners to see if they had swallowed gold. Of 70,000 Saracens there were not left enough to bury the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... of Babylon,' by Ebenezer the fool-boy, but my poesie have you not. Gott in Himmel!" He tore the sheet frantically across and rushed from the shop. In five minutes he reappeared. Raphael was absorbed in reading the last proof. Pinchas plucked ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... but the little man was not to be beaten, and he said: "I should like to see some of those peaches of yours on the trees. You haven't plucked them ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... self-indulgent, and it certainly showed that he was without nervousness. He invariably roused himself, or his professor roused him, a half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as it were, by a mathematical calculation he had always done just enough to prevent him being plucked. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... saw a most feminine creature in the Grey One, naturally defenceless in her life against the world; a woman so preyed upon by moods that many a time she gladly would have turned devil, but was helpless to know how to begin; again and again plucked to the quick by the world. She had put on foreign scepticisms, and pitifully attempted to harden herself; but the hardening, try as she would, could not be spread evenly. It didn't protect her, as Kate Wilkes' did, only made her the more misunderstood. She did not have less talent ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... in her blue eyes and sorrow in her grimy little face. 'Grandad!' she called out once more, and plucked at the pillow. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... plucked the ivy green, Forever fresh, forever fair. Inconstancy with flippant mien The fading primrose ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... oh Muse! was the rage of Peter Stuyvesant, when from afar he saw his army giving way! In the transports of his wrath he sent forth a roar, enough to shake the very hills. The men of the Manhattoes plucked up new courage at the sound, or, rather, they rallied at the voice of their leader, of whom they stood more in awe than of all the Swedes in Christendom. Without waiting for their aid, the daring Peter dashed, sword in hand, into the thickest of the foe. Then might ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with dollars enough to pay for the food he eats, without seeing him lose his sense of proportion. Twenty-five dollars he understands and can spend more prudently than you, perhaps. Twenty-five thousand he simply cannot gauge. It seems exhaustless. It is as if you plucked from the night all the stars you can see, knowing that the Milky Way is still there and unnumbered other stars invisible, even ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... of a still-born male child; one old black-letter book recommended the heart of a yellow hen; another ordered the life-warm entrails of a black fighting-cock; a fourth prescription commanded the admixture of hairs from a dead man's beard! These ingredients mixed with herbs plucked in churchyards at midnight, or spices brought directly from the East, and with seven times distilled water, and suchlike, made a life elixir, or an infallible love potion, or again a cure for this or that disease. Among the many absurdities of ignorance ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... hand, in evil hour, Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate! Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, That ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... found no change to record in the body. In thought the Schools, like the Church, raised ignorance to a faith and degraded dogma to heresy. Evolution survived like the trilobites without evolving, and yet the evolutionists held the whole field, and had even plucked up courage to rebel against the Cossack ukase of Lord Kelvin forbidding them to ask more than twenty million years for their experiments. No doubt the geologists had always submitted sadly to this last ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... James said. "Look how Johnstone would lose his importance without his tails, he would look like a plucked jay." ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... and feelings which the food we partake of provokes, are not remarked in common life, but they, nevertheless, have their significance. A man who daily sees cows and calves slaughtered, or who kills them himself, hogs "stuck," hens "plucked," etc., cannot possibly retain any true feeling for the sufferings of his own species....Doubtless, the majority of flesh-eaters do not reflect upon the manner in which this food comes to them, but this thoughtlessness, far from being a virtue, is the parent ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... universally popular, and is found in almost every vegetable garden. It is also very productive; succeeds well, whether grown in open culture or under glass; and, if plucked while young and small, makes an ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... A hand plucked at his boot. "For the Lord's sake, governor, come down from there, or you'll be travelling on ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... no business putting a machine out here to bother people like this," Alan said hotly. He took a few more steps and the robot plucked at his sleeve. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... strayed beyond its skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops. We obtained one of these handsome birds, which lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and broiled it here with some other game, to be carried along for our supper; for, beside the provisions which we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... I may tell you that our landlady is NOT a nice woman. In fact, she is a regular beldame. You have seen her once, so what do you think of her? She is as lanky as a plucked chicken in consumption, and, with Phaldoni (her servant), constitutes the entire staff of the establishment. Whether or not Phaldoni has any other name I do not know, but at least he answers to this one, and every one calls him by it. A red-haired, swine-jowled, snub-nosed, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... amongst the tangled ropes like an energetic porpoise. Favoured by an ominous and untrustworthy lull, the work was done without any one being lost either off the deck or from the yard. For the moment the gale seemed to take off, and the ship, as if grateful for our efforts, plucked up heart and made ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad |
