"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was surprised into silence. Then a handful of mud caught Charlie's sign and a group of college students, with a shout of "Break up the line! Break up the line," broke into the ranks of the Indians and in a moment a free ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... from the hills, and a tide of giant pebbles had swept down from the mounds. These rugged boulders had turned the trail, so that the American was riding beneath a kind of cliff. To his right, on the east of the trail, the boulders were smaller and scattered, like a handful of great marbles flung across the cactus plain. He may have glanced toward this side especially, at the clumps of spiny growth over the pradera, and caught glimpses behind the strewn rocks, but his look was casual, unstartled. He breathed deeply, though. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... work?" said the officers to one another. The general heard them. "I wanted to make my Spaniards thorough French," he said, "that nobody might any longer perceive that there are two nationalities here." Murray at last capitulated on the 4th of February, 1782: the fortress contained but a handful of soldiers exhausted with ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at last, snapping the case shut—"two or nothing." The girl handed over the watch with a troubled sigh. He made out a ticket and gave it to her with a handful of silver change. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... self-degradation. They are content in their helplessness and poverty and destitution of rights. Nay, they are so deeply deluded as to believe that all this belongs to their natural and unavoidable lot. But the handful of women of whom I am here complaining—the woman's rights women—persevere just as blindly and stubbornly as do other women, in wearing a dress that both marks and makes their impotence, and yet, O amazing inconsistency! they are ashamed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and after him, some few on horseback but the most of them on foot, marched his little army of conquerors, staring about them with bold wondering eyes and jesting to each other in Castilian. They were but a handful, bronzed with the sun and scarred by battle, some of them ill-armed and almost in rags, and looking on them I could not but marvel at the indomitable courage that had enabled them to pierce their way through hostile thousands, sickness, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... people sat on the bench, still as statues. Never mind, there was always the crowd to watch. To and fro, in front of the flower-beds and the band rotunda, the couples and groups paraded, stopped to talk, to greet, to buy a handful of flowers from the old beggar who had his tray fixed to the railings. Little children ran among them, swooping and laughing; little boys with big white silk bows under their chins, little girls, little French dolls, dressed up in velvet and lace. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... that one who takes only a handful of corn for the support of life even when millions upon millions of carts loaded with corn await his acceptance, is certainly to be regarded as freed. Literally rendered, the second line is—'who beholds a shed of bamboo or reeds in a palace,' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... insignificant province, from a despised race, proclaimed by a mere handful of ignorant workmen, demanding self-control and renunciation before unheard of, certain to arouse in time powerful enemies in the highly cultivated and critical society which it attacked, the odds against it ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... if there ain't something the matter with him—he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of his neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pounds!" and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was and he was the maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... too, but both were too hungry to fast any longer, so they began eating their apples and plums and let the magic bush bear all sorts of fruits, one after another. The Cap'n stopped once to pick a fine cantaloupe, which he held under his arm, and Trot, having finished her plums, got a handful of cherries and an orange; but when almost every sort of fruit had appeared on the bush, the crop ceased and only flowers, as before, bloomed ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... things called hashes, commonly manufactured by unwatched, untaught cooks out of the remains of yesterday's meal, let us not dwell too closely on their memory—compounds of meat, gristle, skin, fat, and burnt fibre, with a handful of pepper and salt flung at them, dredged with lumpy flour, watered from the spout of the tea-kettle, and left to simmer at the cook's convenience while she is otherwise occupied. Such are the best performances a housekeeper can hope ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tell you and maybe I won't," he cried, scooping up a handful of sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Socialism is certainly weak in England. Your socialist movements, your socialist parties . . . when I was in England I zealously attended everything I could, and for a country with so large an industrial population they were pitiable, pitiable . . . a handful at a street corner . . . a meeting in a drawing room . . . a school class . . . pitiable. But you must remember one great difference between Russia of 1905 and England of to-day. Our first Soviet in Russia was made during the revolution. ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... we were confident that the Turk was about to attack. Suddenly the artillery fire ceased and a red flag was seen being waved from the enemy's trenches. Shortly afterwards two Turks came over the parapet but were immediately shot down. They were followed by an officer and a handful of men, possibly a dozen, who advanced a short distance, but when about half of their number fell, the remainder turned and bolted back to their trenches. All along the enemy's line we could see bayonets appearing above the parapet ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... the desired dimensions having been made, or an existing one having been discovered, the person who is to be chief of the kiva performs the same ceremony as that prescribed for the male head of a family when the building of a dwelling house is undertaken. He takes a handful of meal, mixed with piki crumbs, and a little of the crumbled herb they use as tobacco, and these he sprinkles upon the ground, beginning on the west side, passing southward, and so around, the sprinkled line he describes marking the position to be occupied by the walls. ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... the finger that he had trailed along the desk and entered the small office that was his sanctum. Seated at his ancient roll-top, he opened and read a handful of letters that had come in the afternoon mail—and his ready frown was active again as he noted the tone of some of them. The clerk, Stevens, when he told Maxon that several orders were shortly due to be filled, had in nowise exaggerated the case. Two or three were already overdue, and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... could not reward my kind physician with my hand, which, by-the-by, I should not have offered had I not been certain of refusal, I was obliged to force upon her as splendid a trinket as I could purchase, for a keepsake, and gave my sable nurses a handful of bits each. Bits of what? say ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in finesse, that shade of the shade by which, and by which alone, one really knows art. I contrasted the affair with the evening in December last that I walked over (also in the rain) to the Odeon and saw the "Plaideurs" and the "Malade lmaginaire." There, too, was hardly more than a handful of spectators; but what rich, ripe, fully representational and above all intellectual comedy, and what polished, educated playing! These Venetians in particular, however, have a marvellous entrain of their own; they seem even less than the French to recite. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... inadequate for the transportation burdens suddenly cast upon it. In this desperate emergency a transport system was born of necessity, a system that saved Verdun. It was fleet upon fleet of motor trucks, all sizes, all styles; anything that could pack a few shells or a handful of men was utilized. The backbone of the system was a great fleet of trucks driven by men whose average daily rest was four hours, and upon whose horizon-blue uniforms the stains of snow and sleet, of dust and mud, were indelibly fixed through ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... delighted these are to be recognised, even in this small way. We were talking about the huge bungle of the landing at Suvla. It seems agreed had it not been that two Territorial Battalions turned tail when faced by a handful of Turks things here would have been totally different, and the ridges which are not yet ours should have been taken and held the first day. A distinguished General is said to have remarked: "Had there ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... forwards in an horizontal direction, and his hands were the first parts of him that touched English ground. Upon this occasion, he, in imitation of Scipio's behaviour on the coast of Africa, hailed the omen, and, grasping a handful of the sand, was heard to exclaim, in the Italian language: "Ah, ah, Old England, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... our notions—a kind of go-between, akin to sympathy and disgust. Not a few have thrown round the Gipsy an enchanting, bewitching halo, which an inspection has proved nothing less than a delusion and a snare. Others have tried to improve this field of thistles and sour docks by throwing a handful of daisy seeds among them. It requires something more than a phantom life-boat to rescue the Gipsy and bring him to land. Scents and perfumes in a death-bed chamber only last for a short time. A bottle of rose-water thrown into ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Gabriel and three thousand angels. His eye was fixed on the field of battle: the Mussulmans fainted and were pressed: in that decisive moment the prophet started from his throne, mounted his horse, and cast a handful of sand into the air: "Let their faces be covered with confusion." Both armies heard the thunder of his voice: their fancy beheld the angelic warriors: [131] the Koreish trembled and fled: seventy of the bravest were slain; and seventy captives adorned ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Irons, and Rangely to dinner, the hostess sat gnawing her stylographic pen in despair a good half hour before she could decide upon a fourth guest. A woman she must have, and few women whom she wished to ask would come to her house even to call. When she now and then gathered at an afternoon tea a handful of people whose names she was proud to have reported in the society papers, she did it by securing a lion of literary or of theatrical fame, whose unwary feet she entangled in her cunningly laid snares before he knew anything about social conditions in Boston. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... as possible the coast of Africa, and to continue that unfrequented route, till the ships should pass the Island of Sardinia. "In the mean while," said he, "should an English fleet present itself, we will run ashore upon the sands, and march, with the handful of brave men and the few pieces of artillery we have with us, to Oran or Tunis, and there find means to re-embark." Thus Napoleon, is this hazardous enterprise braved every peril. The most imminent and ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... the actress on the evening before he left London for America. "Before we parted," she says, "the General told me that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying at the same time: 'Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,'"[195]—a strange presentiment for a ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... suggested itself; and stooping, the officer took up a handful of small pebbles, and launched them down upon the two adorers of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... He took a handful of letters from his pocket, and looked through them, while Agnes rang the bell. Returning to him, she noticed a printed letter among the rest, which lay open on the table. It was a 'prospectus,' and the title of it was 'Palace Hotel Company of Venice (Limited).' The two words, 'Palace' and ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... held out, as implacable unbelievers. I was as hurt by this as if I were engaged in some honest occupation. There is nothing surprising about this. Human beings feel dishonor the most, sometimes, when they most deserve it. That handful of overwise old gentlemen kept on shaking their heads all the first week, and saying they had seen no marvels there that could not have been produced by collusion; and they were pretty vain of their unbelief, too, and liked to show it and air it, and be superior to the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... with sturdy independence did not ask for alms, and when I had seen his leg he bound it up again and limped on. Meeting him a little later at an inn, where he was sitting at a table with nothing before him to eat, I gave him a handful of cash which I had put in my pocket for him. He thanked me by raising his clasped hands, and said something, I knew not what, as I hurried on. A little while afterwards I stopped to have my breakfast, when the boy passed. As soon as ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were arrested, and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other prisoners with royal vigor. A very intense love story runs ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... my ticket and a handful of change, "and lucky you are to be going to the Rhine. I'm from the Rhine myself and now I'm going back to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... for your advice,' says the poor poet, thirsting for a draught of fame, and offered a handful of dust. And off he hurries to the printer, to be sure that his poem comes out in the next number of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bill as a substitute, it was the intention of the House leaders to accept the Senate's measure when it came to them for passage. The measure, however, never passed the Senate. Through the wide latitude allowed for unlimited debate a handful of Senators opposed to any action against Germany succeeded in effectually blocking the bill. The Senate sat late into the night of February 28, 1917, and took up the Armed-Ship Bill the next day. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... British extreme right wing, and we had to close the gap. There was no question about it. It was our job. On the night of April twenty-second we commenced to put this into effect. We were still holding our original position with the handful of men who were in reserves, all of whom had been included in the original grand total of twelve thousand. We had to spread out across the gap of two miles and link ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... lighted with shaded candles, and in the soft glow Anne's face had become startlingly lovely. She had tucked a handful of the shell-pink wild flowers into the girdle of her black dress, and their hue was reflected in her cheeks, glowing from the afternoon's drive in the sun. As King talked and laughed, his eyes seldom off her face, he felt the enchantment of ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... life. It holds in its bosom numerous animalcules: you may have a glass of water, perfectly free from infusoria, which yet, after your dissolving in it a handful of snow, will show itself full of microscopic creatures, shrimp-like and swift; and the famous red snow of the Arctic regions is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... them on the live coals until one side was done, turned them on the other by the aid of a long stick he had sharpened for the purpose, and when done he took them up on its point, and laid them steaming on a handful of leaves he had collected, and ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... Frank produced a handful of crackers from his little pack, which he willingly turned over to the other. This seemed to satisfy Jimmy; at least, he stopped groaning and telling of his aches and pains. When they could get his jaws ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... choose according to their taste. These conditions are by no means impracticable, but how, in the large earthy mass, containing at least a cubic yard of soil, should we recover the atoms I had so much trouble to find in a handful of black soil from the heath? Moreover, such a laborious search would certainly detach the larva from ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... in the trenches had no peaches, no squabs, no mushrooms, no avacados—for them bully beef and soup cubes, a handful of dates, or by good ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... God, if the truth to be told harmed the interests of his own order, whose interests he must shield by a silent reservation. The lesser caste, the ecclesiastical clique, thus was held paramount to the entire nation; and oaths of fidelity to the religious order, a mere handful of God's creatures, rode over the rights of the God whose name had been invoked to witness truth-telling, and over the rights of God's whole race of mankind, to have the truth told in their courts by those who had solemnly proclaimed and deliberately sworn that ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... head of all his forces, silently debouched out of his camp, and suddenly fell on the royal army. The rout would have been complete, and probably James II. dethroned, had not Churchill, whose vigilant eye nothing escaped, observed the movement, and hastily collected a handful of men, with whom he made so vigorous a resistance as gave time for the remainder of the army to form, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... burning camp in front—our brave fellows lying down under a heavy cannonade, which continued during the whole night, mingled with the wild cries of the Sikhs, our English hurrah, the tramp of men, and the groans of the dying. In this state, with a handful of men who had carried the batteries the night before, I remained till morning, taking very short intervals of rest, by lying down with various regiments in succession, to ascertain their tempers and revive ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... city papers has shown us step by step the progress of the Home Rule movement. That great work has been accomplished by the Irish leader there can be no doubt. I witnessed it personally a few short weeks ago, when standing in the strangers' gallery in the House of Commons, I saw a handful of Irish members under the leadership of Parnell withstand the assaults of six hundred English members. [Applause.] It was an awe-inspiring sight. When one remembers that within the four walls of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the stage and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of whiplash went singing through the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... begin to talk like that I'll go back again. I should most likely have been a neer-do-weel all my days, and maybe have died a drunkard, if it hadn't been for you, Dick, and the good words of the Book. Besides, I've got plenty," and he pulled out a handful of silver from one pocket and the little bank book from the other and tapped it merrily. "All saved from the paws and the jaws of the 'Brown Bear,' that squeezes all the comfort out of so many homes in Venley. If only I'd got all the money that have gone out of my ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... upon a smoky background, a steamer swayed uneasily with the swell of the water at her keel, her nose touching the pier-head, a chain of lights outlining her cumbersome hulk. Men's voices made the night noisy, and numerous feet scuttled to and fro over the cobbles of the dockyard to where a handful of fishing boats were drawn up, only their masts showing above the landing, with here and there a ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... flint, mud, or the rubble of chips, Thy roots have grasp in the stern-exact: The redemption of sinners deluded! the last Dry handful, that bruises and saves. To the common big heart are we bound right fast, When our Mother admonishing nips At the nakedness bare of a clout, And we crave what the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Bailie of Dijon was the first to come upon her in the room to which she had fled with a few attendants and a handful of men, amongst whom were Alessandro Sforza, Paolo Riario, and Scipione Riario—this last an illegitimate son of her first husband's, whom she had adopted. The Burgundian declared her his prisoner, and held her for the price that had been set upon her ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... handful of salt in paint will allow a good-looking job for a day or two, but when dry will fall off ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... was spreading steadily through the world. Even the schoolmaster could not check it. For the mere handful who grew up to feel wonder and curiosity about the secrets of nature in the nineteenth century, there were now, at the beginning of the twentieth, myriads escaping from the limitations of intellectual routine and the habitual life, in Europe, in America, North and South, in Japan, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... infatuation, stealing the light of Menelaus' eyes, leaving him only the torturing memories of her beauty which visited him in his dreams. But there is a spirit of discontent in every city of Greece; all had sent their young men to Troy in the glory of life, and in return they had a handful of ashes, asking why their sons should fall in murderous strife for another man's wife. At night the dark dread haunts Argos that the gods care not for men who shed much blood, who succeed by injustice, who are well spoken of overmuch. Often these are smitten full ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... was supposed to last had expired, but our catch had not amounted to more than two hundred and fifty barrels of oil. Whales had been undoubtedly scarce, for our ill-success on tackling bulls was not at all in consequence of our clumsiness, these agile animals being always a handful, but due to the lack of cows, which drove us to take whatever we could get, which, as has been noted, was sometimes a severe drubbing. Energy and watchfulness had been manifested in a marked degree by everybody, and when the news circulated that our stay was drawing ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... found himself in a position of the utmost difficulty. With a handful of unruly backwoodsmen, imperfectly disciplined and kept under control only by his own personal influence, he had to protect and govern a region as large as any European kingdom. Moreover, he had to keep content and loyal a population ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... o'clock. Bricks, mortar, scoops, shovels were abandoned. The women, in their great clod-hopping shoes, flew chattering to the tiny hut where their lunch boxes were stored. The men followed more slowly, a mere handful of them. Not one of them wore overalls or apron. Out again with their bundles and boxes of food—very small bundles. Very tiny boxes. They ate ravenously the bread and sausage and drank their beer in great gulps. Fifteen minutes ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... England, where they were received with every demonstration of respect that a grateful nation could give. In Europe and America the news of this victory had made the people wild with joy. "With a handful of men," said Pitt, in the House of Commons, "he has added an empire to English rule." A monument in that Walhalla of great Englishmen, Westminster Abbey, records that he "was slain in a moment of victory." On the heights of Quebec, in the rear of its noble ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... elders kept their long debate, Coroebus stole unheeded to his band, And led a handful by a postern gate Across the plain, across the barren land Where once the happy vines were wont to stand, And 'mid the clusters once did maidens sing,— But now the plain was waste on every hand, Though here and there a ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... slavish idolatry in these our days. But heretofore, almost in all countries, in all places, superstition hath blinded the hearts of men; in all ages what a small portion hath the true church ever been! Divisum imperium cum Jove Daemon habet. [6354]The patriarchs and their families, the Israelites a handful in respect, Christ and his apostles, and not all of them, neither. Into what straits hath it been compinged, a little flock! how hath superstition on the other side dilated herself, error, ignorance, barbarism, folly, madness, deceived, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... five hundred dollars!" said Mitchell jubilantly. He drew out a billbook and shook a handful of notes at the artist. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... no sport of any kind. Mr. Milman has made a good tennis-court, and anybody who likes can play there every afternoon. The society on Thursday Island consists of two resident ladies, supplemented by occasional visitors, and six gentlemen. Besides this handful of English, Mr. Hall lives on Prince of Wales' Island, and Captain and Mrs. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... May 16th the traitor made known the new spot of the smala's halt, and D'Aumale at once daringly advanced with his cavalry alone. The surprise created a panic among the people. The guard of five hundred regulars fired a volley and fled. A handful of the Hashem tribe bravely strove to stem the torrent, but they were swept away in the rout, and in an hour all was over. The smala was broken up amid scenes of terrible confusion and despair, including the extraordinary sight of a promiscuous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... American masses entertain for the opinions of their "leading" men, whether in public life or not. The English people is accustomed, within certain limits, to repose confidence in its leaders and to suffer them in truth to lead; so that a small handful of men can within limits speak for the English people. They can voice the public sentiments, or, when they speak, the people will modify its sentiments to accord with their utterances. There is no man or set of men who can similarly speak for the American people; and no one ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... in it as thine own," said Mother Rigby, "and it will guide thee straight to worshipful Master Gookin's door. Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my precious one, my treasure; and if any ask thy name, it is Feathertop. For thou hast a feather in thy hat, and I have thrust a handful of feathers into the hollow of thy head, and thy wig, too, is of the fashion they call Feathertop,—so be Feathertop ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Anne. They were assembled on the green plot outside the churchyard-gate, dressed in their common clothes, and the sergeant who had been putting them through their drill was the man who nailed up the proclamation. He was now engaged in untying a canvas money-bag, from which he drew forth a handful of shillings, giving one to each man in ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... very footsore and weary, the party limped into Whitcombe, a small hamlet consisting of a wayside inn and a handful of cottages. It was eight o'clock, and the sun, behind long bars of crimson and grey, had already begun to sink below the horizon. They were nine miles away from home, as the stream had led them in quite a different direction from Linforth, and, as Leonard expressed it, they had "altogether landed ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... away a wonderful old damask cloth which dates back at least half a century. Cover the table with this and scatter over it a handful of carnations, allowing them to fall ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... Duke's? Then we shall have nearly a mile to drive. Will not that do for you?" He was working hard while he spoke. There was a great oak post-box within reach, and another box for letters which were to be delivered by hand, and he was thrusting a handful of notes into each of these. Other packets he swept into different drawers of the table. Still standing, he stooped and signed his name to half a dozen letters, which he left open on the blotting-pad. "Atley will see to these when he is dressed," he murmured. "Would ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... angrily. "Well, I'll prove it. I tell you I did, and I thought it all out carefully, although the doctor says I can't think connectedly. I'll show him." She fumbled in the breast of her dress for a moment, and brought out her cherished handful of newspaper clippings, which she cast triumphantly upon the table. "There's all about him from the papers, and a picture of the house. Why, I'd 'a' been a fool not to find him, and I had to. Oh, yes, I suppose, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... slowly, "that many, many moons ago, long before this oak tree grew upon this hill, before its father's father had yet been planted as an acorn, our people came hither across just such a sea as that. Far to the westward it lay, and they came, a mere handful of bold spirits in their canoes, across a wide water from some land that we have utterly forgotten. Some settled down at once upon the shores of the waters they had crossed, but some pressed eastward, little by little, as the generations passed. They filled the land with their children and in the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... the poor beggar half a crown. Don't insult him with coppers," said Jack in his lordly way, pulling a handful of silver from his pocket and selecting the largest coin of the number. "I'll take it to him myself. You might give him some tea if there is any left. ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... each to the other and stared at this too inquisitive Molly Breckenridge with the disconcerting stare of childhood, till she turned away and gathering a handful of biscuits from the table bade them sit down and eat. She forbade them to drop a single crumb and they were obedient even ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... our neighborhood hold out I guess I can do something that all the temperance societies in this town have failed to do," says the bad boy to the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of cheese and took a handful of crackers out ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... had set his heart steadfastly on getting the Golden Fleece, and I positively doubt whether he would have gone back without it even had he been certain of finding himself turned into a red-hot cinder, or a handful of white ashes the instant he made a step further. He therefore let go Medea's hand and walked boldly forward in the direction whither she had pointed. At some distance before him he perceived four streams of fiery vapor, regularly appearing and again vanishing after dimly lighting ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... apes at an unknown period of time, that is as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of necessity to which he is subject cannot ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... worthy, Alan of Buchan, who thus flings down the gauntlet, who thus dares the fury of a mighty sovereign, and with a handful of brave men prepares to follow in the steps of Wallace, to the ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... purposes. Monstrously defective as their farming was, still it was better than their neighbours'; for Mark had some practical knowledge of such matters, and Martin learned of him; whereas the other settlers who remained upon the putrid swamp (a mere handful, and those withered by disease), appeared to have wandered there with the idea that husbandry was the natural gift of all mankind. They helped each other after their own manner in these struggles, and in all others; but they worked as hopelessly and sadly as a gang ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... front seat was a box with her name on it. In it was a handful of orchids. The luxury of the car, the beauty of the demon-flowers, the flight from the walk-up, yet more, perhaps, the caresses and surrenders of spring, affected her. If, she thought, if only the things that might be could be the things ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... dropped away. The town shrunk to a handful of toy houses flung carelessly down upon a dingy gray carpet, with a yellow seam stretched across—which was the railroad—and yellow gashes here and there. The toy houses dwindled to mere dots on a relief map of gray with green splotches here and there for groves and orchards not yet denuded ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... around the circle. At last the supreme moment came, and with head erect and the bearing of an empress she swept through the door and stood upon the stage. Her eyes fell upon only a vast, brilliant emptiness—there were not forty people in the house! There were only a handful of coarse men and ten or twelve still coarser women, lolling upon the benches and scattered about singly ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... they may lead: had your early representations been attended to and produced their proper effect, you would probably not have to boast of the most brilliant success, with the most inadequate means, which history records. There is something so fabulous in the report of a handful of troops, supported by a few raw militia, leaving their strong post to invade an enemy of double numbers in his own fortress, and making them all prisoners without the loss of a man, that, although your report may be sanctioned by Sir George Prevost, it seems to me that the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... and fern, of both which there is a great variety; but except the flax or hemp plant, and a few other plants, there is very little herbage of any sort, and none that was eatable, that we found, except about a handful of water-cresses, and about the same quantity of cellery. What Dusky Bay most abounds with is fish: A boat with six or eight men, with hooks and lines, caught daily sufficient to serve the whole ship's company. Of this article the variety is almost equal to the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... religious faith. It is no wonder, therefore, that the despatches of the obscure adventurer who announced to his sovereign that, in spite of obstacles thrown in his way by highly placed royal officials, he had conquered a vast civilised empire with a mere handful of followers, were received sympathetically by the potentate to whom the possession of fresh sources of revenue was so important. Cortes in his various letters again and again claims the Emperor's patronage of his bold defiance of the Emperor's officers on the ground ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... hands, I give to valiant Koko wealth and lands. Fair Arabella! Nature, Fortune, Art, Have made her perfect—lacking but a heart; So let her take, that want to cure, I say, These pleasant tablets, three times every day. (He gives her a handful of heart-shaped sugar-candies which she obediently begins to eat.)Now for your futures: Koko shall belong To Master Lee; and, being very strong, He won't be broken for a month or so. But Arabella,—her I do bestow On Baby Maud. Them shall you serve by day; But oft at ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... be wanting," said the saloon-keeper, holding out a handful. Judd Jason lighted one, and began ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... put his left hand into a cask, not one of silver, but of gold, and tossed a handful of it into the witnesses' caps, as they lay on ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... regeneration, worse now than worthless carrion. And the cause of it all, the sole excuse for this delinquency, lay back there upon a greasy table in the shanty—a short scrawling tale scribbled upon a handful of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... pounds of lump sugar in a gallon of water; skim it clean, put in a handful of balm, and boil it ten minutes. Strain it off, cool it, put in some yeast, and let it stand two days. Add the rind and juice of a lemon, and let it stand in the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... From the handful of small change, she selected some pennies which she slipped inside of her glove, and dropping the remainder into her pocket, left the building, and walked on toward Union Square. Absorbed in grave reflections, and oppressed by some vague foreboding of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of July a mob assembled, who forced all that went by to put a handful of straw in their hats, upon which the Duc d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde went to the Hotel de Ville and convinced the assembly of the necessity they were under of defending themselves against Mazarin. Upon a trumpeter arriving ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Seneff has for us, too, a particular importance. It gives us, according to some of his biographers, the first glimpse of Claverhouse as a soldier. The story goes that, at an early period of the fight, William with a handful of his men was closely beset by a large body of French troops. In making his way back to his own lines the Prince's horse foundered in some marshy ground, and he would inevitably have been either killed ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... formerly a "tight crawl," but later opened up by heavy blasting, must be traversed before we come to the Snow Ball Room, beautiful with round spots of untinted carbonate of lime, as if fresh soft snow had been thrown by the handful over walls and ceilings, with the additional ornamentation of calcite crystals. In the crevice beyond rises the Church Steeple, diminishing regularly, though roughly, in size, to a height of sixty feet, but not degraded with the little ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... him, at this time, wore an air of deep dejection; yet he bore his woes in silence, doubtless avoiding any concession that should suggest the need of another clarification of his system. Once, when nobody was looking, he cautiously withdrew a handful of scraped birch bark from his pocket and gave it to me, remarking that he thought it was "a little more bracin' ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... enormous masses. No room for them. Only the merest fraction can ever get into action. Where they're coming in is like crowding into the neck of a bottle. Two thirds of them uselessly jammed up behind. A mere handful can hold ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... of all this, for he was sleeping soundly; but the noise of a handful of peas being thrown against the window waked him suddenly. He listened and heard outside at the bottom of the wall, a "scit! scit!" so softly whispered that you might almost think it the cry of some bird. Nevertheless, the good ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... and the orphans brought there. Still, he listened to the eminent preacher unprejudiced, and when the collection was taken, at the close of the meeting, he emptied his pockets of all the money he had, which consisted of "a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... government rested upon a compact—so significant for the development of the American conceptions of individual liberty—was strengthened by the force of historical circumstances. A handful of men went forth to found new communities. They began their work of civilization scattered over wide stretches in the loneliness of the primeval forest.[80] And so they believed that it was possible to live outside of the state, in a condition of nature, ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... circumstances, this company would have been exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me. But whereas I supposed that, like the fairies' pavilion in the "Arabian Nights," it would be but a mere handful, and I find it turn out, like the same elastic pavilion, capable of comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the honour of being your guest; for you will readily believe that the more widely representative of the press in America my entertainers are, the more I must feel the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... the last noise of the complaining snow had died away, and he knew his son was beyond recall. Then his hand crept out in haste to the wood. It alone stood between him and the eternity that yawned in upon him. At last the measure of his life was a handful of fagots. One by one they would go to feed the fire, and just so, step by step, death would creep upon him. When the last stick had surrendered up its heat, the frost would begin to gather strength. First his ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... features denoted Jewish descent, suffered expressions of aversion to break from them; some turning their backs—some gazing up with faces inflamed with the fiercest intensity of hate—while one, less cautious, clenched his fist and hurled after the rider a handful of dust and volleys of heavy Hebrew curses. And so the apostate Josephus passed on, and was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... child. He had taken it in a feeble and helpless infancy. He had given it strength and increased vitality. He brought it up to a vigorous and useful maturity. It was loved by only a handful of students when he gave his name and talents to aid its life: but when he died, a hundred and fifty pupils were its warm suitors, and hundreds of lawyers over the whole union cherished its prosperity as a link in their ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to make Grizzel change her mind," Prudence interposed. "Papa says you might as well explain to a pigling which way you want it to go. Let's help with her chain and get it finished. I'm tired of it." She threw a handful of yellow bloom into Mollie's lap as she spoke, and began herself to link some stalks together in a somewhat dreamy and lazy fashion. Mollie followed her example ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton |
