"Raking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old grandfathers and aunts you brag of; a set of poor souls you won't let rest in their coffins; mere clay and dirt! fine things to be proud of! a parcel of old mouldy rubbish quite departed this life! raking up bones and dust, nobody knows for what! ought to be ashamed; who cares for dead carcases? nothing but [carrion]. My little Tom's worth forty ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... dressed, as even Mercier's wife could not have dressed, nor yet his mistress. The black satin coat and gown that clung to her body like a sheath showed flawless, though they streamed with rain; the lace at her throat, the black velvet hat with the raking plume that had once been yellow, the design and quality of the flat bag slung on her arm were details that belonged (and Ransome knew it) to a world that was not his nor Mercier's either. And as he took them in he conceived from them ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... communicates the defect to his personages. His Julie argues and descants for twenty successive pages on dueling, on love, on duty, with a logical completeness, a talent and phrases that would do honor to an academical moralist. Commonplace exists everywhere, general themes, a raking fire of abstractions and arguments, that is to say, truths more or less empty and paradoxes more or less hollow. The smallest detail of fact, an anecdote, a trait of habit, would suit us much better, and hence we of to day prefer the precise eloquence of objects to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... for H. Fielding's death, not only as I shall read no more of his writings, but I believe he lost more than others, as no man enjoyed life more than he did, though few had less reason to do so, the highest of his preferment being raking in the lowest sinks of vice and misery. I should think it a nobler and less nauseous employment to be one of the staff-officers that conduct the nocturnal weddings. His happy constitution (even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it) made him forget everything ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... most is his own dignity," said Sir James. "Of course I care the more because of the family. But he's getting on in life now, and I don't like to think of his exposing himself. They will be raking ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the war was to be carried on in the newly conquered element. When the infantry saw an occasional box-kite-looking machine drifting slowly over the lines, struggling to keep itself aloft, how many, I wonder, foresaw that in a few months these machines would be swooping down on them like swallows, raking them with machine guns by day and bombing them by night? How many artillery officers laughed at the suggestion that a day was coming when thousands of great guns would be directed from the air? Yet in a few short ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... ordered the few cavalrymen who accompanied me to make a detour to the right and rear, and ascertain, if possible, who were in our front. The videttes soon after reported the enemy advancing, with a squadron of cavalry in the lead, and I put my artillery in position to give them a raking fire when they should reach a bend of the road. At this moment when life and death seemed to hang in the balance, and when we supposed we were in the presence of a very considerable, if not an overwhelming, force of the enemy, a half-grown hog emerged ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... settlement of the Dutch, the fort, for the protection of the little colony, was built at some distance from the extreme edge of the island, which was then rocky and swampy, but near enough to it to sweep the point with a raking fire. This fort occupied the site of the present Bowling Green. In 1658 Governor Stuyvesant erected a fine mansion, afterwards known as "The Whitehall," in the street now called by that name, but "Capsey Rocks," as the southern point of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that please to understand, Come listen to my story; To see Death with his raking brand Mongst such an auditory; Regarding neither Cardinall's might, Nor yet the rugged face of Henry the eight. ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... the boy was particularly low. It was scowling, squally weather. Huge broken companies of cloud sailed swiftly overhead; raking gleams of sunlight swept the village, and were followed by intervals of darkness and white, flying rain. At times the wind lifted up its voice and bellowed. The trees were all scourging themselves along the meadows, the last leaves flying ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "They're raking the whole city for this Englishman," answered the other man. "Vogel, who works for Section Seven, you know the man I mean, was telling me. They've done every hotel in Berlin and the suburbs, but they haven't found him. They raided Bauer's in the Favoriten-Strasse last ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... as Ralph was raking the gravel-walks in the garden, his employer's daughter, a young lady of seventeen, came out and spoke to him. His culture and refinement of manner struck her with wonder, and she asked him to tell ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... for ten minutes I had a game as lively as I had experienced with the coon. How he did jolt me! But I sat him. Then, when all his other tricks had failed, he started in a run for the center post of the corral, with the intention of raking me off. But it was his side that struck the post; my knee was on top of the saddle, and when the rebound knocked him away from the post it was not a second until I was back in the saddle; and then I assumed the offensive and drove the rowels into ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... broad-leafed sunhat, replied. Seeing a stranger, she dropped a graceful "courtesy,"—which is one of the lost arts now-a-days,—and put up her hand to brush back from her face her wealth of clustering curls, somewhat dishevelled by the exercise of raking ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... the stream came a good-sized log with raking, shortened limbs. Under its cover the fish sallied forth a hundred strong, strenuous in bravery and resolution. The log swept past me, making a terrible breach in our weir, through which many fish shot. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... for the county or for Dollington, as you know, and can do better for him then; and I rely on you, one way or another, to make him undertake it. And now for myself: I think my vexation is very near ended. I have not fired a gun yet, and they little think what a raking broadside I'll give them. Any of the county people you meet, tell them I'm making a little excursion on the Continent; and if they go to particularise, you may say the places I have been at. Don't let anyone know more. I wish there was any way of stopping that old she'—(it ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... moment her thoughts drifted back, and perhaps for the first time she fully realised what her going then had meant to the little sister upon whose shoulders she had left the heavy burden. But she banished these unpleasant memories with a shrug. "O well, all that's past and gone—no use in raking it ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... which will repay consideration has been aptly termed "muck-raking." Mr. Roosevelt took the word from Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" to describe the irresponsible and slanderous attacks upon public officials, which were made merely for the purpose of selling the wares of penny-a-liners. To eliminate corporations from politics and to bring them under government ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... not alone the results of my stewardship that give me joy. Its very processes are good. Delight in the earth is a primitive instinct. Digging is naturally pleasant, hoeing is pleasant, raking is pleasant, and then there is the weeding. For I am not the only one who sows seeds in my garden. One of my friends remarked cheerfully that he had planted twenty-seven different vegetables in his garden, ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... of corn varied considerably, according to the season, from 4 shillings to 8 shillings a bushel, the average rate 5 to 6 shillings. Half a bushel of corn was the equivalent of a week's board. The ordinary rate of farm wages was 2s. a day except for such work as mowing, framing, hoeing corn, and raking hay, for which the rate was 2s. 6d. a day. The wages of a woman servant were 10s. a month and as all articles of clothing were very dear compared with modern prices, they became excessively so when the rate of wages was taken into account. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... dark now, and the schooner lay on it, a black, a lonely, and a graceful form, with the slender masts darting upwards from it in two frail and raking lines. The shadows of the evening crept up the trees, crept up from bough to bough, till at last the long sunbeams coursing from the western horizon skimmed lightly over the topmost branches, then flew upwards amongst the piled-up clouds, giving them a sombre and fiery aspect in ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... mare's nest. But that dark mountain mass changed my outlook. I began to have a queer instinct that that was the place, that something might be concealed there, something pretty damnable. I remember I sat on a top for half an hour raking the hills with my glasses. I made out ugly precipices, and glens which lost themselves in primeval blackness. When the sun caught them—for it was a gleamy day—it brought out no colours, only degrees of shade. No mountains I had ever seen—not the Drakensberg ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... closed by a double set of ancient iron-clamped doors. As the few exterior windows of the farm-house are grated heavily, and as from each of the rear corners of the square there projects a crusty tourelle from which a raking fire could be kept up along the walls, the place has quite the air of a testy little fortress—and a fortress it was meant to be when it was built three hundred years and more ago (the date, 1561, is carved on the keystone ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... before him on the table in a heap of gold and bank-notes. His eyes kept flashing, and his hands shaking; yet all the while he staked without any sort of calculation—just what came to his hand, as he kept winning and winning, and raking and raking in his gains. Around him lacqueys fussed—placing chairs just behind where he was standing—and clearing the spectators from his vicinity, so that he should have more room, and not be crowded—the whole done, of course, in expectation of ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... school they looked in the big yard of Mr. Porter who lived next door. He was raking up some dried leaves and grass and a small, red-haired boy was ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... don't mind it, so long as the patients come to me. I can very well afford to send him one now and then. The fact is, the Irish must feel their medicine. It's quite often that a raking dose will cure 'em, not because it's the right thing, but because it takes their imagination with it. The Irish imagination goes with Bagford and against me; and the wrong medicine with the imagination is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the youngsters are absorbed in what must be a second cousin to "craps." Every child has some sort of tin can filled with small spotted seashells. They throw these like dice; they slap their hands together with the raking gesture of the crap-player, and utter ejaculations in which numeral adjectives predominate, and which must be similar to "lucky six" ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... would not let him go. So he went in, and played away the three groschen also. Meanwhile St. Peter and the Lord were waiting, and as he was so long in coming, they set out to meet him. When Gambling Hansel came, however, he pretended that the money had fallen into the gutter, and kept raking about in it all the while to find it, but our Lord already knew that he had lost it in play. St. Peter again gave him three groschen, and now he did not allow himself to be led away once more, but fetched ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... once a like pleasure in raking over an Indian shell-heap with Wyman. The quiet, amused amazement of the native who plied the spade for us was an odd contrast to Wyman's mood of deep interest and serious occupation. He had a boy's pleasure in the quest, and again ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... famous builder of boats, was rigged in Corsica by another good man, and was described on her papers as a 'tartane' of sixty tons. In reality, she was a true balancelle, with two short masts raking forward and two curved yards, each as long as her hull; a true child of the Latin lake, with a spread of two enormous sails resembling the pointed wings on a sea-bird's slender body, and herself, like a bird indeed, skimming rather than ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... stove makes an excellent bath on a small scale. As a general rule, every row of huts has one or more baths attached to it, which the inhabitants support by subscription; but when this is not the case, the peasant, after carefully raking out the ashes, creeps into the hot peitchka, and is soon bathed in his own perspiration. He would infallibly be baked alive but for the pailfuls of water with which he soon begins to cool his heated skin. Thanks, however, to this precaution, he issues from the fiery furnace uninjured, and, it ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... raking out one looking of a delicate golden-brown, but it was too hot to hold for a time; and Tim held it on a pointed stick, looking at the morsel with his brow ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... the iron ramrods and, raking some of the embers from the fire, placed it in them, about a foot from one end; then he directed the others to fan the embers, until they raised them almost to white heat. Taking the ramrod out, he laid the edge of one of their knives upon it and, striking its back ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... a time a couple of folks who had a son called Halvor. Ever since he had been a little boy he had been unwilling to do any work, and had just sat raking about among the ashes. His parents sent him away to learn several things, but Halvor stayed nowhere, for when he had been gone two or three days he always ran away from his master, hurried off home, and sat down in the chimney corner to ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... plain where the recent battle of the Springs had been fought. Here, as they galloped across the field, which was still strewn with the bodies of the slain, they came upon the blackened ruins of a hut, around which an old hag was moving, actively engaged, apparently, in raking among the ashes with a forked stick for anything that she could ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be involved in a raking over of the affairs of Murray Davenport. To me it would be an unhappy business, I do admit. The man is ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... record of an unsuccessful attempt to make a breathing hole." Around these breathing holes we frequently found fragments of clam-shells, sections of crinoids and sea-anemones. It is evident that after raking the bottom with his tusks and filling his mouth with food, the walrus separates the food he desires to retain and rejects on his way up and at the surface such articles as he has picked up in haste and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... knees sank Hannah, raking the hot embers into a heap, and at last she bent her grey head almost to the ground. Lifting something on the end of the spade, she uttered ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to be held there this morning, for slaves were raking the sand smooth, and hanging flowers about a dais, which was no doubt intended for Caesar. Was it to be her fate to see the dreadful man from the place where she was hiding from him? Her heart began to beat ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cheerful and inviting; a stove that was the life and soul of the whole room, a stove to draw up to and talk to; no, never was there such a stove! There was hardly a minute of the day he was not fussing with it, raking it down, turning the damper off and on, opening and shutting the door, filling it with coal, putting the blower on and then taking it off again, sweeping away the ashes with a little brass-handled broom, or studying the pictures upon the tiles: the "Punishment of Caliban and His Associates," "Romeo ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... loosened from the soil, they are raked in little heaps and burned. In the field just back of this is a circle of these bonfires, sending up their columns of smoke towards the sky. A young woman is busy raking together the piles. In the distance she looks like a priestess of ancient times presiding at some mystic rites of fire worship. Far beyond, a shapely tree is outlined ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... "the soul in me is like a toy skiff, tossing in the ripples of a duck pond an' mayhap stranding on a reed or lily. An' then," he added, with kindling eye and voice, "she is a great ship, her sails league long an' high, her masthead raking the stars, her ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... fence where old Etienne was everlastingly raking. The young man had not seen much of the old rack-tender for some weeks, and now he greeted Etienne rather curtly as he passed on his way to the tree. But ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... this time without the chisel, and using the hammer with so much effect that they could hear the pieces of rock he chipped off rattling down inside, till at the end of about half an hour he ceased striking, and began raking out the bits ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... none of them spoke. Several men raking hay in a nearby field waved to them, as people do to scouts, and the three waved their arms in answer, but there was not much enthusiasm in their act. The birds chirped among the bordering trees. A nimble little chipmunk paused upon a stone wall, looked ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... exacting as to keep her thoughts and glance from wandering. Looking through the wide open back doors, the picture which she saw was a section of the perfect lawn that encircled the house for an acre around, and from which Hiram was slowly raking the leaves cast from a clump of tall magnolias. Beneath the spreading shade of an umbrella-China tree, lay the burly Hector, but half awake to the possible nearness of tramps; and Betsy, a piece ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... then gave place to excited talk and bustle. The men stood in crews at the four guns; but most of the jackies were mustered on the forecastle, ready to board. All expected a desperate resistance. Great was their surprise, then, when they were permitted to take a raking position under the stern of the "Hope," and to board her without a shot being fired. But as Mugford, at the head of the boarders, clambered over the taffrail, he heard the captain of the "Hope" order the men to cut the topsail halliards and ties, with the intention of so crippling the ship ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of rails on an upland green With a good take-off and a landing sound, Six fences grim as were ever seen, And it's there I would be with fox and hound. Oh, that was a country free and fair For the raking stride of ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... about his, I'll lend him a safety-pin from my shirtwaist," drawled Rupert, lounging up, hooking his own mask. "I ain't muck-raking, but he broke his rear axle at Indianapolis, last month, and ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... slaves—which were not of so great market-value—he asks, "Are there not many that in such a case had rather save Jack the horse than Jockey the keeper?" Of widows' evil speaking he observes, "Foolish is their project who, by raking up bad savours against their former husbands, think thereby to perfume their bed for a second marriage." Of celibacy he says, "If Christians be forced to run races for their lives, the unmarried have the advantage of being lighter ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... are mixed with each other; but in a quiet corner of one of the sheds you will find a boy with a heap of these filings before him, separating the brass from the iron by means of a magnet. Only imagine a boy of fourteen or fifteen doing nothing all day long except raking a magnet through a heap of black and yellow dust, and brushing into a separate heap the iron filings off his magnet! You will also see a series of three iron rollers working on each other, by means of which plate iron can be twisted into any given form; a mighty "punch" ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... looked at the cigarettes, not at her. His face had the blunt voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat. She kept him standing for some moments impassively. Then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking one out at last. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... to mount at once by a path through hay-fields. How could old Stormer stay in bed on such a morning! The peasant girls in their blue linen skirts were already gathering into bundles what the men had scythed. One, raking at the edge of a field, paused and shyly nodded to them. She had the face of a Madonna, very calm and grave and sweet, with delicate arched brows—a face it was pure pleasure to see. The boy looked back at her. Everything ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... capital in the past year," that the financier runs the slightest risk. It may be that a purchaser would find it so difficult to prove the falsity of any of the statements upon which he had relied in purchasing the stock that the vendor would practically be immune, but in these days of muck- raking and of an hysterical public conscience prosecutors sometimes go to the most absurd lengths and spend ridiculous sums of money out of the county treasuries to send ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... toward the office, expecting to see Forester come out. He thought Forester would want to know whether he went a-fishing or not. But he did not come. Marco spent some time in the garden with James, who was at work there raking over the ground, and gathering in such things as might be hurt by any sudden frost. Marco worked with him for some time, and endeavored to converse with him, but he did not find him very communicative, and at last he went into the house and sat ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... astonished weeklies, a discharge of point-blank blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some of the heavy quarterlies loaded up the old pieces of ordnance, that had not been charged in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and junk-bottles, and poured in raking broadsides. The effect on the island was something tremendous: it shook and trembled, and was almost hidden in the smoke of the conflict. What the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon to determine. If any ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... At the present moment she was attending to three beside the darning, and had chosen her position with an eye to their accomplishment. Here, where the Virginia creepers shaded her from the afternoon sun, she was near enough to the wall enclosing the backyard to mark that the Saturday raking and tidying of that battleground of the young Gordons suffered no serious interruption. Also, she could watch that little Jamie, tumbling about the grass in front of her, did not stray away to the pond. And, best of all, she commanded a view of the lane leading up ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... minutes at a time, and he gave his imitation of a dromedary almost continuously. These phenomena could be intensified in picturesqueness, the boys discovered, by rocking the cage a little, tapping it with a hammer, or raking the bars with a stick. Altogether, Gipsy was having a ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Strawberry Hill chapel. Here was a greenhouse unaltered since the days of George II. Everywhere, though everything was antique, there were signs of punctilious care, and morning by morning a bevy of female villagers would be raking the gravel paths and turning them into weedless silver. The front door, heavy with nails, would be opened by an aged footman, his cheeks pink like an apple, and his white silk stockings and his livery always faultless. Within were old Turkey carpets, glossy, but not worn ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the little kraal where the goats were kept, and pulled away the bush which served as a gate, thus leaving the entrance open. He then divested himself of every article of clothing and ornament, and placed them in the hut. The fire had gone out, but, after raking about deep down in the pile of ashes, he found a few embers still alight. These he placed carefully on a bent wisp of dry grass which he pulled out of the roof, and which blazed up in a few seconds. ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... a long wig and a sword, and a set of companions suitable; and this wig and sword, being left at proper and convenient places, are put on at night after the shop is shut, or when they can slip out to go a-raking in, and when they never fail of company ready to lead them into all manner of wickedness and debauchery; and from this cause it is principally that so many apprentices are ruined, and run away from their masters before they come out of their times—more, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... barbette battery (Grivel's very forcible admission has been quoted), on a low site, and to which vessels can approach within 300 or 400 yards, is utterly inadmissible. It may safely be said, that in nine cases out of ten, the sites which furnish the efficient raking and cross fires upon the channels, are exactly of this character; and indeed it very often happens that there ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... confusion which follows the doings of men, to lay low their green protecting walls, and expose their cherished treasures to the greed or the cruelty of their worst enemies! Not less their surprise and grief when, after the uproar of cutting, raking and carrying away their only screen, there entered the silent but watchful spies, who planted their stools in plain sight, to take note of ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... composed of a serjeant and a small number of men. As soon as the serjeant sees what number of ships a fleet consists of, he hoists a flag, and fires so many pieces of cannon as there are ships in sight, to give notice to the commandant at the Cape. They are here employed in making train-oil, and in raking oyster-shells to burn into lime. Into this island, malefactors are generally banished from the Cape, and from most parts of India. Here, besides the punishment of being separated from all their friends, they are kept to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... this country again." It was an American fellow-passenger, one of the tall, thin type of American, with pale blue eyes of an idealistic, disappointed expression, and an Indian profile. The other half of America, personated by a small, bumptious, eager, brown-faced man, with a cigar raking at an irritating angle from the corner of his mouth, joined in with, "Wal! I should smile, I guess this is the Land of Freedom, anyway." The tall man swung round: "Freedom! do you call it a free land, where—" He gave instances of the power of the dollar. The other man kept up the argument by spitting ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... exercised, and counsel given, to beware of the danger of going to extremes. The race over the meadows for the cows; hoeing in the garden or field; sawing or cutting wood for the fire; riding the horse to mill; a walk to the village post-office; holding plow; raking hay; the most of which are charming things to do, and just what boys should do to become ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... movement and hurry everywhere. Already the world ran loose and soft in colour. Birds, just awake, were singing in the trees below. Several passed swiftly overhead, raking the sky with a whirring rush of wings. Everybody was asking questions, urging return, yet lingering as long as possible, each according to his courage. To be caught 'out' by the sun meant waking with a sudden start that made ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... having been duly attended to, it is no less important to provide for regular and constant care. Any rutting that comes of heavy traffic in bad weather should be obliterated either by raking, or, better still, by filling the ruts with gravel or ashes. If such work is attended to immediately on the occasion for it arising, the amount of labor required will be very slight; for it is especially ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... of sojourn, as a mark for those of his tribe who may come upon his track. 'Patteran,' it may be remarked, is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own 'path;' and the least philological raking among the chaff of the Gipsy dialect will show their secret argot to be, as Mr. Leland calls it, 'a curious old tongue, not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point of age an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.' No ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... their masses in the open fields behind a swell of ground, and after some heavy artillery firing, advanced in parallel lines against the Fifteenth Corps, expecting to catch it in air; but Sherman was prepared for this very contingency; our troops were expecting this attack and met it with a raking fire of musketry, which thinning the ranks of the enemy, compelled him to withdraw in confusion. After this, at some points, six or seven successive efforts were made to carry our works, but all of ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... would be too deep for us to wade, and we were obliged to put our weapons on the raft and swim. The Indians followed us pretty close, and were continually watching for an opportunity to get a good range and give us a raking fire. Covering ourselves by keeping well under the bank, we pushed ahead as rapidly as possible, and made pretty good progress, the night finding us still on the way and our ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... whole tone of the administration. He was once or twice unkindly attacked by Englishmen who hated or mistrusted the propagation of Christianity. One gentleman even wrote a letter in a newspaper calling a missionary a disgrace to any nation, and raking up stories of the malpractices of heathens who had been preached to without being converted, which were laid to the charge of the actual Christians; but imputations like these did not meet with faith from any one whose good opinion was of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a great raking pull here, and a mighty sweep there, kneeling now, and now standing with one foot braced against the side for leverage, the boy managed in some marvellous way to keep his cockleshell in midstream. The girl ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... is so a shot from the enemy, no matter what the angle, striking in a trench, will simply go a few feet, and plow into the bank of earth ahead of it. Formerly, a single shot, raking the length of a portion of a trench, would cost hundreds of men. Now it seldom means a loss of more than ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... struggled above the narrow text and the monotonous cadence with a cry of individual longing, but was borne down by the dull, trampling precision of the others' formal chant. This and a certain muffled raking of the stove by the sexton brought the temperature down still lower. A sermon, in keeping with the previous performance, in which the chill east wind of doctrine was not tempered to any shorn lamb within that dreary fold, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... beyond par in fitness and in condition, and there were magnificent animals among them. Bay Regent was a huge, raking chestnut, upwards of sixteen hands, and enormously powerful, with very fine shoulders, and an all-over-like-going head; he belonged to a Colonel in the Rifles, but was to be ridden by Jimmy Delmar of the 10th Lancers, whose colours were ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... from the spot where I had now killed it. The superior size of this animal to the remainder of the herd had upon both occasions attracted my special attention, hence the fact of selection, but I was surprised that any animal should have recovered from such a raking shot. The cavity of the body abounded with hairy worms about 2 inches in length. These had escaped from the stomach through the two apertures made by the bullet; and upon an examination of the contents, I found a great number of the same parasites crawling among the food, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... London. I know them all, or nearly all, and of course you'll come across them. But unless you can hold your tongue, don't come to me. Julie Dalrymple has disappeared, and I'll be no party to her resurrection. If Julie Le Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there shall be no raking up of scandals much better left in their graves. If you haven't got a proper parentage, consistently thought out, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... while it rolled its quid, Brave with adventure and doubloons and crime, Rum and the Ebony Trade: when, time on time, Real Pirates, right Sea-Highwaymen, could mock The carrion strung at EXECUTION DOCK; And the trim Slaver, with her raking rig, Her cloud of sails, her spars superb and trig, Held, in a villainous ecstasy of gain, Her musky course from BENIN to the MAIN, And back again for niggers: When, in fine, Some thought that EDEN bloomed across the Line, And some, like COWPER'S ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... is king," says Farmer John, "And Fashion is queen, and it's very queer To see how sometimes when the man Is raking and scraping all he can, The wife spends, every year, Enough you would think for a score of wifes To keep them in luxury all their lives! The town is a perfect Babylon To a quiet chat," said Farmer ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... life to her eyes. How free it all was, how unrestrained, how suggestive of liberty and of a boundless kingdom! And then upon it all the excitements of the gallop, the thunder of hoofs upon the soft turf, the bent figures of the jockeys, the raking strides of the beautiful horses—Anna no longer wondered why sport could so fascinate its devotees. She felt at such a moment that she would have gladly put her whole fortune ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... create this interest and stir his readers to action by either one of two methods: by exposing existing evils, or by showing what has been done to improve bad conditions. The exposure of evils in politics, business, and society constituted the "muck-raking" to which several of the popular monthly magazines owe their rise. This crusading, "searchlight" type of journalism has been largely superseded by the constructive, "sunlight" type. To explain how reforms have been accomplished, or are being brought about, is construed by the best of the present-day ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... vessels, with twelve men to each, or four hundred and eighty in the whole. And, besides the people employed by the officers of government to purchase provisions, numbers were stationed in different parts of the rivers to contract the stream, by raking together the pebbles where, otherwise, the water would have been too shallow for the boats to pass; and others to attend at all the fluices on the canals to assist the vessels in getting through ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... it!" she called, running down to the hedge where he was raking out the trimmings left from the morning's work. "I know what I can do, Jack. I heard Mrs. Dunning tell Aunt Trudy the other day that she would give anything if she could get someone to stay with her baby while she went to the card ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Pilgrim ship, if of 120 tons burthen, as figured from such data as that given by Admiral Paris, must, approximately, have been. (See photographs of the model presented herewith.) "A wooden, carvel-built, keel vessel, with full bluff bow, strongly raking below water line; raking curved stem; large open head; long round (nearly log-shaped) bottom; tumble in top side; short run; very large and high square stern; quarter galleries; high forecastle, square on forward end, with open rails on each side; open bulwarks to ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... often see spaces of bare sand amid them. But I walk encouraged between the tufts of Purple Wood-Grass, over the sandy fields, and along the edge of the Shrub-Oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries. With thoughts cutting a broad swathe I "get" them, with horse-raking thoughts I gather them into windrows. The fine-eared poet may hear the whetting of my scythe. These two were almost the first grasses that I learned to distinguish, for I had not known by how many friends I was surrounded,—I had seen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... who had no delicate scruples of this kind to struggle with, "you do beat all, aunt Hannah; I hadn't the least idea that there was so much vinegar in you. Now Mr. Farnham was a kind of father to me, and I'm bound to keep any body from raking up his ashes in ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a questionable financial enterprise. One of the yellow journals of the day—for we had them even then, although they were not put forth from printing presses, but displayed on board fences in scare-head letters six or eight feet high—one of the yellow journals of the day, I say, issued a muck-raking Extra, exposing what it termed The International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, and most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lend color to its ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... the end of these new transverse polings. Breast boards were set on end under the ends of the transverse polings when they had been driven out to their limit. Side bars, BB, were then placed as far out as possible and supported on raking posts. These posts were carried down to rock, if it was near, if not, a sill ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... disaster. Vye shouted, his battle cry piercing the silence of the lake and wood. He sprang, aiming the spear point at the beast's protuberant belly, and then swerved to the side as the knife bit home, raking his weapon to ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... Mariner was far from cheering up, if I recollect rightly; and I don't believe that venerable navigator would have cared much if it had been announced to him, through a speaking-trumpet, that "a low, black, suspicious craft, with raking masts, was ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Jerseymen went on, closely followed by the brave boys of Company K of the Third New York Cavalry, they returned the fire briskly. After reaching a point bordering on a piece of woods, the rebels commenced firing artillery, nearly raking the road on which our troops were advancing. They then fired to the right and left, to prevent a flank movement, which was attempted by Colonel Heckmann. The fight began now in earnest, and as our infantry and artillery were ordered up, regiment ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... wound is bad—a long, raking furrow in the right forearm. I bind it up for him, but he is losing a great deal of blood and is ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... rubbish with her fore-legs, collects it with the rake of her mandibles and pushes it back into the pit, into which she now descends to stamp upon the powdery layer and cram it down with her hind-legs, which I see swiftly working. When this layer is well packed, she starts raking together fresh material to complete the filling of the hole, which is carefully trampled stratum ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... terrier nose lifted on the moth-wing shadows of her nostrils, her dark-blue eyes, that gazed at you, close under the low black eyebrows, her brown hair that sprang in two sickles from the peak on her forehead, raking up to the backward curve of the chignon, a profile of cyclamen. And her mouth, the fine lips drawn finer by her enchanting smile. All these features set in such strange, sensitive unity that her mouth looked at you and her eyes said things. No matter ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... other assaults Pope replied by a long letter, suppressed, however, for the time, which, as Johnson says, exhibits to later readers "nothing but tedious malignity," and is, in fact, a careful raking together of everything likely to give pain to his victim. It was not published till 1751, when both Pope and Hervey were dead. In his later writings he made references to Sappho, which fixed the name upon her, and amongst other pleasant insinuations, speaks of a weakness which she shared ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... nothing to care for but myself, and the laying out my money; which is disposed of by one single precept; too many things are required to the raking it together; in that I understand nothing; in spending, I understand a little, and how to give some show to my expense, which is indeed its principal use; but I rely too ambitiously upon it, which renders it unequal and difform, and, moreover, immoderate in both the one and the other ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... look up he felt the eyes of the young woman opposite raking him like searchlights, and Rose's eyes were on him too, he knew, but they rested on him unquestioningly, beautifully, like a benediction. How long would they go on doing that once Lady Caroline was there? He didn't know; he ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... fire was there,—just enough to kill the dampness of the river's edge, and over it the old squaw of Akkomi bent, raking the dry sticks, until the flames fluttered upward and outlined the form of the chief, coiled on a pile of skins and ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... boys looked up during the conversation. With the point of his hunting-knife Rod still searched in the bottom of his pan, turning over the pebbles and raking the gravelly sand with a painstaking care that would have made a veteran gold seeker laugh. Some minutes had ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... was on the common where he was raking over old rubbish and abstracting rags and bits of iron. The children were about to speak to him when something in his brown and wrinkled face recalled the nurse-girl's remark about "Satan's imps," so they ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... the old ballad, Robin Hood set his horn to mouth and blew mighty blasts; and half a hundred yeomen, bows bent, came raking ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... dry sand under their laboring feet, the Legionaries charged. At any second, a raking volley might burst from the dunes. The lethal pellets—so few in this vast space—might not have taken effect. Not one heart there but was steeling itself against ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... screamed with laughter and roared applause at jests which were either inane or hateful. A noisy man in a long-waisted overcoat, whose skirts swept the stage, a blonde wig, flying yellow whiskers, and a white hat at a raking angle, sang an idiotic song with patter interspersed between the verses. He described a visit received from Lord Off-his-Chump, Lady Off-her-Chump, and all the honourable Misses Off-their-Chumps. The witticisms convulsed ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... any longer—barbarian!" she added, shaking a finger. "Didn't I say that you would get into trouble? that you would set the country talking? Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories, and raking up your sins, with no cause whatever, instead of in your bed. You were to have lunched with us the next day—I had asked Lady Harriet to meet you, too!—and you didn't; and you have wretched patches where your hair ought to be. How can you promise that you'll not make a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... looked up to her as the squire's lady and thanked her for toys and magazines. Evenings she went with her husband to the motion pictures and was boisterously greeted by every other couple; or, till it became too cold, they sat on the porch, bawling to passers-by in motors, or to neighbors who were raking the leaves. The dust became golden in the low sun; the street was filled with the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... determined our actions, although the Civil War is proof of its power. Again and again it has gone aground roughly when the ideal met a condition of living—a fact that will provide the explanation for which I seek. But optimism, "boosting," muck- raking (not all of its manifestations are pretty), social service, religious, municipal, democratic reform, indeed the "uplift" generally, is evidence of the vigor, the bumptiousness of the inherited American tendency to pursue the ideal. No one can doubt ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the ship's newer and nearer position this disadvantage to us was intensified. Then abruptly we realized that under cover of darkness bombs, an electronic projector and searchray had been carried to the top of the crater rim, diagonally across and only half a mile from us. Their beams shot down, raking all our vicinity from ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... speaks. In passages of satire that becomes so acrimonious at times as to indicate real personages, the wave of speculation that swept Argentina and Brazil is analyzed and held up to scorn. The novel is really a piece of historical muck-raking and was long an object ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... America can show is despicable,—all thoroughly cultivated and adorned, with the care and ingenuity of centuries; and an income, a month of which would be greater wealth than any of your American ancestors, raking and scraping for his lifetime, has ever got together, as the accumulated result of the toil and penury by which he has sacrificed ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were blowing in on him through the open door, no sounds of loud and boisterous conversation were rattling in his ears. The dashing manager of one of the branch banks in the town was sitting close to the little stove, and raking out the turf ashes with the office rule, while describing a drinking-bout that had taken place on the previous Sunday at Blake's of Blakemount; he had a cigar in his mouth, and was searching for ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... decided. "The influence of the fellow on Hatch is wholly bad. What is the best course for me to pursue? Had I better warn his father? Is there not some other way to open Arthur's eyes? If I go to Warren Hatch, the man may become angry, and give his son a raking down that will do ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... which Fielding must have found exceedingly galling. He carefully abstained from mentioning his name, on the ground that it could do him no good, and was of no importance; but he described him as "a broken Wit," who had sought notoriety "by raking the Channel" (i.e. Kennel), and "pelting his Superiors." He accused him, with a scandalised gravity that is as edifying as Chesterfield's irony, of attacking "Religion, Laws, Government, Priests, Judges, and Ministers." He called him, either in allusion to his ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... then left the house, and again went towards the blackened ruins, where men were still raking ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... be gained in raking over at this day the ashes of dead controversies and revilings. Americans no longer read the (p. 092) writings of the kind described, and Englishmen have largely forgotten that they were ever written. The new ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... up!" broke in the cheery voice of our rare old host. "Livingstone, if you begin back-handing already, you'll never be able to hold that great raking chestnut I saw your groom leading this evening. The man looked as if he thought he would be ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... doctor hid the key, he possessed himself of it one day, and sallied forth, bent on a lark of some kind or other, but without very well knowing what. Passing the kitchen, he observed Anderson, the butler, raking the fire out of the large oven which ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... you niggers," he continued, raking the coals together over a fresh bar of iron, "would stop wastin' yo' money on 'scursions to put money in w'ite folks' pockets, an' stop buildin' fine chu'ches, an' buil' houses fer yo'se'ves, you ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... down to the duck-boards he saw Private Berger come back into the trench from the adjoining traverse, the latter a jog in the trench line intended to prevent the enemy from raking any great length of trench during ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... his ears that day he tried to kiss me," went on Felicity, who was evidently raking her conscience for past offences in regard to Peter. "Of course I couldn't be expected to let a hir—to let a boy kiss me. But I needn't have been so cross about it. I might have been more dignified. And I told him I just hated him. That wasn't ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pomace is shoveled from the finished cheese, it is again ground under a toothed cylinder, and thence drops into large troughs, through a succession of which a considerable stream of water is flowing. Here it is occasionally agitated by raking from the lower to the upper end of the trough as the current carries it downward, and the apple seeds becoming disengaged drop to the bottom into still water, while the pulp floats away upon the stream. A succession of troughs serves to remove nearly all the seeds. The value of the apple seeds ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... going on. Ricord's ship lay, idle and deserted, at anchor. Five pirate crafts surrounded Santoval's galley. Two of them were alongside of her; the others were raking her fore and aft with their shot. The young knights left the oars, sprang up to the poop and joined in the shout of encouragement raised by the others, and then, resuming their helmets and armour, stood ready to leap on board an enemy as soon as they reached her. ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... discovery, that he was tired of South America, tired of his ship, tired of everything. He contrasted his own voyages in and out, from the same place to the same place, up and down, up and down, as regular as the swing of a pendulum with that gay wanderer of the raking masts who was free to roam the world. It came over him with an insistence that he, too, would like to roam the world, and see strange places and old marble palaces with steps descending into the blue sea ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... repeated faintly, and observed him as searchingly as it was possible to do without exposing herself to a raking fire in return. Could he know that Christopher was living there, and was this said in prolongation of his recent suspicion? But Lord Mountclere's face gave ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... lines are concerned the men in the trenches keep a sharp look-out for hostile aeroplanes. The moment one is observed to be advancing, all the men seclude themselves and maintain their concealment. To do otherwise is to court a raking artillery outburst. The German aeroplane, detecting the tendency of the trenches describes in the air the location of the vulnerable spot and the precise disposition by flying immediately above the line. Twice ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... smooth, as there was hardly a breath of wind stirring, though the boat's crew who went ashore told us that the long groundswell broke into a heavy surf on the beach. There was only one vessel in the port— a long, sharp brig of about three hundred tons, with raking masts, and very square yards, and English colors at her peak. We afterwards learned that she was built at Guayaquil, and named the Ayacucho, after the place where the battle was fought that gave Peru her independence, and was now owned ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of his hampered leap, the carcajou now crept slowly around the raging and snarling captive, who kept pouncing at her in futile fury every other moment. Though his superior in sheer strength, she was much smaller and lighter than he, and less murderously armed for combat; and she dreaded the raking, eviscerating clutch of his terrible hinder claws. In defence of her burrow and her litter, she would have tackled him without hesitation; but her sharp teeth and bulldog jaw, however efficient, would not avail, in such a combat, to save her from getting ripped almost ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Loutherbourg was decidedly an innovator and reformer. He was the first to use set-scenes, and what are technically known as 'raking pieces.' Before his time the back scene was invariably one large 'flat' of strained canvas extending the whole breadth and height of the stage. He also invented transparent scenes, introducing representations of moonlight, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... did by building a big fire, raking away the ashes, and putting the dough on the hot place, covered with a kind of basin made of clay, over which 'I had ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... occupations there are: as, various and much brawling; raking about; and much caring about earthly things. Against much brawling, Solomon says "The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water." "Let the water out," that is, "let the tongue fleet out in quarrelling." But to the knowledge of ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... sentinels over the river banks. For a moment I stood among them, watching the blue haze of the opposite shore; then turning away I rolled over on my back and lay at full length in the periwinkle that covered the ground. From beyond the church I could hear Uncle Methusalah, the negro caretaker, raking the dead leaves from the graves, and here and there among the dark boles of the trees there appeared presently thin bluish spirals of smoke. The old negro's figure was still hidden, but as his rake stirred the smouldering ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... and keep it up— A flying race is the Melbourne Cup, You must race and stay to win it; And old Commotion, Victoria's pride, Now takes the lead with his raking stride, And a mighty roar goes far and wide— "There's only Commotion ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson |
