"Reaper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the whole barnyard answered. The guineas were clucking, the turkey gobbler strutting, the hens calling, the chickens cheeping, the light streamed down straight overhead and the bees began to hum. The air stirred strongly, and away in an unseen field a reaper clacked and rattled through ripening wheat while the driver whistled. An uneasy mare whickered to her colt, the colt answered, and the light began to decline. Miles away a rooster crowed for twilight, and dusk was coming down. Then a catbird and a brown thrush ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... buildings on the platform and the sleepy village beyond. From the blue overhead came the thin, sweet notes of a lark, and as we listened in the stillness we heard a faint whispering "swish" like the sound of a very distant reaper. It was the wind flowing across miles of reeds and grass and heather from the distant Atlantic. But it was not until half an hour later, when we breasted the crest of the great hog-back that stretched before ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... soil a mulch, arid tracts were rendered to a great extent independent of both rainfall and irrigation. Improved machinery made possible the farming of vast areas with few hands. The gig horse hoe rendered weeding work almost a pleasure. A good reaper with binder attachment, changing horses once, harvested twenty acres a day. The best threshers bagged from 1,000 to 2,500 bushels daily. One farmer sowed and reaped 200 acres of wheat one season without hiring ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... are fickle, That love is sorrow, that life is care, And the reaper Death, with his shining sickle, Gathers whatever ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is much love lost between them. He hath never forgotten the day when they pelted the Queen with rotten eggs, and sang their ribald songs; nor they the day he rode them down at Lewes like corn before the reaper." ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Christ. One element in that character is faithful work for Jesus. Faithful work indeed is not necessarily successful work, and many who are welcomed by Jesus, the judge, will have the memory of many disappointments and few harvested grains. It was not a reaper, 'bringing his sheaves with him,' who stayed himself against the experience of failure, by the assurance, 'Though Israel be not gathered yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord.' If our want of success, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I did, I thrust out my stick and touched it, shrinking back as I did so. What I touched, plain instantly to my sight, was a piece of wood and iron,—some portion of a mowing-machine or reaper, which had been, apparently, repainted and hung up across the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is to the home and the factory, that is the reaper to the farm. After many years of experiment Cyrus McCormick invented a practical reaper and (1840) sought to put it on the market, but several more years passed before success was assured. To-day, greatly improved and perfected, it is in use the world over, and has made possible the great grain ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... fruitful; but here—Omnia sponte sua reddit justissima tellus. I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile that, without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a summer, and in both oppressed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only counterfeit; it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real; other greatness burdens a nation with its weight, this supports it ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Henry had been along this river before, and at this crisis in the lives of his comrade and himself he remembered. Dense woods lined both banks of the stream, which was narrow here for miles, and a year or two before a hurricane had cut down the trees as a reaper mows the wheat. The surface of the water was covered with fallen trunks and boughs, and for a half mile at least they had become matted together like a great raft, out of which grass and weeds already were growing. But Paul did not know it, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that in the day of restoration "the ploughman would overtake the reaper." War's grim reaper is quitting the field to-day. The ploughman has overtaken him. May he remember the law of the "fallow" and not be in ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... owned by their holder. We carry out of his house whatever suits us; we pay him for this with worthless paper; we frequently do not pay him at all. For greater convenience, we seize objects directly and wherever we find them, grain in the farmer's barn, hay in the reaper's shed, cattle in the fold, wine in the vats, hides at the butcher's, leather in the tanneries, soap, tallow, sugar, brandy, cloths, linens and the rest, in stores, depots and ware-houses. We stop ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of oars. Other inventors asked for patents on a machine for raising water to run a waterwheel, on one for making nails, for producing power by using a weight, for curing the bite of a mad dog, for counting the revolutions of a wheel, for a reaper and thresher, and for a lightning-rod on an umbrella. In the second session Congress passed an act making the members of the Cabinet, except the busy Secretary of the Treasury, a board to hear petitions and to grant sole rights ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... intintions to presarve peace ar-re honest, but I don't like to see ye pullin' off ye'er coat an' here goes f'r throuble while ye have ye'er arms in th' sleeves,' he says. 'F'r,' he says, 'ye have put ye'er hand in th' reaper an' it cannot turn back,' ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... much pleasanter payment than groans, murmurs, and scoldings; and the brother and sister sometimes grew quite cheerful and merry together, as Alfred lay raised up to look over the hedge into the harvest-field across the meadow, where the reaper and his wife might be seen gathering the brown ears round, and cutting them with the sickle, and others going after to bind them into the glorious wheat sheaves that leant against each other in heaps of blessed promise ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were trod by the restless feet of adventure and the people of every nation—out of this strange mingling of facts and fancies came the great Republic. Every fact has pushed a superstition from the brain and a ghost from the cloud. Every mechanical art is an educator; every loom, every reaper, every mower, every steamboat, every locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph is a missionary of science and an apostle of progress; every mill, every furnace with its wheels and levers, in which something is made ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... reason Judge by the eye of reason, and not from common report Judgment of duty principally lies in the will Judgment of great things is many times formed from lesser thing Justice als takes cognisance of those who glean after the reaper Killing is good to frustrate an offence to come, not to revenge Knock you down with the authority of their experience Knot is not so sure that a man may not half suspect it will slip Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment Knowledge is not so absolutely ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... us all took and went along to The Reaper, an' that were shut, an' The Dovedale Arms (which is an oncomfortably superior sort of a 'ouse, dealin' in sperrits) was down to ginger-wine, an' The Crown and The Corner Cupboard an' The Ploughman's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... wants the reaper's hand, Banish every fear, plenty fills the land. Joyful raise songs of praise, Goodness, goodness, crowns our days. Yet again swell the strain, He who feeds the birds that fly, ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... verdure smiles around, And this rich virgin soil Gives stores of wealth in quick return For hours of careless toil; But oh! the reaper's joyous song Ne'er mounts to Heaven's dome, For unknown is the mirth and joy Of the merry ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... she sadder day by day, Till the Reaper came that way; Then she raised her eyes and smiled, Died, and left ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the greatest sockdolager since Goebbels explained Stalingrad. Cam's feverish brain had figured out a host of effects to catalyze the audience reaction. But in the last analysis, triumph or disaster would hinge on the oral effort of the Grim Reaper, as some of the minions at MAB had come ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... be so sanguine, my friend," returned the explorer in a kindly tone. "I fear I shall be only the reaper, who cuts the weeds and stubble, and prepares the field for the sower. I have said that I am an explorer. But my field is not limited to this material world. I am an explorer of men's thoughts as well. I am in search of a religion. I manifest ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ramifications are endless. It is not limited to a particular region like agriculture, or to towns and cities like manufacturing; it is not stopped by tariff walls or ocean boundaries. An acre of wheat is cut by the reaper, threshed, and carted to the elevator by wagon or motor truck. The railroad-car is hauled alongside, and with other bushels of its kind the grain is transported to a giant flour-mill, where it is ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... is done in the old style, as in my own native place, before the days of machinery. But soon we will see the mower and reaper finding their way into the very furthest settlements—and if ever there was a country laid out for the use of machinery ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... Knew he as yet of grief than that one bird's, Which, being healed, went joyous to its kind. But on another day the King said, "Come, Sweet son! and see the pleasaunce of the spring, And how the fruitful earth is wooed to yield Its riches to the reaper; how my realm— Which shall be thine when the pile flames for me— Feeds all its mouths and keeps the King's chest filled. Fair is the season with new leaves, bright blooms, Green grass, and cries of plow-time." So they rode Into a land of wells and gardens, where, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was ideal. To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless reaper,—a sordid and miserable taint was on her life, and she shuddered with mingled fear and grief as she realised that she had not even the simple privilege of ordinary baptism. She was a nameless waif, dependent on ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... have sown the seed again. Now gather and pray the prayer of the grain: Earth of our land, With arms they cannot overpower us, With hunger they would fain devour us, Arise thou in thy harvest wrath! Thick grow thy grass, rich the reaper's path! Dearest soil of earth Our prayer hear: Show them of little worth, Shame ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... business, Cyrus H. McCormick might be named. The inventor of the reaper and builder of the first American business which covered the world was not a man of extraordinary intellect, wit, or judgment. He had, however, the will and power to focus his attention on a single question until the answer was evolved. Again and again, his biographers tell us, ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... the hook. When swift I haste at sunny morn, unto the spreading plain, And view before me, like a sea, the fields of golden grain, And listen to the cheerful sound of harvest's echoing horn, Or join the merry reaper band, that gather in the corn; How sweet the friendly welcoming, how gladsome every look, Ere we begin, with busy hands, to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his Ansichten der Natur, achieved the noblest masterpiece of description—Alexander von Humboldt, has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... nor Care, nor world's rude waves, Have had the power to chill The holy love which then we vowed, That is unclouded still; And until Death—the reaper—comes, It ne'er shall flow away— Our tide of love which first began ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... months ago he was a citizen, cultivating his farm upon the prairies, ploughing, sowing, reaping. But now the great reaper, Death, has gathered him in. He had no thought of being a soldier; but he was a patriot, and when his country called him he sprang to her aid. He yielded to disease, but not to the enemy. He was far from home and friends, with none but strangers to minister ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... autumns long ago turned the fans and ground the seed of harvests toilsomely gathered from corn-fields, among whose furrows many a time the arrow and tomahawk spilt the blood of reaper and sower. The old mill with its pastoral associations of peaceful toil in time passed away, and was succeeded by a structure dedicated to the art of war, for on the same spot stood la Citadelle. This stronghold, though primitive in its ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... passed, bringing its crops again, and another batch of pigs. A mare and a cow added to the animal creation, too. Old man Henty sent out a reaper and commanded his son to grow hay the following year instead of buying it from the Okanagan Valley. The boys built another out-house, bought some calves, and kept adding to their effects. The calves gave Evan copy for some humorous stories, several ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... need not be missed if another succeed me, To reap down the fields which in spring I have sown; He who plowed and who sowed is not missed by the reaper, He is only remembered ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... a reaper, his name is Death, And with his sickle keen, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almost without a companion—for the good priest Herman, whose time was divided between his pastoral duties, his prayers, and his studies, saw him but at intervals—found time to hang very heavily upon his hands. He thought the old reaper weary and sluggish, for the scythe flies fast only when we employ or enjoy the moments. The autumn blast was beginning to lend a thousand bright colors to the trees, and the giddy leaves, like giddy mortals, threw off their simple green for ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... moved onward. Volley after volley of musketry mowed them down, and the puny reaper in the neglected grain gave place to the grim reaper Death, all down that unwavering line of gray ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... risen!" Then, like a stream from ice released, forth fled And wafted far the tidings, flung them wide, Shouted them loud from rocky ridge o'er bands Marching far down to war! The sower sowed With happier hope; the reaper bending sang, "Thus shall God's Angels reap the field of God When we are ripe for heaven." Lovers new-wed Drank of that water changed to wine, thenceforth Breathing on earth heaven's sweetness. Unto such More late, whate'er of brightness time ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... many poets have spoken of the bearded oats. You may remember in this connection Tennyson's phrase "the bearded barley" in the "Lady of Shalott," and Longfellow's term "bearded grain" in his famous poem about the Reaper Death. When a person's beard is very thick, we say in England to-day "a full beard," but in the time of Shakespeare they used to say "a well filled beard"—hence the phrase in the second line of ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... the undimmed heaven to shine down upon the happy festival of families and nations. The cattle stood still in the fields without a low; the trees were quiet as in friendly recognition of the spirit of the hour; no reaper's hook or mower's scythe glanced in the meadow, no rumbling wain was on the road. The birds alone, as being more nearly akin to the feeling of the scene, warbled in ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... labor-saving? The mason's trowel is a labor-saving tool, invented to prevent him from using his hands to put on the mortar; the bolo or the knife is just as much a labor-saving tool as the planing machine; the sickle saves labor and so does the reaper. The difficulty is that some people do not stop to think that the saving of labor applies just as forcibly to a simple tool as to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... extended for half a mile down the stream. At one such place eighteen trees fell in three minutes, and it would be safe to say that a hundred trees were included in the extended fall. The trees, sixty feet high, resembled a field of gigantic grass or unripened grain; the river was a reaper, cutting it away at the roots. Over they tumbled to be buried in the stream; the water would swirl and boil, earth and trees would disappear; then the mass of leaf-covered timber, freed of the earth, would wash away to lodge on ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... over an aviation field nearby gave the air of a fte. Only the uniforms of the English and American women who are attached to each of these many cantonments suggested any necessitous combating of the grim reaper. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... descent, it is struck by lightning, and she tumbles into the abyss. She is saved by Hoel in some inexplicable way, and, still more inexplicably, regains her reason. The music is bright and tuneful, and the reaper's and hunter's songs (which are introduced for no apparent reason) are delightful; but the libretto is so impossibly foolish that the opera has fallen into disrepute, although the brilliant music of the heroine should make it a ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of the departed; he made trees and branches of trees suddenly to spring up where he pleased; he set up and deposed kings at will; he caused a sickle to go into a field of corn, which unassisted would mow twice as fast as the most industrious reaper. [120] ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... as well tell you. I've invented somethin'. It goes onto a reaper. Mother never believed in it, an' she turned me down. So I came East. I couldn't get anybody to look at it, an' I was pretty blue. Then the same day I busted my ankle I heard from another man, an' he'll buy it an' take all the risk, an'—George! I guess mother'll ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... learning to ride that she bade fair to have a more graceful seat in the saddle than Jane herself. Sherm was deep in farm work and the girls saw little either of him or of Ernest, except in the evenings and on Sundays. Dick ran the reaper in the harvest field for Dr. Morton for three days, but his zeal waned as ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... spent a lot of days in an easy chair in the shade of a county office since then while I was driving a reaper in the hot ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Death had meanwhile wrought terrible havoc among the people, like a reaper mowing down line after line of them, allowing not one of the line he touched to escape, whereas, on the other hand, not a single man died before he reached the row in which the man stood. Aaron, censer ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... looked at the clock and it was just three o'clock in the morning, just the time Pa comes home and goes to bed in town, when he is running a political campaign. Well, sir, I had to jump from one thing to another from three o'clock in the morning till nine at night, pitching hay, driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled my clothes, and I think another week would make a pirate of me. But during it all I had the advantage of a pious example. I tell you, you think more of such a man ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... farm which is said to be the "boss" one in all the country, belonging to a man who has been out five years. He was just starting to cut his two square miles of wheat, and we watched the seven self-binding machines with great interest. They seem as light as a reaper, and the machinery ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... grain, yielding hundreds of millions of bushels, the small, widely scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our machine methods quite impossible. Even our grain cradle, which preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met with the old-time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill by ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... then, what steps have trod thy border! Here On thy green bank, the woodman of the swamp Has laid his axe, the reaper of the hill His sickle, as they stooped to taste thy stream. The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still September noon, has bathed his heated brow In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose For a wild holiday, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... their bees That wade in honey red to the knees: Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In dreamless garners underground: 40 We know false glory's spendthrift race Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long, "'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 45 Lachesis, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... boiled with the soup in a goose's neck, then a veal cutlet, covered with a thick layer of chopped garlic. Horace says that this herb is only fit for the stomachs of reapers, but every man who loves garlic in France is not a reaper. Strangers to this region had better reconcile themselves both to its perfume and its flavour without loss of time, for of all the seasoning essences provided by nature for the delight of mankind garlic is most esteemed here. Those who have ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and received a halfpenny; also to mow, with another, three days in harvest time, at their own charges, and another three days when the lord fed them. After harvest six pennyworth of beer was divided among them, each received a loaf of bread, and every evening when work was over each reaper might carry away the largest sheaf of corn he could lift ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... instance, when the grain was scattered over the furrows in the hope that the land would yield its increase, the sower supplicated the friendly interposition of the heavenly powers; in the latter, after having laid up in storehouses the winter's supply of corn and wine, the reaper returned thanks to the celestial givers of all good things, and made merry with his friends in feasts. Nor at this season, when the sight of nature's decay dashes with a certain degree of sadness even the hilarity of the ingathering of crops ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... and so would old Sylvanus, who looks young for his years, and Pan, who wears a garland of pine leaves around his head. But Vertumnus loved her best of all; yet he sped no better than the rest. O how often, in the disguise of a reaper, did he bring her corn in a basket, and looked the very image of a reaper! With a hay band tied round him, one would think he had just come from turning over the grass. Sometimes he would have an ox-goad in his hand, and you would have said he had just unyoked his weary oxen. Now ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... scarcely daylight, the farmers were already in their fields. It was harvest-time—the second harvest of the year—and the little rice-fields were no longer like mirrors, but were filled with high rustling grain ready for the sickle. The water had been drained off and the reaper and thrasher were going through the fields before dawn. There was no machinery like that used at home. The reaper was a short sickle, the thrashing-machine a kind of portable tub, and Mackay looked at them with some amusement, and described to A Hoa how they ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... arrowy sleet Hisses and darts; till the challenging thunders are heard, and they meet; Across fly javelins and serpents of flame: green earth and blue sky Blurr'd in the blind tornado:—so now the battle goes high. Shearing through helmet and limb Glaive-steel and battle-axe grim: As the flash of the reaper in summer's high wheat, King Harold mows horseman ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... and princes are brushed aside by the cutting phrases of Shakspere and go down to earth like grass before the scythe of this rustic reaper. They are dumfounded by his matchless mysterious logic. Religion, law and medicine are pitchforked about by the Divine William on the threshing floor of his literary granary, where he separates wheat from chaff, instanter, leaving the beholder ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... themselves to be persuaded, and they sing in chorus a 'Reapers' Song,' composed long ago by some unknown Prigourdin poet, who was perhaps a jongleur or a troubadour. The notes are so arranged as to imitate the rhythmic movements of the reaper: first the drawing back of the right arm, then the stroke of the sickle, and lastly, the laying down of the cut corn. There is something of sadness as well as of joy in the repeated cadences of the simple song, and it moves the heart, for now the old men join in, and the sound gathers such strength ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... The Grim Reaper spared him, and Sam came, and was introduced to the family, and ate. He put himself in a class with Dr. Johnson, and Ben Brust, and Gargantua, only that his table manners were better. He almost forgot to talk during the soup, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... of the reaper Takes the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper Wails manhood in glory. The autumn winds rushing Wafts the leaves that are searest, But our flower was in flushing When blighting ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... But in the Dakotas, the labor of one man will deliver in Chicago enough flour to feed three hundred men a year. This increase in man's power to produce wheat caused the world's population to double itself since McCormack invented the reaper. The Chinese and Hindu millions who would have starved to death, have been fed, and that's why they're with us to-day. The natural limit of population is starvation. The more bread the more mouths, less bread, fewer ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... son, by heavens, good! And when it comes to that, I'll go with you; by heavens, I'll go too! What should I wait here for? To become a buckwheat-reaper and housekeeper, to look after the sheep and swine, and loaf around with my wife? Away with such nonsense! I am a Cossack; I'll have none of it! What's left but war? I'll go with you to Zaporozhe to carouse; I'll go, by heavens!" And old Bulba, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... proceeds of his farm are worth, he virtually takes the men who have been mending his barns and reapers, and sets them to build a buggy which will take him to the neighbouring races. The varnish on the buggy is bought with the rust on the reaper's blades; the smart, weather-proof apron with the barn's unmended roof. If the managing body of a railroad pays a higher dividend to the shareholders than can be got out of its net earnings, the results are presently seen in cars that are growing dirty, in engines that break down, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... had never heard before, which rang out across the square, and was answered by a yell that was nothing but a cry of sheer delight. The crowd swayed back as if before a gust of wind, and the General, following it, seemed to clear a space for himself as a reaper clears away the standing corn before him. It was, however, only for a moment. The crowd surged back, those in front against their will, and on to the glittering steel—those ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... herself all bodily ills, she lusted for physical suffering, and was greedy for wounds; she was, as it were, the reaper of punishments, and she was also the piteous vessel in which everyone discharged the overflowings of his malady. If you would speak of her in other fashion than the poor hagiographies of our day, study first that law of substitution, that miracle of perfect charity, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Here, where the reaper was at work of late— In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, deg. deg.13 And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use— 15 Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... going,— why, there is nothing to fear; there is not a reaper near, and if there were, he would need to be a sharp fellow who could catch a rat ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... his father, Roger had had no contact with the Grim Reaper, and the tragic discovery of the afternoon had shaken him. Yet as he sat looking out over the impenetrable calm and mystery of the ranges that lifted their noble peaks to the sailing moon, it seemed to him that death in the desert was a clean and normal part of life. If his Sun Plant ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... farm for a few days, and who had been dismissed by Lecacheur for an insolent answer. He was an old soldier, and was supposed to have retained his habits of marauding and debauchery, from his campaigns in Africa. He did anything for a livelihood, but whether he were a mason, a navvy, a reaper, whether he broke stones or lopped trees, he was always lazy, and so he remained nowhere, and he had, at times, to change ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... and poverty are like waves; what is now crest will soon be trough. Such conditions demand forbearance and mutual sympathy. Some men are born with little and some with large skill for acquiring wealth, the two differing as the scythe that gathers a handful of wheat differs from the reaper built for vast harvests and carrying the sickle of success. For generations the ancestors back of one man's father were thrifty and the ancestors back of his mother were far-sighted, and the two columns ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to mend a broken mowing-machine and reaper, for which he received five dollars; and on the following morning he started for his old haunt, the village tavern. He knew that his wife sadly needed the money, and that his two little children were absolutely suffering for want ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... value is fully appreciated, but there is no reason why the men who have utilized the inventions of Stephenson and others, and have grown rich by doing so, should be eulogized any more than those who are ministering to the wants of the public by the use of the Hoe printing press, McCormick's reaper, Whitney's cotton gin, or any of the thousands ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... with grief and fatigue, went picking his way among the dead and wounded. He had lost Peter and Hannibal in that battle, and Hamilton and John were dead; he alone remained, and it was not just. He felt that the Great Reaper had spared the weed among the flowers, and he was bitter against the Great Reaper. But there was one more sorrow reserved for Aladdin, and he was to blaspheme against the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... Whitney buried in thought, wondering how he could make a cotton gin to disprove the statement that the Americans are an unprogressive people. Cyrus Hall McCormick did not go out and manufacture a reaper because he was infuriated by a German newspaper taunt that the Americans were backward in agriculture. Nor can we fancy that John Hay while dealing with the Chinese crisis in 1900 was continually ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... iron massy and long From the swift-speeding hand did many essay To hurl; but not an Argive could prevail To cast that ponderous mass. Aias alone Sped it from his strong hand, as in the time Of harvest might a reaper fling from him A dry oak-bough, when all the fields are parched. And all men marvelled to behold how far Flew from his hand the bronze which scarce two men Hard-straining had uplifted from the ground. ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... were clamoring drowsily in the tops of the sycamores. From out of sight beyond the orchard came the monotonous, musical whir of a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful, careless "Bob White!" from the rail fence edging the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled among a cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the mower had spared. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... clock which, outside his own shop and in the hands of another, would not wind; a self-binding reaper that, in his neighbor's field, would not perform its part; and a lamp that was designed to manufacture the gas that it burned from the water in its bowl, but which dismally and ignobly failed. He had contrived and patented a machine for milking cows, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... bring forth more violent deeds. His eyes he op'nd, and beheld a field, Part arable and tilth, whereon were Sheaves 430 New reapt, the other part sheep-walks and foulds; Ith' midst an Altar as the Land-mark stood Rustic, of grassie sord; thither anon A sweatie Reaper from his Tillage brought First Fruits, the green Eare, and the yellow Sheaf, Uncull'd, as came to hand; a Shepherd next More meek came with the Firstlings of his Flock Choicest and best; then sacrificing, laid The Inwards and thir Fat, with Incense strew'd, On the cleft ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... pilot-wheel steer staggered back and made several efforts to gore the dying horse and helpless rider, but with a dozen shots through his vitals, he sank down and expired. A destiny, over which he had no seeming control, willed that he should yield to the grim reaper nearly three thousand miles from his birthplace ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... horses were not built for racing, either, and they were dragging a heavy machine on soft ground. The iron wheels of the reaper were made with projections, to enable them to bite deeper into the earth, and thus turn the gears that operated the knives. And these iron wheels were ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... Daffodils" the flowers, jocund in the breeze, drive away the melancholy mood with which the poet had approached them and enable him to carry away a picture in his memory that can be drawn upon for help on future occasions of gloom. In "The Solitary Reaper" the weird and haunting notes of the song coming to his ear in an unknown tongue suggest possible ideas back of the strong feeling which he recognizes in the singer. Here also, the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... had been the residence of a northern farmer. Although the house was completely stripped, and nothing of the barns and outhouses remained but the frames, yet there were many evidences of the thrift and comfort of the former occupant. A northern reaper, several horse rakes, ploughs of improved patterns, and other modern implements of agriculture, betokened a genuine farmer. We were told that he was driven from his home early in the war, and had now found refuge among his friends in New Hampshire. But the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... discover a spice of roguish waggery, that might perhaps be as well spared; but then they also show, in my opinion, a force of genius, and a finishing polish, that I despair of ever excelling. Mrs. Burns is getting stout again, and laid as lustily about her to-day at breakfast, as a reaper from the corn-ridge. That is the peculiar privilege and blessing of our hale sprightly damsels, that are bred among the hay and heather. We cannot hope for that highly polished mind, that charming delicacy of soul, which is found among the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... forced back, literally by weight of numbers. And, as they retreat, a British detachment is sent around to attack them on the flank. They press forward, expecting to crumple up Morgan's men like tall grain in the hand of the reaper! They will teach those rude fellows a lesson, that Americans can't stand before the trained soldiers ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... place, was nibbled by hungry horses during the bivouac subsequent to the battle. Not a stalk of wheat is upright; not a blade of corn remains uninjured; all has fallen long before the time of harvest. Another harvest, in which Death was the reaper, has ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... confidences the essayist is brought up short by the question, "Why must you still be talking?" Even the passionate lyric feels the need of external authorisation, and some of the finest of lyrical poems, like the Willow Song of Desdemona, or Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper, are cast in a dramatic mould, that beauty of diction may be vitalised by an imagined situation. More than others the dramatic art is an enemy to the desultory and the superfluous, sooner than others it will cast away all formal grace of expression that it may come home ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... of personal reminiscences, the author, hearing in the distance the Grim Reaper, is at his most pi. The first few chapters describe the effort he had to make to gain the background information he needed to write the books, but suddenly he tells us that he doesn't feel at all well, that his time may well be near, and he fills out the book with half-a- dozen short ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... balmy showers 'Mid gleam of sunshine shed, When May calls forth a thousand flowers To deck the earth's green bed. There's joy when the harvest moon comes out With all her starry train, When the woods return the reaper's shout ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... we know their bees, That wade in honey, red to the knees; Their patent-reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In doorless garners underground: We know false Glory's spendthrift race, Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long,— "'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... he accommodates to and regulates nature. Some of the objects, in themselves, give a fair idea of how the farmer used them. Most people, after all, know about edged blades and digging tools. Nearly anyone can grasp what a man might do with a scythe or a plow. Even the working of a modern reaper needs only a little explanation. But museums cannot well show cross-breeding of plants and animals. Museums seldom can show the results of that cross-breeding. Bags of fertilizer can be put on display, as can vials of penicillin, and jars of herbicide. Although some may ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... fruit and vegetables; single horns appear also in the clever and elaborate marks of R.Fouet, Paris, 1597, whose design was a very slight deviation from that of J.De Bordeaux, Paris, 1567. The oak-tree, sheltering a reaper and with the motto "Satis Quercus," was employed by George Cleray, Vannes, 1545; and the fruit of this tree—the acorn—by E.Schultis, Lyons, 1491. The thistle appears on the marks of Estienne Groulleau, Paris, 1547; the Rose on the more or less elaborate ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... the wheat Made the air above them sweet; Sweeter and more divine Was the scent of the scattered grain, That the reaper's hand let fall To be gathered again By the hand of the gleaner! Sweetest, divinest of all, Was the humble deed of thine, And the meekness of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that the horizon was lost in the summer haze. Wheat, barley, and oats—barley and wheat and beans, completely occupied the plain. It was one vast expanse of cereals, without a sign of human life; for the reaper had not yet commenced, and the bailiffs' cottages were hidden among the ricks. There was an utter silence at noonday; nothing but yellowing wheat beneath, the ramparts of the hills around, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... this one for me." Therefore do not concern yourself with what is not yours; but as each day or hour comes, trust God! He is not a hard master, reaping where He does not sow; but is a Father sowing in you, and by you, in order that you, as well as Himself, might reap so that "both sower and reaper might rejoice together." Trust Him for always pointing out to you the path of duty, so that, as a wayfarer, you will never err. Be assured, that when the moment comes in which you must take any step, He will, by some voice in His Word or providence, say to you, "This is the way, walk ye in ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... stood on a mountain-top, and seen before him a wild, disorderly landscape that has nevertheless awakened in him the emotion of the beautiful? or that has given him the emotion of the sublime? Wordsworth's "Daffodils," "Three Years She Grew," "The Solitary Reaper," "The Rainbow," "The Butterfly," and many others are merely beautiful. These lines from Whitman give one the emotion of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... a few weeks of this planning, hoping, saving. The little Temple builder fell ill. It was a brief illness and then the grim Reaper knocked at the door of the Wiatt home and the loving, self-sacrificing spirit was born to the Father's House where there are many mansions, where there was no lack of room, for the little heart so eager to ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... virtuously attracted toward heaven, while the other is viciously drawn to the earth; but he countenances the inference that the earthward proclivity of the latter is to be accounted pure misfortune. But to the universe there is neither fortune nor misfortune; there is only the reaper, Destiny, and his perpetual harvest. All that occurs on a universal scale lies in the line of a pure success. Nor can the universe attain any success by pushing past man and leaving him aside. That were like the prosperity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... have two ponies to break this fall, and Pa has promised to let me drive the reaper around the ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or sluggish thoughts ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks |
