"Mowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mowing-grass Sweet doth the clover smell, Crushed neath our feet red with the pass Where hell ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... proverb of this, that it is good to see black cows in burnt wood when one attains to the enjoyment of his love. I had a consultation upon this point with my masters the clerks, who for resolution concluded in frisesomorum that there is nothing like to mowing in the summer, and sweeping clean away in water, well garnished with paper, ink, pens, and penknives, of Lyons upon the river of Rhone, dolopym dolopof, tarabin tarabas, tut, prut, pish; for, incontinently after that armour begins ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... mowing in the fields near Sempach. A knight insolently demands lunch for them from the Sempachers: a burgher threatens to break his head and lunch them in a heavy fashion, for the Federates are gathering, and will undoubtedly make him spill his porridge. A cautious old knight, named ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... when seeded or during its existence as a sod, not taking into account any manure spread upon it during the winter previous to its breaking for corn. But the rule is not to break a grass sod when it is fairly heavy. The years of mowing are arranged in the crop-rotation to provide for as many harvests as promise immediate profit. On some land this is two years, and not infrequently it is three. Where farms are difficult of tillage, it is a common practice to let timothy stand until ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... C. Drury whetted a scythe mowing fence corners he was, so far as can be reasonably surmised, thinking about the tariff and the waters of the Red Sea that swallowed up Pharaoh. It may be a coincidence, but it seems like fate, that he was born in the same year as the National Policy; ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... missionaries be secured as seem needed for the world's conversion? If many of those already in the sacred office do not go, it is absolutely certain, that the present generation of heathen must die without the Gospel. The angel of death continues hovering over the dying nations, mowing down his twenty millions a year; and before ministers can be raised up from among the youth and children, will be drawing a stroke at the last man of all that are now heathen. The present generation of ministers must preach the Gospel to the present generation of mankind. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... enjoyed life in Winesburg. He did odd jobs, such as cutting wood for kitchen stoves and mowing the grass before houses. In late May and early June he picked strawberries in the fields. He had time to loaf and he enjoyed loafing. Banker White had given him a cast-off coat which was too large for him, but his grandmother ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... collection of plants) of a clay soil is quite different from that of a sandy soil, and both are different from that of a chalk or of a fen soil. In like manner draining a meadow or manuring it alters its flora: some of the plants disappear and new ones come in. Even an operation like mowing a lawn, if carried on sufficiently regularly, causes a change. In all these cases the plants favoured by the new conditions are enabled to grow rather better than those that are less favoured; thus in the regularly mown ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... soot, or guano, or wood ashes (or all three mixed) before rain. "Slops" are as welcome to parched grass as to half-starved flowers. If the weather is hot and the soil light, it is well occasionally to leave the short clippings of one mowing upon the lawn to ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... He has tramped all over the mountain back of the town after wild strawberries, followed the peasants to the mowing, and gone to many a fete in the village. We are fortunate to have ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... day, and the mowers in their shirt-sleeves, mowing with long scythes, out in the meadow: I was with my mother, as she passed by them, knitting. Outside the fence lay a half-bare rocky hill, behind which my mother had a bench. Above this on a stony heap grew raspberry-bushes, and beside them stood a few small birch-trees. While I was scrambling ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... immediate topic. On horseback, therefore, he was perpetually swinging himself backwards and forwards, now on the horse's ears, then anon on the very rump of the animal,—now hanging both his legs on one side, and now sitting with his face to the tail, moping, mowing, and making a thousand apish gestures, until his palfrey took his freaks so much to heart, as fairly to lay him at his length on the green grass—an incident which greatly amused the Knight, but compelled his companion to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... of their ray florets—have become prime favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much American hay is shipped? Thrifty farmers may decry the importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds through ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... time for such work, anyway," said Dick, "for most of the improvement is planting things, and mowing grass, and like that. But there are other things, 'cause Father said that such a society could make all the people who live here keep their sidewalks clean and not have any ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... had been mowing, appeared at dinner in a grayish blouse and trousers, and a soft white linen cap. He looked even more weather-beaten in complexion than he had in Moscow during the winter, if that were possible. His broad shoulders seemed to preserve in their enhanced stoop a memory of ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... but she fell in love with him to distraction. The King would needs have him come into the coach and take part of the airing. The Cat, quite overjoyed to see his project begin to succeed, marched on before, and, meeting with some countrymen, who were mowing a ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... steadily as we did at any time in the forenoon. But we said less—if that were possible—and made every ounce of energy count. I shall not here attempt to chronicle all the events of the afternoon, how we finished the mowing of the field and how we went over it swiftly and raked the long windrows into cocks, or how, as the evening began to fall, we turned at last wearily toward the house. The day's ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... Everett in convention, General, just as sure as the devil can't freeze his own ice. It's going to be 'Seventy-two all over again. People gone crazy for a change and jumping the wrong way, like grasshoppers in front of a mowing machine. Spinney means the whole rotten thing over again—State treasury looted, tax rate reduced to get a popular hoorah, a floating debt that will make us stagger and keep enterprise out of this State ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... soldiers, and brave men too, or at least they seem brave; but it's discipline does it. They are just like machinery. Once when I was right in the middle of it, they attacked in close formation, and we turned our machine-guns on 'em. Ever seen a mowing machine in a wheat field? ever seen the wheat fall before the knives? Well, that's how they fell. Hundreds upon hundreds; but still they came on. Just as fast as one lot was killed, the others, knowing that they were going to certain death, came on, thinking they would ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... growing plant, a sign of swift desiccation in the sun. Save in a few cases, therefore, the Shrike does not collect the dead and withered remains: it is from the growing plants that he reaps his harvest, mowing them down with his beak and leaving the sheaves to dry in the sun before using them. I caught him one day hopping about and pecking at the twigs of a Biscayan bindweed. He was getting in his hay, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... gained another portion of the city. There the people were huddled together like sheep in a pen. We strove to defend them, but our arms were weak with famine. They fired into us with their pieces, mowing us down like corn before the sickle. Then the Tlascalans were loosed upon us, like fierce hounds upon a defenceless buck, and on this day it is said that there died forty thousand people, for none were spared. On the morrow, it was the last ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... night-owls. The death of that little one, and all that was happening and going on in the house, had made his soul pale from weakness. He understood now Maeterlinck's expression, to sink to the very eyelids in sorrow. When that Intruder, who is ever mowing grass beneath life's windows, came for that little girl, Maryan had the question in mind continually: "Why do the lamps go out?" Now, like Hjalmar in "Princess Malenia," he feels every moment like exclaiming: Someone is weeping here near us! He had moments in which such ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the simple words came back to me! A slave, day after day mowing his owner's cotton and cane, plucking the maize from the savannahs, yet happy and gay! Should I be equal to this spirit? The Honourable George had lost; so I, his pawn, must also submit like a ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... yes or no to that, and no more was said. But three days after, William Privett was mowing with John Chiles in Mr Hardcome's meadow, and in the heat of the day they sat down to their bit o' nunch under a tree, and empty their flagon. Afterwards both of 'em fell asleep as they sat. John Chiles was the first to wake, and, as he looked towards his fellow-mower, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... by John-a-noke and John-a-stile for the baylive [sic] of Withernam, cum privilegio perennitatis; and are to be sold at the sign of the crab-tree-cudgel in Thwackcoat Lane. A sentence. Martin hangs fit for my mowing. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... fished the river for a few hours, I began to think I might as well have stopped in London. The fish would not rise that afternoon, and there was but a beggarly brace in the basket. Some wretch above had been mowing his lawn and casting the contents of the machine into the stream at regular intervals. He got rid of his grass, certainly; but this was no gain to me, whose hooks perseveringly caught the fragments floating by. At last the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... where are you going? I will go with you, if I may. I am going to the meadows, to see them mowing, I am going to ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... the printer answered; 'but from the Court by way of Paris and thence from Cleves.' And to the interested spy he related, accurately enough, that a make of mouthing, mowing, magister of the Latin tongues had come from Paris, having stolen copies of the Cleves envoy's letters in that town, and that these letters said that Cleves was fast inclined to the true Schmalkaldner league of ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... in the open and cross a foot-bridge. "Please— Lieutenant," one of the soldiers protested as the officer with us stepped out, standing erect, "it is not safe!" The officer crouched and hurried across and so did we, but just before we did so, up out of the field where they had been mowing, straight through this gap, came a little company of barefooted peasant women with their bundles of gleanings on their heads, and talking in that singsong monotone of theirs, as detached as so many birds, they went pat-patting ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... his galley alongside of the treasure-ship of the Turkish fleet, a vessel, on account of its importance, doubly manned and armed. Impatient that the Crescent was not lowered, after a few broadsides, he sprang on board the enemy alone, waving an immense two-handed sword—his usual weapon—and mowing a passage right and left through the hostile ranks for the warriors who tardily followed the footsteps of their vehement chief. Mustapha Bey, the treasurer and commander of the ship, fell before his sword, besides many ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... little while. So it is with me. It may be only a few days since I left home; but it seems to me as if the summer must have passed, as if all the flowers were faded, and the leaves fallen from the trees; and yet father may still be mowing his grass, and Mary playing in ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... craft, however, responded gallantly from their upper decks with what cannon they were still able to serve, and a perfect hail of arrows and arquebus bullets swept the English decks, mowing down men ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Benedetto." The Selvas learned from him that Benedetto occupied a cabin belonging to the innkeeper himself, in payment of which he tilled a small piece of ground. Those who wished to see him must wait until eleven o'clock. Now he was mowing the grass. His life was regulated in the following manner: At dawn he went to hear the parish priest say Mass, then he worked until eleven. He ate only bread, herbs, and fruit and drank only water. In the afternoon he worked in ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... to suppose that his farm, or his place, is finished, without it. The man who has a fine lawn, of any extent, about his house, or a park adjoining, should have something to graze it—for he cannot afford to let it lie idle; nor is it worth while, even if he can afford it, to be mowing the grass in it every fortnight during the summer, to make it sightly. Besides this, grass will grow under the trees, and that too thin, and short, for cutting. This ground must, of course, be pastured. Now, will he go and get ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... on her tongue; fearing to face the daylight, she lay with lids heavily closed on a brain which ached in its endeavour to resume the sensations of a few hours ago. The images of those with whom she had talked so cheerfully either eluded her memory, or flitted before her unexpectedly, mopping and mowing, so that her heart was revolted. It is in wakings such as these that Time finds his opportunity to harry youth; every such unwinds from about us one of the veils of illusion, bringing our eyes so much nearer to the horrid ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... at it in my place,' she said softly. 'Their cattle have eaten up my whole meadow, and they are tearing up everything in my kitchen-garden. I was looking this morning; not a cucumber left. To-morrow they will begin mowing the oats; the officer gave me an advance in money, and the rest he paid with note of hand. Is it true that they ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... went into the haying with as much apparent zest as Leonard. They began with red-top clover. The growth had been so heavy that in many places it had "lodged," or fallen, and it had to be cut with scythes. Later on, the mowing-machine would be used in the timothy fields and meadows. Amy, from her open window, watched him as he steadily bent to the work, and she inhaled with pleasure the odors from the bleeding clover, for ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... sped fast, for Father Time's scythe is never idle, and he was gradually, though slowly, mowing down the flowers which had garlanded the sunny hours. The leaves once so green were changing now, assuming their glowing autumn tints, whilst some would fall fluttering to the ground with a gentle sigh of weariness, as the ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... how it shadowed and brought out the slight irregularities of the road, was a cart drawn by a galloping donkey, which came at and passed me with a prodigious clatter as I dragged myself forward. In the cart were two nuns, each with a scythe; they were going out mowing, and were up the first in the village, as Religious always are. Cheered by this happy omen, but not yet heartened, I next met a very old man leading out a horse, and asked him if there was anywhere where I could find coffee and bread at that ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... which Daisy pondered and pondered and could make nothing of. They walked on, Mr. Randolph making observations and giving orders now and then to workmen. Here a man was mowing under the shrubbery; there the gardener was setting out pots of greenhouse flowers; in another place there were holes digging for trees to be planted. Daisy went musing on while her father gave his orders, and when they were again safe out ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... to get quit of this heartless mummer. Fortunately I shall soon be past him. And now, behold! the old dog waxes amorous. Mincing, mowing, empty sleeve on hollow breast, he would fain pose as the most irresistible old hypocrite that ever paced a metropolitan kerb. "Love, you young dogs,'' he seems to croak, "Love is the one thing worth living ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... born to the saddle, if not in it. Nevertheless, I trembled for him, though the creature he had mounted was far from being either vicious or spirited; and then, too, when he tried waltzing, he reminded me, and others I am afraid, of "the man a-mowing." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Aydelots were to give a party in honor of Thaine's birthday, and the farmhouse was dressed for the occasion. Thaine had been busy all day carrying furniture in or out, mowing the front lawn where the old double fireguard once lay, and fixing a seat under the white honeysuckle trellis, "for the afflicted ones," he declared to pretty Jo Bennington. Jo's blush was becoming. Thaine felt sure that he must be in love ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... money. We were laughed at. The peasants grazed their cattle in our pasture and even in our garden, drove our cows and horses into the village and then came and asked for compensation. The whole village used to come into our yard and declare loudly that in mowing we had cut the border of common land which did not belong to us; and as we did not know our boundaries exactly we used to take their word for it and pay a fine. But afterward it appeared that we had been in the right. They used to bark the ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... his tail. Of course he'll snap and bark, but he tries to sweep people over with his tail, just as if he were mowing you off the ground. Hullo! he's moving now. Ready? Give the rope a ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... the most poetical moment of the year. Here we have a big house, a big garden, a lot of servants, and a lot going on, so that you don't see the haymaking; here it all passes unnoticed. There, at the farm, I have a meadow of forty-five acres as flat as my hand. You can see the men mowing from any window you stand at. They are mowing in the meadow, they are mowing in the garden. There are no visitors, no fuss nor hurry either, so that you can't help seeing, feeling, hearing nothing but the haymaking. There is a smell of hay indoors and outdoors. There's the sound of the ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Even then a sensible tenant of his own name, and a distant relative, managed very snugly the farm of Leasowes; but when Shenstone came to live with him, neither house nor grounds were large enough for the joint occupancy of the poet, who was trailing his walks through the middle of the mowing, and of the tenant, who had his beeves to fatten and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Dave in the paddock mowing lucerne. Jack sinking post-holes for a milking-yard close to the house. Joe at intervals stealing behind him to prick him with straws through a rent in the rear of his patched moleskins. Little Bill—in readiness to ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... daily newspaper are the only substitute for this much needed register. It is one of the many painful consequences arising from the overgrowth of cities. In a village where everybody knows everybody else this necessity does not exist. If a farmer wants a couple of extra men for mowing or some more women for binding at harvest time, he runs over in his mind the names of every available person in the parish. Even in a small town there is little difficulty in knowing who wants employment. But in the cities this knowledge ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... fierce Day-star's blazing ball their sight Sears with excess of light; Or through dun sand-clouds the blue scimitar's edge Slopes down like fire from heaven, Mowing them as the thatcher mows ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... tea-houses stood therefore back to back with nothing but the wall between them. Now, one warm summer evening Mr. Jenkins-Smith—Rosamund could remember his name, though she had not thought of him for years—had been busy watering his flowers and mowing his lawn. He had worked really hard, and when the evening began to close in he thought he would go into the tea-house and have a rest. On each side of the curly-legged tea-table of unpolished wood stood a wicker arm-chair. Into one of these chairs Mr. Jenkins-Smith sank with ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... that fact, the beauty and simplicity of the common people. They own a subdued and unostentatious strength, are humble and ignored, are walked upon, unnoticed, rarely thought about and never praised; they are cut off in early youth by mowing machines; yet their pain in fading is unreported, their little sufferings unsung. They cling to earth, and never aspire to climb, but they hold the sweetest dew and nurse the tiniest little winds imaginable. Their patience is divine. They are ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... more hewers of wood, not drawers of water, and the axe swung all around, and new clearings were made and earlier ones broadened, and where fireweed first followed, the burning of the logs there were timothy and clover, though rough the mowing yet, and the State was "settled." Roads through the woods showed wagon-ruts, now well defined; houses were not so far apart, and about them were young orchards. The wild was being subjugated. The tame was growing. The boy was ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under-gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and the sound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing- machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune with the voices of Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of midsummer are the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest fly, and the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... were each of them doing similar work on every part of the line, but the particular one whose work I was able to follow then made a call on a whiz-bang battery, smashing one of the guns when it first stepped upon it, and mowing the gunners down, the rest fleeing as though from the wrath to come. Many batteries and crews were similarly smashed, and then their work being done for the day, they all returned with the exception of one which lay in the German lines for about five hours, due ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... fatigue, and wounds, and thought of nothing but victory and pursuit. Our scanty cavalry followed them up close, dealing destruction around them on every side; and our faithful allies fought like lions, mowing down all before them with the arms which the enemy threw away to facilitate their flight. On the return of our cavalry from the pursuit, we gave humble thanks to God for our unexpected victory and miraculous ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... should be to have the crop put up in heaps, usually called "cocks," but sometimes called "coils," before the second night arrives after the mowing of the clover; and in order to accomplish this, it may be necessary to work on until the shades of evening ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... air is damp and heavy, swallows frequently hawk for insects about cattle and moving herds in the field. My farmer describes how they attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been foggy for two days, and the swallows were very hungry and the insects stupid and inert. When the sound of his machine was heard, the swallows appeared and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of July, I came home from mowing about noon, or a little later, to fetch some cider for all of us, and to eat a morsel of bacon. For mowing was no joke that year, the summer being wonderfully wet (even for our wet country), and the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... land was left "fallow" (uncultivated) in order to restore its fertility, the yield per acre was hardly a fourth as large as now. Farm implements were of the crudest kind; scythes and sickles did the work of mowing machines; plows were made of wood, occasionally shod with iron; and threshing was done with flails. After the grain had been harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on the supposition that the fields were common property. It was useless to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... stretched string, and fast. He had a jump ball, which he evidently worked by putting on a little more steam, and it was the speediest thing I ever saw in the way of a shoot. He had a wide-sweeping outcurve, wide as the blade of a mowing scythe. And he had a drop—an unhittable drop. He did not use it often, for it made his catcher dig too hard into the dirt. But whenever he did I glowed all over. Once or twice he used an underhand motion and sent ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... the door upon the right, and so horrible a smell issued from it that they were driven back from it. The lamp which Simon held forward showed a monkeylike creature mowing and grimacing in the corner, man or woman none could tell, but driven crazy by loneliness and horror. In the other cell was a graybearded man fettered to the wall, looking blankly before him, a body without ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... morning sunlight. "To look up from my sewing and see—la! and 'twas the first time I ever sat down to that rag-rug since I had to drop it and run over and take care of Simon, when they brought me word he was 'most cut to pieces in the mowing machine. My senses! I'm afraid ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... elder. The village elder was at first surprised; but the haycutting had just begun; Gerasim was a first-rate mower, and they put a scythe into his hand on the spot, and he went to mow in his old way, mowing so that the peasants were fairly astounded as they watched his wide sweeping strokes and the heaps ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... where are you going? I'll go with you, if I may. "I'm going to the meadow to see them a mowing; I'm going to help ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... decent, I do not know, but though the Gobbo serves me faithfully, I find him one day replaced by a venerable old man, whom—from his personal resemblance to Time—I should think much better occupied with an hourglass, or engaged with a scythe in mowing me and other mortals down, than in cleaning my boat. But all day long he sits on my riva in the sun, when it shines, gazing fixedly at my boat; and when the day is dark, he lurks about the street, accessible to my slightest boating ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... crows are great scavengers. In the spring they get a great many insects and moths from the ground, and do good work in picking up those large white grubs with red heads that work such destruction in some of our mowing fields. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... crouching at your gun Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun: The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast— No time to think—leave all—and off you go ... To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow, To lovely groves of mango, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... preferring much By beggary from others to extort Wherewith to feed thy never-sated maw. Then answer, thus, Ulysses wise return'd. Forbear, Eurymachus; for were we match'd In work against each other, thou and I, 450 Mowing in spring-time, when the days are long, I with my well-bent sickle in my hand, Thou arm'd with one as keen, for trial sake Of our ability to toil unfed Till night, grass still sufficing for the proof.— Or if, again, it were ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... why. The governors of the city will not succeed in making the Via Appia look busy, or its stripped stones suggestive of a thriving commerce. Again, at the cemetery within the now torn and shattered Aurelian wall by the Porta San Paolo, they are often mowing of buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread," says Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the pyramid. But a couple of active scythes are kept at work there summer and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... fragrant with the odor of new-mown grass and the breath of wild strawberries that had fallen under the sickle, to make the sweet hay sweeter with their crimson juices. The whir of the scythes and the clatter of the mowing machine came from the distant meadows. Field mice and ground sparrows were aware that it probably was all up with their little summer residences, for haying time was at its height, and the Giant, mounted on the Avenging Chariot, would speedily make his appearance, and buttercups and daisies, ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thereupon he woke. Then he arose, and said unto her, "Take the horses and ride on, and keep straight on as thou didst yesterday." And they left the wood, and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand, and mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before them, and the horses bent down and drank of the water. And they went up out of the river by a lofty steep; and there they met a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck, and they saw that there was something in the satchel, but they ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... may be divided,—First, Into those who are able to perform the full work of a man,—that is, what can be done by a person from twenty-one years of age to fifty. I know no husbandry work (mowing hardly excepted) that is not equally within the power of all persons within those ages, the more advanced fully compensating by knack and habit what they lose in activity. Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labor and that of another, from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... as Jim came up, 'I thought you was running. Whoa!' The last remark was addressed to a bored-looking horse attached to the mowing-machine. From the expression on its face, the animal evidently voted the whole process pure foolishness. He pulled up without hesitation, and ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... tide takes them. We have seen that biography vetoes this theory. Will makes circumstances instead of being ruled by them. Alexander Stephens, with a dwarf's body, did a giant's work. With a broken scythe in the race he over-matched those with fine mowing-machines. Will-power, directed by a mind that was often replenished, accomplished ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... but wandered far and wide with his dream of blood-shedding fraternity. Whenever, with his wonted frigidity, he gave utterance to one of those terrible remarks of his which, like a scythe in a meadow, cut away all before him, little less than the necessity of thus mowing down nations, in order to sow the earth afresh with a young and better community, became apparent. At each proposition unfolded by Bache, such as labour rendered agreeable by police regulations, phalansteria organised like barracks, religion transformed into ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a shop-window in Oxford Street—studying, indeed, the print of a patent mowing-machine, but thinking, I fear, more of past scenes in certain well-lit rooms, on slippery floors, than of the velvet lawns at home—when a barouche drew up to the kerb-stone with such trampling of hoofs, such pulling about of horses' mouths, such a jerk and vibration of the whole concern, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... knew that more would be sent. The children had to be kept at home in busy times, and the farmers didn't like to bind themselves to pay the full amount for all that they would send. He himself would sign one and send two. Charley could go all the time; but Jack would have to help about mowing and reaping and threshing, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... countrie people, wafting with a flagge.] And thus marching towards our botes, we espied certaine countrey people on the top of Mount Warwick with a flag wafting vs backe againe and making great noise with cries like the mowing of Buls seeming greatly desirous of conference with vs: whereupon the Generall being therewith better acquainted, answered them againe with the like cries, whereat and with the noise of our trumpets they seemed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Well, we had no money to hire men to do our work, so had to learn to do it ourselves. Consequently I learned to do many things which girls more fortunately situated don't even know have to be done. Among the things I learned to do was the way to run a mowing-machine. It cost me many bitter tears because I got sunburned, and my hands were hard, rough, and stained with machine oil, and I used to wonder how any Prince Charming could overlook all that in any girl he came to. For ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... the Count of Warwick; and Tosti of Davenesse, his kinsman; and Azer Vass, whose father had possessed Lincoln Tower; and Leofwin Moue, [Footnote: Probably the Leofwin who had lands in Bourne.]—that is, the scythe, so called, "because when he was mowing all alone, and twenty country folk set on him with pitchforks and javelins, he slew and wounded almost every one, sweeping his scythe among them as one that moweth"; and Wluncus the Black-face, so called because he once blackened his face with coal, and came unknown among the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... against the fading sky, I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie: With brawny arms they sweep ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... heard a strange cry behind a part of the wall which I had not visited, and hastening thither, I found a miserable object in rags, seated upon a stone. It was a maniac— a man about thirty years of age, and I believe deaf and dumb; there he sat, gibbering and mowing, and distorting his wild features into various dreadful appearances. There wanted nothing but this object to render the scene complete; banditti amongst such melancholy desolation would have been by no means so much in keeping. But the maniac, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Place de la Revolution a gruesome engine they called the guillotine was levelling all things, and fast establishing the reign of absolute equality. But with all the swift mowing of its bloody scythe, not half so fast did it level men as Mademoiselle de Bellecour's thoughts were doing ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... you asked her; wouldn't she? I think it would be a charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow round and pick out the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gold-cups, and daisies Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the hay- makers Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the mowing, And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily; from dawn, till the gloaming Wears its cool star, sweet and welcome to all flaming faces afield now; Heavily weighs the hot season, and drowses the darkening foliage, Drooping ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... attention. Marshall McMahon McNutt, familiarly known as "Peggy" McNutt—because he had once lost a foot in a mowing machine—and who was alleged to be a real estate agent, horse doctor, fancy poultry breeder and palmist, and who also dabbled in the sale of subscription books, life insurance, liniment and watermelons, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... hearts in old Jo-ohn Smithses sho-op," drawled the smith, in his deep voice; "nor steals nobody, nother. We be honest-dealing folk in Albans town, an' makes as good horse-shoes as be forged in all England"—and he went placidly on mowing the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... cannot easily pull up a buttercup root, or that of any flower of the meadows. The stems break first, for they draw their sustenance from a deep stratum of earth. Most of the meadow flowers and blossoms in the mowing grass belong to the beautiful, rather than to the useful, order of plants. They are fitted to weave a garland from rather than to distil into simples and potions. As Gerard says of the butterfly orchis, "there is no great use of these in physicke, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... the population marched in the middle of the street while the other half banked the curbs in screaming, kerchief-waving lines of admiration. And thus has it ever been since that far-distant morning of Eternity, when Time with his scythe let down the bars and went upon his mowing of the meadows of men's existences. Mr. Gwynn, you may be sure, has nothing novel to propose; wherefore at this crisis he gives a dinner, as doubtless did Nero and Moses and Noah and Adam and others of the mighty dead on ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in the air, as old Jeptha Funnel led the donkey in the mowing machine, up and down the wide lawn, pausing every now and then to exchange a few words with ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... manure. Rose-trees will require looking after: give them plenty of rich food, and, when the "perpetual" flowering section has done blooming, cut back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... silver," said she, "if I change it in the village it will be known." I took it back, gave her all the silver I had, owing her some. She said she would meet me again in the evening, unless her husband was working in the same field with her; he was mowing then. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... one sees in this country would astonish a Californian. The plows are patterned very much after those that were used by Boaz and other large farmers in the days of the Patriarchs; the scythes are the exact originals of the old pictures in which Death is represented as mowing down mankind; the hoes, rakes, and shovels would be an ornament to any museum, but are entirely indescribable; and as for the wagons and harnesses—herein lies the superior genius of the Russians over all the races of earth, ancient or modern, for never ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Darlington, one of my neighbours residing on the lake-shore invited me to a mowing and cradling "Bee."* As I had never seen anything of the kind, I accepted the invitation. On my arrival at the farm on the appointed day, I found assembled about forty men and boys. A man with a pail of spring water with a wooden cup floating on the surface in one hand, and a bottle ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... her he strolled away from the shed. Someone had left the lawn mower in the middle of the lawn. With one of his rare impulses of pure virtue he determined to be useful. Also, he rather liked mowing the grass. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... mowing the lawn for a gentleman whose premises joined Tracy Park, and without any explanation told him that he was wanted ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... they came charging at double quick time, but the Phalanx held its fire until the enemy was close upon them, and then poured a deadly volley into the ranks of the exultant foe, stopping them short and mowing them down like grass. The confederates recoiled, and now began a fight such as was always fought when the Southerners became aware that black soldiers were in front of them, and for an hour and a half they fought at close quarters, ceasing only at ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... The mowing-machine always wanted oiling. Barnet turned it under Jacob's window, and it creaked—creaked, and rattled across the lawn and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... interest it was to defraud both the tenant and the parson—the consequence was, that the gentry and the large farmers, to a great extent, evaded the tax, and left the small occupiers to bear nearly the whole burden; they even avoided mowing the meadows in some cases, because then they should pay ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... had neither mowing nor reaping to do that year, I told him that the time was come to build his house; and that for the purpose I would myself invite the neighbourhood to a frolic; that thus he would have a large dwelling erected, and some upland cleared in one day. Mr. ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the meadow, brown and shallow in the midsummer droughts, she saw that the big locust was long past blossoming, but some elderberry bushes, in full bloom, made the air heavy with acrid perfume; the grass, starred by daisies, and with here and there a clump of black-eyed Susans, was ready for mowing, and was tugging at its anchoring roots, blowing, and bending, and rippling in the wind, just as it had that other day!... "And I sat right here, by the tree," she said, "and he lay there—I remember the exact place. And he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... young lady of twenty-one in fancy dress and an opera-cloak, and just as she was coming unaided to an adequate realization of this, she discovered Mr. Pragmar, the wholesale druggist, who lived three gardens away, and who had been mowing his lawn to get an appetite for dinner, standing in a fascinated attitude beside the forgotten lawn-mower and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... to conueie to chast eares, som fond or filthie taulke: And if som Smithfeild Ruffian take vp, som strange going: som new mowing with the mouth: som wrinchyng with the shoulder, som braue prouerbe: som fresh new othe, that is not stale, but will rin round in the mouth: som new disguised garment, or desperate hat, fond in facion, or gaurish in colour, what soeuer it cost, how small soeuer ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... know the boots well, and—avoid them.) "Gad! doctor, you should see that gun on the war- path. Travels as light as a tricycle. And when she begins to talk- -my stars! Click-click-click-click! For all the world like a steam-launch's engine—mowing 'em down all the time. No work for you there. It will be no use you and your satellites progging about with skewers for the bullet. Look at the other side, my boy, and you'll find the beauty has just ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... squadrons—and spurred forward as in a dream. There was no shouting; no war-cry. We rode into the Germans as I have seen wind cut into a forest in the hills—downward into them, for once we had leapt the trench the ground sloped their way. And they went down before us as we never had the chance of mowing them again. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... paths unseen by hawks. But with the grass cut and raked, leaving only naked stubble, he couldn't hide even from old Mr. Crow. It was no wonder that he agreed with Bobby Bobolink's wife. The Bobolink family were so upset by haying that they moved to Cedar Swamp at the very first clatter of the mowing machine. And when Master Meadow Mouse bade them good-by Mrs. Bobolink said to him, "What a shame that Farmer Green should break up a happy home like ours!" And Master Meadow Mouse remarked that it was very careless of ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... money goes to pay the expenses of the agency, some for food, some to pay clerks and blacksmiths, some to buy mowing-machines, wagons, harness, and rakes, and some to buy the cattle which have been issued to ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... the tricks played upon Punch by Fate was on August 11th, 1894 (p. 66, Vol. CVII.), when Sir William Harcourt was represented as an artilleryman mowing down the host of amendments put upon the paper against the Irish Evictions Bill with a Gatling gun labelled "Closure." Closure had, indeed, been promised, and upon that the cartoon was based; but the Tory ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... first days of the hay-harvest, Peer lay out on a sunny hillside with his head resting on a haycock, watching his people at work. The mowing machine was buzzing down by the lake, the spreader at work on the hill-slopes, the horses straining in front, the men sitting behind driving. The whole landscape lay around him breathing summer and fruitfulness. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... strove to capture the guns; which were firing case and shrapnel into them, at a distance of thirty yards, mowing them down in hundreds. Not even would this terrible slaughter have checked them, had not the 2nd Punjaub Cavalry most gallantly charged them, again ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... in a while to look at her with anxious eyes and to ask, "How do you feel now?" Her mother wandered in and out as if she could rest in nothing but in looking at her, and her father had given her one of his glad kisses before he went away to the mowing field. Several village people having heard of the accident through Hollis and the doctor had stopped at the door to inquire with a sympathetic modulation of voice if she were any better. But the safe feeling was the most blessed of all. Towards noon she lay still with her ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... sun rise. To my right were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree. Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed, their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... the village abruptly ended, and the green mowing fields began, stood Mrs. Bickford's house, looking down the road with all its windows, and topped by two prim chimneys that stood up like ears. It was placed with an end to the road, and fronted ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... himself, "you forgot that it is a luxury, an undeserved bliss, if it even comes once to a man. It was not complete, it was not genuine, you say; but prove your right to full, genuine happiness Look round and see who is happy, who enjoys life about you? Look at that peasant going to the mowing; is he contented with his fate?... What! would you care to change places with him? Remember your mother; how infinitely little she asked of life, and what a life fell to her lot. You were only bragging ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... not fear them—none so wretched and poor but that he may venture to entertain the hope of being through them aided and relieved. Public opinion is in America the mightiest organ of justice—shielding no one, from the president to the simplest citizen, and proceeds, mowing, casting down, or grinding to powder all things which oppose it and deserve ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... fields of summer, all your airy grasses Whispering and bowing when the west wind passes,— Happy lark and nestling, hid beneath the mowing, Root sweet music in you, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... determined rather to help him in educating the rest. I went therefore to what was known as the Lamb Fair at Lockerbie, and for the first time in my life took a "fee" for the harvest. On arriving at the field when shearing and mowing began, the farmer asked me to bind a sheaf; when I had done so, he seized it by the band, and it fell to pieces! Instead of disheartening me, however, he gave me a careful lesson how to bind; and the second that I bound did not collapse when shaken, and the third he pitched across the field, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... like. All the while they are on full pay. Now, what manufacturer could endure such conduct as this? Is it not enough to drive a saint out of his patience? Of course the larger farmers who can afford it have the resource of the mowing-machine, but there are hundreds and thousands of farms upon which its sharp rattle has not yet been heard. There is still a great divergence of opinion as to its merits, many maintaining that it does not cut so close to the ground, and therefore wastes ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... is!" panted Carette, pointing the opposite way along the shore. And there, among a tumbled heap of rocks, whose heads just showed above the water, I saw my boat mopping and mowing at me in ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... being that a 'cradle,' in American farming, signifies a machine for cutting down corn wholesale. It is a scythe, longer and wider than that used in mowing hay, combined with an apparatus of 'standard,' 'snaith,' and 'fingers,' by means of which a single workman may level two acres and a half of wheat or ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of time to the organ. "It's a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in the gloom, with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence he sends forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people, while they are mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad over the stormy ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. 'There's the parson at his bells,' they would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase might sink into their hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to some hope or faint ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... if you wish to purchase, a Jew is your agent; and this perhaps is the only country in Europe where Jews cultivate the ground; in passing through Lithuania, we frequently saw them engaged in sowing, reaping, mowing, and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... well known to tell. He runs the "Dillaway Combination Stores" that are all over the country. In them stores you can buy anything and buy it cheap—cheapness is Ebenezer's stronghold and job lots is his sheet anchor. He'll sell you a mowing machine and the grass seed to grow the hay to cut with it. He'll sell you a suit of clothes for two dollars and a quarter, and for ten cents more he'll sell you glue enough to stick it together again after you've worn it out ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the veins of the summer were hot and swollen, and the juices of all the poison-plants and the blood of all the creatures that feed upon them had grown thick and strong,—about the time when the second mowing was in hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were following up the scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass, (falling as the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers dropping as the grass-flowers drop,—with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,—frsh,—for that is the way the sea ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... following the instructions of their officers. This was bound to be of advantage to them, since the fire of the enemy could not cut them down as ripe grain falls before the scythe of the reaper or the revolving knives of the modern mowing machine. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... it is in the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts, of making such mighty and beautiful things happen, is not beautiful, that it has nothing to do with art. They can but watch the machines, the earth black with them, going about everywhere mowing down great nations and rolling under ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... answered, but, as the boat rose and fell on the short sea raised by the first of the breeze, the face kept mopping and mowing ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... effect in the very thickest of the crowd, literally mowing the French down in heaps. At the same instant both parties of the "Scourges" renewed their attack, and this time their rush proved irresistible; there was a momentary attempt at a stand, but our lads were no longer to be denied; ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... mowing-field, and then, climbing over a stone wall, found himself at the edge of the three-acre lot. The captain was superintending one or two hired men, and, as he had his coat off, ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... 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 in hand, now appeared, and stood up between the ranks of the living and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... is objected that the strength of an average rabbit would be unequal to the task, are there not, I would ask, strong rabbits among rabbits, just as there are strong men among men? None of the rabbits of my acquaintance could, I admit, overturn a mowing-machine; but then neither could I myself balance a coach-and-four upon my neck, yet I have seen men upon the stage who could and did. The first object of the efficient trainer would be, of course, to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... with the romance of sin. If Browning once or twice gives his fantasy play, it is in describing the black cave of a palace at Arezzo into which the white Pompilia is borne, the cave and its denizens—the "gaunt gray nightmare" of a mother, mopping and mowing in the dusk, the brothers, "two obscure goblin creatures, fox-faced this, cat-clawed the other," with Guido himself as the main monster. Yet the Count, short of stature, "hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard" is not a monster but a man; possessed of intellectual ability and a ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... treading lightly, Scattergood went about acquiring what he needed. His method was not direct approach. He went to the owners of that land with proffers to sell, not to buy. To Landers, who owned the marsh on both shores of the river, he tried to sell the newest development in mowing machines, and his manner of doing so was to hitch to the newly arrived machine, haul it to Landers's meadow—where the owner was haying—drag it ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... case of transfixion of the chest in a youth of eighteen. After mowing and while carrying his scythe home, the patient accidentally fell on the blade; the point passed under the right axilla, between the 3d and 4th right ribs, horizontally through the chest, and came out through corresponding ribs of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... willow leaves above. The silence would become oppressive were it not for an indistinct murmur from the working world, which forms a fitful background to the prevailing stillness; the distant roar of a train as it rushes on its journey to the palpitating heart of London, the faint sound of a mowing machine in the meadows, or the crack of a whip up the tow-path as a barge moves up to the primitive lock, add a touch of human interest without disturbing the sense of restfulness from the eager hurry of ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... wide elm-tops the drifting shadow of the cloud which the wind brings is caught for a moment. Pushing aside the stiff ranks of the wheat with both arms, the air reaches the sun-parched earth. It walks among the mowing-grass like a farmer feeling the crop with his hand one side, and opening it with his walking-stick the other. It rolls the wavelets carelessly as marbles to the shore; the red cattle redden the pool and stand in their ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... glory, Not on god or angel story Loyal poet-fancy dwells! Not on streams for rich men flowing, Not on fields for rich men's mowing,— Graves he sees, of graves he tells. Pain, oppression, woe eternal, Open heart-wounds deep, diurnal, Nothing comforts or allays; O'er God's Acre in each nation Sings he songs of tribulation Tunes ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... beneath, which had tumbled out and died. Also there were many crow-blackbirds hopping about in the dry fields, and the upland plover were breeding close by the light-house. The keeper had once cut off one's wing while mowing, as she sat on her eggs there. This is also a favorite resort for gunners in the fall to shoot the golden plover. As around the shores of a pond are seen devil's-needles, butterflies, etc., so here, to my surprise, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... people and middle-aged people who go out of this life to one aged person, for the simple reason that there are not many aged people to leave life? The aged seem to stand around like stalks—separate stalks of wheat at the corner of the field; but when death goes a-mowing, he likes to go down amid the thick of the harvest. What is more to the point: a man's going out of this world is never in the way he expects—it is never at the time he expects. The moment of leaving this world is always a surprise. If you expect to go in the winter, it may ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the surroundings are still wild and rural, in keeping with nature free and unshackled, and have a faint flavour of German parks where the mowing-machine is not always at work, but a sweet math of wild flowers three or four feet high is supposed to cheat the dweller in courtly palaces into a belief that he too is at liberty to breathe the fresh air without thought or care, and roam where he will, free from ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... instrument not unlike a cleek or other golf-stick. This he slowly swung round his head, and each time it touched the ground cleared about three inches of grass. The thing looked too absurd. We all wanted to get out and ask him how long he expected to be mowing that strip of grass ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... ploughing, or even the mowing, of the ground tends to extirpate alike the earth-bee and the fairy. In various places, the fairies are described as having been seen on some particular occasion to gather together and take a formal farewell of the district, when it had become, from ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... was engaged 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 ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... business to leave his back gate open, while Robinson declares that that brute is becoming a damned nuisance, and so provokes Smith to express a hope that now perhaps that grass of Robinson's won't want so much godless mowing on Sunday morning: if two neighbours, in short, have a difference of opinion they both know perfectly well that the rights of the argument can never be decided by a free fight in the middle of the road, even if one of ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... in the mowing Season, when he came home, after a fifteen hours' spell of hard work, in worse humor than usual, and was swearing, cursing and execrating all women and their laziness, because his soup was not yet ready for him, his ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Prospect, but when it was realised that something had occurred, they were stopped, and marched back again. Bit by bit we managed to gather the truth. At first we heard that our men had made a most gallant resistance on the hill, mowing down the advancing enemy by hundreds, till at last, their ammunition failing, they fought with their bayonets, using stones and meat tins as missiles. I wish that our subsequent information had been to the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... not of the kind that could be dispersed by a squadron of cavalry. A fierce charge was made on his left wing, which was cut to pieces by the daring warriors of Caupolican. The right wing was also vigorously attacked. But the artillery and musketry of the Spaniards were mowing down the ranks of the Araucanians, whose rude war-clubs and spears were ill-fitted to cope with those death-dealing weapons. Driven back, and hundreds of them falling, they returned with heroic courage three times to the assault. But at length the slaughter ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... would be obliged to wait outside, having come too late to exhibit their perfections to advantage. However, as I went in fancy up the long aisles, and saw, to the right and the left, the admiring crowds of worshippers, grimacing, and mowing, and prostrating themselves, with a folly which might lead one reasonably to suppose, that, miserable as were the gods, they were gods indeed compared with such worshippers, I imagined my worthy friend Fellowes in the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... 'model-farming' humbug about all that English passion for neatness he had read of in public journals, and as our fathers—better gentlemen, as he called them, and more hospitable fellows than any of us—had got on without steam-mowing and threshing, and bone-crushing, he thought we might farm our properties without being ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Nothing could be more lively than the impression which I received of this imaginary scene. I could paint, even at this moment, the mute and courageous submission expressed in Diana's features—the wild and distorted faces of the executioners, who crowded around us with "mopping and mowing;" grimaces ever changing, and each more hideous than that which preceded. I saw the rigid and inflexible fanaticism painted in the face of the father—I saw him lift the fatal match—the deadly signal exploded—It was repeated again and again and again, in rival ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... so heavy," continued uncle Nathan, with a sigh, "as I am now-a-days, but she always loved to wait on me just as you do; and when I came into the stoop, hot days in summer, tired with mowing or planting, away she would run after a pitcher of cool drink, holding it between her two little hands, and laughing till the dimples swarmed about her mouth like lady-bugs around a rose. I do really think, Mary Fuller, that our sister Anna was ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a sure key to wealth for any agriculturist. It gives the modes of preparation, and the effects of all kinds of manures; the origin, texture, divisions, and description of every variety of soil; the economy of sowing, reaping, and mowing, irrigation, and draining; cultivation of the grasses, clovers, grains, and roots; Southern and miscellaneous products, as cotton, hemp, flax, the sugar cane, rice, tobacco, hops, madder, woad, &c.; the rearing of fruit—apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, &c.; farm buildings, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... their ale, the afternoon was getting on, and the constable rose to go back to his work; while old Simon declared his intention of going down to the hay-field, to see how the mowing was getting on. He was sure that the hay would never be made properly, now that he couldn't be about as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... position—by the river-side or on the mountain-top it seems equally at home, though it somewhat varies according to its situation, but its most chosen habitat seems to be a well-kept lawn. There it luxuriates, and defies the scythe and the mowing machine. It has been asserted that it disappears when the ground is fed by sheep, and again appears when the sheep are removed, but this requires confirmation. Yet it does not lend itself readily to gardening purposes. It is ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... he was no novice at farm work, and he won Jake's approval by the quick and efficient way he was able to milk. But it was when once out in the field he showed what he could do. Though not hardened to the work, he exhibited his knowledge of mowing with the scythe or the machine, as well as raking and putting up the hay in bunches ready to be hauled in ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... that I have been mowing down a great deal more, Edward, and it is almost ready to carry away. Poor Billy has had hard work of it, I assure you, since he came back, with ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... indeed, a warm July day—a fine hay day—and the people of Mill Crossing are taking advantage of the occasion. They are turned out en masse. Mowing machines are called into active service, and the new inventions—reapers, binders, etc.—are also at hand. The farmers of this favored locality are pretty well to do, and conspicuous among the number is our friend ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... and was suddenly reminded that for a long time he had been thinking of getting a new reaper. Gazing fondly at his good-looking son, he pictured him sitting on a fine, red-painted reaper, cracking his whip over the horses, and mowing down the thick, waving grass, as a war hero mows down his enemies. And as he stepped into the office he seemed to hear the clicking noise of the reaper, the soft swish of falling grass and the shrill chirp and light flutter of frightened birds ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof |
